DINNER.
I'm not one to toot my own horn, but tonight I'm feeling generous so I will make an exception. I am a total badass in the kitchen. .....sometimes. Tonight happens to be one of those Sometimes. I took that dinner and I wrangled it to the ground. I took it by the neck and whirled it around until there was no pulp left to beat out of it.
It happened like this. (Yes, for me to make a nice dinner, something does in fact have to happen.)
I went into the Wal in search of the face lotion I like. Upon entering the store, I was very dismayed that a Demolition Durby was taking place and I did not have fair warning. If you didn't already know, the new thing now is putting full grocery departments into Wal Marts and Targets, but to do so they have to demolish the part of the store that they're not replacing, keep it like that for just long enough so you get used to it, and then they change everything back when they put it back together again. This means everything gets moved around, which really annoys me.
So the Cosmetics and Toothpaste sections are now at the far end where the Random Holiday Crap used to be, the Eyeballs and Pills sections are smashed up against a very strange wall that did not used to exist, and the Bicycle section is completely missing. When I got all the way to the far end, it was dark and creepy. Not the kind of place I want to shop for makeup or face lotion. But I was willing to take the hit. This lotion is THAT good.
When I couldn't find it I became unbelievably annoyed. I know what the box looks like. I know the brand. Where is it? WHERE. IS. IT?!?!? I kept standing in the Face Stuff aisle, frantically searching for the lotion because sometimes I don't see things that are right in front of me, so I had to check every single bottle on the shelf just to make sure. The lady stocking and straightening the bottles looked at me funny. I looked at her funny back, and she put her head down and kept straightening the bottles. My rage became exponentially worse as the minutes ticked on. How can they not have this lotion?? Freddy's has it. Target has it. Why the hell doesn't Wal Mart have it?! How am I supposed to get a good deal if it's not at Wal Mart?!?!? RAAAAAAAAGE.
I know my story was originally about dinner. Don't worry, I'm getting there.
I decided to walk off my anger attack in the soup aisle and got even more mad that the soups I like are a buck eighty-eight a can. A buck eighty-eight! Unacceptable! What happened to soup being a buck a can? Back in the day soup was less than a dollar a can. When did that stop being the case? Why are the prices of everything skyrocketing? No, I will not pay four dollars a pound for chicken, either. It only costs that much because now we're giving chickens beds and privacy and social lives and well-balanced, wholesome lives that don't have anything to do with the fact that that chicken will eventually end up in my belly no matter what. That, my friends, is a little thing we call "extortion."
And when the hell did I turn into an old codger, anyway? There is a blog I follow by this young funny lady and one of her recent posts is about being an 80-year-old woman in a 22-year-old's body. I think we might be twin sisters.
Moving on. After I got mad about the soups I wandered around huffing and puffing for a while looking for any other overpriced items I might need for home and/or my stomach. It occurred to me in the pasta aisle (I will note the pasta aisle in Wally World seemed particularly dismal today -- don't go there for pasta. They only had four different kinds and none of them were whole wheat, so it's a BIG FAT WASTE OF TIME) that I should make a delicious dinner tonight. And it also occurred to me that this dinner should be none other than: fettucini tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper, with a summer vegetable sautee and garlic lemon shrimp. Why this particular meal? I have no idea. It popped in my head like a light, so I wasn't about to question it. And, I discovered I was much less mad about the lotion after I decided to eat something delicious. I'm not sure how that works because they are about as unrelated as stuff can get, but whatever.
I would not find such yummy ingredients at this awful place with bombs going off and piles of rubble everywhere, so I went to Freddy's for supplies. I found everything quickly and efficiently and came home straight away to cook. YAY! Mission salvaged!
So the REASON I am such a badass is NOT ONLY because of this beautiful meal I just devoured maniacally
but because I cooked it expertly: everything was done all at the right times and all the parts were hot and delicious all at the same time. If you don't cook, this is perhaps the most difficult part. Well, for me anyway. Most of the time the main dish is hot and awesome (that's what he said?) but the vegetables and whatever else sit around for a while and end up cold and impatient.
But not today! I was fantastic! I was a savage! I took that dinner and said BOOM, DINNER! You're DONE!
Some things I learned:
- Shrimp is no longer mysterious to me. If you buy frozen, buy it raw. Defrost in cold water and sautee in butter and minced garlic with lemon juice. And that's IT. Easy peasy. Way better than Red Lobster.
- I really did miss summer vegetables during the winter, no matter how much I tried to deny it.
- Having four arms really would be much better than two.
And this is what it amounted to:
- Yellow squash, zucchini, asparagus sauteed in olive oil, shallot, ground mustard and cider vinegar, topped with fresh cracked black pepper
- Whole wheat fettucini with olive oil, salt and pepper
- Jumbo shrimp, sauteed in butter, fresh minced garlic, lemon juice
If you make this, eat everything happily and with passion. And be glad your kitchen skillz are almost as good as mine. BOO-YAH.
No comments:
Post a Comment