Alexander* and I are two peas in a pod. Some days are nothing but terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.
Last Thursday was one of them.
I told Louis not to eat before I got home after practicing the organ following the class I teach. (He had gone to Seminary with me that morning to play a video during the lesson.) I told him I was in the mood for a REAL breakfast, and I was going to fix an omlete, bacon, muffins, and some cottage potatoes . He like the idea of a good breakfast. Me? I could hardly wait to get home and start cooking! Yum!
But....I haven't practiced cculinary skills for a long time (nuking something in the microwave doesn't qualify) and everything went wrong. Well, almost. The orange juice and milk were okay.
I got a terrific set of pans for my wedding 52 years ago. They are heavy cast aluminum, but over the years the bottoms got warped from all the heat from the burners. When that happened, Ross would take the pans out to the garage and hold a blow torch on them until he was able to pound out the bottoms for a flat cooking surface once again. Voila! Just like new.
Only, Ross has been gone for a long time, and Louis doesn't do that kind of thing. Instead he constantly asked me to get rid of the set and buy a completely new set. One year for Christmas he even gave me a complete Rachel Ray set. But I know HOW to cook with the ones I have.That new set was too fancy. Expensive. And I told him that if we were cooking for eight people every day like I used to, it would be worth getting a new set. But not now. It is way too late in the game for the upgrade. I returned the pans to get a gift I could really use.
After that and a few more pointed suggesstions that we get new pans, Louis got tired of my negative answers to his pleas. About three years ago he went out and bought two heavy--and I do mean HEAVY--cast iron skillets because he saw a recipe online and decided to start cooking. The pans were too large and too small for the kind of preparation we do for two people. And too heavy for me to handle. My aging body just cannot pick up that kind of weight any more. Plus Louis' desire to cook lasted for only one or two meals. Then nothing.
Louis got the same "cooking bug" again a few weeks ago. This time, he went out and bought two frying pans--also odd sizes for our needs--but at least I could handle them.
So, that morning when I got home the cooking adventure began. I prepared the muffins first. Easy, peasy and put them into the oven. The omlete and potatoes could cook while the muffins were baking. Howewver, I wasn't used to using these new pans, and I underestimated how fast and hot they prepared the food.
The next thing I knew, the potatoes were scorched! While trying to turn them over and eliminate the tainted ones, I began to smell an awful burning odor. YUP! The omlete--completely charred on the bottom and the top still a really runny egg mixture--was a disaster. There was NO saving anything from that--though I did try to scrape char off the bottom and cook the rest of the eggs. Didn't work out. What a surprise, huh?
The bell dinged for the muffins but, because I wanted to eat them HOT, I just turned off the oven and left them in for a couple more minutes while I wrestled with the burnt food on the stove top.
By this time I was screaming bloody murder stuff like, "No wonder I hate to cook! The failure rate with me is too high, and I don't LIKE to cook anyway." Louis heard the commotion and came into the kitchen offering to take over and prepare a completely new omlete for the two of us. That made me even madder! I told him I wouldn't eat it, so not to cook anything for me, and I flounced out of the house. But not before I took the muffins out of the oven. By then they weren't burnt, but way too dry. I didn't care and took one with me.
Got into the car and backed out of the driveway....but there was no place to go. No one to go visit. No store where I needed to purchase anything. Nothing to do. I had already practiced the organ that morning. Nothing. I ended up sitting in the church parking lot and tried to read on my smart phone. Couldn't even focus on that! So, I just sat there until the huff was finally over and then I drove home.
Louis had indeed fixed a new omlete and salvaged enough potatoes for his meal. He had prepared the bacon, too. Then he ate and cleaned up the dishes and the kitchen. By the time I walked in, it looked like no major crisis had happened at all.
I don't remember what else I did that day. Probably NOTHING that could have been considered great, since I was so over the top enraged about my cooking skills. But you can be sure I more than likely thought the whole day was a pice of junk.
Ah, yes! Alexander and I could have been twins on that crazy morning. Nothing worthwhile came my way the rest of that day, I'm sure. My attitude killed it all.
Some days are nothing but terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. That was one of them!
Welcome to my world, Alexander!
*Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is a children's book written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz. It won several awards during the 70's and was a Reading Rainbow book.
