A few weeks ago, a well-known food blogger, writer, and mother to two young girls named Jennifer Perillo, suddenly lost her husband Mikey to a massive heart attack.  He was helping their daughter ride her bike when his life was tragically and unexpectedly taken away. I cannot imagine her pain and my heart aches at the thought of her loss.  Although I do not know her personally, my eyes still well up when I think about her and her family.  Yet she found the strength, just eight days later, to write a touch article here about the importance of family dinners.

I grew up in a family where we sat together for dinner every night.  It didn’t matter if we were eating leftovers or takeout or a home-cooked favourite, my sister and I would set the table and we all took our respective seats around the table to have our meals.  That’s how we learned about each other’s day, shared jokes, vented our grievances, laughed, cried, and celebrated life’s little victories.  And now that I’m married and my husband and I live in the city, I find we don’t sit down together as often as I’d like.  The hecticness of work, friends, travel, classes, and the sheer grind of it all finds a way into our weekly routine more often than not.

So when he was getting ready to head out on a week-long international business trip, I made sure to take the time to prepare his favourite meals.  We had Ah Poh’s Yam Mein one night and my mom’s Lemon Chicken the next.  I remember as a kid how special we all felt when my mom would take the time to make lemon chicken and how spoiled they felt when I made my version for them.  And so, before D’s big trip, I wanted him to feel spoiled, and lemon chicken it was.

While this dish is fairly simple, it’s not the quickest to whip up (and you know I’m a fan of quick dinners) so give yourself enough time.  The chicken needs to be sliced, but you can buy prepped chicken tenders to cut this step.  I butterfly the breasts, which just means you cut it horizontally to make the breast thinner.  It opens up and make a ‘butterfly’ shape.  I used to be so scared of raw chicken, and would wear plastic gloves.  But with practice, I’ve toughened up and now it doesn’t freak me out. If you are scared, don’t be – just go for it.  Be fearless.  Or don’t and buy chicken tenders.

When making breaded chicken, it’s good to set up a dredging station.  Dredging is basically the process of creating a dry layer, followed by a wet layer, finished with a crumb layer to create the breading.  So here we use cornstarch, egg, and gluten-free bread crumbs.  You dip the chicken in cornstarch to coat, then the egg, then the crumbs, shaking off the excess after each ingredient.  At the end you have perfectly breaded chicken ready to fry.  If you’re sensitive or allergic to eggs, you can substitute egg replacer and it works just fine.

I’m new to food blogging, and am pleasantly suprised to see it’s a supportive community.  When news of Jennifer’s loss broke, there was an overwhelming amount of support for her and her family.  To help her heal, she asked that people make her husband Mikey’s favourite peanut butter cream pie in celebration of his life.  And to share that pie with someone you love.  Thousands of people made that Pie for Mikey.  It was on CNN.  And there’s this lovely video by Todd & Diane that basically sums it all up.

While I didn’t partake in the Pie for Mikey, I will definitely be helping by supporting Bloggers Without Borders – a non-profit organization that is was formed by food bloggers Maggy  Three Many Cooks and Erika Pineda-Ghanny of The Ivory Hut to help Jennifer and her girls during this difficult time.  I follow Jennifer on twitter and her tweets about insurance and the US healthcare system are both infuriating and sad.  Jennifer’s grace and strength during this tragedy are inspiring, and as I was making the lemon chicken for D, I remembered her words “Instead of looking at dinnertime as yet another chore, seize it for the gift it really is — a time to come together as a family and talk about your day, say grace or clink glasses and cherish the moment with each bite.”