You will regret reading this. It’s disgusting.

A few notes on this post (ugh, this already sounds like a work e-mail):

1. If you don’t like it, you may blame Fig’s aunt. (I won’t link to her in case that’s weird.) She requested a new post. I was going to write one anyway, but then I started to feel gross, so I changed my mind, but then I changed it back again.
2. There is a very small chance I am dying. If you don’t hear from me in a week, you may assume I am dead and move on to greener blog pastures.
3. Everything you are about to read is gross and unpleasant, and will involve conversations with things and creatures that cannot speak in reality. (Update: I was going to relate a conversation with Fitzpatrick, but I won’t bother. It was even weirder than the rest of all this.)

A straggly band of loners. The roots of tomato disease are already visible.

What I did for food

Woah.

I have just made an unbelievable salad.

I know.

It’s from Plenty (but I modified it; also, wow, the American edition of the book is actually prettier), and it was easy, and it is amazing. Vinegary. Broiled tomatoes. Sweet. Aaaah.

Tomatoes before broiling

(Also, I created a very deep gash in my thumb during this evening’s cooking festivities, and bandaged it up and went right on chopping. It was one billion percent my fault—I’m not used to using knives that can actually cut you and did something truly moronic, and cut myself right after thinking “This may not be safe”—and actually it was while I was chopping for things for r&b for lunch, not for this. But still. Also, no one wants another post about r&b, so I have to tell you about it here.)

Frazzly, sour, bitter, hot

I have, in my long life, come across recipes for kimchi fried rice many times. It never seemed remotely appealing. I don’t like kimchi: it’s too cold, sour, spicy, lip-puckering, shriveling. It always comes before something better, something I want much more.

But when I came across it on Pink Basil, it suddenly looked perfect—red, hot. Full of onion and chewiness and oil; I thought it would be cooling. And I anticipated a week or two of Pantry Staples because of various traveling.

So I bought kimchi (which totally destroyed my $5 rule—that I can’t buy any single thing that costs more than $5, ingredients-wise; this rule is frequently destroyed, most recently by CHERRIES), and it sat in my fridge for a while. Kimchi, if you are not aware, is basically fermented cabbage. It is also very good for you, in a yogurt sort of way, if you catch my meaning. The brand I bought—no idea what the name is; it just says “New York Kimchi” and then some things in Korean—contains cabbage, apple, salt, ginger, garlic, green onion, anchovy broth (SURPRISE! not vegetarian!), pepper, chile powder, and some sort of bacteria that’s put there on purpose.

Today I finally made the fried rice.

I have purchased a new friend. His name is Mofo, Do Not Rob Me Or You Will Regret It. I will keep him under my pillow. This reminds me of an Eddie Izzard bit, but I cannot find it on YouTube.

“Glang Gling Gling Gling … Gling Gling.” That was a barrel organ version of “Jerusalem,” which was a British, a British Empire type song. It’s a hymn, you know, one that we’d sing in church as a kid, I used to [sings] “And did those feet Boom Boom Boom Boom in …” you know. And it’s got really weird lines in it, and it was “And shall my sword sleep in my hand.” Not a good idea. You’re gonna roll over and cut your bits off, aren’t you. And then it’s that Godfather scene of [holding things to his face] “Uhh, Uhh, Uhh, Uhh, a head of a horse, and my willy.” “Should my sword sleep near my bed, but not too close so it cuts my bits off.” That’s how the line should go.

(Thank you, wonderful people who have transcribed all of Eddie Izzard.)

Pasta salad with all the good things

This pasta salad contains all the best things in the world. It was also utterly emotionally exhausting. During the making of it, I:

1) confronted the possibility that my cat is sick
2) lost my cat in my (300-sq-ft) apartment and was convinced he had gone somewhere to die.

He’s not dead, but a visit to the vet is definitely in the cards. (And he won’t take medicine—he’s aggressive and only eats one kind of dry food, so there’s no way to trick him—so I don’t really know what I’ll do if he’s sick. FREAKING OUT. SOMEONE HELP.)

I started out by preparing my one pound of chicken thighs—skin-in, bone-in. I did this because the happy chicken was too expensive unless I bought the most labor-intensive kind. I still have no idea how I made this edible; I tried to watch videos about how to remove the bone from chicken, but it just freaked me out more and wasn’t helpful. It was all, find the joint, and then put your knife in, and do something magical, and all of a sudden your chicken is perfect and cooked and already eaten.

Exactly.