From the Fitch's Kitchen

There I was, standing over a lump of frozen ground turkey simmering in a Pam-covered skillet on the stove. “I am a disgrace to my mother,” was all I could say while my husband kept looking at me saying “I’mmmm soooooo huuuuunnngggry.” He could have, and would have, cooked, but I really wanted to. I found a Turkey Burrito recipe in a low-fat Betty Crocker cookbook that I really wanted to try. I’m glad I tried it – it was good and Trevor liked it. Plus it was fast. Prep time, Betty estimated, was about 10 minutes and cook time, about seven. The recipe probably took me about 30 minutes total. Not bad for a first timer.

Tonight’s Turkey Burritos taught me a lot. First, I realized I am not a graceful cook quite yet. When I discovered the turkey was frozen (not my fault by the way – I put it in the fridge to thaw before I went to work this morning) I chopped at it with a spatula for minutes. When that didn’t work, I got out the largest knife we had and chopped it into turkey chunks. It eventually thawed, but it took some time.

I also remembered I am a panicky cook. Once that timer starts buzzing at me, I start get overwhelmed. If the oven timer and microwave timer go off at the same time, I go bonkers. If it's an evening we have company over and two timers are beeping at me and everyone's hungry, I freak. Tonight I stood at the stove for about two minutes with the microwave timer going off and didn’t do anything about it. The timer was probably four inches from my head. I never did anything about the microwave timer. Trevor did. I was busy (chopping up the frozen turkey).

I also realized you have to have confidence in what you cook. That sounds really stupid, but I kind of mean it. Maybe daring is more like it. Trevor’s said before he doesn’t really like ground turkey in tacos and stuff. But I moved forward with the recipe anyway. When he said he was STARVING and I told him I was making turkey burritos, I was seriously thinking, “thank goodness there’s a CPK pizza in the freezer.” He didn’t say anything about it bring ground turkey and really enjoyed it. Things might have turned out differently, but that’s okay. You have to try a recipe to know whether or not it’ll be on the kitchen table again, right?

There’s two things I think of when I cook. The first: my mom makes this broccoli cheese stuffing casserole (I think that’s what’s in it) that’s just awesome. When I was in college a few years ago I called my mom for the recipe. I remember her telling me that was one of the first things she made after she and my dad got married and my dad HATED it! The random ingredient goodness ended up being at our house several times a month because we all fell in love with it when she experimented with the recipe years later. The second funny story was very recent. I have no idea what we were talking about or where we were, but before the wedding my mom, dad and I were chatting. All of a sudden my dad said, “you know, when we were first married your mom couldn’t cook either.” My mom and I were both insulted.

Thanks for indulging me in this very long post!

~Wendy


Picture from our first dinner party: December 17, 2005