FAKES-ican stack

we had planned to have mexican stack for dinner. a murphy family favorite, going back to the wisdom and crowd-planning skills of grandma murphy. rice on the bottom, chips, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, all sorts of deliciousness. it's a super-easy and super-satisfying dinner.

i got home from school right at 6:00. and tommy was walking out the door for his violin lesson, not to return for another hour and a half.

i convinced him that i didn't have the energy to make the meal all by myself, and promised i would wait for him before starting to make dinner. (i am so nice.)

at 7:30 sharp, he got home.

"hey, dear," he said, walking through the door. "oh, shoot. we should have started the rice a long time ago."

oops. mistake number 1. rice takes about 35 minutes longer than the rest of the meal.

i closed out of my scintillating game of spider solitaire (hey, i'm a busy, important person) and we started making our dinner--tommy belatedly started the rice. i began shredding cheese. tommy browned the hamburger. i chopped the grape tomatoes.

"hmmmm," said tommy. "we don't have any stewed tomatoes to go with the meat."

oops. mistake number 2. grandma murphy-style mexican stack involves a thick, soup-y mix of the meat and tomatoes that goes excellently on your rice. so all we had was some meat, which was fine. but not what we'd planned. we didn't even have an onion to go with the meat because the smell of chopped onion makes me throw up, so it's not worth it to even bother.

tommy pulled out the lettuce. i opened the fridge.

"hey," i said. "we don't have any salsa."

oops. mistake number 3. how can you have mexican stack without any salsa?

it was still pretty delicious, but it wasn't really mexican stack.

and we had to wait a good half-hour after everything else was ready to eat it until the rice was done.

not a great feat of cooking genius, let me tell you.