A Bloody Battle

Walking into the kitchen is like walking into a cage match for me. I have no doubt that I will come out battered (cake battered or otherwise), bruised, diced and fried.

I started fighting back last week. I bought a meat tenderizer. Yes, my dear little meat hammer. And I must report that I walked away from cooking that meal with zero injuries (which was nice since I was cooking for guests and didn’t want to resort to busting out the Hello Kitty Band-Aids). I didn’t even whack my thumb with the meat hammer, like some scene out of a wacky-go-lucky sitcom or an episode of the Three Stooges.

So here’s my theory. You’ve got to show the dinner who is boss. Maintaining authority at all times is the key. And sometimes taking a meat mallet to the chicken breasts does the trick. (Put plastic wrap over the chicken first, or else you’ll get splattered. Not technically an injury, but still not fun.)

As a side-note, sometimes retaliations happen. For example, you go into the kitchen unprepared for the battle of cooking dinner. You merely want to core an apple. So, you get out your nifty little apple corer—the kind that cuts the apple into slices at the same time it cuts out the core—and prepare your apple snack. And while you’re trying quite unsuccessfully to pry the leftover core from your nifty apple corer, you slice your finger. You may just find yourself looking at the meat hammer in the sink and thinking to yourself, “Karma.”