Sepia and Esculent

I’ve had culinary successes. I’ve had culinary mixed reviews. I’ve had culinary chronicles that caused me to use big words – sure to irritate certain parties among my faithful readership.

This weekend I managed to burn grilled cheese, hamburgers and garlic bread.

The grilled cheese had a fighting chance, until I accidentally flipped it onto the floor. As a result, it got carpet fibers on it. Since I used the last of the bread and a couple perfectly good pieces of cheese on this sandwich, I wasn’t yet prepared to leave it for dead. I removed the fibers I could see. Then I scraped it with the spatula. By the end of this process, the bread was worn unusually thin. Between the thinness of the bread and my overuse of butter, my sandwich (and the other sandwich I’d been neglecting during the salvaging process) got pretty thoroughly scorched. After some more scraping and taking a few bites, I threw the whole mess away.

Next, I decided to fry up a couple of burgers. Rarely do I screw up burgers, so this is all very embarrassing to admit. Long story short: I smoked my roommate out of his room. I think he now has emphysema. Gasping for air, he ran out of his room and opened all the windows in the apartment – tough to do in the smog.

This evening, I tried to turn leftover baguettes into garlic bread. It worked pretty well, but butter leaked through the aluminum foil and dripped onto the bottom of the oven, setting off the smoke alarm and – undoubtedly – reminding my roommate what a delight I am to have around.

I took a picture of tonight’s dinner. I didn’t make it, so it turned out pretty well – considering we had a fire drill taking place the entire time it was being prepared. Like the burgers and garlic bread I made, tonight’s dinner was esculent!