My evening ended tonight with me yelling, insanely, at my brother “I know what kind of f*cking apples I used, OKAY?!”
It seems like whenever I snap, whenever I really lose it on someone – it’s over something totally inane. This time it was over baked apples.
One of the biggest arguments I have ever had in my life was an argument I had with an ex-partner who demanded angrily that I call 5 minute noodles, “just noodles, not noodle soup.” It ended with me telling him he was – insert expletive here – insane, and to -insert expletive here – off.
Now, I’m not a girl to swear – or even lose my temper – but seldomly, very seldomly, I just can’t take it anymore.
So earlier this evening, I cheerfully offered my younger brother one of the three baked apples I pulled out of the oven, and he took a bite. He offered that his was not very sweet. I said mine was almost too sweet. He said “You must have been using one of THESE apples. This is a Macintosh apple.”
Well, I know what a goddamn Macintosh apple looks and tastes like. I said “No, I used one of THESE.” And pulled from the fruit basket one of the apples that Josh picked off of a tree for me earlier in the day.
There was a tense silence.
“I don’t knooowww…” He offered, incredulously. And that was it. That was what blew my smokestack.
I don’t remember everything that I said, but it ended in him just wordlessly walking upstairs to his room and me popping some vitamins angrily as if they were barbiturates. Slamming them down with some filtered water, and staring at the last apple challengingly.
Now, my angry food-related explosions makes sense within some greater picture.
The picture of today was waking up, placing a large pile of newly purchased clothes in the washer – only to realize that there was some overpowering smell coming from it. I asked my father whether I could use the washer, and he responded that that would be fine, but he had some clothes in there already. I saw that, and asked whether he was using bleach – because of the smell, you see. He responded: “No. Worse. I’m soaking them in paint thinner, why?”
I didn’t ask why anyone would soak their clothing in paint thinner, but simply removed my clothes and started rinsing them in the shower.
So, it was time for family day to the farm market. I mentioned in the car that it would be fun to go to a different market as well, in Steveston. That was met with a grim silence. So, I didn’t bring it up again. We arrived at the farm market and my brother and father urgently paced from one end of the market to the other, as I tried to quickly pick out what I’d like to cook for the week. They returned to the entrance to wait for me, ten minutes after arriving.
I caught up to them, and we decided to make it a Family Grocery Trippe. I don’t know what your family is like, but shopping with my family is all about speed, accuracy, and delegation. You don’t ‘hang out’ in a grocery store, nor do you ‘check things out’. It’s about getting in, and getting out – with as few casualties as possible. The usual casualties are the respect of the other family members, and the loss of ‘picking vegetable’ privileges.
It didn’t take long in Save On Foods for me to lose my picking vegetable privileges. I made the mistake of criticizing the .79 cent-a-pound tomatoes that my father had seized upon. I suggested we could find some local tomatoes at the vegetable market down the street. Obviously, I did not understand the gravity of the situation at hand. “These tomatoes are .79 cents a pound Emily. That’s ridiculous.”
“They just look kind of green, and small.” I tried to represent the whole with one (admittedly rare in the bunch) green tomato, held up in my hand.
“That one is green. The rest are fine.” Then, quickly: “Daniel, you pick the rest.”
And that was that. Suddenly my brother had subsumed all of the vegetable choosing rights: the avocados, the lemons, the apples. The three tomatoes that I chose were discarded at the check-out after my father and brother discussed the impossibility of my choice. “They’re *rotten*! Look at how mushy they are!”
They were, in fact, kind of mushy – but purchased so with the intent to use them in a salsa – to which their mushiness could only be a benefit. I let it go. Let them have their damned, firm tomatoes.
The car ride to the vegetable market was narrated by my father, who decided to capitalize on the poor vegetable choice to make a weightier, larger-scale observation: “Emily never buys anything on sale. If there’s something for one dollar, and something for three dollars – she’ll buy the three dollar thing!”
“That’s not true. I buy everything on sale!” I countered, offended. No Horn buys anything regular price, not even *this* Horn. To do so opens you to endless scrutiny and beration.
“I just like good tomatoes.”
This was followed by more scoffing. I decided I needed to prove my thriftiness, so I found a sack of potatoes for a dollar in the vegetable market we went to next. I tried to quietly place it in the basket, alongside the vegetables my father and brother picked out. I turned to go look at the herbs.
“What are these?”
“Potatoes.” I responded. “They are a dollar.”
“A dollar what?”
“Just a dollar.”
“Where did you get them?” He eyed me, then the potatoes, then the store – furtively.
“Over there.” I pointed to the bagged vegetables and fruits that were on sale for a dollar.
“These are old. They’re sprouting.”
I looked, unbelievingly at the potatoes. None of which were sprouting.
“Fine.”
The rest of the day went much like this. My farm market family shopping day ended in a “waiting in the parking lot of Wal Mart” day, and I was ready to smack the next person who mentioned anything about the virtues of firm vegetables.
I arrived home, and threw my angst into cleaning out the refrigerator. I re-organized all of the food, put all the new food inside, and proceeded to make fresh salsa, and guacamole with avocados that were too firm to make guacamole with. I finished my fixings, made my family burritos and then cleaned up the kitchen again.
I went for a walk to the beach, and then returned home to make lentil curry and blue cheese and walnut biscuits.
I asked how many ounces were in a cup, to my father as he passed by. We squabbled over whether the internet was right or not about the conversion, which ended in a tense moment of me rinsing the red lentils with silent anger at him.
I made the dinner. I baked the damn apples. I cleaned the kitchen again.
And that’s when it happened. My brother accused me of not knowing which kind of apple I used to bake my apples – and I thought I was going to smash everything in the kitchen.
