Spicy!

The whole house smells like I'm making chilli, and this is okay, because I am making chilli. It was odd then, that when I went into my spice cabinet I found three little containers of cloves (two of whole cloves, one of powdered cloves), three different kinds of pepper (red, black, white) three containers of paprika (two small, one large) and one large bottle of smoked paprika, ginger, basil, curry (yellow) tarragon, alum (I guess I was planning on canning), dill, sea-salt, regular salt, flavored salt, cream of tartar, parsley, basil, oregano, thyme, marjoram for pity's sake ...and yet no chilli pepper.

My spice cabinet is a testament to the power of disorganization in my life. I'm sure that I wound up with so much paprika because I baked something with paprika and then decided to do it again, and couldn't find the paprika, so bought another...and again...and so on. I'm not sure where the cloves came from though. I can't think of anything I've ever made with cloves. Maybe cloves are like odd socks and just reproduce when you're not looking.

But more than disorganization, the spice cabinet testifies to my frustrating journey through cooking. I'm not a natural cook. I don't really enjoy cooking; I enjoy the final product of cooking well enough, but cooking itself is a frustrating trip though the perilous waters of "I thought I had that in here somewhere." It never fails. I'm in the middle of cooking up an elaborate dinner when I realize that I need something stupid and essential that every chef who ever wrote a cookbook naturally has on hand. Something like olive oil (two open containers in my pantry at the moment), or white wine vinegar (got it), or oyster juice (ugh),or truffle oil (not a chance) or leeks (aren't you supposed to stick those in your hat or something?) The problem with buying such crazy, exclusive, and yet supposedly needed items is that I will use them once, and then they sit in my pantry, or in my spice cabinet as a silent, accusatory reminder that I don't try hard enough...and no matter how much I beat my children, I can't force them to eat my culinary masterpieces.

George will eat my cooking. He really appreciates a good home cooked meal because he's rarely home for dinner, and doesn't cook in any case. I eat my cooking, and even like it when I'm sure that the meat hasn't turned on me. I've been told that I'm a good cook on occasion. But when all your kids want to eat when you make Chicken Marsala is the wine-drunk mushrooms, you question the necessity of cooking at all. Perhaps I should just marinade some fungus and fry it up and serve it on a paper plate. The kids would probably be happy with that.

Even something as simple as chicken fingers has caused me trauma. I like chicken. Kids like chicken. They especially like chicken if it's unrecognizable (nugget or strip form) and so,  I found a great recipe (or so I thought) for chicken fingers. These little beauties  were tasty, flavorful, homemade and (important!!!)relatively easy to make. What's not to love? I even whipped up a batch of honey-mustard (yes, I know you can buy it) and when I was done, there were enough left over to freeze some for future meals.

There's a reason that these tasty treats are often referred to these days as 'chicken strips.'

"EW! Chicken fingers? That's gross, Mom!"
"Those poor chickens....Wait. Chickens have fingers?"

Chicken fingers were not a rousing success. The kids would rather eat KFC and not have to worry about what part of a chicken the "tender" is.

But whatever part of the chicken a "tender" happens to be, if the Colonel ever runs out of his eleven herbs and spices, he can probably find them all in my spice cabinet. I'm not using them at the moment...unless he finds the Chilli Powder. That one is mine.

FOUND IT!!!!