Fish out of Water

I started making a list a week ago of every entree that I can cook that Emma will eat.  Essentially it started out as a "cheat sheet" for grocery shopping, because, as has possibly been written of in days of yore, I create a weekly menu before grocery shopping, then I use that menu to populate my grocery list.  It's been extremely helpful honestly.  We always have everything we need to cook whatever is on the menu, and when we do it right, I'm not trying to figure out what we're eating at the last minute.

So I mapped out this list, and there are maybe 25 entrees on it, which actually is better than I thought it would be, but, as I told Emma:  "Unless you start eating other things, this list represents what I'm going to be cooking and eating at home...FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE."  Which...no.  Leslie and I used to try to cook something new every few weeks or so.  We loved researching recipes, finding ones we liked, and trying them out.  I have a friggin' recipe box stuffed with printouts, cards and copies of recipes we liked that I WILL NEVER EAT AGAIN...unless something changes.  Because, one of the other shitty things about losing a spouse is...now when you cook, you're really cooking for one.  And there's no way I'm cooking chicken piccata just for me (for example.  See "Surprise" for the amusing (in my humble opinon) details on how to make chicken piccata my (Pioneer Woman) way).  And that became one of our favorite recipes!  I wish I could have included more parentheses in the sentence before that last one.

So...on the spot I told her "I'm going to start making you try something new every Tuesday." (And I picked Tuesday because she has dance on Wednesday and Thursday and I'll need time to cook it, and she just won't have time on that day).  But then...I was like...I wish it rhymed.  Like...Tuesday Tryday?  It has alliteration but if there were only a day of the week that rhymed with try-day...

Sigh.

So yeah, anyway, Friday (also have time to cook on Friday) is now officially Tryday, and Emma has selected the next thing that she's never really tried/wanted/liked and it is...

Fish sandwich.  Fish sandwiches are a Pittsburgh staple.  Pittsburgh has one of the highest percentages of Catholics in the nation, and so during lent every year, people line up around the block every Friday to order a fish sandwich.  Forget even trying to get into Red Lobster.  Emma doesn't even eat them, leaving her with cheese pizza, or grilled cheese, or mac and cheese as her choices.

So...I'm soliciting your feedback.  Do you have a favorite way of making a crispy fried fish sandwich (cod, by the way)?  I loved the feedback and interaction I got on facebook from my request for tips on spaghetti sauce.

The end result should look something like this:

Taken from WPXI's "best fish sandwish in Pittsburgh contest article
http://www.wpxi.com/news/entertainment/pittsburghs-best-fish-sandwich-winners/nD7sC/
(The winner was actually a friend of mine who owns a restaurant/bar...I'd ask him, but I feel like it's his business secret)

And you should know that Emma does not eat food with any kind of sauce on it (except spaghetti).  She doesn't eat ketchup or ranch or honey dijon or tartar sauce.  When I mentioned that I might try to beer-batter it, she was concerned that the fish would taste like alcohol. 

Help me. 

Surprise!

My wife has Lily at Speech and O.T.  It's a Tuesday ritual.  Or will be until next Tuesday when I take it over.  She swoops in to the summer program to pick up Emma.  She swoops home to pick up Lily.  She flies north to drop Emma off at my parents before zooming to the speech appointment. . . then the OT appointment. . . then she does it all in reverse and returns home.


Until next week, when I'll be taking over the swooping, scooping, zooming and returning.  While she's gone there's a tremendous amount of imagined guilt building up about what I should have done around the house before she gets back, and because she's got the lion's share of the work to do, the amount that should be done around the house to alleviate my stress is "a shit ton".  


So I read a chapter of "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" and let my time tick by, because I am almost useless unless I'm working against a clock.  


While that was going on, I was exchanging texts with Leslie in a little campaign I like to call, Operation "Lower Expectations".  Things like, "Ugh, I just got home, traffic was such a nightmare!"  and "God, I'm so tired I could just pass out in bed right now. . . remember how Lily got up so early this morning?  Yeah, getting up with her is totally dragging me to bed!"


Then I asked her what she wanted to eat for dinner and she said that was MY responsibility, and so I said, "In that case I'm thinking about making pretzels for dinner."


"I hope you didn't strain yourself with all that thinking."


"You want Doritos instead?  I can thaw some out."  She ignored this, so I did a search and found a chicken piccata recipe on Pinterest because, as Google continues telling me, apparently I'm a 25-34 year old woman, and I started thawing chicken and cooking angel hair pasta and mixing sauces and so forth.  This is the part of the operation called, Operation "Surprise!"

THIS was done before I blogged.

Only two things can ruin this surprise:  1)  Leslie reads this blog, so she will totally know I'm cooking chicken piccata and it will be done when she gets home CONTRARY to my campaign of misdirection, and 2)  I'm not positive she even likes chicken piccata.  Is it too late to say "LESLIE!  DON'T READ ABOUT THE SURPRISE CHICKEN PICCATA I'M MAKING YOU!!!"  so that the surprise isn't ruined?  Probably.  And I can't ask her whether she likes chicken piccata because she is a smart cookie and will see right through that ruse.  It's sorta how I ruined the surprise of buying her an iphone.  It went something like this:


"Hey Les, if you were to get an iphone someday. . . you know. . . not SOON or anything, but SOMEday. . . how much memory would you want on it?  Would you want 16G or 32?"


"I don't know, Jim, that's really sort of your area."  Fine. . . fine. . . it is.  So then a couple days later. . . 


"Hey Les, if you were to get an iphone someday TOTALLY not soon, would you want a black one or a white one?"


"Black.  Why do you keep asking me about iphones?"


"NOT BECAUSE I'M BUYING YOU ONE!  SHUT UP!" 


And then the next day I had to leave a note for the UPS guy to drop the phone off and leave it because otherwise I'd have to drive to UPS to pick it up, and Leslie was leaving the house and saw something on the door and drove back up the driveway, got out of the car, read the note, rolled her eyes, got back in the car and left, waving cheerfully to me as I got in my own car.  


I watched her go and said, "Well, fuck."

So anyway.  I have. . . well, HAD 20 minutes to write this blog post because I'm timing the chicken so that it's done and hot when she walks in the door, and she JUST LEFT my parents house.  So . . . nice timing for me!  Because this post is DONE!!


So then WHILE I was writing this post, she had Emma text me to say, "This is Emma, we are on our way home."  She does that because I swear when I text her.  So if she doesn't identify herself it would be like:


"We are on our way home."


"'Bout fuckin' time!"


"DADDY!!"


"um. . . wrong number."


Anyway, she got home and the chicken was done, and the pasta was done, but the sauce was still reducing and I hadn't added the cream or capers yet, so I ran about 10 minutes late.  And the sauce didn't thicken as much as I'd have liked. . . BUT. . . 


She liked it.  It was really good if I'm being fair.  She liked it and she cleaned her plate.  And then, because I had made enough to give us each lunchtime leftovers, she walked by the strainer filled with angel hair, and she nabbed a couple strands and dunked it in the sauce pan and ate it like a mama bird eating a worm (except no disgusting Alicia Silverstone regurgitation), and THEN, she got another fork or two of pasta and put it on her plate and ate THAT and THEN. . . and look. . . I don't want you to get the wrong idea about my wife, she's a LADY. . . but she tipped the plate up and drank the piccata sauce off the plate.  Slurped it up. . . um. . . like a princess.


Like a princess.


So. . . the pictures:

3-4 minutes per side in butter and olive oil. . . 

so it looked like this. . . 

End product!  Easy recipe too!