Anybody Want to Come Over for Dinner?

So the other night, after a really hard week, David said, "Hey, why don't I take the kids out and give you a quiet evening tonight?" My response was to immediately shove them out the door. I worked for a while, puttered around the house, and eventually decided that perhaps I was hungry. I poked around in the pantry. Kraft macaroni and cheese sounded as good as anything, and easy to make to boot, so I started boiling the macaroni.

The macaroni was almost done, and I went to gather the milk and butter . . . only to find that somebody had used up the last of the milk and not told me. Argh! I hate it when they do that. By this time, I was getting really hungry. And I was too tired to go to the store. What's a girl to do?

Well, I've watched the Food Network. They've told me preparing food is not rocket science. Try new things, make substitutions! It will work, trust us! So although improvising is not in my nature, being spontaneous won out over going to the grocery store.

I looked around the kitchen and the refrigerator. What could work as a substitution for milk? My eye spied a red can sitting on the top shelf. That's it! Reddi Wip! That's sort of like milk, right? I could just mix in a little water to make it more runny. So that's what I did. I squirted out some Reddi Wip, mixed in some water, and voila, a milk-like substance. And there you have it, a little ingenuity and even the most difficult kitchen problem can be solved.

Only, it didn't taste so good. Who would have guessed that mixing not-milk with not-cheese would be not-edible? I tried to valiantly eat my way through one small bowl, but just couldn't do it. I gave up and went for the wine, the expensive bottle. At this point I figured I deserved it.

As I was sitting there, drowning my Reddi Wip sorrows in a very nice Zinfandel, David came back with the kids. The first words out of my mouth were, "It would really be nice if people told me when we run out of essential items like milk." He got a panicked look in his eye and said, "You didn't go the store did you?" This seemed an oddly out of proportion response, but I replied that no, I hadn't. He heaved a huge sigh of relief and held up his arms from which dangled two new gallons of milk.

"Man," I said, "that would have been useful an hour ago." He asked me why. I told him that I was in the process of making mac 'n cheese only to find out I didn't have a key ingredient. So David logically said, "Oh, so you had to use water, huh?" I said no, of course not. Water makes it too runny. Looking puzzled he asked me how I made it then. "Well, I mixed Reddi Wip and water, of course, to make milk." He looked horrified and, looking at the glass of wine in my hand, said, "Were you drinking when you did that?" I told him that unfortunately, no, I was just using the wine to make me feel better. He shook his head and proceeded to unpack the rest of the groceries he had picked up.

The next evening, the kids asked for some ice cream after dinner. David gave them a scoop each and went to the fridge to pull out the Reddi Wip to put on top. He looked at the can, looked at me, looked at the can again. Then he said, somewhat accusingly, "Is this the can you used last night?" I said I didn't know. Were there any other cans in the fridge? He looked and said no. So I told him that yes, that was indeed the can I used. And that's when I found out, as if the fact that I had used Reddi Wip was not bad enough already, that particular can had an expiration date of January 2008.