Today, I was missing my husband, Frank, who died 6 years ago. I decided to look back at posts I had written about him and found this one. It was originally published on April 5, 2012. I still think it’s funny. I hope you agree.
The other day, when I was trying to come up with a way in which to disguise chicken, I happened upon a bag of panko breadcrumbs at a local upscale grocery store. I’m not upscale, but I frequent the store because I like to see how the one-percent lives, and because it’s down the street from my house.
I picked up the bag of über-hip crumbs and detected tiny red and green specks in it. Always one to tackle a mystery, I read the label. The specks turned out to be sun-dried tomatoes and basil. The price was $4.99 for six ounces. At the time, that seemed reasonable, so I tossed the bag into my cart.
Fortunately, sanity returned halfway down the aisle. Five dollars for breadcrumbs? I’m a person who refuses to pay $5 for a cup of fancy coffee, and I was going to pay that much for breadcrumbs? As I put the bag back onto its shelf, I remembered that I had sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil, and bread at home. I could make my own fancy-schmancy breadcrumbs. One thing I didn’t have at home was panko. I wasn’t even sure what panko was. I had heard Hollywood chefs talk about it, but nobody from Hollywood was going to be eating my chicken. Multi-grain bread was good enough for my audience of two.
Once I got home, I soon learned that the cost of the breadcrumbs was mostly for labor. After toasting a loaf of bread and cutting it into cubes, I put half of the ingredients into my food processor and hit “grind.” No sooner had I pressed the button than the top of the food processor popped off and red-and-green-flecked bread cubes exploded up into the air and landed on my head. After cleaning the kitchen, washing my hair, and donning a hockey helmet, I reloaded the machine with the remainder of the bread, tomatoes and basil and hit “grind” again. This time, I was rewarded with beautifully flecked, perfectly ground breadcrumbs. Visions of gloriously prepared chicken breasts danced before my eyes.
Inspired by my success, I put the bags of frozen french fries and peas back into the fridge and decided to make fresh side dishes. While the chicken baked, I whipped up fresh garlic mashed potatoes and lightly sautéed asparagus as accompaniments. I had outdone myself. In all honesty, outdoing myself only takes putting down the take-out menu and turning on the stove. But this time, I had prepared a restaurant-quality meal that wouldn’t come with a Supersize option.
I called my family to dinner. At the table. When they saw placemats and flatware set out, they asked if they had forgotten my birthday. I made a silent promise to restrict eating in the family room, and presented the chicken breasts, glistening with golden breadcrumbs speckled with green and red flavor flecks. I stood back to accept my due. “Ooh, aah,” my husband said without a hint of sincerity. “Can I help you bring the potatoes and vegetables over to the table so that we can eat?” I took a deep cleansing breath. “Sure,” I said.
Everyone started with the potatoes, which galled me. But I waited patiently. I couldn’t exactly say, “Try the damned chicken, will you?” It would have ruined the experience. Instead, I tasted it. The combination of the tart tomatoes, earthy basil, crunchy breadcrumbs and juicy chicken was perfection. My mouth watered for another bite. My eyes watered from success.
Finally, my husband took a bite. Then he took another. Then another. The suspense was making me antsy. My son took a bite and said, “This is really good, Mom. Isn’t it, Dad?” My husband nodded. “The chicken is cooked perfectly and the mashed potatoes are delicious. I’m just not a fan of the coating on the chicken.” He then proceeded to scrape the breadcrumbs off the chicken into a pile next to the asparagus. I could have gone on a tirade, and perhaps I did, but I’m not going to admit it here. All that I will say is that from now on, one of us is getting plain breadcrumbs. And tomorrow, when I experiment with flavoring mayonnaise, that person certainly won’t be getting any pesto mayo on his sandwich.
Panko Schmanko
Posts Tagged ‘cooking’
Deep Freeze
In Humor on August 11, 2025 at 4:12 pmIf I were a houseguest and my host had to go to bed during my visit due to illness, and she forgot to ask me to remove the cans of Diet Pepsi that she put in the freezer so they’d cool quickly, and I discovered that one of the cans had exploded in the freezer, what would I do?
I would wish I were a man.
A lot of men would quickly close the freezer door and pretend to have not seen the mess. Or, they would pull out what they needed, close the freezer door, and pretend to have not seen the mess.
Women, however, would do one of two things: Immediately tell the host of the mess or decide to tackle it by themselves. I would be in the latter group, unless the host was standing right next to me, in which case, we’d clean the freezer together.
Yesterday, I was especially fortunate to have had a considerate male houseguest who went the extra mile. He took the exploded can out of the freezer, as well as the others in there. He put them in the sink. He even picked out chunks of frozen cola, thinking he had found them all. He didn’t, but he tried.
His actions were much appreciated. However, he could have let me know this morning about what had happened, instead of letting me discover the disaster later that day, after he left. But, if he had told me about the mess awaiting me, I wouldn’t have appreciated all he had done, and I would have gotten myself worked up about all of the cleaning that was in store for me, so it was actually self-preservative of him to leave me in the dark for a time. For the time it took him to get out of the house.
It all worked out, though. My freezer was overstuffed and desperately needed a cleaning before the explosion. I finally had a non-negotiable reason to empty it. On the plus side, I finally got rid of that uncooked Tofurky from last Christmas.
Secret Ingredients
In Food, Humor on August 27, 2022 at 12:23 amCooking is dangerous. I burn my arms in the oven and my hands on the pots. I invariably grate my fingernails along with the cheese, and sometimes it’s hard to avoid dripping blood from a cut finger into my ingredients. I always cut my finger when I’m chopping vegetables.
Maybe I have so many accidents because I don’t like cooking. I have a friend who finds the prep work therapeutic and the cooking satisfying. I think she might have a mental problem.
I’ve been using meal kits recently. I usually order three meals per week and wing it the rest of the week. I really like having all of the ingredients and recipes on hand. The kits are expensive but you can’t put a price on not having to shop or plan meals. Well, you can, actually. It’s about $40 for a meal for four, which feeds three quite nicely. That’s approximately $13 per meal, which is reasonable enough, but I still have to feed my family the other four days, so what’s the point?
I’ve tried three different meal kit services. The third one was the best. It had top-notch ingredients and delicious recipes … and a hefty price tag. The first one was bargain basement. The meals were good, but inexpensive vegetables were commonly used, and one can only eat so much zucchini. The recipes were exotic, though, which was nice … occasionally. There were lots of noodle and rice bowls with fried eggs on top. I never understood the fried eggs. The second kit I tried was a disaster. The packers threw all of the ingredients into the box willy nilly, and the produce rarely survived the trip from the warehouse to my house without wilting or rotting. Worst of all, there were no recipe cards. I had to get the recipes online. Have you ever tried cooking a complicated meal while reading the recipe from your laptop or phone? My laptop would go into sleep mode constantly so I was always pressing the cursor pad with greasy fingers to bring the screen back. Grease-covered computer keys are not covered under my warranty.
I suppose I’ll go back to grocery shopping and meal planning. I’ll have to stop off at the pharmacy first, though, for Band-Aids … and a nail file.
You Have to Crawl Before You Iron
In Humor on December 29, 2018 at 2:35 amMany years ago, my sister said that she is afraid of ironing because she always winds up with her head under the ironing board, afraid that the iron will fall off the board and onto her face, thus scarring her for life.
When she told me about her unusual fear, I laughed. And from that moment on, every time I ironed, I found myself crawling around on the floor under the ironing board, also afraid that the iron, which was always precariously balanced on the edge of the board, would fall on my face, thus scarring me for life.
I don’t know why she and I always end up on the floor under the ironing board, but we do. Sometimes I’m under there picking up something silky that slipped off the board. Sometimes I’m wiping up water that leaked out of the iron onto the floor. Other times, I’m shoving the dog out from under the ironing board before he jostles the iron off the board and onto his face … thus, scarring him for life.
This doesn’t keep me from ironing, though. I love to iron. Give me a pile of wrinkled clothes, a can of spray starch, and a movie on TV, and I’m happy. I get great satisfaction from the piles of starched and folded clothes that I transformed from unwearable to glorious. Ironing also calms me.
I have a friend who gets the same therapeutic benefits from prepping food. “I just love chopping, grating, mincing, slicing, dicing, and muddling,” she told me. She likes having little bowls and ramekins filled with all of her prepared ingredients before she begins cooking. I guess I can see how the monotony of chopping, grating, mincing, slicing, dicing, and muddling could be a soothing activity but it doesn’t appeal to me. That’s probably because after doing all of that mindless work, I’d have to actually cook.
I can cook, and I do cook, but I don’t enjoy it. It’s probably because my mother spent an enormous amount of time preparing meals that were complicated, beautiful, and delicious. I either don’t think I can live up to her abilities, or I’m lazy. It’s probably the latter. I could live on meat and vegetable pizza for the rest of my life. It’s the perfect food, containing all of the food groups. No additional salad required.
My chopping, grating, mincing, slicing, dicing, and muddling friend doesn’t understand this at all. But she’s Italian. ‘Nuff said.
I’m part Irish and was probably a washer woman in a past life, so that might explain my love of ironing. But I could also have been a dog, considering how much time I spend crawling around on the floor. I was probably in the same pack as my sister.
Yes, the word “the” is missing from before “cover” in this meme, but I hope you can overlook that and enjoy the message.
Three Rotting Bananas
In baking, Humor on August 12, 2017 at 12:13 amI don’t like to cook. I do it, but I don’t enjoy it –– or attain a trance-like state while I chop, slice, and dice, like a friend of mine does.
“Chopping vegetables is so relaxing,” she told me a few years ago. To this day I don’t know if she was being serious, or lying to see my reaction. I just told her she was nuts.
Chopping onions burns my eyes. When I peel carrots, I always wind up peeling the skin off my index finger. Grating cheese always involves grating my fingernail along with the cheese, and then sifting through the pile of cheese to find the nail shavings. I now polish my nails bright colors so they’re easy to spot.
Most of all, I dread having to locate the necessary spices, because when I open the above-my-head spice cabinet, an avalanche of spice bottles roll out and fall into the sink, scaring both me and the dog.
By the time I manage to get whatever I’m making onto the stove or into the oven, the counters are littered with peelings, eggshells, onion skins, meat wrappers, and dirty pots, pans, bowls, and measuring cups. And the dog is underfoot, licking up whatever hit the floor.
As much as I dislike cooking, I thought I liked baking. Tonight’s attempt at making banana bread made me realize that I was thinking of someone else, maybe one of those cake experts on the Cooking Channel.
It all started with three bananas that were so ripe that they were going to liquefy if I didn’t do something with them fast. For as long as I’ve been alive, whenever someone complains that his or her bananas are brown, another person never fails to say in a perky voice, “Make banana bread!”
Up until today, I’ve always thrown out brown bananas (and steered clear of people who make upbeat pronouncements), because baking with putrid fruit never seemed honest. But, tonight, I decided to reconsider the ethical question of disguising rotten fruit as a loaf cake.
I looked up banana bread recipes and they all called for bananas that were well past the eating stage. Some of the recipes even gave instructions for transforming perfectly nice bananas into sludge. All of the recipes demanded that the bananas be very brown, very soft, and very aromatic.
So, I made banana bread. The process was just as annoying as cooking, and easily as messy. Flour-drenched counters, a sugar-coated Golden Retriever, sticky bowls, and caramelized beaters awaited me once I slid the pan into the oven. It took me three hours to make one loaf pan of banana bread, not including the baking time. I blame the butter.
Who knew it took hours to bring butter down to room temperature? The recipe said to soften it naturally and not expedite the process with the microwave or hot water. Don’t you think that should have been mentioned right under the title, in all capital letters? But no, the author waited until I had mashed the bananas with sour cream and vanilla, mixed the dry ingredients, and tripped over the dog before mentioning that room-temperature butter had to be beaten with sugar.
Oh well. It’s done now. I have no idea if it’s any good. Nor will I ever know. I hate banana bread. I’ll probably freeze it, and one day when I can’t identify what it is, I’ll toss it in the trash.
Next time, I’m throwing out the brown bananas.
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