Possumblog

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my wife?

I do. A lot!

So just because I'm going to say something about my wife's insistence on using the broiler pan to cook with, and the inevitable smoke alarm EEKEEKEEKEEEK sounds, does NOT mean that I don't love her with as much loving love as a loving lover-man can give a woman he loves.

Because I do love her.

A lot.

Anyway, after I got home last night from the first chauffeur trip, she and the kids had just gotten home from the grocery store themselves, and she'd brought home some very nice looking cow meat, and I was really hoping she was going to cook it in some way that didn't fill the house with the smoke of burning cow meat.

Because, you see, in my own very timid and backward way, I have in the past suggested--in as oblique a way as I know how--that maybe something might be wrong with the oven, since it never seemed to fail that when the broiler pan was employed by dear Miss Reba, the house is filled with choking clouds of smoke coming from the sizzling, broiling meat in the oven.

I have even shown her how you can put the strips of cowflesh in a baking dish, turn the oven temp down from "surface of the sun" to "blast furnace," cover the dish with some aluminum foil, and have perfectly satisfactory cooked cow meat, but WITHOUT large clouds of smoke.

Smoke which, by the way, sets off the shrieking smoke alarms throughout the house. The hallway, the kitchen, the laundry room, the den, the dining room, the garage. And that's all before it moves upstairs and sets off all of those alarms. And requires that all doors and windows be opened to clear the house and shut up the alarms.

It's really not that big of a deal.

I mean, just because the piercing EEKEEKEEKEEKEEK of the alarms feels like it's going to peel my brain hemispheres apart, it really doesn't hurt for long.

Really.

Anyway, after the inevitable recriminations that come about from making alternative cooking-method suggestions to one's wife (whom he loves) things eventually calmed back down and all was forgotten.

Which is, I suppose, why she got the broiler pan back out last night, greased it up with a spritz of Pam, and slapped those cow meats on there.

::sigh::

I did notice that she didn't set the oven control to "BROIL," although she did make certain the temperature was set just high enough to guarantee combustion. And thus, approximately 8 minutes into the process, there was smoke, and EEKEEKEEKEEKEEK.

"You know, we don't have to use the broiler pan since it always gets so smoky--we could always just use a baking dish--or I could even cook them on the grille!"

"I didn't have it on 'broil'!"

I learnt long ago the first rule of hole digging--when you get to the bottom, stop digging.

I dutifully opened the door from the kitchen to the garage and then the big garage door itself, while Rebecca opened the back door. The EEKEEKEEKEEK finally quieted down, and we were able to have a wonderful meal with cow meat having that sumptuous broiled flavor.

It was even better because I love my wife!

A LOT!

Posted by Terry Oglesby at January 12, 2007 03:49 PM