Wednesday, April 18, 2007

I Like My Coffee Like Sludge, Thank You Very Much

Monday morning, my first weekday as a housewife. God, I HATE that term! Oh and now that I'm home all day, every day is like Saturday, so forgive me as I get deeper into my mommy fog and lose my identity if I also lose my sense of what day of the week it is!

So I get up normal time knowing my neighbor is going to bring her daughter over so the kids can play and we can have coffee in our jammies. That is very exciting to me - jammies until I decide I'm done with them. Now, we're going to have coffee, which means coffee needs to be made. I am so tired of sounding like a spoiled brat when I say I don't know how to make coffee, so I decide that I'm going to make the coffee myself. Its brewing and smells great. Jason comes down, I pour myself a cup with my sugar and cream, take a drink and uh, well it appears that no matter how much CREAMER I try to put into it, the coffee will not get that lovely blonde color that signals readiness. Jason pours himself a cup, looks at me for approval to pour it down the drain and proceeds to make another pot. Failure in the kitchen numero uno!

With the coffee secured (by Jason, dammit), I focus on getting the boys their breakfast. Oatmeal and cantaloupe (not together). The oatmeal is instant - foolproof and I've made it before - a confidence builder. I empty two packets into each bowl as one packet is not enough for my linebacker toddlers and proceed to pour water from the tap into the bowls. Jason says, "I always put milk in their oatmeal." Well, I'm putting water in it because there is a milk shortage in the fridge and I was concerned the boys would overdo it on their calcium intake, so we're just going to moderate that. Dammit, who CARES if I put water in instead of milk? Geez! According to Jason, failure number two in the kitchen.

Boys have their oatmeal and don't seem to notice a difference between water and milk, so I move on to cutting up the cantaloupe. Knife down the middle, it splits in half on the cutting board and lo and behold, there are seeds in it! Shocking! When Jason cuts it I never saw seeds before, so I cut, scrape, cut, scrape and pick off the seeds as I go along. This is clearly torturing Jason so he says, "let me show you a trick." He grabs the other half of the melon, scoops out all of the seeds in one fluid motion and sets the perfect portion back on the cutting board next to my mutilated piece. I DID NOT watch and I am NOT IMPRESSED! Dammit, Jason, this is less than 15 minutes and I've accomplished failure number three in the kitchen!

The day passes and after a shower around 1:00 I feel rejuvenated to decide on the evening's dinner menu. Taco salad with (boxed) mexican rice (rice a roni, of course). Easy enough - I did that in college. Another foolproof plan, ah, ha ha! The water is boiling for the rice, the veggies are all cut, the cheese grated, things are going pret-ty stinking well without Jason's nosey nose in my way. Phone rings, its Jason. We chat while I stir the ground meat and he's on his way home. The rice water is boiling and is ready for the cheese/seasonings mix packet. I open the packet and pour in.......the ground meat taco seasoning mix! Dammit, Jason, I was on the phone with you - its all your fault! Got off the phone with him and clearly rounding the final lap toward a fourth failure in the kitchen (in one day) when I decide to go with it on the rice and hold my breath that a "from scratch" taco seasoning mix can be created from a Joy of Cooking recipe. SAVED! Mixed up some spices, tomato sauce and voila - once combined with the rice, the chips and all of the veggies, dinner is saved, uh, I mean served! (Oh, yeah, maybe I should have drained the 30% fat off of the meat before I mixed in the seasonings. Maybe Jason won't notice if I seat him and serve - keeping him AWAY from the stove.)

I hate the damn kitchen! Dammit.

Added Note: Jason DID notice and suffered grease pains the next day. I told him to shut up - it'll put hair on his chest.

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