Chief cook and bottle-washer

I take my job as Cliff's cook seriously.  It's easy, really, since he likes almost everything in the way of food, and so do I.  Anyway, since I'm the cook, food is never far from my mind.  Many times I go to bed knowing what tomorrow's dinner (the noon meal) will be.  If not, I figure it out in the early-morning hours.  Because we don't have an actual meal in the evenings, there's no planning to do for supper, and none for breakfast either.  Usually that's cereal with fruit, or steel-cut oats, which I make in big batches in the Instant Pot and put in a sealed container in the refrigerator to use through the week, heated in the microwave.  Cliff usually likes an egg sandwich once a week.  OK, he'd have that every morning, left to his own devices.  But I'm in charge here!  

We only went to three of the local Lenten fish-fries this year; tomorrow is the last one for the season, and I don't think we'll go.  For some reason, I haven't been so crazy for fish as I was last year, and since we'll likely be eating at Jack Stack Barbecue in Martin City on Saturday, I think we'll save our calories for that.  I've fought a craving for Tuscono's for over a week, but that might have to wait until the next weekend.

For some reason I awoke this morning with no noon menu planned, and it was 9 AM before I even considered it.  We've had every cut of beef known to man lately, and I wanted something else, something easy for this lazy wife to cook.  My first thought was tuna-noodle casserole, since we both like it just fine.  Even the picky kid we babysit will eat a little of it.  During the times we weren't so well supplied with beef, we had that a couple of times a month.  

Then I remembered the can of salmon in the cupboard, and knew what to fix:  Salmon patties!

Now my belly is full, but the house smells very fishy.  While I was waiting to make dinner, I recalled there was half a package of that phony chocolate we dip pretzels into around Christmastime, and had a brainstorm:  You can spread peanut butter between two round crackers and dip it into melted chocolate (even the phony stuff), and it's delicious!  If you haven't tried it, you ought to.  So not only did we have a delicious meal of salmon patties, real mac-and-cheese (not the blue-box kind the Kid likes... it was home-made), and mixed peas and carrots; we also had my surprise dipped-cracker dessert!

Why am I talking about food?  Because that's what I'm thinking about half the time.  Not obsessing over things I can't have, because we can have anything we want.  Just planning ahead.

Here's a food item I've had on my mind lately:  Gingerbread!  When the kids were small and I was milking a cow (when wasn't I milking a cow, back then?), I was always baking something:  bread, pies, cakes, cookies; and nobody worried too much about calories then.  One of my favorite things was gingerbread, still warm from the oven, with real whipped cream on it.  Believe me, Cool Whip doesn't hold a candle to genuine whipped Jersey cream!  In later years I learned Cliff didn't share my fondness for gingerbread, so I quit making it.  I'm not saying he doesn't like it... there are very few sweets he doesn't like... but he'd rather have some other kind of cake.  Cake is his favorite, pie is mine.

It's surely been at least 25 years since I made gingerbread.  Now I'm longing... yes, even lusting!... for some, but ONLY with real whipped cream.  And I don't have a milk cow.  There are a few people around here selling raw milk, but I don't trust them.  If I'm going to pay $5 for a gallon of milk, I want to know it's fresh from that morning's milking.  Raw milk with the cream on top sours more quickly than pasteurized milk, so I want it fresh when I buy it.  I'm picky about people selling eggs, too:  I want to KNOW those eggs aren't over a couple of days old when I buy them.

I buy cream at the grocery store for cooking and for our oats.  I assume it'll whip, since it says "whipping cream" on the label.  But the stuff tastes like it's been evaporated and reconstituted.  Perhaps whipped, with a little vanilla and sugar mixed in, it'll taste like it's supposed to.   

I'm going to try it, but not until our chocolate-dipped crackers-and-peanut-butter are gone.  We can only handle one kind of dessert in the house at a time.  

Peace.