Yes, if you noticed I called this post summertime "blues" where as all the others have been "no blues". To state the obvious: all the others were mostly, nearly successes, and this one .. was not. What was this failure of the summer?
To be fair to me, first I will state things which were against me which werent my fault but helped me fail at suppers.
1. The stove was not working properly for several days when I needed it. First it wasnt on at all and I didnt know how to turn on the gas for it. So, i had to postpone a supper I was going to cook in the oven. THEN when we did get it going, it went off again and it STILL was not working. This caused me to cook on the top of the stove and not in the oven. The meal came out ok, but it was a bit troubling and I had to make changes and adjustments. Not my fault. By the day after I think we got the oven working, but I was worried whether it was leaking while it was on. I could smell stuff in the kitchen, gas, during the day and or night.
2. We werent there during corn season. Last year we had corn about half or more
 |
| Michigan bi color sweet corn |
3. Ugh, the spaghetti and or spaghetti sauce was a total failure. That wasnt my fault. Something was wrong with the sauce and or noodles. I may have bought too thick noodles and they were too watery? Maybe. The sauce was terrible. Too soupy and the taste was bad. And I bought a well known brand, what I thought was a good brand. Failure. Not my fault. Might not even make spaghetti next year.
4. My daughters WOULD not let me make my best signature meal, lasagne. They said, I can only make that during the year, not in the summer. It is not a summer dish and I am not allowed to make it here on vacation. They are kind of tied up in traditions. I understand their reasoning and why, but, it further tied my hands on supper.
Ok, but the basic problem which made it a failure was, I just didnt have a big enough repertoire this year. My big signature meals were seriously diminished. Lasagne was a no no, the spaghetti was terrible so I only made it once. The pork chops were compromised when I made them on the top of the stove. The hot Buffalo wings also, but I salvaged that operation and cooked half in oven and half on stove top. But not the usual good ones. Lost cause. I cant even remember well what I cooked for dinner. Corn a couple, three times, maybe 4. Peegeos pizza 3 times. Sometimes we had lunch at dinner because we had a big lunch. A subs one night during the dusk movie. This and that, but I cant see that it added up to 21 days of vacation. But it did. I dont think ANY of my regular meals were a success. Man oh man.
The easy thing to do is to fix it in one manner: Increase my repertoire!!!!
This I have to do during the year. Even though I will be able to fall back on corn next year more often, I need to develop more recipes for dinner. And I would rather they not be meals that my wife has already developed, granted though I stole the lasagne recipe from her and the chicken kebabs. But I have to find my own successful path to dinner. Should I look for some educational course to learn some more?
I have to get cracking on this and find some meals to try. But as of yet the only one I can think of, and wait a sec, hear me out on this one, the only meal I can think of so far to try is macaroni and cheese. Oh Louise, is that a loss or what?
But wait, see, my older daughter really likes mac and cheese and I think I could make a good homemade one. She was all psyched about this store bought one, but if I try a homemade one during the year, maybe it could be a success for her. But admittedly it is not the most original, healthy, or wise choice to add to my repertoire.
Stay tuned during the year as hopefully I can give more reports on my "struggle". To add to my list of dinners. I better get started on this. Summer will come quickly and I dont want another summer of failed dinners.
Dads, if you are going away with your kids and you are responsible for suppers, let me pass on this rule of thumb of how many recipes you might need. Ie, if you are responsible for a week, it is best that you know 3-4 recipes. And no, hot dogs and potato chips does not count, even though I have fallen back on that one. Best to have 4. Then one, maybe two nights you can go out or order in like a pizza or something good. Get stuff from a real good local restaurant. Something special to that area you are in. Space the restaurants. Ie Monday and Friday or Tuesday and Saturday. And yes, ok one night hot dogs and chips. So that is three nights and 4 left for cooking yourself
Two weeks and you are going to need 7 -10 meals in your knowledge cap. See, nights out is getting tight. You dont want to have 4 restaurant nights. That is a bit much and the kids will stop liking it really. You might get away with 4 order food or restaurant nights, but .... maybe, maybe not. So better to have at least 7 meals you can make and a hot dog and chips meal is 8 and 4 night out and you still have to make up 2 dinners. Tough call.
And three weeks, like I had.. well then you can start repeating your meals so you dont need 16 say, you can get away with like 10 to 14. To tell you the truth, I dont think I have a repertoire of 10 to 14. For the likes of my memory what did I do? How did I get by? See, by my standards I am giving to you, I am not there yet.
2022-2023 RECIPE building is in order and necessary. Stay tuned. I ll let you know. No more supper failures.
I listened to the new Sarathy Korwar album "Kalak" while I was putting in pictures in this post. Pretty good synthesis of Indian tabla and rhythms and jazz. New jazz. I wouldnt really call this an "Indian album", it crosses many boundaries and synthesizes a lot of styles. I might not even call this "a Brit thing" though his last album was very British. This is good stuff with a twist on the new jazz sound circulating as a sub sub trend. (ie porto quartet, zabelov group). Nice, Very nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment