Tonight as I was frenching the green beans my mind was wandering to and fro. I thought of this, I thought of that, I thought, I thought my brain was flat.* Well, not really. But my mind was wandering and it wandered into a semi-zen state where I was suddenly one with the string beans. And the question that siezed my mind was "Who the heck am I frenching these beans for anyway?" Not K. Not E. Surely not Z. who after feeding therapy this afternoon clearly would not touch green beans with a ten-foot-pole, assuming such a pole were available to her, which it isn't.
I was a little thrown off by dinner tonight. I had bought some pre-made red meat thingy at the fancy schmancy grocery store on Monday thinking it would be right up K.'s alley. The packaging said "Cook Tonight!" and "Ready in 50 Minutes or Less!" and "Buy me! Buy me! Buy me! Your husband will love you forever and shower you will affection and praise!" (That last bit was implied, but definitely there.)
But when I examined my little packet of goodness more closely I noticed that other ingredients were required as well as braising.** Even worse, there were carrots sticking out of the meat and K.'s current dietary considerations do not allow carrots. I felt angry. I felt silly. I felt manipulated. I hated the stupid little meat rolls that had sucked me in at the fancy schmancy grocery store. And more importantly, I had nothing for dinner.
I panicked. Then I rooted around in the fridge. And I found the bacon.
I can only stand bacon about every sixth month. I love the smell and sometimes the taste. But raw bacon shows its ugly underbelly—fat. The fat in the bacon gets to me, and quite often chewing the fat of the bacon makes me nauseated. I prefer my bacon nice and crisp and by crisp I mean ready to crumble into tiny, bacon-y bits as soon as you touch it. All the better to hide the fat.
I cooked the bacon to within an inch of its life in two separate pans. In one pan I cooked pork chops in the bacon grease and in the other I swooshed around the frenched green beans. I crumbled a bit of bacon on the beans, plated the food***, and took it to the table.
K. and E. got big, dewy eyes, practically crying at the thought of all that bacon! For dinner! On veggies! K. ate the green beans first, every single bite. I have never, ever seen him eat veggies like that. E. requested some beans and ate them with relish. Dinner was saved, even if our poor little arteries struggled mightily for the rest of the night.
The bacon was for K. As it turns out the frenching was for me. We were both happy. I'm still not sure what to do with the evil meat rollups****, but I'm thinking frenching and/or bacon may help. If not, perhaps some Dr. Seuss.
Fat. Fat. Fat in that. The fat in that made me spat. Carrots. Schmarrots. Feed the parrots. Feed the parrots carrots.
Meat. Meat. The meat has feet. The feety meat should walk out the door and find a new home where people want to braise and eat carrots.
*Channeling Dr. Seuss. It happens.
**Not just braising. A cooking time 3 times longer than that on the package, according to some random person who posted on the grocery store's Web site.
***Too much Iron Chef America and way, way, waaaaay too much Food Network TV.
****D$%()^*(%^&@#n Wegmans and their pretty, pretty, pretty food.
I miss you. Did you climb into my brain to write this post? ...totally something I'd do.
--Thanks for your card.
Posted by: joybucket at October 11, 2007 10:41 AMI recently had an evening like that, where I put what I was going to cook back in the fridge, threw together some fish with an orange juice sauce and baked it-and jb was very very happy.
Love the Dr. Suess! I always miss the pop culture references, but I was right there with you as soon as you started channeling the good Dr. ; ) ~lmc
Hey, it turns out there's really no scientific evidence that fat is bad for the heart: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/science/09tier.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. So eat that bacon!!
Posted by: Mandy at October 12, 2007 5:47 PM