Statements like that must be tested.
The other night I was over at The Heartless Siren's house, trading dinner for her washer and dryer (we don't have one). Especially helpful is that half of my food was still there. Shepherd's Pie was on the menu. I peeled and chopped the potatoes, then got them boiling. Meanwhile, I had the hamburger defrosting. Before long, the hamburger was crumbled and cooked. I waited for a commercial in So You Think You Can Dance that Heartless and Co. were watching, then I headed down to the cellar to raid my food storage for green beans and tomato sauce. Typically I choose stewed tomatoes for Shepherd's Pie. It's already got spices and other yummy goodness, like onions and celery (which actually is disgusting, but I don't mind it in things like this). However, knowing that Heartless considers onions and celery as Death, I made a quick decision to be nice and just grab tomato sauce and spice it myself.
I rummaged around the kitchen, trying to figure out how to open the four home-canned bottles, since I had taken my bottle opener over to my new house with me. Sighing, I gave in and grabbed a spoon. I've seen my parents and siblings open bottles with spoons hundreds of times, but I was never any good at it. To my surprise, it only took a few tries before I popped the tops off both bottles of tomato sauce. I poured the first bottle over, hesitating a moment... was there enough hamburger to justify another jar? I stirred it... just a bit... and decided that, yes, two jars would be ok.
I started stirring the tomato/hamburger mixture, considering putting my iPod back in my ears (I had been listening to Harry Potter 4 earlier), when an unexpected smell assaulted my nose. Where I had expected to smell tomatoes, I instead smelled apples. Apples? Fear crept over my thoughts. No. It couldn't. I recalled in a quick flash the bottle sitting next to the one I had grabbed being labeled as "Duchess". I knew that was applesauce. Mom had labeled it to distinguish what kind of apples she had used. I quickly grabbed a discarded lid from the opened bottles. "06" was all it said. I looked back at the skillet. No. No way. But this wasn't labeled as applesauce. Also, it was pink! Applesauce isn't pink.
And then it hit me like a load of bricks over the head. Mom's specialty applesauce, the one you had to ask nicely and bat your eyes to get a jar of, only surpassed in difficulty by fruit cocktail, was strawberry applesauce. And it was pink. I gingerly scraped the side of the opened jar with my finger, then slowly licked the offending sauce off. It was, without a doubt, strawberry applesauce.
Now what was I to do?! I just poured two bottles of precious applesauce over the only hamburger I had. One of the television watchers reassured me, saying he would often grate apples into his ground beef and it takes on the texture and flavor of hamburger, but it's healthier! That made me feel better, but this was two pints of applesauce, not a grated apple. I called Mom and she laughed and laughed, accusing me of having New Bride syndrome, and told me to rinse it off, then put tomato sauce on. "Sister-in-law Jr. always rinses off her hamburger after cooking it. Granted, I think it takes away the flavor, but that's just me." "Oh, so you think that taking away the flavor is the best option here?" "Wait, it's already cooked?"
[groan]
I chatted at Yellow and told him the horrible thing I had done. He suggested that we could just change the name and call it Orchard Tender's Pie instead. I rolled my eyes, waiting for a real response until I realized... he was serious.
I knew it was ridiculous. I couldn't leave the applesauce in with the hamburger and keep going! .... could I? Of course, now that the idea was planted in my head, I couldn't shake it. But what if it tasted amazing?! This is how new recipes are born, isn't it? And if I didn't keep going, all of that strawberry applesauce would be wasted. But then again, if I kept going and it was gross, the potatoes, hamburger, green beans and cheese would be wasted. [sigh] Dilemmas!
I couldn't bring myself to taste the hamburger/applesauce mixture. Finally I told Yellow that he would have to come from work and taste it himself. He was leaving momentarily anyway, so we decided that would be the plan. He still finds this plan faulty, since he is basically a living garbage disposal... he'd eat anything. But I figured that if it was so gross that even he didn't like it, I knew it would be a very bad idea.
He came. He tasted. He approved. I doubted. I tasted. I wavered.
I think it was the fact that I got a large bite of hamburger. It wasn't so bad at first, but when I actually started chewing a large piece of hamburger with a lingering applesauce taste in my mouth, I wasn't convinced. I hemmed. I hawed. Do I waste it? Should I be brave? What do I do?!
I've never been good with decisions.
Finally, with a promise from Yellow that if I didn't like it, he'd eat it every day for lunch so that it wouldn't be wasted, I went ahead and finished making the dish. Heartless went to bed. She was tired and doesn't like fruit anyway. This dish had been ruined for her. We finished baking and laundry and took it home. Yellow took a big piece; I took a small piece.
Honestly? It wasn't half bad. Yeah, I wouldn't make it again on purpose. But if you took a bite and imagined that you had taken a bite of Shepherd's Pie and then a bite of applesauce, it wasn't bad at all. We both ate it for lunch for the next several days until it was gone.
Conclusions:
- Yellow truly will always think I'm a good cook and like everything I make.
- Being brave isn't as dreadful as I imagined.
- Heartless, you would have gotten dinner had you let me put Death in. I wouldn't have confused applesauce with large chunks of tomatoes, along with celery and onions. I blame this whole thing on you.
No comments:
Post a Comment