Skipper

Ben has certain expectations when it comes to meals. He must be a part of the week’s menu creation and execution. Dinner must include meat. A weekend must include “special breakfast.” Typically, Ben does not question my culinary leadership, opting not to bite the hand that feeds him, but when Phil skips “special breakfast,” Ben makes his disdain very clear, calling Phil “Skipper.” As insults go, it’s kind of brilliant. Phil has, no doubt, been called much worse. “Skipper” summons happy memories of Gilligan’s Island, or for me, a childhood pet. Best of all, it is accurate, so he can’t really be reprimanded for calling his father names. As usual, even when Ben loses, he wins.

Recently, we have had to skip lots of things. Usually, it is because we have many other things vying for our time and attention, but sometimes we are missing key ingredients. Wegmans has ceased to carry or is simply out of ingredients we have come to rely on, so we skip them and do out best.

Our scallops with ditalini pasta recipe called for fennel, but Wegmans was out, so we were skippers. The scallops were good, but the meal was just a bit odd, overall (I’m blaming the fish sauce) and I don’t think we’ll make it a second time. Obviously, if we are future skippers of the recipe, we can certainly be skippers of posting the recipe here!