Fraters Libertas

Dinner At Atomizer's

I hope you were all amused by my battle with breakfast this past Monday. In retrospect, I was too, but the story doesn't end there.

Undaunted by my failure to prepare the easiest of the three prescribed daily meals, I returned home from work that same day with an indescribable desire to try my hand at cooking dinner. I dug deep into my pantry and emerged with a one pound package of orecchiette pasta (the ones shaped like a little ear). "Even I can cook pasta", I said to myself, and then got to cogitating on what to prepare it with. I quickly located a bottle of parmesan garlic pasta sauce and then found some frozen chicken breasts hiding behind the half gallon bottle of Bombay Sapphire in my freezer.

An immediate problem struck me. I needed to defrost this chicken, and fast if I wanted to eat before the sun set. I had always been told that, to be safe, chicken should be defrosted slowly in the refrigerator overnight. Having no time for such formality, I fired up the hot water on the kitchen faucet and stuck two breasts beneath the torrent. With the pasta on the boil and the sauce simmering, I was well on my way to dinner.

Soon, I felt like Emeril as I was pan frying those chicken breasts. Garlic salt...Bam! Lemon pepper...Bam! Lawry's Seasoned Salt and Mrs. Dash...Bam, Bam! I was shuckin' and jivin' around that kitchen like there was no tomorrow.

Before I knew it, I was sitting down to a wonderful chicken and pasta meal and it tasted so good because I had made it myself. Afterwards, I thought to myself that the mishap with breakfast earlier that day must have been just an anomaly. I'm a good cook...I really am.

Then came Tuesday. I just didn't feel right at work. My stomach was churning from the moment I got out of bed. By noon, I had made three mad dashes to the bathroom feeling certain every time that I was about to set a new record for projectile vomiting...both volume and distance. Each time had been a false alarm, but that fact was not reassuring as the pain in me gulliver only grew with each passing minute.

By 1:00, I had suffered enough and excused myself from the office only to make it home just in time to...well, I think you know the rest. I spent the rest of the day either in motionless pain on the couch or in rapid motion pain on my way to the bathroom.

What did I learn from the day's events, you ask? Never, and I mean never, dig any deeper in your freezer than your bottle of Bombay. Not for chicken, not for ground beef, not even for those tasty little Flav-O-Ice popsicles. Hangovers are manageable. Bacterial infections aren't. Don't say I didn't warn you.