Dear George,
I haven’t always been an
excellent cook. When we first got
married, Katja was excited about being a new bride, so, aside from grilling an
occasional burger on our hibachi, I was mostly an appreciative eater. Once our son J was born, we enjoyed
home-cooked family meals together every day. It didn’t require major changes because, until age 11 or so,
J would only eat SpaghettiOs with meatballs. When J went off to college, our
food habits changed dramatically.
Katja went into a deep funk and stopped cooking altogether. Mainly she munched on stuff out of bags
and jars. Faced with anxieties
about malnutrition, I started making my own food. Over the years I’ve become expert at preparing two
specialties. These are known in
the trade as (a) Healthy Choices and (b) Lean Cuisines. The nutritional payoffs, of course, are
excellent. It means, on the one
hand, that I’m guaranteed to be Healthy and, on the other hand, that I’ll be
Lean. I haven’t been quite as lean
as one might expect (because of snacking on Oreo cookies and Graeter’s
doughnuts in between), but I’m leaner than I otherwise would have been.
I’ve complete mastered meal
preparation. You take the plastic
box out of the paper container.
You fold back the cellophane just a little bit on each of the four
corners (alternatively, you could punch holes in the cellophane with a fork,
but the folding back method results in greater uniformity). The most important step is getting the
timing exactly right. Basically,
you push the number 6 button on the microwave for express cooking. Then you
wait six minutes, take the box out, carefully peel off the cellophane, and your
gourmet meal is ready. The company
doesn’t brag about it, but it’s likely that Lean Cuisines were created by a
world-class chef from Paris, France, and they come in an amazing variety of
mouth-watering dishes. I wait till
Krogers is having a $2 sale, then stock up for months at a time. My favorites are Tortilla Crusted Fish
and Swedish Meatballs. Healthy
Choices are a little more bland (necessarily so because they are so Healthy),
but they have the advantage of coming in more robust 10-oz. portions.
A perfectly
prepared L.C. entree which I enjoyed for lunch today (Tortilla Crusted Fish)
In the last year I’ve
expanded my cooking repertoire in entirely new directions. This came about totally by
accident. Sometimes when I have
difficulty getting to sleep at night, I’ll get up and take a sleeping
pill. The morning after one such
event, I was looking at photos in my camera’s memory, and I was baffled by a
picture of a plateful of food which I had no recollection of ever seeing
before. Then it dawned on me that
I must have gone downstairs and made a snack after taking my sleeping pill,
even though I had no memory of it.
Over the next several weeks I figured out that every time I take a
sleeping pill I seem to wander down to the kitchen an hour later. I usually didn’t remember it, but the
evidence was there in the morning in the form of cucumber peelings, olive pits,
and/or spilled mustard drops. Over
time, I’ve accumulated a collection of photos of creations I’ve made during
these late night excursions, sometimes aware of what I was doing, sometimes
not. Whether it’s because of the
sleeping pill or the late night hour, I seem to be much more creative at 2 a.m.
than in my daytime waking state.
Here’s a sampling of some of my best early morning concoctions:
Delectable Reese Witherspoon
Salad: Boston Bibb lettuce, apple
slices, carrot sticks, hard salami, Roma tomatoes, black olives, stuffed green
olives, feta cheese, Red Wine Vinaigrette dressing
The
Cosmic Wonder: Kroger chunk tuna
in water, Kalamata olives, red pepper slices, mozzarella cheese strips
Entrée
de Maison Mike & Duffy:
Blueberries on lemon yogurt with sides of orzo, strawberries, black
olives, mozzarella cheese, and a glass of merlot
Menekaunee
Carrot Burger: Hard salami on
carrot strips with sprinkled black olives and a glass of cabernet sauvignon
Sandwiché Magnifiqué de
Élégance: one slice of toasted 15 grain
bread, Skippy Crunchy peanut butter, Belgian endive, grape tomatoes,
blueberries, salad olives
Floo-Floo Lemon Fluff: Lemon yogurt, raspberry goat cheese,
salad olives, green grapes
Blueberry
Frozen Delight: Spumoni ice cream
on Almond Nut-Thin crackers, topped off with a large blueberry
El
Dreamo Supremo: Belgian endive
encrusted with peanut butter and blueberries; Bibb lettuce spread with cream
cheese and grape tomatoes; mushroom slices and cheddar cheese; all sprinkled
with hazelnuts, walnut chunks, and pine nuts.
It’s never too late to take
up new pursuits, so I’m going to be busy developing my cooking abilities over
coming months. I don’t know how to
turn on the gas stove in our kitchen, and the complexity of the dials
intimidates me even if I could.
Instead I’ll concentrate on new recipes when out camping with the
sheepdogs (who will also help me with the leftovers). I’m already adept at charbroiling things on my Coleman
stove. My favorite meal is black
crispy bacon served with blackened pancakes and syrup. Now I need to get better on burnt chicken
breasts and scorched corned beef hash.
I’ll take some pictures and send them along when they’re ready. In the meantime, Bon Appetit!
Love,
Dave
G-mail Comments
-Linda C (1-29): You get so creative on ambien,.. I have started to cook, every week I do
try one thing new, it's not as great first time. Then I have to make it one
more time to try to make It perfect.
Will send you pictures.
-Jennifer M (1-28): Very
fancy looking food. I wonder if it tastes good?
-DCL to Jennifer (1-28):
Pretty tasty, on the whole. Items with peanut butter are best. Last
night I used a bunch of little seeds I found in the refrigerator. They
were good but Katja scolded me because the container cost $15. :>)
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