So, we have spent a lot of time in the car over the past two days, something like 9 hours since yesterday morning at 10. We had a round-trip from Anderson to Paulding, OH so that Henry and I could join my father-in-law, brother-in-law and nephew at a Father Son dinner that they have at the church Mary's home church. Then we had the usual Sunday round-trip from Anderson to Linton for church. It felt like even longer in the car since last night we got home to go to sleep to get up to leave. Because of that by the time we got home from church there was no way I was willing to get back in the car until tomorrow. This meant that we would be eating dinner at home.
It was a simple problem for Mary, she decided that she would have cereal for dinner. That didn't seem like a bad idea to me either until I realized that I had finished my cereal on Friday. What I didn't realize was that after I came to this realization I had unknowingly began a perilous journey to find something for dinner. The first issue that sent complications into my world was that I didn't want to eat anything at home, I wanted pizza or Taco Bell or donuts or freshly caught game or some other thing that existed outside the confines of our fridge and pantry. But as I already said I was completely unwilling to leave the homestead to venture out for any reason, and though Mary offered to go for me, I decided that I would indeed find something to eat that we already had.
The next thing I became hungry for was a roast beef sandwich, but alas, much like the cereal I had finished our last bit of that on Friday as well. Friday was obviously a day of endings in the Stephens' household, as least as far as food was concerned. So I began the task of looking through the fridge, freezer, and pantry to find something of sustenance. To be honest we have plenty of food in those three places, but trying to find a combination of items that would both work in conceptualization and be appealing to me was next to impossible. For instance, spaghetti sounded pretty good, but the Italian sausage was frozen, and the idea of defrosting it in the microwave was unappealing. We also had frozen ground beef that would have worked perfectly in hamburger form, but once again the prospect of thawing it was not appealing.
I crossed off the possibility of tuna fish and black beans and rice and noddles with butter pretty quickly. Other things, such as Creamy Chicken Ramen Noodles stayed on the radar a little longer. I finally decided to make some frozen fish that I had purchased several months ago when Mary was going to be out of town, because she is not a fan of frozen fish that is a step or two away from the fish sticks that so often graced the junior high lunch counter. We also had some frozen steak fries that I thought would compliment the fish fillets, that I planned on making a fish sandwich out of. I would make some homemade tartar sauce and everything would be great.
If only it could have been that simple. My first hurdle was the moment I read the instructions of the two frozen items and the needed to be cooked at different temps for different times. This would have become a larger issue if I hadn't opened the french fry bag and realized that about half of the fries that remained were freezer burnt, the quantity remaining was neither enough to satisfy me nor worthy of being picked through to get out in the first place, hence the fries got to meet the garbage can instead of the oven, and the time and temp dilemma was solved before it really became an issue.
No problem, I declared I will just make a small salad of spring mix greens, seedless cucumber and tomato, that is until I realized that our tomatoes had all gotten over-ripe and started to wrinkle. But still I would have a small salad or spring mix greens and seedless cucumber to accompany my fish fillet sandwich. That is until I opened the box of fish fillets to find out that I had bought a box of fish tenders instead of fillets. So, instead of cooking two fillets and saving the rest I baked the entire box of tenders, which were just a tad bigger than fish sticks. It was at this point that I realized that a fish sandwich consisting of these tiny tenders would have been difficult to hold together after that first bite, so instead I decided to eat them with out the bread.
In the end my dinner was still satisfying and I had a little adventure to share with all of you, so I guess it was all worth it. But, I could still go for a couple tacos and a pintos and cheese.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
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