“I think, Katie,” Mr. Oliver announces over dinner one evening at our favorite restaurant, “that we need to economize. Save a bit of money.”
I look up from my lobster and regard my husband quizzically. “Indeed? And why is that?”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” he retorts. “We dine out three nights out of five. And that doesn’t include Chinese takeaways, or lunches with coworkers, or McDonald’s on the weekends. It’s expensive, and it’s not particularly healthy.”
“By the time I pick up the kids, stop at the grocery store, and get home,” I say defensively, “I haven’t the energy to do more than bang a frozen meal in the microwave or slap a sandwich together.”
“Well, as to that,” Mr. Oliver says, “I’ve been watching one of those cooking shows.”
I suppress a groan. Nothing good ever comes of Mr. Oliver watching a cooking show.
“You can make lots of things in twenty minutes or less,” he remarks. “People [by ‘people,’ he means me] think it takes all manner of time to put a meal together, but it doesn’t. For instance, on the show they made a veggie stir-fry in in ten minutes. Ten minutes!”
“And did they include the time it takes to wash, peel, and chop all those vegetables?” I ask irritably. “Or the 45 minutes it takes to cook the rice to go with it, if –” I glare at him “someone hasn’t burnt the bottom of the pot beyond recognition?”
“Well, no,” he admits. “But they make instant rice now. You only have to microwave it. The problem is,” he accuses me, “you can’t be bothered to cook.”
“Is that right?” I fix him with a gimlet eye. “I have an idea, then. Starting tomorrow, you’ll fix dinner. In twenty minutes’ time,” I add. “And no omelets or pancakes allowed.”
He looks like he’s just swallowed an olive whole. “Me? But I can’t cook! Not unless you count my world-famous beef bourguignon-”
“-which takes a great deal more than twenty minutes,” I point out, “not to mention my kitchen looks like a crime scene by the time you finish. No,” I say determinedly, “you’ll make something quick and healthy… and you’ll do it in twenty minutes flat.”
He meets the challenge in my eye and accepts the gauntlet I’ve just thrown down. “Very well,” he says, and shrugs. “After all, how hard can it be?”
I smile. This is going to be fun.
When I arrive home with the kids the next evening, Mr. Oliver is already in the kitchen. An assortment of naked vegetables – carrots, celery, onions – sits on the countertop alongside a lethal-looking chef’s knife. The water is running in the sink.
“How’s it going?” I ask. “Anything I can help you with?”
“No,” he says grimly, “I can manage, thank you.” He pauses long enough to pour me a glass of room-temperature Pinot and shoos me out of the kitchen. “Go in the den. I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”
“Okay.” I sip the wine and think, I could get used to this. “If you need the wok, it’s under the sink.”
“Thanks,” he says, his face like thunder, “but I’ve got it under control. Now please leave so I can get on with it.”
“Okay,” I agree, and depart with my wine to the den. I’ve just sat down and turned the television on when I hear a curse and the unmistakable clatter of a knife.
“Bloody effing hell! Katie,” he bellows, “where the hell are the bandages? I’ve cut myself. Blasted, effing, stupid knife-”
I sigh and make my way to the bathroom, where I grab a bottle of mercurochrome and a box of bandages and hurry into the kitchen. It looks like the set of Friday the 13th. Water boils madly on the stove; blood splatters the countertop like a Jackson Pollock painting, and the chef’s knife that caused the carnage is abandoned on the floor.
“Well, don’t just stand there!” Mr. Oliver snaps. “I’m bleeding, damn it!”
As I clean the wound, I ask him what he was doing when he cut himself.
“I was peeling the carrots.”
“With what? A machete?”
He glares at me. “With the chef’s knife.”
I sigh and wrap his finger in gauze. “You’re meant to use a paring knife, you idiot. No wonder you cut yourself.”
I go to the stove and check the boiling pot. My worst fears are confirmed when I see that the rice inside is a sticky, gummy mess, and the bottom of the pot is burned beyond redemption. Before he sliced his finger, Mr. Oliver managed to dice up half a carrot and a stalk of celery, so I find the paring knife and begin chopping the rest of the vegetables.
“Heat up the wok and put some oil inside,” I tell him. “I’ll finish up.”
Twenty minutes later, the kitchen is restored, dinner’s on the table – quick-cooking couscous topped with stir-fried carrots, celery, onion and slivered almonds, all of it doused in some bottled teriyaki sauce – and it’s not half bad. And it didn’t take that long (even if I did have to make it myself).
As for saving money – well, the pot had to be replaced, as did the box of gauze. But Mr. Oliver was forced to admit that cooking dinner isn’t as easy as it looks, and that fresh vegetables and good-quality olive oil aren’t as cheap as one might think. Still, despite the kitchen carnage, he’s made his point.
Dinner really can go on the table in twenty minutes’ time – as long as I keep my husband well away from the chef’s knife.
So now I cook most nights, which saves us some money, and (more importantly) saves my kitchen from becoming a nightly CSI crime scene.
I look at it this way. As long as he gives me a peck on the cheek and hands me a glass of wine on my way in to the kitchen, Mr. Oliver has more than done his part.
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