September 10, 2006
What we have here is a failure to communicate ;-)
Note to the person not doing the cooking: it is not wise to tell the cook in the late afternoon that you want that whole chicken that was bought yesterday cooked for the evening meal and on top of that, you’d like bread stuffing in it.
Apparently Gary was under the impression that I was going to cook the whole thing today and then he’d have leftovers. I, on the other hand, had figured that someone (hopefully him) was going to cut the chicken into pieces and we’d freeze most of it, uncooked. When he told me he didn’t want to cut it up and couldn’t I do it whole, I said okay, and when he said he wanted it stuffed since I’d bought some herbs yesterday, I said okay, but I wasn’t really thinking of just how long that would take. I still had my exercise routine I wanted to do, and when I finished that I ran off on the computer printer the one recipe (I don’t stuff chickens that often, maybe at most once a year) for bread stuffing that I always follow. Well, sort of follow. It’s pretty rare I follow a recipe exactly and I usually do a some substituting. Sometimes a LOT of substituting, so that the original recipe is pretty much unrecognizable. Anyway, he got the chicken out and prepared it and put it on a baking pan, and then as I was going nuts in the kitchen and telling him that he had to help out by cutting some slices of bread, he said he was sorry, that he didn’t realize how long this would take and that he thought I could just throw a few things together and make good bread stuffing. I said I only knew the one recipe and it was not one I knew how to fool around with. He then realized if I did the whole chicken that we probably wouldn’t be eating for a couple of hours. So he decided to cut the chicken up after all (which he said had been hard enough before his accident and was now even harder), and I made the stuffing separate.
I cooked scallions, a diced apple, sage, fresh parsley and thyme, and a pinch of mace (because I couldn’t find the nutmeg and by the way mace is probably not what you’re thinking) together, then added toasted bread cubes and a cup of freshly pureed apples. This was put into a baking dish in the oven.
While everything was cooking (except the asparagus, which was steamed later), I gave him the extra apple puree. He said it was the best applesauce he’d ever had, and I said it was the apples. He said, no, it was the cook, and I said, no, it really was the apples – all I’d done was puree apples. He was really surprised at this (I used one Gala apple and the other one I think was called a Jazz).
Everything was served about an hour and a half after I had started my part of it. The stuffing turned out really great, he said. Almost worth the effort, right? he joked. Almost, I joked back. It was just at the beginning when I was faced with this unexpected task that I wasn’t all that happy about it, but I got satisfaction in it turning out well.
What we have here is a failure to communicate ;-)
Note to the person not doing the cooking: it is not wise to tell the cook in the late afternoon that you want that whole chicken that was bought yesterday cooked for the evening meal and on top of that, you’d like bread stuffing in it.
Apparently Gary was under the impression that I was going to cook the whole thing today and then he’d have leftovers. I, on the other hand, had figured that someone (hopefully him) was going to cut the chicken into pieces and we’d freeze most of it, uncooked. When he told me he didn’t want to cut it up and couldn’t I do it whole, I said okay, and when he said he wanted it stuffed since I’d bought some herbs yesterday, I said okay, but I wasn’t really thinking of just how long that would take. I still had my exercise routine I wanted to do, and when I finished that I ran off on the computer printer the one recipe (I don’t stuff chickens that often, maybe at most once a year) for bread stuffing that I always follow. Well, sort of follow. It’s pretty rare I follow a recipe exactly and I usually do a some substituting. Sometimes a LOT of substituting, so that the original recipe is pretty much unrecognizable. Anyway, he got the chicken out and prepared it and put it on a baking pan, and then as I was going nuts in the kitchen and telling him that he had to help out by cutting some slices of bread, he said he was sorry, that he didn’t realize how long this would take and that he thought I could just throw a few things together and make good bread stuffing. I said I only knew the one recipe and it was not one I knew how to fool around with. He then realized if I did the whole chicken that we probably wouldn’t be eating for a couple of hours. So he decided to cut the chicken up after all (which he said had been hard enough before his accident and was now even harder), and I made the stuffing separate.
I cooked scallions, a diced apple, sage, fresh parsley and thyme, and a pinch of mace (because I couldn’t find the nutmeg and by the way mace is probably not what you’re thinking) together, then added toasted bread cubes and a cup of freshly pureed apples. This was put into a baking dish in the oven.
While everything was cooking (except the asparagus, which was steamed later), I gave him the extra apple puree. He said it was the best applesauce he’d ever had, and I said it was the apples. He said, no, it was the cook, and I said, no, it really was the apples – all I’d done was puree apples. He was really surprised at this (I used one Gala apple and the other one I think was called a Jazz).
Everything was served about an hour and a half after I had started my part of it. The stuffing turned out really great, he said. Almost worth the effort, right? he joked. Almost, I joked back. It was just at the beginning when I was faced with this unexpected task that I wasn’t all that happy about it, but I got satisfaction in it turning out well.
posted by Peg Daniels at 8:30 PM
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