A bridish day

Rebecca used to get a cooking magazine, our favorite part of which was the column were folks noted terrible cooking faux pas they had made as young brides. We read this with glee every month, and inevitably commented that WE would never do anything that stupid, and, “Did their mothers teach them nothing?” Well, I have not been a young bride for about forty years, but my dinner last evening would have qualified for that column. My intended menu was curried pumpkin soup, a rice dish, asparagas, salad and bread. At the store, as Tom and I were looking for the canned pumpkin, I said, “Now, we have to be really careful to get canned just-pumpkin, and not pumpkin pie filling.” Artichoke hearts were supposed to be a part of the rice, but they were outrageously expensive, so I decided to leave them out. The rice was a minor part of the whole thing anyway, and I was only making it because Rachael is unenthusiastic about soup. We got home, and I started cooking. Rachael came down and said, “Yummy! Are you making pumpkin pie?” I told her that no, I was making pumpkin soup. She looked a bit skeptical. I got the soup underway, tasted it for seasoning, and was aghast! I looked more closely at the can, and guess what it was! Not just-pumpkin. Quite discouraged, I got ready to remove the rice from the rice cooker, and prepare it with its herbs and vegetables. To my horror, rather than the fluffiness I expected, the rice was dry and hard. Rachael had wanted brown rice, and I have never mastered cooking it in the rice cooker. Yet another failure. The dressing I made for the asparagus was watery and didn't stick to the asparagus at all. It was late and I was so shattered by this time, that I didn’t have the spirit to bother with the salad. The bread, at least, was yummier than what one would expect from a new bride. Actually, I thought the soup was rather tasty too, although no one else seemed to be gobbling it up.

Naturally, in my undone state, I didn’t photograph this disaster, so here is a fellow who looks dressed up for a visit with the new bride at her first dinner party. Rebecca snapped him in the park near her apartment.