It’s Cioppino Night! Yay and boo. I hate fish. This was a special scallop and clam recipe my daughter, her boyfriend, and George decided to cook. Our daughter gave George a couple of beautiful cookbooks on fish for Christmas. I guess she feels sorry for him. Oh, hell, everyone does.
Despite the dinner menu, I was looking forward to the get together. We were going to play cards, cook the fish soup, have a fire, and watch A Star Is Born. Sounds like fun, but what was I going to eat? Not to be outdone by their creative kitchen moves, I decided I’d make something special too. Pudding shots.
One of my best friends whipped up a batch of pistachio ones the other day, and they were kick-ass cups of delight. Served cold with a tiny plastic spoon, they made me smile. The quality of the spoon was also important. No ridges, not cheap, just a sweet little thing, soft and smooth. I got a 200 pack of these bad boys at the store.
Spoons and individual-sized cups purchased, I was feeling confident I would wear the sash home for best happy hour appetizer—Cioppino be damned. I bought my cool whip, graham crackers, limes and pudding and told George, who was going to the liquor store to pick up a special wine for the Cioppino, to pick up a bottle of the key lime vodka. George came home with regular vodka and chocolate liquor.
Negative two hundred fifty degrees below zero outside, I fumed as I realized I had a choice to go back out that day, or deal with it. This probably doesn’t seem like a real problem, but the thing is, George has a maddening habit of twisting any list or task. His methods are purposeful and devilish. He always apologizes when he screws up, but I don’t think he means it. The twists are just subtle enough to make it hard to complain. People pause and question me. Annabelle, it’s not that bad, why are you so upset?
Tell him to get paper plates which he has seen many times at the cabin, and he will come back with a pack of the cheapest, flimsiest plates, which you need a knife to stick between the layers to pull them apart. Like a biscuit. The layers are all naturally stuck together. Tell him to get toilet paper, (need I say it? A product he is familiar with), and he will come home with some one-ply stuff which you can use to exfoliate with. Tell him to get milk, he will get the wrong percent. Yogurt…the wrong flavor. Apples…the wrong kind. Tea….a green box doesn’t mean green tea, George!
It’s so hard to be angry over pudding shots. It almost screams fun. But there I was, fuming as I mixed my pudding listening to the Italian cooking music while the other three giggled and laughed, chopping fresh parsley, garlic and peppers. The elitist group didn’t offer help as I over poured the vodka and made the pudding too thin. They glanced at my outbursts of profanity with pity as I dished up the shots into their tiny cups and put them in the refrigerator. And when I pronounced that it was time to eat them, by my calculations, two hours later, they were still sadly runny. Luckily, we managed to suck down a few, but then I cussed and threw them in the freezer.
Cioppino served, games played, movie watched, I reluctantly looked into the freezer and there they were. Lined up like good little late-night soldiers. Frozen, not sad at all. PJs on, we finally ate them by the fire. I went to bed with my consolation crown, not for an appetizer, but for best dessert.
I win this round, George.
WINNING, WINNING, WINNING, WINNING, WINNING, WINNING, WINNING! (I wrote this last bit so I could get a better word cloud—can’t believe how many times I had to write it for it to overpower the word George. And then the tool at Prowritingaid.com kept placing the word Winning above or below George which was definitely unacceptable! Argh!)