Hearing the call to cook
I awoke Sunday with a headache. It had been threatening to come forward all week, having started several days before as a twinging in the back of my neck. What it unleashed was horrible, giving me a head that was disturbed by both light and motion. I followed the protocol that usually works – several ibuprofen and lying down for an hour or so – to no avail.
For nearly five hours, I lay on the couch praying for mercy (and for the room to stop spinning). Since noise was not one of my triggering factors this time, I had the television tuned to the Food Network so I had something other than pain to concentrate upon. With my eyes closed, I listened to various cooking shows hosted by various cooking-show personalities with all of their suggestions for what to do.
And I must have been brainwashed.
Around noon, when the pain abated and I could stand without being sick, I went out to my kitchen and started rooting through the fridge for ingredients to make a nice dinner. I pondered a few moments about chicken cacciatore, something I have never made before.
I printed a recipe for it and looked it over. I had most of the ingredients necessary, so I decided to give it a whirl. I browned the breasts, legs and one thigh from a chicken after dredging them in a seasoned flour mixture. Then I added sliced onions and peppers to the skillet, and after they softened, I added a quart jar of whole tomatoes.
Because my family doesn’t care for peppers or onions – or whole tomatoes, for that matter – I pureed my sauce before adding mushrooms and returning my chicken to the pan. Some seasonings and some simmering completed the dish, which I cooled and stuck in the refrigerator for another day. You see, Rachael Ray taught me that I can make several dishes in one day and have nutritious, tasty meals for a whole week’s worth of dinners.
I cooked the remaining chicken parts, including the wings, backs and the other thigh, in a stock I made with carrots and celery (aromatics, as Alton Brown would say).
Then I picked the meat off the bones, sautéed some more vegetables and used some of the stock to make the base for chicken pot pies. I followed Giada de Laurentis’ advice to make them in individual containers, as well as her suggestion to put parmesan cheese in the crust mixture for an extra layer of flavor.
Lastly, I used the ground beef that was in the fridge to make a big pot of chili. You see, I followed one of Nancy Fuller’s Farmhouse Rules that says that chili is an inexpensive comfort food that is a crowd pleaser. I went light on the beans (my middle one hates them) and added some corn (my husband enjoys that twist) to my standard recipe. Trisha Yearwood’s sour cream cornbread should round out that meal.
After all of that, I was feeling pretty good. But then I turned around and saw three days’ worth of dirty dishes piled in my sink. Anybody have a suggestion about who is doing those?
Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@hughes.net.