A Public Service Blog

This blog is offered as a public service for men who are not skilled in the kitchen. You need to read this if you are one of those men who, like me, don’t know the difference between ‘sauté’ and ‘watch out, I think it’s gonna blow.” I believe I am qualified to offer this advice since I just survived three days of “batching it” with no one to cook and serve my meals EXCEPT ME. The cause of my deprivation was that the Mrs. spent three days away from home, provoking my enforced servitude in fending for myself. Fortunately, she had left a fridge full of leftovers and fixin’s for sandwiches so that the first two days went by in a flash and I was neither hungry nor desperate enough to actually cook something. By day three, the supply of left-overs had become dangerously diminished. At dinner-time, it was clear that if I was to survive one more day I would need to cook something.

I began my kitchen adventure in the only logical fashion for a man of my caliber in the kitchen: I poured myself a drink. Things went downhill from there. As the effects of the drink began to wear off, I donned an apron and began my search for something edible in our kitchen. After consulting the pantry unsuccessfully, I rummaged around in our freezer and, wonder of wonders, found dinner. As I gingerly fondled the bright orange package, a dim recollection of instructions passed thru my mind: “and there is a frozen dinner in the freezer that you can heat for your dinner” seemed to ring a bell. I greedily took out the package and looked at the backside of the gaily-decorated ‘Gourmet Blend’ of frozen food. It should have been a warning sign.

My experience had been that instructions on the back of a package are a warning of bad things to come. And now, here is the pivotal advice to men: Don’t believe what is written on the back of frozen food packages.

I’ll illustrate this with the continuation of my story. Unlike my normal practice, I decided to read the instructions on my gourmet chicken dinner package in their entirety, including the bold type at the end, READY TO EAT IN 11 MINUTES.

“Ah-ha, a gourmet chicken and rice dinner ready in eleven minutes. And it has vegetables in the rice with a gourmet sauce. What could be better.”

I was so pleased with my good fortune in finding the frozen dinner that I decided to have another glass of wine. Thus emboldened, I began to cook by following the instructions. The first step was easy enough, “Thaw contents in hot water. Do not microwave.”

I put hot water in a bowl and placed the individual frozen food packages containing the chicken, the rice and sauce into the hot water. The small and pliable package containing the chicken floated in the water but the big package of rice went “plop” into the bowl like a giant ice cube. The package containing the brown sauce was also hard enough to be mistaken for a frozen turd. Undeterred, I tossed it into the bowl of water and went on to step two, “Saute chicken from pouch in a preheated skillet with one tablespoon oil on med-high heat.”

Ever mindful of the written instructions and the “READY TO EAT IN ELEVEN MINUTES,” I decided to begin my saute (ing?). I cut open the chicken package and dumped the contents into the hot pan. Whoosh! The hot skillet with its big tablespoon of oil just beginning to sizzle didn’t seem to appreciate the sudden infusion of cold water that was included in the bag of chicken. As the chicken fell into the pan, the hot oil and boiling water came jumping out, providing a continuous mist of hot oil on the surface of the stove and the floor. Whoa, this wasn’t quite what I had bargained on. I almost spilled my wine as I rushed to lift the pan from the stove hoping to prevent my chicken from hopping out of the pan along with the popping oil. For my efforts, I was rewarded with an oil-coated shirtsleeve and little drops of oil floating in my wine.

After the pan cooled, I decided that someone had made a small error with the instructions. I turned the heat down until the violence of the popping oil subsided enough so that the oil only had enough energy to jump to the stove, but not to reach the floor or my shirtsleeve. Now, I reasoned, I’ll probably fail to have dinner READY IN ELEVEN MINUTES, but better to be safe in the matter of hot oil.

I considered step three, “add the rice and vegetables to the pan and cover.” I lifted the rice package from the water. Through the clear plastic I could see it was still a large lump of frozen rice with an occasional green bean sticking out like a stick in a snowball. “Ummmm. This requires more drastic action than floating in a bowl of water drawn from the tap. I filled the tea kettle and put it on to boil. In eleven minutes the tea kettle was shesssssshing with steam. I poured the boiling water on the frozen ball of rice and the brown turd forgetting for a moment the hazardous nature of molten plastic in one’s diet. There. The turd seemed to move in the plastic bag. All the boiling water was gone so I refilled the tea kettle and set it back on the stove to boil more water.

It occurred to me that my chicken had been simmering for more than 20 minutes what with the hot oil clean-up and tea kettle business so I decided to complete step two even though the rice was now a small snowball with bits of green and yellow chunks moving about freely in the bag. I dumped the whole mess in the pan, covered it with a lid that I had found earlier and concentrated on melting the turd.   

After another eleven minutes, the turd melted. With great ceremony, I cut the bag and added the brown mass to the skittle. The chicken had dried to a little white strings bobbing about in the overwhelming glob of white rice dotted with green beans, pale orange carrots and little yellow chunks that I later learned were supposed to be egg bits.

Step 4, “ cook on medium low for 5-7 minutes and stir.”  I stirred and then tasted. The rice was still frozen. The last line of the instructions had an ominous note, “Product must be cooked to an internal temperature of 165°F, determined by using a food thermometer.” I quickly decided that at this stage of my life I wasn’t going to stoop to the use of a ‘food thermometer’ when I had a particularly serviceable tongue. Besides, I didn’t know if we owned such a device nor where one might be located in our kitchen that is full of mysterious tools. I replaced the cover and turned up the heat, hoping to someday melt all the rice.

Some hours later I sat down to my very own rice and chicken dinner. It wasn’t too bad, and the preparation was OK, although I thought the cooking instructions needed work, especially the part about READY TO EAT IN ELEVEN MINUTES.

 

So men, here is the advice that should be posted somewhere in your man-cave: if you find yourself ‘batching it’ and eating becomes essential, I suggest going to the nearest fast-food restaurant and never, ever believe what is written on the backside of food packages.