Okay, so now I know how far I have come in ten years with my cooking and food choices. I just don't know how to cook with processed foods anymore. I don't know if there are a lot of women like me, but there are just times that I'm willing to go on auto-pilot, make "the pots jump up and down" (as my father-in-law says), and wait for a suggestion from one of the other family members who reside with me. However, most of the time, they are just no help at all! None. Today, though, was different. My husband had a suggestion: fish sticks! Fish sticks, like in school cafeteria fishsticks? With garden peas and french fries, a roll and a slice of cake? He looked a little sheepish; probably because of the bewildered look on my face. And then it hit me, I had not cooked nor eaten fishsticks in probably seven or eight years! Did I even remember what kind to buy? How should I best cook them? Did I even really want to cook them? I could not imagine eating them, but fervent love and a reminder of those vows I willingly and mushily chirped out almost 25 years ago took me straight to the frozen food aisle of the grocery store! I'm sure that I remember there being a clause in our vows that went like this: "For better or for worse, for aged ribeye or for crumbly fishstick, I take thee." Yeah, I'm almost certain that's the way it went!
I bought the Gorton's popcorn fish and one small box of breaded white fillets. Now, at no time am I blaming Gorton's for the way those little "pop-in-your-mouth" morsels of fish turned out. It would be nice to do so, but I do have a conscience. Looking for some gourmet twist to the french fry side dish, I decided upon julienne sweet potato strips seasoned with sea salt. That sounded fishsticky enough, but yet had also a cosmepolitan feel enough to satisfy my gourmet side that has really become who I am and how I cook. I chose Leseur extra small garden peas to top off the cafeteria-like menu, deciding on making a mixed green salad instead of cake and rolls (even though my husband was disappointed about the cake part!)
Because of a time constraint, I needed to get everything done by 6:00 p.m., but didn't remember that until 5:40. Never fear, it's just fish sticks and fries. That shouldn't take too long to create, I thought. Wait a minute, I'm not really creating anything! Just heating up something. The gourmet, holistic-foods person that I had become almost jumped out of my skin with that knowledge! However, after looking at the packaging on both the fries and the fish sticks, I realized that they both needed to be cooked at a different temperature. So, I used my faithful brown stones (instead of heeding the instructions and using metal pans for baking), met the temperature in the middle of the two foods, and popped it all in the oven. Everything was fine for the first 12 minutes, then I had to take the sweet potato strips out to stir them. The last 12 minutes did not go so fine. When I came back in the kitchen, following a trail of not-so-aromatic smoke coming from the oven, I knew that supper had taken a turn for the worse. When I opened the oven door, which, hours later, I am still regretting because the house smells like it was burned down and built back up again before the smoke settled.......the fries and the popcorn fish were almost charred.
Because my husband had asked for the fish sticks, he gingerly came into the kitchen, trying hard not to sniff obviously or rub his burning eyes from the smoke, and proceeded to eat my burnt offering! I had bought a good tartar sauce and a malt vinegar for him to enjoy with his nice browned fish sticks. What a trooper he was with the "blackened fish sticks" and dual-colored sweet potato sticks (one side black, the other orange)! Twenty-four years ago I would have run to my run in tears because of the burnt meal. Interestingly enough, I just laughed, apologized, and went about cleaning up the ruins.
I'm almost sure that I will not get another request for fish sticks for at least six more years! By then, maybe the smell will have left the house!
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