Night #5: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger–Right?

Friday night, for my final night of the five-nights-o’-cooking challenge (TM) we ate the galumpki  I attempted to serve on Thursday after an unsuccessful attempt at blindly setting my broken crock pot. And at some point while I was reheating it (after it had also cooked for a couple extra hours in the crock pot on Thursday) Mark expressed some concern over “food safety.” As in, if it hadn’t fully cooked in the several-hour process, perhaps what was happening instead was bacteria was sprouting, explosively procreating in large cabbage-and-tomato-soup-based mushroom clouds of funk.

I shrugged it off. “Nah, I think it’s fine.”

And then I served it to two of the people I love most in this world.

It wasn’t until 3AM that, despite not feeling sick at all from the food, I developed a stomach ache over the thought that I could have recklessly caused serious harm to my family. But before my instinct to drag Mark and Kate out of bed and bring them to the hospital for voluntary stomach-pumping (or would that be Stomach Pumping by Proxy?), I fell back asleep and it turned out that everyone woke up alive in the morning (phew!) and as far as I know devoid of even any poo-related maladies.

So as it turns out, this whole getting dinner on the table for the family every evening thing has greater ramifications than just Mark not having to do it, and having the family all eat together. Talk about pressure.

This explains why growing up our mother’s overcooked the shit out of most everything they served us. Turns out they were trying to not kill us.

For my part, instead of letting fear of poisoning everyone interfere with ever making another meal, I should probably just not use the crock pot until I get it fixed.

The epilogue to my 5-Dinners-In-A-Row Challenge: I may have not managed to truly prepare five separate meals (due to failed Thursday and Friday’s Galumpki Redux), but I did come to the realization that  all it took for June Cleaver to have a hot meal on the table every night was some planning, some late-afternoon “Mama’s cookin’ and can’t braid the doll’s hair now”-type child neglect, and rebuffing the concept of gourmet for basic, balanced nutritious food. Which is to say, it’s doable.

Heck, at the end of it all I heard Kate utter the words, “I like galumpki!” That right there is incentive enough to not raise a child on chicken tenders alone.

But anyway, all this food stuff isn’t really all that’s been bouncing around in my psyche. What I’m really excited about is that His Holiness David Sedaris has a new book out. This generates in me the excitement that collectively all the fans of the Harry Potter books have ever felt about any of those books coming out. (And by “coming out” I don’t mean San Francisco-style coming out… I always feel like I need to make that clear.)

Despite my rabid enthusiasm I have yet to own this new book. So I’m going to hie me to the bookstore right now, seeing as Mark is home to hold down the sleepin’-kid fort. Yee-ha!