How to Cook a Celebratory Dinner Like A Mom on Spin

So, after only one week in "The States", Veggie has landed a full-time-part-time-temporarily-permanent position with a pharmaceutical company . . . the news of which sent your favorite Mom on Spin rushing to the market after work to carefully choose organic-farm-raised-no-animals-were-killed-in-the-making-of-this (unless you count the free-range chicken) ingredients for a celebratory family dinner.

And if you - like so many others - have been aching to cook like A Mom on Spin, I suggest you follow these simple steps so that you, too, can serve her famous Family Stir-Fry.

1. Run to the grocery store like a chicken with her head cut off  (but all indications are we'll get to that part of the recipe later. . . )
2. Enter the house and head straight to the basement to pick up the official rice steamer in order to prepare specialty rice you have just paid a premium for.
3. Encounter Ponzi upon entering kitchen - who promptly declares she must leave the house in one-half hour and that she just couldn't wait for you to come home so she made herself a small salad, but if the rest of the dinner is ready on time, she'd love to eat that too!
4. "Bag" the idea of the specialty rice and reach into freezer for bagged brown rice.
5. Cut up organic peppers and onions and begin to saute in frying pan.
6. Look for can of water chestnuts you swore resided in your pantry.  Discover it's a can of tuna. Decide not to add to recipe (although - strictly speaking - it would qualify as vegetarian, now wouldn't it???)
7. Open fridge. Look for soy sauce.  Find only two drops left in bottle.   Scream like a banshee.   Hear Ponzi blame Trigger for using up the family's store of soy sauce.  Find remnants of other "sitr-fry" sauce in an unfamiliar-but-only-slightly-used bottle and decide that it will do.
8. Begin to heat up special Terriaki-flavored "Tofetti" bites in separate frying pan for vegetarian daughters.
9. Observe Veggie enter kitchen and hear her asking you to drive her to the train station so she can have a last overnight in New York before starting her big job. . . and, yes . . . she does have plans for dinner - but they're in "The City". . . you know. . . with her friend . . .  who's in from California. .  .
10. Put all frying pans on "low".  Yell up to Ponzi that she must finish her own cooking and depart immediately for train station.
11. Allow Veggie to take $40 from you to pay for train fare, because the only other valid U.S. currency in her wallet is a $100 bill and - as she discovered last weekend - the conductors on the train won't be able to change that!
12. Ignore her requests to stay in your warm, dry car until the train arrives because your house is most-likely burning down as you speak (for you're beginning to be haunted by the fact that you're not really sure you ever heard Ponzi acknowledge your request to come down to the kitchen. . . )
13. Swear to yourself that you will make an appointment with the Opthamologist tomorrow because you can't see a damned thing in the dark . . .and it's pouring rain on the way back home.
14. Return home to an empty house.  Assume that now no one but Drip Dry will be eating dinner with you.
15. Head to refrigerator and promptly pull out box of Pinot Grigio.
16. Pour wine into glass.  Consume first glass quickly.
17. Throw caution to the wind and feed tofu to dog. . . .for once not thinking how much THAT just cost you! 
18. Smile at the thought.
19. Cut up organic chicken (with head already cut off) and fry in already-used-but-no-longer-holding-tofu pan with stir-fry sauce.
20. Burn tip of tongue while trying to sample chicken prematurely.
21. Observe Ponzi return home, help herself to all of the brown rice and most of the veggies, and yell, Hey!  What happened to the tofu???? but then proceed to head downstairs to eat her vegetarian meal and watch t.v.  (She left you a message, you know.  Did you not get it????)
22. Hear the garage door open, announcing Drip Dry's return home.
23. Separate onions from peppers (for don't you know they upset his delicate digestive system?) and pretend they never existed.
24. Pour more wine out of box.
25. Resort to heating pre-cooked minute rice in microwave and douse with remaining stir-fry sauce.
26. Serve dinner to Drip Dry.
27. Disassemble box in order to milk last of wine out of box and then proceed to blog.
28. Somehow validate Drip Dry's "observations" that no one else in the family likes the theme-related dessert items you purchased by consuming the entire pint of green tea ice cream and the box of ginger cookies by yourself despite the fact that the ice cream would almost qualify as "medicinal" on your burnt tongue. . . would it not????