Mixing it up on a Sunday morning

One of the things about living a bachelor life is experimenting with food in the kitchen.
In between shifting from one laptop to another and running from here to there, you tend to throw some things in the fridge to experiment with later. Going to the grocery store ranks up there with a colonoscopy, but sometimes I enjoy it if I take my time.
Going to the grocery when Taylor is home is a blast because she’s an impulse shopper. Little Debbie boxes typically are on my table when she’s in town, and random cereals. It always brings a smile to my face when we check out because, typically at her age, you don’t see people sneaking stuff into the cart.
But cooking at home is usually a one-way street for me. No matter what happens, I end up going the same way.
I’m a bowl guy. I love to eat out of a bowl because everything is mixed in there together. If you think about it, it all ends chewed up in the same place anyway. I’ve been around the people who don’t like their food to touch each other, and they eat methodically. I don’t get that it. It’s cute.
It's a Felix Unger type mentality. First I eat my peas, then I eat my potatoes, then I cut up my gently pan-fried chicken breast with lemon and rosemary and chew it in morcels so the flavors don’t get confused on my palate and in my brain. Screw that.
Cut that chicken up and sauté it in avocado oil with the lemon and rosemary, salt and pepper. When it’s about ¾ done throw in some kale and cherry tomatoes and a little red wine vinegar, and even the damnable peas if you want, and throw it all in a bowl on top of the potatoes. Splash on some Frank’s and get after it.
I do that with dessert, too. Last week was my birthday and I threw the strawberry rhubarb pie into a bowl, piled on some ice cream, cut it all in together, and down it went.
Even when we go out to eat and the restaurant puts everything on the same plate, nicely spaced and evenly portioned, I discombobulate that out of the gate. This food gets dragged into that food and that food gets pulled around the plate. I’m not eating a lot of bread lately, but that’s typically the brush that stirs the paint.
I’ve tried a few things that didn’t work out lately and that bugs me a little bit. I usually have a plan, and….aaaah, I never have a plan.
So I tried a pan quiche the other day where I heated up some veggies and herbs in a skillet on a bed of sliced roma tomatoes that were just placed in the pan with the avocado oil. Then I poured some whipped eggs with salt and pepper over the top to bind it all together. I thought, incorrectly, that I could just flip that like an omelet. But it wouldn’t release from the pan, so now I’m stuck right?
I waited a bit and since I couldn’t flip it over, the top egg wouldn’t cook. So, smartly I thought, I put a lid over the skillet, and the egg started to cook on top. Cool!. I added a little shredded cheese and put the lid back on. I would just use the fish spatula and slide it off onto a cutting board. Then cut it like a pizza. Genius boy.
But that Ninja skillet would not let go of my food. I tried working the spatula around the sides of the quiche, which I later learned from my daughter was actually a frittata, and not a quiche. Well, I didn’t set out to make a frittata, I set out to invent a pan quiche. It turns out that a pan quiche has already been invented. It’s called a frittata. Go figure. And apparently a frittata has to get some oven time. Ain’t nobody got time for dat.
So I finished melting the cheese, worked the elongated spatula around the edge and started to sense a little give. I took the skillet over to the cutting board and tipped it with the spatula underneath. It tore like a chunky mud slide and fell in a heap onto the cutting board. Fail.
I scraped the rest out onto my plate and piled it all up. A plate didn’t do this justice, so I grabbed a bowl and dumped it all in the bowl. Threw on some Frank’s. Blech…no bueno.
Now that skillet is my favorite cooking piece. It has never held onto food before, but by God, I found a way. It cleaned up okay. I never put it in the dishwasher. I just hit with that power spray stuff, a sponge and hot water, and rinsed it thoroughly. I dried it and put it back on the stove for the next disaster.
The Ninja will make a nice quesadilla or piece of cod or salmon. It sautés with perfection and can make a nice pancake. It’s even built for oven cooking, should I ever get good enough to move from the stove to the oven like Bobby Flay.
I’ve failed with many improv meals, but the great thing in my kitchen is if it doesn’t work out in presentation, it can always just go in a bowl. I’m not scared to mix it up.
Speaking of mixing it up, we’ve got a couple of former city officials who’ve thrown their name in the bowl for the next mayor of Fort Madison. I would think we may have others that do, as well, before the filing deadline. We’re starting to hear rumblings of changes on Fort Madison’s City Council, as well. Stay informed on this one, it will be interesting for sure.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com.