You Want Schnitzels? Go Pound Yourself.

My husband is a very easy man to please – gastronomically, anyway. He loves every meat, as long as it’s schnitzel, and every vegetable on earth, if it’s potato, and fried. And even though I hate cooking at the best of time, and schnitzels are the messiest, splatteriest, most annoying things to make, my greatest joy is pleasing my husband*. 

So every now and then, I will buy a mountain of chicken, and a huge pile of veal, and fry up enough schnitzels to last the year. Or at least feed my husband for a week or two.

Last night was one of those nights. I prepped the kitchen, pouring a mound of flour on one plate, a mound of breadcrumbs on another, and a bowl of whisked eggs in the middle. Then I added my secret ingredient , love (using ‘love’ in the sense of ‘combination of herbs, spices and salt’), and began pounding the meat.

Totally (not) my schnitzel

Now, let me tell you: I don’t like pounding the meat. Bits of chicken spray gets into my hair, and tiny shreds of veal get up my nose, and the whole thing is sickly carnivorous and gross. And then my five year old needed a bath, and my husband took ages to come and get her, and it was totally unfair because I was cooking him bloody schnitzels and the very least he could do was take one third of our joint offspring off my hands.

So I kept on pounding the meat, hard. Like, really hard. I wasn’t just pounding that meat. I was pounding my husband, and the bits of chicken spray in my hair, and the veal in my nose, and the whole unfairness of my life, of having to spend hours messing up my kitchen only to spend hours cleaning it up again when everyone around me just hung about taking it easy. I pounded and pounded until the kids became alarmed and my husband appeared before me.

“What are you doing?” he asked warily, looking as anxious as if I was wielding a mallet in my hands, which, of course, I was.

“I’m making you schnitzels,” I yelled.  “And you’ve forgotten about the bath!”

“I just ran it,” he said carefully. “Um... I think the chicken is ready.”

I looked down. The piece of chicken was in tatters. There would be no schnitzel for this particular bit of bird. There wasn’t even enough left for a nugget.

Chastened, I continued to prepare the rest of the meat. I dunked and I dipped and I rolled and I fried, and then I presented my family with a nutritious meal (using ‘nutritious’ in the sense of ‘containing trace amounts of protein amongst lots and lots of oil’). And then I sat down at the table with my own nutritious meal of Gin and Tonic and a slice of cheese (because I never wanted to look at schnitzel again), before rising seven minutes later to start cleaning.

It took one and a half hours. And another glass of gin.

My husband can be a very easy man to please. But next time he wants pleasure in the kitchen, he’s going to have to bite the bullet, and damn well please himself.

*Okay, so it’s maybe not my greatest joy, but it’s certainly up there in my top fifty.

Mummy's Special Diet Biscuits & Other Acts Of Devious Brilliance

I must say, Twitter teaches you the most amazing things. At least, it teaches me the most amazing things. I really can't speak for you. For all I know you're not even on Twitter, which means it's not teaching you anything at all.

What's more, it doesn't always teach me especially amazing things - it often teaches me things that are fairy mundane or just mildly amusing. But that's beside the point too.

What is my point actually is - and I really do have one - is that the other day, I had a very interesting Twitter discussion with some of my online buddies. It was about food, as many of my discussions with my online buddies tend to be. (To be honest, many of my discussions with my real life buddies tend to be about food too. I guess I'm just really interested in food [which is fascinating, as I'm not interested in cooking at all]).

I had Tweeted about my surprise that I had not lost weight, despite a week on the Central Coast with my mum and kids eating very little other than hot chips and apple pie (and, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner). I thought that chips were one of those foods that have negative calories - the more you eat of them, the less you weigh. Apparently I was wrong. Apparently it's celery (or kiwi fruit, or potato scallops - there was some minor controversy).

My Special Vitamins (half a dose)

This led to a mind blowing disclosure about the peculiar misconceptions other people believe, or perpetrate, about food. One Tweep, @ptmaree, told me about her friend who grew up being told that Kingstons were his mum's special diet biscuits, which made me stand up on my seat and applaud this genius woman whom I'd never met (or even knew the name of, apart from 'ptmaree's mate's mum').

Another, @propinqua, revealed that she tells her kids that Vita Weets are called Tim Tams, which demostrates a level of devious brilliance I had only previously suspected she had.

And then @duckformation - poor, tragic @duckformation - told us how her mother had always described fried eggs as 'special cheese'. She confessed that she had always had a difficult relationship with cheese since. Quite frankly, if I was her I would have had a difficult relationship with eggs, too. And my mother.

Happily, my mother inflicted no such cruelties on me, though we did regularly eat a 'meal' consisting of tinned tuna covered by mashed potato known by the improbably sophisticated moniker of 'Fish Pie'. I still can't be in a room with potato and tuna at the same time.

I have never, ever attempted to trick my kids, though. Of course, I tell them that my packets of dark chocolate bullets are my 'special vitamin pills' and my bottles of red wine are 'Mummy's health drinks', but that's not a lie at all. It's the absolute, honest truth.

And now I'm going to have some schnitzel. My husband assures me that it's the key to good health, and I want to do the best by my family.

Tomorrow I Am Taking A Lover

Tomorrow I am taking a lover.
Why? Because I CAN.
My youngest child is starting creche, my two big kids will be at camp before starting school the following week, and I will have time to myself for the first time in TWO YEARS. Time to do anything I like. Write. Read. Go for a walk. Get a hair cut. Or find a handsome man to come over and ravish me while my husband is at work.
If I like.
Of course, the day may not necessarily pan out like that. The way I see it, there are several possible scenarios:

1. I take my baby into creche. She sobs when I try to leave. I sob when I try to leave. The carers spend ten minutes prising us apart with heavy machinery developed especially for that purpose*, and I spend the rest of the day paralytic with grief, prostrate on my bed, until the moment it is time to pick her up again.
2. I take my baby into creche. She smiles and waves when I try to leave. I sob when I try to leave. I still spend the rest of the day paralytic with grief, only this time I feel a bit silly, as the carers assure me (every fifteen minutes when I ring) that my baby is perfectly cheery and having an absolutely delightful time.
3. I take my baby into creche. I decide it was all a horrible mistake and take her straight home again.
4. I take my baby into creche. I decide it was all a horrible mistake and try to take her home again, but she cries and says 'No mummy! Want kindy!' and I am forced to shamefacedly return her to the centre.
5. I take my baby into creche. We both sob a little and then we both recover and I go home to my 26 year old Italian lover Paolo**. Though I cannot actually go through with cheating on my husband, I do allow Paolo to fulfill his favourite sexual fantasy, which is to clean my house and prepare me food whilst dressed in nothing but a pair of black Bonds. After watching him vacuum and mop in his undies, I enjoy an excellent spaghetti puttanesca before picking up my calm, happy children.
6. I take my baby into creche. We both sob a little and then we both recover and I go home. I clean, do the washing, prepare some schnitzel for dinner, and wonder if I'll ever have time to get my hair cut.

Will keep you posted.
*"Maternal Bond Severance Equipment" or the like.
**Name changed to protect privacy***.
***Okay, name made up to give impression he actually exists.