This past weekend, I took a much needed vacation from my family. I have been living at home for the past 5 and 1/2 months and while I love my family, I needed a break. So off I went for a short visit with friends. On the last day of my trip, I decided that it would be nice to make dinner for me and Kara, my dear friend with whom I was staying. I decided to cook chicken, wild rice and sauteed veggies - old standbys that are fast, easy and delicious. So off to the store I went.
I was making dinner while Kara was upstairs packing for a trip. I got out the pans and went looking for the things I would need to cook the veggies and chicken- salt, pepper and olive oil. I found the olive oil sitting on the counter and the salt and pepper near the stove. I cooked the chicken – browning it to perfection, making sure that it was fully cooked on the inside but remained juicy. I cut the veggies up, red peppers cut in circular patterns that looked like 4-leaf clovers, julienned zucchini and yellow squash sliced into half circles. I firmly believe that presentation is at least half of what makes food taste good, so I made sure the veggies were a combination of colors and patterns. I then sautéed the veggies in the olive oil and the rice finally finished cooking. I dished it all up on plates and it looked beautiful – honestly it could have been a picture in a magazine. I was pretty proud of myself.
We blessed the food and then dug in. I took a bite and it didn’t taste very good at all. I wondered if the chicken was bad, even though it was fresh at the store. Maybe the oil had gone rancid or something. I turned to Kara and said, “This chicken tastes weird. It is not very good.” I didn’t want her to fake politeness if she thought it was disgusting. By saying it myself, I hoped she would be honest if she thought it taste gross. Kara is so well bred that she would totally eat everything on her plate, even if it the worst dinner ever and be totally gracious, thanking you the entire time. She is just that type of person.
I then tried the veggies. They too weren’t that great either. Something just wasn't right. Kara took a bite and while trying to be polite agreed that it was not the best cooking. I took another bite, trying to identify what went wrong. I am typically a pretty decent cook and I didn’t think I was THAT out of practice. Plus it is really hard to screw up chicken and rice and sautéed veggies.
I took one more bite and proclaimed, “it kind of tastes like dish soap.” Kara raised her eyebrows and then asked what I had used to cook the veggies and chicken. I said “ the olive oil that was on the counter.” She looked panicked and said, “That was the dish soap.”
Apparently in Kara’s family they decided that it looks nicer to keep your dish soap in an olive oil decanter instead of the Dawn bottle. I agree that it looks prettier, but can I recommend that should you chose to do this, use a type of dish soap that is a color other than the one that looks JUST like olive oil – use green, blue, purple, even clear, but steer clear of the gold.
The good news is that dish soap flavored dinner makes water taste like candy! Water never tasted so good! I drank a lot of it too – close to a gallon of it (as that is the recommended treatment for accidental ingestion.) Needless to say, we threw away our dinner and scrounged up some leftovers out of Kara’s fridge. It is a good thing we both have a sense of humor.
