Montana Jones

A late supper

I thought the burning smell was coming from outside my window. I really did. With all the slash piles getting burned this time of year it is not unusual to get a whiff of smoke drifting in the air. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I discovered the smell was actually coming from my stove.

I had put a pot of water on to boil and in following that rule about watched pots never boiling I wandered off to surf a little internet. I guess I lost track of time, when I got back to the stove there was no water. Boiled away to a sizzling blob of charred and molten gunk skating around on a hot metal dance floor. Fuck. I switched off the burner and lifted the pot over to my cutting board. I immediately thought better of that and transferred it to an unused burner. Too late, I had managed to scorch a circle into the wood of the cutting board. Fuck. What started as a late dinner was turning into an exercise in damage control.

I gave myself another five minutes to let everything cool down. Even then splashing water into the pot caused it to instantly steam and sizzle. I cautiously added water until it cooled enough for me to scrub out the charred black remains on the bottom. I re-measured my two cups of water and set it back to boil. Then I noticed floaties in the water so I pulled it and scrubbed again. I re-measured two cups of water and still saw crap floating in there. I got out the brillo scrubbers and extra soap and polished the stupid pot to a high shine. This time I didn't bother to look for anything floating.

I tended to my cooking a little closer this time. When the water boiled I added the noodles and set a timer. I stirred occasionally. When the timer beeped I removed it from heat. I cut open a package of albacore steak and in trying to dump it to the plate I got a puddle of fish juice instead. Rinse, repeat. Dinner was starting to piss me off. The albacore made it to my plate and into the microwave. Sixty seconds later I was looking at the horrendous mess of an exploded tuna bomb coating the insides of my little oven. Dinner was starting to piss me off.

A cool thing about being a bachelor is that you get to ignore small spills and messes at your own discretion. Fish stinking up the microwave is not a good choice for overlooking. I wet a sponge and went to work on the inside of the oven. Strange, the fish on the plate did not look any smaller than when I put it in, but close to a fourth of its mass was getting wiped off the microwave walls.

Dinner was a package of pasta alfredo and a package of albacore steak. It was supposed to be a quick and simple meal for a late dinner. It turned out to be extra late with extra cleanup work and burned kitchen tools as souvenir. It tasted all right though. I forced myself to eat every last noodle. There was no way I was going to deal with leftovers from this particular meal.

Labels: boil, burn, cleanup, cooking, dinner, fish, mess, microwave, supper

Posted by: Montana Jones / 7:55 AM