Hick is Not the Only Thing Full of Hot Air Around Here

I got a jump on the Easter dinner on Saturday. We're not having a lot. Well. I guess we're having a LOT, but not anything fancy, nor a wide variety of dishes. Just the standard Thevictorian holiday meal. Of course Hick says he will be at his Storage Unit Store. I suppose Easter Sunday draws a big crowd? Now that the weather is warming up, Hick hangs out there a lot. So we'll be eating around 2:00.

The main item I wanted to finish Saturday was the deviled eggs. They take the longest. And the 7-layer salad. For both, I needed boiled eggs. So I put the pot on the front burner, and started rounding up the potatoes, carrots, and onions to roast some vegetables. Hick and The Pony like them, and I can use the (FREE) bacon I drape on top for flavoring to make the 7th layer of the 7-layer salad.

Hick likes potato salad, but I hadn't mentioned it. Then while the eggs were cooling and I was getting ready to chop the romaine lettuce for the 1st layer of the 7-layer salad, I had a scathingly brilliant (at the time) idea. I'd pop the potatoes I hadn't used into the oven to bake while the vegetables were roasting. That would cook them with no problem, and I could whip up some potato salad. I had everything else. I could even use the same bowl I used to mix the deviled egg filling.

The Pony was a big help, trotting to and fro to dispose of my eggshells and peelings, and bring me ingredients from FRIG II as needed. That way I didn't have to stand at the kitchen counter except for the initial 45 minutes I took to get the vegetables peeled and chopped and in the oven.

We had taken out the roasted vegetables, and I had removed the bacon to cool and cut up later for the salad. The potatoes I'd put in to bake had only been in about 15 minutes. I told The Pony I was going to leave them another 15. He dished up a bowl of "vinchtables," as he used to call them, and headed to Hick's recliner to take a break from helping. I went to peel the rest of the eggs and mix the filling. Of course The Pony volunteered for tasting duty. We got it just right. I filled those little devils, and added the green olive slices on top.

BOOM!

"Pony! I forgot about the potatoes in the oven! They've been in for 45 minutes! I think one just exploded! I stabbed them to let the steam out. WHY are they exploding?"

The Pony came to the rescue. Looked inside, then closed the oven door.

"Um. Yeah. At least one exploded. I'm not looking at the back of the oven to see the damage."

"You have to! Get the mitt and take them out. Set then on top of the stove."

"It's all over the back of the oven. Looks like only one exploded. There's only a little hole in it. I want to see what the inside looks like when you peel it!"

"I can't get down on my knees and clean that out. You and Dad will have to do it."

"Dad."

"Well. It will take a lot less time to do that than to make this dinner that will be eaten in 15 minutes. And less time than washing up the dishes."

"I'll send Dad a text."

So helpful, that Pony...

Anyhoo... those were Golden Potatoes. I'm pretty sure they're like a store brand of Yukon Gold. The Pony likes them in the roasted vegetables. I normally use baking potatoes in my potato salad. But I usually boil them instead of baking. So this was an experiment. Those little Goldens worked just fine. the peel slid right off. Especially from the exploded one, which was mostly peel anyway.

The Pony also volunteered to sample the potato salad. Which I must also pronounce delicious.

Our menu will be ham (half left over from Christmas in FRIG II's freezer), roasted vegetables, 7-layer salad, deviled eggs, potato salad, Sister Schubert's Rolls (The Pony's favorite), shells with cheese (a box mix I bought for The Pony to try, him not being much of a ham fan), and a storebought cheesecake slice collection for dessert.

Oh, yeah. I didn't get to the shower until 3:30. But while I was in there, Hick came home, and he and The Pony cleaned up the oven before I was out. The only glitch being that neither could remember which levels I had the two oven racks on. The Pony met me at the back of the couch, and confessed, and asked me to come to the kitchen to let him know how I wanted them. They only had two wrong. Out of two. 

Everybody does their part around here. Mine is planning the meal, buying the food, cooking, and washing up. The Pony's part is sous chef and extra legs. Hick's part is eating. And scrubbing exploded potato out of the oven.