Sure, Maria sings that bright copper kettles are one of her favorite things, but she’s not the one who has to clean them.
I do. I’m the chef who works for the Von Trapp family.
I hate this job, but I’m a Jew. Captain Von Trapp says that if I don’t want to work for him, then I’m welcome to board the next train for the camps.
So, I stay. And cook. And clean those damn kettles until they’re bright and shiny.
If she and those kids don’t shut the hell up, I’m going to poison the next apple strudel.
Tag: food
Wedding Soup
While shopping for vegetable soup, I saw cans of Italian Wedding soup on the shelf.
Wedding soup? Don’t Italians have cake at weddings like everyone else?
Do cake topper brides and grooms float? Or do you strip them out of their clothes so they can skinny-dip in the soup?
The Italian Wedding soup? I thought that Minestrone was the “Italian” soup, but it turns out they serve that at divorces.
Italian Wedding soup is nothing but noodles and meatballs. Why not just call it noodles and meatballs?
Are gays and lesbians allowed to eat it?
I’ll stick to Vegetable, okay?
Italian Food
My grandfather served in World War 2. He liberated Italy, and when he wasn’t screwing whores and stealing priceless art works, he was chowing down on the best food he could get his hands on.
He brought back crates and crates of paintings and sculptures, only to lose them all when the Army followed up on the Vatican’s complaints about looting.
He kept one treasure, though: a recipe book, collecting up amazing dishes that kept his restaurant busy every night.
One night, a burglar shot him.
The book stopped the bullet.
Don’t ever say Italian food is bad for you.
Tea Time
It doesn’t take long to make a fresh pitcher of iced tea.
I strip 8 teabags from their packages, drop them into a pitcher, and then put a kettle of water on the stove.
Turning the dial to High, I walk into the living room and sit for a while.
I guess this is the superstitious part of me, not watching a pot because a watched pot never boils.
I wait 5 minutes… 10 minutes… 15 minutes…
No whistle yet?
I go back into the kitchen.
Great. I turned on the wrong burner.
I guess those pots don’t boil either.
Choice
It’s not easy for a person to cook with their arm in a sling.
Visions of setting my left arm on fire convince me to stick with simple foods, like carrots and hummus.
Yogurt, too.
But I find myself unable to choose from the many flavors in our refrigerator. The pain meds make it hard to make arbitrary decisions like this.
I stand there, confused, and getting hungrier… hungrier…
I reach out and freeze.
“Close your eyes,” a voice says.
So, I do.
And I pull out a yogurt! Success!
Uh oh.
Now I need to pick out a spoon.
Paper or Plaster
Every time I go grocery shopping, it’s the same damn question:
“Paper or plastic?”
Plastic’s good for putting the scooped-out clumps of kitty litter into.
But the kitties like to play in the paper bags.
In the end, I settled on paper. The baskets on my bike are large enough for one paper bag each.
The one time I got plastic, I couldn’t fit all the bags into the baskets.
With one bag dangling from my right hand, I fell and broke my left arm.
I use a plastic bag to keep the cast dry in the shower.
Open For Dinner
I wanted some chicken in my vegetables, so I pulled out a can of chicken and fumbled with the can opener in my one good hand.
I can’t close it and turn the handle at the same time.
And wishing I had an electric can opener doesn’t do squat for me right now.
So, I use the can opener to rip around the lid, taking five minutes to get it open.
Then, I poked a fork into the lid, prying it off.
And dropping the can on the floor.
Chicken… everywhere…
“Dinner,” I call to the cats, eating my vegetables.
The Meal Plan
Back in college, the meal plan covered weekday breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On weekends, there were just the noon brunches, and we were on our own for breakfast and dinner.
Most of us slept through breakfast, or we loaded up on beer at the tailgate parties for football games, but the truth is I never grew out of having milk and cereal.
Sometimes, it was corn flakes, but usually it was Lucky Charms.
Whatever the cereal, the cockroaches always found their way into the box.
Green clovers.
Blue Diamonds.
Yellow stars.
And brown insect corpses.
Yeah, they were magically disgusting.
Gremlins
The nurse told me that I can’t eat anything after midnight because I am having surgery early tomorrow.
But the truth is that I am a gremlin.
Feeding a gremlin after midnight turns them into an evil scaly predator that causes havoc and mayhem.
And getting a gremlin wet causes them to pop out warped clones.
I smile, close my eyes, and say “wet or dry, a sponge bath is a sponge bath.”
It’s certainly better than the food, which explains why there aren’t any evil scaly gremlins walking around causing havoc.
Or is it because visiting hours are over?
My Table
This is my favorite restaurant.
I have my own table here.
And I have my own chair, too.
They keep a special set of fine silverware for me.
And I’ve got my own wine glass. With a fully-stocked wine cellar to serve me from.
My personal waiter takes my order from the menu they printed just for me.
He goes back to the chef that works in my kitchen, using the ingredients they bought for my meal.
That’s when I hear the commotion from outside.
They’re towing my car? From my special parking place?
Unspeakable!
I’ll never come here again!