a home cooked meal with mixed results (lyn)

Alexander recently commented that my cooking is improving.  Rather, he means, my cooking choices.  He prefers that I not be experimental.  He doesn’t care (nor should he) how fattening a meal is.  He just doesn’t want any mislabeled surprises (like the spaghetti squash lasagna disaster from last winter).

So here’s tonight’s menu (both found on allrecipes.com):

Main Course:

Baked scallops with butter and garlic.  (I’m splurging on the butter since scallops, at 25 calories per ounce,  are waistline friendly).

Vegetable:

Broccoli florets and red pepper marinated in an oil-vinegar-honey dressing.

The prep time on the broccoli says 15 minutes.  It takes me two hours.  I get a little sidetracked. 

I take a step stool out to get something.  Once I can reach my high cabinets, I look in them and decide to re-organize.  In one of them I keep my never-used Waterford crystal (Lismore pattern) from a  brief marriage in 1977.  I really should unpack them from their yellowing boxes.

Next I come across a Presto Electric FryBaby (circa mid-70’s), still in a sealed box.  I’m surprised by the spelling of FryBaby as I thought the one word-two caps was a more recent phenomenon.  Maybe Presto was the one who started this trend. There was a time when I liked to make French Fries, but that ended when I was living in Boston and almost burned down my apartment kitchen.  I won’t keep this item, as I don’t need a French Fry maker tempting me at home.

While I’m in the kitchen, I also organize the cabinet with my pots and pans.  That’s where I discover two tops for springform pans, but no bottoms.  I throw these out, but not before remembering the cakes I used to make.  That period of my life was short-lived.

Alexander comes home from work.  “What’s for dinner?” he asks.  I tell him and he is excited about the broccoli but more restrained in his enthusiasm for the scallops.  “I don’t love scallops.  I like shrimp better.” But both turn out looking pretty good.

I love the scallops, but when Alexander doesn’t request seconds, I know I won’t be making them again.