This and more in this week’s edition of HarperTheFox news.
BUTT FIRST!
How failure makes my marriage delicious
In our ever-evolving quest to beat rampant inflation and save money somehow, my family has wandered deep into the world of ✨poverty meals✨
For us, that means and fifty-pound bags of whole wheat flour, rye flour, beans, cracked rye, and whole rye berries. It means baking our own bread, buns, dumplings, and pasta from scratch because it’s cheaper than buying them. It means buying the cheapest cuts of meat I can find and pressure-cooking them in the Instant Pot until they surrender.
They’re the kinds of ingredients that make you feel like you’re preparing for the apocalypse.
This works for us because Max (husband) and I are both pretty good cooks. That is to say, I am a competent cook, and he is excellent.
He frequently tosses out terms in the kitchen that leave me staring at him wide-eyed and befuddled. The other day he asked me to brunoise some carrots, then looked genuinely surprised when I had absolutely no idea what that meant. (For anyone else wondering, it means cutting them into tiny, even cubes.)
One of my favorite places in our marriage is the period immediately after Max fails at cooking something.
Because failure doesn’t discourage him. It offends him.
We have something happening right now that perfectly illustrates this. We have a new ingredient in the house: whole rye berries. Cracked rye often appears on top of something like a loaf of whole wheat bread, but we’ve been experimenting lately with making a sweet cracked rye berry porridge and trying to figure out whether whole rye berries could become a much more nutrient-dense, fiber-rich, and insanely cheap substitute for rice.
No one does this. There are no guides to follow.
As best as I can tell we are pioneers in this level of cheap-ass cooking
The cooking method, however, is not going exactly as hoped.
Max has been the one trying, and Max has been the one failing, which means that he currently has a bone to pick with the entire kitchen.
The latest batch technically qualified as edible. We each sat down and discovered that chewing it required so much determination that both of us quietly surrendered about two-thirds of the way through.
Our two-year-old daughter, however, apparently has jaws forged from titanium. She cheerfully ate three bowls and declared them wonderful.
And this is the part of the loop that I love.
When Max tries to make something and fails, it guarantees that he will keep trying until he makes it so ungodly delicious that anyone who tried it would feel terrible for ever having doubted him in the first place.
So far, we’re two rounds deep into edible but somewhat disappointing rye. I wonder how many more attempts it will take before it becomes outrageously good.
A quick update on our progress toward leaving:
For readers who are new here, we’re in the middle of packing up our entire house and moving into a van, an SUV, and a camper trailer so that we can spend about a year living on the road.
It’s going well. This past week Max has been a busy beaver fixing up our SUV, and we’ve been steadily getting ready for departure. Every day one more thing starts working in the camper, and one more thing disappears from the house.
As for me, all three of our kids came down with several days of pretty severe tummy trouble.
So, to be honest, my main job this week has been wiping butts.
But, hey, we all serve our purpose.
The camper is coming together, the children are slowly recovering, and somewhere in the kitchen sits another bowl of rye waiting for Max to prove that it can, in fact, be delicious.
AND NOW!
SONGS ROUNDUP
Social media sites are notorious for only selectively showing you posts by the people you follow, so for you dear subscriber, I like to gather up all the week’s posts for you in one easy place. Here you go!
“Hey Jude” parody
“Three Little Birds” parody
“Hurt” parody
“Five Little Ducks” parody
“Sittin on the Dock of the Bay” parody
Anyway, that’s all for now. I will write again next week with songs, stories, and updates.
But it’s not over for paid subscribers!
Down below, get yourself a little sample of a new parody I’m working on— an iconic 90s song retrofitted to be about plastic surgery addicted trophy wives.
See you down below!