A Typical Meal At Home (When I Make It, Anyway)
After I handed off the baton of my daughter’s interminable English assignment to my wife (and I do mean interminable; in all violation of time and space she began the dang thing back when New York was called New Amsterdam), I started dinner.
Our pathetic menu was hamburger steak (our fancy name for ground beef squished into a vaguely pancake-like shape) and supremely unpopular leftover Potatoes-Au-Gratin from the night before that have been miraculously transformed into mashed-potatoes-with-the-works using an electric mixer. I smashed the meat and plopped it into the frying pan. Hmmm, I thought. This could probably uses some seasoning to disguise the pervasive tang of beef hormones. I reached for the garlic powder (hey, I was in a hurry), unscrewed the lid, and sprinkled some on.
It was like an old Candid Camera sketch where they unscrewed the lids on all the salt shakers. Garlic powder completely covered my hamburger patties. I stared at the container. All previous garlic powder from this manufacturer (a famous spices-and-herbs brand that isn’t Lawry’s) had screw tops with a shaker underneath. THIS one had a screw top cleverly hidden beneath a barely-visible flip top. There was no shaker underneath the screw top.
To make sure I wasn’t going crazy (sadly, always a possibility), I checked the same brand’s onion powder. Screw top with a shaker underneath. Someone at the seasoning company was obviously playing some sort of mean-spirited practical joke.
I scraped the excess garlic off as best I could and tossed it in the trash, then continued as if nothing had happened. My family has yet to try it, so I may be spending the rest of my evening dodging hurled epithets and regurgitation. I’ll let you know, assuming I live.
To my astonishment, the meat was eaten with nary a retch. The potatoes, however, were still regarded as something you might serve party guests in order to cut the evening short. Our cat is at this moment trying to bury the leftovers in her litterbox while glaring at me accusingly.
