Violence in the Kitchen
Luckily last weekend was pretty notable – good and bad – on the food front, because I’ve been lacking in material this week. Don’t ask me what I’ve been busy with, because I have no idea. Perhaps I’ve been doing too much of that dirty word – no, get your mind out of the gutter – the dirty word I mean is WORK. Therefore, the meals have been unremarkable and the photos have been even worse.
Here are the lowlights, because they’re certainly not worthy of being called highlights. There was the awful meatloaf on Wednesday night, that everyone quietly ate without asking why it was so awful. Since nobody asked, I’ll tell you the secret. I failed at defrosting the ground beef. While rushing around the kitchen, trying to toss together dinner quickly, I put the meat in the microwave and accidentally pushed an extra “0″. So instead of 2 minutes on defrost, it was set for 20. By the time I realized it, the meat was semi cooked and crumbly. I had already prepared my mix-in ingredients, and they weren’t going to be wasted, so I used my will and determination to shove it all together, against the already bonded meat. Yes, I will WIN at this meatloaf. I pressed and crumbled the meat until it was broken and defeated and then I mixed in my seasoning ingredients and shoved it into the loaf pan, pressing it down to force it back into a bonded state. Yep, I can get that vicious in the kitchen. Bet you didn’t know I was such a kitchen sadist. Well, the end result kind of looked like a meatloaf although it fell apart as it was sliced, and not in a good tender, falling off the bone kind of way. Still, the family ate it without complaint, maybe sensing the underlying dangerous possibilities if they made me too angry that night.
Last night I was very busy working on a Halloween cupcake gallery for my Entertaining site. Cupcakes, frosting, candies, cookies were strewn about the kitchen. I was desperately trying to assemble the cupcakes since this month isn’t getting any younger. Or is it me who isn’t getting any younger? In any case, it was 5:30 and dinner hadn’t been started yet and we needed to eat in 15 minutes because Joe and I were going to back-to-school night at the High School, and I knew those teachers wouldn’t wait for me. Louisa was watching me with skepticism and asked if I had started dinner yet because she knew our schedule. No! I replied while for the second time I was creating a spider web on top of a cupcake. She offered to help me start dinner until she took a look at the recipe and decided it would be easier to clean her guinea pig cage. Win! – for the guinea pigs, and I guess a win for me since it was becoming perilously close to the point where I’d have to clean that smelly cage. Little did she know that the dinner I had planned took about as much time to make as it took her to clean the cage. Paninis were on the menu and I chopped the ingredients, slapped them on the bread, and grilled those puppies with a firm press on the spatula to make them stick together in half the required time. You WILL grill and you WILL hold together so we can choke down our dinner and make it out on time to avoid the traffic. I won.
The photo with this post is probably the least violent meal of the week. Although the eggs were beaten to a lovely, frothy whip, they were gently scrambled with the softened onions and cheese, and topped with that delicious bean salsa for a soft and savory dinner. If only my mood from Monday had lasted all week, the scars from the remainder of my cooking wouldn’t still be echoing in that room.
Not Worth the Calories
Did you ever look forward to a meal, so much that you could taste it? That was how we all felt on Saturday night after planning to go out for Greek food for dinner. We spent the earlier part of the day, first walking around at a fall festival in a neighboring town, followed by shopping for fall clothing for the girls. We really worked up an appetite. We all like Greek food and we especially like the baklava, so you can imagine the anticipation. Or maybe you can’t. But we’re the live-to-eat kind of family, not the eat-simply-to-live variety. That’s why we’re not skinny, but we’re not especially overweight either. That’s because we like our food, but we try to make choices that are worth the calories. If we’re going to eat food for reasons more than survival, it had better be good.
Our plan on Saturday was to eat dinner at a Greek festival held at an area Greek church. But after walking all afternoon at our other activities, we didn’t have the strength to face the lines we saw waiting for food when we arrived at the festival. Time to turn to Plan B. There was a Greek restaurant close by that we’ve been wanting to try ever since they opened so, still holding that excitement and anticipation near and dear in our hearts, we drove over.
We were met at the back door near the parking lot by a staff person who led us through the kitchen to our table. It probably should have been our first sign that there might be a problem. It seemed as though she was poised there to drag folks off the street. We were seated in the empty restaurant and Annie leaned over to whisper how uncomfortable she felt. Airily we brushed it off assuming their usual customers were at the Greek festival. Eventually two other tables had diners too, one with an especially chatty pair that helped to fill the silence.
As the dinner wore on, the eager, desperate staff continuously checked on whether we were happy. But we didn’t have the heart to tell them that this was the worst Greek food we had ever eaten, flavorless, pasty, dry, heated over, freezer burned slop. We choked down as much as we could since we were hungry, took the rest in take out boxes to be polite, and quietly left the place, still feeling hungry.
You see, it’s one thing if criticism could improve the meal. It’s another if the place is beyond hope. And clearly, other customers had long ago realized this place was beyond saving. And it was definitely not worth the calories. Sigh.
Spinach and Ricotta Dumplings
Last night’s dinner. What can I say? The commentary emanating from Louisa was strong, but nearly incomprehensible as the words sputtered from her lips. I mean, I’m sure you can come up with many not-too-pretty ways to describe the look of this dinner. It had no eye appeal. It was a visual fail. It took will and determination to get past the look of it on the plate in order to try a bite. I needed to coax Louisa to brave it but, even then, the texture turned her off and she barely ate half of it.
What was it supposed to be? It was a recipe for dumplings made with frozen chopped spinach and ricotta cheese. The recipe comes from this month’s “Food Network Magazine”. It was a 35 minute recipe so it seemed like it qualified as a dish for week night cooking when there were kid activities before and after dinner. So where was the problem? Possibly I didn’t squeeze out the water sufficiently from the thawed, frozen chopped spinach. Or maybe it was my quarter cup slip with the parmesan cheese – but I would think that extra parm would have firmed up the texture better. No, I think I didn’t spend enough time squeezing the spinach. Have you ever squeezed chopped thawed spinach? If not, what you don’t realize is that with each progressive squeeze you lose more of it in the squeezed out water. After a while it seems like you have half the quantity of spinach that you started squeezing. So I stopped at the point where I didn’t want to lose any more. Now I know that was a mistake. If any one of you knows how to squeeze the spinach without losing it down the drain, I would appreciate the tip.
Oh, and once you got past the look and the texture, they actually tasted pretty good. As Annie said, they tasted like ravioli filling. Joe said nothing, he just went back for seconds.