Meatballs

I made a pan of delicious, old Italian family recipe meatballs last night. "Why," you may ask, "is the mostly-vegetarian Pink Shoe befouling her hands by shoving them into a bowl of ground meat?"

This is a good question. It has a long and complicated answer:

Thursday, on my way home from work, I got a call from an old friend, SA, who happened to be in my part of town and wanted to go out for a drink, possibly dinner. I tell The Husband that I'll call him in an hour after I figure out if I'm having dinner with him or with SA. At this point, The Husband encourages me to go out with SA for dinner. So SA and I head out to a bar around the corner from my apartment and settle into chocolate martinis and catching up. About 45 minutes later we're a few martinis in, and I call The Husband and tell him that if he's hungry to go ahead and eat, because I'm not sure about dinner.

However, SA and I finish our drinks and head our seperate ways without having eaten dinner - it just worked out that way. It was raining, and the walk in the rain to get dinner did not appeal to either of us. We like each other, but we also like being warm and dry. So I went home to The Husband with the slight hope that he had not eaten, so that we could eat together.

I get home and The Husband is slightly sprawled on the couch. "Hi Honey!" I say. "Hi..." he replies. I sense the ellipses in his speech. "Did you eat?" I ask. "More or less...." Again with the ellipses! "What did you eat?" I knew that there was practically no food in the house - I was mostly curious to see if he'd made or ordered something that I could then eat, as I was quite hungry (chocolate martinis make a delicious but unsatisfying dinner). "Crackers..." I pause. This was not the answer I had been expecting. Did we even have crackers in the house? "Do you mean that package of 3 kinds of crackers? That was unopened?" I remembered buying one of those Pepperidge Farm Trios, the pack of crackers that you buy for a party: 1 sleeve of Hearty Wheat, one of English Water, and one of butterfly shaped Butter Thins. Immediately conscious of only my welfare, I inquire, "Did you eat all the butterfly ones?!?!" as those are my favorite. "No... not all of them..." he replies. I really wish he'd stop using these ellipses. They're starting to get on my nerves. "Did you eat the wheat crackers?" "Yeah, I ate those..." Ok, I think, a loss, but not a big one. "Did you eat those gross water crackers?" "Yeah..." I'm kind of happy he did that, because I don't like them. At this point I've decided I've gotten all that I can out of him, and I head to the kitchen to try and scavenge some food.

In the kitchen, I discover this:
Yes, it's the remaining crackers. There are 9 of them. He ate everything else. And then wouldn't go out and buy me food, because he felt all gross and carb-y. The butt. I looked at the side of the box: Serving size - 3 crackers. Servings per box - 20. I yell at The Husband, "You ate 17 servings of party crackers! What were you thinking?" "Well, I was watching the Simpsons... and I wanted something to chew on..."

and then ... I saw him there, bloated, miserable, surrounded by cracker crumbs, and knew that I couldn't leave him on his own for dinner another night. So I went out, and bought meat and oregano and garlic (among other things! I'm not giving away the ancient family recipe!) and dug my hands in deep into the slimey gross meat... because I really love him. Or because I don't want him to turn into a cracker-craving hunk of fat man-flesh.