Cooking with Abigail

[Deb Speaking] The headline in my cooking magazine said "Awesome Asian Dinner: Try something new tonight! This delicious menu with Asian flair is guaranteed to shake the winter doldrums out of any weeknight."

Perfect, I thought. Abigail will be happy because she likes most anything. I'll get to try out some of my new Asian oils and sauces, and the guys will love it.

I soon had Abigail happily stir-frying the vegetables. I was doing it in my regular frying pan and she was showing me with exaggerated motions how it was supposed to be stir-fried. My pan did not allow for such Chinese cooking ballets.

Next, we made the sauce for the cod using the sesame seed oil. Definitely a different smell than my olive oil or canola oil. Well, that oil certainly spread its aroma all through the house. Josh claims it nearly knocked him off his feet when he walked in the door.

The stir-fry vegetables were tasting pretty good until I added the cornstarch broth mixture. There's something about stir-fry vegetables in a gelatinous mass that just doesn't seem right.

As I'm writing this, I'm looking over the recipe, and I now know why it was a gelatinous mass. I was so busy teaching Abigail what was a tablespoon, teaspoon, etc., that I used four tablespoons of cornstarch instead of the four teaspoons that were called for.

Abigail had been busily sampling the stir fry vegetables three our four times before I created the gelatinous mass. After that, she quit sampling it, but dutifully ate it all at dinnertime.

I had not yet made rice for dinner since Abigail has been home, so I got out my new rice cooker, my Jasmine rice, and decided to add part of the package of fried rice that I bought from Meijer. I thought, "Hey, I'm so good at making minute rice, this can't be so hard."

I threw the two together and didn't bother worrying about the correct amount of water. It will all just boil away anyway. When Abigail tasted that mushy disaster, there was such a look of stricken horror in her eyes. She tells me my Chinese is bad, but to add insult to injury, I can't even cook rice. I quickly decided to redeem myself.

I threw the mush in the trash and measured the rice carefully along with the water. It's amazing what happens when you follow directions. The rice was good. I cannot say the same for the rest of the dinner. It did shake us up as promised, however, and the smells of that dinner now captured in my stairway will continue to remind all of us of it.

The next meal I'm making: beef roast with potatoes (with NO Asian flair).