Clever Incompetence

Catherine decided to make chicken scarpariello for our giant Christmas Eve party-- it's chicken and sausage, with bell peppers, sweet and hot cherry peppers, onions, all in a wine sauce, but you have to cut thighs and whole breasts into parts, and cut through bone, which is more difficult than it looks on television-- and she was having trouble with our knife, so I told her she should be using a cleaver (which is where the word "clever" is derived from, but she didn't want to hear this) and that if she was clever enough to use the proper tool, she wouldn't be having so much trouble, and I even offered to go buy her one-- but instead she wanted me to chop a few pieces, though she knows I'm a bit squeamish when it comes to cutting chicken (and this wasn't a chicken breast out of the package, this was skin and bones and gristle) and so she was sarcastic and emasculating about my ginger cutting style (I really don't like touching raw chicken, it's slimy and gross) and so I took a good chop at it and broke the cutting board in two (a big chop just like I see the chefs do on TV-- and Catherine said to me, "Do you see any cameras?") and then she relieved me of cutting duty, but she wasn't very happy with me . . . so, against my better judgment, despite the fact that I knew I might lose a digit, I got her a cleaver for Christmas.