Kitchen Wars

It was bound to happen after all this isolation: Things grew a little edgy around here, in the kitchen especially. For one thing, my man and I can’t seem to agree about where the dishwashing gear belongs when not in use, never mind the best way to hand-wash a glass. “Is THAT how you do it?” is what we’ve been saying to each other for more than a year now (but seriously, who performs this task without using soap?)

I know I sound mean here, but, you know, I’ve discovered I enjoy blaming him for stuff, and he enjoys blaming me. It’s entertaining, sort of. Plus why be married if you  can’t pin stuff on the other guy?

Here’s some blaming I’ll do right now, in fact: Last night, I cooked a whole and actual chicken, which is a huge deal for most of us nowadays when we can all buy the little guys freshly roasted and still warm inside their plastic swaddling clothes.  “Here’s some real home cooking right here!” I told myself as I gave it a nice little sponge bath. I rubbed it all over with salt, tucked a handful of freshly quartered onions in under the arched rafters of its ribs and mailed it on into my oven -  from which I drew it 90 minutes later with a crackling honey-colored skin and an aroma that would cause a stone statue to salivate. 

Naturally I whipped up a stuffing. I also steamed some fresh veggies and made gravy the old-fashioned way, using the nicest chicken stock to slowly urge the drippings up off the bottom of the pan, and mix them with a velvety mix of butter and flour. It was plain heavenly.  

But when mealtime came and I offered to ladle some onto this man’s plate, he walked over to the pantry, rooted around there for a full two minutes and pulled out a jar of gluey commercial stuff marked “chicken flavored.”

“What in God’s name is THIS?” I yelped, “and who even bought it?”

“It’s gravy, and I did, a long time ago.”

I’ll say a long time ago. It had expired in 2010 as I saw when I took it from him.

When I told him as much he said, “It’s perfectly fine.” He added, “I’ll have this and you have that,” in a tone that suggested nothing could be more reasonable – while in actual fact I don’t even eat gravy, and I’m pretty sure he knows that.

All this annoyed my socks off  but I held my tongue, in just the same way he holds his, I reckon, mostly when I open the refrigerator and then wander off to water a plant. Maybe I just need to keep in mind that people have their ways: He can’t bear to throw out even the worst old food, while I can’t stop going at the preparation of a meal until it seems perfect in every way, right down to the decorative sprigs of parsley.

Anyway, we’re still married after all these years and we laugh every day, so, really what else is there?