Tonight I felt like cooking, so first I put together a mushroom barley soup that is mild but tastes good. I took an old recipe and added some dried porcinis and garlic, it was a satisfying result.
Then -- this may seem like an odd choice, but because my son won't eat beef, I had made some meatless chili from a cookbook that I rather like, "The Best Soups and Stews" from Cook's Illustrated (2006). Max Hauser had forced me to buy this a while back by pointing out that at the time you could get the paperback on Amazon for $2.00 plus shipping (!!). That price is no longer available but it is still a bargain. At any rate, while the Tempeh struck me as weird, I grew to like it as did my whole family, as we ate through the pot of chili. So tonight I decided to do it again.
The whole thing would be more or less unremarkable except 1) I did something "real" chefs don't do very much, and got my beans from cans, (as the recipe suggests BTW) and 2) I am at the age where daily low dose aspirin is a good idea, so my blood is always a little "thin." So twice, TWICE, I cut myself on can lids, once when reaching down into the dishpan and once DURING the act of opening a can. Both times, the index finger of my right hand. I couldn't stop, these things happened at a critical juncture, and I tried to make do with a paper towel.
The result was that when I was done the kitchen looked like a crime scene. As I was wiping up, there was blood on the tiles behind the sink, blood on the relevant pages of the cookbook, the floor, the counter, the cutting board. I had had no idea I was making such a mess.
It reminded me a little of one of the old OLD SNL sketches where Dan Ackroyd is imitating Julia Child...
F
