IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

Tell me, have any of you ever looked at something in the grocery store & thought, “Yum, that looks good”, only to find out later that it was not even close to a good choice? Well, that happened to me today at Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s (for those of you who don’t have them nearby) is a great store with lots of good food, reasonable prices, easy to prepare & fairly nutritious.

Of course, the VERY best thing about Trader Joe’s is “Two Buck Chuck” or now, “Two & a Half Buck Chuck” since they raised the price. It’s a great, everyday wine that used to cost $1.99 a bottle & is now $2.49 a bottle. It really pissed off the wine snobs several years ago when their Chardonnay beat some of the $20+ bottles in a blind taste test.

But, I digress. Today I was shopping at Trader Joe’s. While looking for something interesting for dinner, I spotted some frozen salmon burgers. I’m not a huge fan of fish but do try to eat it once in awhile for the health benefits. I’m always searching for an interesting, tasty way to consume fish. These salmon burgers sounded pretty good – along with the sweet potato tots that were nearby.

I was picturing these delicious ground up salmon burgers that are seared on the grill with just a bit of crispiness to them. It sounded like a great choice for dinner & I was getting just a little bit hungry. I grabbed the salmon, the sweet potato tots & a couple of artichokes – along with a few bottles of Chuck. Woo hoo, dinner tonight was in the bag!

Fast forward a few hours to the time to get dinner started. I pulled the salmon burgers from the freezer along with the tater tots. When you think back to your childhood, I mean, who didn’t love tater tots? They were so good! Of course, my guess is that my mom fried them in oil to make them so crispy & tasty…..& loaded with fat & other non-nutritious things. Now days, they are baked & most of the bad stuff has been removed, leaving them relatively tasteless.

There were several ways to prepare the salmon burgers – in the oven, in a frying pan or on the grill. Well, it’s November & raining here, the grill was out. I started in the oven but after a few minutes they were not looking the least bit appetizing. So, I pulled out a frying pan, added some olive oil & plopped them in there. By now, I was getting the old “this seemed like a good idea at the time, but . . . ” feelings.

Again, not being a fan of fish in general & not having any real clue how to cook it or make it appetizing, the salmon burgers began to ooze this white, goopy stuff as they cooked. As Charley would say, “Ooooh, that’s gross!” And she would have been one hundred percent right. It was pretty gross. But dinner was too far along to make any drastic changes by now.

To his credit, Lou never complains about my culinary skills, or lack there of, for that matter. I put the salmon burgers (with most of the icky white goop cooked out), sweet potato tots & artichokes on the table. He ate it all & said it was good. Ya gotta love that man. As for me, not so much. It was okay at best.

So, please, tell me honestly, how many of you have had the experience of thinking what a great idea this was at the time only to have it dawn on you half way through the preparation that this kind of sucks & you screwed up?

My guess is that this is not the last time one of my cooking adventures will go awry but I need to remember a few things when it comes to dinner preparation. 1) Don’t shop when you are kind of hungry & anything looks good, 2) Don’t believe that the pictures on the boxes will look anything like the actual product, & 3) If it seems like a good idea at the time, it probably isn’t, so don’t do it!