What’s Not for Dinner

Washed AND dried my hair today. Was feeling fancy. Thought I’d make a nice dinner that wasn’t out of a box. So I pulled out the recipe ingredients I’d added to the shopping list last week and went to town. “Crab Meat Fettuccine”, I read outloud, and it sounded really good, in theory. I’m not sure who I got the recipe from, but I need to apologize in advance for what I did to your beloved meal. It’s not you, it’s me. I knew I’d never made alfredo sauce from actual ingredients before, but it read deliciously on that recipe card. A few questionable smells later, and my fancy dinner balloon was starting to deflate. 

I should have known when the smell in the house wasn’t luring everyone in, like seagulls to a dropped french fry. My first mistake was using minced garlic instead of fresh cloves. I’m assuming this is where it all went wrong. But I couldn’t fixate on my mistakes. Timers were beeping; there was no going back now. I gave it a quick sample and thought to myself, “Do we still have frozen pizza? Maybe I can hold them off for another 45 minutes and order a pizza. Cereal could be fun for dinner, again…” Then I heard them enclosing on me, like hungry lions surrounding their prey. Yep, I’m done for.

As Chris entered the room the garlic and olive oil fumes smacked him in the face. He gave out a “hmmpt’ sound; and somehow it came out as a question. His expression was carefully controlled, but I could see it in his eyes. He was afraid. I stated that we could just throw it away and make something else, but he’s too kind. He took his plate and bravely went in with a full fork. For a second I flashed to the scene in Ratatouille where Remy scurries past the soup and gags a little. Chris, however, held the gag back, grabbed the parmesan cheese and headed to the table. 

We called for Kaden to come to dinner three or four times. Evan slurped down butter noodles while Paige and I crop dusted our plates with salt, pepper, and parmesan like we were topping cupcakes with sprinkles. Mmmm, cupcakes. That would have made a nice dinner. Wondering where Kaden was, we called dinner a fail and started to toss it knowing he’d never go for it anyways. As he made his way to the kitchen, Kaden asked us if we’d forgotten to tell him dinner was ready. Luckily for him he was playing a game on-line with friends and didn’t hear us through his headset. I’ve never felt so envious of a fifteen-year-old playing “Call of Duty”. He grabbed what was left of the cheese bread and Rocky’s pizza sauce and made his own pizza bread. Smart kid.

I’m not going to lie. Our kitchen has never been cleaned up quicker after any meal. This failed meal had me sprinting to the kitchen to get rid of the evidence like a desperate housewife disinfecting the scene of a murder, as told by the narrator on “Dateline”. As I hit the switch on the garbage disposal I wiped the tear from my eye. Not a tear of disappointment, but a gag-induced tear. This alfredo sauce was off, and my nostrils couldn’t hide. Once again, if this is your recipe card, I’m sorry for what I did. But tonight’s dinner can be found in a rather large take-out bag, recipe card and all.