The Day That Didn’t Go as Planned

Early this morning, Jordan reviewed her plan for the day and asked mine. We shared, but none of it worked out. My early morning haircut appointment turned out to be tomorrow, not today, and my standing dinner date for Wednesday night canceled. I took most of this calmly—a whole day to stay home and work. And oh my, did I get things done—wrote a scene in the novel, sorted my astounding medical bills from 2017 for tax purposes, wrote up a recipe for the cookbook.

Late morning Jordan called: her car died. In better times I would have quickly gone to get her. Obviously, I couldn’t do that. Fortunately, Christian could go to her rescue. The car had to be towed, and who knows when she’ll get it back. Errands for me were on her schedule—oh, well.

I saved the day for myself by cooking. In fact, I felt like a real cook, because I “rescued” leftovers from a restaurant meal. With great anticipation last night, I went to a German restaurant and ordered schnitzel, red cabbage and German potato salad. None of it turned out quite like I wanted—the schnitzel was dry, the cabbage neither sweet nor sour, the potato salad lacking the zing I wanted. It was all good but not what I craved. I brought half of it home.

Tonight I made a lemon/butter sauce for the schnitzel and cabbage, and made a cold salad out of the potatoes by adding a splash of vinegar and a bit of mayo. Somehow that brought out the dill flavoring that I hadn’t noticed before. Meal was much improved but still not my favorite

I found a chart on Facebook that fits in with this perfectly. It has succinct descriptions of ethnic cooking from various countries. To my dismay it has no description of German cooking, though my dinner companion last night, Carol, told me Germans don’t eat corn—they feed it to pigs.

But the chart says for American, “Buy three cans of this stuff and put them in a pan. Congrats. You cooked.” For English, “Boil and salt. Okay, that’s it. Enjoy.” And Australia: “Chuck it on the Barbie.” I think you can find the chart here: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.chambers.714?hc_ref=ARTvQ5cCvEmQdDcw8wr5xt7VqBdGTLiublOUkHzvdONw5QSYXDqSYQpTFiKYqcHTgYQ&fref=nf&pnref=story

Cooking and thinking about food is such fun!