Category Archives: food

Anniversary

Posted on December 30, 2009 | 6 Comments

Yesterday marked one year since my wife had her heart attack. She and I rang in the new year in her hospital room, toasting with sparkling pear juice after a dinner of home made chicken noodle soup (her favorite).

I’ve been ruminating about that, and how far we’ve come since then.

On the plus side, it precipitated some positive changes in our life.

We quit doing dessert every night: no more cream pies or ice cream. Instead, we have home made apple crisp from time to time.

We are eating more vegetables. Our dinners (and lunches) are more geared around the salad, choosing appropriate sides and proteins to go along with it. We’ve incorporated some new recipes into our regular dinner choice rotation, including ratatouille (made the way Remi the rat does in the Pixar movie of the same name). At least three times a week our breakfast is hot cereal consisting of toasted oatmeal, quinoa, flax seed and walnuts. And on those weekends we have pancakes or waffles, they’re made with whole wheat flour and flax seed meal.

We bought a series of books called “Eat This, Not That” which opened our eyes to the reality of nutrition, and how small changes can make a huge impact without forcing impossible expectations or unreasonable diet restrictions. For example, reading the nutrition labels on packaged foods can reveal how much high fructose corn syrup is in nearly every processed food you buy, including bread.

Still, there’s a lot of room for improvement.

One of the things my wife and I both struggle with is will power, and remaining fixed on our health goal.

We both are prone to “falling off the wagon” when it comes to food, particularly when that food is chocolate. Or at least partly chocolate. Carbohydrates are yummy, it’s an inescapable fact. We both like food, and don’t do well with portion control. Being hungry after eating the proper amount of calories means that at some point, we’re going to want to eat more calories.

And of course we need to get up and move more; get out and exercise. We have had spurts of activity, where we’ll go for a half-hour walk every night for a few weeks… but then we start slacking off, and pretty soon we’re not walking at all.

We now have a Wii Fit Plus, which is phenomenally motivating for getting us up and moving. It keeps track of your weight and body mass index, allows you to set goals and provides enough nagging to keep us going. I swear it said “oof” the first time I stood on that board. And I was very sad to see my little “Mii” character balloon up to walrus size once it calculated my BMI.

The games and training found in Wii Fit Plus are all aerobic activities, and they’re all very addictive – I find myself looking forward to practicing Kung Fu moves, jogging along with a kitty cat, throwing a Frisbee to a dog on the beach or doing the step aerobic dances. My wife is getting to be a grand champion hula-hooper.

We keep our eyes on the objective of being healthier, thinner, and more energetic in 2010. We’ll keep up with our diet changes and make further improvements. We’ll be moving more and eating less.

As I keep telling my wife: “We have to reach old age together. I’ve got plans for you.”

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Posted in food, health, holiday

Holiday Cheer

Posted on December 22, 2009 | 10 Comments

It’s three days until Christmas. I have the week off from work. That is, I have a week off of my normal job. This week I’m full-time daddy. And to make things even more fun, I have a cold.

On today’s planner is “Make Cookies”

Since my wife is working, it’s just going to be me and Michael. He told me last night as I was putting him to bed that today “we’re going to be buddies!”

I’m glad to hear that.

Last time it was just the two of us was two weekends ago, and we made sugar cookies. He’d been asking to make them for quite a while, and we had the perfect opportunity. So while I cleaned up the kitchen in preparation for making cookies, he peppered me with thirteen thousand five hundred eighty-two questions, most of which were of some form of “can we make cookies now?”
Asking Questions

To have a five-year-old helper, it’s important to understand their limitations. As much as I’d like to hand him the recipe page and tell him to have at it, he’s just not quite there yet. Instead I got things like flour, sugar, butter and eggs portioned out and ready and had him pour them into the bowl and mix them up in term. I explained why you mix the butter with the sugar first, proper technique for blending in the eggs and why it’s important to keep the dry ingredients separate from the wet until the final mixing.

He gave the dough about two turns with the spoon and pronounced it too difficult to stir.

After a couple hours of chill in the refrigerator, the dough was ready to roll. This he wanted to do in great excess. Had I not kept him in check, the cookies would have ended up gold-leaf thin if not entirely transparent.

We selected a number of cookie cutters, in traditional shapes: tree, star, bell, heart, etc. My favorite is the one in the middle. He called that one the “award”. Yeah, that sounds about right.
For Meritorious Service

He was only too happy to cut cookies out and place them on the cookie sheets. He got quite adept at being able to do it without tearing the raw cookies. By the third batch he was an old, practiced hand at cutting out cookies, reforming and re-rolling the leftover dough and cutting out another set. We used every scrap.

His favorite part was decorating. I never saw a kid spend so much time carefully selecting and applying sugar sprinkles on cookies. And he liked to use every color, regardless of the cookie’s shape.

So we’re going to be making cookies again today, as the last batch has long since been snarfed down.

I’m hoping I win another award today. Maybe one with a little something that’ll soothe my sore throat.

Merry Christmas everyone!

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Posted in food, fun, holiday, memories

Just Gone

Posted on August 4, 2009 | 16 Comments

It wasn’t five star dining, it wasn’t a healthy food haven, it wasn’t an iconic classic, it wasn’t a cherished town treasure, it wasn’t an example of period architecture.

It was just a great place to get a burger and a fries. And a corn dog. And a grilled cheese sandwich. And a milk shake in nearly any flavor you could dream up.

It was the Sunset Humdinger, a dinky little drive-in joint that had lived right off of Oregon’s Sunset Highway since the early 1970s. The place changed owners a couple of times (at some point acquiring walls to enclose the original façade and create a small indoor dining area) before finally being bought by the most recent owners just a few years ago.

The place had a familiar, “loved” atmosphere about it, like a kindly old man everyone in town knows, the guy who spends his time sitting on the bench outside the corner grocery, and who always greets you with a “Howdy” every time you pass by. In conversations with friends over the years, every time the Humdinger was brought up at least one person would spout off with a glowing review of their milkshakes, or would gush about their having the best onion rings anywhere.

Whenever I drove by I always made a point to remind myself to drop in and grab a burger, but I usually forgot. And when I didn’t forget, I’d convince myself that I should eat something else because my arteries are clogged enough already.

Now it’s no longer an option.

The powers that be decided that they needed to widen the road.

The bank on the other side of the street said they didn’t want it widened in their direction, so the Humdinger and the adjacent 1940s-era strip mall had to go.

When I first heard the news of its impending demise, I resolved that Michael must eat there at least once in his life. So one Sunday afternoon his mom and I took him there for lunch. We had burgers, fries and chocolate milkshakes. And onion rings. The staple foods. The best things. It was as delicious as it ever was, greasy and filling and sumptuous. Michael was not as impressed, and decided it would be more interesting to experiment with shoving a soda straw into the coin return of a Ms Pac-Man video game, one that probably last saw any serious game play well before Clinton was in office.

With the permission of the owners, I took pictures of the place for posterity (later I burned them onto a CD and gave it to the owners). I was afraid nobody else would, or ever had.

And now, it’s gone. Razed. It has disappeared without fanfare, mourners or bullhorn-toting protestors. There was absolutely nothing about its passing in the news. I conducted some casual interviews with some of the surrounding business owners about the Humdinger, but came away knowing no more than I had gone in with. The place was apparently a mystery that has gone silently into that dark night.

And the world is a slightly sadder, less yummy place.

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Posted in food, life, memories

Important Stuff

Posted on July 9, 2009 | 9 Comments

And now, because I have nothing but lengthy tomes in the works, I submit this list of things that are in one way or another significant in Michael’s world.

Things Michael Likes:

1. Sprinklers.
2. Fireworks.
3. Lunch.

He created this list yesterday on the way to Ms. K’s, as sort of a summary of his current state of being. We had been talking about fireworks, and how we were sad that the fireworks stands were all closing up because the 4th of July had passed. While he was mourning the passage of fireworks for the year, he saw some sprinklers running and had to interrupt his fireworks lamentation to ask me questions about the sprinklers, such as “how they’re sprinklers?” (which of course translates to “aren’t those sprinklers amazing?”).

On the heels of this came a sudden question about the contents of his lunchbox. “Do I gots peanut butter and jelly samwich?” “Yes, Michael. Just like you asked.” “Good. I love peanut butter for lunch. I love sprinklers and fireworks, too. So, I love sprinklers, fireworks and lunch.”

Got it.

Things That Upset Michael:

1. Spiders
2. Blood
3. Ice
4. Cheese

The spider part is easy to understand. I don’t like spiders. Neither does his mom. His oldest sister is ghoulish enough to be okay with them, and will catch the largest, hairiest spider you can imagine in a jar and show it to everyone.

Michael doesn’t like to see blood, or even consider the fact that it might ever leave his body. If he bumps his elbow or scrapes his toe, he will immediately demand a band-aid. 99% of the time the injury is bloodless, but that doesn’t matter. There is the possibility of blood, so let’s not take any chances. Of course this fear of blood brings with it a macabre fascination as well. He wants to know that he has blood in him, that his parents and siblings have blood in them, and what this blood does and why it’s red and how it stays in there and what happens if it all comes out.

I’m not sure how the ice thing started, but he hates it. More precisely, he hates knowing that ice melts. If it didn’t melt, he’d be okay with it. This one is relatively new, so I’m still not sure what to make of it. Last night at dinner he asked me several times whether his drink (in a special opaque cup with a straw – we were at a restaurant) had ice in it, because he doesn’t want ice. I’m sure he was cringing watching the rest of us drink our water, knowing that the ice in those glasses would eventually melt. Snow cones, otter pops, ice cream – anything that’s frozen and might melt will cause him much anxiety. Not too long ago, his mom tried to explain to him that when ice melts, it evaporates back into the air and turns back into water. He took her theory and ran with it: “And then it comes back into our freezer and makes more ice!” He was so pleased with himself for having figured that out all on his own. Now he knows that evaporated ice melt will find its way into our freezer somehow.

He still hates cheese. Particularly the smelly kinds like Parmesan, Asiago and Feta. We’ve been doing the Greek food thing lately, making Falafel with hummus, tzatziki and kalamata olives – and Feta cheese. Mmmmm! Michael can’t stand it. He can’t even be in the same room with the Feta, without holding his nose and waving his hand around in front of his face. I feel sorry for him, I really do. I hope his tastes change when he gets older. He’s missing out on an entire dimension of food enjoyment with his dislike of cheese.

Hopefully this weekend I’ll have something more meaningful to proffer.

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Posted in food, michael

Mother Lode

Posted on June 24, 2009 | 12 Comments

Last year, I sent up the red flags noting that Mother’s Circus Animal cookies were gone. Just a few weeks ago, I made a passing reference noting the fact that they’re back.

Yes, my friends, it is true! Those phenomenal little frosted miracles are back, and as good as they always were.

While it is true that the original Mother’s Cookies company has gone out of business, Kellogg’s stepped in and bought the trademarks and the original recipes, and fired up the magical cookie ovens again.

So great was my elation in discovering this fact that I had to buy a bag of them.

And when that ran out, I had to buy another.

Unbeknownst to me, my wife bought a bag on the same day. She was so thrilled to find a bag in the store, after seeing them fly off the shelves in recent weeks that she couldn’t pass it up. Imagine her surprise when she brought home this treasured bag, and then learned that I’d already bought one.

But it really became absurd when the next day a box arrived from my brother via FedEx: a box containing three bags of Mother’s Circus Animals. This brought our total to five bags. I’d say that’s plenty.

So at least as it concerns that one aspect, life is good again.

Now, during that dismal, dark epoch bounded by October of 2008 and January of 2009, I reluctantly resigned myself to the purchase of a substitute brand of frosted circus animal cookies. They held out some promise to be a worthy replacement, as they bore a brand of some repute: that of a somewhat famous elf and his cohorts, who presumably run their operation from within a hollow tree.

Upon inspection, I was immediately disappointed. These cookies were not the same. Not by a long shot.

I’ll let you be the judge. Cast your eyes upon this unaltered side-by-side comparison of the physical aspects of these two cookie brands (click for larger image).

Is there really any comparison? Taste-wise, the results are about the same as well. The “Brand X” cookies were thin, weak, doughy and tasted faintly of moss. The Mother’s cookies were of course spot on: crisp, light and with just the barest hints of lemon and coconut.

I did finally figure out that the one unfathomable “Brand X” cookie at the top was supposed to be a Gorilla, and that I had turned it the wrong way. Since Gorillas are in fact traditionally included in the “circus animal” phylum, I suppose I can give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

What shocked me the most, though, was the discovery that “Brand X” is also owned by Kellogg’s. In sum, Kellogg’s owns two different lines of cookies competing for the same market. To me, that’s sort of like selling a Lexus on the same showroom floor as a used Pacer. Whatever.

I’m just glad they’re back. Don’t be surprised if you can’t find any at your store though. I think I might have them all here.

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Posted in dad, food, ponderings

A Nice Smoky Flavor

Posted on May 14, 2009 | 13 Comments

After a hard day of blunking and wrestling with work-related matters, I came home Wednesday night to a delightful scene: dinner was being prepared, and one of my daughters was pitching in to help. I demonstrated the proper technique for removing the skin from a piece of fish.

On the dinner menu: broiled cedar plank salmon and red potatoes. Mmm! Heart healthy. We usually broil or grill the salmon on a cedar plank to give it a smoky flavor. With the rainy weather outside, that sounded perfect.

Then my wife asked me:

“Can we have a fire?”

“Yeah! That’s a great idea,” I said, thinking that this would be nice way to warm up a rainy day. In the fireplace, we had built up quite a load of papers to burn (credit-card inducements, old utility statements and other items with personal info on them), so I had to haul a ton of stuff out of it before starting a fire. I piled stuff up right in front of the fireplace, completely hiding Michael’s shoes, which he had decided to take off right there for some odd reason.

I opened the damper, got a good layer of papers and kindling set up, and touched it off with a match.

In almost no time, smoke began drifting out of the fireplace.

“Whoops!” I said. “I guess I forgot to open the damper! Sorry!” I reached in and pulled the damper lever, then leaned back to fan the growing flames.

I got up and turned to grab a log. I looked back at the fireplace, and was face to face with Satan’s own inferno.

Not only is smoke disgorging from the fireplace in massive wafts, but orange flames are hungrily licking the bricks below the mantel.

And it all went downhill from there.

“OPEN THE DOOR!” I shouted to my daughter (who stood nearby, mouth a perfect “O” of astonishment) and my wife. I was hoping that by some miracle the smoke would obediently march outside through the doorway, and that the fireplace flue would figure out what to do and let the smoke escape up the chimney. My daughter opened the door which the smoke ignored entirely in its inevitable search for higher ground.

My wife came running over with the fire extinguisher. She pulled the pin and handed it to me.
“Here. Extinguish it. Or I’m calling 911.”

I had no idea how to work the thing, but I finally managed to squeeze the right part. Yellow powder blasted out of the nozzle and doused the fire.

“Now sweep,” my wife instructed me, silently recalling the PASS acronym from her regular emergency training.

By this point, the smoke coated the ceiling two feet deep. Both smoke detectors are now very much alert. Sister B poked her head out of her bedroom door and leisurely ambled downstairs. Had the alarms been reporting an actual fire, she would have become an unfortunate statistic.

“WHERE’S THE FAN?” My wife shouted at me.

Michael repeatedly whirled around in a circle, hands over his ears, yelling: “I don’t want to die!”

“I DON’T KNOW – MICHAEL, YOU’LL BE FINE! THE FAN IS – YOU’RE OKAY, MICHAEL! – IT’S UPSTAIRS!” I yell, trying to be heard by my wife and reassure my son above the piercing alarms.

I head upstairs to get the large box fan, pausing briefly to silence the upstairs smoke alarm. I bring it down and hold it up in the doorway, aiming it to blow outside. The smoke is blasted out in a thick, grey column.

“WHERE ARE MICHAEL’S SHOES?” wife yells.

“UNDERNEATH ALL THOSE PAPERS I SCOOPED OUT OF THE FIREPLACE,” I said. All the while soothing Michael with calming words, she got down on her knees and frantically excavated through the pile for his shoes. Michael had his hands firmly clamped over his ears and screamed “AAAAAH! FIRE! THE BEEP BEEPS!”

“Michael, I need to get you outside for air,” she told him, putting on his shoes and sweatshirt.

Michael shouted back: “No! I don’t need air! I don’t need air!”

Sister B finally arrived in the midst of the chaos, and assumed responsibility for Michael. She whisked him outside, where they remained safely out of harm’s way. L took over holding the box fan while my wife and I headed upstairs to deal with smoke removal there.

Outside, Michael tried to get his sister to listen to reason:

“B?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a fire.”

“Yeah, kinda.”

“We should call 911”

“It’s not really a fire. Daddy has it taken care of.”

“No! We should call 911!”

“It’s just smoke. There’s not really a fire.”

“We need to call 911”

B calls her boyfriend.

“Hello, 911,” sister B says into her phone.

“Huh?” her boyfriend responds.

“Is that your boyfriend?” asks Michael.

From the outside our house must have looked like quite a scene: every door and window disgorging dark clouds of smoke. I was sure someone would call 911.

From the inside, the house was engulfed in a thick layer of smoke; my head was entirely lost in the murky atmosphere. The smoke rolled upstairs in great billows, covering the ceiling there to an even greater depth, until the exhaust fans that my wife and I turned on began to vent the smoke away in earnest. Gradually the tide turned, and the air cleared.

As the smoke abated, I knelt down and tentatively reached in the fireplace and checked the damper.

It was closed.

So: when I had originally thought I’d forgotten to open it, I was wrong. Then I mistakenly closed it, thinking I was opening it.

My two wrongs had made an even wronger wrong.

“Honey? Guess what? The damper was closed after all. How about that?”

After the dust had literally settled and all was under control, Michael went back to playing with his Leapster and his sisters went back to their respective phone call and art project. I got down to clean up the mess in front of the fireplace.

From the kitchen, where she finished dinner preparation, my wife observed:

“I have to say, my life has been far more interesting since I met you.”

Thanks, honey. I’m glad I can at least provide solid entertainment.

Oh: the salmon? It had a nice, smoky flavor. Perfect for a rainy day. I really could have used a beer.

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Posted in family, food, fun, moments

Tales of the Sisters: The Plague

Posted on April 13, 2009 | 11 Comments

On certain weekday evenings and every other weekend, there descends upon our house a plague of near Biblical proportion: a voracious hunger that cannot be sated, but merely pacified for a time.

I’m speaking of my two teenage daughters.

For the majority of their lives, they reside with their mom in a small house in the next town over. Apparently they never eat or drink while they’re there, but merely lie dormant until it is time to swoop down and wreak their devastation.

If I do not provide at least a full gallon and a half of milk by their arrival on Friday, I will be running to the store to get more on Saturday evening.

Bread, ice cream, soup, cereal, waffles, Spaghetti-O’s, cheese, crackers, leftovers, dry macaroni, house plants, small animals, furniture; anything that could be in whole or in part consumed and used by the body as fuel: these things are in imminent danger of being ravenously eaten as the girls sweep through the kitchen.

Every time I get a glimpse of them, they’ve got some kind of food in their hands: a sandwich, a bowl of cereal, hunks of cheese, handfuls of Lucky Charms, etc.

I bought a half gallon of lemonade on Sunday morning, and by Sunday evening, there were about two tablespoons left. Neither my wife nor I had had any, and Michael had had about six ounces. L said “it’s not my fault,” a great non-committal answer if there ever was one. This meant those two had consumed 60 ounces of lemonade over the course of the day without impinging upon their intake of milk, soda and whatever else they’d had.

One night, I kid you not: my older daughter was holding something wrapped up in a paper towel and was sucking on the outside. Apparently she had momentarily mutated into some kind of grotesque human-spider hybrid, had liquefied her prey and was sucking the digested material back through her proboscis. I was more than just slightly creeped out.

I have to keep five or six cans of Campbell’s Chunky Sirloin Burger with Country Vegetables on hand at any given time, because this same daughter will go through at least a can of that every day she’s with us.

Sunday night, after packing up to go, they can be seen in the kitchen cramming whatever morsels they can find into Ziploc baggies for the trip back to their mom’s. My wife calls this the “Final Pillaging.”

After making the cross-town trip, I return to a home that looks reminiscent of a small town after a Roman siege, plundered and ransacked. I swear, it looks as though the cupboard doors are hanging from their hinges, and torn wrappers are rustling about the floor in the dry breeze. My wife stands in the midst of it, shaking her head: “They come, they eat, they leave,” she says.

Sometimes I’m tempted to check to see whether Michael is free from bite marks; I never know just how hungry they might have been.

I’m scared to think what’s going to happen when Michael hits his teen years. Might be a good idea to stock up now, put a meat freezer in the garage and a few head of cattle in the back yard.

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Posted in daughters, family, food, teens

Plate? What Plate?

Posted on March 19, 2009 | 4 Comments

Wednesday night is usually a rushed, extra-stressful night for me. I have meetings all afternoon, right up to the stroke of five o’clock, after which I must head straight to Ms K’s as quickly as I can (obeying traffic control devices, of course), get Michael, then head off to get my daughters at their mom’s house.

To add to the fun, this evening my wife was with my stepdaughter at a school function and wouldn’t be back for at least another hour. It was my job to get dinner. Thus, given the circumstances, I attacked that job with my best strategy: head to Subway.

Five sandwiches later, we arrived home.

Michael started in immediately making demands: “I wanna watch SpongeBob!” “I need Cocoa Puffs.” “I need juice.” “Can I have blueberries?” “Daddy! I love to watch something!”

“Michael, can I at least get my coat off and keys put away? For crying out loud,” I griped at him.

He hesitated, but only for a moment or two, and then started back up in earnest.

“Can I have an egg? I want one of the eggs,” he whined.

This was a particularly sore point for me. On Monday he’d schnookered his mother into letting him stay home with her instead of going to Ms K’s for the day. She always regrets it, but never seems to remember. And every time, I remind her – and am told how insistent he is, how persuasive, how cute. By the time I get home, her tone has changed. “Persuasive”, “Insistent” and “Cute” have transformed into “Whiney,” “Sucking My Will To Live,” and “Where’s The Gin?”

Monday he’d talked his mom into buying blueberry pop tarts (“I love them!” he said. He ate one bite and said “I don’t love these.”), off-brand snack cakes that he crushed up and left in crumbs on the floor, seven more bags of holiday chocolate, and an Easter egg decorating kit.

That night they boiled Eggs and then decorated them. And since then, Michael’s been champing at the bit to eat one of them. He must think they taste extra yummy. They’re so colorful and beautiful on the outside, why wouldn’t they be just as tasty on the inside?

So with his unceasing demands for an egg, I decided to let him have one.

I got out plate, selected a green egg, placed it on the plate and set it in front of him.

“There. You need to crack and peel the shell off first. And don’t make a mess. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

I left him in the care of his sister B, who was within arm’s reach. This made her, as far as I was concerned, responsible for him. We have a clause in our home’s bylaws that state that whoever is closest to Michael assumes liability for his actions.

I returned to the kitchen to stash uneaten sandwiches and to get myself a drink and some chips. I heard B quietly explaining to him how to crack the egg on the plate.

I sat down and ate my sandwich and flipped through a copy of Popular Science that I’d been working on for the past week or so.

“Ewww, Michael! Don’t do that!” His sister said, jarring me back to reality.

I looked over to see Michael tasting the egg shell.

In front of him, there was carnage. The yolk of the egg was sitting on the bare table to the left of the plate, chunks of the egg white littered the placemat to the right of the plate, and bits of the egg shell were strewn everywhere else around the plate.

The plate itself was completely empty. Sparkling clean.

Well, he didn’t make a mess of his plate. I’ll give him that.

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Posted in food, frustration, inscrutable, michael

Just Desserts

Posted on February 24, 2009 | 10 Comments

Note: this is actually a story from two years ago that I just found buried. I see that I never posted it. It needs to be shared, even though it isn’t exactly the best follow-on to a post about healthy eating, there is still a lesson to be learned.

Around 7:15 or so, my wife announces that she wants something yummy. I’m always up for something yummy. I suggest pie, and she says that’s exactly what she was in the mood for. I offer to run and get one if she’ll give Michael a bath.

So off I go to Marie Callendar’s, taking with me the tin from our previous pie. I pick out a beautiful banana cream pie, one of our favorites, and head home in record time.

I come in the front door, pie in hand, and hear my wife calling down to my stepdaughter: “Could you bring some paper towels?” Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good. Stepdaughter responds with “I don’t know where they are!” This girl lives in an alternate universe, I think, because despite the fact that she’s lived in this house for four years, the only things she is certain to locate are the TV remote and the refrigerator.

I didn’t bother to point them out because according to my wife’s tone, time was of the essence, so I quickly whipped open the pantry closet and got a roll out. Stupid me, I didn’t put the pie down first. As I’m tossing the roll upstairs, I drop the pie box. It does a full somersault and lands right side up.

“Shoot!” (or something like that) I shouted, and inspected the pie. “Ow!” my wife calls from upstairs, having been beaned with a poorly thrown roll of paper towels.

The pie is okay – shaken up but otherwise edible. I am incredibly angry with myself for being so careless and I vow to not do that again.

After explaining the whole scenario to my wife and then demonstrating to my stepdaughter where certain key items are in the house she’s lived in for four years, I put the pie in the refrigerator.

Fast-forward to pie time, after Michael is safely ensconced in his bed.

I eagerly extract two plates and two forks, and then reach into the refrigerator to withdraw the lovely pie.

Somehow, and I’m really not sure how, I managed to drop it again.

This time, it does not fare so well. The box splits open, the pie slips out and most of it spills out into the refrigerator, coating the sides, the vegetable crisper, the meat drawer, the grill on the front, my knee, my socks and the floor.

Needless to say, I went slightly insane with self-anger. I picked up the pie tin, scooped the remnants onto the two plates, and then grabbed twenty seven squares of paper towels to clean up the mess I’d made, all the while muttering oaths at myself.

Right then, my wife said exactly what I was thinking: “Maybe God doesn’t want you to have that pie.”

Later on she pointed out how hilariously funny it was to watch me angrily throwing the last edible bits of the pie on our plates. I’m sure I made quite the spectacle.

Anyway… the pie was really good.

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Posted in food, frustration, marriage

Evil Chicken

Posted on January 27, 2009 | 13 Comments

I’ve been saving this particular story of culinary disaster for an opportune time. WeaselMomma’s post about soup provided me exactly that opportunity. If we can get a couple of other bloggers to join in with disastrous side dishes and desserts, we’ll have a whole meal covered.

My kids (and my wife) will never let me live down the day I served them chicken from hell. It was unintentional; I had nothing but the best intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions, and the road by which they are paved.

Some time ago, I created a dish the kids have dubbed “Famous Chicken.” I developed this recipe out of desperation for something that was nutritious and healthy, but would still be acceptable to picky children.

Let me just say right now that I don’t much like the taste of chicken. I don’t want to be reminded that the thing I am eating used to walk around the barnyard clucking pointlessly and wearing a stupid expression. The taste of chicken generally develops more after the meat has been cooked and has had a chance to ripen in the refrigerator, rendering the leftovers something to be avoided entirely. It has a sharp, fleshy flavor that just shouts “walking bird” to me. Turkey does the same thing, but shouts it in a different language.

Anyway.

I formulated a marinade that I’d soak the chicken in for six hours or so. After cooking the marinated chicken, it tasted tangy and salty and yummy, and masked most of the chicken-ish taste. The chicken can simmer in that stuff for an hour after marinating all day, and when it all reduces out, you toss in a couple of lumps of butter and brown the meat really good. It goes perfect along side of plain white rice, and up until this time, the kids would always issue shouts of joy whenever I said that we were having Famous Chicken for dinner.

This marinade consists of salt, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, lime juice, tequila, and whiskey (don’t worry, the alcohol cooks off. And if you try to argue with me on that I’ll just say you’re lying).

Well, one night I didn’t have lemon or lime juice. And this recipe needs the citrus tang badly.

I did have a couple of packets of Country Time Lemonade Mix. “Well,” I reasoned, “if I just use that, I can skip the sugar too.” Very reasonable, I thought to myself.

And so I did. The chicken sat in my homemade hard lemonade for the day, until I cooked it and served it with white rice and steamed vegetables.

Bon appetit, dear family!

At the beginning, they were very polite about it. After only a couple of bites, each of their expressions changed.

Then the girls began begging for something else to eat. Cereal. Whole wheat toast. Dry macaroni. Cloves.

“Okay, okay. Go ahead,” I said, waving them off.

I seem to recall that Michael just sat there, crying.

And no wonder. It was like tucking into a syrupy-sweet lemon Jolly Rancher constructed of flesh. My wife stalwartly and smilingly trudged through my horrific concoction, as did I. She did it out of unwavering love. I did it out of a sense of self-reprimand.

The next day the kids did a sweep of the kitchen and removed all traces of Country Time Lemonade Mix to be sure I’d never do that to them again.

It was only after a year or so that they’d let me make Famous Chicken again, and then only if they could have a representative observer monitor me in the kitchen.

They still like my pizza, though. So far I haven’t screwed it up yet.

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