Dinnertime

Mark is a good cook, in fact he's a great cook. There's a reason I'm walking around with a big old belly. The cause of my always being so thin before I met Mark was that I had never had good food before. Ante-Mark, dinner usually consisted of a hunk of meat and a vegetable. And since I can't cook, that hunk of meat and vegetable had very little flavor, hence my lean stature. Hmmm... I could probably sell that as a great diet plan. Anyway, getting back to Mark and his cooking, it doesn't come without a price. From the moment Mark steps into the kitchen until he puts dinner on the table, many things happen. Yesterday I noticed a bad smell wafting through the house, so I went to check it out.

"What are you cooking?"

"It's African."

"Okay, African what?"

"And Indian, some of it is Indian too. It's chicken with a rice side dish."

"Why does it smell so funky?"

I don't know why I asked that. He had already said it was African and Indian, I should just assume it would be funky. By the time the food had reached the dinner table, however, it had changed. In both appearance and odor. There sitting on the table in front of me was a lovely plate of food. On one side was a delicious North African rice dish and next to that was some chicken floating in a curry broth. It looked good, smelled good, and it was delicious. The only problem with Mark and his cooking though, are his methods. If you walk into the kitchen and didn't know that Mark had been cooking, you might think somebody had vandalized the place. He uses every utensil, every pot, every gadget he has and leaves them right where he last put them down. Bits of food are scattered everywhere (Except for the floor. The dogs take care of that.), and sauces are splattered on the counter, walls, and sometimes even the ceiling. It often looks like a Dexter murder scene. Yes, dinner was scrumptious last night, very tasty. The only problem I had with it was that it took two hours to cook, forty five minutes to clean up afterwards, and only five minutes for me to eat it. It almost doesn't seem worth it. I could start doing the cooking myself, that would be much faster and cleaner. Unfortunately poor Mark would probably starve to death. But just think of how much thinner I would be.