My
husband thinks fully cooked meals spring ready-made from the oven like Venus
rising from the foam, but with gravy. I
don’t know how he survived eight years of bachelorhood before he met me, but I
do know why he wore pants that would be relaxed-fit on Paris Hilton, and why
his eyes glaze over with that faraway look when we drive past Burger King.
These
days he’s making up for all the meals he missed by hanging out in the kitchen,
waiting to see if the Pillsbury Dough Boy appears from the swirling mists in
the freezer. It’s like watching a
toddler get ready for a visit from Santa. Everybody thinks they’ve been good
enough to get a prize.
“What did you eat before we got married?” I quizzed one day
as he stared into the empty tea pitcher like a motherless calf.
“Tuna casserole,” he answered, prodding a package of frozen
hamburger in hopes it might turn magically into meatloaf.
“You ate tuna casserole for eight years?”
“No, I had the same tuna casserole in the freezer for eight
years. I got custody in the
divorce. Every night I had to figure out
what to do so I wouldn’t have to eat it.
I know the nutrition information for every item on the fast food
market.”
At least I don’t have to worry about any fond feelings left
toward his first wife. The woman did
things to tuna that I couldn’t do to scrap metal without heavy-duty equipment. She didn’t use serving spoons. It took the jaws of life to separate the one
that didn’t get away from the casserole dish.
It makes my life easy.
If I defrost cinnamon buns in the microwave, he thinks they’re homemade. I hate to tell him, but if I can’t rake something out
of a jar with a Rubbermaid spatula, I’m not going to be serving it for
supper. It could be a 55-gallon drum full of creamed spinach, if somebody else made it, I'm ringing the dinner bell with my best happy homemaker smile in place.
To me, it's not a recipe if it doesn't say Heat and Eat.
When I discovered Alfredo sauce
in a jar, I was more excited than a Brownie Scout on cookie delivery day. While I understand that I’m not going to find
fettuccine Alfredo tacked up on the doctor’s bulletin board as one of your top
ten heart healthy foods, it’s part of a meal that everyone in my family will
eat, which goes a long way towards making it a food priority in my house. Add some grilled chicken and everybody’s happy.
I popped a couple of jars of the
white stuff into my buggy at Wal-Mart and wheeled innocently down the aisle,
full of the peaceful conviction that comes from providing a good meal for a
loving and happy family.
Later that evening, while my back was turned, the beast,
heady with the freedom that comes from release from captivity, shattered the
air with a mighty blast and attacked. I
screamed.
The children ran to the kitchen like the population of Tokyo pouring in to see
Godzilla.
“Did you start another fire?”
Alfredo covered the front on the stove like a dust
ruffle. I had spatters up my sleeve and
a striking Picasso-esque design on my Snoopy sweatshirt.
Kid One: “Is supper ready?”
Kid Two: “Supper can’t be ready. The smoke detector’s not going off.”
Kid One: “The
batteries wore out.”
Just then the beast attacked again, rising from the depths
of the superheated Alfredo like a milky Kraken rising from the ocean
floor. This time I was prepared. No towering wall of Alfredo is going to
threaten my family without me beating it into submission with a serving spoon
and the lid to a two-quart boiler. “Run,
kids, run!”
Heating supper from a jar should not require escalation of
the National Defense Warning System.
My husband sauntered around the corner, hands in
pockets. “Need some help?”
“Sure. Do we have the
Chef Emeril or the Marines on speed dial?”
The lid on the pot behind him rattled like a teenager’s
knees at quarter past curfew. He whisked
the pot off the stove, poured the contents into a bowl and added a paper plate
lid, then tucked the whole thing into the microwave. Slamming the door with a flourish, he
performed the beep-boop medley on the keypad that told the microwave to cook
Alfredo sauce.
He grinned. “Once
you’ve been face to face with an eight year old tuna casserole, you’re not
afraid of anything.”
