Tag: food

The Pesto Pest

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When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
But life handed me basil, so I made pesto.
I even built a hothouse to grow basil year-round.
Just harvest, wash, crush, mix, and serve.
The problem is that I am growing far too much basil for myself, so I give away a lot of basil leaves and pesto to others.
Maybe too much?
Now people turn off their lights and shut their windows when they see me coming.
“There’s that crazy Pesto Pest,” they whisper to each other. “Just be quiet and he’ll go away.”
So I hang it from their gutters.

Rock on

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Headquarters said to throw a curveball on the application form and then ask people about their answer in the interview.
So, I added a line asking “Paper, Scissors, or Rock?”
Most people write “Rock” on their application.
(Some just circle it.)
I throw out all the Paper, Scissors and Rock responses.
Stacks of Harvard and Yale grads tumble into my wastebin.
One is left.
Their response? “Bacon.”
I hired them blind.
No interview, no reference check.
Two weeks later, we carried our stuff out in cardboard boxes together.
I needed a drink, but it’s no surprise that they needed bacon.

Fizzy

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I never understood why people like those fizzy poprocks candies so much.
Then, someone watched how I was pouring the packet into my mouth and swallowing it.
“Put a little bit on your tongue,” she said.
“And?” I asked.
“Just let it sit there for a bit.”
So, I did, and that’s when I experienced the fizzling and popping flavors for the first time.
“When do they stop?” I asked.
But I couldn’t hear her answer. The popping had grown to a deafening, rumbling roar.
My tongue was numb, and blood started to run from the corners of my mouth.

Bug Diner

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I remember when restaurants wouldn’t put up with bugs in diners.
Those days are over, and one was taking up three seats at the counter, sitting on one and two left open because of all his arms.
He held a cup of coffee, stirring in blue packet after packet.
They used to say the red and yellow packets caused cancer, but I’m not a laboratory rat.
I just like the blue stuff.
“Leave any for me?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Alice, another coffee.”
The waitress scowled at me, poured a fresh cup, and I twitched my antenna in gratitude.

The Frying Pan

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You’ve heard of the expression “Out of the frying pan and into the fire” right?
But have you heard of its opposite?
“Out of the fire and into the frying pan” may not make sense to you, but then you don’t work with elemental spirits.
This is why we do not cook over the burners here in the research dungeon. Food attracts unwelcome guests to our plane of existence, and before you know it, you’re surrounded by firedrakes and salamanders.
Well, those and cockroaches, but we have traps for those.
And you can’t stomp a firedrake as easily as cockroaches.

The Farm

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Whenever lunch at school was chicken fingers or buffalo wings, kids would make jokes about chickens with fingers and buffalo with wings.
I didn’t, because I knew the ugly truth.
Every visit to Grampa Moreau’s farm was a nightmare.
Chickens clutching at the bars of their cages.
Tiny buffalo flapping around, goring our ankles.
(You do not want to know about the baby back ribs.)
These days, I’m a vegetarian, but I need to be careful. Grampa’s long gone, but out at the farm, his crops still grow.
And that’s why I’m picking the kidney beans out of my salad.

The War On Soup

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It is important to get to the front of the soup line as early as possible.
When the soup is running out, they roll the soup-drum into the kitchen and add water to fill it back up again.
No meat.
No vegetables.
No stock.
I know this to be true, because I worked in the soup kitchen for a year.
Until they threw me out for complaining that we were starving the people.
“If they starve, they should never have been born!” yelled the director.
“Without the born, we would have no meat!” I growled.
Happy now?
Finish your soup.

Millard!

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O, Millard Fillmore gold dollar coin!
How shiny thou art!
Zounds!
Your luster and glisten have no equal among currency!
Your visage may be one that scowls, but your undepicted heart beats bravely, rest assured.
I tap you against a glass table… once… twice… three times, my, how you sing brightly!
If it were not a sin, I’d worship your graven image, I would.
But, alas, parting is sweet sorrow, and the waffle-chips are my craving.
Sally forth into the coin-slot as the ransom for my snacking desire.
I will gaze upon your beauty no more.
Farewell, brave coin, Farewell!

Catering

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Usually, when there’s a big company-wide conference call, they bring in pizza or boxed lunches.
However, this time, they brought in crates full of glowing ham-sized seed-pods to put on every employee’s forehead.
“Hell no,” I said. “I’m not going to let you mess with my brain like that.”
The secretary put the pod away and handed me a box lunch.
The box had T on W written on it. Sure enough, inside was a turkey on wheat with a side of coleslaw.
Of course, the bitch didn’t say anything about the nanoprobes.
I mean, Unit Seventy regrets any insult.

Gravy Boat

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“Why do they call it a gravy boat?” I asked.
“Because there’s tiny German submarines in it,” said Grampa. “I bagged my share of Nazis, but there’s always one around the corner.”
Grampa was never in the army or navy. He drove his Buick into one of their Supreme Court-upheld Free Speech marches, and it was a miracle nobody got killed.
Well, okay. Maybe not the right use of the word miracle.
Anyway, they took away his license, and we’re stuck with him now.
I watched a tiny periscope rise… and then sink.
Just butter for my mashed potatoes, please?