The Curse of the Halftime Chili

Last week, as you may recall, I made halftime chili. And crikes, it was delicious! And it made so much, that even though I froze half of it, it took three people over a week to finish the half I kept in the fridge. Ever since I made the chili, however, I have noticed that certain things...certain odd things...keep happening to those who are in any way associated with that chili. So I have donned my Sherlock Holmes hat, filled my pipe, and pulled my armchair up to a crackling fire in order to solve the mysterious Curse of the Halftime Chili.


MYSTERY #1: The Gurgling Toilet.
Alex's flight wasn't due to arrive until 8:30pm on Friday night, and we had earlier scrapped the idea of making pizza once he arrived. He was hungry so he got something before he left, and I was also ravenously hungry, so I heated up some chili. It was magnificent. My chili is obviously like fine wine, and it only gets better (and spicier) with age as the flavors "marry" (to steal a phrase from Paula Deen) in their tupperware love shack.

I finished my chili a few minutes before I needed to leave for the airport, and like my momma always says, I heeded nature's call before I left. Because you nevah know how long it'll be before you see another bathroom (I have a deep-seeded fear of being stranded on the side of the highway, having to wait for AAA to come tow me away, and being forced to relieve myself in plain view of all passers-by. Trust me, I know this is absurd). So right, I did my thing, flushed the toilet, and nothing happened. I opened the tank, jiggled all the pipes and balls and whatnot that are located in there, tried to flush again, and this time most of the water drained out, but the rest just kind of sat there. The toilet emitted a pathetic, hollow gurgle, which sounded to me like the pipes were saying with their last breath, "Sorry honey, we gave it our best shot, but that last wad of Charmin Extra-Soft toilet paper did us in." And then they died.

When we moved into our apartment over the summer, we found that the previous owners had left a plunger in the half-bath between the kitchen and the living room. And we thought to ourselves how nice that was. But since then, we've noticed that the toilets have a nasty habit of getting clogged up, even if there is no earthly reason why they should be clogged up. You could flush the smoothest nectar of the gods down the toilet, and it'd get clogged up. Usually, these problems are remedied by the handy plunger sooo conveniently left by the previous tenants (or perhaps by the maintenance man, who was tired of toilet-related phone calls).

So I trudged upstairs, grabbed the plunger, then went back to work on my toilet. Nothing happened, except that I somehow managed to get a gallon's worth of water all over the bathroom floor. Then I realized I was running late, so I abandoned the plunger in the toilet and headed to the airport.

Alex is our resident fixer-upper. He tried his darnedest to unclog the toilet of whatever mysterious force had taken residence in the plumbing. After some sweat, tears, and more water on the floor, we abandoned our quest and resigned ourselves to using the upstairs toilet for the Rest of Time. Or at least until after we had watched a movie and relaxed a bit.

Much later that night, we returned to the dastardly toilet. I gave it the meanest sneer I could muster, and Alex kicked it heartily and set to work giving it one final plunge. I caressed the handle, willing it to flush normally again. And wonder of all wonders, IT FLUSHED! The haunting gurgle was gone, replaced by the bright, vibrant, familiar gurgle from the days of yore. I wish I could say that something bobbed to the surface that explained why there had been such a problem (a substantial #2, a wad of toilet paper, a feminine product, a watch, a beer can, a nest of centipedes, a squirrel), but no. No explanation. And so my toilet was henceforth known as victim numero uno of the Curse of the Halftime Chili.


MYSTERY #2: The Dalmatian Muffins.
Last week, I made cornbread muffins to go along with my halftime chili. As if the chili itself wasn't filling enough. HA. But you know, I had a ton of corn meal that was just going to go bad if I didn't do anything with it, so corn muffins it was. Since the chili itself was taking up so much freaking space in the fridge, the muffins were relegated to a tin foil-covered plate on the countertop. I kept telling myself to put them in a tupperware, but all of the big tupperwares were filled to the brim with chili. Dilemma. So the muffins stayed where they were.

On Friday night, I ate a muffin with the chili I had for dinner. Alex later ate one as a snack during our tv/relaxation time that night (we were lame and just watched junk on a perfectly good going-out night, okay? accept it, we are getting old). The muffin still tasted perfectly fine to me, despite being a little stale and pretty dense (I had not followed the directions properly when I mixed the ingredients together, which resulted in a total lack of fluffiness). Saturday came and went and no muffins were eaten. Sunday morning, I woke up craving a muffin, a sweet hangover-fighting muffin to ease the rumbling in my stomach and my brain. I pulled back the tin foil and GAHHHHH!!! The muffins were COVERED in dark green spots of MOLD! MOOOOLD! IN MY KITCHEN! They looked like Dalmatian muffins, which would have been cute if it wasn't SO DISGUSTING. My obsessive-compulsive clean-freak of a heart leaped into my throat and I almost had a coronary attack right there on the tile floor. And sweet Jesus in heaven, the SMELL. Oh my, it was a good thing I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, because the stench of rotten cornbread was absolutely repulsive. I mean, I think even the hungriest and mangiest of dogs or homeless people would have whimpered and turned their heads away from such nastiness.

But how could this have happened in a mere day? Okay, so I guess the muffins were four or five days old by that point and the protective tin foil covering had not been as airtight a lock as I usually opt for. But whoa. That smell was. so. bad. And thus the chili STRUCK AGAIN.


MYSTERY #3: Death of a Tupperware.
The final (and shorter) act in this three-part saga continued last night when Rose was making dinner. We had all finally managed to polish off the chili in the fridge, and she decided to move onto the chili in the freezer, which was, understandably, as hard as a lumberjack's washboard abs. I don't know what she used to try to break off a chunk of that brick o' chili, but whatever it was, it was no match for the frozen deliciousness. The utensil was deflected off the chili and forced through the side of the tupperware. Yes, THROUGH the PLASTIC SIDE of the tupperware. I have put my containers through the works in my life, but never before have I actually pierced one of them. (I tried to take a picture, but when I opened the trash can, the smell from the rancid muffins was still so potent that I had to shut it immediately or risk losing my lunch.) So either Rose is super buff and I never realized it before, or the tupperware was weakened from being frozen for a week, or the chili just has the might and brawn of 100 raging bulls. One of those three options. I am leaning towards the third, unless Rose has a Clark Kent-like secret she is keeping from us.


And so this is where we currently stand on the Curse of the Halftime Chili. There have been three mysterious happenings so far, and half (actually, a little less than half since Rose did finally manage to chip off a small piece of the frozen block) of the chili still remains. What strange and terrible things will happen in the next week? STAY TUNED!