EDITOR’S NOTE: This week, Green Plate columnist Christine Burn Rudalevige is, um, on break, and her husband, Andrew Rudalevige, normally a government professor at Bowdoin College, has heroically stepped in and written a special guest column.

“These plates, Dad – they’re not green! Or special!”

Green Bachelor Chicken

Christine and Andrew Rudalevige. Staff photo by Ben McCanna

This recipe, first printed in the Watertown, Massachusetts, St. John’s United Methodist Church Cookbook circa 1990, is a one-pot wonder, even in this more sustainably minded rendition.

Serves 4-6

1 cup local whole wheat berries
1 (4-pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces
Kosher salt
Black pepper
Smoked sweet paprika
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, peeled and diced
1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped
1 green bell pepper, deseeded and chopped
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups canned chopped tomatoes in their juices
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried oregano or basil
2 cups frozen peas
1 Hostess Twinkie, for snacking while cooking

Soak wheat berries in warm water for 1 hour. Drain and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Liberally season chicken with salt, pepper and paprika.

In a large Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium high heat. Place chicken pieces, skin side down, into the hot pan to brown, about 5 minutes. Remove the chicken to a plate. Add onions, garlic and bell pepper to the pan, stirring to coat in fat. Lower heat to medium, and cook vegetables until they are softened, 3-4 minutes.

Add stock, tomatoes, reserved soaked wheat berries, bay leaf and oregano. Increase the heat to high. Bring the mixture to a boil. Nestle chicken into the pot. Cover and bake in the oven for 40 minutes. Stir in peas.

Cover and cook until chicken is very tender and grains are cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Remove pot from the oven. Allow to rest for 15 minutes before serving.

We had discovered the bunker.

The snow had finally melted, as March turned to April. My daughter Eliza and I were taking advantage of Christine’s attendance at a three-day workshop – I think it was titled “Green Crabs, Brown Moths, and Artisanal Pine Cones: Imagining the Lobster Bake of the Future” – to do some spring cleaning.

Well, I lie. Actually we were looking for food. We weren’t used to having to fend for ourselves, after all, what with the plethora of chopped seasonal salads, sushi scallops, local dried beans, and Maine-grown flint corn around the place. On green plates. Always, served on special green plates. Surely there were some delicious winter root vegetables lying around somewhere.

But the room we discovered – had the Realtor not shown us this when we bought the house? – was full of something quite different. One wall was stacked with Saran Wrap, jostling for space with mega-sized paper towels. Magazines like Pseudo-Science and UnSustainable Weekly (“50 Fun Pranks to Play on Vegans!”) littered the floor along with scattered Styrofoam takeout containers, Taco Bell wrappers and red plastic plates. In another corner a pile of polyethylene bags grew, topped with a sign designating them “for the landfill.” Peeking out from under the bags was a stack of empty Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes and what looked like a half-full vat of high-fructose cheese whiz.

And next to that, dozing, a hand still clasped around the remains of an extra-large Shamrock Shake, was Christine herself.

Eliza screamed. But Christine only smiled in her sleep. And suddenly it all made sense. This was where Christine vanished to after the Maine Sunday Telegram’s photographer had captured that week’s perfectly plated organic goodness for posterity. This was where the petroleum-based kitchen conveniences, and the people trying to quit them, could secretly live out their days. This room – and Christine’s temporary coma – was proof of Kermit the Frog’s timeless wisdom: it’s just not easy, being green.

Christine’s pulse was strong. But while she was safe, all was not well. Her cellphone showed 26 text messages from Source editor Peggy Grodinsky asking, with increasing urgency, how the moth-crab-pine cone soufflé was coming along. It was deadline day.

And so it was a time for heroism.

“Well,” as the Bard once said (albeit to Mary, not Peggy), “I’m no hero, it’s understood.” But what I am, as a matter of historical fact, is the first published recipe author in the Rudalevige family. And so I stood tall, and turned to Eliza.

“We will make … Bachelor Chicken!”

She looked skeptical, in the manner of all teenaged daughters not convinced of their parents’ sanity. To be fair, her mother was passed out in a hidden room overdosed on minty not-so-green goodness, and her father’s main culinary achievement in recent years had been in the realm of (admittedly impressive) mixed drinks.

And yet, as I hastened to explain, it is true: The first line on my CV is not, in fact, the classic page-turner “Revisiting Midterm Loss.” Instead it boasts a contribution to a now-revered collection of New England cuisine: to wit, St. John’s United Methodist Church Cookbook.

Were it not for the 20th-century religious visionaries of Watertown, Massachusetts, “Bachelor Chicken” might have been lost to time. Instead, it was coming to the rescue.

I turned again to Eliza. “Get out the green plates!” I said.

Addendum: The original Bachelor Chicken was many excellent things, but it was not particularly green – mostly it was pretty beige, until you added the canned tomatoes. Thus sous-chef Eliza and I made key adjustments in order to honor the spirit of this column. We substituted sustainably raised chicken, local whole grains instead of rice, stock from the freezer instead of chicken bouillon, and so on. We even had to change the name. Still, the crucial ingredient remains intact, as close reading of the recipe will show.

April Fools!

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