Ground Beef and Guilt Trips

Hell of a week so far. Long days and mom guilt nights. I'm certain there's a field trip I've forgotten to pack a lunch for, or a daisy scout troop I've neglected to send in a healthy, school policy mandated pre-packaged store-bought snack for this week. I've worked too many hours and come home late and taken business calls in the middle of spaghetti and homemade meatballs one too many times in the past four days.

My husband cooks and tends a mean bar in my kitchen, though. Thank god one of us read that part of the parent handbook that said meals should be provided on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong. If he didn't feed them, I would. But we'd just eat a little more like college students than we do now. And frankly, they seem to like boiled eggs, sliced strawberries and toast for dinner now and then when daddy's at a bike race and mommy cooks dinner. They like pancakes. And oatmeal. Who doesn't? I would honestly eat a baked potato with broccoli and ranch dressing every night of the week if I lived alone. Happily.

It's not that I don't like cooking, or even that I can't. It's just that I hate when the kitchen gets all messed up so I don't move out of my comfort zone (microwave baked potato), or use any more than two pans for any meal before stopping to wash up.

I was at Schnucks Wednesdsay night to pick up some ground sirloin my husband, the good cook and bartender, requested for his meatballs. And when they were out of the meat on the one tray that said "ground sirloin" I stood there frozen and slightly panicked, looking around for help.

Now, I have no business even approaching a meat counter on any other day. I see no reason to eat red meat unless it is filet bernaise from Sidney Street. I'm not sure what to even SAY to a real live butcher, except thank you (if he hands you a cold hot dog and you're five, and you're perched in the front seat of the cart at Kash n Karry in St. Petersburg, Florida).

Um, do you guys have any more of that back there? i finally asked the tall black guy behind the counter who had just returned from flirting with the fish lady at the next counter down from his. She was still saying something like mmnnnnnnhhhhhmmmm with her eyebrows raised high and her eyes on a tiger prawn, as he casually strolled over and stood behind his meat.

Uhhhh, naw. We don't had no more a that. The machine thing is broken.

So i asked him which one of the other two identical meats on either side of the empty tray was closest to ground sirloin.

Uhhhh, you want this one. It's 86.

I have no idea what that means, I said, mostly defeated by this venture. In the restaurants I'd worked at in college it meant we were out of crab legs.

What, you don't cook? he asked me. It's 86 percent lean. The other is only 79, so you want this one. It's closest to that one.

And he began to scoop the 86 percent lean brownish goo into a little paper tray, and he wrapped it with paper and taped it up.

Here you go, he said.

And I said, But I work--really really hard. Pathetic that time.

And he said, Somebody got to.

And I think I heard the fish lady say mmmnnnhhhhnnnn again.