Friday food

I know, I know. It's late in the day. But settle in, folks, because I've got a long tale for you. A tale in which our Plucky Heroine faces Great Adversity! Peril! Trauma! Blood! And recites poetry! All beginning with preparing food! But don't worry, being the Plucky kind of Heroine, she Perseveres and All Ends Well.

So. It started with this cast of characters:

 

Chicken, shredded carrots and cabbage, vinegar, soy sauce, and an onion.

It started easily enough. Our Plucky Heroine took her trusty kitchen knife, one of the many she recently took in for professional sharpening. She did that because they were all so dull that she was afraid one would slip and cut her if she didn't get them sharpened.

That, my friends, is known both as irony and as foreshadowing.

Slice slice slice went the shiny sharp knife through the onion, slice slice slice, until it was time for the last slice, and the greedy knife wasn't content to cut just the onion, but decided to take off part of our Plucky Heroine's little fingertip too.

Oh! she cried out (in a Plucky way, of course). My! That hurt! And bleed! Goodness! Like a geyser! She flew to the kitchen sink and turned on the tap for cold water, then stuck her finger under it. Not necessarily the best idea she'd ever had. Blood continued to gush, so she grabbed a paper towel and wound it tightly around the finger, then slowly pulled it off to see what size bandaid would be required.

But there was no flesh on the fingertip at all. Just a fountain of blood. Hmmm, thought the Plucky Heroine (OK, maybe she was borderline hyperventilating at this point), that doesn't look like a bandaid will fix it. I think I have to go to the doctor. And since the sight of all that blood rushing out of her little finger made her nervous, she grabbed another paper towel to cover it up.

But then she paused. Why, look, she thought--look at all that blood on the countertops. Apparently the geyser had cleared quite some distance as she had scampered across the kitchen. Does blood stain countertops? Plucky Heroine did not know, but she didn't want to find out the hard way, so, clutching a paper towel around the finger of blood, she used her other hand to wipe down the counter.

Ready for the doctor? Almost--but not yet. She looked at the other counter. And there were all those perishable foods sitting there, just waiting to, you know, perish! So those had to be put away too. And then finally Plucky Heroine was ready to get in her car and go to the doctor.

You know what's a good way to get quick service at Urgent Care? Show the receptionist your bloody paper towel and tell her you sliced off part of your fingertip. You'll get bumped right to the head of the line, in front of all the coughing children and the cranky old lady.

In no time at all, the gallant doctor was there and impressed with our Heroine's slicing skills. Stitches, he informed her. There would have to be stitches. OK, said Plucky Heroine, who had never had stitches and found that whole idea unnerving. Whatever, just stop the bleeding and stop the pain.

So the gallant doctor instructed the nurse to put a blood pressure cuff on the Heroine's arm to cut off the circulation so he could, you know, see through the blood and start stitching. You know what happens when there's no circulation to your arm? You lose all feeling, and your arm starts to look like a Swamp Thing.

You know what happens when you've been blogging too long? You sit at Urgent Care, watching your arm turn into Swamp Thing, and wish you had your camera so the nurse could take a picture.

She also remembered that there's a poem by Sylvia Plath called The Cut, which starts: "What a thrill--/My thumb instead of an onion" and goes on to say: "A celebreation, this is./Out of a gap/A million soldiers run,/Redcoats, every one."

But at last! No more bleeding! No more pain (thanks, Novocain)! Only this:

 

Just a nifty-difty splint-like gauze bandage (and an arm no longer looking like Swamp Thing). Which, Plucky Heroine did not realize until this morning, was already in the process of adhering so firmly to the wound that when she went back to the doctor this morning to have it checked, more Novocain had to be administered in order to get the gauze off her without making her cry, or throw up, or both. Again--Plucky Heroine loves her Novocain.

Obviously this experience exhausted Plucky Heroine, but nevertheless, home bloodied and beaten, she was still determined to make the damned chicken.

And she did.

Even if it was a challenge trying to cut another onion (because she certainly wasn't going to use the first one) with only one hand.

There it is. Crockpot Chicken Adobo. It was good. But was it good because it was good, or because it represented our Plucky Heroine's personal triumph over tragedy? That, my friends, is the question.

Comments

[--Deb]

Ack! Amy!!! You ARE plucky!!

[Heidi]

Oh plucky heroine, only you could recall amidst all the Drama and Blood an appropriate poem by Plath! You are indeed a gem! Mend well.

P.S. 1st time for stitches? Really?!?