You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
The diet of a bachelor.
It’s Thursday night and I am eating a bowl of rice. No chicken and rice. No pork chops and rice. No salami or tuna fish or corn beef with rice.
Just rice.
Rice-a-Roni The San Francisco treat? Nope. Some generic brand. Rice from Pakistan or some such country. Christ. I can’t even do rice right?
My rice is made by Knorr and the sales pitch on the side of the bag is no artificial flavors and it cooks in 7 minutes.
Fan freaking tastic.
I’m sure that families are sitting down to dinners all across America tonight eating corn and peas and green beans and salad and bread with butter.
I’m eating a bowl of rice like a prisoner of war in a tiger cage.
Chinese vagrants have more variety in their diet. At least they get eel and ants and toe scabs with their rice.
Me? it’s rice with rice. Spoonful after spoonful of Asian Sides Chicken FLAVORED fried Rice.
2 cups of water. A pouch of freeze dried YUK. A tablespoon of year old Wesson oil. Boil and simmer and serve.
It’s nuclear hot and has the consistence of wet hay.
Why am I eating rice with rice topped with rice?
Because I’m a damn bachelor and food, well food just isn’t my top priority.
I come home and I’m thinking about working out and grabbing a beer and writing this life encompassing blog for your damn amusement.
Suddenly I notice a void in the vacuous hole of my existence. It starts with a creaking in the emptiness. I think it’s a broken screen door or a possum with a case of irritable bowel syndrome.
Then I realize, it’s just me.
Apparently it is hunger pains bubbling in the vacuum of my stupid existence.
So why don’t I fry up a chicken or buy a burger?
Lazy? Broke? indifference? All of the above.
I thought about shopping on Tuesday. Then something came up. Then I said ah, you can make it. See what you’re made of. How tough are you bitch?
Suddenly I was back in college challenging myself to sustain life on beers and Ra man noodles.
And just like that, I was on a self prescribed mission of mind over matter. I keep telling my stomach if it doesn’t mind then it don’t matter.
But there is hope on the horizon. It’s called Friday. I’m going shopping Friday. Till then, I am going to see if I can manage to survive on cobwebs and dust and magazine images of meals prepared in Julia child’s test kitchen.
As I write this, I am eating anything in my cupboard not covered by mold or question marks. I don’t care if the bag has been open for a month. I don’t care if the food item is no longer identifiable as a food item.
The challenge has been laid down. It’s a culinary gauntlet.
I have met the enemy and he is me.
Don’t believe anyone is this stupid?
I am and I realized it Wednesday as I was making my lunch. Usually I have a roast beef sandwich on a baguette with pickles and chips and mayonnaise. Damn I’m getting kind of excited just writing these words.
Wednesday was a spartan day of food preparation. I looked in the chilly emptiness of my fridge. All I see is Kraft American Cheese and Publix brand hamburger buns.
I blink my eyes trying to wish a pastrami sandwich into the crisper.
Nothing.
So I throw two slices of Kraft American cheese on a plain, somewhat stale hamburger bun. That’s it. Bun. cheese. Done.
No butter with the bun, no mayonnaise with the cheese. Bun and Cheese.
Somewhere a Frenchman reading this just took his own life.
It wasn’t disgusting, but it wasn’t exactly good. I ate it at work in my cubicle. I gobbled it up like a gerbil. My stomach was aching so bad I might as well have been on a raft in the Pacific starving, drinking sea water and urine.
It’s like I’m filming my own episode of survivor. Instead of shooting in Malaysia, I’m doing it in Franklin, Tennessee.
Hah.
OK, to be honest, A nice woman did try and give me a care package of chicken the other night, but I politely declined. She sarcastically reports to me that her little dog loved the left overs. Nice. I’m hungry enough now to eat her dog.
So this week I have had cheese on bread. I have eaten Peanut butter and Jelly. I fried up a couple of eggs and tossed them on burger buns. I did have one piece of freaking delicious ass chicken. That’s the highlight of my chewing experience this week.
And now, I am a homeless man in my own home, eating a bag of Asian Sides Chicken fried rice; a food product not designed to be its own course. A rice dish that would make an Asian man wince.
So Friday is upon me. I am so excited. As I eat what’s left of a stale bag of Goldfish, I am dreaming of Publix. In my mind, it’s like a strip club full of dancing bologna.
I can’t wait to walk in and let the meat counter woo me with enticing visuals. I want to walk through the produce section and watch the misters mist. It will be wet and dreamy like good produce sex.
I want to stare at gallons of milk and read expiration dates like a gigolo at a women’s prison.
I am going to shop with reckless abandon. I will shop as if I’m high, as if money is no object. I will buy pop tarts and chocolate milk and milk duds and toss it all in the cart with glee. I will buy so much crap that the check out girl will ask me if I need an ambulance?
Maybe i’ll buy a steak? Maybe I’ll buy a pork loin. No I won’t buy that, I don’t know how to cook it.
I’m stupid and hungry and kind of proud of myself for being this old and still doing stupid stuff to challenge myself.
Was it worth it? Only my colon can answer that question and it ain’t talking.
Hello Friday. Hello Publix.
Life’s Crazy™