COURTING DISASTER

 HELP!!!

Every time I go into the kitchen, I court disaster.  That's just a fact of my life.  

I never much cared for cooking anyway, missed all the tutoring that my older sisters had from my mother, plus my dad expected plentiful food on the table at mealtime.  Best my mother take care of that for my father so he could go to or come home from his railroad job and have his energy replenished.  After all, he was the bread winner and responsible to go out and slay the dragons!  He needed fuel.

My job was to set the table (And I am CRACKER JACK about that!  Nice--and superior--even now.) and entertain the grandkids who weren't all that much younger than I was.  And at regular mealtime, my job was to dry the dishes.  No cooking.  Didn't bother me.  My puny attempts the times my mother was away tending one of my older sisters post baby delivery were not successful at all.  Not at all.

Years passed and I had a family that needed to be fed a healthy diet with well-balanced meals.  I had good intentions and good recipes. Yet, in spite of having these great mental images of how the finished food dish was going to turn out, my culinary expertise was ALWAYS fraught with some kind of failure.  And that became the story of my life.  And my mantra.  "I do not like to cook.  The failure rate is too high!"

My "now" husband, on the other hand, claims he doesn't mind cooking.  Told me he did all the cooking for his kids when he wasn't out on some assignment with the Army.  He just didn't like coming up with the "what" he was going to fix.  Claimed he and his kids would sit down together on the weekend and plan the meals for the following week.  Then they would go grocery shopping.  He regales me with all of his successes, and how much his kids loved what he fixed.

I've mentioned before how, since Louis and I have been together, he sees a recipe online and suddenly he is committed to prepare all these new dishes.  Then he goes out and purchases cookware to go with his latest whim.  Alas, that notion of becoming the household chef is short-lived when the reality of fatigue sets in after a long work day and no preparation for fixing a meal has been done.  Heck....not even the planning has been in real time.  These adventures have never gotten past the first recipe.

 Believe me, we have plenty of food in the house--and a cupboard full of great recipes.  Tasty stuff.  But it has to be prepared.  And I don't want to fix it.  All those years when I was at home going into the kitchen about 4:30 pm every day to fix a meal for eight people (and the horrendously lengthy clean-up afterward) was enough to last me a lifetime! That daily endeavor always gobbled at least three or four hours of the evening. 

And Louis really doesn't want to do all that either.  He would rather grab some fast food, order from a restaurant, or actually go out to an establishment to eat.  He has now come to prefer restaurant food over home-cooked.  But for me, eating out is no longer a treat.  It is an exercise in choosing which offering is the least gaggy at the moment.

However,  I finally got fed up with this constant need to go out and eat because we both were too tired (or too contrary) to go into the kitchen and prepare a meal.  Plus the food budget had burgeoned!  It needed to be shored up by regular shovels-full of money being poured into it.  (Isn't THAT a shocker!)

Some time ago I began receiving in my junk mail, advertisements for preassembled meals with all ingredients included--just add preparation and cooking.  It looked pretty expensive, and the dishes that were advertised seemed a little on the gourmet side. Those slick advertisements touted grand suppers for little effort.  I ignored all of this hype.  Then the glossy little advertisements, complete with incentives for FREE meals and FREE shiping, began to pop up in my neighborhood mailbox.  Still, I was not convinced it was a very economical or convenient service to suscribe to.  It was definitely for those with money to blow on the frills of life.

But when the amount of money we were spending on eating out morphed into a small fortune, I began to take a closer look at those superlative invitations.  Turns out it would be about $100/week for the two of us to order five different meals for a week.  I talked to Louis.  He thought it sounded like a good idea, too--and I thought he understood I wasn't going to be the ONLY one to prepare the meals.

I poured over the menu selections:  ukka fish or ingredients neither of us cared for or too fancy--until I found five meals I thought we could enjoy.  So, I picked them, processed the coupons for FREE shipping and fourteen FREE meals over the course of the next few weeks.  Pretty easy really.

Then when the meals came several days later, I was impressed how they were boxed in sturdy, foam-lined reclyclable cartons and bags with plenty of cold packs to keep them fresh.  Hence the Hello FRESH!

I looked over what I had chosen.  Elementary recipes with EVERY step clearly set out.  Prep times are listed at 5-10 minutes and cooking time from 30-40 minutes depending on the dish.  Every indredient has been pre-measured and sealed in its own bag or box.  Even items like 2 TBSP of sour cream, 1/4 C grated Parmesan cheese, and chicken stock concentrate.  Looked easy enough.

Chicken Sausage Spaghetti Bolognese was my first pick.  Never had zucchini in my spaghetti sauce before, but hey!  I'll try something once. And I figured Louis would like ANY kind of spaghetti.

Prep time: 5 minutes.  Cook time:  30 minutes.  Calories:  850 per serving.  Let's get cooking!  HAHAHA!

TWO hours later, I'm finally ready to set the table, slice the garlic bread, and cook a side dish of vegetables.  YIKES!

Cutting the zucchini into thin, thin half moon slices took 10 minutes alone.  Then I picked the wrong sized pan to cook the chicken sausage.  The pans we have were either too small or too large.  I picked "too small".  Caused problems later when I was supposed to put the crushed tomatoes, the butter, sour cream, and stock concentrate into the pan with the cooked sausage.  (But the meat is very, very lean so there are no dippings to drain.)  

And there was an even worse problem when I  realized I was supposed to add the cooked spaghetti and zucchini which had been cooking in the oven under the broiler into the meat sauce.  Pan not big enough!  Improvise with my standby pressure cooker pan which was big enough to toss all those ingredients together.  Then I poured the whole concoction into one of my large bowls, topped it with the Parmesan cheese and some reserved zucchini half moons.  Not bad....

At long last!  By that time Louis had been home from work for almost an hour, and I was grateful to finally sit down to eat.  Happily the food tasted good, and I liked the zucchini in the recipe because it had been cooked in some seasoned olive oil.  Something different that I wouldn't have done if I had been picking the recipe.

The other recipes have taken lots longer than the suggested time on the instruction cards, too.  I'm NOT liking all the time I am spending in the kitchen again.  However, here are the pluses:  The precisely measured ingredients for EVERY recipe are in their own separately labeled brown bag, (except for the meats). When I select a bag out of the refrigerator, everything I need to assemble is right there together. Here's another plus:  I don't have to go to the store for panko bread crumbs and have the rest of the box sitting on the shelf until it is unusable.  Same with chili flakes, a thumb of ginger, just two flatbreads, etc.  Just enough for each single recipe packed with the other ingredients for the same dish.  Clean up is pretty much a snap, too.  It's just that I am soooo out of practice with even the elementary cooking skills needed to fix a meal.  

We tried the first box.  The second one was scheduled before I knew what was happening and arrived yesterday.   (Hello Fresh's choices but no fish--thank goodness.)  At that point, I got smart enough to skip a couple of weeks while I figure this whole thing out and cook the rest of the meals that have arrived.  

So, this excercise in the kitchen may be just a "one hit wonder".  I'm not sure yet if it will make it to the "top of the charts" by easing the culinary disasters I usually court! 

Bon appetit!