Well Barbara has left me alone for about nine days. When people ask, I blythely say "she has gone to Heaven". But before they can express their sorrows, I tell them that heaven is Palm Springs and she is having the time of her life. She is visiting her daughter, Mary, and my old friends Phyllis and Dan Reynolds who have been living there for about 3 years are planning on showing them all the good spots. After a harrowing 11 hour trip due to delays in connection at LA, Barb has settled in to the delights of fruit trees scattered around for anyone to pick and real snow-capped mountains only a couple of miles away. And best of all temperatures in the 60's and 70's which are no challenge to a gal whose blood has been thickened in New England most of her life.
With all the conditioning of a lifetime as mother and wife, Barb left me with a refrigerator full of packaged food for the next nine days. She made sure that three jugs of green tea were cooled in our outside refrigerator, namely the garage and finally a can of coffee and filters should I get a hankering for a fix of caffeine. But this lead to a series of adventures for this old city boy.
Now there have been times in my life when I had to resort to frozen dinners for my sustenance. But pre-cooked and packaged in aluminum foil and whatever are a challenge I was not prepared for. So this is what happened step by step and up the learning curve we go.
Removing the aluminum foil and the Saran wrap was merely child's play but now I come to find that the food was firmly stuck to the paper plate that it was placed on.`
Brute force did no good because that just resulted in more or less paper shreds sticking to the pile of food itself. So then let me just put it in the microwave and heat it for a few minutes.... result.. a smaller snowball and the paper still stuck on but more peelable. Ugh.. remove more of the paper and flip the food and back into the microwave for another couple of minutes...now it is fairly pliable but still pretty cool. Ok so it is a real challenge. Back into the microwave for five minutes this time. Wallah! Now it is completely heated, in fact hot as hell. But that is what the very cold ice tea is for.. to keep my tongue from blistering.
Now I can sit down to dinner. No problem except this one long shred of paper I kept chewing on before I realized what it was and also the lesson that meat tends to get very well done even in the microwave.
This is what I learned on the second day. I left the uncovered plate on the counter for a half hour before I attempted to unbuckle the food from the paper plate. Aha this time most of it came off. And there was only a golf ball sized snowball in the middle of the food. So I put it in for three minutes and stirred it when I took it out... looked pretty good so I put it back in for another three minutes.
Success at last except that the broccoli didn't taste the same somehow as when Barb makes it for me straight up.
But the paper was kept to a trifling minimum.
Now today I plan on unwrapping the meal and placing it on a towel on the counter for about a half hour... this should do a better job of defrosting and allow the paper to peel off 100% and result in a consistency that will allow for stirring or mixing at an earlier stage. Then I can put it in the microwave for only three minutes and eat a warm meal with out making it into shoe leather. If that does not work then Burger King here I come...
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