Patience, young Antonio!

I will not bore you with my usual “kids got to me”, “life’s hard”, “I am exhausted” blah blah blah stuff. Sometimes I make even myself nauseous with all the whining. Just thinking about the number of people who would give up five years of their life to live like me and have children like mine should make me a little more grateful for what I have. Yet I whine. But I refuse to whine about whining; after all, one has to draw a line somewhere.

This post is actually about my cooking. I have mentioned several times on this blog that I enjoy cooking. That is not entirely true. It’s not the cooking itself that I love; I like feeding people. It makes me feel good. I don’t really know why; maybe, I subconsciously hope that if everyone around me gained weight, it would make me look slimmer. Desperation is a powerful motivator, what can I say. But this time I was making food for people who I hope will never get fat, my kids. Since Friday afternoons before Shabbat are so long now, I need not to only worry about what they’ll have for breakfast while I am at work, but also lunch. This Friday I decided to treat them with baked ziti.

So I started cooking Thursday night. It was pretty late by the time I managed to boil water, and I was anxious to call it a night. When the pasta finally seemed done and before I drained it, I took one piece to taste to make sure it truly was cooked. I barely waited enough time for the ziti to cool off, taking an educated risk of burning my tongue by hot pasta, but I definitely didn’t expect what happened next. I bit into the very hot ziti, and all of a sudden instead of a burned tongue I felt my lip and chin getting burned. The water from inside the ziti (something I didn’t think was there and never thought to check for) squirted onto my face, making me scream with pain and scaring SubHub in the process. It didn’t look so bad immediately, but when I woke up the next morning, I had an ugly blister on and under my lip.

It all would’ve been worth it if the ziti came out fine. (I know, I am a masochist.) Since I was tired and burned, I decided to bake the ziti with cheese Friday morning, reasoning that I didn’t have to prepare kids for day care and would have plenty of time if only I got up at the regular hour. Ha! Ha! And another sarcastic HA!!!!! When did I ever wake up to give myself enough time for anything? I was rushing like a maniac in the morning, and when the time finally came to make ziti, I was already 10 minutes late for work. But one cannot compromise when it comes to kids’ nourishment. I made ziti, leaving SubHub specific instructions of when the oven should be turned off.

When I called from work, very puzzled hub said that he followed instructions, but didn’t understand why the cheese hadn’t melted. After a brief investigation, we concluded that I must’ve pressed the wrong button and actually never cooked the ziti. After initially warming up the oven, I must’ve pressed the “stop” instead of the “start” button on my toaster oven. What led me to this conclusion? The dish was cold to the touch, for crying out loud, coming out of supposedly 350 degree oven. So Hubs put the ziti back where it belonged, actually turned the oven on, and afterward kids reportedly liked it. When I came home, I saw the remaining of very well eaten bakes ziti on the table and…horror of all horrors… it was all white! As in NO TOMATO SAUCE WAS POURED ON IT!!! In my haste I forgot to add the sauce I so painstakingly prepared!

So now I am wondering. Is my cooking so horrendous that kids didn’t feel the difference between a normally prepared baked ziti and the sause-less? Or they don’t actually care and would eat anything as long as it is sprinkled with cheese? In that case, I want 2 years of my life spent making their food “just right” back!