Be afraid, be very afraid.

My Daughter rang me earlier to invite me for dinner, my heart sank, its not that she is a bad cook, its more a lack of quantity values that she suffers from. She overdoes or under does ingredient amounts, which can have a disastrous effect on both tongue and stomach. Sunday dinners are fine, in fact great, her mixed grill can’t be beaten, and bangers and mash cooked by my little girl are delicious. Even a simple dish like egg and chips can be eaten with the confidence that it will taste good and be cooked perfectly. However the minute she decides to prepare something requiring the accurate measurement and blending of several ingredients her mathematical skills take a nosedive.

I remember once when she was in her first year at high school, she proudly announcing that she was going to make a beef casserole in school cookery class. She was late home so I went to look for her, I found her sat on a wall just up the road from our house head bowed, bag at her feet. She had been crying, apparently some big boys had snatched her bag away from her and began throwing it to each other. She desperately tried to retrieve her bag, horrified that her beef casserole would be ruined. She forgot all about that though when she managed to grab her airborne meal because anger got the better of her and she proceeded to beat the shit out of the boys with it, swinging it round her head like a highland chieftain swings a Claymore.

I told her not to worry, and promised her that I would eat the casserole no matter what state it was in, this was definitely one time I wished I had kept my mouth shut, from both a speaking and eating point of view. When we got home she placed the bag on the table and unzipped it, an aroma akin to burnt wellingtons emanated from the bag. I can hold my nose I thought, I lifted the casserole dish out myself, didn’t want her to cut herself. I needn’t have worried; there was no damage to the glass in fact no damage to anything except perhaps the boy’s heads.

The casserole was intact, in fact it was the casserole that had protected and held the dish together. In all probability the casserole would have been immune to an armour-piercing missile it was that hard, And I had promised my Daughter I would eat it. My brain raced (Well more of a slow stroll really) for a solution, Gravy, that would soften it up (I hoped) about a gallon should be enough. I was living a dream; not even a lake of gravy could have tenderised what in effect was culinary concrete.

So it is with some trepidation that I prepare myself for tonight’s feast. “Chilli con carne with special onions” though you might be thinking what can go wrong, after all its just ground beef, mushrooms, chilli plus whatever the con in Chilli con carne is. It’s the special unions that are worrying me. Why not just regular unions? why make things complicated?, why risk buggering up a fairly simple dish by introducing a wild card?.

I think I will stop of at my house on the way in and bang a couple of toilet rolls in the fridge for later. Call it insurance, call it fear. I will let you know how I get on.