your tardy chef-in-residence in action

Whenever I perkily announce, “I’ll make dinner tonight!” All the guys immediately stop what they are doing, look at each other with mouths agape, and employ telekinesis to decide how they are going to sneak out and get survival rations to make it to dinner time. I’ve never heard a complaint about my cooking, but whenever the topic of my prep time comes up, chairs fly and unfed tummies churn.

My announcement is usually followed by the question “what are you making?” dispatched in a voice of dread and apprehension. Most of the time, whatever I list is met with “oh I don’t like the sound of that at all. That sounds complicated.”

I’m not sure whether it was my 3-day prep-time Boeuf Bourguignon, combined with the 11 hour baguettes made from scratch, or the 2-day chicken soup with the 28 hour Popia and the 16 hr slow-cook Pot Roast that did it. My mom passed on to me a recipe that is 10 pages long, involving stock made from shrimp heads, roasted scallions, and Mexican turnips.

It’s not uncommon for people to sit and watch me work, asking “are you auditioning for Triathlon Chef?” I guess I’m just channeling my inner Stepford Wife in going after recipes that can only be executed by someone who stays at home and in the kitchen all day.

Not surprisingly, I was also responsible for the title to the song “Savor the Inconvenience” by the Ohio Alternative Rock/Folk band Jehova’s Waitresses. My Stepford ears heard it that way when the band members were discussing it in the recording studio while they were working on the album Perfect Impossible. After several months, they discovered I was referring to their song “Save Her The Inconvenience” incorrectly. They liked my title so much, it became the new title of the song.