KC Update: Part Two

It's 1:35 a.m. and I am back to strange sleep patterns because I don't quite have the structure to my days here that I do back home in Mankato. Sort of interesting to me that you can feel a lack of structure in your home town. This is probably due to the fact that I left, went out into the world, and became more of a big boy who developed his own way of doing things at his own pace.

This afternoon I planned on making some soup here at my brother's. Of course he had all sorts of "suggestions" aka "I'm-gonna-whine-like-a-little-bitch." He kept asking, "Where's the recipe? What's your recipe?"

"Chillax," I said.

"There is no recipe is there?"

I chopped potatoes as Drew and Bobby observed me getting more and more irritated with my brother who was looking over my shoulder, watching my every move, and wondering outloud how many stitches I would need while I kept chopping the two potatoes. I have probably chopped more potatoes and onions and garlic and mushroom than one person could eat in a life time. My history of working in restaurants did not matter to my brother though. I knew what he was up to. He was being big brother doing absolutely everything to piss off little brother in the name of trying to excercise some kind of power.

Let me describe my brother's kitchen. First off, remember that there are dead mallard and teal wing thumb tacked to the wall. There's a lot of counter space except that just about every inch is lined by empty beer cans or dirty dishes or some random food container with some random, spoiled food. Most everything is dirty or suspect and when I washed out the pot to make the soup, the pot my brother claimed to be clean, he called me a hypocondriac. When I rinsed the "clean" wooden spoon my brother said, "Jesus."

Jesus wouldn't dare eat at this house. Most cooks would look at this kitchen and vomit. Most human beings would consider cooking in this kitchen a little like cooking when you are camping. And when my brother reads this he will be horrified because I will have offended he good graces to let me cook him something that doesn't come out of a box; he will be offended that I have bad mouthed all that he has provided; he will say that I'm not respecting him.

Now, I can trash a house and live like a pig like nobody's business so I am not an innocent little lamb when it comes to filth. In the past and sometimes in the present, my apartment in Mankato is pretty notorious for being substandard and worse. Let's get back to the cooking scene.

Bobby and Drew have take cue to my extreme irritation at this point. Bobby asks if I need any help and Drew stands in the doorway keeping quiet looking a bit like he might have to break up a cat fight at any moment. I ask Bobby to cut up half an onion. My brother does not like the texture of onions. He bitches about there being too much onion.

I cut up half a toe of garlic. That's too much garlic, my brother says. This is gonna be another garlic and onion soup with too much soup. Why can't it just be a stew? I don't like soup, my brother says.

You are wearing me out, I say.

Drew knows what this means the most because when he and I cooked together at Kennedy's this was the token phrase I found myself saying before something grew wings and flew across the kitchen followed by a litany of profanity.

I decide this is the time to pan fry the Kielbasa in the stock pot. I do this to irriate my brother. The potatoes should go in first. Everybody knows this especially since Kielbasa is pre-cooked.

Then the potatoes and onions and garlic go in.

What happened to sauteeing the onions, my brother asks. He thinks the only way to liquifiy onions chopped finely is by sauteeing them.

It'll be fine, I say.

At this point I want to add some broth to the mixture.

That'll make it too soupy, my brother says.

At this point I am five seconds from hitting my brother in the face with the stock pot lid that's hot. I've seen this done to someone in real, commercial kitchen. It the worst thing you can do short of stabbing somebody.

I agree not to add any broth just to get my brother to stop his bitching and I know exactly what's going to happen to the potatoes. They'll turn to mush. They'll be mashable.

So the "stew" my brother wanted turned out to be more like mashed potatoes with sausage and tomato. It looked a bit like cat vomit. And my loving brother decided to eat cold pizza before even tasting what he bitched to high heaven about. I considered this a major insult, though I said nothing. I ate the stuff and it was good but a far cry from a stew though the flavor was just fine. My brother ended up eating the stuff straight from the pot on the stove after he had his fill of cold pizza. He said he liked it though it got a little dry. No shit. Really? Hmmmm. I told him I'm thinking of starting up a new Christmas tradition. We're gonna make that exact same thing every Christmas. We'll follow the exact recipe from today. It's gonna become a favorite. It's gonna become a Christmas classic. It won't be Christmas until we eat that sludge. Yeah, baby.