Listing Through Life

The preparation for my great Mother’s Day meal began on Saturday when I accidentally bought a $51 ham. I drove to the nearest Whole Foods Market as instructed. This happened to be about 20 miles from my house. I wandered around with my little green basket on my arm looking for tarragon and champagne vinegar and all sorts of other stuff I never looked for before. Unfortunately, the first thing I found were the two pineapples, and by the time I made it to the check-out counter the better part of an hour later, the basket was heavy and my arm was sore.

The one thing I couldn’t find was a Black Forest Ham. I wandered up and down the aisles, trying to ignore the stares of women who could somehow tell just by looking at me that I didn’t belong there. I finally located the ham behind the deli counter. I remembered that when I had my lesson, John had bought an entire ham, and that we had used a little more than half of it. I was feeding more people than we had that day, so I wanted to get one at least as big. I asked the guy for a whole one. He looked at me strangely, but he handed me an entire ham. It was quite a bit larger than the earlier one, but I didn’t think too much about it. Turns out it was a bit more than five pounds — and made my basket even heavier.

I was shocked when the cashier told me the total for my little basket of food was $94. That’s when I figured out the ham was $9.99/pound. I wasn’t about to go back and ask to have it cut in half. Evidently, my pride is worth at least $25 to me.

As I was fighting bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way home and feeling stupid about the ham, I realized that English muffins weren’t on the list I was given. My wife bought those for me later in the day when she went shopping at a regular grocery store.

Before I get to the meal itself, I’d like to clear something up. This whole thing started when I wrote a post on my blog about how I don’t like to cook. Somehow that got blown up to mean that I only eat junk food and have never had fresh or good food in my life. That is not at all true. My wife is an excellent cook who frequently makes meals from scratch. I have several friends for whom cooking is a passion and who share their food with me. My problem is that I often make my own meals, mostly lunches. I frequently eat fresh fruit, good cheese, home made bread — I just don’t assemble them into meals. I eat the components separately because I don’t like to cook and don’t know how.

So now for Mother’s Day. My mom was here, as was my sister, my niece and her husband and three kids and my wife and younger daughter. They all showed up shortly after I began preparing the food.

John said the meal preparation would take about two hours. It took almost exactly two hours.  I couldn’t find in the directions when to add the bourbon to the Bearnaise sauce, so I dumped it in near the end. I was also supposed to salt the sauce to taste, but that’s tricky to do when I don’t know how something is supposed to taste. The final product tasted a little different than I remember it tasting at the restaurant, but it wasn’t bad. The rest of the meal — the pineapple salad, the asparagus, and the poached eggs — came out just as they were supposed to.  I used maybe a pound of the ham.

I thank my wife and niece who gave me a hand whenever I needed a third one and offered encouragement throughout. I thank my sister for bringing dessert. And I thank my daughter and her cousin for cleaning up the huge mess.

I am very glad I had the experience. Again, I thank my friend for setting everything up and John for his time and effort. I now know I can cook, and I know a little bit about how.

So, now that it’s over, what did I get out of this experience?

Guilt, mostly. I think I was expected to experience a eureka moment when I suddenly realized that cooking was an incredibly worthwhile endeavor that brought joy to myself and others and added new colors to my world. It didn’t happen.

I found it a chore. Trying to keep everything organized without forgetting any steps while remembering what I’d been taught three weeks before and ignoring the dirty dishes and utensils that were piled all over the place was stressful. And if cooking includes shopping, include me out.

I am happy that my family enjoyed the food. I will probably occasionally dig up a recipe for some simple dish and give it a try, but I don’t see any more two hour meals in my future.

Somehow I feel like I ought to be apologizing for that.

Not long after we were married, friends gave us their old microwave oven. It was a beast of a thing, almost large enough to cook a turkey. We kept it for years. I used to joke that it was the oldest functioning microwave on the planet. It may not have been a joke. We finally decided to get rid of it when we moved. There simply wasn’t room for it on the counter of our new kitchen. We stuck a price tag on it and placed it with our other junk in a garage sale. It sat there, forlornly, all through the first day and into the afternoon of the second day. Finally, when the sale only had an hour or two left, an elderly woman took an interest in it. She studied it for a while, then wandered off, then came back to it again and looked some more. I sidled over with an optimistic expression on my face, ready to close the deal. The woman looked up at me and asked, “Is this color or black-and-white?”

I have serious issues with the consumer culture that surrounds us. Stuff is made to be used and tossed. Very few things are made to last. Computers are old before you buy them, the cell phone you must have is the one that came out the day after you bought the one you do have, and every week some guy rings the doorbell and tries to sell you the latest cable or satellite hook-up. Right about the time I started buying DVDs, stores began selling Blue-Ray Discs.

My wife and I are in open rebellion against the system. We keep things for decades longer than the manufacturer intended them to last. I recently got rid of a car that was older than my daughter who is old enough to drive (and it only broke down because I did something stupid). The TV in my study has old metal cable attachments that look like bicycle pump needles. There is a functioning VHS player hooked up to it, but I can’t use it because it needs to be on channel 92 and the buttons on the front of the TV only go up to 50. To get to channel 92, I have to use the remote, but the remote is so old that only the volume buttons work and even then only when I push really, really hard. I still have a functioning turntable in the basement, along with all the LPs I bought back in college.

I spend a considerable portion of every day in the La-Z-Boy chair in my study. That’s where I do my reading. That’s where I watch movies. That’s where I take my naps. My dad bought that chair when I was about 12. When my parents moved to Wisconsin, the chair went with them and was the focus of the family room where the vast majority of the activity took place in that house. When my dad died, I inherited the chair. That was more than 11 years ago. The vinyl is cracked and ripped and has to be covered with a sheet. It makes an assortment of creaking noises, and the footrest sometimes doesn’t catch. But I have no plans to get rid of it.

It’s not just the expensive stuff that we do this with. I was on vacation with my family when I was about 10. We stopped at a gift shop somewhere in Northern Wisconsin where my dad bought everyone in the family their own glass mug. I used mine all through high school. I took it to college and had it for a few years after I was married. One evening I was bragging to my wife about how long I’d had the mug when it slipped out of my hand and shattered. I went out the next day and bought another one. A week later, I dropped the new one and chipped a wedge-shaped piece out of the handle. Twenty-five years later, I’m still using that same mug with the broken handle.

We bought our grill at a garage sale 27 years ago. I wear sunglasses that I bought in 1988. My wife carries a cell phone with a pull-out antennae. It’s so large you can actually put the ear holes by your ear and the mouth holes by your mouth. (I’ve always been a little disturbed by smaller cell phones that aren’t large enough for me to do this. I have an urge to keep shifting them up and down my cheek as I talk and listen.)

I guess this is why I like antiques so much. Yes, I enjoy the way they look. But more than that, they were built to last. The dresser in our bedroom is the one I had in my bedroom as a kid. The drop-leaf table in our living room is the one my mother ate at 70 years ago on her first visit to her mother-in-law’s house.

I don’t really have a point to make. I am just frustrated at having to throw away a perfectly good Bic pen simply because it’s out of ink.

Would Bearnaise sauce really taste any different if I left out the tarragon and didn’t add the pepper and shallots cooked in bourbon? Is there a chance on earth that I’ll pour the butter and water into the eggs in the right amounts at the right times to make the sauce come together?

I looked up Poblano peppers on the Internet. I read that they’re usually mild but occasionally hot. What will my pineapple salad taste like if I get a hot one? I also read that a Poblano is a resident of Puebla, Mexico.  I’ve been there!

I also looked up to find where the “Benedict” in eggs Benedict came from. There are at least four origin stories on the Internet, and the only thing that anybody knows for sure is that they’re probably all wrong.

The chef taught me how to make the foods he did because they’re “brunchy.” But my meal on Mother’s Day probably won’t be ready until 3:00 p.m. If the meal between breakfast and lunch is brunch, what, what do you call a meal between lunch and supper?

One evening, we had half an hour to cook and eat supper before we had to head out the door.  My daughter scrambled some eggs. My wife made toast. I pulled a package of sausages out of the freezer and read the directions.

1. Place links and 3 tablespoons water in unheated skillet. Cover and heat over medium heat for 7 minutes.
2. Uncover the skillet and allow water to evaporate while heating another 2 to 4 minutes. Turn links often to brown.

That seemed simple enough, and with my new-found cooking skill I figured I could handle it. I dumped the sausages in a skillet and covered them with a pot lid. I set the timer on the stove for seven minutes. When the time was up, I took off the lid and dutifully stood by the stove, turning the links over repeatedly while watching the clock. I was doing this! I was cooking! And then my wife strolled by and said, “You know, those are precooked. Just make sure they’re warmed clean through.”

Oh.

Baby steps …

But that experience got me thinking — it would be a good idea to practice cooking my Mother’s Day meal. The two things I am nervous about are the Bearnaise sauce and the poached eggs. I can’t afford to do the sauce twice, but I could tackle the eggs, albeit with non-organic super market eggs.

Imagine my surprise when I looked on the Internet and discovered that poaching may be illegal if:

• the poacher does not possess a valid permit.
• the poacher is using an illegal weapon.
• the activity takes place on restricted land.
• the poacher uses illegal bait, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or spaghetti. (Really, that’s what it says!)

I decided to risk it anyway. First I set out all my ingredients — mise en place.

Pay no attention to the bananas or the pretzels. And the coffee stuff. And I forgot the spoon and cheese knife. But otherwise I got it right.

To make a long story short — the poached eggs turned out perfectly. My wife ate one and agreed — and she’s refused to eat any eggs I’ve cooked since about two years ago when I served her a fried egg that was 50% raw.

I ate mine on rye toast with butter, ham and cheese, and it all tasted just fine. (And don’t tell anyone I said this, but it was even kinda fun.)