“Mommy told me to put the icing on first,” I overheard Chooch telling Henry.

“Wait, what did I tell you?” I said overtop of Henry groaning, “That’s just great.”

“To put icing on the toaster streudel first,” Chooch answered.

“Oh shit, is THAT what you were asking me yesterday while I was exercising?

” (Seriously, he waits until I’m in the middle of Bodies in Motion* to expect me to start parenting him.)

“Wonderful,” Henry sighed. “Did you do it?” he asked Chooch.

“No! I didn’t think I should, so I put the icing on after,” Chooch said, sounding appalled that Henry even had to ask.

“Thank god,” Henry said. “That would have been a nice toaster fire.

Chooch, if you ever have questions about cooking, please call me. Don’t ask your mother.”

*I enjoy working out to exercise programs where people are wearing LA Gears.

The last couple of apples Henry has bought have been downright horrific. I’m talking so bad that I have THROWN AWAY more than half of each 7pm work apple. They taste hard and like the ground, similar to raw potatoes. Total fucking fruit foul. WHAT IS GOING ON!?

So I asked Henry just that: “WHAT IS GOING ON?!”

“It’s not apple season,” explained Henry.

I didn’t like that answer, so when I was whining to Debbie and Barb about it at work today, I wailed, “WHAT IS GOING ON?!”

“It’s not apple season,” explained Barb.

OH OK, HENRY JR.

Later, I sidled up to Barb’s desk with my “I AM A VERY SWEET GIRL” smile on my face, while palming a Gala apple behind my back.

“Can I feel your apple?” I demanded. And of course Barb let me feel her apple, because I’m Erin Rachelle Kelly.

In response to Barb’s curious expression, I said, “I just know that my apple is going to suck, and if that’s the case, then I would rather you eat it.”

“OK. So, do you want to trade apples?” Barb is so good at reading between the lines.

And that is how I turned my Gala into a Pink Lady. I don’t know yet if it sucks. If it does, I’ll be interofficing Barb some hate mail.
———————–
Speaking of apples, Henry’s mom Judy was singing the praises of grapples a few weeks ago. She told me that they are apple and grape crossbreeds and that they are REALLY JUICY. This sounded good to me, so I asked Henry why he never buys any.

“Because they’re 4 for $4!” he cried. I always forget that we are peasants living in Shantytown, wearing sardine cans as shoes, and that we cannot afford such extravagant and superfluous foodstuffs. I guess I’ll just have to make do with the vittles I scavenge while playing wildberry roulette in the forest.

Finally, Henry bought a sleeve of grapples and by George those motherfuckers are some fine ass produce. They reek of grapes but taste like really moist apples! No wonder all these other apples taste like overripe garbage.

Grapples or gtfo!!!!
———————-
Henry and I had time to kill while Chooch was at a birthday party on Sunday, so I suggested that we walk up to the local Mexican market in Brookline. I went there with Chooch in December, but that was before I cared about fruit, so we only looked at candy and rosaries.

At first, I was so excited. This place had all kinds of non-American fruit!

But then I realized that it was just regular fruit with the names written in Spanish.

There were cactus petal things that Henry refused to buy, and these long ass weapons that were apparently aloe. Henry said no to those too. He did let me get these dwarf mango things, like I’m supposed to get down on my knees now or something.

“Ow! What are these?” I asked Henry about these grapefruit-sized balls of pain.

“I don’t know,” Henry answered.

“Ow!” I yelled again.

“Yeah. Keep touching it,” he muttered.

I made Henry buy tomatillos because I thought they were what fried green tomatoes are made from, but apparently fried green tomatoes are made from green tomatoes. But now we have a shit ton of tomatillos so Henry made salsa which is better than stupid fried green tomatoes anyway and now no one has to get hit by a train.

Henry also added some of my midget mangoes to the salsa. It was OK, but kind of tasted like a garden. I guess because that is what “fresh” is supposed to taste like.

Henry turned around after buying chorizo from the meat counter to find me standing with my arms full of scary religious candles, which is all I really wanted to go there for anyway. Truth comes out.

——————–

In other ethnic market news, Henry went to Pitaland (right next to the Mexican market; I hope they don’t decide to feud anytime soon because I walk past both of them A LOT) to get pita (surprise!) for his mom. He also came out with a bag of fresh dates. I love dates, but these dates were DESIRABLE. Super plump and soft, I couldn’t believe it.

SIDE NOTE: When Henry and I went to Coachella in 2004, visiting a date farm in Indio, CA was the highlight of the trip for me, probably because we fought so furiously—enough to make Sid and Nancy blush from their Afterworld drug den—that I literally blocked out most of that trip from my memory. But that date farm I will never forget. We watched some video about dates having sex, and they have always had a sleazy connotation for me ever since.

And we had date milk shakes.

Motherfucking milkshakes made from dates.

I would do unspeakable things to have one of those gyrating down my gullet right now.

(Apparently, it is a date garden.)

That milkshake alone makes up for the stripper shack in San Bernadino in which Henry put us up, and the 113 degree heat during the weekend-long concert in the desert, not to mention the fact that I was there with Henry.

“What are dates made out of, anyway,” I asked Henry, closing my eyes and obscenely sucking face with a fat ass date.

“Um…..dates?” Henry said, in his typical snide Professor Henry von Fuckstick tone.

I ate one of those sexual dates while I was writing this. I probably looked like a muted porno, just so you know.

After WEEKS of being forced to eat American people fruit, we finally went fruit hunting last weekend, thank the fucking lord. Henry asked me where I wanted to go and I just looked at him like his mouth had turned into a flapping kooka.

“Um, an Asian market, idiot!” I scoffed and it’s a wonder that man never backhands me.

There we were, surrounded by the fruits of the Oriental Market, and Henry asked, “What are we getting?”

What a fucking dumbass. All of the persimmons, obviously.

I haven’t had persimmons in weeks. WEEKS. The regular grocery stores quit selling them, but I just had a feeling my stinky little Eastern markets wouldn’t let me down.

Henry wouldn’t buy all of the persimmons, just four. Fucking tightwad. I was picking through the pear selection when I noticed a box of small green balls.

Apparently, jujubes aren’t just teeth-hugging candy. I tried to unload a handful into the basket but Henry juju-blocked me.

“You better google that shit and find out what it is first,” Henry warned, not wanting a repeat of the 2004 Durian Disaster.

Google told me that jujubes are basically Chinese dates. I love dates! So we bought some. Unfortunately, I didn’t read enough to learn that when the jujubes are green, that means that they’re not ripe and will essentially mock the taste of an apple, only without any flavor at all.

They also had mangosteen, which I desperately wanted and not only just because it looks like some crazy medievel marirtal aid. However, Henry did the whole cartoon-eyes act when he saw that they were only available in mesh bags (probably also doubling as marital aids in some uncivilized country) and were $8.toomuch a POUND.

This is apparently a lot of monies for fruit so Henry quickly shooed me away from the produce aisle, which was fine, because it’s in close proximity to the fish counter resulting in a veil of rotting scales got trapped in my throat every time I opened my mouth to complain.

So then we went to dumb Whole Foods where Henry stocked up on boring, regular fruits (seriously, how many types of tangerines do yuppies & hippies really require?!), which is what I ate all week in lieu of exotic pulps.

I’m a citrus’d out. Henry watched me eating a grapefruit the other day and was one errant eye-squirt away from enrolling me in the remedial living facility down the street.

“Who eats grapefuit like that!?” he cried, watching me stab the pink with a limp wrist and a fork.

“Someone who doesn’t have a GRAPEFRUIT SPOON!” I snapped, opening the door for another Life Lecture from Henry who tried to  tell me all I need to do is CUT IT WITH A KNIFE.

Oh OK, Henry. Remember my knife allergy?

Every time I eat a grapefruit, I wind up looking like the tail end of a citrus porno was just filmed on my face.

One time, I used one of Chooch’s coats as a bib.  And I don’t care if you tell him, because:

• he shouldn’t have left his fucking coat on the goddamn couch
• he’s done way worse shit to my stuff

Eating fruit is exhausting. I’m one step away from having Henry chew it for me first.

We went back to the Oriental Market on Saturday. The whole way there, I chanted, “Please can I get a mangosteen. Please can I get a mangosteen. Please can I get a mangosteen I’VE BEEN SO GOOD!” (Lies.) Totally wore Henry down and he snapped, “OK! OK. God.”

And of course they didn’t have any so I got to indulge in a Veruca Salt moment.

They did, however, have a jackfruit! Look at the size of that motherfucker! I didn’t even bother asking Henry if we could get it. That fruit’s girth had his answer written all over it.

Meanwhile, two white vans full of Asian adolescents dressed in their most eye-blinding neon swag (lens-less neon eyeglass frames, check!) spilled into the store and began loitering in every area I needed to access, like they were waiting for an LMFAO appearance. Chooch and I took that as our queue to go sit in the car, but car key-carrying Henry and I were separated by a sea of shopping carts spilling forth with bricks of tofu and seaweed-wrapped quail eggs and not one of the carts’ pushers would respond to my sad whimpering and quiet “excuse me”s so I had to walk all the way back around the produce department just to make it to Henry, like some lame Asian market rom-com.

Mangosteenless in Pittsburgh.

You’ve Got Exotic Fruit.

I don’t really watch many rom-coms so I have no idea what I’m saying right now, except that I had this overwhelming desire to get back to Henry, like he had just come home from the SERVICE and the only thing that stood between us was a bunch of adulterating whore-bitch army wives and psychological quicksand.

I have never felt that before! Either I’m Falling in Love For Real or I just really wanted out of that market.

Meanwhile, Chooch was squinting at candy wrappers, like clearer vision was going to help him understand how durian could possibly be made into a delightful treat.

After finally escaping with my precious produce, Henry got in the car and animatedly spoke of being jostled around by Eastern  elbows and finding himself the victim of a brutal line-jumping*, which was probably more action than he experienced in the SERVICE, but Chooch and I definitely didn’t care because there were no battle wounds to show for it, plus it didn’t happen to us and we are selfish motherfuckers cut from the same cloth.

(*Some old lady sideswiped him with her cart when he was trying to move up in line, totally robbing him of his spot. Cry us a river, Henry.)

At least I have enough persimmons to get me through the week.

I guess this wasn’t as urgent as I thought.

Oh, sure—this pile of fruit looks beautiful, doesn’t it? Too bad being aesthetically-pleasing to the eyeballs don’t mean SHIT if the tongue’s not getting flavor-fucked.

We have officially run out of Weird Fruit at the Appledale household. Henry went grocery-shopping over the weekend but came home with nothing that I haven’t already eaten, nothing that only grows in a riverbed of wombat dung, nothing that requires watching a YouTube video to learn how to eat it.

Just strawberries (yawn), blueberries (seriously, Henry?), pears (and not even exotic pears, but regular pears  that even orphans probably eat), apples (oh OK, 2011!), kiwis (Jesus Christ, Henry, I outgrew kiwis in the 90s), mangoes (overrated) and cherries, which I’m actually happy about because apparently when I settled for a Blue Collar Life with a man whose fruit palate is clearly as calloused as his hands, I settled for a life where a bag of fucking cherries is considered a “splurge.”

Even the blackberries Henry dumped into my fruit salad tasted like nothing more than petty Pittsburgh produce. I mean, what went through Henry’s mind when he was at the grocery store? “Oh, here are some plain oranges that plain Americans eat. I bet Erin will love that because her standards are so plain.

” IS THAT WHAT YOU THOUGHT, HENRY!? Bitch, please! He might as well just go buy me fruit from Wal-Mart.

My fruit purveyor Andrea called my current fruit menu “pedestrian,” and while she was probably mocking me I don’t care because this fruit is fucking PEDESTRIAN. I will stop short of calling it jejune, because that word sounds too fancy for what this fruit really is.

Oh my god, I miss the days of lychee and longans and jackfruit!

Persimmon and cherimoya! Eating that fruit made me feel important, like the guts of that cherimoya was really some kind of indulgent fruit-oyster that plain people weren’t allowed to share with me. But this everyday shit? There are elderfucks in nursing homes eating the same fruit as me right this very moment, except that theirs is suspended in green Jello and sadness.

Oh, I just can’t stand it.

Earlier today, there was a gentle, friendly knock upon my door. “Probably Hot Naybor Chris wanting to use Henry for sex tools,” I thought.

(*Or SEX TOOLS!) 

Then there was another congenial little rap, followed by the sound of the door opening.

I was in the middle of making new serial killer Valentines*, so you can imagine where my mind went.

(*More on this later; I’m super excited about it!)

But it was just the mailman, putting a giant box between my doors. A giant box of FRUIT from my friend Andrea in California! She hooked me the fuck up. Persimmons, guava, honey tangerines, cactus pears, a giant Mexican papaya that didn’t survive the flight…plus CANDY!

You know I’m on a fucking fruit kick when I literally toss the CANDY aside in order to gain better access to the FRUIT.

 Henry came home from work and I screamed, “HURRY UP AND CUT THIS FRUIT FOR MY FRUIT SALAD!” He glanced at the mound of exotic Californian fruit and growled, “Andrea!” in the vein of Pee Wee finding out Francis! stole his bike.

Look at that bitchin’ prickly pear! When I have to Wiki how to eat the fruit in my fruit salad, you know shit’s about to get cray. I should have done my research beforehand, but then I wouldn’t have found out that eating the green part of the prickly pear is a bad idea. Tasted like spicy cucumber and I openly wept a little, loud enough for my office neighbor Angie to ask me WTF was wrong. When she learned that I was just being weird with my fruit, she seemed to lose interest in my plight. I could have been seriously injured!

Then my friend Kevin from Miami (another place that probably has much better fruit than stupid Pittsburgh) told me on Facebook that he bought a sapodilla today. I Googled it and learned that it tastes like brown sugar and ROOT BEER?! WHAT!? I emailed the link to Lee, who is working late shift with me tonight, and he told me I have a full blown problem.

I put in a call  to my fruit purveyor and she’s putting her feelers out for sapodilla. She said she might even have a cherimoya hookup!

What if I became a fruit blogger?

[See also: This Post.]

You know what Henry wanted to do on Sunday?

Sleep, watch FOX News, nap, snooze, eat some jerky, scratch his balls while dozing off, doze off, nap some more, watch things being made on the television, go to bed.

You know what Henry did instead? Every goddamn thing Chooch and I told him to do.

First, we went to the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville, which I will get to later. (Warning: it’s gon’ be photo-heavy.) Immediately afterward, Chooch and I started whining about being hungry. I mean, we had literally just gotten in the car. We’re like a cuckoo clock for hunger.

“Oh Jesus Christ, here we go,” Henry spat, stupidly thinking he could drive 90 minutes home and just feed us whatever orphanage porridge du jour he had planned.

Seriously, almost everything Henry cooks us for dinner is gray. Sometimes olive and throw-up. Indian porridge, I guess.

“There’s nowhere to eat here anyway,” Henry smugly (and wrongfully) pointed out. So I countered with at least 6 different restaurants I saw as Henry sped past.

I don’t know what made me latch on to Young’s Cafeteria, but when we started to pass it, I screamed to Henry to turn in there.

“Why?” he cried. “You’re not going to like it!”

Look, when in Moundsville, eat like the Moundsvillagers, right? And I imagine they must flock in droves to a restaurant attached to a run-down motel with a shady accountant’s office in the back.

“This is going to be just like that Roadside Restaurant you hated,” Henry mumbled as we walked through the doors and were hit with a blast of 1960s wood paneling, coagulating gravy and geriatric disdain. But unlike the Roadside, where we were forced to order from a grease-encased menu, we instead got to push a tray through a grease-encased tableau of said menu, like taking a tour of an 85-year-old’s last meal request.

As we stood there holding our trays, every last townie looked up from their snot-gravied plates and if they weren’t all whispering “City folk!” to each other, then my knack at prejudging is really tarnished.

You better believe I tried their homemade p-nut butter pie.

And it actually was delicious, but it reminded me of when I used to give my German Shepherd a spoonful of peanut butter to disengage his barking ability before I would sneak out of the house in high school. I’m sure Henry enjoyed my pie-feasting silence.

The cafeteria offerings actually started out with fruit-suspended jello dishes. Come on, Young’s. Could you be any more cliche? I couldn’t decide if it was more hospital tray or 1967 block party. I even had the green one on my tray for a split second before coming to my senses.

I could practically see Henry’s ears smoking as his brain frantically tried to dissuade his stomach from choosing every single bowl of disgusting Old Person Side Dish. Pickled eggs, REALLY? You know there were beets floating around up in that display somewhere, too.

Like I’m one to talk for thinking that this BEAN SALAD would be a good idea. Oh my god, one bite and I thought it was going to spring forth in all its vinegar’d glory and kill me. I swapped it out with Henry’s cole slaw when he wasn’t looking, but that was just as dried-up as all the octogenarians dining around us.

Healthy stuff.

Their entree offerings were exactly as I had guessed, short of salisbury steak. Just a bunch of mystery meats lost beneath gravy pits of varying colors. However, they actually had a vegetable lasagna! Chooch was ahead of us and doing everything on his own because he’s apparently his own person, when the fuck did that happen? Oh wait, it’s always been like that. Apparently, the close proximity of so many vats of vomit models had him suffering the same recoiling gag reflex as his mother, so he opted for the vegetable lasagna too. I heard the old hair-netted broad ask him if he wanted sauce on it, and he had the good sense to shoot down that idea.

I, on the other hand, did not engage my smarts and said yes to the same question.

In return, I was handed a plate of vegetable lasagna smothered under a blanket of MEAT SAUCE, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Seriously, MEAT SAUCE?! On VEGETABLE LASAGNA? Look, I’m not one to send back food, but I had to make an exception with this. So after whispering tersely with Henry about how “I can’t eat this now! WHAT SHOULD I DO? YOU DO IT!!!!” I handed it back to the old lady and said I didn’t want any sauce at all.

“The marinara sauce is next to the meat sauce,” her youthful co-slopper pointed out, and, not having heard me tell the old broad I didn’t want any sauce after all, was just about to begin ladling a blood pool of tomato sauce onto my pure, virginal slab of vegetable lasagna when I yelled, “NO SAUCE!” I mean, when I was originally asked if I wanted sauce, I assumed it was a creamy sauce to match what was already on the lasagna, and I only said yes because that shit looked desiccated, I’m sorry.

God only knows how long it had been sitting in that vat, forced to commingle with the likes of chicken a la king and pepper steak. I’d be all withered, too.

But why would you want to put marinara sauce on a vegetable lasagna?!

I had to remind myself that we were in West Virginia, after all, and they probably don’t know any better.

This picture is too good not to use again. Why was Henry so angry? Oh god, the possibilities are endless. The fact that Chooch and I were acting like obnoxious tourists could have had a lot to do with it. Or the fact that we weren’t paying attention to the crap with which Chooch was filling his tray (like chocolate cake and a chocolate chip cookie and chocolate milk and chocolate chocolate). Or the fact that our lunch cost over $40, hahaha.

“I thought cafeterias were supposed to be for poor people?” I asked Henry, who is an authority on Poor People Things.

“Not when you’re charged for everything separately!” he growled. I don’t know why he was taking it out on us when his tray was the one filled with an individual hospital patient smorgasbord. I seriously think he took one of everything in the disgusting wet salad section, where everything was either pickled or buried under a relish helmet.

You’d think he would have been content—-this was a Babylon for blue collared gourmands!

I wonder if cafeterias remind Henry of THE SERVICE. I wonder if he ever had kitchen duty. I sense a potential Henry interview.

While my lasagna wasn’t anything to blog about, I enjoyed my time at Young’s. It reminded me of when I was little and would beg my mom to take me to Woolworth’s at the mall just so I could eat in the cafeteria. There’s something special about cafeteria pudding when you’re 4 years old. And pinching your mom’s fingers between her tray and yours.

THAT’S what I forgot to do to Henry.

Nowhere inside the Palace of Gold lobby could I find even a footnote about the cafeteria. I thought this was pretty strange, because eating is important, especially since we were in the hills of West Virginia and would probably have to skin a groundhog or worse – a Miley Cyrus fan – if we wanted to replenish all the energy we exerted being faux-spiritual in some dead Indian’s palace. What kind of establishment doesn’t post all kinds of ephemera directing visitors to their cafeteria?

I wasn’t leaving that joint without having my fat, heretic mouth fed the food of Krishna. I waited for the annoying redneck with the baby oiled-hair daughter to suck up by donating $10 to the repair fund, and then I sidled up to our shorn-headed guide and, in a tone reserved for a man inquiring about a happy ending, asked, “So, where’s the cafeteria?”

She seemed slightly surprised, I guess because most whities get their fill of the Palace and all of its splendors and then go back home to eat real food at McDonald’s. But not these whities. We didn’t just drive 80 miles from Pittsburgh for a 30 minute tour without ingesting some sort of edible souvenir.

“The cafeteria isn’t located in the Palace. It’s down by the temple and lodging,” she explained.

“Ok,” I replied, not about to be deterred. “Is it walkable?” She said it was only a quarter of a mile down the street and come on, this is the #7-ranked Walking Challenge Specialist in Pittsburgh, PA. A quarter of a mile ain’t shit.

But first we stopped at the gift shop, where the middle-aged cashier was talking to her friend on the phone the entire time (Seri said they were talking about someone having a mistress; I was too busy trying to keep my eyeballs from aooga‘ing over all the baubles) and had the audacity to ask if I could pay with cash instead of credit because she didn’t want to get off the phone. That doesn’t seem like something Sri Krishna would want his peoples to do.

I paid with my credit card.

Seri and I got matching bracelets to celebrate our independence from our men-folk! The only man for me is Swami P-dawg, anyway.

We walked the short distance down the street, passing nothing but fields, and then cows, before arriving at what I guess was New Vrindiban’s city center. We had to ask about the cafeteria one more time before finding it on the other side of the Lodge and a small playground occupied by happy Krishnan children. (Krishnan is probably completely incorrect but it sounds so, so right.)

Finally, we stumbled upon the open-door to Govinda’s Restaurant and walked in RIGHT BEHIND MY INDIAN ENEMY from the tour. God, I would have thought he had been halfway home on his high horse by then.

We walked into the cafeteria and were immediately met with a strong sense of awkward. The West Virginian red necks had probably bailed on the cafeteria in favor of Jeb’s pig roast, so that just left me and Seri as the outsiders. But I refused to be chased away by racial discomfort. Not on an empty stomach, anyway.

Turns out the secret mystery food of the Hare Krishnas is your regular Indian fare. How did it not occur to me that this was just going to be Indian food? I’m not sure what I thought it was going to be, but I was definitely hoping for some gold-plated pudding at least.

Still, I could be content with Indian food, especially since the last 87 times I suggested it to Henry, I was denied. What’s a girl gotta do to suck down some curry?

Drive 80 miles and consider converting to a new religion, apparently.

Seri, not being a big fan of Indian cuisine, was not as content with the Hare Krishna offerings, though. However, there were traditional American items on the menu too, for all the honky posers who are driven there by the power of George Harrison’s seminal hit “My Sweet Lord;” things like pizza and grilled cheese.

There was no organization to the ordering system, so we just kind of stood in the middle of the cafeteria like two maladroit dummies, until I finally had the foresight to approach the counter. Seri followed me, for I am her leader.

Too bad INDIAN DICK  beat us there and proceeded to naan-block us while scribbling out his family of five’s order. (There was a teenage boy with them who evidently skipped the tour of the Palace in favor of sexting his boo. WWSP-DD?)

(What Would Swami P-Dawg Do? Obviously.)

But then I made eye contact with the guy behind the counter who had a head tattoo. I wasn’t about to piss around with the menu so I just ordered the lunch buffet. Since Hare Krishnas are vegetarians, I felt confident in my decision. Finally, I could eat the shit out of a buffet without accidentally biting into bull testicle.

Part of the buffet had just been taken back into the kitchen when we arrived because I think they were getting ready to switch to the dinner selections, so Head Tattoo told me, “I will just prepare plate for you.” You don’t argue with a man with a head tattoo, even if he bears an uncanny resemblance to Aziz Ansari. (He totally didn’t. I just wanted to see if your Racism Bell tolled.)

While we waited, Seri watched a man eating alone behind us. “What’s that?” she asked me, pointing to a plate in the middle of his table.

“I don’t know. Maybe like some kind of pot pie or something?” I shrugged. It turned out it was naan. In my defense, my eyes are REALLY BAD.

Head Tattoo came back with two full trays. “Oh,” I started. “I ordered the buffet for myself—”

“No! It’s OK. I’ll take it,” Seri said as she retrieved the tray. When in New Vrindiban, eat like New Vrindibanians. I was infinitely proud of her for that.

The non-head-tattooed cashier told me there was a $10 minimum for credit cards, so I told her to add a mango lassi.

“How do you know what that is?” Seri whispered.

“Because I’ve eaten in Indian restaurants before,” I whispered back, hoping that she wouldn’t expose my Caucasian roots.

“Yeah, but how did you know to order that?!” she persisted.

“Because I saw it on the menu!” I hissed under my breath, so INDIAN DICK wouldn’t catch wind of the cracker bitch trying to play like a seasoned lassi drinker. God, that was all I needed was for him to smirk at me.

Indian food is some of the most visually disgusting slop this side of homemade baby food. But Krishnadamn, is it good. And Seri appreciated the nod to the Western World the buffet gave by providing a vat of pasta. Our naan order was up at the same time as INDIAN DICK’S teenage son’s. Seri said he tried to argue with Head Tattoo because our plate had four pieces as opposed to his two-piece plate, at which point Head Tattoo gave him a lesson in counting. “That’s because THEY have TWO buffets,” he supposedly said. I say “supposedly” because who knows if we can believe Seri. We go to the high school track at night and she thinks she sees armadillos and crashing planes.

INDIAN DICK, above the Pepsi can. Even blurred, I can still tell he’s a dick.

“I COULD LIVE HERE,” I moaned, shoveling food into my fat mouth with my naan-shovel. Seri ate slowly and like a normal human not competing in a speed-eating contest. I envy that about her. But the one thing we had in common in that cafeteria is that our faces were both melting off above that tray of food. Hot flash city.

“I’m never leaving!” I texted Henry.

“The Palace?” he replied.

“No, the CAEFETERIA.”

And Seri tried everything on her plate and even liked most of it! (You’re welcome, Pete.) As usual, I ate faster than my stomach could handle and wound up pregnant with paneer and rice. What a stinky baby that would be. Halfway in, my stomach was expanding and the waistband of my jeans were waving the white flag, but I still kept eating because I drove 80 miles for this and by George Harrison, I was eating my fill even if it meant perforating my stomach lining. I really thought I was hungrier than I actually was.

Seri kept trying to rush me out of the cafeteria, probably because she knew I was 2 spoonfuls away from having my stomach pumped, but I was like, “Hello, can I finish my mango lassi? Krishna!”

In the temple afterward, not only did I come close to gilding a deity tableau with my vomit, but I apparently donated my entire iCarly wallet as well.

Chooch went to his cousin’s house today to dye Easter eggs, leaving Henry and I with a wide-open beautiful afternoon. And because it was so beautiful today, we decided to skip rollerskating in favor for a hot dog picnic in the cemetery.

I’ve been a fan of Pittsburgh chef Kevin Sousa ever since I had the great fortune of experiencing his memorable vegetarian feast at the Bigelow Grille. It remains, to this day, my all-time favorite dining experience. I’d even go as far as to say it was transcendent.

And when have you ever known me to say something like that? IT WAS TRANSCENDENT.

This is just a pretentious-worded way to say that we went Chef Sousa’s hot dog joint, Station Street Hot Dogs, to fulfill the food portion of our cemetery picnic.

“This is my favorite part of the day,” the super-friendly girl who took out order said as she popped off the caps of our Mexican Cokes.

That was so weirdly endearing to me and it kind of made me love her. Even if the food sucked, the people working there were so nice it would have negated any sour reviews. And you know how I love to write a sour review.

I remember when hot dogs cost fifty cents and Kristy McNichol wasn’t gay.

After we got our hot dogs and fries, we took it to the nearby Homewood Cemetery & masticated the shit of it while sitting on a rock near a pond.

Henry and I both got a chili dog, but mine was of the veggie persuasion. I almost got the Devil Dog instead, because hello–egg salad and potato chips on a hot dog sounds so disgusting it must be right.

But the chili dog had a bonnet of CHEESE CURD and that was enough to sway me. I’m coming back for you, Devil Dog.

Henry’s standard mastication pose.

I don’t know what came over me, but I started pining for the taste of a real hot dog and kept passive-aggressively begging for a bite of Henry’s while wringing my hands. Mine was so good, but the baseball stadium beef stench was wafting from Henry’s bun RIGHT INTO MY FACE.

“God, just take a bite. I’m not going to call the veggie police,” he mumbled.

AND SO I DID. OH GOD I DID. I took a bite and almost cried, it was so good, this Vesuvial eruption of smutty pleasure and smoked guilt on my palate. My first bite of non-soy meat since 1996. (But god only knows how many times my family minced some meat up into their so-called vegetarian holiday side dishes.)  MY WHOLE WORLD IS FALLING APART RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES.

Oh my god, I can’t believe I did that. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Thanks a lot, Ohio.

After I cried and vowed to repent later to my Saint Rita statue, Henry and I went for a walk around the cemetery; I was wearing Henry’s least favorite sweater boots, which make me shuffle my feet like a teenaged girl, so he kept calling me Captain Floppy Feet, but I secretly changed it to Fräulein Floppy Feet because I’m OCD for alliteration.

[ETA: Henry totally waved at a robin while we were walking around the cemetery, and then tried to deny it.]

I don’t know what came over me, but two weeks ago I was sitting at my desk at work when the most ridiculously out-of-character idea cloud settled upon my head, and it told me to bake Henry a cake for Valentine’s Day.

There are several things wrong with this:

1. I have never baked without supervision.
2. I have never baked a cake, nor have I ever wanted to. (I do like decorating cakes that other people have made though, usually in a mean-spirited fashion.)
3. I do not like baking. Or cooking. Or being in the kitchen at all.
4. Since when do I ever willingly want to do nice things for Henry?

Natalie happened to stop by to talk to me right after my plan was devised and I eagerly filled her in. She gave me a horrified look and then walked away.

See? Everyone knows this is not an Erin thing to do! And more importantly, HENRY knows this goes against everything I’m all about which means he would never expect it.

Ever. Never ever.

I posted about it on Facebook (I blocked him from that particular status update) and the reactions were mixed, everything from shock and trepidation from the people who know that the only recipe I’m capable of following is one for disaster, suspicion from some who are not used to seeing my sweet side, and then there were all the “You Should”s with their unsolicited suggestions of what I should make instead.

But my mind was made up: red velvet cake, cream cheese frosting. No cake pops or cupcakes or chocolate-covered strawberries. No bakery-bought cake. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it big and do it my way.

A week before Valentine’s Day, I did some subtle recon.

“Why don’t you ever bake cakes?” I asked Henry out of the blue one night, because that’s how I do subtle. “Is it because it’s too HARD?” If it’s too difficult for Henry, then it’s impossible for me.

“Because we don’t have any cake pans,” he mumbled, not seeming to think it was a weird question at all.

The next day at work, I was freaking out about cake pans, which is how I learned that there are many options in acquiring one. For instance, Target sells cake pans! I never would have known. I learn so much about life at work.

But then Natalie said I could borrow hers! So then I had two 8in cake pans in my purse when I left work on Friday and Henry looked at me weirdly when he heard them clanging together.

And then he looked at me even more weirdly, now with a dash of fear, when I told him that I needed something for his Valentine’s gift but Natalie let me borrow hers, like it was her diaphragm and this was 1996.

“I don’t want to know,” he said.

After I took Chooch to school Monday morning, I looked at the frosting and cake mix recipe 45752 times to see what I would need, then I collected all the courage I could muster and set off to the grocery store. A solo trip to the grocery store. Whoever would’ve thought? When I t old Chooch what I was doing that day, he stopped everything and said, “Are you sure you shouldn’t just buy the cake?”

Nice to know my son has so much faith in me.

I was so nervous and apprehensive that I acted like I was on Supermarket Sweep, grabbed what I needed (I even got coffee creamer because I knew I was almost out; I’m suddenly responsible!), checked my heart rate and got the FUCK out. I really hate grocery stores. Unless it’s one of the fancy ones. Then I like to tag along with Henry and increase our bill by $150. Henry really enjoys that too.

The actual cake-baking wasn’t too bad, you guys! I even found the hand-mixer thingie and the whisk-y thingies which were in the second drawer I looked in! Clearly all of these things meant that baking was in my destiny. And you know, in between heaping mouthfuls of cake batter, I smiled to myself and thought about how surprised Henry was going to be that I was doing something selfless for him, because when do I ever do anything for him, aside from making pretty faces for him, filling his days with my warm and sunny disposition, and BEARING HIS CHILD?

Yep, everything was fine until the cake was done and I tried to remove it by flipping the pan upside down and shaking. A huge chunk flopped out, but another huge chunk remained adhered to the bottom of the pan. (Yes, I greased the pan! Why does everyone keep asking me that!?) Thank god for Facebook; I posted this picture with a caption begging for help, and my guardian angels asured me that this wasn’t fatal and that there were ways to piece it back together. And then Kaitlin texted me and said that happens to her all the time and I was like, “YES, I’M ON THE SAME PAGE AS KAITLIN!” Whatever that means!

Parts of the cake appeared burnt while other portions were definitely undercooked. I shrugged it off because let’s be real – this cake was mostly just a symbol at this point. If pieces of it turned out edible, well then that’s a bonus.

Once I dumped out the second cake, I stowed them away in the attic (yes, they were covered! I’m not that stupid!) and spent the rest of my day watching MTV like a person like me should be doing.

The next morning, Chooch was brushing his teeth and admitted to me that he peeked at the cake.

“It looks weird,” he said, his voice full of toothpaste and concern.

“BECAUSE IT’S NOT DONE YET! God!” I was feeling pretty defensive at that point.

After I took Chooch to school, it was time to make the frosting. I waited a whole day to do this because all of my Google research told me that it is best to frost a cake the next day. Plus, I didn’t feel like being in the kitchen any longer on Monday. But I realized I didn’t have enough butter and had to go BACK TO THE STORE which caused me great anxiety. Henry called while I was doing this and all I would tell him was that I was working on the second thing I needed to do but a wrench was thrown into the plan and I had to go back to the store.

Goddamn does it take butter a lot of time to thaw! Jessy texted me some ways to speed up the process but they all involved copious opportunies for me to fuck up. So I just sat on it for awhile instead.

The cats went apeshit when I was using the mixer. They have never, in 14 years, seen me do that before. I started to pretend like I was going to go after Marcy with it but then batter started flying around like arterial spray so I shoved it back in the bowl. God, baking is messy. I still don’t know where the frosting landed. And you know what, that shouldn’t be my concern. I already did enough, Henry can clean up. Right?

Aside from when I dropped the bowl and caught it by slamming it against the cabinets with my crotch (I did all the preparations on the 2 inch slat of counterspace in front of the sink, even though we have an entire table I could have used), frosting proved to be pretty easy to make! I did have to ask Google if confectioners powder is the same as powered sugar, though. (It is, in case you didn’t know.)

OK, I lied. I wanted to see how it felt to be cheery and positive for once. No, it wasn’t easy! It wasn’t easy at all! It took forever to mix, and my arms were hurting so bad, and it was jerking me around and not in a pleasurable way either. And then when it was time to slather it on the cake, my spatula thing kept pulling up parts of the cake and then it was mixing in with the frosting and I was getting so angry that I found myself crying for the eight time since the nigthmare started the day before, and if that shit didn’t taste so fucking good, it was about to get set on fire and chucked at the nearest Katy Perry fan.

And then I was like, “Fuck it. Once he sees I baked him a cake, of course he’s not going to deduct points for it being a hot mess.” Because the whole point is that, hello, this bitch baked him a cake for the first (and last) time ever!

When I first had the idea, I thought it would be cute to decorate it with all the things we share a mutual love for, but then I realized that’s only one thing (aside from our kid, obviously).

So it’s only slightly a wreck! I was pretty proud of myself, to be honest. But the sense of accomplishment was not enough to make me forget the electricutionary feeling of frazzled nerves, so no, I will not be making this a hobby.

Henry was nervous. “This is only the second time in 11 years you’ve done something for me on Valentine’s Day,” he said. It’s true. The last time I gave him an empty ring box which was supposed to hold a key to my house, but I left it in the paper bag from the hardware store.

He said, “I’m going to guess whatever you were doing was something you don’t normally do….which could be just about anything.”

Oh my god, he’s almost smiling! But then he looked at it again and said, “What are all the lumps in the frosting?”

“It’s cake!” I wailed. Ugh!

The more he looked at the cake, the less his lips held the smile-curve. It looked like apprehension was setting in, like he was going to make me taste it first. But he apparently ate a piece while I was at work and lived to tell about it. (I have no evidence that he didn’t force our son to eat it on his behalf, though.)

I only half-considered adding the zest of Hemlock to the frosting, I swear.

That night, after Chooch went to bed, Henry slipped into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him. I kept waiting for him to come out with a ring* or at least some vintage porn hidden in a souffle, but apparently my big Vday gift was dinner.

(*You know I would have been displeased if he had proposed on a day as obvious as February 14th. I’M NEVER HAPPY!)

“You ALWAYS cook dinner,” I whined. “I baked you a CAKE!”

He spent the rest of the night kissing my ass and then I let him scratch my back, so all was not lost.

(Wait, this sounds like a regular night at our house.)

I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life smearing this in his face.

Alternately titled: Come Back Thursday (If You Want To See Keith)

Any day that includes lunch at Zenith is bound to be a great day. And this was Laura’s first time, so that made it even better. It’s fun watching someone take in Zenith for the first day; there is so much to look at (in addition to fill your stomach with)!

We met Kara there yesterday at 11, after I perfomed the mother of all parallel park jobs and Laura was all, “OMG all of those years reading your blog never could have prepared me for the sheer amount of adoration I have for you right now. You should be on a DMV billboard, you are that amazing. Look at how I’m trembling from all of your glory right now!”

Typically when Kara and I meet for lunch, we both have our sons in tow. But yesterday, Chooch was in school and Harland was at home with his dad, so we were able to have a conversation that didn’t consist of “OMG sit the fuck down!” and “Chew, chew, chew!” (although someone should have considered saying that to me, the way I masticated my tofishy sandwich like I had a gun to the head and a Choke Pear to my asshole). Kara was worried we wouldn’t remember how to interact or have anything to talk about, but obviously we prevailed.

(Thank you, Revolutionary War porn)

So happy to scope the tea list! Laura is secretly 70 and British. But seriously, Zenith has phenomenal tea. I usually get some kind that has sarsaparilla in it, but I couldn’t remember its name and then thank god Kara pointed out that there was an Earl Grey Lavender, because true friends remember which of their friends like to toss some lavender in their mouths every now and again. So that is what I ordered and it was full of floral, just how I take it.

My teapot came with a warning. Our waitress, who I believe was the owner and not happy about having customers as soon as the door was unlocked, set everyone’s tea pot down before them and to me she said, “Be careful, with yours. The lid doesn’t want to stay on.”

Kara said she thought to herself, “Of all the people at the table to give the dangerous tea pot to.” It was one of the many moments I have throughout any typical day where I whisper wistfully to myself, “I wish Henry was here to do this for me.” But I prevailed! I spilled a little on the table right away, but everything hit the cup after that point. Every day, I conquer new (tiny) battles. That’s what growing up is all about, or so I hear.

Tofishy in black and white.

Even though I’m not a real vegetarian anymore (sushi won the war, so I guess I’m a pescetarian now), I still enjoy vegetarian food. I still don’t eat meat or chicken though, although the one thing that tempts me more than anything is bacon. And I live in a world where everything has bacon in it, even donuts and milkshakes – DO YOU KNOW HOW DEVASTATING THIS IS. There is a big event being planned around bacon, so that’s all I’ll say on this subject for now. Anyway, Zenith has some wonderful vegetarian and vegan fare, and it’s so delicious that even my meat-eating friends enjoy it. I thought Kara and her stroganoff were going to conceive at one point.

Laura ordered a burrito that was the size of an American forearm* and it almost gave me order remorse. But my tofishy sandwich was amazing enough that I was OK with admiring Laura’s motherwhomping burrito from afar. The vegan tartar sauce was so tangy-good that it had me substituting my tongue for my napkin.

*(As opposed to a Caribbean forearm.)

Usually I get a salad with my lunch, but something was telling me not to. To save room for cake? Because I’m allergic? I brought it up as we all sipped on our teas, and Kara was all, “What is wrong with you? I can’t be friends with someone who doesn’t like a good Zenith salad.” So I looked up my old Zenith blog posts and found the answer:

“It was like the vegetation version of clown cars. As soon as he set the bowls down in front of us, leaves of lettuce the size of elephant ears began unfolding and springing forth. It was the most difficult, not to mention aggressive, salad my fork tines have ever speared.”

It had nothing to do with taste, apparently, but the level of difficulty surrounding it. It’s hard enough for me to eat a basic grilled cheese without a Gallagher-approved safety tarp, let alone a salad that belongs in Little Shop of Horrors.

You would think this was around the point I brought up my dire yearning for Revolutionary War porn, but it was not. (Although Kara has a friend in the adult film industry who said he could probably make my dreams come true OH MY MUSKET-FUCKING GOD! But um, that’s a story for another post.)

The unfortunate part of the meal was that our favorite waiter Keith was not there that day. Even though our waitress intimidated us and flashed some weird gypsy death rays at a couple who had the nerve to poke their heads into the kitchen in the universal sign for “We have been sitting out for here for an unacceptable amount of time and would now like you to bring us our menus and meet every last one of our yuppie needs,” I still mustered up the resolve to ask her if Keith still worked there. She seemed moderately taken aback and said that Keith now only works on Thursdays.

“Come back on a Thursday if you want to see Keith,” she proceeded to tell me almost every time she walked past the table, which wasn’t very often, because she hated the other couple out in the dining room. So I hated them too, only because I wanted to order cake and didn’t want her to get mad about it.

Since I asked about Keith, I made Kara inquire about our cake options. I didn’t want to press my luck with the lady. Kara and I both ordered a slice of lemon vanilla bundt cake and it was the word “moist” in a wedge, on my plate, slathered with icing sweet enough to make a death row inmate smile. I was so full from my sandwich, but I kept shoveling it in. This is what I’m trained at. Right before I die, I hope to have the opportunity to impart my wisdom on Chooch: NEVER LEAVE A DESSERT UNFINISHED.

A few minutes after I took this picture of Laura, I looked at it and asked, “Wow, why do you look so full of duress in this picture?” and then I remembered it was right at the moment she was lamenting the time she left a takeout box containing a t-bone on the roof of her car a year ago. Then the lady brought us our checks and said, “Come back on Thursday if you want to see Keith.”

It’s tradition to flounce around the antique-side of Zenith once we’ve rolled ourselves away from the table. Laura immediately found a sword and started waving it around. She’s such a loose cannon! And then Kara found on a small table the most hottest picture of Jesus these eyes have ever seen. I grabbed it from her and imprinted with it immediately. Our waitress happened to be passing by and said, “Isn’t that creepy? My daughter had it hanging on the wall, but I put it down there because it was freaking me out.”

I asked her how much she wanted for it, and she said, “$10…but only because it’s kind of old!” she tacked on as if she thought I was going to exclaim, “$10! Astronomical! Why, you’re out of your mind!” and then she took it from me and tucked it back behind something else on the table and walked back to the kitchen.

“You’re coming home with Mama,” I whispered, snatching it back off the table and holding protectively against my Virgin Mother bosom.

This picture is so visually pleasing to me. It reminded me of the time in 2005 when I needed a new notebook for college and I found myself unable to choose between two notebooks of this same shade of purple and a lime green. CVS was about to close and I had Henry hulking around behind me, hissing, “JUST PICK ONE!” It turned out they were buy one get one free so I got to have both! [Yes, things were so tight back then that Henry only gave me financial clearance to purchase one (1) notebook for school. Now that I work at The Law Firm, I sometimes walk down that aisle and think cockily, “I could buy like, FIVE of you if I really wanted.”]

I finally flagged down the lady again and told her that I intended to purchase Hot Jesus and she was like, “OK, can I go to the bathroom first?” Like I was leaving without it! When she came back to get my credit card, she brought up Keith again and I called after her, “He was the best waiter I ever had!” This gave her pause at the cash register.

“Well….maybe under certain circumstances,” she said, which led me to believe that perhaps their relationship was rocky. I would have been satisfied leaving with that information only, but she just kept telling me things about him (not bad things though; they apparently have a mom-son type of relationship so she was candid) and by the time I left, I knew everything short of his social security number and how he takes his eggs in the morning.

And I also really like that lady now. I feel like we bonded over Hot Jesus, Keith and Hating Yuppies.

“Come back on Thursday if you want to see Keith!” the lady called out one last time as we exited the door.

Oh Christ, have you ever seen a hotter Jesus?

While out and about on the Southside, trying to get last minute shopping under our belts, we stopped at the Little Donuts Shop to get some, well, little donuts to take to my dad’s house.

“Little Donut, Big Jerk.”

The proprietor gave us generous samples and even threw in some extras. I was really pleased with the service and I’m happy to have a new tiny donut place to patronize, since the other one (Peace Love & Donuts) is run by a gay-hating bigot. (No, seriously. Don’t go there. Unless you hate gay people. Then be my guest, but let’s not be friends.)

Nothing says “Merry Xmas Eve!” like a dozen Lilliputian donuts capped with holiday sprinkles. (And hopefully a pitcher of spiked egg nog to wash it down.)

When my friend Jason presented me with the option of either going to the AP Fall Tour in Cleveland or at home here in Pittsburgh, I didn’t hesitate to choose the 2.5-hour drive to Cleveland because I wanted to go back to Melt.

I mean, I wanted to hang out with Jason.

While eating the fuck out of some Melt.

Saturday morning, Jason and his wife Emily were already standing outside of the back entrance, sentinels in anticipation of an impending line of grilled cheese aficionados. We were soon joined by Jason’s friends Terri and Christian from Philly, who were quick to apologize when it came up in conversation that I once stayed in a motel in Camden. Then I asked if they have ever eaten at Cereality, because that is all I know about Philadelphia. I’m not sure how well I sold the cereal bar, considering my review featured the line: And then I almost threw up on my drive home.

I think these were actually the first words I slapped them with after the standard “how do you do”s. I am not very good at small talk.

Once we were all situated in a booth (first ones in, motherfuckers!), Jason, Terri and Christian all ordered different root beers and I could tell Henry was bursting at the seams to start masturbating their minds with all of his lame bottled beverage knowledge. (And then he orders plain old iced tea.) Meanwhile, Emily’s palate twice rejected the grape soda she ordered so she finally surrendered and just got a Coke. Jason teased her about holding up the ordering process but if it had been Henry, my foot would have swiftly kicked his nuts in lieu of good-natured teasing.

Last May was my first time at Melt and I experienced a complete meltdown behind the curtain of my menu. Absolute ordering paralysis. So many choices! And nearly all of them can be made vegetarian/vegan. So what did I get? A plain old mushroom melt. Granted, not so plain when you get it at Melt, but still – it was a far cry from fancy and exotic. Delicious, but pretty pedestrian when wedged in between a line up of artery-clogging sensations like The Dude Abides (homemade meatballs, fried mozzarella cheese sticks, rich marinara, provolone & romano); Paramageddon (2 potato & cheese pierogi, fresh napa vodka kraut, grilled onions, sharp cheddar); and The Big Popper (fresh jalapeno peppers, cheddar & herbed cream cheese, beer battered, mixed berry preserves), which I almost ordered because my aunt Susie recommended it and also because of the mixed berry preserves (Henry puts jelly on my grilled cheeses at home; it’s the best way to eat a grilled cheese) but I was afraid the jalapeno peppers would ignite bonfires in my stomach for the rest of the day.

But then I saw that the special was the New Bomb Turkey, which could be substituted with seitan turkey, and just like that, all the other options paled in comparison. Terri and Christian are both vegetarians as well, and Terri also ordered the New Bomb Turkey so I didn’t feel like an asshole forgoing the meat like I normally do when I’m eating with a bunch of carnivores and being the “difficult one.” Jason and Emily ordered the regular versions of this, Christian I believe got the Dude Abides with vegetarian meatballs because I remember exclaiming that I might have wanted to get that instead but I already ordered. Henry got something dumb.

Waiting for our food went something like this: Blah blah blah, JONNY CRAIG DISCUSSION, blah blah blah, OH HENRY IS THE BEST FOR BRINGING A CASE OF BOYLANS ROOT BEER EVEN THOUGH IT WAS ERIN’S IDEA, music industry scoop, WHERE IS OUR FOOD MY STOMACH IS REVOLTING & IT SOUNDS LIKE NICKELBACK.

Oh, you guys. It was the most glorious sandwich I have ever had the pleasure of sloppily masticating. I softly cried when I took the first bite, like a woman meeting her baby for the first time. (I did not do that when Chooch was born; I was too shell-shocked and hyper-aware of the fact that beneath the sheet, my abdomen was splayed open like a freshly-fucked corpse on a row of milk crates in the back of a serial killer’s Econoline van.)

The bread alone on this sandwich was enough to grow a food baby in a belly. They use the thickest slabs I have ever seen on a sandwich and I don’t know what sort of liquid heart attack they use to grill it, and it’s probably best that I don’t know, but it makes the most glorious goddamn grilled cheese vessel of all time. If it won an award, Kanye West would probably interrupt its speech just to agree. Greasy as fuck, crispy around the edges, moist in the middle—just the way Henry liked his hooker vaginas when he was in the SERVICE.

And there’s so much going on between the slices, I have no idea how the sandwiches don’t topple over on their way to each table from the kitchen. Even the vegetarian versions had so much seitan turkey jammed atop a soft wad of stuffing, there was no way that bitch was fitting into my mouth (and I do have a big mouth) without the aid of a fork.

It was all the things I never get to have on Thanksgiving, punched inside a towering stack of Paula Deen-approved toast and served with a prescription for Lipitor.

The cranberry dipping sauce was like gilding a lily at that point, but fuck did it make for an ambrosial lily.

I had to take copious breaks, but I managed to polish off an entire half and I felt my stomach expanding sickeningly throughout it all. Henry had already engulfed his entire plate in that time.

Speaking of Henry, here is what he has to say about his lunch at Melt.

Me, watching Henry wash the dishes last night: What was on your sandwich?

Henry, in his standard indignant tone: It was gyro melt.

(I guess this means we’re supposed to figure it out on our own.)

Me: OK, no one cares anyway. How sad were you that you couldn’t sit next to Jason and dish secretly about root beer like two little 1950’s school girls?

Henry, maintaining his Man of Few Words image: I wasn’t.

Me, as Henry takes a hearty swig of Faygo Cola. Dish washing is hard work, ya’ll: What was harder to wrap your mouth around, your sandwich or the words “I do” in 1993.

Henry: Why do you have to do that.

Me: Seriously, which one?

Henry, adopting his “You’re pushing me” high-pitched squawk that I hate so much yet cause so often: I don’t know! Let it go!

(He hates being reminded of That Time in his life.)

Me, furiously scribbling in my important “I’m Interviewing Henry!” notebook (it has monsters on it): If you could have your own sandwich on the Melt menu, what would be on it?

Henry, trying to make my dinner at this point, so you would think I would back off lest a generous sprinkle of rat poison fall into the pot: I don’t know!

(This is assuming Henry has any imagination, but it would probably be some sort of flesh marinated in Faygo and served on a bed of emasculation, with a bandanna as a napkin.)

Me: Did you think our waitress was hot?

Henry: [Looks at me suspiciously and slowly says no. This means YES.]

Me: What about the guy who refilled your iced tea?

Henry, in a flat tone: No, I didn’t pay attention.

(This means he’s already downloaded busboy porn.)

Me: How disappointed were you that none of our lunch companions remarked upon your striking resemblance to serial killer Ed Kemper?

Henry, playing Bakery Story on his phone at this point: I wasn’t.

Me: If you found a finger in your sandwich, would you

• Pull it out and set it aside, then puke in a flower pot;
• Eat it. Meat is meat and they know what they’re doing at Melt;
• Use it to replace the butt plug you lost during the Great Marital Separation of 2001.

Or: How Barb Found Another Way To Ruin My Life

Or: That Fucking Tomato, The Sequel

Before Barb left work on Monday, she had to go and fuck up my whole world by offering me an apple. I just smiled and said thanks, but what was really happening at that moment was that a vignette of cumulative  botched apple-cutting situations began whirring around in my head,  my inner-wrists started tingling at even the suggestion of wielding a paring knife, and my teeth were curling back inside my gums at the thought of biting into a whole apple.

Meanwhile the ghost of Johnny Appleseed openly mocked me from above my desk.

It just sat there all night, to the left of me, this glowing red/yellow orb of temptation. If I had been the original Eve, the Bible as we know it (and I don’t really know it) would be drastically altered, because I have a feeling Adam would have been too busy exploring holes with his dick to cut a fucking apple.

We might all be walking around nude right now.

Eventually, I tossed it into my purse, thinking I would just find some way to eat it at home. And by that I of course mean Henry would put a Gerber bib on me and slice the apple into Erin-appropriate wedges.

That night at work, I ate peanuts and Halloween candy instead. Fucking apple.

***

I forgot the apple was in my purse until the next morning and Henry had the audacity to not drop everything and come home from work wearing his produce armor to cut my fucking apple.

“Where did you get an apple?!” he asked, probably thinking I was trying to eat random growths from neighborhood trees again.

Gee, I don’t know, Henry. An old fucking lady brought it up to my cottage window while goddamn bluebirds sang Disney songs behind her.

“Barb gave it to me last night and I put it in my purse! Don’t act like you don’t go through my purse!” I answered defensively, like I was trying to deny an affair with a bait shop owner.

(This all happened via Facebook; look at me, making it appear that Henry and I have real life conversations that don’t take place via the Internet, text, and Post-It Notes!)

Seriously, when will apples shake their stigma? WE NEARLY BROKE UP OVER THIS.

I had people on twitter sending me tutorials but the first I watched said I needed a melon baller and I started to break a sweat because I was pretty sure we don’t have a melon baller and also because I think I used a melon baller as a torture device in a short story I wrote a long time ago.

I decided to just wait for Henry to come home from work.

***

Henry hadn’t yet had a chance to get both feet through the door before I was blocking his path and shoving an apple-fist in his face.

He looked tired and disgruntled.

“Give me the fucking thing,” he said, snatching the apple from my hand. As he disappeared into the kitchen, I heard him grumble, “You’re pathetic.”

Nice to know he worries about my safety and the possibility of apple-induced arterial spray.

He practically frisbee’d a plate of shoddily-cut apple wedges at me before storming out the door to pick up our son, who will have to learn how to cut his own apples if he ever so much as dreams of eating one when Henry is away from the house.

This was definitely the product of a pissed off man with a knife. I call it Henry Sliced the Apple: the shocking conclusion to How Will Erin Eat Her Apple?

***

When I got to work later that day, I regaled Barb with the horrors of what had come to be known as Applegate. I did a lot of hand-wringing to further illustrate the distress her stupid apple had put me under.

“Oh, honey,” she said in her Babying Erin Voice,  which you might have figured gets a ton of use. “You should have just used the apple corer we keep here.”

WHAT APPLE CORER.

I took a picture of Barb demonstrating, so I could look back on it for reference.

That night, Barb left me another apple, the apple corer thing, and an assignment: to try it by myself.

I waited until everybody but the late shift people had gone for the day, just in case I wound up causing a scene. You never can be too safe. My first attempt propelled the apple with great force against the kitchen wall, knocking over the paper towel holder. (Speaking of the paper towel holder: The roll was empty the other night and I put a new one on all by myself. So now no one can say I haven’t helped out around there.) I think I didn’t have it properly centered because I might not have been paying attention.

My second attempt sent me lurching into the kitchen counter, but I did reach some low level of success. I couldn’t get the blades to split the apple the whole way through and wound up having to break it off the corer thing, but this was a win as far as Things Erin Tries To Do In The Kitchen goes.

Then I happily ate my apple, while  saying, “I did this myself!” to everyone who walked by. (And by everyone, I mean just Carey.)

And that is how I learned to cut an apple at work.

(You should see me with an orange.)

Why do I keep having parties? All they do is stress me the fuck out. And you know, this time, I was trying to be more lackadaisical about it but all that did was make me wake up Saturday morning to a constricted chest and a build-up of pre-party heart palpitations. And it wasn’t like there was a ton to do — Henry just had to make two pies while I roamed around the house, looking at my imaginary Swatch watch and calling him a motherfucker.

“I don’t know why you get so stressed out when I’m the one who has to do everything,” Henry called out from the kitchen, elbow-deep in butterscotch, while I zoned out to Chiodos and buffed my fingernails. Finally, he finished his pistachio pie and deemed the butterscotch pie as “getting there,” so we packed it all up and split for the pavilion; upon arrival, Henry had already written a list of a hundred things he forgot, which meant Chooch and I got to hang out alone in the pavilion while he “ran real quick” to the store.

I. False Hope

While I was chastising my son for being 5 and incapable of using a swingset on his own, a car pulled up the dirt part alongside the pavilion. Chooch and I ran a Special Olympics practice lap toward it just as a man was emerging from the driver’s side. It wasn’t anyone I recognized, but I am never one to turn away a pie aficionado.

“Do you mind if I take some pictures of my wife?” he asked. That’s when I noticed that in place  of a checkered bib fastened around his neck and a pie fork in each hand, he came equipped with his camera, his very pregnant wife, and a young kid.

Oh.

Hopes crushed, I gave them the green light and Chooch and I moped back to the playground with our heads down. Maybe that was just me. It was already past the start of the party and no one had arrived, so what did I care if some weirdos were taking lovey-dovey family portraits over by the porta john.

Then another car pulled down and around the pavilion, so Chooch and I jumped up and cheered just in time for the two strangers in the car to leer at us as they drove back up the road.

“What the fuck?!” I yelled to the party gods, who were clearly angry with me for some reason. Not sending thank you cards fast enough after my birthday party? God, fuck off.

Finally, Henry came back at the same time my brother Corey and his girlfriend Danielle arrived, so they were here for the next fake out, when a pick up truck pulled into the lot across the street but then it turned out to be some assholes bringing their dog to the park for a walk. It was nearly 2 at this point and I started to cry a little.

II. The Horse

The incredibly affectionate family/pie party crashers had taken a break in their photo session long enough to plop down for a picnic in the grass. We were sitting at a table under the pavilion, openly mocking them, when Corey noticed a horse coming out of the woods. Atop the horse sat a poised older woman in some kind of fucking safari hat and chambray shirt. Corey could not stop talking about how poised she was, like she was expecting to be photographed or draped with a champion’s sash.  Everyone (but me) took turns telling her how beautiful her horse was as she clomped off toward the playground.

Chooch decided that he HAD TO GO TO THE SWINGSET at this moment and he would have to RUN AS FAST AND AS LOUDLY as he possibly could because it might not be there much longer. Off he ran like a madman, ignoring Henry’s warnings of “Don’t run near the horse——aw, shit.”

Too late.

The horse got spooked and started to buck. The bitch on his back was suddenly less than poised as she tried to get him to calm down. We all just sat there and stared, and then I had to turn away because I was laughing so hard. We’re all so incredibly irresponsible when it comes to that kid.

At least she wasn’t thrown off the horse, I guess.

III. This Is My Brother, Corey; He’s Color Blind

Since there still wasn’t a party happening, Corey, Danielle and Chooch sat down and colored some Star Wars pictures. Thank god for crayons and coloring books.

“You know I’m color-blind, right?” Corey asked me.

“What? No!” I replied.

“Yeah, I found out when I was like, 7 and got my first pair of glasses. The doctor was basically like, ‘You’re color-blind as fuck.’ I can’t believe you’ve known me for 21 years and didn’t know this!

” Corey said, mock-offended.

Meanwhile, Chooch was chastising Corey for coloring Luke Skywalker totally wrong and I was like, “Dude doesn’t know his colors, Chooch. He can’t help it.” I tried to give Corey a sympathetic smile but I couldn’t stop laughing long enough.

Anyway, the point of Corey’s story is that his color-retardedness is affecting his ability to excel in one of his classes, so his adviser intervened and told the professor about Corey’s “condition,” at which point he was sent to the disability office and had to sit among suicidal students and a guy with one leg.

This was so ridiculously funny to me that I could not stop laughing and talking about it. All day long, whenever someone new would arrive (and yes, people did eventually arrive), I would introduce Corey as “my brother; he’s color-blind.” Show me your weakness and I will mock you relentlessly.

 IV. The Butterscotch Blunder

People were finally beginning to arrive and Henry let me set out the pistachio pie (which was like spooning a cloud from Heaven into your mouth; I bet angels get breast implants made from this sweet fluff) but said that the butterscotch pie still wasn’t ready.

“Don’t touch it!” he barked preemptively when I made to open the weird helium-balloon looking cooler stowing the runny pie. “I just checked it and it still hasn’t jelled.” He tugged on his coller a little and then took another swig of his iced tea jug.

This pretty much went on all day, this dance around the reverse pie-incubator, until finally it was 6:30 and everyone had left with nary a slice of butterscotch pie (which is one of my all-time favorite pies and I haven’t had it in years because my mom doesn’t care enough about me to bake me one, but she’ll still bake them FOR HER EX-HUSBAND WTF). I was devastated. Yes, I had shoveled multiple varities of fruit- and cream-filled desserts between my oscillating lips, but there was a void that couldn’t be filled by any berry or Nutella. I needed that fucking butterscotch.

(Two pies came close though: Kaitlin made a black forest pie and then told Henry to suck it; and Laura’s fiance Mike baked one of the best apple pies with a crust soaked in some sort of sex nectar, I don’t even know but I think I may have broken a few laws with it in my mouth.)

V. The Park

Everyone is always bitching about how hard it is to find park pavilions, no matter what park we’re at, so fuck that: the next pie party will be at a strip club. Maybe then people will actually show up.

And then there won’t be any stink bugs to freak people out. Just crabs.

VI. Where’s the Avocado Pie?

Henry didn’t make the avocado pie this year and of course everyone was like, “Did Henry make the avocado pie?” No, Henry didn’t make the avocado pie because he was too busy fucking up the butterscotch pie.

VII. Pictures of People Eating Pie

Pie Eaters:

• Me me me me
• Henry and Chooch
• Laura
• Corey and Danielle
• Robbie and Karen
• Ron
• John, Jennifer, Abby and Gavin
• Nancy and her baby, Joey
• Jamie and her baby, Crosby
• Barb
• Kaitlin
• Sandy and Elena
• Sean and Kylie
• Joy and John
• Kristen and her dog, Joey
• Blake and Shannon
• Henry’s mom Judy
• Henry’s sister Kelly
• Zac
• Janna

 Henry bought some sort of pie shower caps, except I thought he said they were for vaginas. I was so confused, but figured it was something he saw his ex using one time, so I didn’t question it.

I don’t think these kids stopped moving long enough to eat even a bite of pie.

WHAT WERE THEY TALKING ABOUT? It seems so intense.

Since it was an open house-type of party, people came and went all day. Henry kept trying to make everyone take pie home with them, because the pie:person ratio was totally ridiculous this year. There were some pies that hadn’t even been cut into by the end of the day. Was everyone on a diet this year?

We even considered handing off some pie to the picnicking pregnant family down by the porta john.

Joy’s fiance John asked me what started the whole pie party thing. When I told him that it was basically because I wanted pie and wondered how I could trick people into bringing me some, I think he believed me but I’m not sure. It’s kind of cool how much people enjoy pillaging a spread of pies in a park pavilion on a beautiful autumn day, though.

Probably frowning at Kaitlin’s black forest pie.

Laura actually likes having her photo taken, so she doesn’t care when I sneak up on her.

Overall, it was a great day, great weather, great pies, and great people. But by 6:00, I was writhing around and yelling WHY DID YOU LET ME EAT SO MUCH PIE!? because everything is Henry’s fault.

The next morning, Henry finally admitted that he fucked up the butterscotch pie, which had never jelled, not even after a full 24 hours. There goes your spot on the Food Network, Henry, you fuck-up.

Even though I waited until the night before The Law Firm’s fall food party
to tell Henry that he has to make a batch of caramels he’s never made before, and even though we don’t have a candy thermometer or any of the ingredients he needed, and even though he was tired from working on little sleep and I couldn’t totally remember where I had seen the recipe, there he was in the kitchen at 9:30 on a Monday night, stirring away at a bubbling pot of stout-spiked caramels.

Anyway, these are beer pretzel caramels. When I think of fall, I think of Oktoberfest and even though I hate beer, I’m a glutton for some beer-flavored food.

Sometimes it pays to have a Henry. It’s a good thing he was too busy paying attention in Home Ec to be a normal teenager collecting BJs under the bleachers or else I’d be fucked right now.

I’m totally going to tell everyone at work who doesn’t read my blog that I made them myself though. Weekend classes and lots of Food Network, along with keeping a Michelin Star chef hog-tied in my basement.