Chicken and Roasted Tomato Sandwich

Sorry not sorry*… I really like my life.

You’re not supposed to say that.

When someone asks you how things are going, you’re supposed to say, “OK.” You’re supposed to say, “All right.” You’re supposed to say, “Good, except…”

Except I can’t. Ever since I left my job and became my own boss, I’ve been thrilled with pretty much everything that goes on in my life, from waking up to riding the metro in the middle of the day to spending my afternoons working at the American Library in Paris. For someone who spent most of my adolescence purposefully angry, being blissful for four months has been a strange, new development. I didn’t much know how to deal with it, except to repeatedly tell the Country Boy, “I love my life. I love my life.”

“I know, baby. I know.”

It’s starting to fall on deaf ears. So now I’m telling you, and anyone else who will listen. I love my life… and I’m not sorry about it.

I don’t know where we get this cultural necessity to always highlight the things that are going wrong in our lives, the things that aren’t as good as they should be. I know I’m guilty of it too. But there’s something to be said for understanding that you deserve to be happy, for accepting being happy, for enjoying being happy and not apologizing for it. That isn’t to say that it can’t be off-putting for some people, but I don’t mind that quite as much as I used to. After all, no amount of skepticism from anyone else could change the fact that the past four months have been some of the happiest of my life, and I don’t see a downturn anywhere in my future.

Last night, I met up with some friends, a mix of French and American, different languages sailing across the two tables we shared in the basement of a trendy Parisian bar that I generally wouldn’t go to, because I’m not really a trendy sort of person. But this year, instead of hoping I would see people on my birthday, doing nothing about it and moping around wondering why I wasn’t seeing anyone or doing anything, I decided to do something I’ve been afraid to do since middle school: I threw myself a birthday party.

As I was sitting in the room with a woman I met through my writing workshop here in Paris, sharing delicious spicy fish tacos and enjoying the only cocktail I actually like, I confided to her something I haven’t been able to say out loud, not yet, not until yesterday.

“From now on, when people ask me what I do, I’m going to say I’m a storyteller,” I said. “And that’s what I’m going to do: tell stories.”

Telling stories has, after all, recently become what I do, slowly and without my noticing. It was TCB who recommended that I start doing guided tours of Paris again along with my freelance writing, and as the summer season has picked up, I’ve been visiting Paris’ most famous monuments every day, meeting new people who grin uncontrollably as they walk to the Eiffel Tower, and in between writing pages of my novel, articles about Paris’ food scene and recipes for this blog, I’m telling visitors all of the things I love so much about my adoptive country: its history, its art, its literature. I tell stories with my voice to make coming back to type all the more fruitful. It’s a lovely balance.

Tonight, I was giving a tour, a ghost and legends tour outlining, amongst other things, how scary Catherine de Medici was, and why you never mess with the Templar knights. There was a little girl on the tour, 12 years old, following me around and asking me questions. I know I used to be like that; at some point, I got scared of what people thought of me. I forgot that happiness is infectious, and self-consciousness is evident and therefore useless. I loved how excited she was, how she followed me between stops. She drew me an Eiffel Tower in rainbow colored pencil, and I brought it home with me.

“You’re a great storyteller,” the little girl’s grandmother said as the tour ended. “That was fantastic.”

And I said what Amy Schumer says no woman says. “Thank you.”

My father has spent most of my life asking me questions appropriate for a Proust questionnaire. “What’s your passion?” “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”

And the one I dreaded the most. “Are you happy?”

I never knew how to answer that question. Am I happy now? Am I content? Am I done working towards new things, because I have everything I need? I could somehow always manage to get off the hook with a shrug. There’s no shrugging now.

Yes, I’m happy. No, I’m not content; I hope I never will be. Yes, I’m going to keep working and working and working, to always be achieving goals and looking for new ones, uncovering passions and living them to the fullest. And in all of that, I will remain, I hope, the way I feel today: happy.

I think that’s the best 28th birthday gift a girl could ever give herself.

Roasted Tomato and Chicken Sandwiches

One of the tours I run is a food tour along the Canal Saint Martin. I made these sandwiches so the Country Boy and I could enjoy them together once the tour had ended.

Roasted Garlic Spread
1 head garlic
1 tsp. olive oil
3 Tbsp. Greek yogurt
salt and pepper

Green Onion Chicken
1 green onion, thinly sliced lengthwise
2 chicken breasts
1 Tbsp. olive oil
salt and pepper

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1 tsp. olive oil
salt and pepper

1 baguette, halved

Roast the garlic for the spread and the cherry tomatoes at the same time. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Place the cherry tomatoes, whole, in a Pyrex dish and toss with oil, salt and pepper. Cut off just the top of the head of garlic, so that the tops of the cloves are slightly exposed. Drizzle in one teaspoon of olive oil. Wrap in aluminum foil. Roast both the tomatoes and the garlic for 1 hour. Allow both to cool.

When the tomatoes and garlic are cool, squeeze the garlic from the papery skin and smash with a fork. Combine with the Greek yogurt and season. Set aside.

Prepare the chicken. Place the sliced green onions on top of the raw chicken breasts. Cover the chicken with parchment paper and pound the chicken breasts with a meat mallet or rolling pin until they are slightly flattened. The onions should be slightly embedded in the chicken.

Preheat a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil. Season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper, and cook until golden on the outside and cooked through on the inside, about 3-4 minutes per side, depending on how much you have flattened the chicken. Once the chicken is cooked, allow it to cool slightly. If making the sandwiches ahead, for a picnic, allow to cool completely.

Split each half of the halved baguette. Spread one side with the garlic spread, then distribute the tomatoes. Slice the chicken breasts and place them on top. Close the sandwiches, and wrap tightly in plastic wrap if enjoying later. Eat somewhere beautiful, and be happy.

*Sorry not sorry, Little Sister — I stole your phrase.