Homemade Barf and Patty Melts

I do recognize that the word "barf" should never ever be used on a cooking blog.  I get that.  But I feel the need to break a basic cooking blog rule and tell you about how I accidentally stumbled upon the perfect recipe for homemade barf last Sunday.

It all started out so innocently.  I had this recipe called Mexican Manicotti that I had been anxious to try.  I know the combination of pasta and Mexican food can be a bit risky, but this recipe caught my eye and I just had to take it for a spin.

Just so you know, I will not be posting the recipe for Mexican Manicotti on this blog.  It wasn't that the recipe was all that terrible, it's more that the sauce looked exactly, and when I say exactly, I mean exactly like barf.  As soon as I stirred it up I started to giggle.  I'm very immature when it comes to these sort of things.  I started to giggle because I knew The Spy Who Loves Me was going to flip his balding lid when he saw this sauce.  The Spy is kind of a big baby girl when it comes to these sorts of things.  More on The Spy's girly princess issues later.  Let's get back to the barf.

The sauce consisted of five very innocent ingredients.  Innocent on their own, not so much when combined.  Cream of chicken soup (a good ingredient in many recipes), green chilies (a personal favorite of mine when it comes to ingredients), chopped onion (great for flavor, but added an unfortunate element of chunkiness to this poor sauce), milk (harmless enough), and finally, the culprit, salsa!  Yes, it was the salsa that turned this sauce into something that looked exactly, trust me on this, exactly like barf! 

Like I said, as soon as I stirred it up I started to giggle.  The Spy had been sitting at the kitchen counter while I stuffed the manicotti noodles with a mixture of chicken, onion, sour cream, green chilies and cheese.  He seemed a little bit unsure watching the combination of the pasta and Mexican ingredients come together, but I assured him that it would taste great.  He walked away for a few minutes and that's when I proceeded to stir up the sauce.  As soon as I stirred in the salsa I knew that I now had the perfect recipe for homemade barf.  And I knew The Spy was going to freak out like a big baby girl when he saw it in the pan.  And I was right!

The Spy walked into the kitchen and said, "You've gotta be kidding me.  That looks exactly like barf!"  I lost it!  My giggling turned into full blown laughter as I saw the look on his grossed out face.  This is what he saw:

This picture doesn't even do it justice.  It looked worse on it's own, before being poured over the manicotti.  It was one ugly sauce.  And to top it off, it was Sunday dinner.  I must say, I was proud of The Spy, my teen son and my mom.  They all closed their eyes and ate it.  And it wasn't horrible, although it most certainly falls in the recipe file called "one timers".

Bottom line, if you ever need to make fake barf, I've got the perfect recipe for ya!  And you're welcome!

Just so you know, the next night, Monday night, I redeemed myself by making patty melts for dinner.  The Spy loves a good patty melt, and in nearly 30 years of marriage I've never ever made him one.  But because he was so brave and ate the barf recipe, I felt he deserved a dinner he would truly enjoy.  So I fried up hamburger patties, sprinkled them with Montreal Steak Seasoning, put them between two pieces of rye bread with Havarti cheese and grilled them until they were golden brown.  The Spy was happy!

Getting back to the many reasons The Spy is sometimes a big baby girl slash princess, let me just list a few.  And don't you worry about me going behind The Spy's back.  I've warned him plenty of times that if he didn't change his girly ways I was going to blog about it.  He didn't, and now I am!

Recently we went out of town for a family wedding and stayed in a very nice hotel overnight.  For reasons that I will never understand, most hotels do not use fitted sheets.  They use a flat sheet on the top and on the bottom.  During the night the flat sheet on the bottom came untucked and created a wrinkle underneath The Spy.  Are you thinking of the same story I'm thinking of?  Yep, The Princess and the Pea.  Only we'll call this one The Spy and The Wrinkle.  When The Spy woke up I asked him how he slept and out came the little princess.  He went on and on about the wrinkle in the sheet and how he barely got a wink of beauty rest the whole night.  Do you see where I'm going with this?  Princess!  I told him that I was going to start saying the word "princess" every time he had a princess moment.   There have been several since that day!

The Spy can at times be a bit high maintenance.  Take for example the other day when I made him steel cut oats for breakfast.  I topped them with these nuts and added chopped apples, brown sugar and a splash of milk.  Do you know that man had the nerve to tell me I forgot the raisins!  It took everything in me not to bop him over the head with my rolling pin.  But I refrained and instead just called him a princess.

The Spy is spoiled.  Spoiled rotten.  At least I like to tell him that he is.  He was running late for a spy meeting the other day so I made him steel cut oats (with raisins this time) to go, and even put homemade orange juice in his spy cup. (Notice the little badge on the cup.  Isn't that cute?)  When The Spy picked up the cup he asked what was in it.  I told him fresh squeezed orange juice and that little princess said, "Too much pulp.  You can have it."  People, do you see what I'm dealing with here?

Tonight The Spy and teen son are camping with other men and their sons at a church campout.  The Spy slash princess took the twin mattress off our teen son's bed, placed a clean FITTED sheet on it and stuffed it in the back of our minivan.  Some call that camping, I call it a princess sleep over.  Our studly teen son took a tarp and a sleeping bag.  That's it.  I begged him to take his little pup tent but he wouldn't do it.  He was determined to sleep under the stars.  I guess I should be grateful that he hasn't taken after his father's princess ways, at least not yet.

There's really no point to this blog post.  I just wanted to give you a little window into my life, and what it's like to live with The Princess Spy.

Hope you enjoy stirring it up!