Sides Are For Pussies

As I was growing up, my mother cooked about as well as Jeffrey Dahmer did so I eventually taught myself to cook. I couldn't cook cook but I could hold my own with a few key recipes. After I got laid off from my job last year, I needed a hobby that wouldn't land me in jail. Or destroy my liver. So I started watching cooking shows. Granted, I've had a love/hate relationship with them, but I've really learned a lot from them. My recipe repertoire has grown, I've experimented with foods I normally passed over at the grocery store, and I've developed a pretty good taste for seasonings. I'm not Paula Deen yet (thank God) but I can cook some good ass food!

Except.....for side dishes. I spend so much time and energy on the fantabulous main dish that I usually forget to make side dishes. Maybe it's because I usually only cook for myself (although I almost always find sides for The Kid, who doesn't eat what I cook half the time.) But I don't care. The dishes I make taste so good that I don't need side dishes filling me up!

However, The Mother has a problem with it. She is benefitting tremendously from my newfound cooking prowess (i.e., she always finds a reason to be at my house around dinnertime. Moocher.) But she always has to make a comment about my lack of sides.

"Couldn't you have made a salad? Just a salad would be good."

Here's the door. Go find yourself a salad.

Mother knows she has no room to criticize me on my dishes...but she does, natch. It's actually become a joke between us - she whines about salads, I remind her of how she made three of us sick last Easter. Ha ha.

Oh well. If she wants to eat well, she can keep her criticisms to herself. Cause tomorrow night I'm making some kick ass beef burgundy.

With no sides, of course.