My greatest failure, in the execution of Tapas Tueaday, was in not buying enough ground lamb. Well, and then forgetting the flamenco eggs. And then in making the children clean the kitchen. But these turned out to be small sadnesses in the general glow of eating a lot of really delicious food in the middle of the week when none of us really deserved it.
On Monday, after checking out Price Chopper for the first time and realizing that the reason that I LOVE Aldi is not just because of how cheep everything is and how I can buy chocolate and cheese and flowers without taking hearty amounts of gluttonous bread out of the mouths of my muling children, the main reason is because I am not psychologically exhausted by catastrophic levels of Choice, there's just the one kind of everything, so you just buy it, and so you're out in twenty minutes, carrying on with your life, not weeping in the cereal aisle….where was I? Don't Run The Sentences So Long….on Monday I mixed this nice ground lamb with a little chopped onion, garlic, salt, pepper and egg. And I was very anxious, because I was not, under any circumstances, going to add breadcrumbs. I scavaged the Internet to find out if it would be ok but found no answers, so I just ploughed ahead, added the egg, skipped the breadcrumbs and shoved the mixture into the fridge. Then I mixed dough for that trendy No Knead Bread because, as I've already heretofore mentioned, my mixer is broken.
Then yesterday, after failing at school and failing at everything because of the time change, really, that is the only reason, for real, stop looking at me like that, instead of making a lot of the food in the afternoon, and doing laundry, I just sort of wandered around the kitchen in a fog. Then I had Usual Tea with a friend. Then it was five o'clock and my mind cleared suddenly and Matt and I found ourselves in a sudden frenzy of cooking. Carrots sautéed with butter and curry powder. So Delicious. They crisped along the edges and the butter just soaked all the way in. Mushrooms melded with butter and brandy. Thin sliced smoked cured pork wrapped around a slice of jalapeño and a little bit of cheese, baked for just a moment. The meatballs, in which the lack of breadcrumbs registered not at all, so fluffy and rich and succulent, with a sauce of onion, garlic, tomato, turmeric, ginger and tamarind. Oh my word. Couldn't stop licking the spoon. Roasted baby tomatoes. What have I forgotten? Put it on the table and told the children it was all gross and they probably wouldn't like it and they should just concentrate on the bread. Blech, I kept saying. They narrowed their eyes suspiciously and decided to try all the food after all. Stupid children. You can't win. Next time maybe I'll tell them it's good. There wasn't anything left. There wasn't anything left. My heart is really just totally broken. How can they strew their stupid cups of noodle soup all over the kitchen but then eat all the food at dinner. Life continues to a veil of tears. They even finished the whole loaf of bread and we had to break into the Aldi bread, at which they sniffed. I mean, I'm gratified, of course, but also extremely irritated.
So now I'd better get up and face down all the cornflakes being flung all over the kitchen. I can hear the gentle fall of sugar, onto the mud strewn floor. Have a lovely day. And there's a picture even though it's Wordy Wednesday and there shouldn't be any pictures. See what a failure I am.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In