Carsales competition: my entry

Last week, on my preferred car-news website, I stumbled across carsales.com.au's Ford Focus Ultimate Test Drive competition. "Just my cup o' tea" I thought, and so I slapped up an entry which I hoped might be left-field enough to grab their attention.

Turns out it was... seems they're quite happy with my efforts. They've also gone and posted up my entry on the competition's website for all to see, several weeks prior to the competition close. A long and exciting wait lies ahead to see if twelve other chumps can one-up my own valiant efforts; if they can't, I'll score a new-model Ford Focus Titanium TDCi for six weeks, and if I can keep the ball rolling on the competition's facebook page, I might just get to keep it forever. Fingers crossed...

Through the vagaries of html and the limitations of the website's competition entry form, the version of my entry which they posted up lost a lot of the formatting I worked hard to replicate from carsales' own car reviews. They also chopped the last few paragraphs off the end -- whether for the sake of brevity, or because it was lost in transmission, I am not sure.

So of course I shall post it here again -- have blog, must post something. And it's vaguely car-related... anyways, enjoy, and pls don't plagiarise.

MACGYVER PIE: A Review of Last Night’s Dinner, Carsales-style

Faux-Bachelor’s attempts to prove he can, in fact, provide self-sustenance

First drive: a kitchen in suburban Australia, May 2011

WHAT WE LIKED:

>> Laziness and innovation combine to beat the odds

>> MacGyver and MasterChef, all rolled into one

NOT SO MUCH:

>> Disturbing dormant microcosms in the bowels of the fridge

>> Forgot the jalapenos! Damn and blast!

OVERVIEW

>> Left to fend for myself with scant preparation

I have been with my wife for six years now. After the courting, the dating, the engagement, the wedding, and the birth of three beautiful children – all happy events made none the less valid by not strictly occurring in that order – I regularly assure my darling wife that I simply cannot remember a time without her. Sure, there were twenty-five years or so that I managed to survive without her constantly by my side, but those traumatic memories have long since faded into grey.

All well and good, until the time comes to fend for myself.

It came to pass last night, when the fading red light of dusk found me returned from work to an empty house. The missus and the sproglets had sojourned southwards for a mid-week visit to far-flung family, which in all likelihood had been mentioned to me earlier but since forgotten. The shock of a cold, empty house did little to quell a more pressing concern – the rumblings of my empty belly.

Let me stop you now, lest you suspect a whiff of chauvinism in these writings. I am a modern man of fairness and sensitivity, just as much as the next boofhead in line. The mundanities of domestic life are divided fairly equally betwixt me and the missus – in fact, if you weight the tasks by the degree of heavy lifting involved then it is I who comes out most magnanimous, thank you very bloody much.

But as it happens, the wife and I have a long-standing agreement: one shall fill the dishes with fresh-cooked goodness, t’other shall clean them once the goodness is consumed. And the wife hates dishpan hands, so for more or less every night as far back as I dare to recall, she’s done the cooking.

And now she’s gone. Whatever to do?

PRICE AND EQUIPMENT

>> Fashioning a gastronomic extravaganza, MacGyver-style

A quick check of the fridge and freezer brings scant relief: nothing in the way of leftovers, not a scrap of wifely-prepared sustenance set aside for just such a contingency. Memories of exquisite comestible treats from recent nights prior dance teasingly, tauntingly before my inner eye – stews, stir-fries, slow-cooked dishes simmering in their own juices…the things one woman can do in a kitchen, enough to make one’s eyes loll with heavy pleasure. (Still talking about food, thank you.)

All the treats from nights prior – all now gone? None of it remains? How could this be allowed to happen? What manner of foul neglect is this? How dare she leave me in the lurch, hungry and abandoned, cold and confused and unfed!

Get a bloody hold of yourself, boy. This is but a challenge to be surmounted. Betwixt mother and wife, there were a goodly six years of my life where I somehow managed to sustain myself. I had dim memories of foraging for groceries, wielding fry pans, operating stove tops and piling dinner plates with delicious nutritious goodness, all on my merry old bachelor-ific onesie. Not every night was two-minute-noodles night, surely? And tonight of all nights, no noodles to be found, two-minute or otherwise…

Time to re-scan the fridge and pantry, widening the search parameters from ‘reheat and consume’ to ‘prepare, assemble, heat and consume’. The list of materials is depressingly slim, an odd and mismatched assortment: breads, salad items, various produce of dairy, scraps of pre-sliced deli product, forgotten condiments in jars… and a solitary frozen vegetable pie – not a meat pie, not even a chicken pie, it simply had to be a vegie pie, didn’t it? – lording over what proved a somewhat forlorn-looking ensemble atop my kitchen bench.

Times like this in a man’s life, that man must ask himself: what would MacGyver do?

COMPETITORS

>> MacGyver wouldn’t do drive-through!

A guerrilla-style, improvised-explosive-dinner experience was not the only option on the cards. I am in possession of a car, a driver’s licence and a rudimentary knowledge of nearby grocery- and fast-food outlets. The problem I faced could easily be solved by reaching for the keys and laying rubber to the road, as it were.

But that seemed like admitting defeat, somehow. Arrayed before me, I had all the basic elements of some sort of meal – each item was edible, to a varying degree. T’was the end of a long working day, I was home, I was ready to settle in for the night, determined to take it slow and easy – there simply was not enough impetus to actually seek out an external source of nourishment. “Couldn’t be arsed”, is probably the best way of summing it up.

So then: improvisation ahoy.

PACKAGING & MECHANICAL

>> Making the most of not really a lot

I, for one, am not a man long given to despair. Yes, fine: the missus has abandoned me in her selfish quest to let her parents have some time with their beloved grandkiddies. Okay, I admit: I was caught unawares, totally failed to prepare for the situation. And I was too lazy to attempt an improvement of the situation in any meaningful fashion – yes, fine already!

Time to make the best of a frozen vegie pie.

First up: chuck that soggy morsel in the microwave for three-and-a-half minutes, as directed by the packaging. It suggested I may have, alternatively, placed it in the oven for thirty-five minutes – but how many grams of CO2 does an oven running at 180 degrees push out of my nearest brown-coal-fired power plant? Worse than an idling ocean liner, I’d wager. Not worth the environmental infamy for one solitary pie. (Plus, I was in a hungry hurry.)

Next up: select a winning combination from the unloved, unwanted, often-best-forgotten array of jarred condiments rescued from the darkest depths of the fridge. Mango chutney? Lime-and-ginger jam? Something called… ‘salad cream’?? They always sound like a good idea at the time, don’t they? No, forget them – such things ought not be wedded to an unsuspecting pie, for the sake of good taste and decency.

What’s in this bowl with the glad-wrap on top, though? Left-over taco sauce from ‘taco night’ of last Thursday? Why hello, old friend! You’ll do well atop Her Vegetable Pieness, in combination with a handful from the bag of pre-grated mozzarella.

“Ding!” goes old Microwave, and in the very best traditions of a dysfunctional corporate auto merger, the highly anticipated cross-cultural marriage of English (pie), Italian (mozzarella) and Messkin (taco sauce, ay ay ayy!) is made. Watch that mozzarella melt lovingly into the pre-heated sauce, the cheesy-saucy combo glooping sensuously across the top of the pie, dribbling delicately down one side to cascade across the plate like the hands of a dark, mysterious, just-met lover – my my, who knew dinner could be so rousing?

SAFETY

>> Adding some greenery, to push the cholesterol through

Stepping back to cast a critical eye over the plate, I realise that variety is missing. A few different colours, some “greenery” must be added to offset the vivid whites, reds and yellows of the MacGyver Pie.

What are our options? Why, is this… could it be… a bag of baby spinach?? The sort of fancy-pantsy, lah-de-dahdery that elevates any ordinary dish to the giddy heights of MasterChef-dom? Chuck some of that goodness on the side, thank you very much! Along with some slivers of tomato, some shreds of lettuce (we can’t have the dish thinking itself too egalitarian) and a bit more mozzarella, for good measure.

Best to leave the salad ‘naked’, in keeping with the unanticipated sensual theme of the dish – good for the waistline too. And also because I suspect the ‘best-before date’ of that shady vinaigrette may in fact pre-date the conception of my youngest child.

And there you have it. Perhaps not as safe as seven airbags and electronic stability control, but nonetheless: half of it nuked to high heaven; t’other half crisp, fresh, arrayed upon the plate most artistically; and all entirely free of coalescing dressings that, on closer inspection, appears to have birthed a thriving macro-ecology. (In the bin with you, budding vinaigrette civilisation.)

ON THE ROAD KNIFE AND FORK

>> At last – ready to eat!

Transported swiftly on the pre-arranged route betwixt kitchen and dining table, the meal clung tenaciously to the plate, its roadholding abilities so assured my other hand was free to carry, with full confidence, the requisite hard-earned beer. (Not something they can safely report in a usual Carsales review, I dare say…)

Once seated before my MacGyver Pie, I wielded my cutlery with great anticipation and was swiftly rewarded. The reviled vegie pie proved itself, in fact, most inoffensive: a creamy filling interspersed with vegetable matter, wrapped in a pastry made crispy by slightly underestimating the power of my microwave. Add to this a forkful of zesty, tangy taco sauce and molten mozzarella of the most deliciously gooey order, the combination proving a rich and delicious mouthful.

The saucy countenance of the Anglo-Romano-Mexicano creation (I can still hear the Mariachi band playing “Land of Hope and Glory” atop the Tower of Pisa, even now) was delightfully offset by alternate forkfuls of salad – the tomato smooth and juicy, the baby spinach oh-so-fancy (and full of iron, I am reliably informed), the lettuce crisp and refreshing.

The remainder of the dish was swiftly and greedily consumed. Yet, and without detriment to the ingenuity and brilliance of my creation, I was not fulfilled. I was still in the ‘zone’, pumped and amped to the utmost – I had proven myself a worthy contender in the kitchen, equally able to sustain myself by unlikely means and not burn, sever, poison, or in any other way bring harm to my person in the process. And I was keen to repeat the feat.

Back to the kitchen it was, and a sandwich ensued – sliced cheese, sliced roast beef, sliced tomato, more sliced beef, a return of the taco sauce, and diced jalapenos on wholemeal was the result. My only regret was that I had in fact forgotten to include jalapenos on the original MacGyver Pie. Dang.

So enthused was I by my own Richard Dean Anderson-meets-MasterChef triumph, I had even paused along the way to take pictures of my esculent efforts – and a-post them to Facebook I did, inviting Jamie Oliver to “suffer in his jocks” should he ever happen to come across the evidence (pictures attached). And I’m sure he will suffer most mightily, come the day.

The posting of my proud efforts prompted reactions of amusement from my friends, compliments on the use of jalapenos, and various statements of horror and disownment from my wife which I still don’t quite understand. You’d think she’d be proud – I fed myself and lived to tell the tale. Who wouldn’t be pleased with such a resourceful spouse?

And so ends a tale of emancipation from famishment, a triumph of innovation over culinary adversity, a victory for the hungry-but-lazy everywhere. There may be a lesson wrapped up in all of this… but let me not detain you. I can sense your inspiration, I know you’re simply itching to rush home and MacGyver-up something from the forgotten contents of your own fridge – so go on, go and get creative, and eat free of all spousal repression.

Just don’t forget the jalapenos. And beware the vinaigrette.

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