Accidental Cabbage & the Minotaur
This week has been all over the place, but the one thing my husband and I knew was that at some point this weekend, burgers were to be made. Today was that day.
I did a full round of errands (pharmacy, grocery [failed attempt], pharmacy again for pick-up, second grocery [successful attempt], gas station, and other pharmacy to grab the Cheetos I forgot at the second grocery) that wiped me out. My new prescription has a heat sensitivity side effect, and today was the first day it’s been warm enough to actually notice it. I curled up in the dark cool bedroom for a couple hours to combat the overheating and the accompanying headache, then arose to help with the burger prep.
Husband set up the griddle and got out the ground beef, to which I added a spice mix I found online. While he shaped the patties and got ready to make his first-ever smash burgers (we finally found the smashing implement at the grocery in the grilling section), I got out the salad spinning and cutting board the clean the head of lettuce I bought earlier. I pulled it out of the fridge and started pulling open the plastic wrap. This iceberg looks a little darker than normal, a much deeper green. Different texture, too… Wait a minute…
I bought a head of green cabbage instead of a head of iceberg lettuce. Mea culpa.
We had our burgers sans lettuce and they were delicious nonetheless. Husband grilled them perfectly and they were just the right size. Next time I’ll toast the buns. It’s been really fun making things on the griddle; we’ve been able to have healthier versions of things we’d get a drive-throughs. Quickly cleaned up the kitchen to get to book club.
It was very nice to hop online for book club again, as I hadn’t taken part for quite a while. The book club I’m part of started during Covid quarantine, and we tend to read cozy supernatural series, which have been a good safe escape from daily stresses, as no matter what happens in the narrative, the novel is guaranteed to have a happy ending (in more ways than one if you get my meaning; the majority of cozy supernatural series are romances that don’t shy away from the dragon-shifter/tree nymph sex). This month’s book was “The Trouble with Witches” by Kristen Painter, and I didn’t enjoy it as much as her other series our club has dabbled in before (the Nocturne Falls series and its spin-off, the Miss Frost series). I, in fact, mistook the author for another one we read, Molly Harper, whose use of the hidden-town-in-the-American-South-full-of-supernatural-beings trope I like better as well (the Mystic Bayou series).
After book club, I dutifully gathered up “The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks,” set my timer for twenty minutes, and hopped on the stationary bike. I cycled past my timer’s beep because I was one page away from the end of Chapter One and wanted to finish reading about the Minoan civilization. I knew the myth of the Minotaur was associated with Crete (where the Minoans were located), but I didn’t realize how much the Minoans pre-dated the ancient Greeks, who assumed the Minotaur into their legends. I’ve always like ancient history and myths, and it’s really enjoyable to learn new things all these years later.
