How not to poison yourself in the kitchen

I've been cooking for decades and like to think I'm safety conscious. I know that a falling knife has no handle, and whatever hits the floor goes immediately into the trash or laundry. I am well-versed in kitchen safety. Even so, it hasn't stopped me from poisoning myself in there every so often. Here are my screw-ups and the ways that you can avoid them.

Mushrooms: Should never be slimy. Not even a little damp. Styrofoam or plastic packaging is the culprit. It creates a steamy, moist environment that rot mushrooms early. Try to avoid that stuff. If it’s your only option, turn a package upside-down in the grocery store to see how much water trickles to the surface. If you see any, try another container. Once you have a relatively dry one home, immediately take those shrooms outta there. A few drops of water can be wiped off with a clean paper towel, but if a shroom is still slippery after you wipe it, throw it out.

Chicken: Back before I learned to put dates on my refrigerated food, I ate old chicken soup and got immediately ill. I thought I was catching a flu so I got myself another brimming bowl. You can guess how that ended up. So always put dates on your food, because time flies especially quick in the kitchen, and remember that if you have to hurl shortly after eating, maybe it’s the food’s fault.

Eggs: How could I mess myself up by using cold eggs from the fridge in packaging that was weeks ahead of its sell-by date? Well, when the power goes out in your apartment and it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside, the eggs in your fridge can warm up to unsafe levels, but you'll never know it if the electricity starts up and cools everything back off before you get home. So since power outages are a thing, always check your raw eggs before using them. Put them into a deep container filled with cold water and see if they float. If they do, they are rotten no matter what the date on the carton says.

Herbs: Making herbal remedies is a fun pastime but you must tread lightly because herbs are very powerful plants. Most people don't think so because they're not as strong as the drugs the pharmacy doles out, even though most of them have actually been created from herbs. Last week I made a powerful herbal tea that knocked out my severe cold. However, I added waaay too much Sage and now I know what it feels like to go into labor. So research and consult specialists before you go throwing a bunch of twigs into a boiling pot.

So while you're enjoying your next kitchen excursion, remember to date label all your food and throw out floaty eggs and mushy mushrooms. And for the love of all that is holy, consult an herbalist when you're brewing a potion.

 

 © 2023 C. Devine

I now pronounce it better

A wedding ceremony can be a wonderful celebration of love which brings tears to the eyes of even the most cynical relative, but it usually ends kind of cringey when the officiant says, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” That sounds all kinds of wrong to me.

If it seems fine to you, try reversing it for a moment: “I now pronounce you woman and husband.” Sounds crazy, right? Well, that’s how crazy the first way seems to me.

So I began playing with the words in that last line of the ceremony that I’m probably thinking way too much about, and which everyone else just seemingly ignores while they breathe a sigh of relief, loosen their ties, take off their heels and head toward a reception which might just be brimming with booze.

My first try was “I now pronounce you man and woman” but then I wondered why we always have to put the man first in these sentences. I changed it to “I now pronounce you woman and man” but it sounded just as silly because we all knew the genders of everyone involved when we came to the wedding. And anyway, why does gender even matter?

So then I tried “I now pronounce you husband and wife” which was better but still echoed centuries of having the man go first in the officiant’s last rite and also in life, so I tried the more equitable “I now pronounce you wife and husband” while making a mental note that we’d have to reverse the genders again in that sentence after a few thousand years, just to keep everything fair.

After my last try, I gave this whole thing up and let it go. “I now pronounce you both married. You may kiss each other.” Please feel free to use this. You don’t even have to give me credit. All I ask is that you not mention me in the vows.

 

© 2022 C. Devine

My Weird Covid Vaccination Dreams

A few nights after getting the second Moderna shot, I was back in Hawaiʻi, going on some sort of victorious night-time hike by myself over terrain through the the city and through the countryside too, even though there were roving bands of thugs that I had to keep a constant watch out for.

I climbed down my apartment through the building’s walls instead of using a stairwell, falling down through the ceiling of a restaurant below my place, and got cussed out by the chef and wait staff for it. Diners looked up at me through the chunks of drywall falling into their main courses, scowling with disdain. I apologized profusely and continued onward.

I started my journey somewhere around Ala Moana Shopping Center, planning to walk to Waikiki and maybe even as far as Mānoa after that. My first stop was at a vast field — perhaps in Kapiʻolani Park? There was a huge tree in the middle of it, and it contained a tree house that had been built by hippies decades back.

It was abandoned and full of rats, all of which had somehow died while looking out the many windows. I stared up at their dead, vacant eyes in awe, as they peered back lifelessly at me. The other trees on the border of the park twisted up endlessly toward the sky, singing an electrical, warning hum.

I walked along Ala Wai Canal and ended up in a part of town that disoriented me. There was a row of restaurants there, so it might have been a refurbished Ward Warehouse in Kakaʻako. Cars careened and skittered through parking lots and down the streets, honking and smearing their paint against the thickening night sky.

Everywhere I looked, things were getting distorted and blurred. I kept bumping into walls and tripping over the sidewalk, becoming thoroughly disoriented and dizzy. My glasses and debit cards were gone. My purse melted down my leg, pouring my keys into a storm drain.

As I peered out into the vast horizon, nothing looked familiar to me, and everywhere I could choose to go stretched out into miles and miles of gothic cityscape that I had never seen before. I was looking desperately for familiar terrain but found none.

I began asking people for help. Their general response was indifference and, when they deigned to pay attention to me, absolute disdain. "Maybe you should be more responsible for your own actions," they admonished me when I told them I was lost.

"I can't help you; I'm busy," an impatient woman working at a cash register told me before I slipped her a ten-dollar bill to convince her to call me a taxi, but she just took off with the last of my cash, never to be seen again.

In a last-ditch attempt, I tried calling my husband, whose phone number I couldn't remember to save my life, and when I pulled out my cell phone to try to find his information in it, mung beans began sprouting from its glass surface. "Nooooo!" I remember shouting as I dropped the phone onto the ground, where it quickly took root and began growing into a beanstalk that wound its tendrils up my body as I struggled to break free.

It was then that I woke up, to be comforted by my husband. I relaxed in relief and fell asleep again. The dream continued, but luckily I found a nice couple with a cute dog who drove me around in their car, letting me hang out with them at their apartment for a while, and feeding me copious amounts of huge, luscious strawberries.

"We've been through the same journey you have," they told me with sympathy. The woman flirted with me and the guy gave me magazines to read. They played soothing music from their stereo, their dog licked my hand, and the sun shone over everything, removing the blur from the world’s surface. Reality was evening out again and I was at peace.

Furniture that bites

If you want to avoid infesting your living space, then never accept used furniture or office equipment. Because those things often come with pests. 

For instance, did you know that furniture can get fleas, just like pets?

I didn’t, until a hippie neighbor shooed a family of cats off her couch and pushed it into my apartment as she was packing to leave for San Francisco.

 

At first I thought, “Score!” But then I kept getting bit when I sat in it, like the couch had some ghost who pinched me every few seconds. The possibility that there could be blood-suckers in the fabric didn’t cross my mind at first.

 

But as I scratched away at the bites on my legs while watching the hippie’s cats outside, scratching themselves egregiously too, it was then that I realized I was infested.

That’s right — I finally figured out that I had fleas. Luckily they’re relatively easy to get rid of. I threw out the couch and got lots of flea powder to spread liberally around my apartment.

My boyfriend at the time didn’t fare as well as I, as he had a habit of sitting on furniture naked. I think he learned a valuable lesson, too.

Also, never take office chairs from a downtown basement. I tried rescuing a nice, benign-looking upholstered little number once. 

Although it was a little rickety, and the seat was a little speckled in filth, I just covered the chair with a large piece of fabric once I got it home, and everything seemed okay. 

Then a week or so later, I began to notice the red welts on my arms and legs.

 

They itched. I knew it wasn’t from fleas, though. My husband was all, “Maybe you’re allergic to the internet!” But then he started getting welts on his skin when he sat in it, too.

 

And after about the fourth time I jumped off of it, yelling and clawing at myself, we dumped that chair outside where nobody could rescue it ever again, and then we did some online research.

 

We found out we had scabies. Yup, these are better than fleas, because they’re microscopic… and they live and breed in your body, right under your skin! Which is pretty bad-ass of scabies, except they’re not as cute as fleas, when you look at both up close.

 

It took a lot of vinegar soaks to stop our skin from crawling after that. So there you have it. Never accept used furniture and then you will probably live a life free of fleas and scabies. 

That way, the only bloodsucker left in your apartment building that you’ll probably want to avoid will be your landlord.

Cane haul trucks and runaway hills

Sometimes the things that we enjoy the most can be dangerous for us. Such as sugar, or really fast trucks. Back in the ‘80s, there was a booming sugar business in Hawaiʻi.

The C&H Sugar Company was here, and sugar cane was growing all over the place. In order to transport all those harvested stalks of sugar around, Hawaiʻi got a fleet of “cane haul” trucks on some of the islands.

These monstrous vehicles looked like dusty, wooden big rigs. They had large, flat truck beds which were surrounded by seven-foot-high slats, lashed together with thick cords of leather. The beds would be piled high with hundreds of long, papery stalks of sugar cane.

The only thing that kept the enormous load from spilling out onto the highway was the group of sugar cane farmers in the back, riding atop their bounty like paniolos, or Hawaiian cowboys.

At least this is how I remember it being on Kauaʻi when I lived there, and when many of the locals were making a living in the farming industry.

These trucks didn’t have to go very far because they were on a small island, but once they got going, they kept up to speed. Plus, they were weighed down with hundreds of pounds of cane refuse, so it was hard to stop them once they got going.

In fact, some of the trucks would speed out of control and become a danger to everyone else on the road. That’s why cane haul runaway hills were created.

The runaway hills are fashioned out of naturally occurring places, such as atop the steep cliffs that were winding up into the mountains. These areas were made to contain the trucks so that they could run out of steam up there and be brought back under control.

But not everyone understands why these roads exist, and this has led to some dangerous situations, such as when a group of tourists from Japan mistakes the top of a runaway hill for a picnic spot.

This has happened more than once on Kauaʻi, but as far as I remember nobody ever got hurt. Usually, a local surfer or fisherman would be akamai (perceptive, wise) enough to notice the tourists up there and be safety-conscious enough to go urge them to leave.

In fact, I think they finally started putting up warning signs in English and Japanese after those incidents.

So when you’re visiting Hawaiʻi, remember that the state has a legacy of having provided the rest of America with a wonderful source of cane sugar, the sweetest kind around. But that sugar came at a price, in the form of very heavy, out-of-control cane haul trucks.

And if you ever see a dirt road in Hawaiʻi that is beckoning you up a hill which seems to have a sweet picnic spot at the top, please resist the urge to go sit there and eat what could become your last meal, because you’re probably on a runaway hill. I don’t know if there are any trucks out there that still use them, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.