The Knife Fight in the Kitchen

So just to clarify there really was no knife fight between Steve and I, but to look at us, you'd wonder what we've been doing to ourselves/each other.  Truth is... we are both amazingly uncoordinated (how we managed to have kids, I'll never know, but it was probably like watching a new genre: romantic comedy- porn).

You see what actually happened was... Steve tried to make a Smorgasbord.  If you've hung out around my place lately, you'd find this is my favorite way to feed the kids lunch or a disorganized dinner.  You see nobody likes leftovers and nobody likes just sandwiches.  My solution has been to pull out the largest  cutting board I have and slice up french bread (or some other hearty crusty bread), cheese, sliced deli meat, veggies and fruit.  Then yell "SMORG!!!" at the top of my lungs and chase the kids around the house doing an impersonation of the Swedish Chef "Bord, Bord Bord... smorgasbord." [Oh, I'm sorry did you think I was normal]... On occassion the smorg will involve leftover chinese food, meatloaf, etc... somehow disguised as foreign cuisine... nobody cares and everyone eats it.  

Before anyone attempts to imagine Steve mimicking that whole scene... He got as far as cutting the bread and slicing cheese.  Unlike me, he got out the cheese slicer (I use my Santuko knife for EVERYTHING)... and apparently it's a really sharp cheese slicer because when he got to the Monterrey Jack cheese, he sliced open his left thumb.  Sadly, this lead to later amusement, because I'd invited my parents to dinner. [more on that later]

Coming to my own dangerous experience... I wasn't even using a knife.  Instead, I was making a modified version of Texas Caviar as a side dish with our grilled/rotisseried chickens.  Upon opening up the first can of beans , I grabbed a spoon to scoop those last few black beans out of the bottom of the can.  Being ever unobservant, I felt a paper-cut like sensation on my right middle finger (yes, there's irony to this too)... and realized I had sliced open my knuckle on the lid to the can.  I diligently washed and cleaned the wound and presented it to Steve for band-aid assistance.  The irony here is, it took me 5  minutes to locate him... he was taking a trip to the dump (ahem, making a deposit... ahem, you know, pooping!)... There are times for privacy and frankly people, I was trying to make dinner  and pick up around the house before my parents came over, so sorry Steve... I barged right in, middle finger in the air... "Steve I need your help..." Well, maybe it's not exactly ironic that I needed help with a band-aid on my middle finger while Steve was pooping... maybe it was Murphy's Law... but overall, it was pretty much par for the course around here.

So we invited my parents for dinner... my parents haven't been to the house since January, because they just returned from 2 months in Florida.  Steve wanted to rotisserie a chicken on the grill and had me buy 2 chickens (apparently the rotisserie is more effiencient that way or some such engineering type explanation). However, there's no way the 4 of us can eat 2 chickens (and leftovers would lead to another smorg, which apparently is very dangerous).  I decided  that my role with the chickens was not to micromanage... I'd offer him what seasoning mixes we have, but the whole prep, cook, cut and clean up was on him.  It actually worked out pretty well.  And here's where I get to take credit... I prevented Steve from using his psychic doneness powers (which tend to detect overdoneness) and gave him a instant-read meat thermometer.  The chicken came off the grill at an internal temp of 175 and rested up to 180... perfectly moist and flavorful!  He wanted to leave it on the grill until it reached 180... has this man NEVER watched Alton Brown?  Thanks to my Food Network addiction, we had some GOOD EATS last night.  Had Steve not followed my instructions, perhaps it was the scary glare I gave him, and the meat had been overcooked, there might have been a knife fight in the kitchen... no not really... but I would definitely have cut him with my caustic sarcasm about how juicy the meat ended up.


So if you're wondering how all this ended up being amusing... Steve kept having to touch the raw chicken, which is partially why I recused myself from the situation... I had no desire to reach inside and "save the giblets!"  He found my box of disposable rubber gloves just for this sort of thing (also mixing meatloaf and chocolate chips into cookie dough... ew!). At some point after arriving (and doing her garden inspection tour) my mother noticed Steve was wearing one rubber glove.  I really wanted to tell my mom some ninja movie watching inspired knife fight had ensued and watch her get all flustered, but Steve jumped in before I could explaining it was a cheese slicer and he didn't want to keep getting his hand wet.  Okay, so maybe not quite amusing but it could have been good.  It did distract my mom enough that she didn't notice that there was a real table cloth on the table and that I'd ironed it.  In which case, I had planned to tell he Steve was getting transfered to North Carolina and we were moving.  Yeah, with Natalia moving to Tanzania...that would have been freaking awesome to sit back and watch!