Mum came home yesterday complaining that I never cook for them, and "just for once, I'd like to come in the door and you be like "Dinner's on the table!"" She went on to claim that I couldn't cook to save my life, and my kids would die of gout after eating Kraft Dinner until age 8. I gathered later that one of the nurses had been talking about teaching her daughter to cook, and how much fun it was. Mum never taught me to cook, and I never bothered to learn [most likely because I never could have learned from her anyway], beyond a few forays into cake-like things: brownies (with banana liqueur and black pepper- last time I brought them to work, someone [Azam] wrote "hashish" on the ingredients list. They are unusual, I concede.), apricot cake, and awesome crepes. But meat tends to scare me. I never know when it's cooked enough to not kill people, especially chicken.
[Mostly] unjustified culinary fears aside (after all, the apricot cake I made for C was the most dreadful thing I'd made in years, but I'd run out of white sugar AND icing sugar), I decided to prove her wrong BADLY (in my "stick in to the Man but only once" kinda of way), so I made crepes with bacon and EITHER chicken or fake-crab in a creamy cheese sauce. I used my own crepe receipe, found the only remaining piece of chicken in the house (about the size of a fist), found some fake-crab (which later turned out to be a year past its sell-by date, but no worries, at least not yet), defrosted everything, mixed Campbell's Chicken A La King soup with some cheese sauce for broccoli, covered the chicken with it and set it to cook in the oven, defrosted the fake-crab and mixed THAT with the cream sauce and nuked it, defrosted the bacon, and was putting THAT in the oven when they walked in the door. And of course, I got to ring out with "Dinner will be ready in 10 minutes!" and they looked sort of surprised. (Only sort of, cuz I had talked to Mum earlier in the day and she had reminded me that yesterday was Shrove Tuesday and I hadn't made any pancakes, so she thought there might be a possibility I'd make my pancakes and had stopped off to buy some REAL lemon for them. We have them with lemon juice and sugar.) So they had their wine and sat down and all, and half an hour later, I presented them dinner: Crepes au Poulet A La Cr�me Avec Morceaux de Lard [yes, unfortunately, this is the word for bacon in French; not uber-appetizing, is it?], with a sprig of parsley on top.
No, I didn't have any.
But apparently they were fantastic, better than Godbrother David's seafood crepes at Xmas (and those were damn good, first time I've ever forced myself to eat scallops.) They both had helpings of chicken AND fake-crab, Mum exclaiming how great they were. When she was out at church (Ash Wednesday, anyone?), I asked Daddy if it had just been a lot of noise, and he said no, she'd genuinely been amazed I could cook. She said that if I could have taken the yelling and stress, I would have been a great cook. I said I didn't think cooks were allowed to use Campbell's soup, Gardenay notwithstanding. I did have Michelle coaching me along the way via email, but since I had already incidentally done everything she was telling me to do, it was more reassurance than education. :) You'd never guess to look at her, or hear her talk, or watch her drink or smoke, but Michelle's a damn good cook. [Joking, Shelley......]
And now that the matter is no longer in dispute, I never intend to make that much effort for one meal ever again.
12:34am
You stupid git.
Readin' The Truth
Listenin' to nothing
Thinkin' about crepes for tomorrow's lunch
Most recently I was 
