MR. SMART-BRAINS

Ahh, Friday. I love Friday. Especially the part that starts when I clear out of the Great Corporate Salt Mine.

My first stop on the way home tonight was Harry’s Farmers Market, a subsidiary of Whole Paycheck Foods Market. My main objective was to pick up a pile of Meyer lemons, advance prep for a Shakerina pie that I wanted to make for tomorrow’s dinner. Gotta get them lemon slices macerating early, so a Friday Harry’s run was necessary.

Of course, there’s a shitload of other little items that will inevitably find their way into my cart at Harry’s, especially if I’m shopping on an empty stomach. A jar of bright green Ba-Tampte half-sour pickles. Dried blueberries – really tasty sprinkled on my favorite Colon Blow. A nice chunk of Manchego. Well and good, but do I really need the Lake Champlain hot chocolate mix? In two different flavors, yet?

Yes, I do.

And I can’t forget black peppercorns. Gotta get black peppercorns for that empty grinder.

I load up the car with my swag, then head home. I unpack, and now it’s time to recharge the old pepper mill. I open the plastic clamshell container of peppercorns and start loading the pepper mill, pinch by painstaking pinch. Whereupon She Who Must Be Obeyed throws her two cents in:

“Why don’t you use a spoon, ya dumbass honey?”

Which I proceeded to do. Yep, that sure sped up the process. Duh. What else could I do but roll my eyes at my own slack-jawed genius and say:

“Mr. Smart-Brains, with the engineering degree from Princeton.”