Sam was always trying out new recipes. He loved to experiment with unusual spices and rare herbs. He would sometimes order foods from foreign countries and await their delivery with zealous anticipation. His wife, Willamae didn’t mind because she loved to eat and would consume anything put in front of her on a plate. Her mother claimed she had blown out her taste buds on hot peppers and vinegar at an early age. Today, Sam was humming and running around the kitchen with a large spoon in one hand and a pot holder in the other. He was short and rotund, while she was tall, lanky, and perpetually hungry. They were a perfect match for each other.
“What stinks in there?” she yelled from the back porch. Sam just stirred the cast iron pot in front of him and replied, “What?” so she would think he didn’t hear her. Their niece and her husband were coming over for dinner and Sam was looking forward to showing them what a fine chef he had become. After a largely inedible meal (except for Willamae), Sam looked around at the dinner plates. His niece had shoved the food around on her plate and managed to hide the rest of it in her napkin. Her husband had forced himself to eat about a fourth of it, then claimed to have a bad toothache. Sam tried to act pleased, but, in truth, he had put so much Carolina Reaper in the food, his mouth was on fire and he had to keep chugging his beer. It made him so sleepy, he laid down on the couch and passed out.
Willamae ate heartily and even had a second helping of the spicy dishes. Her niece offered to stay and help wash up, but Willamae claimed she had to put the leftovers away for Sam’s lunch tomorrow and didn’t need any help. Then, when her company was gone, she scraped all the leftovers into a large dog bowl and set it out by the road, thinking the neighborhood mutts would take care of it. This, in fact, was her nightly routine since Sam had declared himself a culinary master. Sure enough, in the morning the food was gone, and she washed the bowl and put it away before Sam could see it. Even Willamae, who loved to eat, could only take so much unidentifiable, hot, smelly food into her system.
A few weeks later, she was out taking the wash off the clothesline and happened to see her next door neighbor thinning out some daylilies. “Hey, Willamae, don’t you want some of these daylilies for your yard?” the neighbor yelled.
Willamae walked over to get them and noticed two chubby dogs laying in the sun. “I guess those dogs are gaining weight off Sam’s weird cooking experiments!” laughed Willamae.
“Heck no!” the woman replied, “They won’t touch that mess! I get it and put it on my compost heap. It keeps the raccoons, possums, and bears away!”
