Want a needlessly-complicated recipe to distract you from the real world while you try to assemble it? Indifferent as to how it will come out, as you've lost your appetite anyway? The Family Home Cookbook (director Melanie de Proft, 1973) has a couple of recommendations.
If simply heating up fish sticks and calling it dinner is not quite sufficient distraction from a crazy week, you can try turning them into an arts and crafts project.
Wrap the breading in more bread! Well, a crust, anyway. Because we all know that making a fussy pie crust and trying to shape it into anything other than "random amoeba that is kind of losing structural integrity" can really focus your attention on the task at hand.
And if you do actually manage to turn the crust into a viable shape, your fish sticks could come out looking like lumpy pigs in a blanket or maybe the cookies your weirdest aunt brings for Christmas that get quietly thrown in the trash once the party is over and she declines to take them home, instructing you to "Enjoy."
Alternatively, if you like mindlessly stuffing deviled eggs, but think the steps of boiling the eggs, disassembling the eggs, making the filling, and stuffing the yolk mixture back into the eggs again will be insufficient distraction, try Sardine-Stuffed Eggs.
They also give you a chance to fiddle around with opening and mashing cans of sardines for the filling. And the excitement doesn't stop there! You also get to cook and drain noodles, mix them with a homemade white sauce, throw the noodle assembly in a casserole dish, top it with the eggs, and bake the whole thing. You can even make toast points for serving. If you're lucky, you might burn the bread and have to make them twice. That's extra pointless work for a dinner that's already starchy! Plus, the casserole will come out looking like phlegm-covered rocks.
Not a bad visual representation of this week.
Mmm, bread covered bread. Noting like dry, nasty pastry covered with a slick of fish stick goo. Now I would just imagine people would use refrigerated crescent rolls.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to decide what the modern equivalent of toast points would be. They sound elegant, but they aren't really. Since people want less work with cooking these days, would it just be some fancy crackers, or toaster waffles cut into quarters?
Ha! While I like the idea of quartered toaster waffles, I'd have to go with fancy crackers or melba toast.
DeleteI agree. While the quartered waffles would be super fun, sprouted 12 grain emmer wheat crackers that cost $25 a box would be the modern equivalent.
DeleteSoggy fish breading under crumbly and hard pie crust seems like a metaphorically perfect way to head into the oncoming years.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I have to agree.
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