[NOTE: The audio version of this blog can be heard in Podcast #2 if you’d rather I read it to you instead of reading it yourself. If you choose to hear it, don’t forget to scroll to the bottom of this post to see a photo of the gourmet meal I talk about.]
I have desire to learn gourmet cooking—or even being a “good cook” for that matter. I don’t get the point. It takes up a lot of time and requires a lot of work—shopping for the right ingredients, preparation, cooking, clean-up. The only crucial part is eating. You have to eat to stay alive, which is why I eat. I also feed my husband because I would like for him to stay alive, too.
I don’t require fancy food or gourmet meals or anything with a sauce on it. All food goes in the same way—and comes out the same way. I don’t see the value in making a big production out of what is essentially a plate of calories.
Pre-marriage, I could easily alternate between p-nut butter sandwiches and Taco Bell burritos for dinner. But now I put in a little more effort—although, my husband has had the previously mentioned meals for dinner—on more than one occasion.
If my husband calls me to let me know when he’s coming home from work, then I’ll cook something.
He’ll say, “What’s for dinner?”
And I’ll say, “Something.”
He will ask, “Is it the same something I had last night?”
I reply: “It’s ½ Monday’s something PLUS ½ Tuesday’s something = today’s something.”
My husband did not marry me for my culinary skills. And lucky for me, he eats anything. I even get compliments sometimes, like with my specialty: fish stick quesadillas. Delicious!
One time I decided to make a homemade pizza for dinner. I started with a frozen store bought one, a “quarto fromaggio” whole wheat crust kind of thing. I like to add additional toppings to make the pizza more nutritious—like organic mozerella, pesticide and herbicide-free red, green, and yellow bell peppers—and grass fed, no bovine growth hormone ground beef. Then I mix it all together with pizza sauce, the kind in the squeezable plastic bottle.
I opened the pizza box, removed the cellophane covering, put the plain pizza on a cookie sheet, and added the topping mix on top. The result looked more like a gloppy meat pot pie without the top crust. But it would taste good, so what difference did it make what it looked like.
When I thought everything had cooked, I removed the pizza from the oven, waited for it to cool, and tried to cut a piece.
But I couldn’t get the pizza cutter to work because I had made an error in the cooking process. I had forgotten to remove the cardboard backing under the pizza crust, which had kind of melted into the pizza.
So I had to scrape cardboard off the bottom to try to salvage part of the crust. But this caused all the toppings to fall off into a big heap. So I had to take parts of the topping mound and parts of the crust bits and shape them together into what looked like a slice of pizza—kinda like molding a ball of clay into a triangular-shaped door-stop.
I plopped it on a plate and served it to my husband. He said, “Boy, this is somethin’!” He laughed so hard I was surprised he was able to jump up from the table and grab his camera. He didn’t ask what it was he was eating. But he sure wanted to photograph it.
After a few photos from various angles, he said, “Let’s go to Taco Bell.”
I said, “Great, but don’t throw away the pizza.”
He said, “Is it going to be tomorrow’s something?”
“No,” I said. “I’m going to make an art project out of it.”
“Much better idea,” he replied.
My artistic idea was to make a sculpture out of the pizza heap. I thought I would dry it out, cover it in shellac to seal it, and pour resin over it to harden it—the way it’s done with prehistoric insects inside amber. After that I planned to mount it on a silver tray and put it on my coffee table. I thought it would make a great conversation piece. Can’t you just see people’s faces when they look at it? Some trying to be polite and ignoring it, others exclaiming in horror, “What the hell is that thing on your coffee table?”
I couldn’t wait to create this thing. To dry it out, I set it outside on a second story deck. I thought the breezy night air would facilitate the dehydration.
But the next morning, except for a few streaks on the plate, the entire pizza mound was gone! I couldn’t believe it. I was so upset. There went my beautiful artwork. Who could do such a thing?
My husband said it was probably a raccoon.
But how could a raccoon climb up onto our deck?
My husband said it must have been a very industrious one—and a pizza-loving one, too.
And ever since that night we have had raccoons skulking around our house. They make mean growly noises under the deck, like a rhino on the hunt.
And every night I yell out the window at them, “You’re never getting another pizza out of me!”
I thought for another art project I might shellac one of my fish stick quesadillas, but they are way to delicious not to eat. But there is always that option if one of my dinners doesn’t turn out.
If you'd like my recipe, give me a holler!
