Lost Gourmet
Fri., February 29, 10:05 AM
What got me started here was Bev’s post about cooking. I’m a good cook too — or I used to be — although in the past couple of years, I have been quoting the lady who said she turned her stove into a planter.
Even after U.D. had become vegetarian, I still put some effort into cooking for Husband and me. I knew I couldn’t try anything too different, because he is automatically suspicious of anything he hasn’t seen before.
[Many years ago, I made chicken cacciatore, thinking the family might like chicken a different way. Husband ate it, but he asked why I didn’t just make spaghetti with meat the way I always did, and please don’t make this again. He is after all, a lost cause.]
Nevertheless, I did not want to continue baking chicken parts as I had when the kids were home, coated with corn flakes. For one thing, there is too much sugar in the corn flakes; for another, I ended up throwing away a lot because he doesn’t like bones and doesn’t care to bother with them. But either I figured out something else to do with chicken or I would be cooking variations of ground beef every day.
I began experimenting with boneless chicken breasts, one of the most versatile meat products around, right? Having watched “Yan Can Cook” (great chef, funny man), I tried my version. No real recipe, just a set of techniques. I cut up the chicken breasts, marinated them briefly with garlic and ginger, then sautéed them. I added some Asian vegetables, careful not to give him any “gizmos,” like water chestnuts. It was not what I would call exciting, but it was tasty and it was not spaghetti. He ate it once or twice, then asked me why I didn’t make it with peas and carrots. That’s canned, overcooked peas and carrots.
So then my choice was to make two separate portions or to eat the kind of vegetables I never liked. He loved it with peas and carrots. What’s not to love? It was easy, he didn’t have to cut anything, he could eat it with a spoon.
I guess that was a sign of things to come. At least five days a week now, I feed him something he can eat with a spoon. He is still capable of using a knife and fork, but he doesn’t want to. He will eat soup with extra noodles or canned spaghetti. If I give him meatloaf — his favorite — I cut it up for him because otherwise he will ask for bread to make a sandwich. The doctor says he should not have too much bread; the only kind he wants is plain, soft white bread. (We call it cotton bread.)
If it weren’t for the occasional pizza U.D. and I eat (too big for the toaster oven), I would probably never use my beautiful stove at all. I am so tempted to buy plants…
As I sit at the computer, I hear Husband’s radio playing loudly. He is listening to CBS news, over and over. Everyone is analyzing the economy. The only thing I have heard that I did not say years ago is that even people who make a lot of money (say, three or four times more than we do) cannot save any; they have trouble making ends meet. That is not hardship; it is stupidy. It is Veruca Salt, yelling at her father, “I want it, and I want it now.” I would say it serves them all right, except that this mindset is going to produce more hardship for people who had very little to begin with.
Enough for today. Maybe I can go do something useful for a change.
