Kitchen Diaster

After cooking every meal since I've retired, I thought it only fair to request one of Hubby's best dinners -- one that he has done so often, he could do it in his sleep.  He agreed, but rather reluctantly, I thought.

Saturday I got a family pack of drum sticks for him and one of wings for me, as well as bag of Yukon Gold potatoes for some buttery mashed. About 11:00 Sunday morning he ambled to the kitchen and started paring potatoes.

The smells for the next hour were rather strange.  But I hadn't had his fried chicken since Christmas, so maybe I had forgotten the smell of bubbling grease.  About 12:15 Hubby came and sat next to me, turned the TV down, and growled, "You bought store generic chicken, no vegetable oil, and generic flour.  How many times must I tell you to buy good food products?  The flour wouldn't stick to the chicken and I could only find olive oil to fry the chicken in.  I did six wings for you but I just couldn't finish up anything else because nothing worked right.  Why didn't you buy what we needed when you went to the store?"  He then proceeded to give me a long lecture on the benefits of Pillsbury flour as opposed to generic flour which would never stick to the surface of chicken.

What could I do?  He was probably right -- it could well have been generic flour, though once it was in the flour container I had no way of knowing just what brand it really was.  I listened, told him I was sorry, and agreed that when he cooked next he would have Pillsbury flour.  But the vegetable oil was under the kitchen cabinet on which sat the microwave -- where he had kept it since 1973.  "Why didn't you ask me if you couldn't find it?" I queried.  That question didn't seem to sit well. 

Hubby, in a huff, told me my potatoes were ready and the six wings had been fried -- in olive oil and probably wouldn't be edible..   I could plate up what I wanted to eat.  I wandered into the kitchen, and the Yukon Gold potatoes were perfect.  But the chicken wings were sticky and burned black on the skin.  I turned them over a couple of times and looked at them awhile, and finally I took a taste.  And light dawned. 

I reached up over the frig and took down the big canister of white powder and took it, along with the vegetable oil into the computer room where Hubby was still scowling over his favorite compute game.  "Here is the full bottle of vegetable oil" and I showed him the container. "Is this the canister you used for flour?" I asked next.  "YES!" Hubby huffed. So I opened it, stuck my finger in - and brought him a whiff.  "Sniff it," I commanded. 

After Hubby looked at the powder and then sniffed it -- he was even more angry.  "For Pete's sake, why did you switch containers on me?"

"Because you bought five huge bags of powdered sugar - and it was going bad just sitting in the cabinet.  It needed to go in an air-tight container If you had just looked at the sticky mess in your bag of shaken chicken, you could have easily seen this was NOT in any semblence or form, flour!  Now, what am I to fix you to eat, because clearly you did not make yourself any dinner."

"I'll just have a sandwich," Hubby mumbled. 

I went to the kitchen, fixed him a sandwich and some fruit -- all of which he ate without even a "thank you:" uttered.  I  gave the dogs a chicken wing each, and took the remaining four wings that Hubby hadn't fried, floured then, seasoned them, and cooked them up in vegetable oil. 

After my dinner, I took in the flour container, showed it to Hubby, who gave it his most evil glare, and we didn't speak to each other the rest of the afternoon. 

My question is (which I admit I haven't had the courage to ask Hubby):  if you've been flouring chicken for at least 70 years, how come you couldn't distinguish confectioner's sugar from all-purpose flour?  Once I tasted the chicken, once I looked seriously at the gooey bag of shaken chicken -- I knew immediately he had used something other than flour - and I'm not the seasoned cook of this outfit.