Further Cooking Adventures With Bonnie

"I'm going to try cooking a ham for Easter." Bonnie said. "How hard can it be?  Did you know that hams are already cooked?  Which makes me wonder why people recook them, but whatever.  It's got to be better than the corned beef I cooked in the turkey fryer on St. Patrick's Day!"

Wait......what?  "You cooked a brisket in a turkey fryer on St. Patrick's Day?"  I asked.  "Why? And how did I not hear about this?"

"Well, we were hungry and in a hurry, and I didn't tell you because you know how you get about this stuff.  I didn't realize how long it takes to cook brisket the normal way and I wanted to hurry things along.   I had heard somewhere that food cooks really fast in those things.  And it was outside, so it seemed, well, safe.   I think I got a little snow in there, or maybe it was still frozen when I tossed the meat in, which I now know you're not supposed to do.  I kind of blew a hole through our neighbors shed, but it didn't start on fire or anything.  I do feel bad  about their dog, though."

"Oh my God! Did you kill their dog?" 

"No, of course not, but he was outside  when it happened.  He was doing his business next to the shed.  I'm guessing I really did hurry things along if you know what I mean! They had a hard time getting him to go outside for a few days, but he's better now. They can get him to go out again, but he won't go anywhere near what's left of the shed,  or our side of the yard."

"Yet, you are willing to try cooking again!"  I marveled, thinking about the Easter ham.

"Well, we did just go out and by a new oven, and we have a free ham that I won in a raffle.  That's were I got the brisket too and  I have to learn to cook sometime!  By the way, how do get  eggs into the boiling water without breaking them?  I thought you might help me color a few Easter eggs while I was at it this year too.  The last time I tried,  I had all kinds of eggs and shells floating around in the water, and the eggs that didn't break all had cracks in them."

Candy Bars for Dinner

In 1579, English pirates raided a Spanish ship.

  Upon finding it's cargo of precious cocoa beans they burned the whole ship.  They mistook the beans for sheep dung.






That would never happen today.


I have chocolate on my mind, because my friend Liz, who has a big sweet tooth,  called this morning to tell me she ate two Hersey bars and some chocolate covered pretzels for dinner last night. She said this was the first time, or maybe the second time,  she had ever done this. Liz is the kind that always wants to order dessert first when she eats in a restaurant. "What? It's the best part!" she always says.

We found  the above story on line because Liz asked for confirmation that chocolate was "some kind of fruit or vegetable, right?"  She was trying to justify her actions.

It turns out, according to the Internet, chocolate is really a seed. Liz figures that the chocolate may have had more nutritional value than the corn dogs she had fed her family a few nights ago, and maybe she's right. Especially, she said, because she had a glass of red wine to go with her dinner.

"All those antioxidants!"  Liz was getting into it. "Maybe next time I'll have an Almond Joy instead.  You know, for the coconuts and almonds.  Coconuts are great for you and so are Almonds!" 

Well, she's not wrong.

 

 

I did say that if she does this again sometime-she could really even things out by having a vegetable for dessert.  She said I was a buzz-kill.