Paella

One of the best thing about being on your early 50s is that the little kids -- the children of your close friends, who you have known and loved for their whole lives because you love your friends and they are these friends' children -- turn into young adults who you enjoy being around because they are intelligent and funny and enjoyable to be around as fellow human beings.

One of Annika's Spanish masterpieces

Twenty years ago, I fought with four-year-old Annika over a disagreement regarding laundry. On Saturday, she texted me from a paella class that she was taking in Valencia.

Why it made her think of me is a story from days gone by that I did not post at the time. I think it was New Year's Eve, and I attempted to make a paella. I had way too much liquid, and once the rice had absorbed all that it would I tried to boil the rest of the liquid away. I ended up with a big burnt mess with a day's worth of income of sausage and seafood wasted.

It was so bad, that Annika's mother has been telling the story for all of these years.

Annika's text inspired me to make paella. Saturday evening came, and it was getting late with neither kid was home, so we punted to Sunday.

But then Sunday, I made one. A meat-lover's paella, with steak, chicken, and chorizo.

It was somewhat of a hit. Right after I took it out of the oven, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I took Ko and a couple of his friends to a mall. While the kids tooled around, Mrs. theskinnyonbenny and I went for a drink. At the bar, Ilooked at my phone and saw this post from V:

The real purpose of this whole post is to make my claim of stolen paella valor.

The first step of the recipe was to roast a couple of cloves of garlic. I preheated the oven and cleaned up a bit while it got hot. Then, I pulled out the garlic, peeled a couple of pds, and put them in a ramekin. At that point, V walked into the kitchen and was standing right by the oven.

I slid the ramekin over to him. "Stick that in the oven."

He just looked at me confused.

"The big oven," I clarified.

He hesitantly opened the door. "Are you sure?"

My annoyed voice kicked in. "Yes! put it right in there," I said, leaning toward the oven and pointing wildly.

So he did. (I'll be fair: it turns out that he lacked confidence that the ramekin could handle being put right into the hot oven.)

And that's it.

V did nothing else to help on this particular night.

But, "Me and my dad made this..."