SHE DOESN’T HAVE THE RECIPE!!!!!

Many years ago, when we were just married and she still loved me, or at least liked me, TLW (The Little Woman) made a favorite dish of mine, baked macaroni. Now this dish wasn’t just ordinary baked macaroni, no, it had three cheeses, and her magical fingers and hands created a thing of beauty.

The other day I asked TLW where her recipe for her concoction was. My daughter Ellen was coming home for dinner and I wanted to make it for her because I know she would love it, so what the heck, damn the doctors, exercise gurus and health experts, she would have this wonderful creation. So would I after at least 35 years!

“Toots, where is your recipe for that three cheese baked macaroni?”

Looking up into the ceiling like she would somehow find there between the top hat lights and the ceiling fan she announces:

“I don’t have a recipe.”

She doesn’t have a recipe?! What does she mean she doesn’t have a recipe?

“Oh sure you do, you remember, with the Monterey Jack cheese and everything, and the bread crumbs?”

“You’ll have to look it up.”

Look it up??? Look it up! That’s not going to be the same. I’ll never replicate that masterpiece, no way!  I’ll eat it, it may taste good, but in the back of my mind, I’ll be thinking: this doesn’t taste like I remember, no, there is something missing, something is not in this dish that was present so long ago.

Well, another dream gone. That recipe must be somewhere with the French Onion Soup she used to make for me when she still loved me, or at least liked me. I wonder if Lipton makes French Onion soup? Nah, what kind of bread would they use? My daughter and I will have to suffer through whatever I make and call it: “Baked macaroni”, another half-baked idea by yours truly.

So sad.