In a last desperate effort to get some Facebook referrals, I turn to the culinary art.
Early in our marriage, I once sought to favor my wife with a supper of my own creation. “You’ll like it,” I assured her. “I used to make this for myself when I lived alone.”
So I did my thing in the kitchen, we ate it for supper, and Patty said, “This is amazing. It has absolutely no taste. None at all!” And then she got kind of critical about it.
For those of you who by now are intrigued enough to try it for yourselves, I present Lee’s Tasteless Supper. Excuse me if I don’t get the format right: I don’t read a lot of cookbooks.
1/2 lb. lean hamburger meat
1/2 cup or so of brown rice
Nothing else.
While the rice is cooking in water, put the hamburger in a pan and stir it vigorously with a fork so that it breaks up into little tiny bits, and keep stirring as the bits get cooked. Be careful not to overcook.
Then, when the rice is done, put it and the hamburger into the same bowl and thoroughly mix them together.
Bon appetite!
What? I should’ve added salt, or chopped onions? Hey, did they tell Jacques Pepin how to cook? It’s my recipe and I’m sticking to it. Besides, it’s the only recipe I’ve got.
Sounds like Purina Bachelor Chow. 🙂
Purina, eh? Just for that, you don’t get any!
That was meant as a compliment. Purine is top-shelf stuff. 🙂
I’m fairly certain our turtle Alvin would have loved it, Lee 🙂 He really liked hamburger!
In my experience, turtles are very good indicators of what their humans can eat. My painted turtle, Clem, got for his supper whatever I was eating. The only time he ever escaped from his dish was when we were having lobster one night and the scent of it drove him crazy with desire. He should have known we’d save him some.
haha, that’s kinda funny. I used to be a good cook, or so my family and friends said, but these days everything seems much more difficult, even cooking. Never thought i would loose my touch in the kitchen. My daughter in law keeps hinting that “her mom never knew how to season things…” I think it is a hint?
I’m with you, Erlene. In my day, I made everything from scratch – bread, pasta, sauces, jellies, baked goods, pastries, donuts – everything. Even baby food. My children never had store-bought baby food. Those days are long gone, but my eldest daughter has taken up where I left off, and does a marvelous job!
By the way, Lee, even without seasonings, if you replace the ground beef with Italian sausage, you’d have some flavor 🙂
I recently had a meal at a local “theme restaurant” which makes a big deal of its amazing ambiance. Well, the ambiance was mediocre and my meal had no flavor whatsoever. None, not a bit, just an unpleasant aftertaste.
I would agree with Linda’s comment, make this with Italian sausage and you would be deep into “Flavor Country”.
I am a decent cook, but living alone and cooking just don’t work for me. It seems like too much bother, too much cleanup, etc. when I cook anything beyond the very basics.
I completely agree with you Unknowable. My family was my inspiration for creating wonderful kitchen creations for the tummy 🙂 It would never have worked if there was no one to appreciate the effort and the end result. Thus the phrase ‘made with love’
We were definitely not made to operate in isolation and, of course, the world around us pushes us in that direction.
LOL – yuk! Add onions (optional – fresh or from a can), red beans and a jar of Chili sauce (organic without fructose corn syrup) to the hamburger and serve over rice.
Your wife is brave, Lee. I don’t let Ralph make our meals. He can make food for himself but I take care of the main meal-making. Ralph once made lunch for me because I was running late. Peanut butter and mayonnaise on bread. I couldn’t believe what I was beholding. So, I do the meals but Ralph can play around with meal-making as long as he eats it and he doesn’t make messes.
Marge, this is hilarious! Reminds me of a school lunch my mom made for us once. Cream cheese sandwiches with those little red hard cinnamon candy hearts on them. UGH! After that, I started making school lunches for myself and my siblings lol Btw, mom also liked peanut butter and sweet pickle sandwiches Double UGH!
Cream cheese and cinnamon sounds sorta good to me.
Cream cheese and cinnamon is good, but not when the cinnamon is in the form of those hard little hot cinnamon hearts. That was awful lol
I see your point.
You could try it, but I wouldn’t recommend it 🙂
Not to mention the poor banana that went all black and gooey after several hours in the locker in a non-air conditioned classroom…
Thankfully, we never had that one to deal with. But tuna sandwiches aren’t much better under those conditions lol
Feh!
I feel guilty now, in that I still cook for myself and use lots of flavors — sometimes Italian, sometimes Korean, sometimes Chinese, sometimes Indian, sometimes Tex-Mex, sometimes Greek, sometimes plain ol’ American….
Darn, it’s not even breakfast time yet, and I’m making myself hungry for dinner. 🙂
I learned to cook early. My mother and I found ourselves on our own when I was 11, and I became co-homemaker, learning to clean, shop, and cook. We shared all the chores, including shopping for food together so I could see how to pick good meat and produce, and I got lots of cookbooks out of the library, so on my cooking days I could prepare something really good for us when my mother got home from work.
seriously, this is what professional dog trainers give their working film dogs. clean, warm, healthy. For my hubby and I, I add a green bell pepper each cut medium fine. Or just cut off the cap and seeds, and boil til tender, and fill the dinner into it. Voila. Cordon bleu.