Day One Part 2

Before I continue, I need to add a few more things. My bratty younger sister Sarah thinks it's important that I mention how I almost killed the entire family after making a Banana Vanilla Wafer Meringue pudding. It was an error any teen ager could have made and I don't see the need to dwell on past transgressions. Suffice it to say someone put Ivory soap liquid in a cup and I thought it looked a lot like egg whites. My dad was the only one who finished the pudding, but I digress.

The other important thing to note is that I do not expect to get through this entire cook book in 40 days, but rather I would like to learn to make soups and antipasti. This seems reasonable.

I decided to begin with something very easy. It was a prepackaged fast grain (faro, black eyed peas, kidney beans, lentils) soup that promised it was so easy a child could do it and it would be ready in less than 30 minutes. At 11:00 I told the Stoic One I was going to begin on my cooking adventure and I would have lunch on the table in 30 minutes...great he says. The owners left us some great bread, and fruit so our "pranzo" will be complete.

Lesson number one...Check to see if the kitchen has the cooking items you need...like knives.  This was an unexpected obstacle. All that was in the kitchen was a large serrated bread knife, 6 serrated steak knives, and that was it as far as the knives were concerned.

Okay that knife looked normal, but when it came time to chopping...but wait, you'll see.

I was determined, so I carried on with my preparations.. Finely dice one carrot, one stalk of celery, one onion and saute.....hmmmm...Chopping a carrot with a steak knife was not at all easy. Did I mention the recipe called for "finely diced"?

I gave it a valiant effort. The Stoic One was in the living room reading. Luca seemed particularly worried with me in the kitchen.

Okay, the celery, no problem. I mean I wouldn't call it diced...who came up with that word anyway, I would call it more sliced. Ok...carrying on to the onions, a bit scary looking but no problem. Then came the carrots. Too put it nicely, they were mangled, torn, anything but diced. I cooked them for a while, took them out and then thought I did a good job of dicing! Here they are.

It was at this point that the Stoic One came back. "How's it going" he asked as he peered into the pan. These sautéed vegetables were to be added to the beans once the beans were cooked.

Fine, I said. The color is nice. Hmmmmmmm. Then ever so gently, "Do you think the carrots will cook in the next 15 minutes? I think the recipe says saute for 15 minutes."

I burst into tears. "It's not my fault. All of these things are out of order. I can't remember what comes first. This is a disaster. Maybe I have early dementia."

He looks at me, hugs me and says, literally with tears in his eyes. "This must be very scary for you." I mean, really, does he think I have dementia? Just because I can't dice carrots with a serrated steak knife? The fact that I did not pick up that frying pan and hit him in the head was a testament to how heavy the pan was.

"Let me help," he offers. "Let's make some broth to go with the soup as I don't see how the soup is going to turn into soup."

He found these little broth cubes in the cabinet, and even though I thought it was cheating, he whipped it up so we would have some soup to our soup.

Then he looked at the beans. "How long are these supposed to cook?" he asks benignly. I say 20 minutes. They're almost done. He says, "Taste one." Hard as a rock.

2 and a half hours later it was 1:30 and things still were not ready.
"You know there is a restaurant that we can walk to and we can just let the soup rest for a while." I sigh, thinking I also needed to rest for a while and think about this adventure.

We walked to lunch and one of those fantastic, simple Sicilian meals. Probably done in 30 minutes or less.

I am not giving up. Tomorrow I am off to buy a knife and go to the butcher's to get meat to make real meat broth. At this point my vacation will be over before I make one dish!