Last week I did a stupid thing. Well, to be honest I probably did several stupid things last week, but this was one of the stupider ones. The silly thing is, it didn’t start out being a stupid thing at all. In fact it might well have generally been able to fall into the “good things” column, a much-neglected column in the history of me.
Ah well, they say no good deed goes unpunished, so maybe that’s why I avoid doing them so much.
It was nothing special. I cooked the evening meal. And it’s not as if that’s unusual. I cook our meals a lot. With our current lifestyles it makes more sense that I do. Obviously, when I say I “cook” what I probably mean is “reheat” because nowadays I guess I do rather a lot more “reheating” than actual “cooking”.
I used to do a lot more actual “cooking” than I do now, although it was probably all variations on the theme of “one pot” recipes; Chilli, curry, casserole, soup. For years I’ve done Christmas Dinner for the few remnants of my family that can be gathered together on that day, but that’s never struck me as being overly complicated because I keep it comparatively simple. No Domestic God stuff from me, just an honest to goodness roast dinner.
Anyway, I decided to make a tiny bit more effort last Thursday than I generally do on a weeknight. Rather than warm through a pizza or heat up a ready meal as I might normally do, I excavated some of the “Debbie and Andrew’s” Sicilian Sausages (other much more inferior sausages are available) from the ice cave we call the freezer and set about thinking about what to do with them.
I toyed with something like a casserole by frying up tomatoes and onions and maybe doing some patatas bravas but decided against it in favour of the simpler option of sausages and sweet potato mash.
So after work was over for the day, I peeled the potatoes and sweet potatoes and left them to soak in some salted water until my beloved was home. Then, after a swift "welcome home" cup of tea, I shoved the sausages into the oven (so much nicer than frying, I find) and set about chopping the cabbage and started cooking the potatoes.
Half an hour later, all was going well. Everything was on schedule. The potatoes were ready about five minutes before the sausages, the cabbage was just coming to the boil and the plates were warming nicely. A plan, as they say, was coming together.
I drained the potatoes, added some butter and white pepper and mashed them in the saucepan and then put the pan into the oven to keep it warm.
Shortly afterwards, the timer pinged, so I extracted the sausages from the oven and put them on the plates, returned the potatoes to the hob and drained the cabbage and plated that up.
Then I picked up the saucepan of potatoes to dish them up.
BIG mistake.
I forgot, just for a split second that it would still be hot, about as hot as a metal-handled saucepan just removed from the oven could possibly be. Ironically, I had the oven protection thingy in my other hand as I did it.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
The evening meal was, as you can imagine, slightly delayed as I ran cold water over my hand for quite some little time, and plastered myself with as much salve as we could put our three remaining useful little mitts on.
So now my hand is branded and if you curl up my fingers as if I was holding something, there’s a perfect image of a pan handle to be made out. The blisters are fading, so no permanent damage has been done, but crikey, it didn’t half hurt.
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