Things I've Seen

"Hey, 19" Wordle

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I like this Wordle made from my June post, "Hey, 19." Almost poetic, isn't it?

The anti-cook digs for dinner

I don't really hate to cook, don't get me wrong. What I hate is adding to the mess in a kitchen that forever seems untidy anyhow. I don't experiement much, after years of trying to feed picky kids, which makes every new recipe venture an epic adventure.  And I never seem to be able to keep the pantry stocked with those "essentials" you're always supposed to have on hand - whether it's  spices, various stocks, pastas, grains, tomatoes, vinegars and oils of every type and flavor ...  In fact, it seems like everytime I go for a needed spice or flavoring - ginger (never fresh grated, of course!), cumin, bay leaf? red wine vinegar - it is something that's been there a couple of  years, and I find myself asking why I  haven't thrown it out by now.

Because I might need it come Christmas, that's why!

Which brings me to today.

We are very short on money right now, and I won't go into details. Suffice it to say that we have an extremely strict budget to live on which has effectively ruled out the usual Friday night pizza for awhile. We're not going to the grocery store until tomorrow, so what to eat tonight?

I may hate cooking -  yes, I guess it has come to that afterall - but I do like a challenge.  And so, digging through the regrigerator and cupboards, I find I am completely out of bread, rice, pasta. I have no jars of sauce of any kind. No soup, hotdogs, coldcuts. No boxed dinners (ewww), no tuna. No cheese other than American singles (I didn't buy 'em). Fruit, fresh vegetables, salad fixings? Long gone.  There was an open box of couscous. Hmmm.  I also have eggs. I could make a very plain omelet. Maybe pancakes? Neither sounded good to me, but if nothing else turned up one or the other would do.

The freezer held ice cream, frozen chicken breasts, some very old home made sausage of undetermined origin, a pound of hamburger, a half-bag of shrimp, cooked. There's a bag of hashbrowns - to go with the omelet, maybe? And most of a bag of baby peas with pearl onions.

Some possibilities here, but now it was after 7 p.m. and no time to be trying to defrost meat. Chicken, couscous, peas -there had to be a meal there.

The chicken breasts were those boneless skinless (flavorless?) flash frozen kind that I actually use quite a bit, just because they're easy and don't need thawing. I ran two of those under cold water, applied a rub (I did have a jar of that) and threw them on the mini George Forman. Boiled water and threw in some couscous. Put the rest of the baby peas in a dish and stashed them in the microwave. And in, oh, 15 minutes - dinner was served!

Well, my dinner was, anyhow. Clay had begun a huge yard project late in the day and I knew he wouldn't want to stop to eat until he was finished. As far as I know - it's now 2 hours later - he still hasn't finished.

His dinner's in the microwave. Mine you can see, above.