Body By Irma

Rombauer, that is. Deviser of The Joy of Cooking. And if I don't stop procrastinating with its pages, there will be some dress size fluctuation in the wrong direction. Did you know that you can use a coffee bean grinder to turn sugar into the superfine sugar necessary to make their master cookie recipe--and the resultant peanut butter cookies won't at all taste like eight-month old Eight O'Clock coffee grounds? The real reason I'm here is that while rustling around the kitchen for ingredients for the above, I noticed this recipe on the side of a box of Key Food raisins.

Diamond Jim's Chicken Hash with Champagne Raisins
3/4 cup Key Food raisins [make sure they're not Sunmaid, because that would totally detract from the feeling that you're eating something out of a church cookbook from the Las Vegas area circa 1959]
1/3 cup champagne [did you ever think you'd see the words "Key Food raisins" and "champagne" this close to each other?]
3 tablespoons flour
2 1/2 tablespoons butter or margarine
3/4 cup chicken stock or broth
1/3 cup whipping cream or half and half
3 cups diced, cooked chicken
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

It will take me too long to type the directions, but the expert chefs among you could probably figure out what goes where. Who is Diamond Jim? Who does he know at Key Food? Do they have chain gang escapees manning their test kitchens? Serve with toast points!