Walled-off salad.

I don’t have any walnuts. Apples? Nope, none of them either. Celery? Who the hell eats CELERY? Aside from anti-Lincoln, that is. (He’ll eat anything except chicken fricassee, the real Lincoln’s favorite dish.)

Yeah, well … it was bound to happen. This sequester, social distancing business is getting pretty old. I know what you’re going to say (just call me Kreskin) – But you guys are always cooped up in that abandoned hammer mill! you’ll say, what the hell’s the difference? Such an insolent question! Actually … yeah, you have a point, but watching all these crazy people get even crazier because of home confinement is prompting us to get kind of sick of it too, if only for appearances sake. I mean, I don’t want to be that guy … you know, the one that isn’t climbing up the walls, even though he hasn’t been able to go golfing since last November. Of course, I’m genuinely not that guy, but you see where I’m going with this, right? No? Fuck. I was hoping you could tell me.

Anyway, that’s me. What about my fellow hammer mill-dwellers? Well, they are going stir crazy. Nothing to do with the quarantine. It think they’re just sick of my stir fry. You see, I’ve somehow ended up as the mill cook by default. The job originally fell to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), as that seemed well within the scope of his job description. (“Other duties as assigned,” it says in big red letters.) Anyway, when he set a tossed salad on fire last week, he was out, and because he reports to me, they handed me the apron. I let a few days pass to see if they’d forget about it, but they didn’t, and well …. they were getting kind of hungry, so I put the kettle on. I’ve had worse assignments. Like selling insulated windows over the phone. Sheesh, what a gig!

Ever try to make something out of nothing? Well, if you haven’t, come on down the Cheney Hammer Mill kitchen. We’ve got some ginger root that’s been lying around the pantry for about five years. There’s a half jar of mustard. Two digestive biscuits. Half a pint of club soda. Oh … our neighbors sent over some carrots. Um … that’s about it. I’m making a casserole. By that, I mean … I’m throwing a bunch of random stuff in a pot and putting it on the fire. I might stir it a couple of times, but again … they didn’t like last night’s stir fry, and I’m getting a little sensitive about the criticism. Mitch Macaphee had the gall to put a review of my cooking up on Yelp. Ripped me a new one, the bastard. Hell, he‘s the mad scientist …. why doesn’t he just invent a decent dinner? TAKE WHAT YOU CAN GET, YOU SHIFTLESS MOTHERS!

Ahh, I feel much better now. Soup’s on!