National Wine Day

I wasn't sure what to title this post, but it is National Wine day today so, fact.

My grammar may be atrocious-- oh well.

I saw this recipe on the internet about mozzarella stuffed, deep fried onion rings. They looked delicious. So after work I bought all of the ingredients. With barely enough money to cover (let's face it I'm broke as a joke).

I took a bottle of red wine that I took from home, out of my car and grabbed the groceries.

Thinking back, I shouldn't have left the bottle of wine in the warm car for as long as I did. I guess it's just out of habit.
Like how during the summer of my Junior year of high school I kept a duffle bag of clothes in my car all the time, and a plastic handle of vodka.

I posted myself up at the counter and began clumsily chopping onions.
I thought of when I took that home-ec class, where we learned home skills and how to properly cut things with knives. My teacher Ms. Kochen would be shaking her head at me if she saw me now. But it's ok, because that was in 8th grade, and I'm far away from 8th grade now.

I use to cut wild onions in the yard with my sister. We would sit on a bath towel with our pairs of scissors, gabbing at the grass in the yard cutting at it. Snip. Snip.
We would have a bucket with water in it, my mother would call it our onion soup. It would sit on the back porch for a couple days, then we would have to dump it.

I continue chopping-
   with a glass of red wine at my side.
I think of my mother and how she use to pour herself one glass of deep red wine at dinner every night, until one day she stopped. I remember how she let me dip my dull dinner knife in it to try it once, and I thought it was disgusting.

My onions lay in a pile of mangled, uneven rings.
    Sarah tried to help me, but was to no avail. It's ok, because I don't know anyone who can actually replicate those food video tutorials.
For only having a 1 minute video to reference off of, I did pretty damn good.

There's freshly cooked bacon on a paper towel next to me, for the jalapeño dip. Sarah and I wanted to try that as well. I am not Betty Crocker by any means.
However, Sarah could be a modern Betty Crocker. She just knows what to do. I admire that.

Bacon reminds me of the mornings spent at home. Before home became known as 'mom's house' or the 'fenton house'. The smell reminds me of coming downstairs to a Saturday morning breakfast with my family. My dad. My mom. My sister. My mom would always sit next to my sister and my dad would sit on my left next to me.
My dad was my PIC

We would always divide up the bacon evenly.
On Easter and Christmas morning, we would always be so polite about it. One or two pieces, eat it sparingly. Grandparents on either side of me.
Nice thoughts. Old thoughts.


Although this summer I am away here in Iowa, I can sit at this janky counter and still feel close to home. Close to my mother. 




Follow up: the dip was bomb.
     We have yet to make the onion rings.