Arroz con Tonto

(or "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Eating")

A few days ago, I invited myself to my friend Caroline's house to take our dogs to what she described as "a really big fenced in area for the dogs to run around in" (okay, so that's not a direct quote - but, my blog, my reality!). Unfortunately, this particular really-big-fenced-in-area was infested by shirtless teenage boys taking turns practicing running into padded metal. Double standard: when they do it, it's okay. But if kids in the "special class" were taking turns running into padded metal, it'd be sooo sad, right? (I'm still not sure that anyone doing that ranks a high IQ, though....)

Oh, and a fat, dirty woman who was missing several teeth commented that, as the man in our dyad, I should be walking Caroline's large dog Otis rather than "making her" get pulled around by him. (Thanks for your opinion, fat dirty woman missing several teeth, but I offered and am not really trying to impress anyone here anyhow.) I truly believe that fat, dirty women who are missing several teeth should NOT be making emasculating statements about me. Seriously.

Anyhow, the deal Caroline and I made was that I would bring some food over to her place and she would cook it for us. I brought a box of Minute Rice and a box of General Tso's Chicken for her to prepare. Since there was only two of us, I had assumed she would cook SOME of the food and leave some in the box. Nope. She began by dumping the entire box of chicken onto a pan; the whole 8 servings! When I pointed this out, Caroline somehow began a fairly convoluted logic equation in her head which roughly translates to:

"If I am making eight servings of chicken, then I should also boil eight cups of water and add in eight cups of rice. Since rice servings are one-half a cup, this will make four cups of rice (i.e. eight one-half cup servings) to go with the eight servings of chicken that I am still cooking for some reason."

This would be the recipie for the fine Spanish cuisine "Arroz con Tonto." A two-family-sized box of chicken and sixteen cups of cooked rice. As with all good recipies, pictures of the finished product are included:





But if I could get her to make some nachos, I'd be in Heaven....