“You’ve got supper tonight.”
Those were Dave’s parting words to me recently as he was leaving for work.
My response? Silence. My forehead was too busy creasing into a question mark.
If you know me in real life, you know why. Let’s just say that he’s better in the kitchen than I am. He cooks, I cut the grass. Said another way since we eat every day and I only cut the grass once a week: he cooks, I pour the wine.
You’ve got supper tonight…
What does that even mean?
Does it mean I go to the grocery store, pick up a few ingredients, and he works his magic?
Does it mean I go through the freezer and dig out leftovers from last month?
Does it mean…
OMG. Does it mean he wants me to cook supper???
Okay. Deep breath. Not sure why the sudden change in our dynamic but I CAN DO THIS! (That sounded confident, right?)
Later that day I went on Google and typed in “easy recipes.” Within a nano second, I had access to eleventy thousand potential options. All I had to do was narrow it down (anything with four or more ingredients, immediately disqualified), and choose one.
Confession: If a recipe didn’t have a picture, it too, got taken out of the running.
After much scrolling and drooling, I finally found the one.
Not too many ingredients. Check.
Beautiful, mouth-watering picture. Double check.
The recipe was called Sweet and Sour Pork, and according to my mental inventory (and a quick text to Dave asking if we had peppers and pineapple), we had everything we needed… except the pork.
Pork butt was what the recipe called for. Not gonna lie. That question mark was forming on my forehead again.
What the hell is a pork butt? Butt??? Seriously? We’re eating butt now???
Regardless, the picture made me salivate.
For confirmation, I sent Dave a link to the recipe.
His response?
Yummm!
Decision made, I thought to myself. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
Except…
As it turns out, I made one teensy weensy mistake in my research: I didn’t read the instructions.
What’s the opposite of easy recipe?
Big. Fat. Fail.
Lucky for me, Dave actually did read the instructions because it was very… shall we say involving. There was a lot of prep time required (two hours!), plus a lot of dip-in-this and coat-with-that.
By the time I got home that night, Dave had saved the day. The prepping was done, the dipping and coating were done. Basically, all I had to do was… well, pour the wine.
Guess who won’t be saying, “you’ve got supper tonight” any time soon?
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Mona Andrei is an award-winning humour blogger and author known for her entertaining perspective on life’s quirks. In her most recent book, SUPERWOMAN: A Funny and Reflective Look at Single Motherhood, she shares a personal journey filled with challenges and triumphs, intertwining stories and insights from single mothers around the globe.
When Mona isn’t writing, you’ll find her practicing her dance moves. As a member of a competitive hip hop team, she likes to think that she’ll stay young and cool forever. She may be delusional.
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