THE NOT-SO-NAKED CHEF Part II

Turning around, I ramble over the dunes, working my way closer to the parking lot and my car.  It’ll be good to get home, ditch the bag of gross-me-out garbage and take a shower.

 ***** 

Continued from Part One

Ah, there’s nothing like a refreshing cool shower on a hot summer day.  I put on fresh undies and one of my long, t-shirt type nightshirts, knowing that I’m home for the evening.

During my rambles and ablutions, I finally decide what I'm  going to make for dinner.  Pan-fried, thin sliced T-bone steak from the local grocery store, in a little butter and fresh-picked corn-on-the cob and cucumbers from the local farmer’s market. New potatoes smashed with milk and butter, complete the picture.  Yum, yum!  My tummy is now in full rumble.

Turning the stove on, a bit to the high side, to sear my meat, I melt a little slab of butter and let it caramelize before I carefully place the still slightly frozen steak in the pan. 

Checking on the progress after a minute or two, I notice one part of it isn’t lying flat.  So I take my fork and press down on the uncooperative edge.  BAM!  A huge projectile of hot grease and butter comes shooting out from under the thin-sliced steak, and scatters like buckshot into hundreds of small pellets.  Their size notwithstanding, they are plentiful and they nail me and everything in their path.  The velocity of the many buttery, blobby missiles is astonishing.  Not only does it splatter me from the base of my fingers to almost my shoulder, along the inside of my right arm, but also hits the refrigerator which is about four feet behind me.  The noise is incredibly loud, so loud I think I jumped a foot.

I am absolutely gob-smacked and gob-covered.  For a good minute or two I stand there, covered in the now-cooling hot grease, and wonder what in the feck happened. 

Grabbing a paper towel, I carefully blot the globs, knowing better than to wipe.  As I examine the damage, I realize that I am very lucky that the trajectory of the grease was at about a 45° angle, instead of 90°, because then it would have blasted my face and that would have been horrible.  As it was, it soaked through my t-shirt in places and even managed to singe one of my lady parts.  Sigh! 

Wanting to eat my dinner, while it’s still hot, I put on a fresh 

t-shirt and chow down.  Only it didn’t taste as good as I thought it should.  Maybe I was in shock?

After I clear away the dishes, I google how to treat a grease burn, ‘cause it’s been a long time since I had one of those.  Of course, the first thing you should do, after blotting, is run cool, not cold, water over the burn(s) for about 5 minutes.  Uh huh, a little late for that but I did it anyway.   It's interesting to see that the worst areas, besides the lady part, are the two biggest burns, just below where my t-shirt sleeve ended – the furthest body part from the pan. That’s weird.

Luckily, I keep a well-stocked first aid supply cupboard and usually an antibiotic cream in the fridge but, for the time being,  I slather myself in real aloe vera (I have three very healthy plants) and leave all my parts uncovered. Nowadays the advice for burns is that you can keep them covered or not.  Back ‘in the olden days’, we were told never to cover a burn.  I guess modern technology caught up with first aid, along with everything else.

After I finish slathering all the visible regions, I lift my T-shirt and check out the lady bit.  Hmmmm, my right side sure took the brunt of those greasy projectiles.  Of course, the part which sticks out the furthest, (i.e. the boob), took a pretty direct hit.   Also, about half of my poor tummy looks like a nicely patterned speckled trout.  I just keep cutting the aloe leaves and slopping on the gel.  I am very thankful that aloe is one of the few plants that I can actually keep alive and it grows abundantly.

Deciding to go ‘old school’, I leave all my parts aloe-slathered, but uncovered.  Sleeping that night could have gone a whole lot better.  About half-way through my very restless attempt at reaching REM sleep, because things are rubbing against the burns, I figure it’s the 21^st century and decide to give today’s way of thinking a try.

 

I raid my first aid bin and assemble everything I think I’ll need.  I cover all my singed parts with fresh aloe, and sterile gauze pads.with one exception – have you ever tried to bandage a boob?  Uh huh, doesn't work that well.

I wind yards of gauze bandage around the worst areas on my forearm and upper arm.  Now that was interesting – ever try to do that kind of thing with only one hand?  At least it’s my ‘good’ hand although I couldn’t quite get the gauze strip wound tight enough.  About a half mile of the hospital-grade tape finishes my amateurish efforts.

Sighing tiredly, I head back to bed.  I’m pretty wound up from all the first-aiding, so I turn on the TV and hope to be lulled to sleep listening to the Food Channel.  That didn’t work.  Now I’m hungry ‘because I didn’t really eat much of my dinner after that greasy ‘appetizer’.  It’s about 3:00 a.m. at this point and I know that whatever I may eat now will only come back to haunt me, so I forego the very early a.m. snack and try to get a little comfy. 

I turn off the TV and turn on a soothing CD, something that’s titled, “You Can Heal Your Life”.  How appropriate.  I hope it’ll heal my body along with my life.

Boy, am I ever glad I don’t cook naked.

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