A Recipe for Disaster

Last time, I mentioned the bite I got in the line of duty. Well in the line of taking photographs really.

I've still got it. I've doused the area with alcohol to the extent that my left arm is permanently pissed but the raised 'zit' is still there and if I absent mindedly scratch around it, I'm scratching for 10 minutes.

Hey ho. Could've been worst I guess. I could've been bitten by a Cottonmouth snake !

Btw, I loved this advice on a site about snakes...... "Generally speaking, if you encounter a snake and you are unsure whether it is dangerous, or not, you should avoid it."

Brilliant !

Thankfully I rarely see snakes here in the park. There are 'only' 6 poisonous types in Florida but believe me, if I see ANY snake, I avoid it. After trying to photograph it of course !

Gators though, are everywhere. And those cute little lizards. And spiders the size of mice ! And all of them will try and enter the house which is why I always keep the doors locked. So far it's worked as I don't believe any of them can pick a lock.

(And they told me years of watching the Natl Geographic channel was rotting my brain. Ha !)

Anyway back to my sort of diary.

Yesterday we didn't play golf. We wussed out. At 7am it was 31F/-0.5c and us oldies don't go out when it's that cold. If I'm going to slice and hook balls into the water, trees, bunkers and rough and loose about a dozen doing so, I'm not going to freeze to death as well. I want to enjoy it !

So seeing the forecast, Jack rang me on Sunday night to say....lets not. And I agreed.

Instead of playing golf, I played cook instead. Deb had given me a shopping list and a recipe and after driving into town to fulfil the order, I then hit the kitchen. I diced and sliced for 90 minutes and ended up with a shed load of carrots, onions, celery, red and yellow peppers, potatoes, a blister on my left hand and numerous nicks and cuts on several fingers.

Food preparation is freakin' dangerous, people !

The worst cut was from a potato peeler I was using to 'skin' the carrots......with. I went off the end of a carrot and onto the end of my index finger. Owwwwy.

Then there was the knife. A big ass knife. A Rambo knife. I was using this WMD to dice the aforementioned veggies and tried to emulate the chefs I see on tv. Keep the veg still and rock the blade along it with smooth and rhythmic cutting strokes. Oh yeah. It was working just fine till I sensed I was not so much slicing an inanimate vegetable as a very animate finger part.

If Edward Scissorhands and Freddie Kruger had high fived each other, there couldn't have been more blood on display.

Bravely I carried on, deciding not to tell anyone I was adding a 'secret' ingredient to the casserole. I'd blame the red pepper for the unusual colour.

So once the 4.5 lbs of meat was diced and everything tossed into the huge pot, beef broth was added and finally salt, pepper and garlic powder were liberally sprinkled on top. Seven bay leaves were placed artistically and finally it was good to go. With the lid in place, the pot was shoved into the oven and 4 hours later the three of us sat down to a wonderful meal with enough left overs to make about 10 more meals. Just the thing for cool Floridian evenings.

Apart from hacking into body parts, the food preparation had caused even more drama. As you might imagine, the residue from preparing 15 carrots, 6 onions, 12 potatoes, 2 peppers and a butt load of celery put a bit of a strain on the garbage disposal unit and just before the last pile of cuttings went down, it gave up the ghost in a very noisy and watery way.

The meal took 4 hours to cook and the disposal unit took 3 hours to unblock. Dennis and I both had goes with the sink plunger, each taking over from the other when our arms needed a rest. There were encouraging gurgles from time to time but after over 2 hours hard work, all we had achieved was water moving from one sink to the other, depending on which one was being plunged ! Clearly the blockage was further along the pipework and so was impervious to being plunged.

Deciding to take his break, Dennis went to the bathroom and after flushing the toilet, I heard a whooooooosh from the kitchen sinks and hurrah, the blockage was gone and the disposal was disposing again.

Just how flushing the toilet unblocked the disposal unit beats the crap out of me !

I blamed the carrot shavings. They were long and thin and wet and probably not ideal for grinding up and so probably bypassed the disposal unit's 'teeth' and slid along the pipework and came together to block the system. Hey, it's a theory.

One thing I can tell you and this won't come as a shock to anyone familiar with waste disposal units; it gets your heart pumping when you put your hand down one even with the switch off. And boy do you look at that switch a lot when doing it ! Logic tells you that as long as it's in the off position, your digits will be safe and remain attached to your hand.

But in your mind, you just know it's like sticking your hand into a nest of sleeping Cottonmouth snakes.

Best avoided.