Gilded Recession pt. 2

I woke to the steamy breath of my bed mate. We were spooning, an entanglement of limbs, and hair; our bodies intertwined. For a bulldog, he sure could cuddle. I apparently was in his space. He came and went, his toenails clicking on the hardwood as he made is way from my room into the hall and back again. I felt good. No hangover. Nothing. The true signs of an alcoholic, the absence of pain, and the thirst for more.

I was up for awhile before I got out of bed. YogaMarketingBrownieGirl had gotten up, leaving to go teach an early morning class somewhere. After some time passed, Shaddley could be heard stirring about. I got up. Coffee. I needed some, and he was on it. We briefly discussed breakfast. There was a little bit of steak and potatoes left from the night before, and I really wanted to make a hash with them. We had bacon, but no eggs, so we decided to go to the store.

It was Valentine's Day. The traffic in the store was heavy for 9:30 on a Saturday. We found the eggs, got some English muffins, more bacon and started to make our way back to the front, when we found ourselves standing in front of a massive display of lobster tails. We looked at each other, and thought, "Fuck it!" We took one with us. Shaddley picked up some flowers for the wife, and we were on the way back to his house with our early morning bounty.

Back at his house, we made another French press, and got to work. I diced the steak and potatoes and started frying them with some butter, onion and garlic for the hash. We prepared a nice hot tub of white wine and butter for the lobster tail to poach in. Shaddley got to work on preparing a delicate, and delicious Hollandaise. We fried some bacon, toasted some muffins, and cracked eggs for our Julia Child style omelets. We plated everything up, cracked the lobster tail, finishing the meat in even more butter. It was beautiful, this plate of food; breakfast. Steak and fingerling hash, bacon, english muffins, omelets smothered in Hollandaise, and topped with lobster.

Fuck your recession.

As we ate, we were in awe of ourselves. We both looked anxious. Fearful. I was certain that at any moment the authorities would be bursting through his door, taking us to some secret FEMA camp for those like us. Fiends. Gastronomical terrorists. How could we eat like this? People in the world were starving, and we were simply filling our arteries with fat, delicious, delicious fat. Each bite was like an orgasm for my mouth. One bite of omelet, Hollandaise, lobster, and bacon sat on my fork, poised to enter the gaping chasm through which so much other food had perished, I looked at it admiringly, lovingly, as if it were my lover on the tarmac, striding towards a plane that would take her from me forever. I took it in my mouth, closing my eyes.

"I feel like if your wife walked in right now, it'd be like she caught us having sex."

"I know..."

We cleaned our selves up, did the dishes, and sat there in awe. YogaMarketingBrownieGirl would be home soon. We were still high from our meal. After some discussion, we decided we had to make her something. Fortunately, we still had some lettuce that wasn't used from our dinner the night before, eggs, and bacon. We got to it. Carrots were diced put in a pan, smothered in duck fat, and roasted in the oven. The eggs got the nine minute non-boil method, this is where you boil some water toss in some eggs, turn of the heat and let them sit for nine minutes, resulting in creamy, cheese-like yolk, rather than a gray chalky one. Bacon was cut and cooked. Left over aioli turned into a vinaigrette, and the whole thing was dressed, tossed, plated and covered in Reggiano.

Salads are vehicles for perversion.

We were mad; in some states we would have been committed. The food had gotten to our heads. She came home excited as usual. We asked if she had eaten. She said 'no', just her luck. We presented her with the salad and sat with her at the table. She was excited about the eggs. She wanted protein after her day of leading complicated stretches. We stared at her. She noticed.

"What's wrong with y'all?"

"Nothing."

"Why are y'all watching me eat?"

"Just excited."

"You're kinda freaking me out..."

"Sorry, we're still high from breakfast."

"Oh? What did you have?"

That was a loaded question. We spilled our guts; our forbidden affair laid bare. Adulterous gastronomy, and we were the sinners. She ate. We watched. After she finished, we sat and relaxed. She left again, one of her millions of jobs beckoning to her from the ether. Alone again, Shaddley and I sat there.

"Do you have to be home soon?"

"Not really. It's my day off."

"Want a beer?"

"Of course."

To be continued...