Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Take out fiasco

We had a series of mishaps with our take-out dinner last night but before that, background story muna.

I've been very busy with my project so I haven't had time to do some marketing and I haven't even had the time nor energy to prepare something from what little we have in the pantry & refrigerator. So take out has been the answer to the question "what's for dinner" these past days.

Now, between hubby and me, he is the one w/ more exacting food requirements.

I can eat the same thing (well, my favorites) 3x a day, everyday. I can eat fried rice alone w/o any additional ulam. I can have soup as ulam too. I guess that's because I came from a household where we didn't always have a proper kusinera all the time. Hubby's father was a chef and while they didn't have mala-restaurant-types of spreads at home, hindi naman basta-basta lang like what I was used to.

One of the things I really really love about hubby is that he doesn't complain. Alam naman nya what he was getting when he chose me - while I'm not a disaster in the kitchen, my true talents lie elsewhere (haha, feeling talented!). He will gamely eat whatever I serve in the table, whether it's something I experimented on, or something I asked him to pick up on the way home.

He prefers to still have ulam even though we have fried rice. Soup is drunk (like we do with water or soda during meals) and isn't an ulam, ... But if there are no other alternatives, quiet lang siya. He does have 1 weakness though, he absolutely, positively cannot tolerate spicy foods. Sabi nga nya, gutumi mo na lang siya, wag lang pakainin ng maanghang.

Fast forward to last night's fiasco. So walang ulam, right ? I asked him to drop by his favorite Chinese Takeout place to pick up some food. He ordered fried rice (w/ our usual customizations) and the shredded pork w/ eggplant (matagal tagal pa kami nag deliberate if we wanted the pork w/ eggplant or beef w/ mushrooms).

Unfortunately, he does not check his package when he does take out. He never does. So we never realized, until we were about to dig into dinner, that we were given some other pork dish. We would've been okay w/ the substitution except for the fact that it was also spicy.

So we called to complain. We never do this - complain about food, I mean. We're very tolerant 99% of the time because we don't want the hassle but for some reason, hubby wanted to complain last night, so I did.

Takeout place apologizes and asks if we can come back for a replacement. We said, no. Could they deliver ? Okay raw.

While waiting for the delivery, we were discussing if they will get the wrong dish ? Parang mali naman if they get it pa - pwede ko bang tikman ? kagatan ? Haha. I hope they don't give it to some other customer. If this were McDonald's, they'd throw that away so you can keep it.

Delivery guy comes, hands us the package and asks to see the other one. Hubby shows it to him and he takes it with him. Eh ?

Tinikman ko yun. So if you're my neighbor and you ordered some shredded pork dish with peppers last night at around 8:30, ... uh... let's not get into this.

Anyway, it was almost 9p when we sat down for dinner. I was ravenous. I'm not sure about hubby, because he was the one who wanted to complain & wait for a replacement, remember ?

So I started digging in to the food.

I tasted the pork w/ eggplant dish and eek! Seems like the takeout place had the last laugh, the dish they sent us was spicy. It was so spicy that *I* thought it was spicy - and I have a great tolerance for spice.

Poor hubby. He quietly ate his fried rice. No more ulam.

The weird thing was, we've been ordering this dish on and off for at least 2 years now and we never got a spicy version until tonight. There must be something off w/ their cook last night.

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