Cornish game hens with wild rice?

Men, I’ve heard told, are marvelous creatures and those of us who don’t have one, often cuss our single status, and yet . . . there are times.

Yes, there are times when every woman is in accord with the gal who, after long years of marriage, was asked if she had ever considered divorce.

“Divorce?” she replied in consternation, “Oh heaven’s no!” But then, with a lift of an eyebrow and a humorous grin, added, “But murder? Now, if you ask if I’ve ever felt like murder, why, that’s a different story.”

I imagine that’s how my friend Janet felt last week about her males. She called me and all it took was one quick sentence for me to know the whole story. A story every wife knows.

See, Jan is a happy, capable gal who keeps a nice home and like most of us she knows her way around the kitchen and all in all puts good food to the dinner table for her family, which happens to be her husband and three sons.

But the other day she felt a certain dullness about her meals, (TV cooking programs can do that to us) and decided to serve her fellows something different. To give them a real treat.

And so, not content with any half-measures Jan planned “A Dinner”. None of that “I’ll fix your plates and you can finish watching the game” stuff. No, she’d treat them to the whole bit. Silver, candles, china. Real TV style. The whole bit.

For the meat Jan bought small Cornish hens and then thumbed her cook book for the proper know-how. Stuff with wild rice, the book said, and so she bought Wild Rice and stuffed the birds with it. Then following each step precisely, she basted constantly with minced garlic, butter and sage as they gently baked. Mmmmmmm, I can taste them now.

When she called her guys to the table it was so beautiful that the only thing missing was Julia Child standing at the doorway welcoming them in.

Now, every woman knows exactly how Jan felt as they sat down to eat. Would her guys stand up and cheer? Would tears of appreciation well up in their eyes? Or would they eat in silence, feeling mere words a desecration to such divine nectar of the gods? So Jan waited, as every woman waits, for the verdict of her males.

With knife and fork they cautiously prodded their hens and one of them ventured, “Looks like someone forgot to feed this here bird and stunted its growth.”

Another wondered aloud if their mother had cooked them long enough, and so the meal went. But the fellows (all recognizing an occasion when face to face with one) ate on and only fleetingly glanced toward the light switch in preference to the flickering candles on the table.

And, as they left the meal, oh the cruelty of the male specie . . the main comment was, “Well, it was okay but why go to all this trouble when plain roast chicken, with bread stuffing is better?”

Well, it was no doubt lucky for those fellows that Jan didn’t happen to have any weapon handy, for that was one of those times she must have felt the same as that other gal who first said, “Divorce? Heavens, no. But murder????? Now that’s a different story.”