TO GAG A MAGGOT

 

The night Rob and I first met we somehow managed to discuss our food likes and dislikes.  I did not know how big a roll food plays in Robs life.  He is all about food.  He has amazing taste buds and can accurately pick out food ingredients just by tasting. 

We discovered that very first night that we had little, if any, food likes in common.  Both he and I knew the moment we met we would marry so what was a little difference in taste buds?  I actually didn’t even know how to cook the things he liked to eat.  I grew up cooking Italian dishes and I am very good at it.  I had a huge ability to make casseroles and fresh out of the garden dishes.  I love various salads, pastas and breads.  Rob loved anything fried or with bacon grease in it.  The only vegetable he would eat was green beans and that had to have enough bacon grease in it to disguise the bean flavor. 

When I married I had never fried a single thing in my life.  I was one that ate baked, boiled, broiled or grilled; I had NO CLUE how to fry!  Here I had married a man who refused to eat anything that wasn’t doused in grease, how in the world was I going to feed him?  We managed to eat out or with my parents the first week of our marriage.  We grocery shopped and prepared for the next week.  After discussing my limited exposure to frying my husband decided that he still wanted fried food and he wanted me to cook it.  He decided to “give me instructions” on how to fry.  He wanted me to get it done before he came home from work so he was not there when I made my first effort. 

When Rob came home I had the table set beautifully with candlesticks, mashed potatoes, gravy (which I had never made before either), green beans and breaded and fried round steak.  We set down to the table with confidence.  I had made a wonderful presentation for our first home cooked meal.   Robin began to fill his plate with everything and complemented how wonderful it looked, well, until he got to the gravy.  We noticed right away that the gravy had sort of congealed.  It had the consistancy of jelly.  It was so vulgar, I nearly gagged.    Rob decided that was ok he would help me make gravy at some point soon.  Then we cut into our meat, the meat, though seemingly perfectly cooked on the outside, the inside was raw; again I nearly gagged.  The potatoes were next naturally they were not good, they were nice and “earthy”  in other words they tasted like dirt.  At this point I was ready to cry, my first meal would gag a maggot!  Rob calmly looked at me and suggested pizza.  So, we cleaned up what was to have been our first meal and went out to eat pizza. 

It is nearly thirty nine years later and I still cannot make gravy and the only thing I can fry is popcorn chicken.  I can cook the popcorn chicken because the pieces are so small that when the outside is done I know the inside will be too.  At this point in life (2017) Rob does the frying, but then we do not fry too often as he finally realized it is not a healthy style of eating.