I can always tell when I’m overdue to cook my husband a decent meal. He will wander into the pantry and look at all the canned food (lunch meats, soups, stews, and vegetables); then he’ll give a great big sigh and say: “I’m hungry and there’s nothing to eat.”

 

We have enough canned, packaged and frozen food to last six months, but that is beside the point. Usually I ignore my husband’s subtle please for a home-cooked meal, but today I decided to be kind and generous (two words that he does not associate with me most of the time). However, there are days when being in the kitchen is not a good idea, and today was one of them.

 

Borrowing from my primary blog Irish Eyes, the following occurred as I attempted to prepare my husband dinner:

This was not a day to place myself in the kitchen. I decided to be kind to Wilbert and prepare dinner, but from the get-go trouble brewed instead. When I opened the freezer door to get a bag of vegetables, a frozen-solid package of hot dogs flew out and hit the floor, narrowly missing my foot. Let me first clarify that our freezer is the top half of our refrigerator, therefore the freezer door is half-sized as well. After bending over to pick up the cursed package of hot dogs, I stood back up and hit my head smack on the open freezer door, jolting the door off its hinges and crashing it to the floor while a loose screw went flying across the kitchen to the entrance of the pantry.

 

I was slightly dazed for a few minutes, rubbing the top of my noggin and swearing a blue streak. I developed a goose egg, of course, but trudged ahead and made dinner anyway. When Wilbert woke up from his sleep, he fixed the freezer door and kept looking at me in amazement. “You must have one tough skull,” he said. “Either that or your Irish stubbornness has seeped into every fiber of your being.”

 

Once in awhile Wilbert comes up with a zinger or a nicely turned phrase. Today was one of those occasions when the opportunity presented itself and he grabbed it running – at my expense. I can’t begrudge his small and all-too-rare victory, so I let the comment slide…

I did continue with dinner, and we finally sat down and had tender-baked chicken, steamed vegetables (kernel corn and chopped broccoli), and a side of sliced potatoes lightly coated and fried with breadcrumbs.