Friday nights at our house are reserved for entertaining the in-laws. This is a good plan; they live nearby, they don't cook as well as they used to (or eat as much of their own cooking as they should) and it provides my spouse with a direct, guaranteed opportunity for interaction that I think both parties find quite satisfying.
It's always a question as to who is going to cook. This depends on such esoteric and astrologically driven characteristics such as workout schedule, level of relative exhaustion, current position vis a vis the Spousal Doghouse, and so on. In addition, there is always the hope or prayer that one of us will have one remaining spark of creativity that will motivate the whole process, thereby freeing the other to be A Good Host, and/or Model Child.
On the Friday that The Beeting took place, we'd managed the most beneficial of all scenarios: joint cookery. I spiced and baked the pork tenderloin, Alan managed side dishes and thankfully there were remnants of Thanksgiving dessert hovering in the background ready for consumption. In addition to the main event, it is tradition in Alan's family to offer "fore-spice", or an appetizer course. This is often a meal in itself given the variety of smaller comestibles offered: cheeses, pickled herring, olives, pickles, chips, crackers and dips. You may ask why we put out such a substantial table for 4, but I refer you to the first paragraph in which I indicate that at the end of the day, this is our opportunity to be assured that they're not starving. Whatever isn't eaten on the spot goes home with them for distribution over the next six nights.
As is true with most of us, Alan and I have "comfort food" items that were either part of our childhood table or are something that we've created ourselves that provides a soothing gastronomic and emotional balm from the eating experience. Often, when one gets into a relationship it is an honor and a gift to become adept at creating and serving each others comfort food needs.
One such food for my husband is boiled beets done in the manner of his maternal grandmother. The recipe is straight from Poland, and since Grandma really couldn't speak English nor can I speak Polish, we'll just leave it at Grandma's Beets and call it good.
We'd gotten fresh beets from the Fremont Sunday Market, which is a delightful, open-air Mercado filled with eatables and hard-goods side by side. Anything one does in Fremont is several degrees off the norm, and negotiating with the beet seller was no exception. We also picked up some very attractive chard and carrots the size of a large flashlight, but I digress.
To prepare these beets the "right" way, they must be peeled, de-greened and sliced in 1/8" slices. The thinness is important because these beets are cooked in sugar water until tender, then finished at the last minute with lemon juice. They're actually quite good, and a novel taste that I'd not experienced prior to conjoining lives with my beet-meister.
Comfort food has both situational and sensory components. I've discovered that they joy of Grandma's Beets just keeps on giving, in that the "juice" from the cooking process is intended as a after-the-fact drink, somewhat akin to clam nectar. Situationally speaking, this means that the clean freak in the household (that would be me, who generally has most of the pots and pans done prior to sitting at table) needs to be mindful NOT TO THROW OUT THE BEET JUICE.
I have to tell you, I HAVE thrown out the beet juice, and to very ill affect. On this night, I did NOT throw out the beet juice. I did, however, manage to get the remaining beets from our meal into a storage container, then carefully placed the pan in the sink with the intention of taking care of the beet juice momentarily.
One of the downsides of being me is that I don't do things by half measures, and am bi-modal to boot. I'm either manic, or asleep. There are about 15 seconds of transition between the two states, and once I get to the point where bed is immanent, pretty much everything else leaves my head.
I admit to leaving the pan in the sink. I admit to leaving the kitchen for bed. I also admit to listening, with horror, my husband's duress at finding that pan in the sink. It's still not clear whether the juice had become inadvertently contaminated by an outside food source, but suffice it to say that my dear, sweet spouse said things that would make a sailor (or even Bob) blush, and in front of the parents no less.
All thought of sleep having been driven from my psyche, I rushed to the kitchen to see what catastrophic nightmare had transpired, finding my husband brandishing the pan while spewing expletives which of course rotated in my direction as soon as I entered the room. "*&$#^%@!! I TOLD you not to throw out the beet juice!", he said. Clear evidence that the beet juice was still present and accounted for was in his hand, but that point seemed to have been lost on him at that moment.
I protested my innocence, coupled with what had been my good intention. No go...I was clearly nothing short of devil-spawn from hell intent on removing whatever smidgen of pleasure he has in his life through active beet-juice elimination. No sweet talking or explanatory text was going to change this all-too-obvious fact. Instead, I let The Beeting commence, sneaking an occasional peek out of the corner of my eye at his parents. Instead of being appalled (as I expected), they didn't even skip a beat. The basketball game continued, and my mother-in-law read a travel magazine, while my spouse looked for all the world like some alien creature with spittle and blood (or beet spatter; it's really not clear) in his beard.
At that point, I'd had enough, so I turned tail and returned to my bed and soporific effects of my current Agatha Christie mystery. The Beet Demon came to bed hours later, still steamed and smelling of lemon sugar. It took a full 36 hours for his apology, which came grudgingly and with the caveat that I swore to put that beet juice away the very next time we dined on this important food, a concession I willingly re-offered, having traversed this ground at least once before.
And that completes the story of The Beeting. The moral? Know your spouses comfort food requirements, and don't get tired in the middle of satisfying them. Alternatively, you can refuse to have anything to do with them, thereby freeing both yourself from the angst of potential failure, and your spouse from the need to share this particular dependency. God knows we've got plenty of others to fall back on instead.
Our household has returned to normal, and there are no beets in the vegetable crisper. There are, however, those flashlight-sized carrots...!
I was sitting in the waiting room of my migraine doctor's office, a practice area that she shares with the cardiac department at Swedish Hospital. I was mentally grousing about all the bits that seem to be broken in my body, and feeling a bit put-upon that this was my third doctor's appointment (out of 5) this week, thinking that this was no way to start the holidays.
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