Swordfish Snafus

Sometimes no matter how hard you try, there are clearly unseen forces working against you.

I really wanted to have dinner at a somewhat normal hour last night since Tuesday night's meal took so long we didn't eat until almost 9:30 - and while I appreciate the charming European-ness of eating so late, no one likes to eat and then immediately brush their teeth and go to bed. So I decided broiling up some swordfish was an easy, no fuss no muss meal we could eat at a reasonable hour. I mean how can broiling fish take more than 10 - 15 minutes at the most?

Adam arrived home from class around 7PM and I had already prepped the fish with a spice rub and gotten sides ready so all I had to do was preheat the oven to broil, pop it in and wait a few minutes, right?

Not so much.

I retreated to the living room while Adam showered and when he emerged he asked "Why is it so smoky in here?". Oblivious to a fault (setting your apartment on fire being the fault) I leapt up and into the kitchen to find smoke billowing out from my preheating oven. So much so that I was coughing as I turned it off and opened the windows.

Ok so evidently my mom is right and you really DO have to clean your oven once in a while. Duly noted.

Once the kitchen cleared it became clear that no broiling would happen tonight. So I fired up our Foreman Indoor/Outdoor grill intent on grilling the swordfish. When it was hot enough I threw the fish on, covered it, and started getting the rice and green beans ready.

After about five minutes I checked it and it wasn't reallly cooking as quickly as I had hoped. I figured maybe medium heat was not enough so I turned it up to medium high, covered it again and went about my business.

Five minutes later it was warm, but not really cooked. So I covered it YET AGAIN, made sure that the grill was plugged in (it was!) and let it cook.

The next time I checked it, it was clearly not even cooking anymore and the grill was almost cool. WTF!! I glanced at the microwave to see what time it was but the face was blank. Then I realized that the light on that side of the kitchen had gone out.

Ohhhhhh.

Yeah so I had blown a fuse and the reason my fish wasn't cooking was because the grill had shut off, oh about twenty minutes ago. And I just hadn't noticed.

SWEET.

Once that situation was taken care of, and the grill was preheated again, we finally did get to eat around 8:10PM.

Definitely an improvement! Maybe next time we can even try for 7:30! We are grilling steaks with friends tonight so hopefully they can help us break our late dinner steak.