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Writing History & Mysteries

When I'm not delving into historical research, I'm planning a character's demise.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Less Than Fortunate Foods

This month’s blog chain at Absolute Write was for one blogger to pick the prompt for the next blogger. The prompt chosen for me was Less Than Fortunate Foods. This stymied me at first until I realized it was perfect. Any food that ends up in my kitchen to be cooked—by me—is unfortunate indeed.

You’ve heard of twice-cooked potatoes? Well I have a steak specialty I call twice-dead beef. My hubby will agree with this. He has often commented, “Woman. It’s already dead. You don’t have to kill it a second time.” It isn’t done until I produce a sufficient amount of smoke.

During dinner one night while my family was waiting for me to make something they prayed would be eatable, a friend of my husband’s stopped by—just in time to hear an ear piercing beep. Beep! Beep!

His friend panicked. “Dude, you can’t hear that? You got a fire somewhere.”

Hubby calmly gets out of his chair, takes the smoke alarm off the wall, yanks out the battery and tosses it on the dining room table. ”Nah, there’s no fire. That’s my wife’s cooking timer.”

 Even the produce in the vegetable isle at the supermarket fears my arrival.

 ***

Idaho looked over at Moonlight. Despite his fancy blue Styrofoam container his days were numbered. The dark spots of old age were showing on his skin. Moonlight shifted in his package. The apples and oranges quivered, the display table shook as one by one the fruits rolled off onto the linoleum floor, headed in every direction.

 “Pisst. Moonlight,” whispered, Idaho. “What’s going on with Navel and Mac?”

The mushroom strained against the cellophane cover and looked towards the automatic doors. “Shush! She’ll hear you. You don’t want her to pick you up.”

 “What are you talking about?” Idaho twisted in the bag to get a better look out of the mesh screen.

“She usually comes in on Sundays. It’s only Thursday. You know what that means don’t you?”

Poor Moonlight, he had been around for a while. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. I just shipped in on Tuesday.”

 “It means,” said Moonlight, trying to keep his cap on, “she must be trying to cook something ‘special’ for her humans. Hide! She’ll fry you to a crisp!”

 “Hide? Are you mushrooms or nuts? I’m in a paper bag that’s sewn shut on top. How are me and the boys going to get out of this?”

 “Put your stink on,” Moonlight said. “You know that mildew smell you guys get. Force it out your pores before it’s too late.”

The human walked closer to the pile of five pound potato bags. They thought for sure they were cooked as she lifted them up to her nose.

Sniff. Sniff.

 The spuds waited. She set the bag down and looked to her left—right at the packages of two week old mushrooms. Was it possible? This human would feed them to her family? Idaho couldn’t believe his eyes. Could she not see their tops were splitting from the stems in agony?

 “Well,” said the woman, “the law only says I have to feed them. Doesn’t say anything about it tasting good, and I haven’t killed anybody yet.”

 Idaho watched the human put the blue container in her cart and head to the checkout. There was nothing he could do to stop her. It had cost the mushroom the ultimate price to save the potato’s skin.

-END-

Please visit the rest of the bloggers in the February 2013 Blog Chain. Who knows what they'll be writing about!

Participants and posts:
orion_mk3 - http://nonexistentbooks.wordpress.com (link to post) Yuppies Who Hate the Family Business
ConnieBDowell - http://bookechoes.com/ (link to post) Unexpected Library Encounter
bmadsen - http://hospitaloflife.wordpress.com/ (link to post) Cupcake Disaster
MsLaylaCakes - http://www.taraquan.com/ (link to post) Unfortunate Sports
HistorySleuth - http://historysleuth.blogspot.com/ (link to post) Less-than-fortunate Foods
writingismypassion - http://charityfaye.blogspot.com/ (link to post) Blind Date with a Ventriloquist
katci13 - http://www.krystalsquared.net/ (link to post) Evil Cupid
KitCat - http://twilightasylum.wordpress.com/ (link to post) Hunting with Hounds
Angyl78 - http://jelyzabeth.wordpress.com/ (link to post) A Ghost's Bad Day
randi.lee - http://emotionalnovel.blogspot.com/ (link to post) The Wrong Bar
Lady Cat - http://carolsrandomness.blogspot.ca/ (link to post) Visitors
pyrosama - http://matrix-hole.blogspot.com/ (link to post) What the Leprechaun Said
Ralph Pines - http://ralfast.wordpress.com/ (link to post) Under the Bed
dclary - http://www.hardhobbittobreak.com/ (link to post) Warm Kitty, Soft Kitty, Evil Ball of Fur
meowzbark - http://www.lizzylessard.com/ (link to post) Road Trip
SRHowen - http://srhowen1.blogspot.com/ (link to post) Faded Blue Jeans
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19 comments:

  1. Oh, poor mushrooms. Should've kept his mouth closed. Lol!

    And oh my gosh, that story about your husband calling the smoke detector your timer is hilarious! Lol!

    I love the take you took on this topic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good point. What foods are fortunate? I guess if the potatoes get planted and grow more potatoes that would be better, but then they would just be raising their children for their eventually slaughter. Dark, I know, but there's no good way to look at sentient potatoes. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Poor tattoes, waiting to be chopped up, boiled or fried.

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  4. And I din't even get into how I burnt Christmas. Savin' that one!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Burning christmas (which smells awful by the way) the smoke alarm being your kitchen timer, and you killing meats twice is a sad truth. and being your child, i unfortuntely know.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lol. Very funny. I like how you gave all the foods their unique flavor.

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  7. This is hilarious! I love it! Great dialoge with the mushrooms and potatoes. Great job!

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  8. Anonymous (my daughter) has confirmed the truth of it all.

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  9. Thanks Charity! Glad you all enjoyed it and I promise never to invite any of you over for dinner. :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh it's okay if she invites you to dinner it's just not safe to "pop in" at dinner time ;) Your BBQ hamburgers are good, and I know you saw my nose wrinkle when you first told me about them. I loved the writing.... and I think I know where you have been shopping...

    ReplyDelete
  11. This is too cute! I was waiting for the onions to save their friend by squirting some onion juice on the shrooms and rendering them inedible. :D

    Tune in next time, when Navel goes to the juicer!

    ReplyDelete
  12. See my comment in your previous post--I scrolled down too far before I hit the comment button. :D

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  13. OH That would be easy. I can set the crock pot before I go to work too. We're going to try that. Thanks Ruth.

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  14. I love your smoke detector timer! I make a dish we call burnt veggies - potatoes, onions, and carrots that are fried until they're burnt - and my whole family loves it. :-)

    Poor super market veggies! LOL I loved your story!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Ah, the hidden drama of the produce aisle! I would have gotten the potatoes anyway...shrooms are just gross :)

    Nice job! Your piece reads like a more serious and literary (to say nothing of less irritating) counterpart to Annoying Orange.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Oh this was a GREAT read. You kept me entertained the entire time and I love your language and pacing by the way. Awesome take on this prompt. You def. have a unique voice to you!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Shrooms had it coming, I tells ya!

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  18. Haha! I really enjoyed the different personalities. I'm fairly certain that food would be equally as terrified to end up in my kitchen. Over the weekend, I "reheated" ribs. I could of sworn that my husband said to put the oven on broil. Well, you can probably guess how the food looked when it came out.

    (BTW, captcha is EVIL)

    ReplyDelete
  19. I think your reheated ribs might classify as twice cooked. :)

    I don't care for captcha all that much either, but I get sooooo much spam on my word press blog, and none here. Besides, I think it is built into my template as I don't see any place to turn it off.

    ReplyDelete

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