The Dirt Field

About six weeks ago, my parents invited Andrew and me over for Sunday dinner. “I’m marinating hamburgers and a salmon burger for you,” my father said excitedly.

Then they cancelled a few hours before, because they do not love their only child.

Dinner was rescheduled for the following Sunday. “I’m still marinating those hamburgers,” my father said. “They’ll be so flavorful!”

We gathered for dinner; everybody ate their beef burgers while I had my salmon patty (which had been marinated and cooked separately). It was flavorful: brimming with the delicious flavor of fish. Nobody else tried the salmon.

The next evening, I started feeling badly. I crawled into bed early, hoping it would pass, but soon became horribly ill. To briefly and non-graphically summarize the subsequent five hours: I exploded and begged for death to come take me away. Andrew watched sympathetically, because marriage means you cannot run screaming when your spouse is disgusting.

Eventually we concluded that medical intervention was required. While I was a biohazard in motion, Andrew was kind enough to load me into the car without requiring that I climb into a trash bag first. Then we spent 8 hours in the emergency room. Apparently Virginia is not a Death with Dignity state, which is how I am still here writing this post today.

Thankfully the episode passed eventually and I recovered. When my father and I met for sushi (oh, the irony) a week later, we put the pieces together and discovered that the salmon burger was the culprit. Apparently the package of frozen burgers clearly says “DO NOT DEFROST” but my parents were like, hey, let’s not only defrost this bad boy, but leave it thawed for a week before feeding it to our kid. When I saw my mother the next day and mentioned that she tried to kill me with a fish patty, my usually doting mother replied, “Hm. Really? Hm. So anyway…”

I love you, Mom. And, Dad, that marinade was great. But next time, let’s do meatloaf.

So fast forward to yesterday, when my roommate joined Costco and brought home a huge bag of frozen salmon fillets. She excitedly offered to thaw a fillet for me and while my first instinct was to scream NO WAY, PLEASE DON’T KILL ME, I said sure, that sounds great, I have a few extra pounds that I can’t wait to crap out violently.

The fish was waiting for me in the refrigerator around dinnertime, but I couldn’t bring myself to commit. It wasn’t until after getting home from my Target date with Julie at 9pm (yes, that’s a thing, Target is wonderful) that I had to face the music and cook the salmon, or risk letting in sit in the fridge overnight and become rife with fatal diseases. The package said to bake it for 15-20 minutes, so I baked it for 35 minutes and then set it on fire for good measure.

Okay, not that last part, but only because it was late and I didn’t want to set the smoke alarm off. Once the salmon cooled from an internal temperature that rivaled the sun, I took a deep breath, ate half of it, and then waited. It has now been 24 hours and everything seems to be okay internally, so I just microwaved the other half (for so long that it partly exploded and partly caramelized) and ate it.

This is the definition of living on the edge.