Bacon Socks

Because my husband is a fancy-schmancy culinary school graduate, it pains him to actually cook meat. His own thick steaks are so quickly rushed over the grill that instead of yelping in pain they blink in confusion: "What was that? Did I feel something? I thought I felt something."

His "seared" tuna is kept so far from the flame that he finally put a halt to the whole charade and now simply walks sheepishly over to the platter of tuna and describes the flame to it as it cringes in its fishy oils.

Last night, we went to a Japanese resturant with another couple, and I watched Scott eat the most vile of sushi: raw eel. He was eating the flesh of a snake that lives in the ocean, zigging and zagging back and forth among the startled sea anemones like a slimy gray ribbon in a sweet gingham quilt.

Thus, it is great gratitude that I feel when he exits his comfort zone and cooks meat the only way I can eat it: Burned beyond recognition. On the very rare occasion that I eat a hamburger, once a year or so, it must be reduced to a flat black coaster that falls to pieces when I bite into it. Chicken? Cooked on the grill until it is dry enough to soak up any three of the Great Lakes.

And then there's bacon. Our Sunday morning ritual of pancakes and bacon is time consuming. Scott slow-cooks the pig flesh in the oven forEVER and when he is finished, what is on my plate looks more like The Shroud of Bacon than the actual meat. Which is just how I like it. The only way I like it, in fact. When he burns it more than usual, like today, he says "Don't eat the end of that...it's pure ash." And I bite into it, and it crumbles into a delicious heap of black swine dust.

Just before my last few bites today, I saw the vision. Socks.