Oven Anticipation

While rambling around Publix earlier this week on one of my infrequent trips – having found it to be both glorious and far more expensive than I anticipated – I fell into the altered state of grocery conscious I’ve come to expect. There’s really nowhere better than Publix to contemplate all the things I can cook again when the new oven arrives.

Walmart’s the more reasonably priced but it does not light me up the way Publix does. First off, Walmart is just so damn big. And while there is a very nice new Walmart way down the road, the one closest to us has some permanent veneer of grime and dinginess that makes me feel like I’m spelunking for dry goods, chilly-squooshy packs of ground meat and seedless grapes.

If I get a long register tape at Walmart that reads $187.32 for my hugely laden buggy of groceries, my only thought while I struggle out to the parking lot is, “How did that happen?” But at Publix, with the paper looped and serpentined around my neck like a souvenir scarf from Paris, I think, “I can’t believe they had almond butter! And organic pears from West Virginia and Madagascar bourbon vanilla with the seeds in it and Kerry Gold butter and grocery store sushi for lunch today!” And there might be some skipping, if I have successfully managed to fend off the bag boy.

At Walmart, I just want to kill everybody in sight by the time I leave, and I rarely tolerate the trip long enough to get everything I need – which is how I sometimes end up at Publix the very next day.

But back to the oven. The deal was sealed on Hallowe’en by the Husband while I strung up fake spider webs and Styrofoam tombstones in the front yard for the kiddies, after much delay and contemplation of this major expense. That he did not do it with undiluted pleasure is evidenced by the inclusion, for the first time in our whole life together, of an extended warranty. The Husband does not believe in buying extended warranties but he made an exception in light of the fact that we have spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars over the last four years in an effort to make the JENN-AIR work tolerably.

I have hurled so much abuse at that JENN-AIR that it’s a miracle it didn’t get up one night and slip away without leaving so much as a note.

What a happy day that would have been!

After the truly horrible and worthless JENN-AIR has been replaced by the new oven, I plan to cook until I fall down. Have you ever dreamed that you were in your house, or in some house familiar to you, and you strolled through, discovering new rooms or items or even entire wings you did not know were there? That’s how I felt in Publix on Monday. Everywhere I looked, something to be buttered or oiled and rolled in herbs and thrown on a sheet pan, or sauced in a deep casserole dish, or baked until the edges get crisp.

Lasagna with white sauce! Everybody really loves that!  Chicken cannelloni. Slow roasted beef. Blueberry muffins. From scratch all the way chicken parmesan. Brownies. Oven roasted potatoes with rosemary and garlic. Oven roasted butternut squash. Roasted salmon. Cookies (half butter, half shortening combo makes the best texture for chocolate chip cookies, imo.) Garlicky pork roast. Duck with pears and white wine. The Husband wants a lengthily braised beef bourguignon, just like Julia’s.

Bread. Bread, dear God, bread!

I wafted out of Publix on a cloud of homemade possibility, register tape whipping fetchingly in the autumn breeze.