KS&L 403 My Navy Cooking Disaster! Part 2 by Tina Erwin

KS&L 403 My Navy Cooking Disaster! PART 2

       All right, the appetizer is out, beverages are ready, guests are arriving for our supposedly lovely dinner party. We’ve done our best to remove the powerful cat smell and we are actually dressed and ready – although I’m not quite sure how we did that.

         Our guests, our friends, co-workers are all sitting around chatting and trying to enjoy the clam dip but not really. The dip was more soup than colloidal. The dip dripped off the crackers on to the rug and lovely clothes. Instead of using a carrot or chip to scoup it up, you needed a spoon. It became utterly unusable. Sigh. . .

         Not to worry, they’ll surely forget about this dippy disaster, after the wonderful meal I prepared. I slip back into the kitchen to check on things. I had put the rice on 10 minutes ago. It takes 20 minutes for this wild rice to cook and there beside the pot was the ‘wild’ part of the rice, which takes the longest to cook! How could I have forgotten that? I toss it in anyway, hoping that somehow it will cook extra fast.

         Then, I peak at the Beef Stroganoff: oh my God what has happened to this main dish? It smells divine but it looks like mush! It is not recognizable as stroganoff. It looks like the sour cream, instead of making this creamy sauce actually curdled in the pot. I’m now out of options.

         I return to mingle. 15 minutes later I slip back into the kitchen and prepare to serve. Everyone is seated. I’m using my best china. Troy is so proud of me. Little does he know that, well, this will be a memorable dinner but not like we had hoped.

         We all begin to eat. The broccoli is actually a gorgeous green and is delicious with the lemon butter, but I left probably too much of the stem on because the Executive Officer’s wife informs me that she only eats ‘florets’, not the tough stem. I’m mortified.

         The Engineer looks at the mess that is the stroganoff on his plate and sighs and says that he’s just sure that this will taste good no matter how it looks.

         Troy bites into semi-crunchy rice and tries to put on a non-embarrassed face, but he’s a mariner, not an actor and he looks absolutely baffled as to why his brain tells him that rice should be soft but his teeth are crunching on something.

         The rolls were okay, not burned, not undercooked. But you can’t hang a meal on rolls.

         That’s it: the main course is finally over! Hopefully I’ll wow them with my super delicious lemon meringue pie. So I clear the plates and head to the kitchen to begin the dessert part of the meal.

         I opened the refrigerator to pull the pie out and there it is, the final, friggen disaster!  I don’t make this pie often. I thought it would be delicious cold. I had no idea that when you put lemon meringue pie in the fridge, that really bad things happen. My once glorious, golden singed meringue is now deflated and has separated from the lemon pie filling and the entire filling has separated from the now semi-soggy homemade pie shell.

         I took it out and sat it on the counter and just stared at it.

         And then I started to laugh. I’m just sure that since this is the last visual food disaster, the evening cannot get any worse, so might as well find some humor in the whole evening.

         So, I make a very big deal out of showing them the pie and how bad it looks. I have to serve the pie in bowls instead of dessert plates because it is now pure lemony-meringuey mush. The navigator assures me that even though this pie looks like a train wreck, he’s just sure it will be delicious. And it was wonderful. I got the taste right but not the structure.

         And everyone else starts to laugh too. Then I share with them the chain of disasters of the entire evening starting with the cat. It helps them to understand why our place was so cold when they arrived.

         I have had probably thousands of dinner parties in a joint 20-year career with my husband and in the 20 years since we retired, but I don’t remember any of them. This is my most memorable dinner event because of the disaster cascade.

         I learned so much from that night. Sometimes adversity is the very best teacher, even when we are struggling with it at the time. Hopefully we can all look back with a sense of humor and remember how we felt and how, in the huge scheme of things, it really wasn’t that important, or disastrous. Difficulties are placed in our path so that we can see just how really clever we can become in a tough situation. Oh, and I never made that pie again. Whew! Learned that lesson!

KS&L 402 My Navy Cooking Disaster! Part 1 by Tina Erwin

       I cook a lot and yet I am still baffled by why so many things went wrong that night.

         I’ve been cooking since I was nine.  

         By the time I was eleven, I was able to routinely prepare an entire meal for six people night after night. So, I know what to do.

         I don’t know; there was just something about this one night that has perplexed me. Really, I know how to cook!

         It’s 1974, I know, the dark ages before cell phones, computers, iPads, laptops and YouTube. It’s so far in the distant past that it is also the time before microwaves, cable TV and Velcro. 

         Anyway, in 1974, my husband and I were both in the Navy, living in New London, Connecticut. He was a dashing Ltjg stationed aboard the USS Benjamin Franklin, SSBN 640 (Blue), as the assistant navigator. I was an Ensign attached to the Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Conversion and Repair, Electric Boat Division (where they actually build submarines). I was the Communications officer there.

         Since my husband was on what (and still) is called a ‘two-crew’ submarine, this meant that while one crew is at sea, the other crew is at home enjoying being at home. It’s also the time when you politic, enjoy your wardroom (or the officers on board) by entertaining.

         The Navy is a very political organization. The best way to politic is to entertain and the best way to entertain is to do so over good food. Quiet, intimate dinner parties with wonderful meals and good friends make for enhanced working relationships at sea. For the wives left behind, it helped us to help each other quite a bit more when they guys were out and we also really enjoyed being with such wonderful people.

         So one very cold, wet, wintery Saturday night, I decided to invite Troy’s Executive Officer (XO), the Navigator, the Engineer and their wives over for dinner. Dinner for eight: no problem!

         My menu was ambitious but not outrageous: Clam dip with crudités and crackers, wild rice, beef stroganoff, steamed broccoli with lemon butter, fresh rolls and home made lemon merengue pie for dessert. This is a pretty basic supper: no sweat!

         When you cook, timing is everything, so I decided to make the dessert first. Lemon merengue pie is not hard, but it can be time consuming. I made the crust from scratch, tough to do because as a newly wed, I didn’t own a rolling pin, so I had to use a drinking glass to roll out the dough, but no problem, I can be inventive. Then I needed to juice the lemons but again, I realized that here was another tool I didn’t own, a juicer, but I used a fork instead to get the lemon juice out. I can be clever. I got the juice. I also didn’t own an egg separator for the egg whites, so I used the shells. That always looks so easy on cooking shows, but the jagged edge of the shells has a tendency to snag that yolk. Egg whites don’t become merengue with egg yolk in them. After about a dozen eggs, I finally had enough ‘whites’ for merengue.

         The pie came out perfectly! It smelled glorious! I was triumphant! I let it cool on the counter and then later, I put it in the fridge to chill.

         Next, I followed my recipe for the perfect clam dip – which, in the 1970’s was what you served. I put that off to chill.

         Then I moved on to the stroganoff. I followed the recipe to the letter on this, no deviations. The aroma filled our little on-base house.

         I prepared the broccoli, managed to make the lemon butter and set that aside.

         Finally just before guests were due to arrive, I started the wild rice, again, following the directions to the letter, or so I thought. . . .

         It’s 15 minutes before guests arrive. The table is set, the music is on, the food is on track and Oh My God what is that smell!

         We had two Siamese cats, Sam and Mindy. Sammy was always a bit nervous. Once he saw another cat in the window and passed out cold. Today, he can’t get to the cat box because my sweet husband forgot and closed the door to the cat box room. This made Sammy so upset that he ran around the house screaming and let me tell you Siamese can scream, trying to get us to open the door. But I was cooking. Finally, he was so upset, he had diarrhea in my avocado tree, which was right next to the dining room table. He got our attention really quickly after that.

         Troy and I sprung into action. We then realized that the cat box room was closed off. Once we opened that door for Sammy, he stopped screaming. Then we rushed the plant outside. Once we were back inside we tried to do something to get rid of that staggeringly horrible smell. We opened windows, tried air freshener, opened doors – and it’s winter outside and the house is getting colder and colder and the smell is only mildly dissipating. Finally we found some air freshener and masked that smell. I think the little tree was toast.

         I rushed back into the kitchen and quickly put out the clam dip, crudités, crackers and napkins. Then the doorbell rings!

         See Part 2 next week. . . and yes, there really is going to be a point to this story.