We Need Food!

I'm feeling better today, but I'm still not exactly 100%. I'm in that phase of immediate post-sickness where you kind of still feel icky, but you're not quite sick any more, so people actually expect you to go about your normal routine. It sucks.

Aside from the occasional coughing fits and headaches, the worst part is that I haven't gotten my appetite back yet. So I get hungry, but I don't feel like eating any actual food. Tonight, I thought I'd make myself some eggs and toast, as I have the past few nights.

First, I discover that there are only two eggs left. It's not much of a MEAL. I figured I could compensate by making four pieces of toast instead of two, or maybe finding some sort of food-like substance to put BETWEEN some of the pieces of toast, thus constituting a sandwich. (I know there is always the possibility of making an egg sandwich, but for some reason those never come out rigth when I try to make them, even though you can go into a lot of breakfasty-dinery-deli kind of restaurants and they'll make them and it will taste delicious. I think cheese and bacon are kind of prerequisites.

As it turns out, one of the two eggs is completely stuck to the carton. This is odd, because I didn't notice any cracked eggs when I purchased the dozen, so there wouldn't really be leaky egg goo to make everything cling together. Just this one egg was fused to the cardboard somehow. I'm trying to pry it off when, of course, it cracks in my hand, getting sticky egg goo all over the carton, the countertop and, naturally, my person.

Gross.

My friend Aaron won't even eat eggs. The very thought of eggs kind of makes him sick. It's something about the fact that eggs are clumps of genetic material, or unfertilized baby chickens, or just their oozy consistancy that grosses him out. I like eating eggs a lot, but at that moment, with egg drippings all over my fingers and all around me on every tiled surface, I kind of got where he was coming from.

So, that only left one egg, which isn't nearly enough for any kind of satisfying meal. Even those weird-looking little dinosaurs that used to live exclusively off of primitive bird eggs needed more than one egg to satisfy their appetites. And I'm a full-grown mammal who worked a 6 hour shift at a video store!

So I didn't even bother making the one egg. Instead, I shifted to Plan B, sandwiches. This plan had the benefit of requiring only ingredients I might also have in the house, and not having to leave the house remained top priority.

Bread, check. Raspberry jelly accidentally purchased the other day in an illness fog when mistaken from Strawberry jelly, check.

And then there was the peanut butter. There was some leftover peanut butter in the fridge. But how long had it been in there? At least, bare minimum, 3 months. But peanut butter keeps up, right? Especially if it had been refrigerated. I will now present to you the entire actual real conversation I had with my rommate Nathan about the eatability of the old peanut butter from our fridge.

ME: How long is peanut butter good for?
NATHAN: It lasts a long time.
ME: Yeah, but, like, six months?
NATHAN: Check the date on the top of the container.
ME: But that's the sell-by date...Doesn't that mean it's good as long as it hasn't already been opened?
NATHAN: Oh, yeah. I've eaten peanut butter that was pretty...off.
ME: And it was fine.
NATHAN: It tasted kind of funky.
ME: Yeah, but you didn't get sick later or anything.
NATHAN: I don't think anything can grow in peanut butter. Because of the viscosity.
ME: That sounds right. I tasted a little bit of it already, and it tastes fine.
NATHAN: Yeah, if it tastes fine, you're good.

So, I made a raspberry jelly and significantly old peanut butter sandwich. Not the best meal I've ever had...but not the worst either. Back in college, on nights we'd get really lazy and really stoned, my roommate Dustin and I would make fried baloney sandwiches. Now that, my friends, is a solid taste creation. I still occasionally consider buying baloney when I go shopping, if for no other purpose than the occasional late night friend baloney sandwich. But I never actually go for it. What a shame.