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Marie Callender's chicken pot pie


I did not make this. But I followed directions explicitly and that's got to count for something. 






This is healing me. 

I can feel its curative properties coursing through my veins.  Just like one feels the effects of the first sips of ale in ones carotid arteries, if one happens to be a sensate ale-feeler. Its inherent sanative salubrity is settling upon me like a quilt and comforting me toward wellness. Yes, I feel *burp* all that. Its unchallenging blandness, its creaminess, its rich crusty goodness combine as medicine except a lot better. Better than I remember actually. Even the usually objectionable soft carrot discs are good, and the absence of peas is fine with me. This is perfect and whoever invented this pie sure knew what they were doing. 

The woman behind me in line at the checkout said, "Yeah, but you gotta watch out for all the calaries." And I'm all, "Ha ha ha ha, you cow," inside my head but showing only charm to the outside world, while still thinking privately, "Shut up." 

I had a strange dream with imagery that stuck with me the whole day. It's perfectly meaningless. I think. In the dream, I was keeping a tank of neon tetras in the storage room with no electrical outlet so without anything to agitate the water surface which meant the water would have been stale and un-oxygenated and that made me feel bad. Nonetheless, neglected as they were in there, they had babies and I was delighted with them. The babies were the cutest little things.  On the way out, my neighbor, a woman who outweighs me by about 50 LBS and who usually ignores me, was stacking up her own aquariums outside her apartment carelessly one atop the other, all small tanks, only partially filled, but loaded with neon tetras also replete with tiny babies. I marveled.  I inquired about her success and she explained that she does nothing at all, just stacks up her aquariums inside and leaves them alone. Hardly ever feeds them. No top light. No water changes. Tap water. No special handling whatsoever. I told her that I gave my real neon tetras everything a tetra could want. Native of the tributaries of the Rio Negro, itself a tributary of the Amazon, the water is perfectly soft (all the minerals are immediately carried up into the canopy), slightly acidic with tannins, temperature held at 75℉/ 24℃. I feed  them a variety of supplemental things, brine shrimp, and other meaty neon treats, and I provide grassy plant covering to distribute their eggs and to protect the babies. They have a bathroom all to themselves and I only go in there to feed about a dozen tiny fish. The light is soft, but still, in all that time only one single baby neon tetra was born. Which is true in real life. My neighbor said to me, "You're doing it wrong." Then returned to ignoring me.

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