The other day, I bought a three pound bag of red bell peppers on sale for $2. I was delighted with the good deal, but after a few days, I feel guilty because I had only gone through about a pound and the peppers were wrinkling. Nagymama taught me that I should never waste food, so I started looking up recipes that called for a metric ton of peppers.
After browsing Ye Olde Internets, I discovered a Red Pepper Soup recipe that sounded tasty, and more importantly, cheap and easy! I made a few modifications to the ingredients to make the soup more spicy and waist-line friendly. The whole stew was ready in less than an hour, and since I had already eaten dinner, I packed it in a non-spill thermos for later.
The next morning, I went into the architectural firm where I am a graphic design consult a few days a week. I normally don’t go in on Mondays, but they called me to do some extra marketing since they just moved into a lovely new office space. After a few hours of slaving over InDesign, I popped in the kitchen for some lunch. I grabbed my soup from the refrigerator, pushed the release on top of the Thermos, and…
“BANG!”
A sound reminiscent of a gunshot echoed throughout the office, which was immediately followed by my involuntary scream. All I could see was red, and I felt cold liquid dripping down the side of my face onto my shirt. As I wiped my face with the back of my hand and saw this:
Yup, that’s my Pepper Soup, overflowing like some kid’s bad 5th grade science project.
Oh shoot, I thought, Maybe I can clean this up before anyone sees what happened.
As I reached for a paper towel, I glanced over and noticed that there was pepper soup all over the freshly painted white wall. I wiped it with furious desperation, but paused when I felt something dripping down my forehead. I looked up and saw this:
Yes. That’s the freakin’ ceiling.
Oh. My. Gosh. I thought.
“Are you okay?!” said the secretary from behind me. She heard all the commotion, so she ran right over. Her eyebrows shot up as I turned around.
“AH! What happened?” she screamed. I can just imagine what the scene looked like from her perspective. She heard what sounded like a gunshot and scream from the kitchen, only to find me, eyes crazed, hair tangled all over my face, with my hands full of paper towels dripping red goo all over the floor. I’m surprised she didn’t run and call the cops.
“Please….help!” I begged. “The pepper soup..it…exploded!”
“Uh….I’ll go get the boss!”
My boss immediately came over and saw what I had done. Although we normally get along quite nicely, it was pretty obvious that she was not happy. She crawled up on the countertop and started scrubbing the sides of the wall. The secretary got tons of paper towels and started on the floor and artwork. I got up on a ladder and unsuccessfully dabbed the ceiling with Handiwipes.
Just then, all the architects walked in, Wawa sandwiches in hand. They all stopped in their tracks, speechless as they watched three women scrubbing mysterious red liquid from every orifice in the kitchen like some crime scene.
Pepper photo by Hannah Chapman
Other photos by Me, Unfortunately