Guess I Had a Theme Week After All
For some reason, Gentle Reader, Fridays have been quite madcap and harried of late at Chez Boeckman-Walker. I think part of the problem is that Friday means Grocery Run, and we accomplish that fun little jaunt to HEB after the boys get home from their respective places--which means we're picking up the weekly grocery haul right along with half of the 'hood--and then must get home and get supper ready because usually the boy is simply dying of hunger by that point.
This Friday was no exception. So harried was it that I got a call around 4:15 from the husband letting me know he was working late once again. He called again around 5 because, yes, he was still at work but would be finished soon (his exact words from his previous call) and still planned to pick up the boy. Know what traffic is like at that time on a Friday, I kindly offered to do the grocery run and get supper started so the boys could just come home. I have to tell you, Gentle Reader, I don't think I've heard as much relief in the husband's voice as I did when he accepted my offer.
Because I'm a faudie with some foresight, I'd already selected yet another simple recipe that I knew would please the boy: Nana's chicken, beans and rice. The last time Mum (Nana to the boy) was at Chez Boeckman-Walker, she kindly wrote down her method for preparing the meal so that I might replicate it to the boy's exacting standards. (Parents out there, you know how exacting the standards of a small child are when he or she is accustomed to having a dish prepared a certain way by someone else.)
Naturally, being the faudie that I am, I was missing a key ingredient for the dish--chicken tenders--and therefore could not prepare it exactly as specified. Sure, I could have defrosted a pair of chicken breasts, but HEB has chicken tenders (previously frozen) on sale pretty cheap. Plus I didn't feel that skipping the step I would be unable to accomplish by waiting to buy the tenders shortly before preparing them--letting them marinate in a rub of chili powder and onion powder in the 'fridge--wasn't that terribly crucial because I figured the chicken could be just as flavorful if I added those spices while pan frying it.
And I was right! Let's here it for faudie wisdom!
The black beans came from a can because black beans were another item on my HEB shopping list, and I knew damn good and well I wouldn't have time to prepare a fresh batch in the pressure cooker before the boy died of hunger. But the canned black beans were an affordable (79 cents!) no-salt-added variety, which beat the hell out of the organic, pricey ($1.99!) no-salt-added variety, and I was pleased to be able to nuke the suckers just as Mum prescribed in her recipe and be done with it.
The husband made a batch of lime-cilantro rice, once again using his lemon-lime squeezer for fresh lime juice. Heh, funny story here. The first time he used it, I was in the shower but heard the commotion it caused: Somehow both he and the boy, standing beside him watching, got a shower of their own from the lime juice being squeezed out. I didn't think too much about the incident until I saw the husband preparing to squeeze his second lime.
Not to insult the husband, but the squeezer isn't as intuitive a tool for him as it is for others. In other words, he failed to realized that you must halve the lime before squeezing it. Yes, the first time he used the squeezer, he put a whole lime in the little squeezer nest. No wonder he and boy got an impromptu citrusy blessing!
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t red chili powder
1/4 to 1/2 C chopped onion
Olive oil
1 can black beans
1 to 2 T Rotel
1 C long-grain white rice
Shredded cheese for garish
Sour cream for garnish
- Four to six hours before serving, sprinkle cubed chicken meat with onion and red chili powder and let sit in the refrigerator.
- Prepare rice according to package instructions.
- Heat an adequate amount of olive oil in a frying pan over medium to medium-high heat. Toss in onions and brown.
- Once onions are golden, toss in chicken to brown. To add flavor, sprinkle chicken with additional red chili powder.
- Dump black beans into a microwave-friendly bowl. Stir in Rotel. Nuke for 2 min.
- To serve, layer rice, then beans, then chicken in a bowl. Garnish with shredded cheese and sour cream. Optionally, layer the three food items in a tortilla.
This is the boy's bowl of chicken, beans and rice goodness. After a few bites, he declared, "This is the best dinner I've ever had--here." Yes, Gentle Reader, he paused for effect before that here bit. I told you he's quite the drama queen.
By the way, because the camera has become a fixture of ma cuisine and taking a photo of a prepared dish before we all sit down to eat is now standard operating procedure here at Chez Boeckman-Walker, it's only natural that the boy make these things part of his routine.
Just what this family needs--another blogger.Send Out the Scavenging Hordes
Friday--well, technically Saturday--saw the release of a new glut of Star Wars toys, this time to tie in with the impending theatrical release of The Clone Wars. I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here, Gentle Reader, but the husband is a Star Wars fan. No, fan isn't the right word. Obsessive freak probably is more apt, although that phrase seems so...dysfunctional. The husband functions all right: He just happens to have a lot of knowledge about the Star Wars universe crammed into his head. Sometimes it strikes me he has way too much of this knowledge crammed in there, leaving little room for more useful information. Then again, he's writing an article for starwars.com and getting paid quite handsomely for it and was selected to do so because of he's previously displayed his depth of knowledge of the World of Uncle George, so I guess I shouldn't complain. He's doing better than I am at freelancing!
But I digress. Back to the toys.
Those toys were to hit shelves at midnight, July 26, and the husband didn't need much coaxing to take part in yet another Star Wars Midnight Madness. He and I were there for the Midnight Madness preceding The Phantom Menace (gads, that was madness), the Midnight Madness preceding Attack of the Clones (scaled back from the merchandise-palooza of The Phantom Menace) and the Midnight Madness preceding Revenge of the Sith (very much scaled back from that first Midnight Madness in 1999). However, I decided I'd have no part in this Midnight Madness but urged him to take the boy because, well, the boy is well on his way to becoming another Star Wars obsessive freak--ahh, just like his daddy.
And so the boys went to our neighborhood Wally World shortly before midnight. (I'm guessing that was when they left, for I was already asleep.) The husband said they returned around 1 AM. I vaguely remember muttering, "Hail the conquering heroes?" when the husband crawled into bed, and I think he might have said something in response, but the melatonin and I don't recall.
Upon rising and tramping out to the living room this morning, I curiously noticed no booty. No Wally World bags. No hastily torn open Clone Wars toy packaging. In other words, no toys did I see.
Hmmm....
Turns out Midnight Madness was a different sort of madness at our local Wally World. Starting at midnight, a lone stocker began slowly unboxing a pallet of products for a center aisle display. The husband said first the guy set up some voice-changing clone trooper helmets, then came the toddler-sized electric vehicles. Then came the big-ass Millennium Falcon, which the husband and the other half-dozen fan boys gathered there drooled over but didn't acquire. Then came a few other things. Then the stocker left, the pallet hardly unpacked, for his break.
The boy was anxiously awaiting the unveiling of, well, toys. The husband was anxiously awaiting the unveiling of those toys. The husband grew tired of waiting for the stocker to return from his break, grabbed the boy a lightsaber (his fifth) in the Clone Wars packaging, paid for his souvenir from this Midnight Madness and hauled ass home.
Yeah, not exactly the Midnight Madness any of us were anticipating. Returning empty-handed must have crushed the husband.
It's now 7:30 am and the boys just left for a return trip to Wally World to see if the stocker ever came back from break to finish the job.
0 comments:
Post a Comment