As you see me daintily pull a rack of brandy-herb chicken from the oven, if you didn't know better, you might think I'd learned to cook.
"My God," you'd think. "Is that Jessica, making unprocessed, unboxed, freshly prepared food?"
Then I would pirouette around the kitchen with a pan of roasted garlic potatoes, and your mind would be totally blown.
"Is this the girl who has been known to dump Lean Cuisines onto plates and try to pass them off as homemade?" you would wonder. "What has changed? Did Jack in the Box discontinue their chicken pitas? Was the frozen-food section at the grocery store undermined by global warming?"
Then you would see me look shiftily from side to side and yank a bag of instant white rice with broccoli and cheese "flavor" out of the microwave, and it would all become clear: "Why, she hasn't learned to cook at all! She must be using a dinner preparation service."
For lazy yet gluttonous folk such as myself, these commercial kitchens, which allow you to "prepare" food to take home to "cook," are a godsend. And while you flit from station to station, dumping pre-measured ingredients into bags, you can guzzle glasses of wine and chat with your fellow slothful people ... I mean time-strapped homemakers.
"Let's see," I say at my favorite commercial kitchen, which is in Plano, that bastion of southern home-cooking. "Take one bag of pre-cut-up chicken breasts. Add one teaspoon of pre-minced garlic. Add one tablespoon of olive oil from a squeeze bottle. Squish around. LOOK EVERYONE, I MADE GARLIC CHICKEN."
Then I take home bags of raw food, put them in the freezer, and then, when I'm hungry, I thaw them out, put them in the oven, and take credit for them.
Because, in my house, whoever cooked dinner doesn't have to do the dishes. Which leaves me more time to practice dancing around the kitchen.
Jessica suspects garlic may be plant-based. E-mail her at jburgess@quickdfw.com.
