If you can't take the heat...

They say love begins in the kitchen. Fortunately for my wife and me, the origin of our besottedness long predates any of my adventures 'tween dishwasher, oven, and refrigerator.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and the wife and I kept it fairly low-key. The little lady had a dentist appointment after work, and I returned home well before she did. As a V-Day surprise for my sweetie, I decided to have dinner ready for her when she came home.

I chose to make a few of her favorites: Chinese kung pao chicken and chocolate chip cookies. These should have been fairly simple tasks: the Chinese dinner came in a box kit with all the ingredients in little plastic baggies and explicit instructions, and the cookies were of the break-and-bake pre-made cookie dough variety. I've watched the wife prepare these items a million times--how hard could they be?

In a tactical decision my grandfather would have endorsed, I began with dessert. I pre-heated the oven, placed heaping teaspoon-sized dollops of cookie dough spaced two inches apart from each other per the Toll House protocol, and inserted the cookie sheet into the oven. The "recipe" called for an oven incubation time of nine to eleven minutes. When I'm working with a new experimental procedure in the laboratory that prescribes such a range of time, I nearly always choose the average. So, in this case, I set the timer for ten minutes, and shifted my attention to the main course.

Again, mimicking my laboratory habits, I read and re-read the instructions, neatly arranging the ingredients on the counter in the order that they would be required. Dinner preparation proceeded ominously smoothly. I boiled the rice and chopped the chicken breast to 3/4-inch modules. I had just moved all of the chicken breastlets to the frying pan when the intoxicating chocolate-chippity aroma suddenly morphed into the pungent bouquet of charred cookie. Just as I thought to myself, "Strange, the timer hasn't yet beeped," the timer beeped. I oven mitted up and extracted the metal sheet upon which the world's easiest-to-prepare cookies rested, nine shades browner than golden. The cookies were done.

My cookie options were limited. I had exhausted all of our dough (a recurring theme for us, of late), and the only cookies I am prepared to create from scratch are made on my three-in-one sandwich/waffle/pizzelle maker. I was still recovering from the batch I'd baked two months ago, and my time was limited. The wife would be home within twenty minutes. I quickly assembled a Valentine's Day Cookie arrangement (as if it had been the plan from the beginning), combining the freshly seared chocolate chip cookies with the three remaining sugar cookies we'd bought at the store last weekend, a few Oreo knock-offs, some low-fat 'Nilla Wafers, and the last of our frozen supply of Christmas pizzelles.

I was short on time, and had to abandon the cookie project to focus my will on the successful completion of kung pao chicken. Meticulously, I followed each step: frequently mixing the fried chicken until golden brown and no longer pink in the center, then stirring in peanuts, kung pao sauce, and hot water. The final task was to add the dried peppers to the chicken. The cooking instructions advised that, if an "extra kick" was desired, the dried peppers could be squeezed to release their seeds. I pondered this option. The wife and I both appreciate a little zest in our diets, and what was kung pao chicken if not spicy?

I turned the pepper baggie over in my hands and pinched the peppers. I tried to modulate the intensity of pinching such as to liberate an intermediate quantity of seeds. I opened the bag, dumped the peppers into the saucy, peanuty chicken mix. Almost instantly, I began to sneeze. My cell phone rang. I answered, sneezing.

"Hello?"

"Hi, I'm on my way home." It was the wife.

"Oh, great." "Dinner is just about ready. I have to let you go."

"OK, see you soon."

"Okayloveyoubye."

Within two minutes, watery eyes and irritated asthmatic lungs accompanied my sneezes. I looked into the frying pan to see a great multitude of seeds escaping from their former peppery abodes adding that "extra kick" to every bit of meat and each drop of sauce. Before I could throw open a window to release some of the capsaicin-saturated air, the front door opened. The wife was home, and by the time I could greet her at the front door, she was coughing and sneezing, unable to utter anything more than "Hi." The entire first floor was filled with a nose-and-eye-burning smoky haze.

"I made you dinner," I told her, ashamed. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, great, thank you," she replied sweetly, eyes tearing.

"I don't think you want to eat it."

"Sure I do," she assured me.

I took her at her word, prepared dinner plates with kung pao chicken and white rice. I watched nervously as she ate her first bite. She looked pleasantly surprised. She ate another bite. Then a third. As she slowly chewed her third bite, her demeanor transitioned from cautious to panic-stricken. "Milk," she whispered loudly.

"What?" I asked for clarification.

"MILK! NOW!" She clutched her throat with one hand and fanned her face with the other.

I ran upstairs to pour her a glass of milk, but she couldn't wait--she was right behind me and grabbed the glass out of my hand and rapidly chugged its contents.

She looked at me and I at her. I followed her as she returned to our dinner plates, tall glass of milk in hand. We muscled through the rest of our meal, barely speaking, heavily breathing, frequently sipping milk.

After the kung pao chicken inferno, the toasted chocolate chip cookies provided unanticipated sweet relief. Previous adventures in dinner preparation should have prepared me for such a fiery outcome.

The Valentine's Day Taste Bud Massacre of 2008 was an unanticipated testing ground for our relationship. That my wife was still sitting on the couch next to me bodes well for our future together.

For now, however, I will stay out of the kitchen.

I can't believe it's not buttered.

After reading my previous post, in which I mentioned my recent discovery of donuts and chocolate chip cookies being made to taste even better when slathered with butter, despite my explicit request not to inquire, Sara has in fact asked:

"[H]ow can one NOT ask how you know this?? I'm intrigued."

It's quite simple, actually.

Monday morning: I got a late start. Didn't have time to eat breakfast at home. Once I got to lab, I initiated some experiments. When I had a few minutes of down time during a sample incubation, I stopped at the snack bar in my building's lobby and purchased a bagel, and I picked up a butter packet. I brought the bagel and spread to my desk, buttered my bagel, and partook of all the buttery bagelly goodness.

I readied to return to my bench for lab work but was troubled by the excess butter remaining in the packet. Of course, I was raised not to waste food, so I rummaged through my lunch for something that else that could be buttered (after all, I was sure there were starving children in the Third World clamoring for half-empty butter packets such as the one I nearly discarded). I rejected mandarin oranges, carrot sticks, Diet Pepsi Jazz, and leftover shrimp as unbutterable (though that designation, after my subsequent discoveries, is certainly eligible for review). The only remaining item was a chocolate donut.

I removed the donut from my lunch bag and turned it in my hands, mulling over the butterability of this baked good. Better judgment nearly got the best of me as I was at first reluctant to add fat to fat and amass unnecessary calories. However, I recalled that calorie is just another word for energy. And, heck, I could use all the energy I could get (for an alternate interpretation to caloric impact, click here).

I threw caution to the wind and scraped out the remaining butter from the packet and spread it onto my chocolate donut.

The result: rich, creamy, buttery, chocolatey, artery-hardening ecstasy. The end result was far greater than the sum of the parts (i.e. if I had eaten donut and butter a la carte).

Tuesday morning: again running late, again purchased bagel with butter. This time, as I spread the butter on the bagel, I took care to spread more sparingly than the day before. I finished the bagel and repeated would could turn into a diet-devastating habit. This time, the most butterable items in my lunch were chocolate chip cookies. Delectable.

As Avery and Chad have both mentioned in the comments of my previous post, it seems that everything tastes good with butter. I may have to employ the rigors of the scientific method to the testing and verifying of this hypothesis.

The pizzelles that almost were not

Saturday, I completed my quasi-annual holiday tradition: pizzelle making.

One of the very few items I personally selected on our wedding gift registry five and a half years ago (feels like it was just yesterday we were marching through the department store aiming the laser gun at items on our wish list) was a three-in-one sandwich/waffle/pizzelle maker. When I saw it, I knew that we had to have it. I couldn’t imagine married life without it.

How prescient I was. We’ve used each of the three functionalities, I’d say, on average 0.5 – 0.75 times per year. We’ve made waffles probably twice or thrice since we exchanged our vows… I’ve eaten maybe four sandwiches (toasted to perfection) grilled between the two hot metal bread-shaped molds (two were on Saturday) in the time spanning June 1, 2002 till now. But, most critically, during our first December of wedded bliss I decided that I would initiate an annual regimen of pizzelle making (the annualness not being strictly defined—prior to 2007, I have made pizzelles three of five Yuletide seasons).

You can imagine the horror, then, when in the course of refacing our kitchen cabinets, I heard my wife utter an “oops” (“oops”s in our relationship traditionally have emanated from my mouth, not hers) and I looked down to see the two halves of my pizzelle/ sandwich/ waffle/ book report maker resting on the floor in cracked outer casings and connected by a thin, exposed wire in the midst of the scattered contents formerly occupying our cabinet just beside our front window.

My disappointment was palpable. I mustered the most pitiful Eeyore response I could: “I guess I won’t be making my special Christmas pizzelles this year.”

My wife wanted to rectify her accident and buy me a new three-in-oner, but I told her it wasn’t worth the expense. Huddled masses of yearning family members would just have to make do with (my wife’s delicious) sugar cookies this year.

And then came my birthday, and what a happy one it was, for among the many lovely presents was one conspicuously large wrapped cuboid box which I eagerly unpackaged. The innards of said birthday present was none other than a replacement pizzelle/ waffle/ sandwich maker (thanks to the in-laws for that one—this blog post mightn’t have happened without them): crisis averted. Pizzelles a la yajeev would indeed come to pass to mark the birth of Christ Jesus.

This past Saturday was Christmas cookie day in the household of yajeev. The lovely wife prepared a multitude of sugar cookies of myriad shapes, colors, and sprinkle patterns and flavors, and I set about to prepare the pseudo-traditional pizzelles.

When I cook or bake or prepare food of any variety in the kitchen (which admittedly, happens, only slightly more frequently than my pizzelle making extravaganzas), the scientist in me requires a clear and detailed protocol. To be honest, the recipe I use from year-to-year varies; I will use whichever instructions are first listed after a google search for “pizzelle recipes”. So “yajeev’s pizzelles” do not necessarily match a particular protocol endorsed by yajeev, but rather are simply the pizzelles prepared by yajeev in strict accordance to a not entirely randomly procured internet pizzelle recipe protocol (I have to assume that the first listed recipe is so positioned for some good reason).

Saturday afternoon, I prepared my benchtop, er countertop, carefully placing each ingredient in the order it would be needed: three eggs, sugar, vanilla, lemon extract, flour, and baking powder (or was it soda?). Next, I turned on the holiday tunes (carefully avoiding Dominic the Donkey or Merry Christmas from the Chipmunks—these don’t go over so well with the little lady). Next, I arranged all the tools I’d be using: mixing bowl, measuring cups, measuring spoons… As I carefully lined each item up along the back wall, I asked my wife, “Honey, where’s the ¼-cup measuring cup?”

She, icing cookies, replied: “I don’t know.”

I: “What do you mean you don’t know? And where's the tablespoon measuring spoon?”

She: “I mean I don’t know where they are.”

I: “Well, they’ve got to be somewhere around here, right? Maybe in the dishwasher?”

They were not.

Improvise? Was she kidding? I have been trained to proceed with scientific accuracy, not senseless estimation. I mean, I don’t perform alkaline lysis bacterial plasmid mini preps with just any old pipette. I weighed my options. There was no time to go to the store: we were on a tight schedule. After cookie making, we had planned to wrap presents, eat dinner, and pack for our Christmas vacation: no time for frivolous measuring cup purchases. Make pizzelles with no regard for accuracy or no pizzelles at all. I chose the former, and with great trepidation, I christened the new pizzelle maker.

So how is this year’s batch? So far, they’re getting rave reviews from the dog (of course, he like poopsicles). The rest of the jury is still out.




(Eeyore picture accessed at wikipedia)