Wednesday, March 12, 2003

To see a man brought low by the vagaries of life (groceries) and the world (Long Island City) is a terrible thing. That morning I wrote the shopping list.  Our house is brimming with old shopping lists – in the pantry, under the bed, scattered around the computer.  My purse looks like a ticker tape parade.  These lists are written on the backs of envelopes, magazine subscription cards, and old bits of graph paper from these stacks of cheap notebooks Eric bought when he was in Siberia (no joke) and refuses to throw away.  So for this particular list I tore the bottom half off an old list.  I wrote it out and put it in front of Eric.  I asked him if he could understand it.  We went over every ingredient together.  Four lamb kidneys OR a quarter pound of ground lamb and black Greek olives.  Frozen spinach.  It all seemed straightforward.  But I didn’t burn the other, older list.  In retrospect, it’s almost like I set him up.  Because the thing with my husband, see, and I’m saying this in the most flattering way possible, but the thing is, if has a choice between two things, two objects or tasks or methods, he will inevitably those the wrong one.  This goes double for shopping.  My role as a wife is to relentlessly narrow his options.  And in this case I failed him.  I did not tear the old, useless list into tiny pieces.  I didn’t even – God, what have I done? – throw it away.  I set it aside.  Knowing that to look at the list a second time – to notice whether it was written in red ink or black, or whether perchance the word “kidneys” was written upon it – is simply not built into his genetic makeup.  I’m sorry Eric.  This is all my fault. So here I am home at 6:30, relaxed and rested and ready to roast some lamb with kidney and rice stuffing.  Eric’s not back yet, which is not all that surprising.  I sit back and – ahem – play just a wee bit of Civilization III.  We all have our childish, geeky, annoying weaknesses, don’t we?  At around seven I get a call from the boy. “So I’ve been shopping with the wrong list,” he says. I of course immediately knew what had happened.  Aflush with guilt, I go over the list with him again.  “But you can just come home,” I said.  “We can eat leftovers.” “No, the butchers’ is right here.” He comes home another hour later.  To face his yowling cats, whose food he’s forgotten to buy.  And that is far from all he’s failed to get.  The butcher shops – he went to three, actually – were all closed.  I should have thought of that.  So no kidneys, no ground lamb.  He did, however, get London broil, potatoes, and Craisins.  Cherry flavored Craisins.  And Camembert cheese. And frozen spinach.  He remembered the frozen spinach, which saved the day, because now I could do Julia’s method for frozen spinach, and the day was not lost.  So I was happy, and Eric was hating life but at least was home, scarfing down real dried fruit, artificially flavored. So to make frozen spinach as good as possible, Julia has me chop it up into small pieces when it’s only slightly defrosted, and throw it in a pan with some melted butter, salt and pepper.  Cover and cook slowly for a minute or two until it thaws, then uncover, raise the heat, and stir until the moisture has evaporated.  For all I know, this could be what it says to do on the back of the box – I didn’t look.  But it’s what Julia says, it’s a recipe, so it counts toward the Project.  I love that!  I stirred in some flour and let that cook with the spinach a minute or two, then stirred in most of a cup of chicken broth and let it slowly cook, covered, for ten minutes.  Then I whipped up a Mornay sauce – roux, boiling milk, boil for a minute, stir in grated swiss cheese – and poured a third of it into my braising dish.  Dumped the Spinach on top of that, then the rest of the sauce, some more grated cheese, and a couple of tablespoons of melted butter.  Epinards a la Mornay, Gratines.  I stuck it in the uppermost part of the oven while I broiled a London broil and Eric mashed some potatoes I’d put on to boil. Ordinary dinner.  The spinach was plenty rich, of course, and I think Eric snuck some plutonium into the potatoes while I wasn’t looking (or maybe just a cup or two of cream and a quarter pound of butter), so by the end of it, I felt like a beached whale.  Didn’t even touch the Charlotte Basque, which I forgot to mention we ate Monday night.  It was okay.  I unmolded it and it promptly collapsed, but it wasted alright.  A hell of a lot like Charlotte Malakoff au Chocolat, only more like Swiss Miss.     7:51:21 AM    comment []