By Charles Duggery

illustration by- Kelly O’Grady with Francisco Goya

  I have a lot of things in common with English chef Gordon Ramsay, none of which including his culinary skill; I am very angry, I use foul language and I’m very critical of others; the similarities end there. My mother didn’t cook at all when I was growing up, when it was dinner time she would send us kids out with change to the closest dollar store to (in her words) figure it out, suffice to say I ate a lot of potted meat. When my mom would cook (which was rare) it would be liver and cabbage. My father wasn’t around, he went crab fishing when I was five and never returned, I always dreamed he would come back with pounds of crab for us to eat but he never did.

 As an Adult I’ve learned to scrape by the best I can to feed myself and my cat Freud. I rarely entertain guests and the last time I had a lady over the song “Mambo number 5” by Lou Bega was all over the goddamn radio like the crabbs. I wanted to bring the readers into my world a little bit and tell you about the 5 saddest dinners I’ve ever eaten.

Spaghetti and hot sauce

Jesus Christ, you know what I had in my pantry to whip up a meal? Nothing except Spaghetti and fucking hot sauce. No butter, not sauce, no pepper; just boiled spaghetti noodles and Bob Saget hot sauce. I hope to never eat this again but the way my goddamn rent goes up who knows. Fuck you landlord, you eat fucking Spaghetti and hot sauce some time and tell me how you like it Mr. Rich guy! They say a lot of Italian cuisine started off as peasant food, well this is fucking ridiculous.

Hot dog wrapped in a tortilla

Again, I opened my fridge and there was only two items that I could combine and gain sustenance from; a dried up old tortilla that I had forgot about and a loose hotdog that I had to defrost. I remember taking bites out of it and spraying mustard into my mouth and chest (I wasn’t wearing a shirt) the wiener wasn’t even thawed all the way. Eating bugs would be a step up from this garbage.

Grasshoppers and Salad

I read an article on the Internet that grasshoppers are a great source of nutrition so I went to my friendly pet store on Judah and bought a box of live grasshoppers. They happen to be the same price of a bag of croutons and perhaps twice as delicious on a nice Caesar salad. WRONG! They were hopping’ all over the fucking apartment and scaring the shit out of my cat. Good luck getting live Grasshoppers into a salad bowl. Tasted like shit.

Dry Ramen baloney sandwich

Oh lord, this was terrible. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just boil the ramen in the first place, I’ll tell you. I had my water and power shut off for a week so I couldn’t boil any fucking water smart guy! To make things worse the baloney was defiantly rotten, the small blessing being that I couldn’t see what I was eating. Once in a while I could get lucky and catch a Grasshopper that had started to colonize my apartment. It was one of the saddest looking sandwiches you’ve ever fucking seen. Two pieces of dried ramen with green baloney in the middle, why I didn’t hang myself that night I’ll never know; perhaps it was all the mood altering drugs I’m prescribed.

Dumpster Pizza

Dramatic recreation via portlandia

I was hungry, I saw a dumpster full of pizza and I wasn’t about to ask questions of where it came from. Once I had picked out all the cigarette butts off of it was fine. Don’t you judge me! You think when the shit hits the fan and we’re all living in Mad Max world you can afford to be a picky eater? You’ll be lucky to eat dog food while your ducking Raiders and feral punk rockers. In fact I’m munching on some dumpster pizza as I write this.

Condiment soup

Lets talk some rock bottom shit, just when you could sink any lower the fucking ground caves in and next thing you know your squirting whatever condiments you have lying around into a pan like a pathetic hobo wizard. I mean I was mixing relish and ketchup with barbeque sauce and boiling it, even my cat wouldn’t eat it, I’m sad to say I also had the left over’s for lunch the next day. I have seen the void and the void stared back.

The end