The MOST Unnecessary Cooking Tip...Ever.

Good evening!

Those of you who follow this blog know three things about me:  

1)  I do not do well when I have to wait in a line.

2)  I hate Pick n Save, and especially the one near my work which I call the "racist" Pick n Save because the soda, liquor, junk food and FRIED CHICKEN is in the front of the store while the fresh fruits and veggies are relegated to a back corner that's actually blocked off from site.

3)  I'm a terrible cook.

The last one is especially true.  I'm not so much terrible as I am uninspired.  See, like every home cook, I have six recipes in my head and about another half dozen I can look up quickly and generally have everything I need on hand.  BUT, a couple years ago, Hubby went vegetarian on me, which wiped out every single one of my recipes.  Thusly, for the last couple years, not only have I been not a great cook...I haven't really cooked much.

Case in point:  Last night, deciding we can't get yet another cheese pizza, I decided to try a little creativity in the kitchen.  Hey, I'm a writer, I'm creative, I should be able to build a recipe with what I have in the kitchen.

I came up with a casserole, the food of my PEOPLE, and I called this wondrous thing: STUFF IN BOWL.

I can't remember exactly what I put in there.  It started out as some sort of tuna/rice casserole and wound up being a "clean out the fridge" sort of collection of ingredients.  I'm pretty sure nacho sauce was involved.  

It was NOT a rousing success.

So today I decided I would do a bit better.  I did manage to come up with a recipe for vegetarian tater tot casserole a few weeks back and everyone seemed to like that.  So I went to the Pick n Save by my work, against my better judgement, and I picked up everything I needed for dinner, plus a couple more items.  I broke my golden rule of shopping at that stupid store:  I went over 15 items.  And thus I was forced to wait in line behind the senior citizens who pay with a check, never have two forms of ID, and have 97 coupons, half of which are expired, and yet they feel the need to debate all of them.

After waiting in line for roughly half my lunch hour, it was finally my turn.  I loaded my stuff on the belt, waited for the woman to scan everything, and paid her.  Then, it happened.

We have Cream of Mushroom Soup? WHERE IS THAT?

The woman bagging my groceries  (my other rule is that if I MUST shop at Pick n Save, I WILL go to the aisle with a bagger.) was studying my items.  Seriously. She was STUDYING my items.  I felt like I was in that SNL skit where their at Target and the cashier runs away to get something off a shelf.

I must have made some sort of noise that resembled that of a dying goose...or possibly what I thought I was screaming in my head, "YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS RIGHT NOW!"  came out in actual out loud verbabl words, but the bagger looked at me.  

"Oh yum," says she, "I love those taters tots!"

"Oh?" says I, barely keeping a grip on my patience.

"Oh yeah...you put them in the oven, you know."

I smiled and nodded, but inside my head was EXPLODING with snappy comebacks such as, 

"Really?  I've been eating them right out of the bag."

"Oh yeah?  Well, see, I was planning on setting them out in the sun to solar cook."  (See that's funny because we in Wisconsin don't get much sun January-May.)

"An oven?  Oh, wait, tater tots are food?  Geez, I've been throwing them in the drier like drier sheets!  The laundry gets greasy, but everything smells so good!"

But mostly, what I wanted to yell was, "YES, I KNOW!  AND THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME THE MOST UNNECESSARY COOKING TIP EVER!"

I have really got to start looking into Peapod.