Wellness Today–Playing Ketchup

I have fallen way behind on Peaco posts so as you can imagine this was not a fun week. I’ll be playing ketchup for the next few days. No, that was not an auto-correct flub. I really meant ketchup.

The Chef and I have a standing rule that ketchup is only to be applied as a condiment when the food in question is so bad it cannot be consumed without it. At any other time ketchup is culinary blasphemy. This is one of the many personal quirks he and I happen to have in common. We continue to resist divorce because neither one of us can stomach the idea of daily meals with people who reach for condiments as a reflex. Alternatively, people who don’t consume food flavorful enough to stand alone without a cover-up sauce. It’s not a concession either of us are willing to make now that we’ve been spoiled by marriage to superior palates.

The rule also applies to tartar sauce and steak sauce, but the puns aren’t nearly as satisfying. If the french fries, fish or steak, scrambled eggs, or synthetic mystery nuggets don’t taste good enough to be eaten without the goop, you shouldn’t be paying for them (or you need a better recipe). I once divorced a man because he perpetually seasoned everything on his plate at every meal without tasting it first. I divorced another man because he dumped ranch salad dressing all over gourmet pizza made with Calabrian chili and Iberico ham without even tasting it. Yeah, I’ve been divorced a bunch of times. But fair is fair; several fellows wanted to divorce me for scraping all the frosting off of cake or ordering pie without whipped cream. It’s fine. Really, it is. Some people just shouldn’t be together.

I confess that I still giggle with devilish delight when I remember the number of times I deliberately fed a certain man undercooked chicken because I knew the split-second the bird hit the table he was going to pour barbecue sauce all over it. I estimate he ate half a dozen raw chickens before I divorced him but he never saw the blood for all the runny red barbecue swill. Or maybe did but he just didn’t want to save the marriage. It’s just as well. I imagine him remarried now to some nice girl who agrees to unlimited meals that come from greasy paper bags thrust through the window of the car. They are probably happy as clams amid their mountains of shiny easy-open squeeze packets. Sending love and light, y’all.

But I digress. This week was bad; so bad it required copious amounts of ketchup even before I break out the catch-up pun. I cried. I broke things. I said cuss words and gave myself bad dreams. Wellness was bad this week. Bad enough to need a condiment to choke it down. I’m not going to elaborate (but just to put your mind at ease, it is not divorce). I’m just going to douse that shit and look forward to better cuisine. Sploosh.

Friday’s prompt:

I loved flying until…