Cream cheese can be scary

I was going to title this with "making cream cheese sandwiches is hard" but remembered that I'd said that I wasn't going to do entries in that format. Or maybe I just said that I wasn't only going to do that. OK, so I could have carried that off, probably. Still, it's gone now and there's nothing I can do about it. Aside from change it.

So anyway.

There is not currently a lot in the house as regards full meals. There are plenty of store-cupboard things (spices, tomato purée, herbs, you get the idea) but not anything that creates a full meal. And I've just thought of something that I could have made.

So now I feel stupid. This whole situation could have been avoided if I'd just made some... hang on... oh yeah, I couldn't be bothered actually cooking, never mind.

Earlier when I was hungry I could not think of anything to make as a meal. I've been away for a few days and I really couldn't be bothered thinking too much about what I was going to eat. I wanted something easy. Now I've had a couple of fruit smoothies so my day has not purely featured chocolate and crisps (or chips as the more American amongst you might say) although they have featured up to a point. So I decided to do what any self-respecting lazy bastard who needed food quicker than someone could deliver pizza would do: I decided to make a sandwich. Not much of a reveal given that first paragraph but what the hell.

I decided upon a cream cheese with garlic and herbs sandwich with tomato purée as the only preparation with this was spreading. Nice and easy (no, not like me, thank you very much... I'm not nice). This rested on the cream cheese with garlic and herbs still being edible. The use by date mentioned some time in February but it had been open for a few days so I knew I had to check what was what.

I pulled off the lid and had a look inside at the contents and what I saw inside, at first glance, please be greatly. Everything was wonderful. My cheese was still fighting fit and ready to help deliver some starch in to my stomach. I approved of this development. I got my bread all ready, got the tomato purée squirted out on to one of the slices, and then decided to have another look at the cheese.

Upon looking a second time I was appalled to discover that what I had considered to be a perfectly safe and tasty contribution to my sandwichy plans had, in fact, nothing upon its mind but my death!

I was betrayed by mine own foodstuff!







Now I had to act fast. This mould, this monster, had clearly decided that only one of us could survive and, weak from hunger as I was, I was not going to let it defeat me.

This monster looked like the demented ghost of Jim Henson had created a newer, deadlier, Muppet and unleashed it upon me. I was aware of his ghostly arm operating this thing, ready to attack at any moment, as he hid his intangible form within my kitchen cupboard.




Uh... yeah... so I had an idea as to what that looked like but things didn't work out so well in MSPaint.

Hoo boy.

The action I took was to re-seal the plastic tub and consign the evil within to a bin-based eternity. Yeah, that'll show you, y'mouldy fucker!

So I had survived the attack with merely the insult to a fondly remembered part of my childhood (sorry Jim) to show as a scar but I did not have a sandwich just two slices of bread with one of them with a large squirt of tomato purée on it (no, I did not consider just having a tomato purée sandwich, not for long anyway) and I was fading fast. Handily I still had a small amount of Double Gloucester cheese and, as I was taking this out of the fridge, I noticed that I had a jar of pesto hanging around.

I ended up enjoying the cheese, tomato purée, and pesto sandwich far more than I would have enjoyed my previous plan.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes what we see as monsters are really just things that we don't understand. They seem scary at the time but maybe they're actually steering us in the right direction. Or maybe I just don't clear out my fridge often enough.

It is just so difficult to say.