You know how you hear those stories of young brides who burn the casserole, or forget some essential element of their supper, usually on some special occasion… and we all laugh? When I was little, I often wondered what grandiose mistake I’d make in the first few months of my marriage. Now, I always grin at those stories, but, with all humility, of course, think to myself that it’s funny I’ve never really had a meal that completely and utterly flopped.

Unless, perhaps, you consider that orange chicken I made in the crock pot, served with noodles, to my husband of about a year and my little brother. The one we couldn’t finish because of the mental block–expecting the orange sauce to be cheesy with every bite and getting a burst of citrus instead. But that was more of just a recipe we didn’t care for than a mistake I made. At least, that’s what I’ve told myself.

Is over three years into marriage too late to have a classic I-completely-messed-up-dinner story?

Because I have one.

Earlier today, my friend Elizabeth mentioned that it was a rainy day in her Alaska home, and I found myself longing for the same kind of day here where I sat in a sticky 85 degree house. I turned on the air conditioner and was glad that I’d defrosted pork chops already, because I had in mind a scrumptious apple-y glazed pork chop recipe and it seemed perfect for my mood. Today was also John’s first day of Iraq training, so I thought he’d appreciate to come home to a relaxing evening and the aroma of a tasty meal cooking in the oven. I lit all of our Yankee candles (and the couple cheapy ones mixed in there :smile:) and turned on John’s favorite Southern Gospel music.

Then I started dinner.

Weird thing number one was that when I pulled out what I thought were three medium-thick boneless pork chops, what I found was six extremely thin chops, stacked two tall. Oh. Okay. The package probably said something to that effect, but I missed it apparently. I just altered the way I prepared them slightly, and stuck those chops, with apples, brown sugar, cinnamon and a bit of butter on the baking sheet I’ve used several times before… then put them in the oven.

Then I mixed up some corn bread and decided to make muffins out of it instead of using my square pan, and slid those in alongside the pork chops.

Everything was great. I pulled a load of laundry out of the dryer, straightened up a few things. I even brushed my hair to look my prettiest when that hard working Marine of mine walked in the door. I was feeling pretty good about myself and my accomplishments. I even thought, in actual words!, that I was doing pretty good today, that I’d been pretty productive, and how sweet I’d be for John when he came home. I envisioned us sitting at the dinner table over a nice meal, me telling him of all the things I’d done and seeing him smile at his industrious wife. Because, you know, my love language just happens to be words of affirmation, in case you couldn’t tell. :wink:

Then he came home, gave hugs and kisses to both of us here at home… and asked what he smelled. I told him it was pork chops. He paused and sniffed again, and said it smelled good. Then I walked into the kitchen. And just about choked on the smoke.

Apparently, the oven in this house is not level.

All that butter on the pork chops? (Not that I’m telling you just how much I used, because I wouldn’t want to distort the mental picture of us being health nuts.) It was all on the bottom of the oven. Step one was to open every window in the house before the smoke alarms went off, and step two was to pull out the somewhat, ahem, shallow baking dish, only to discover that it was time to take it out anyway, given the extremely thin cut of the chops. (Probably should have done that in reverse order, but my first concern was having our neighbors think the house was burning down.)

It was okay, though, because at least the chops were still perfectly edible, even if the aroma wasn’t quite what I’d planned and the apples didn’t get to bake as long as usual. Then I pulled out the cornbread.

I don’t know what happened to those corn muffins… but somehow, despite greasing the muffin tins and the fact that I’ve made corn bread and corn bread muffins a half a zillion times… the inside was just barely fully cooked, the tops were perfectly golden, and the sides were, well, black. Perfectly black.

I wasn’t too happy at this point. I even, much to my increased frustration, could feel my eyes smarting and welling up. I was not, NOT going to allow myself to be so silly as to cry over a smokey kitchen and burned corn muffins.

I set about tossing together the salad I’d forgotten in the midst of everything else, and opened my bag of baby carrots to slice for the salad… only to find them slimy and rotting and, in a word, disgusting. This was the bag I bought just a few days ago. I leaned against the counter, where John was beside me, busy holding a corn muffin and pulling off the outer “crust.” I took a deep breath.

So much for my nice relaxing evening and tasty supper.

Then John, after swallowing a bite of the inside of a corn muffin and setting to work on separating the next one from its burned sides, said, “You know, I’ve never liked that part of corn bread muffins anyway. It’s the part you just deal with to get to the good stuff. It’s a whole lot better like this.”

And he was serious.

We sat down to eat now-semi-cooled pork chops, half-crunchy-half-baked apples, corn muffins without the sides on them, salad with no carrots, and a bowl full of peas–hey, at least those turned out okay.

The candles were still burning and the music was still playing… and John was smiling at me, asking how my day was.

Then it was all better.

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