recipe

I Found It!!

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After twenty-seven years of marriage, I finally decided that being the ideal European wife (born in Canada) to my European counterpart husband (also born in Canada), was no longer a feasible option in my life. My role as the European stay at home wife / mother didn’t really apply since I HAVE A FULL TIME JOB. It was time for change and I was not backing down. Communication. Open and honest communication is what was needed. Right?

I will provide an instant replay of our conversation:

ME: I think you can start making dinner on days when you aren’t working. (We Europeans don’t call it supper).

HIM: Fine…fine…fine. I will quit my job and then I can make dinner every night.

ME: Uh…that’s not how it works. I have a full time job AND I make dinner every night.

HIM:

ME: You aren’t working tomorrow. I have a fantastic recipe here for beef ribs. They are slow cooked in the oven. Follow the recipe. Make a side of potatoes or rice or whatever else you feel like making.

HIM: Sure. No problem. I can do that. #snarky

ME: #doubtful

Fast forward to next day

(cell phone rings) It’s my husband. I look anxiously at my watch. I have my weekly group meeting at 10am and he is calling me at 9:52am? Do I have time to answer? #regret

ME: Hello?

HIM: Ok, I was going over the recipe you gave. I have to get these ribs in the oven by 10 o’clock a.m. so we have eight minutes.

ME: (loud and almost symphonic sound of “Carmina Burana”)

HIM: Hello?

ME: I have my meeting in 8 minutes. What’s up?

HIM: Ok, so the recipe says I need barbecue sauce.

ME: Ok.

HIM: Where is the barbecue sauce?

ME: It’s in the fridge. On the door. Right side. Round bottle. Black lid.

HIM: I don’t see it.

ME: It’s there. On the door. Bottom shelf or one shelf up.

HIM: I don’t see it. pause. Oh, wait. Nope, that says “pickles”.

ME: (hangs up. It is 9:54am. Makes FaceTime call.)

HIM: (answers FaceTime call) – Why did you hang up on me?

ME: I don’t have time for this! I have a meeting at 10am!

HIM: Don’t yell at me. I have to get these ribs…

ME: (Rudely interrupting him) Let me see the shelf!

HIM: What? (looking at me intently)

ME: Turn your phone around so I can see the fridge door!

HIM: How do I do that?

ME: Don’t worry about the flip part, just physically turn your phone around so I can see the fridge. Put your phone on speaker.

HIM: (put phone on speaker): Can you hear me?

ME: (time: 9:55) YES! Move the phone down.

HIM: (picks up a jar) – this has a black lid…

ME: Those are olives. It says olives!

HIM: Yeah. That’s not barbecue sauce.

ME: (eyes roll so loudly it sounds like bowling balls). MOVE YOUR PHONE DOWN!!

HIM: Don’t yell at me!

ME: THERE!!! Right there! That black lid!!!

HIM: That’s mayonnaise! (pointing to the super white squeeze bottle)

ME: NOOOOO! Right beside it!

HIM: (finally picks up the right bottle) That’s not barbecue sauce. It says Stubb’s….(pause). Oh…(more reading). Ah… there it is. Bar-B-Que sauce.

ME: deep breathing to restore calmness. Also observing my colleagues with fists in mouths and bent over laughing. Then I hear this whispered from the gang: “THIS SHOULD BE A TIK TOK VIDEO!” (Back to spouse): Ok, so you’re good?

HIM: Yes.

ME: (exhales)

HIM: No….wait. Recipe says we need smoked salt. We don’t have that.

ME: Yes we do. (#IDIOT! why did I tell the truth?). If you look in the pantry you will see a cylindrical container with a black lid. (oh noooooooooo…..black lid! Just like the barbecue sauce fiasco). It’s in the pantry that is to the left of the fridge. Second pull out drawer from the bottom or third one from the top. It’s stuck so don’t try to pull it out! There is an olive oil bottle and vegetable oil bottle in there and it should be behind those.

HIM: (Bends down [he is 6’4″ after all] and pulls out a cylindrical container with a black lid. (reading, slowly annunciating) Faaaaaaaaarm Boooooooy – Himaaaaaalaaaaayaaaaaan Piiiiiiink Salt.

ME: You’re close! It is the exact same container but the label will say “Smoked Salt”. (me looking at watch). It’s 9:58. I gotta go. Text me when you’ve found it. (disconnect)

Now that my phone conversation has dramatically ended, I can now focus on the raucous laughter that has been playing in the background of my ever-so-urgent conversation with my husband.

One minute until meeting time so we rush to share in this quasi-dysfunctional experience of my life.

RANDOM COMMENTS:

  • OMG! That is a Tik-Tok video. (raucous laughter)
  • You should have a podcast! That’s hilarious!
  • Does he do this all the time ?
  • Put him on speaker next time !

BING! 10:00am – meeting time

Earbuds in. Click on join meeting. Good to go.

I am 10 minutes into the meeting when I hear the PING or my personal phone. It’s a text message from my significant other. I quickly grab my cell phone worried about what new life dilemma has occurred only to find a photo of the ever elusive smoked salt and an upbeat comment of “found it”. Life goes on.

Please note that although this particular spice drawer is locked in place the items on it live in a drawer that is 2 feet by 2 feet. Not a lot of space that needs to covered, yet it took my humble hubby 12 minutes to discover the special container.

I am sure there are some who will believe that my glorious husband went above and beyond his call of duty to ensure that we had the most exotic and flavourful meal. He followed that recipe as if it was a treasure map and would not be dissuaded from finding all the necessary ingredients.

And I would like to thank Mark Bland and his Helpdesk for Men. This is what my day felt like. https://www.tiktok.com/@mark_bland/video/7261624424481393966?lang=en

@mark_bland

Wait time is currently 3 hours… #marriagehumor #marriedlife #marriagecomedy #married #wivesoftiktok #husbandsoftiktok

♬ original sound – Mark Bland

What’s For Supper?

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Remember me? I am the one who is constantly thinking of food. A trip to the grocery store is torturous for some, yet I relish in wandering the aisles and seeing what’s new on the food scene. This will eventually lead to me googling recipes that will include my new ingredient. This is my happy place. My world of wonder. That is, until my husband, Wiseguy, calls me at 10am at work and asks, “What’s for supper?” I am not sure what sort of trigger that phrase is for me, but my heart starts palpitating, my blood pressure goes up, and I feel like She Hulk ready to SMASH! I will try and explain.

We have been married for almost three decades (I could have said twenty-seven years, but decades definitely makes it sound longer). The first few years were filled with my desire to create a loving home with delicious home cooked meals. Growing up in a European household, with a stay at home mom, did not provide me with the fortuitous education of any culinary skills. Even when asked to assist my maternal unit, it was to circularly stir something in a pot and I, apparently, did it wrong every time. So, learning to cook for my new husband and stepchildren was at the top of the To Do list. It went so well! Kind of.

Wiseguy actually could cook. So imagine when, I meticulously imitated my mother’s way of making sunnyside up eggs. I poured an inch of oil into the pan, turned the heat on high, cracked the egg over the pan and was immediately assaulted with hot spits of oil upon my person. OUCH! My husband came over to assess the situation and asked two very good questions:

  1. Why did you pour all that oil in?
  2. You do know there is a dial on the stove so you can put the temperature higher or lower?

Hmmmm, lessons learned. For eggs I started using a pat of butter, and most of my cooking was now done on lower heat. That fixed the breakfast portion of my culinary life.

Supper. At my childhood home it was always called dinner. Apparently, the term dinner is for fancy meals. Regular, everyday persons, call it supper, but I digress. My first attempt at roast beef was extraordinary! It was sooooooo good! The pizza, that is. My beef was hard as a rock and you could easily shingle a roof with it. Lesson learned. I would not make roast beef again for another twenty years. Now that’s trauma for you.

Fast forward to today. The children are grown and living on their own. When special occasions occur, I will still go out of my way to make the most wonderful food and spoil my loved ones. With life encompassing just me and my Wiseguy, I have sort of become disinterested and fatigued in the daily need to create creative meals. It appears that after decades of blissful marriage, the only thing left to discuss is: “What’s for supper?” Everyday. And then you die. Right? Does anyone else feel that way?

Again, being brought up in the European standards, we don’t get the luxury of, say, having a bowl of cereal for dinner. That is not an option. The European ethos states: For all dinners (American translation: supper) thou shalt char meat, accompanied by a hot carbohydrate (potatoes / pasta) or rice. Thou shalt attempt to have vegetables of the green variety, cruciferous, if desired by your husband. If not skip the veg and enjoy your meal. Done. My favorite meal if my husband isn’t home? I grab a slice of salami, layer a slice of cheese upon it, and add a pickle. Roll it up. Eat it. Dinner done and there is no clean up! But noooooooo…we are recreating the lives of our ancestors on a nightly basis.

I believe that my creative juices for cooking have gone to the wayside. I have fried, boiled, broiled, grilled, baked for almost thirty years. Add to that working forty five hours a week and then coming home, not to relax after a long day, but to happily prepare a delicious meal in forty-five minutes. (Truth be told, it takes an hour. Still working on that ultimate time goal.) Saturdays used to be my happy-go-hunting day for exciting new foodstuff or newly introduced condiments, to be prepped and ready to surprise my Wiseguy with an exhilarating and adventurous new recipe. Now I prefer to step outside our front door and enjoy life outside the home which would include restaurant lunch dates where SOMEONE ELSE does the cooking for me. No planning. No cooking. No clean up.

Maybe, I’m just in a stagnant cooking funk. This might miraculously lift soon and I’ll be back to pouring over cook books and searching out new meal ideas and then BAM! Back to being gloriously excited about meal making again.

It’s 10:00am. My cell phone will be ringing soon. Oh, there it goes. Hubby is calling me. Wonder what he’s going to ask?