Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Day 6: Know When to Walk Away

Tonight, we took a horrible gamble. I'll take full responsibility for it. In retrospect, it was clearly an error of truly epic proportions. The Man said it best, when he said "If you're gonna play the game, boy, you gotta learn to play it right."

Wise words, Kenny. Wise words.

First off, the set up. I'll admit that today was kind of a cheat. See, one of the rules of the game was that you weren't allowed to plan meals around cans. However, we skirted through a sort of loophole (that I just made up completely)...we hadn't planned any meal for tonight. Since it has been brought to my attention that skipping days all willy nilly is costing us the trust of our readership (which we all value incredibly highly), we needed to crack open a can anyway. Little did we realize that this would send us into a greater cooking process than anything we had done thus far.

The can we chose bore some cryptic and helpful warnings:


How kind! Instructions on how best to enjoy the Righteous Happy Beaks within!



Oh. Nevermind.


Since we had no meal planned, there was nothing for it but to crack it open. The internal compromise that I worked out with myself for bending (totally breaking, but whatever, they couldn't eat fucking gravy) the rules was that we would not taste the substance within. We would smell it, look at it, and plan the meal from those impressions alone. Thus, this meal represented A Great Gamble.


Crystal Gravy?

On first glance, it looked like most of the cans we had opened. Some kind of translucent liquid with who knows what (OH MY GOD KILL IT KILL IT) within. Because it almost said to 'serve hot', we decided to dump it into a pan.


If you've been reading this blog, this is a very ominous picture.


As I poured, we kept waiting for the other "shoe" (or tentacled spiny horror) to drop. Nothing. The whole can was this translucent goo with some kind of little meaty chunks in. Well. As we put our noses over it to savor the bouquet, the only thing we got was that it smelled 'spicy' (like poison) or 'fruity' (like hot trash).

I suppose the only explanation is that the very innocuousness of the substance put us off our guard. Remember what we've been eating all week. Something that was just clear goo couldn't possibly be that bad right? This is what caused us to Make A Huge Fucking Mistake.

Meg said that maybe it was just gravy. Which sounds crazy, but it actually sort of fits. See, I'm kind of known for eating gravy. On top of that, Mike went to extreme lengths to apologize loudly and vehemently about the cans we had left. As I was staring at the pot, in my mind I was thinking: Ah ha! Perhaps he doth protest too much! Those of you who are acquainted with Mike know that he has no scrap of duplicity. He lies about as well as the Lamb of Hosts. This somehow led me to believe that it was likely that the reason that he warned us so thoroughly was that he was trying to set up an elaborate trick (like the time he managed to convince Kurt and I that magic was real, and then destroyed our burgeoning sense of childlike wonder in a dickmove worse than 10,000 Grinches, all within 20 minutes--nevermind, another story).

Now, all of that being said, Sara was still involved. So a simple poultry gravy was Right Out. Still, maybe it wasn't 'normal' gravy. Maybe it was made out of some kind of inapproprate meat animal.


Or perhaps it was made out of chickenoids what had all their blood removed and then replaced with gravy. Meta-gravy.

Whatever. How bad could it be? So we planned a meal to utilize gravy. Easy. Chicken Fried Chicken with Homemade Mashed Potatoes. We had everything we'd need to put it together. So I tossed the 'gravy' (as an aside, you've all probably figured out that by this point in the game that there is no earthly fucking way that they would have chosen anything so edible as gravy...I can only say that perhaps the smell of it burned out crucial logic paths in our brains) onto the back burner and prepped everything I'd need.


Behold!


I really got in to this. I think that I was perhaps giddy with excitement to be preparing something that was going to be so edible. For the first time since the competition began, I was really cooking! I seasoned the pans of flour with two different layered blends designed to be distinct and yet still be complementary. I pounded out the chicken to ensure even cooking. I washed, peeled, and cut all the potatoes that we had left.


I meticulously and perfectly executed the 3-stage 2-hand breading method for the first time ever.


Through the entire process, I kept slowly stirring the pot on the back of the stove. I nobly resisted the urge to taste it. I was just completely convinced that this was gravy.


They sizzle, awaiting what can only be incredibly delicious gravy!


After the tempest in the kitchen was over, everything was ready to rock. I got it all dressed up on plates. I was so hopeful that I may have skipped my way to the table.


I completely doused my portion.


Meg, in her wisdom, was more cautious. Gravy on the side, and a big ol' bottle of Hydrocodone ready to go.


First taste. Not gravy. Not even close to gravy. Gravy is not in its ancestry in any way. The people who regularly eat this have never even heard of gravy. The people who 'cooked' and canned this substance actually despise gravy. Gravy killed their parents. There was a gravy flood that drowned their entire village. They were kidnapped as children, and force-fed gravy for twenty years, only to escape and swear terrible vengeance.

Now, we tried. The first taste was bad, but it wasn't repulsive. It mostly tasted like fish. Probably some kind of fish soup. Eating chicken and potatoes covered in hot fish soup was no fun at all. Meg gave up. She couldn't do it. I wanted to persevere though. I didn't want to just give up. We'd come so far through the week! We were so close to the end! I ate a whole chicken and at least 25% of my potate.


Then I found this.


Aaaaaand this:



It's true. Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me.


NOT FUCKING GRAVY.

3 comments:

  1. Hey, you guys bend/break many rules. But that is ok. I guess the thing that matters is that you continue to eat cans of shit passed off as food for our enjoyment!

    And seriously, wtf was in that can?! I hope those were some kind of edible something... but it doesn't really look that way.
    >.>

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  2. Sara's only comment to this post? "There weren't supposed to be worms in there."

    This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

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