food & whining

exhibit A: the actual toast

Before the meat of today’s information, a few notes to the file from the R&P test kitchens:

The persistent smell of burned toast that permeates the house for weeks even when you are not burning the toast may in fact be due to this piece of bread from possibly as long ago as October if you pause to think about how long that smell has gone on, which can lurk, camouflaged, in the innermost reaches of the dimmest back corner of the floor of the toaster oven, but you may not feel motivated to determine this until a significant amount of black smoke billows out of the toaster when you--a person who has decided they can talk to the world about making home-cooked food for your family and the joys of a civilized meal time--pop a gluten-free frozen waffle into the toaster with the intention of eating it in the car. Once you discover the culprit, rest assured you don’t have to worry about the wasted piece of bread, or about the wasted time you might spend strolling to the door to throw it out for the chickens if, like our heroine here, you have taken the precaution all good cooks and homemakers take of keeping a chicken with a neurological problem in your kitchen.

exhibit B: the chicken (file photo; not taken while burning things)

Congratulate yourself on this foresight as you toss the black toast into her box (please note, photo for illustration purposes only; she usually is in a box, I swear. But if I were to just show you the box, you might experience some nagging doubt that it actually had a chicken in it. Now you can relax. It does.)

If, like the protagonist in our hypothetical dramatization, you then over-crank the toast knob on the toaster and (oh, the irony) actually burn the waffle, carbonize it I mean, and then, in disgust, throw it to the waiting dog:

exhibit C: the dog (also a file photo, but this is definitely his "how about you just give that to me?" face)

then the amount of time it takes for the dog to take the waffle to the one area of the living room rug he has not yet destroyed and consume it will be EXACTLY equivalent (nothing left over!) to the amount of time it takes you to recall that frozen gluten-free waffles are made with potato flour. We have a rule in our house that whomsoever feeds the dog all or part of a potato or potato by-product may sleep with him outdoors. His relationship, digestively, with the potato is not a cordial one. The Waffle Felt Round The World.

As for lunch, everyone is on the ravioli cure today because I am taking our woolly products to the Berkshire Grown Holiday Market tomorrow and have not been as attentive to matters like grocery shopping and laundry as I might otherwise have been. Some people had to wear non-gender-approriate socks today, or would have had there not been some dumpster-diving in the hamper to resurrect yesterday’s hosiery.

In related news, at our local fantastic toy store we got this fantastic new thermos, which makes an easier load-in for the ravioli, and I had to cut the oranges like this:

because one of my customers has too many wiggly teeth in the front to eat oranges any other way.

Also on today’s menu: the nibble box. A short stack of crackers, some cubed ham, slivers of cheese, the odd pickle or olive.

Now the ravioli’s all gone and I’ve already played the pasta card today, so what we’ll have for dinner remains an open question. But the dog and I will be outside then, so maybe I don't have to worry about it.