"Something in here smells bad," I say, pulling the plastic bag of collard greens out of the refrigerator. "Like sour milk." A few days earlier, I had thrown out a several month old carton of chocolate silk that had turned solid like a brick. What. I've been busy!
"I'm not the best person to ask about smells," pit crew says, sniffing supportively, "especially not this week," because he's getting over a cold.
"Oh well." I close the refrigerator, which is how I've been dealing with the smell. I take the collard greens out of the plastic bag. Or rather, the collard yellows covered with slimy white mold. "Nevermind, I found out what smelled!"
Pit crew says from his room, "Yay."
"Only that was supposed to our dinner."
"Oh."
Anyway I tried to improvise a hoppin john with what I had left: an onion, some celery, two Grampa Simpson jalapenos, a can of black-eyed peas, and a can of broth. It was going all right until I added the bag of frozen spinach. It probably would have been all right, if a bag of frozen spinach wasn't twice as much green as a bunch of collard greens and if I didn't always feel compelled to use an entire package of everything; and also I don't know why I didn't put in rice, which I usually do with hoppin john. Instead it turned out like Swamp Thing, so I have no recipe for you this week—
