peevish mama

Who makes chili when it’s 90 degrees? Apparently, I do. After a long wilting day at a swim meet, I stand in my boiling hot kitchen, crack a beer and proceed to sweat and chop and mutter and swig and mutter and swig and sweat and stir and cuss. Whoever eats this chili is going to feel mighty ornery. One of my rotten children left the basement freezer door open and most of our share of local grass fed cow and happy pig were subjected to a second death. And I was subjected to a grisly scene this morning when I found a huge pool of blood spreading around the white tile floor in front of the fridge. All the meat had thawed overnight, sweating and bleeding all over the place. I am chucking most of it, but was able to salvage a steak and a few pounds of ground beef that were still cold. There I stood, gagging and cleaning, all before my morning coffee, cursing the name of whichever child was undoubtedly rooting around for the football shaped gelpack to press on some imagined owie, causing a frozen baguette to slip, wedge itself in the door and effectively ruin hundreds of dollars worth of meat. As I threw bloody package after bloody package into garbage bags, I realized the garbage men had just gone by and there was no way I could leave fifty pounds of flesh in our bin until next week without creating an unearthly stench and a Lalapalooza for maggots. I had no choice but to stuff the plastic bags back into the freezer, which made me feel like Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction – shady, beastly. It’s enough to turn anyone into a vegetarian. Right after I eat that steak, of course.