I wonder why.

 

I’m writing this in extreme haste, cuz I wanna go out and get a starburger with some fries at Carl Jrs as soon as I’m done posting this history of my big meal cooking.

Why do I do it?  It’s becoming less and less clear to me why.  With more and more Hispanic moving into the building, there is less and less reason for me to cook – they love to get together for community taco feasts, with lots of beans.  I’m feeling superfluous.  (And don’t think I’m fishing for compliments; I’m just trying to express how I feel in the hopes it will help me decide how to proceed.)

I got my first crockpot when I was doing the advance clowning for ringling brothers with steve smith.  About 50 years ago. We lived in a motorhome, and the agreement was that he would do the driving and I would do the cooking.  I loved that slow cooker.  I put a roast, onions, carrots, and potatoes in it every morning and every night we feasted like carnivorous kings, after dissolving our clownwhite makeup with babyoil.  Smith always had a coke with his meal; I always had milk.

After I got back from my mission and married Amy (for the first time) we eventually had 8 kids, and with Amy pregnant so often it devolved upon me to do the cookin’  – that’s when I grew skillful with throwing together leftovers with a can or two of cream soup to make mighty casseroles that could feed a hoard of locusts.

After the marriage dissolved I got a job as a newscaster at a radio station down in Iowa.  i hated to go out to eat, so I bought a crockpot and started making roasts and potatoes again.  I put the crockpot in the break room, and soon enough the staff was asking if they could have some.

Sure, I said.  So I started buying bigger roasts and more potatoes, and soon I was feeding half a dozen people for lunch each day.  One day I made baked cod, wrapped in tin foil.  The station manager got one whiff of that and forbade me to do any more cooking.  I didn’t care, cuz a few weeks later I went back to the circus as the ringmaster.

I moved into Valley Villa just as the Covid struck, keeping everybody home.  So I started cooking a big lunch, usually soups and stews with the cheapest cuts of meat I could find, and knocked on doors and invited people over.  Soon I had a steady clientele of about a dozen folks who showed up at my door around noon, whether I was cooking or not!

When I remarried Amy I kept on cooking, and Channel 2 did a story on our meals and gave us 500 dollars for cooking supplies.  We burned through that in about a month.

People tell me thanks from time to time – but they also throw a lot of my food away.  I’ve seen them dump it right into the trash can.  We also have some hoarders in the building, who ask for seconds, don’t even eat any of it, and let it sit on their kitchen counter until it rots.  I’ve seen this with my own eyes. 

You know what I’d really like to do?  I’d really like to start eating out:   KFC, McDonald’s, Joe Vera’s, and Carl Jr’s.  if I do that there won’t be any time or money to make big meals anymore.

Today I’m going to Carl Jr’s, as I mentioned above.  Tomorrow I may saunter over to the Silver Dish, a Thai restaurant in downtown Provo.

I don’t think my food will be missed very much, if I stop doing it.  I’m not sure if I will.  I gotta think about it . . .