cook

Thursday Inspiration — Cooking with Gas

Fandango12 Comments

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to write a post using the word “cook.”

Ever since I got married almost 46 years ago, my wife has been the chief cook — and I’ve been the bottle washer, so to speak. She is a very good cook and I am fairly confident that had I not married her, I’d be dead my now.

My pre-marriage bachelor diet was primarily fast food, fried food, and beer. But Mrs. Fandango began preparing healthy, nutritious, delicious meals. She made sure I got a balanced diet with veggies and fruits and food that was mostly organic.

One of her requirements wherever we lived was that our home had to have a gas range, rather than an electric cooktop. She felt that she could cook with much more precision with gas than with electricity. And since she took pride in preparing her meals and I loved eating her meals, I made sure to accommodate her gas range demand.

In fact, she loves cooking with gas so much that this is one of her favorite rap songs.

Now I don’t want you to think that my wife prepares everything I eat. I make my own cold cereal breakfasts and when we have eggs, I am often the one who cooks them. And I’m also the outdoor grill master, grilling hod dogs, burgers, steaks, and even seafood to perfection.

So I’m not totally helpless in the kitchen.

FOWC with Fandango — Cook

Fandango22 Comments
FOWC

It’s March 7, 2023. Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “cook.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.

Cee’s Back and it’s Time to Share Your World

Fandango17 Comments

SYWEach week Cee Neuner poses four interesting questions for us to answer in her Share Your World posts. Here are her questions for this week.

A class you wish you would have taken?

In the ninth grade, I was invited to be a member of the school’s chorus and I was thrilled to be included in that class. But I had, before I knew that I was even being considered for the chorus, applied for an advanced industrial arts course called the Industrial Art Research Lab. Only 12 students were invited to be in the IARL, and when I was selected, I felt compelled to accept it and to turn down the invitation to be in the chorus, even though that was my preference. As I look back, I wonder how being in the chorus, versus taking the IARL, might have altered the course of my life. Of course, I was 14 at the time, and my voice was changing, so maybe, in hindsight, it was a good decision.

Are you scared of heights?

No. That said, I’m not likely to go standing on the edge of a steep cliff and bend over to get a better view of the precipice.

Are you a good cook? If so, do you consider yourself a chef?

I am a great cook of anything that can be “cooked” in a microwave oven. The closest I’ve ever come to being a chef is when I open up a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli and heat it up in the microwave.135A9F8D-D8C2-48B8-B639-5B76FD612604What did you appreciate or what made you smile this past week?

This past Saturday, my two adult children, their significant others, and a few close friends came over and spent the day at our home. It was a very pleasant day that I really appreciated and that still makes me smile.

MLMM Tale Weaver — Whatever It Takes

Fandango11 Comments

img_1276“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” I yelled at the man rooting through my recycling bin.

Our trash, recycling, and compost are picked up early every Wednesday morning, so on Tuesday nights I put out the three bins provided by our city’s contracted refuse company. I usually put it out right before taking my dog out for the last walk of the night.

On this particular Tuesday night I was running late, so it was almost 10:00 by the time I wheeled the three bins to our curb. My dog and I went for our normal twenty minute walk down to the recreation center and back. And as we were approaching our house, I saw a man rifling through the stuff in the blue recycling bin.

He seemed unfazed as I approached my front door and let my dog inside the house. He didn’t seem at all bothered when I walked up to him and asked him what he was doing going through my recycling.

“You throw all this stuff away, right?” he said. “I’m pulling cans, plastic bottles, and glass jars out of here and hauling them to the recycling center. I get a nickel for each item.”

“I don’t like you going through my recycling bin,” I said.

“Why not?” he asked. “You discarded all this stuff and I never leave a mess once I’m done.”

“That’s not the point,” I said.

“What is the point?” he asked. “Look, I’m not homeless. I’m a cook at a restaurant making minimum wage. I have a wife and two kids. The money I make from collecting the stuff you and others discard helps put food on my family’s table and clothes on their backs. But hey,” he added, “if it bothers you that much, I’ll stop.”

Now I was feeling bad. How could I consider standing in the way of this man supporting his family? “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Go ahead and gather what you need.”

I watched out of a bedroom window and saw that when he finished gathering stuff from my recycling bin, he went to my neighbor’s bin and rummaged through it. My curiosity piqued, I continued to watch as he moved up the block and placed various items from the recycling bins into the two large plastic garbage bags he was dragging with him.

But I was surprised when I saw him reach the end of the block. He approached a large, silver Mercedes Benz, popped open the trunk, threw both plastic bags into it, closed the trunk, stepped into the luxury vehicle, and drove away.

“Huh,” I thought.

Written for this week’s Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Tale Weaver prompt. The challenge is to write a post about “the everyday, the hum drum, the necessary side of life that allows us to function in some sort of ordered fashion.”