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Cooking for two
We’re rounding the corner and heading toward the end of January, 2021. I’m too old to wish away months the way I have been doing. Truthfully, I’m still in a whirl wondering what happened to 2020. Hopefully, this year brings an end to our isolation and the lockdowns. I’m a little bit excited to see what the “new normal” looks like. When I was a kid, I thought by this millennium we’d be hotrodding around in flying cars and all of us would own a jet pack. I never figured I’d be pining for dinner guests and wearing a face mask. Whether we can admit it or not, we are social creatures. We thrive in an atmosphere of togetherness. LOML and I, most of all, miss our children, their partners and the grandchildren. We miss having family here. I can manage without a flying car or a jet pack, but I’d love to have family around the dining room table.
While LOML and I are managing without much social interaction, we do miss having a choice. I think part of the problem of not having Sunday dinner guests, or extras here for Friday pizzas, is that I haven’t really re-learned how to cook for just two people. I know it’s possible, because I’ve done it in the past. The first three years of our married life was a life of cooking for two people. Back in the olden days I knew how to make a meatloaf that didn’t last for two weeks. I also knew how to bake fewer than seven dozen cookies. I firmly believe LOML is a little bit frightened anytime I preheat the oven and haul out the big roasting pans or the giant cookie sheets. He knows he’ll be staring down the maw of leftovers for days on end. When the last of our children left home, in the early 2000s, we felt we didn’t need a big freezer anymore. These days we rely on the smallish freezer at the bottom of our refrigerator to store our extras. But, storing all of those leftovers in that small space— which is usually filled with frozen veggies, bags of frozen fruit and ice cubes—isn’t always possible. Reheating meals from earlier in the week is now the story of our isolated, pandemic lives. During the week before Christmas, I made sure there was enough room in the freezer for potential leftovers. We bought a family-sized bird in the hope the pandemic would magically disappear and we’d have ten people at the holiday table to make short work of the bird. That didn’t happen—and leftovers did. Lots of turkey leftovers. I think LOML is afraid to ask, “What’s for dinner/lunch?” I’m sure he’s hoping I’ll say, “PBJ on toast with tea” or “Pork chops, mashed potatoes, apple sauce and green beans.” Instead he gets, “Stir-fried meatloaf, from Wednesday, with pan-seared mashed potatoes from Sunday roast and a stodgy pile of lima beans followed by dry, dayold, cinnamon rolls.” Don’t get me wrong, I know how to cook and how to bake. I’m just getting tired of trying to figure out what to do with the leftovers and no matter what I prepare, there’s leftovers. And, then?
Well, and then I was pawing through my bookshelves on a mission to find some reading material for my beautiful little sister and I saw it! There it was, the answer to my overcooking and the leftovers reinvented and too much in the roasting pan. There, hiding behind my “clean” copy of The Joy of Cooking was my fifty-year-old, dog-eared copy of Dinners for Two. This cookbook was a bridal shower gift to me in May of 1969. The gift card is still inside— I won’t say whose baby sister gave it to me, but there it was, on the shelf, waiting for pandemic lovin’. I’m not sure if I ever made anything from the book, but I’m thinking it’ll get a workout this week. I see a few recipes that may be timely, and by timely I mean midcentury modern, as in last century. The first recipe that catches my eye is for Pineapple Burgers with Poppy Seed Noodles and Mayonnaise Dressing which sounds, eh, interesting. Ooh, ooh, Canned Crabmeat and Cheese Cubes suspended in lime-flavoured jelly with a side of Cheesy Bisquick Biscuits, paired with an iceberg lettuce and radish salad and Green Goddess Dressing could go down (and likely out) quickly. And double, ooh, ooh, Chicken Amandine made with canned chicken and canned vegetables. The Love of My Life is in for a heart-stopping treat. I might put a diaphanous apron on and whip up a pretty plate of baconwrapped Spam bites as an appetizer.
Who wouldn’t want bacon-wrapped Spam bites topped with a festive gherkin pickle and a Champagne glass of spiked tutti-fruiti punch?
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