Chicken Panino

Sponsored Results

add to shopping list Ingredients

1 left over roast or barbecued chicken breast, pulled apart into strips
1 clove garlic minced
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
4 Tbsp tomato sauce
Salt to taste
1 green onion sliced into 4 strips, lengthwise
several slices of Parmiggiano Reggiano
a few sprigs of basil
4 slices Nonna’s Crusty Bread
optional hot peppr

Preparation

Sauté the garlic in the oil, in a medium size frying pan
Add the tomato sauce
Add salt
Cook a few seconds, until bubbly
Shot off burner
Add the chicken breast and smother in the sauce.

-Assembling the Sandwich-
Place the basil on the bread slice
Half the chicken
Half the Parmigiano Reggiano
Half Green onion
Then the other bread slice
Repeat for the other sandwich

I’m about 6 years old. My best friend is Loredana who lives in Rome but comes down to Sicily regularly with her parents to visit her grandparents who live on the floor below us. I also play with 2 other neighbor girls Rosalba and another girl who’s name I forget, but for the sake of the story we’ll call her Angela.
Loredana and Rosalba are good girls, their respective parents are very protective and you hardly see them out on the street playing games with other kids. Angela and I are so much alike but we don’t prefer each other’s company except that because of circumstances we’re always together. No one else is, as available to play as much as we are.

Angela is a risk taker just like I am. We jump off of walls, jump into rain puddles, hang off railings facing precipices, knock on people’s doors and then run away. Well you got the idea, we’re not such good girls, and if you wonder why I’m spending time outside unsupervised, well, these are the 60’s and I live in Agrigento, things are different here. Nothing happens here to make a parent worry of any danger, except the danger, our parents have no idea, we’re putting ourselves through.

A few days ago I invited Loredana who was down in Sicily, to come out and play with us. Somehow we were able to convince her mom this time, it had never happened before. I was so happy to show her to my friends. We played hopscotch, the italian version. We played hide and seek and then Angela suggested we should go knock on the window of our regular source that provided us with mischievous entertainment . We had been knocking on this woman’s window for the past few weeks. Not at a same time and not on the same days, so she didn’t know when to expect us and we were always able to run away and then laugh our heads off.

So we filled Loredana in, on our scheme and we explained our plan that we wanted to execute with her and of course she resisted, but we had a way of convincing her and she couldn’t refuse.
The target lived on a hill and she spent time in a room with bookshelves and a desk. We didn’t know her name, we didn’t know if she lived all alone or had a family, we didn’t know if she worked. What we did know was that she lived in an apartment on the hill and her window faced the street we would pass by regularly. Her apartment was in between the street level and the subterranean, so it was easy for us considering our height to look straight into her window without even bending our knees or lifting our heels.We somehow always caught her sitting at the desk facing away from the window. We would knock on the window and then run down the hill and turn at the corner away from sight.

With the plan ready to execute, the three of us, walk up the hill together, we whisper to Loredana, “that’s her sitting at the desk, let’s knock and then run as fast as you can”
We decide who’s going to knock and there we go. Knock on the window, startle the woman and then we run as fast as we can until we turn the corner and then we, all three, look at each other and start laughing. It was a success! We laughed and laughed and thought we had achieved something worthwhile.
It had been so much fun!
“Why don’t we try it again?” Angela suggested
“What I great Idea” I thought, it wouldn’t be often that I had Loredana playing outside with me. So it made sense to have double the fun.

Loredana, thought once was enough, but we convinced her again and so we went up the hill again. We looked into the window and I asked in a whisper “where is she, do you see her?” Angela says ”no, she’s not there” and before we could wonder any longer the woman storms out from behind the door and catches Loredana. Our hearts our bursting out of our chest, and the woman is screaming at us, but we can’t hear what she’s saying because the blood rushing to our heads has flooded our ears and our world all of a sudden seems to have entered a different reality. I’m in shock, Loredana is crying scared out of her mind, Angela pulls Loredana out of the woman’s grip and she takes my hand, pulling me as she’s running to safety away down the hill and around the corner down to inside my building. Loredana is still crying hysterically, my heart is pumping so hard, I feel like it’s going to jump out of my chest and leave me for ever.
Angela is scared too I can tell, but she’s more controlled than we are.

Loredana decides she’s going to go home to her mommy, so she walks up by herself, while I stay with Angela until it is safe for her to cross the street to her home, then I go up the four flights of stairs all by myself, looking behind me, in case the woman is following me. But of course she had given up on us, I guess she figured she taught us a good lesson and didn’t need to pursue it, and she was right. I was never going to knock on her window again.
Angela and I would have to find another source of mischievous entertainment.

The worse thing that day was, my play day had been cut short. Now I was going home with nothing to do. We had no afternoon TV programs, my mom would probably ask me to do some chore and… there would go my perfectly good play day, wasted.
I figured, before my mom can ask me to do some chore I’ll ask for a snack, that should waste at least a half hour.
My mom makes me a sandwich with some left over chicken and my favorite crust bread.

YUM! Not everything is wasted.

The punishment eventually caught up with me when the next day Loredana’s mother related the previous day’s event.

Post a Question or Comment

Reviews

2/17/11

Theresa111 says:

Your recipes and stories are a great way to warm the tummy, the mind and the heart.

Post A Review