My wife’s birthday was the other day and that meant she got to choose whatever she wanted for her birthday dinner and it was up to me and the kids to make it happen. Normally this is not a problem. If she wants chicken enchiladas no problem. If she wants a nice little fillet and a pasta salad I’m on it. I remember one year I fixed her a big batch of Chicken Alfredo without as much as a grimace, but this year was different. This year for her birthday she wanted kabobs.
I don’t know why I have a problem with kabobs. But whenever I even start to think about all the frilly steps involved in fixing them, just to make them nice and pretty, I start fueling this tiny knot of anger deep in my belly until it is a roaring inferno. I don’t like to put on airs and to me kabobs are the ultimate in wasted time and energy just to be showy. If you want a hunk of grilled meat with vegetables then grill up a big chunk of meat and cook some veggies. Why do we have to put it all on a stick when we are just going to take it off and eat it?
Any how I was having bit of a personal crisis. The closer I got to my wife’s birthday the more out of sorts I became. I don’t know what my problem is. Even with College Psychology 101 through 103 under my belt I had no clue as to why I get so angry about kabobs. Maybe it was my teacher in the Marine Corps Cooking School who messed me up. He was a big brut of a staff sergeant who had cooked hot meals on the front lines of Viet Nam and Korea. He told me one day that my relish tray, that I had put my heart and soul into, looked like (expletive)! They have a way with words in the Corps. From then on I don’t think I paid much attention to presentation.
Her birthday arrived and she had a big leg of lamb thawed out and about a pound of shrimp shelled and ready to go when I got home from a hard day of cutting up meat for the masses. I pushed the anger down, got complete control of my emotions and went to work. I boned and trimmed and cubed the lamb for kabobs, making cute little one and a half inch chunks. Then I had one of my big girls cut the red and green peppers and purple onions into 2 inch squares. I then placed the cute little lamb cubes into 2 cups of soy sauce, 1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar, 1/4 cup olive oil, one level teaspoon of garlic powder, one teaspoon of onion powder, 1 teaspoon of curry and a generous amount of black pepper (to taste).
I allowed the cute little chunks of lamb to soak up the goodness of my tried and true marinade while we skewered the shrimp and veggies. One piece of pepper and then one shrimp and then another square of pepper of another color and then another piece of shrimp and then a wonderful purple piece of onion and so on until we had several beautiful sticks full of colorful goodness. We shook a little salt and pepper over the shrimp kabobs.
Once the shrimp kabobs were laid out in a pan we began to skewer the lamb. One little square of pepper and then purple onion and then more lamb and more peppers until we had about 20 large skewers full of colorful veggies and lamb cubes. I had to admit they were pretty.
I fired up the grill and cooked them on low to medium heat with the lid closed. I turned them several times and they were done in a bout ten minutes.
They were delicious. I think something significant happened to me that day. It was like some kind of break thru. Like I went through some kind of intervention. I was cured. I could eat kabobs every day I could eat kabobs in anyway. I could eat kabobs here or I could eat kabobs there I could eat kabobs anywhere. I could eat kabobs in a tree I could eat kabobs by the sea I could eat kabobs in may chair I could eat kabobs everywhere….
Yes I’m cured. No longer do I feel anger for unnecessary and frilly, pretentious, labor intensive entrees whose only purpose is to impress. Yep I’m a new a man.
One fairly important note, my wife loved them. So It was, after all, worth all the trouble.