Friday, March 30, 2018

The Alien Kale Invasion

I just finished eating one of my junk-in-the-back-of-the-fridge omelettes. It was so good, I have to brag about it. Eggs, butter, sausage, spinach, tomato, onion, mushroom, and kale. Yes, I added kale.

See, I resolved to throw away less food. So almost every day, I eat some kind of junk from the back of the fridge. The other day, I made hot dog soup.

Even Nick admitted that it was delicious, all those little bits of leftover food thrown in together with a couple of diced hot dogs and some beef broth.

Here's the thing - when I look through the back of the fridge, it doesn't always look so great. Kale, for example. I have never looked at kale without first thinking of the original 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' movie. That stuff does not look like normal food. Remember at the end of the movie when the doctor saw the pods in the back of the truck on the highway? Yeah, when I look in the back of my fridge and find old kale, I see that scene all over again. Every single time.

Endive too. It's all those veins.

I try not to think of the veins when I slice the tough stem out of the kale. If I do, I just try to imagine my surgery is to assist the good doctor in his attempt to eliminate the pods.

But then, I cook it and eat it.

Onions, butter, leftover meat from dinner are all okay, but some vegetables, when you look at them closely, don't pass the alien invasion test.

Asparagus. The tight little bunch of pods at the tip of a long reach. What plant do you know that grows that way? And the white ones? I can't even make myself buy the white asparagus.

And with enough asparagus, there's that pee smell afterward. You know what I mean. You're half way through a pee shiver the next morning when that smell wafts up to you. Not you. No, that smell is not you. It's an alien smell, an awful smell that means you've been taken in by the alien asparagus but you just don't know it yet.

There was a show on the cable the other night, something about aliens living among us. I didn't even watch it. I knew, just like when I stared at that bunch of kale at the back of the fridge, that if I watched too long, something would shiver, just a subtle shift so I could see the alien life right here on the couch with me. Who was my husband Mike anyway? Where did he really come from?

One of those curly leaves at the back of the fridge would roll into a tentacle for an instant, stretch out, and grab me by the face. Then it would slowly drag the whole bunch of kale toward my mouth and make me swallow it all in one bite.

Then, I would be an alien too. Never trust a woman who likes kale.

Thank you for listening, jules

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