Silly Rabbit

Canned green beans are my favorite vegetable. I mention this because last night as Dan and I were discussing dinner options for tonight we circled around the choices in the freezer, me throwing out hints for red meat, Dan throwing out hints for dinner out at Hectors, and I mentioned that I'd like to have a side of green beans. The look on his face told me he wasn't pleased with my suggestion. We settled on a main course of cod. Dan mentioned that we didn’t have any breading and before he could finish his sentence (silly rabbit) I explained that he could make his own breading with bread crumbs and a little seasoning. With a slightly forced smile he said yes, he knew that. He was just mentioning that we didn’t have any prepared oven breading. Silly rabbit. He dug out the cod and put it in the fridge, and found a can of green beans and left them on the counter.

Tonight Dan skipped the gym. We have dear friends coming for the weekend with their kids and Dan was getting things squared away. I got home and dinner was 15 minutes from done. After a quick shower I came down to supervise final preparation. Dan was about to nuke the canned green beans, that I had purchased, and mushrooms before I explained that (silly rabbit) the slivered almonds need to be sautéed in olive oil, then the other ingredients need to be sautéed as well. Yes, they are mushy canned vegetables. No, sautéing them will not improve their texture. But it’s what I want, damn it. Dan complied.

After a minute of stirring the almonds in hot oil, they turned brown. “Are those burned? They look burned.” I saw the forced smile and Dan continued stirring.

Dan found a recipe for home made tartar sauce that involved capers, shallots and scallions. As he mixed in the last of the ingredients, I mentioned that if he had patted the pickles dry before chopping them the sauce would be less runny. The smile shrank.

The timer went off on the fish. Dan said it should have about five minutes to go—he had set it for the middle of the 17-25 minutes the recipe called for. As it wasn’t done, I explained that he needed to account for the thickness of the fish. The smile was now a small straight line.

With everything finally done a few minutes later, we retired to the Betty Room for dinner. I took a bite of beans and wondered what in the world he had done wrong. I blurted out “did you mix up the vinegar and olive oil?” (We buy our vinegar and oil from a specialty shop and the only indicator, besides consistency, is the color of the top wrapper – red or green. With Dan’s color blind disability it was an easy leap to think he had confused them.  Silly rabbit.) Dan explained that it was the green beans I had purchased, a can of mushrooms, slivered almonds and no, he knows the difference between vinegar and oil. After another bite or two, he got up and retrieved the can from the recycling. I’d bought dilled green beans—who would have thought?

And the almonds were perfect. And the tartar sauce was really good, too. And we have one more can of the dilled green beans. Damn it.