I concede and hereby promise…

I can remember only one other time in nearly 30 years of marriage when I cooked something so terrible that I wouldn’t let my family eat it. It happened again last night.

We all love American Chinese food. It would be so nice to have it at home now and then. I decided to try to make a chicken stir fry. So I researched several recipes and it seems that my missing ingredient in past attempts has been the oyster sauce. Ewww! but okay…I bought a bottle of oyster sauce at the grocery store and proceeded to follow my recipe.

So yadda yadda, saute the chicken. Blah, blah, cook the veggies. Then make this sauce. 3 T oyster sauce, sugar, ginger, dry sherry, water or stock, garlic, corn starch…Honestly I could not get passed the smell. What was I thinking? Well maybe it needs to simmer a bit. 5 minutes later the veggies are soggy and the sauce still smells. I dished it up anyways.

The guys came to the table, hungry. God bless ‘em, they both dug in. I took a few bites and asked how they liked it. Now past experience with eating whatever I cook has taught these two that they better find something positive to say. Andrew says, “It was better last time” (which consisted of chicken with a bottled General’s Tso’s sauce on it) and Scott says, “It’s okay”. I tried to take another bite and gagged. I said, “Well I think it’s awful! Don’t eat it!” They both released huge sighs of relief and pushed their plates away. “Let’s go out”, Scott says. “Yeah, Qdoba!”, says Andrew.

I couldn’t get the plates scraped, the garbage out and the dishwasher running fast enough. Then I lit some candles and Febreezed the place!

So is it a Chinese conspiracy? The ingredients in the grocery stores are so “off” that we all flock to the nearest “Golden Panda”? Well I don’t care. I will gladly skip any further attempts at “at home Chinese food”. I concede and hereby promise to stick to Italian with the occasional burrito, spanakopita, corned beef and cabbage and various other loosely related to my heritage foods.