The Domestic Goddess Abdicating

In my last entry I promised to make your mouth water and your nipples harden.

I am afraid I shall disappoint you.

These are the sad remains of the meal I served for my family yesterday:

Chicken wings, wholewheat pasta and tomato salad. Except the wings tasted distinctly reheated, the pasta was extremely dry and the tomato “salad” was – well- a tomato. I was very uninspired.

The kids threw themselves at it but after grunting dissatisfied several times and having poked around in it for a while, Hubby exclaimed: “Well, this sure is one for your blog!” He continued: “I wish I had known the menu so I could have stopped for a pizza on my way home.”

And then it came: “This is right up there with that thai soup slash tex-mex nightmare you made that time”.

I once started out making a wonderful coconut-milk-based thai soup and thought it might be interesting to add kidney beans. This was in 1999 and it didn’t go down well. I have cooked approximately (lets see: circa 300 dinners per year for 11 years give or take plus change:) Let’s call it an even 4000 meals.

4000 healthy, delicious, beautiful meals I have cooked for this man and the one he always brings up and remembers so vividly, was the coconut soup with the motherfucking kidney beans.

Sometimes – often – I wonder: “How did he get to BE this way?”

And I got the answer to that just last week, when I served a delicious cup of Irish Coffee for my father-in- law.

The whole family was gathered in our summer cottage by the ocean and as I served my father- in- law the tall glass with freshly brewed coffee, 2 measures of whiskey, brown sugar and topped with freshly whipped cream, he got a stern look from my mother- in- law.

“Don’t you be going all crazy-drunk like you did that one time!!!”, she warned him. My father in law is a very controlled, quiet man who works with statistics and enjoys gardening and I had a hard time imagining him going even remotely “crazy” in any way, shape or form, so naturally, I was intrigued. “When did he get drunk from Irish Coffee?”, I asked.

Pissed off by the memory, she said: “May, 1976!”