I, on the other hand, shouldered the heavy meal lifting. Saturday took six hours of my time to cook ahead. I pretty much have my routine. No Hick help. Not even any Pony help this time, though he would have obliged me, had I asked. I made the deviled eggs everybody expects (boiled them on Friday so they'd be ready), and roasted the veggies, and wrapped bacon around bundles of seven green beans and covered them with butter and brown sugar and sprinkled them with garlic salt to sit overnight. I mixed all the ingredients for the hash brown casserole, and covered it with foil for next-day cooking. I baked a turkey breast so it would only need slicing and warming. Bought the last-minute romaine lettuce (not pre-bagged, due to the food poisoning threat), for the 7-layer salad, for which I had the other 6 layers already in supply.
Yes, I'd been planning this dinner since Thanksgiving, on Genius's timetable. I knew I had everything I needed. Was sure of it. Everything was running as planned. A more relaxed meal preparation had never been performed by Val. Nothing was amiss. The dinner train was chugging into Thevictorian Station on schedule. Until I set out the hash brown casserole for baking at 10:00 a.m. on D-Day (dinner day). All it needed was the scattering of cornflakes across the top. I reached into the corner cabinet for my cornflakes.
CORNFLAKES!
I didn't have any cornflakes! Hick was not yet home from his Storage Unit Store. I could call him. Save-A-Lot is just down the hill. The next-to-next business by his Storage Unit Store. But by the time he got home with the cornflakes, my window for cooking the hash brown casserole would be closed. It would throw off warming the roasted vegetables and ham and turkey. Which would throw off baking the rolls. So... I did what any other logical Val would have done.
I cast my eyes around the kitchen for a substitute. Huh. Nothing in my sight-line jumped out as do-able. WAIT! I'd just cleaned off the counter, where the dregs of a bag of Bugles from the Chex Mix had languished. I'd just taken the chip clip off of it, and tossed it in the wastebasket. No. I wouldn't dare. OR WOULD I?
Yep! Out of the wastebasket came the Bugles bag. Hey! It's foil. It was folded down. Nothing got in it. I crunched up those leftover broken Bugles on top of the hash brown casserole. Bugles are CORN, right? And crunchy. So they might substitute for cornflakes!
Yeah. You might not be impressed. You might actually be horrified. But let the record show that everybody ate them like they were good! Friend even asked for some in the leftovers I packed up for Kansas City.
I didn't think it was pertinent to mention the whole wastebasket thing...
A perfect substitute. Pretty sure I saw one of those cooking shows where the chef said, "Next add corn flakes to the top...if you want you can use bugles, even if right from the trash"
ReplyDeleteHey, maybe I can get my own show on the Food Network!
DeleteEven Julia Child had an occasional problem: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-french-chef/n8667
DeleteHeh, heh! I remember that one!
DeleteIf the real-life Julia Child had a problem, it was probably planned, to make her seem more like an everyday person. You know, to throw off suspicions of her being a CIA spy.
What happens in the kitchen STAYS in the kitchen.
ReplyDeleteI need a little cross-stitch banner with that motto, to hang on the wall. I'm pretty sure it would need to hang right where Hick's cuckoo clock is now. Bye, bye, Cuckoo!
DeleteI'm a little, okay just a teensy bit, horrified, NOT by the bugle rescue, but the idea of a hash brown casserole. I dislike hash browns intensely. I've only ever tried one, once, from McDonald's, the fast food chain and it was really awful. so the idea of using them to make a casserole just kills my appetite. Temporarily. What exactly goes into a hash brown casserole and how is it put together?
ReplyDeleteHeh, heh! I'm sure I could find something better in my trash to serve you!
DeleteThe hash brown part of this casserole is not like a McDonald's hash brown. It's mainly just diced potatoes, frozen, in a bag at the store. To those, you add some sour cream, diced onions, shredded cheddar, and cream of chicken soup. Then sprinkle with shredded cheddar and cornflakes (or trash Bugles!), cover with foil, and bake at 350 for 40 minutes.
They don't look so appetizing in my quick picture. I had warmed them uncovered, and the cheese got a little overdone.
Now that doesn't sound so bad, except for the cornflakes/bugles part. I'd have to leave that off.
DeleteYou might find something even better in your wastebasket to put on there!
DeleteI once skimmed the floating weevils off the macaroni boiling for dinner and served my parents. You do what you have to do.
ReplyDeleteWell. That makes me feel like a gourmet cook for only using trash Bugles. Even if a weevil escaped your skimming, it was just extra protein. And fully cooked. Probably a delicacy in some cultures.
DeleteI've served up roast beef after slicing off the corner the cat had been chewing on. Little so and so jumped right up onto the table! Barely big enough to leave her mother she was.
DeleteWell, it seems like there was enough for everybody.
DeleteYou may have created a new taste sensation! When my 23 year old grandson was not quite 3 he had a photo shoot that turned into a portfolio. From this he got a gig to do a Bugles commercial. All he had to do was put them on his fingers and eat them. This proved I was not the only one to find him incredibly cute. The ad aired in Europe, but his career ended when his father refused to let him have a brown rinse applied to his sweet blond head for a Crayola ad. Oh, wait we were talking about Bugles …..
ReplyDeleteWow! His blond hair would have grown back in! His budding career, stifled too soon!
DeleteYes, I told my daughter she should have just applied the color and then told his father about it after the fact! He might have been a child star, who knows how far he could have gone?
DeleteHe could have been like the "Ask Mikey, he hates everything!" kid!
Delete