Housewifery

K.R.: We were at Popeye’s, and she pissed me off, so I bit her.

K.T.: You bit your girlfriend?

K.R.: Yeah, I don’t believe in hitting women.

Moment of the year right there.

***

Maybe it was the concussion, but I decided to cook Sunday dinner this weekend.

“Maybe” nothing, it was the concussion.

Innocuous menu really, pork spring rolls for appetizers, marinated chicken breast in bell peppers and mushroom, and pork fried rice. Based on how many people play football on any given Sunday, I decided on cooking for six.

Never again. Spring roll preparation took seven hours, with a break to have some cereal. Thin-slice the pork chops, then marinate to add flavor. Shred the lettuce manually, then prep the bean sprouts. Here, I screwed up, I could have left the tips on probably, but something possessed me, the spirit of idiocy. Good ninety minutes to take the tips off. Cooking some scrambled eggs to throw in, then flinging the entire mélange into the pan. Fry baby fry. Let it cool for a little while, let the spring roll wrappers defrost a bit. Then, scoop a bit of the filling into the shell, roll, seal, place on pan. Seven freaking hours.

The rest of the cooking preparation was another five hours. Cut up and marinate the chicken breasts, cut up the peppers and mushrooms. Make the rice (and never buy a Cuisinart rice cooker. On base cook mode, even with extra water, it burns the rice. What the hell, you manufacture the machine specifically to cook rice. It has one primary purpose, to cook rice. How do you screw up the primary purpose of your machine? How?) Take the leftover bean sprouts and cabbage, fry them up a bit to throw into the rice. Go buy some spicy peppers for flavoring.

Football resembled more an idiot’s venture than actual football (if actual football is the strange amalgam of rules we follow). Granted, on Sunday all I did was fall back in deep coverage and pressure C.H. And that sucked, really, he’d rather wobble a pass three feet behind me after falling back ten feet, instead of sucking up the two-hand touch sack. Fine, so be it. I proved that I can’t throw to any receiver not named S.P. This mental infirmity, once such a gleaming jewel in my crown, now hangs about my neck like a dead albatross, three weeks rotting and stinking to Topeka.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to D.C.’s fevered screams and orders for me not to tackle anyone head-on straight up, but I think I like the pain of it all, the getting knocked around and having those strange feelings spike into my mind. Not quite as nihilistic as Fight Club, but I think when I get knocked around, whether or not I make a stop, I feel a little more alive than anywhen else. Let’s face it, that reckless/pointless attitude is what landed me in the hospital; it was not the first tackle attempt, but the second immediately following, that led to the concussion. For all that we did, when I couldn’t tackle, it didn’t feel like football.

Thereafter, add about ninety minutes for the actual heating section of the day, and we’re talking over thirteen hours of cooking. Things to solve for next time (in ten to twelve years), how do you clean up all the congealed chicken blood that oozes out during the process of cooking? The little bits get stuck all over the food and resemble tiny dead maggots. How best to marinate pork, especially for cooking in other dishes? The pork turned out markedly tasteless both in the rolls and the rice, despite everyone’s claims that it tasted good (and thank you all, that’s why I will cook again in a decade instead of a score of years). Can I create a midget army to help me prepare spring rolls? Seven hours for one person, one hour for seven dwarves. However, does that make me Snow White?