TheSnackHound

One day, I was over over at a friend’s house and we decided we were going to bake cookies. My friend’s mom wasn’t home, but her dad was. We got permission, even though we really didn’t know what we were doing. Mr. Steve (we called the parents in the neighborhood by their first name but with their proper title) should have known that something was amiss. We usually were more interested in catching bugs for our pet frogs than we were with cooking.

Mr. Steve was a very tall man (over 6′ 4″). He worked for the government and I always remember him in a button down shirt. He also wore a huge Omega with a gold dial. It looked big even on him.

Prior to this, our greatest kitchen achievement was making our own playdoh or making papier mache. We decided to apply the same principles. We added water to most of a bag of oatmeal and stirred it up. I don’t know what we did, but the consistency was more like concrete. We stood on stepstools, not because we couldn’t reach, but because we needed the leverage. After the sounds of whispery chatter, a thud, and then laughter, Mr. Steve came down to see what the heck was the matter. He took the wooden spoon from us and “tried for himself.” He mixed up the “batter” a few times and could barely get the spoon out.

We gave up on cookies and put it in the oven as one big blob to see what magic could come from our wonderful creation.

A short time later, Mr. Steve came down in his jeans. He never more than halfway changed from his work clothes, as he was still wearing his work shirt. I don’t think I ever saw him in a sweatshirt, but jeans was even a rarity. Anyway, he asked my friend if he had put his watch on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t there.

Steph and I both looked at eachother. Oh no, it couldn’t be, could it?

We opened up the oven and stabbed a fork in the mess and there it was!! Oh we were going to be so dead. We fished the watch out and quickly tried to clean it up. We were surprised it looked so “clean.” We thought it would have all sorts of sugar or slime over it.

Mr. Steve took one look at it, and he didn’t get mad, but he said “It came out clean, so I guess the cake…or whatever it is…is done.” Guess we didn’t need the cake tester. It was more like mortar, anyhow.

Whenever I see a display of Omega watches anywhere, I think about tracking down Mr. Steve and sending him one.  In fact I was looking at The Watchery and there are so many styles, that I am having a hard time in my foggy memory remembering the exact specs on his. I think I am more amazed seeing the price tags that Mr. Steve was more bemused than upset back in the day. I remember his watch survived the incident cosmetically, but don’t know if it was ever “right” again having been subjected to 400 degrees for thirty minutes. Maybe watches that come with a good price tag hold up better?

Even so, just like a careful surgeon, I will make sure no hardware ends up in the patient again!

Who the heck is “Dinah?”   The second question that begs to be answered is : Who is in the kitchen with her, and why is it significant?

You may wonder just what I am going on about.
Remember the folk song?

Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah
Someone’s in the kitchen I know
Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah
Strummin’ on the old banjo!

The song is a temp change section of “‘I’ve been Workin On the Railroad.”   Kind of like how in “Last Dance,” Donna Summers starts out one way, and then everyone has been waiting until she gets to the uptempo part of the song.    Okay. Not really.  Bad analogy.   Truth be told “Dinah” had her own song, penned around 1840 and published in London.   We must travel back through history to have all those burning questions answered.

1) Does the “Someone” in the kitchen with Dinah, i.e, the phrase “Someone’s in the Kitchen I Know,” mean that someone is in the kitchen that the singer is well aquainted with?    Or does the singer imply that he/she “knows” that someone is in the kitchen.  They are aware of they whole “state of affairs” but they do not indicate who it could possibly be.

2)  In the 1800s, it would seem that kitchens were quite more utilitarian.  There were no large L-shaped counters with breakfast bar stools back then.   It was also awfully hot without air conditioning.  In otherwords, we do not “buy” the concept that Dinah regularly “entertains” in said kitchen.  The presence of a banjo playing person, or the fact that a person who is normally in the kitchen who suddenly breaks out the banjo, therefore, is highly suspect.    However, since Dinah would not have a radio to listen to while washing dishes, it is possible she sought alternative entertainment. Does this qualify?

This all leads me to believe that the song’s point was that this was not a usual occurence.  Otherwise, no one would have written a song about it.  Unless they just needed something to rhyme with “know” and   True there are other folk songs where not much happens out of the ordinary.   But it had to be something that stuck out a little in the writer’s mind to actually put pen to paper.

The original name of the song, I have discovered, was Old Joe or Somebody in the House with Dinah.  Ah-HA!   So it was JOE who was in the kitchen and strumming said Banjo.    When one question is answered, it opens a floodgate of many more!   Was he her dad?  Was he a wandering minstrel?   Was he trying to court her?   Was he the local crazy person?   Was this a commercial establishment and he worked there? We need to know!  It he was “Old” Joe maybe Dinah was very young and thought it was gross that this really old guy was interested in her.

Maybe I have left you with more questions than answers.  Never trust someone who seems to have a “useless information” area of their brains with this sort of thing.   Don’t trust anyone who just casually seems to always be carrying around a banjo…or a mandolin for that matter.

My mother-in-law is a good cook when thinks about it.

One would think that if they had tomatoes, ricotta cheese, veggies, and pasta, and didn’t have enough time to make a full lasagna, the following quick dishes would come to mind:

A quickie pasta primavera.  Afterall, water can boil quickly.
Italian panini.  I guess you could skip the pasta and grab the waffle iron.
Pita pockets with Italian stuff in them.
A salad (the fastest of them all if you also have lettuce.)

My mother-in-law doesn’t follow this chain of thought.

Two Christmases ago we had a pretty low key holiday.   We decided to make pizzas at home Christmas afternoon instead of going any place fancy.  We stocked the kitchen with various cheeses and veggies.  My mother-in-law brought over her new Presto Pizza Maker that she was looking forward to trying out, and we preheated the oven so we could cook two or three at once.

We couldn’t figure out why everything coming out of the oven was black as soot on the bottom, and the vegetables were rubbery.

“I was hungry and couldn’t wait,” my mother-in-law explained.  Then we looked at the oven and had discovered, once again, that she had cooked something at twice the heat and half the time to have something finish under the wire.

If cooking is an art, but baking, or anything involving crust, is a science, you can’t mess with science!