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Bake cookbook at 400 degrees until brown in center
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Bake cookbook at 400 degrees until brown in center One of the things that I'll never be accused of is being a "good" cook in even the loosest definition (except by my mother of course, and that's either the chemo, the pain meds, or just the fact that I'm the only game on the block apart from take-out); as a matter of fact, I've gotten a LOT of mileage out of making fun of just HOW bad I am in the kitchen! ...fun little remarks about having the only who begs me NOT to cook, or the creepy little cockroaches with their creepy little "Even WE have Standards" protest signs. All in good fun, but a chronic bachelor who doesn't cook for toot is almost a requirement when one has a stereotype to live up to, and I like to think that I'm paving the way for future generations of stereotypes (fearless trailblazer that I am and all). So anyway, it came as a real shocker when I became the sole cook in the household here. Since keeping weight on my mother can be an issue, I at least try to make up for my lack of skill with the entree's by making sure she gets plenty of ice cream and cookies afterward (some may call that "dessert" but I'm okay with "bribery" as the operating definition). Last year was a year for firsts though; moving in with my mother is something that I would have laughed in your face at the mere suggestion of five years ago (actually ...I honestly seem to recall actually saying something to the effect of "I'd rather be homeless" to a suggestion along those lines once upon a time when it was my own misfortunes in question). I cooked the Thanksgiving dinner all by my lonesome last year (the fact that the fire department wasn't involved in that particular endeavor was a bonus as well), I decorated a house for Christmas (there's a whole other blog or 10 in that one), and I finished a major ongoing project (also a story for another day). The one thing I really keep away from is breakfast ...except for somewhat rare occasions, coffee is about it where breakfast is concerned although Mom likes toast or a toaster pastry many mornings. Yesterday ended up being one of those somewhat rare days, but I hardly went "all out" on anything; I just decided to flake out and make some biscuits (or is that "make some flaky biscuits?" ...pretty sure it was one of those). I started doing the mental inventory: "flour ...check, baking lard ...check, Pillsbury canned biscuits; preheat and bake with nothing else needed ...OH YEAH CHECK!" I put the oven on preheat and went off to busy myself with busy little things that I try to busy myself with when pretending to be busy (meaning: I really don't remember); I do seem to recall that Mom had been doing something in her room and came out with the remark "I sure wish I could get a little bit accomplished in my room this morning" ...quickly followed by "but I'm glad I got as much accomplished as I did." This was one of those things I remarked about in the previous blog, and my response was something to the effect of "Whenever I'm unable to accomplish anything, I always find a great deal of comfort in getting a lot accomplished while I'm not doing it" to which we both got a great laugh out of it. Mom's memory issues as well as verbal troubles really bother her, so we laugh; it beats the alternative every time. The oven beeped that the preheat was over ...I went in and laid out the biscuits on the sheet, opened the oven to put them in and found that it was already occupied. By a big ...uhm ...cookbook. Now as far as logic goes, I might be able to do enough mental contortions to allow that the book giving instruction on how to do the cooking be located in the place where you primarily do said cooking, but my issue at that moment centered more around proximity and timing. The cookbooks are kept in the shelf above the oven, and my mother is a tiny little woman who needs a little stepladder (conveniently kept in the corner of the kitchen) to get up there. I might have been inclined to ask why Mom was climbing around above a double oven looking in cookbooks in the first place, but I guess it occurred to me that if I was living with ME, perhaps I'd get a little bit nostalgic about what good food looked like too. Putting it in the oven might be a little extreme, but who am I to judge? She started in about looking for a recipe and she set it in there just to move it and just forgot she left it there, but I defused with a remark about it not being quite brown in the center yet ...did we need to give it a bit longer, or should I just go ahead with the biscuits? She thought the biscuits were the better option (although I suspect it might have been a bit more of a draw had I entertained "made from scratch" more strongly), and we had a comfortable breakfast of biscuits and jelly, more coffee and an old episode of "Doctor Who" that there probably wasn't enough pain medication on the planet for Mom to understand... |
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