Bad Hummus Brings Out Bad Nature

by riley

2008-04-16 17:05:36 PDT

When I was a younger fellow living in Winnipeg, I was seeing this girl who cooked frequently, but rarely well. I had a habit of touching up the spices once I had mine served, which she thought was impolite I think but if you're the type to get upset every time someone puts salt and pepper on their food chances are your relationships might end up riddled with problems. Easy for me to criticize other people's problems though, as evidenced by how often I do it.

So anyways. One night I go over to her place and there was a bowl of hummus on the counter. She was in the other room and I figures to myself, I says, "What the hell ?" and grab one of her baby carrots and tried the hummus.

And promptly spit it out. I literally spit it on the floor. My face completely rejected it and ejected it immediately. It was awful-- it was like she had mixed chickpeas, tahini and stagnant water together and figured "hey ! hummus is easy !"

"This will not be forgiven," I moaned in a voice not entirely my own.

I found some lemon juice in her fridge and some salt and mixed some of each into the disgustipaste, then, seeing as I couldn't rightly get out the food processor and get real garlic into it, I raided her spice cabinet and found some garlic powder.

I should interject here and insist I would not now do something of this nature, and thinking back I really don't think I would normally have done it then either. I would absolutely fix up the portion of food I was going to eat but to say "no you made it wrong for your tastes." ?? No. I see how gross that is, spiritually. But something nasty and ugly was awakened deep within me by that horrible mouthful of nonfood. It was like the saliva-coated hummus on the floor started chanting in a forgotten tongue and the Cthulfood of my spirit opened his malevolent eyes and turned his gaze and directed his fury on what had disturbed his slumber.

I was dissatisfied with using powdered garlic but I was without alternatives. I was a feral, snarling beast cornered by this abomination, this Kafkan nightmare vision of consumption.

I took the lid off and blindly poured but nothing came out. It was solidified into an unusable (but desperately needed) garlicball. "Oh fuck all of that !" I declared, pulled off the top, got a butter knife, and stabbed that motherfucker apart into some semblance of powdered rationality. I ignored the low note that sounded when I put the shaker top back on the jar, then poured again.

The shaker top and the entire garlicontents emptied onto the moist ball of hummus. I'd fucked up putting the top back on. I started scrambling, trying to brush it off but the powder was already fusing to a paste on top of the hummus. I panicked and tried running water over it but that only succeeded in worsening the nature of the original mess.

"Fuck. Fuck. FuckwhatdoIdowhatdoIdowhatdoIdo..." there was no way to explain this. "Hey your food preparation sucks. I tried to fix it but fucked it up; now you have no food. You want to have the long miserable breakup talk, or should I just go ?" I wished that I knew who Gordon Ramsey was so I could wish he did housecalls.

Inspiration came from a deep, evil voice within. "A simple accident..." it boomed in my head.

Kill my girlfriend ? That seemed excessive, and having to deal with the law over some shitty hummus ? Then again, this was PHENOMENALLY shitty hummus...

"A SIMPLER accident," it boomed, annoyed. "Retard." it added.

I got it.

SMASH !!! went the bowl of hummus on the floor.

"Oh no, what happened ??" my girlfriend came yelling out of her bedroom.

"Just an accident." I mumbled sheepishly. In a dark place inside me, Cthulfood closed its eyes and returned to sleep.