Back in the kitchen

Last night I decided to have some fun in the kitchen. I've learned the trick to sweet-talking my violently combustible oven and I refuse to use the grill after Keating's exploits, so it was a low-key event. I made up some stone-fruit pie 'cause I'm a geologist and that's the sort of thing I do. The pie was filled with an amazing combo of fresh nectarines and red plums, seasoned with brandy, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and featured my first attempt at a homemade crust. For dinner, I decided that I was too lazy to follow my normal obsession of stuffing food inside of food and decided to turn my pear, sweet onion, and edam cheese stuffed chicken breasts into a layered casserole served over seared portobello mushrooms with fresh green beans on the side. Very Mexican, I know. Despite it not having a single chili pepper in sight, the dinner came out AMAZING. As in, it was so good that Keating and I immediately divvied up the rest into jealously guarded Tupperware for today's lunches.

Now, as proud as I am of last night's dinner, I realize that it makes for terminally boring blogging. I am writing it mostly in an attempt to convince my parents that I really CAN COOK. You see, the kitchen gods hate me when it comes to cooking for my parents. In recent years, I have repeatedly set off the smoke detector (which was really awesome since I was cooking so that my mom could lie down with a migraine), overcooked chicken into shoe leather, nearly ruined my mom's pans, and accidentally got drunk while cooking the dinner at which Keating and I were introducing our parents. On this last trip home, I managed to put all that to shame.

I was trying to recreate a recipe I had made up down here and had completely wowed Keating with. I coated chicken breasts with breadcrumbs, fresh ginger, raw oats, and a dash of nutmeg and then baked them. These were then served with a homemade mango-chipotle salsa. The whole effect was sweet-and-tangy with a mildly nutty flavor. It was great. What I made for my parents was not. I shaved the ginger wrong (lengthwise) and over-baked the chicken, resulting in what looked like dusty turds covered in hair. That was nothing, however, compared to the salsa: I'm pretty sure it qualified as a chemical weapon. I don't know whether the problem came from using a different brand of canned chipotle peppers or if I somehow absentmindedly quadrupled the number of peppers I used, but it was hot enough to literally take my breath away despite having been eating Mexican-grade spicy since December. As soon as I could breath again, I gasped a warning to my dad before he could take a bite. Sadly for him, I think he assumed I was joking and took a nice, large forkful. I will never know quite how he managed to keep from spewing it back out, but he managed to not only swallow it but try to smile as though it wasn't actually as bad as it was, all while huge tears welled up in his eyes. It was at this moment that my mom walked into the dining room, having just finished a phone call with my brother. Fortunately for her, Dad and I were able to convince her to scrape all of the sauce off of her chicken without even trying it. Perhaps we were more convincing because we were both still choking and crying a little bit. Keating was spared the entire event as he was still in Mexico at that time and didn't arrive until I had already been informally barred (yet again) from being "helpful" in the kitchen.

Given my track record, I think I need to stop trying to cook for my parents while I'm ahead. They may never be convinced that I really do make some great food, but they will also never be able to blame me for a nasty case of salmonella (I think I gave Dad chemical burns, though). From now on, I think I'll just have to rock the pizza delivery option when offering to take care of a meal while I'm visiting.

P.S. - I swear that this is not the reason why Keating has lost ~40 lbs since we moved here. That's all exercise and fresh fruit/veg. I swear. Back me up on this, Keating???? Please????

Keating visits the dentist

While we were in Michigan, Keating and I both went in to the dentist to get our teeth cleaned. This was significantly scarier for Keating than it was for me because of who our dentist was: my father. (That's right savvy readers: my dad, the die-hard hockey player, is also a specialty dentist. He also has been known to stash chocolate covered caramels in his underwear drawer. Never fear, he still has all of his teeth.)

I can imagine that there are few things more unnerving than sitting down in the dentist's chair and looking up into your new father-in-law's face, except maybe if it is your girlfriend's dad instead of your FIL, but I haven't subjected a boyfriend to that since college (sorry Andy!). Dad was very kind to Keating and didn't even take advantage of his opportunity to mess with his head. Instead, they decided to mess with mine.

I was in the front of the office hanging out with my mom and a couple of the staff when Jeanie, who was assisting Dad, popped in to ask me to come back to the operatory room where Keating was. As I stepped into the room, I saw Dad using gauze to stop some bleeding in Keating's mouth and a bloody scalpel on the tray. WTF??!? Fortunately there hadn't been nearly enough screaming to make me think something bad had actually gone down, like some fraternity hazing taken too far.

It turns out that Dad, whose specialty is gum surgery, had cut away some excess tissue on one of Keating's front teeth. The tooth in question is slightly recessed anyway, and the extra gum tissue made it look far more recessed than it actually was. With one quick flick of the wrist, Dad had done wonders to Keating's smile, making it look as though his front teeth had been straightened overnight. Keating's smile looks even more fantastic than before, and he can now brag that he survived losing a knife fight to his father-in-law. Boys have the strangest ways of bonding.

UFC: Michigan

My parents are probably two of the toughest people I will ever know. My dad, for instance, in pushing the big 6-0 and still plays ice hockey year round. Right now, he has a double header scheduled for every Monday night, and a couple of weeks ago ended up playing in a triple header when one of the teams scheduled to play after his last game asked if anyone could substitute for them. All this was while still getting over being sick and having to be at work early the next morning.

Dad's crazy dedication to hockey pales before my mom's latest test of will, however. On 4th of July weekend, she took a spill on the boat thanks to an unfortunate wave and bashed up her left knee. The next morning, with her knee now the size of her head and unable to bend more than 5 degrees, she decided to stop by the ER to have it looked at. Her knee was too swollen to get a good look at it yet with an X-ray, so she was sent home with an ace bandage and the recommendation to call the local knee specialist to make an appointment for later in the week. When she was the specialist a couple of days later, he couldn't find anything in her X-ray and asked her to keep limping around on it until she could bend it to 90 degrees for an MRI but told her that he thought it was most likely a deep bone bruise. I had already arrived in Michigan by this point, and Mom refused to let something as minor as a swollen peg leg get in the way of spending time with me; my first day in town she insisted on taking me shopping for a new pair of jeans since mine were miserably ratty (Thanks Mom!!!), not to mention about 6 other errands. She continued to go to work each day, walk the dog in the morning before I woke up, etc.

The day before I left to return to Mexico, we got a call from her knee specialist: he had just gotten back the results on the MRI and wanted her in there ASAP since it turned out that she had broken her leg in her fall roughly 2 weeks before. The angle and location of the break prevented it from showing up in the X-ray, but it stood out brilliantly in the MRI. My mom had just spent the last couple of weeks wandering around on a broken leg, and I'm not even sure if she bothered to take more than 2 Advil the entire time. She will now spend the next 6 weeks in a leg brace and using a cane (it was already clear to everyone that she wasn't going to hold still long enough to bother with the crutches. Plus, she was too short for the adult sized crutches they had available.).

My dad likes to claim that the only two things in the world scare him: flying monkeys and my mother. Given just how scary-tough she is, I think I might have to add Mom to my list, too!

(For even more background on just how tough she is, my mom refused to let the doctor tell her she had broken her foot until after my wedding last fall so that she wouldn't have to wear a cast to the wedding. About 8 weeks ago during a minor surgery trying to sort everything out on that same foot, the doctors realized that she had been wandering around with a nearly completely torn ligament in her ankle. She had been taking the dog on 2 mile walks. Daily.)

Get well soon, Mom!