Homemade Chicken Nuggets

Alyssa spent the night with her friend Tessa last weekend. Tessa’s mom called earlier in the week and said that she and Tessa were going shopping on Saturday for track shoes and shorts and they wanted to know if Lyss could/would go with them since she’s an old hand at track now that this is her second year doing it. Tessa’s mom said the shopping trip would extend into an overnight visit if we were okay with that.

I asked Alyssa if she wanted to go and then spend the night and she did. So it happened. Yay!

When she got home on Sunday she said that for dinner the night before, Tessa’s mom had made homemade chicken nuggets and they were awesome.

That’s a thing? Really? When there is the convenience of Tyson chicken nuggets in your very own grocer’s freezer case, people make homemade chicken nuggets? I mean…I don’t get it.

But apparently this is a thing and it’s a thing that Tessa’s mom does.

Even though I was in the middle of spooning chocolate chip cookie dough onto cookie sheets and baking that dough into delicious cookies, I immediately felt inadequate.

And let me say right here that the cookie dough was from scratch, not the kind one can get in the grocer’s dairy aisle along aide the premade tubes of biscuit dough (which I DO happened to buy because…yeah, it’s there and I’m incredibly lazy.)

But the point is, I was making cookies for my family, because they enjoy them so much and sometimes I overcome my incredible laziness to do nice things for them and there I was feeling bad because I don’t also make chicken nuggets.

Which is so stupid and I need to remember my conversation with Alyssa from less than a week ago about not comparing ourselves to others, to just doing our own best and owning that.

I ended up feeling weirdly bad for several hours about the chicken nuggets. I have no explanation except maybe I enjoy putting myself down and telling myself how horrible I am. Maybe I get a thrill out of seeing just how mean my own inner voices can be.

Who knows?

What I do know, though, is that I won’t be making homemade chicken nuggets anytime soon, no matter how often Tessa’s mom makes them. It just seems like a lot of work and I’d rather back cookies over here any day.