This month’s blog chain at
Absolute Write was for one blogger to pick the prompt for the next blogger. The prompt chosen for me was
Less Than Fortunate Foods. This stymied me at first until I realized it was perfect. Any food that ends up in my kitchen to be cooked—by me—is unfortunate indeed.
You’ve heard of twice-cooked potatoes? Well I have a steak specialty I call twice-dead beef. My hubby will agree with this. He has often commented, “Woman. It’s already dead. You don’t have to kill it a second time.” It isn’t done until I produce a sufficient amount of smoke.
During dinner one night while my family was waiting for me to make something they prayed would be eatable, a friend of my husband’s stopped by—just in time to hear an ear piercing beep. Beep! Beep!
His friend panicked. “Dude, you can’t hear that? You got a fire somewhere.”
Hubby calmly gets out of his chair, takes the smoke alarm off the wall, yanks out the battery and tosses it on the dining room table. ”Nah, there’s no fire. That’s my wife’s cooking timer.”
Even the produce in the vegetable isle at the supermarket fears my arrival.
***
Idaho looked over at Moonlight. Despite his fancy blue Styrofoam container his days were numbered. The dark spots of old age were showing on his skin. Moonlight shifted in his package. The apples and oranges quivered, the display table shook as one by one the fruits rolled off onto the linoleum floor, headed in every direction.
“Pisst. Moonlight,” whispered, Idaho. “What’s going on with Navel and Mac?”
The mushroom strained against the cellophane cover and looked towards the automatic doors. “Shush! She’ll hear you. You don’t want her to pick you up.”
“What are you talking about?” Idaho twisted in the bag to get a better look out of the mesh screen.
“She usually comes in on Sundays. It’s only Thursday. You know what that means don’t you?”
Poor Moonlight, he had been around for a while. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. I just shipped in on Tuesday.”
“It means,” said Moonlight, trying to keep his cap on, “she must be trying to cook something ‘special’ for her humans. Hide! She’ll fry you to a crisp!”
“Hide? Are you mushrooms or nuts? I’m in a paper bag that’s sewn shut on top. How are me and the boys going to get out of this?”
“Put your stink on,” Moonlight said. “You know that mildew smell you guys get. Force it out your pores before it’s too late.”
The human walked closer to the pile of five pound potato bags. They thought for sure they were cooked as she lifted them up to her nose.
Sniff. Sniff.
The spuds waited. She set the bag down and looked to her left—right at the packages of two week old mushrooms. Was it possible? This human would feed them to her family? Idaho couldn’t believe his eyes. Could she not see their tops were splitting from the stems in agony?
“Well,” said the woman, “the law only says I have to feed them. Doesn’t say anything about it tasting good, and I haven’t killed anybody yet.”
Idaho watched the human put the blue container in her cart and head to the checkout. There was nothing he could do to stop her. It had cost the mushroom the ultimate price to save the potato’s skin.
-END-
Please visit the rest of the bloggers in the February 2013 Blog Chain. Who knows what they'll be writing about!
