Napoleon and Dagwood and Me
My wife called me at some point yesterday and informed me she would be working late and that I was responsible for dinner for myself and my offspring. News which altered my entire day.
I am sure most women are not fazed at all about coming up with something for dinner on short notice. My better half will sail in the door, and as she is setting down her stuff from work will throw a pot on the stove and toss some butter and onions and garlic in there –the basis for about 75% of our evening meals – and then go into the icebox and pull out whatever we happen to have in there at the time. Forty-five minutes later, Viola! We have a nice, flavorful, nutritionally-balanced dinner in front of us.
As for myself, I have to give it a bit more thought.
I am not helpless in the kitchen, at all. I have never been a fast food person, and over the ten or so years between moving out of my parents home and getting married, I learned how to cook for myself. Nothing gourmet, mind you – I wouldn’t have the patience for that – but as long as I have some basics to start with, I usually come out okay. When I am charged with coming up with something for the family, it requires some effort on my part because they don’t like fast food either, and we have never been big on carry out. We generally prefer a home-cooked meal, however humble.
Actually, I am pretty lucky. My kids are not picky at all. In this case, my wife was going to a dinner meeting, so I did not have to worry about her. My oldest child, a very active teenager, is an omnivore in the truest sense. He will eat pretty much whatever unfortunate thing falls into his path. He is our “garbage disposal”, an icebox ranger who wanders the wild and dark corners of our refrigerator, thinning out the leftover herd. On the other hand, my youngest child has the least regard for food of any human being I have ever met. He looks at it strictly from a utilitarian standpoint; food is fuel to get him from here to there. He is perfectly content to eat a pack of chicken-flavored ramen noodles for dinner, and in fact he does, fairly often. And savors it like a gourmand would coq au vin on a bed of wild rice.
So, my kids are no problem. As for myself, I’m pretty easy, too; but there are some things I like more than others.
My default move in this situation, if I have the time, is to start a fire in the backyard pit and then try and figure out what is getting barbecued today. But, no way during the week. As I pondered it yesterday – dinner plans didn’t dominate my thoughts, but they were there, hovering in the background, all afternoon – I suddenly remembered we had a piece of a chuck roast in the refrigerator left over from a couple of days ago, assuming my #1 Son had not harvested it for himself yet.
Suddenly, my day brightened.
I am a sandwich guy, always have been. I get excited about a good sandwich the way some people do about a good steak. And the best sandwiches are not made with store-bought lunch meat, but rather with leftovers from the 'fridge; roast, or ham, or even steak. So if that roast beef had survived so far, I knew my dinner was covered.
When I got home, sure enough, the kids had taken care of themselves. So I had a nice, unhurried atmosphere to operate in. I went into the refrigerator, and there, way back in the back of the middle shelf, was a Ziploc bag with a decent-sized piece of cold roast beef in it, just waiting for me. I took it out and hand-sliced some sandwich-thin pieces off of it. Then I went back into the box and started pulling all kinds of stuff out. . . mayonnaise, mustard, horseradish, hamburger dill pickles, sweet relish, black olives, banana pepper rings. There was some not-quite-wilted-yet leaf lettuce in the crisper, and a tomato, and even part of a purple onion, which was a long shot. Deli-sliced provolone cheese in the lunch meat drawer. Sweet!
I like to pile stuff on my sandwiches, as many different flavors and gustational sensations as will fit on there. And, as in this case, usually I am using store-bought sandwich bread, the slices of which are as a rule rather small and flimsy. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. They act as a self-limiter. I have been known to pile so much crap on a sandwich or hamburger that I literally cannot open my mouth wide enough to eat it. When I eat my sandwich creations, I need jaws like a snake’s – the kind that unhinge to allow for an over sized load.
I should say that eating a sandwich like this for dinner, especially when an onion is involved, will sometimes cause me to dream wildly at night. I once dreamt I was a foot soldier in Napoleon’s Grande Armée, marching into Russia back in the winter of ’12. At one point, with the troops near starving, The Little Corporal sent me out into the frozen countryside to forage for baguettes and le rosbif. And I miraculously found them, plus mayonnaise and pickles and tomatoes and a cornucopia of other condiments, and I was forever after hailed as a hero in République française.
Anyway, I had all this stuff out on the counter yesterday evening, and ended up making one of the nicest sandwiches you’ll ever see. By the time I was done, the top piece of bread was tilting precariously to the right, balanced on thick slices of tomato and onion. And it was high enough off of the plate I believe FAA regulations called for a blinking red light, to warn aircraft. Or would have, if it had lasted long enough to be a hazard.
But it didn’t. I took my sandwich, threw a handful of pretzels on the plate, and grabbed a Diet Coke® And went and sat down in the den and watched the news while eating my sandwich, a truly happy camper.
*****
Thinking about all this today, I called my wife to see if maybe she had to work late tonight, too. There is still some of that roast beef left, after all. But she doesn’t. She told me not to worry, she would take care of dinner tonight. Great, honey! See you this evening.
Darn it.
*****
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