drew (toothpastefordinner.com)

apple
I have only been cooking for a few years. I am just a dude who grew up in the midwest with a freezer full of meatless corn dogs. My family didn't really cook either (unless you count dry, overcooked, unsalted hamburgers as "cooking") so I have been learning about cooking for a little while. If you don't grow up cooking, basic things like using spices are like learning Russian.

All of their recipe cards are like "HOW TO MAKE PIE: Buy pie crust. Put can of pie filling into crust. Bake for an hour."

"HOW TO MAKE GERMAN CHOCOLATE CAKE: Buy box of german chocolate cake. Serves 8."

"HOW TO MAKE TURKEY: Buy turkey. Cook in plastic bag. Put whole turkey in refrigerator. Eat cold the next day. Serves you right for not doing better in your AP History class."

So here's the thing. When you cook a chicken in an oven you have to put a vegetable or fruit or something inside to keep it from drying out. A lot of people put a lemon in it. You can put an onion in it. Or you can put an apple in it. You just pull all the stuff out from the chicken's insides and then you put your water-laden vegetable or fruit down inside that chicken's cavity.

Then you cook it, and the vegetable gets hot and the water comes out (as vapor) and keeps the chicken moist, and when you take it out, your chicken is good. You can also do all sorts of things with rubbing spices on the chicken or putting other stuff on or around it. I don't know, I am still on a basic cooking level, trying to prepare some simple food that is good.

I was thinking though. Out in the apple orchard there are thousands, millions of these little green and red and stripey apples all hanging down. I don't believe in literal reincarnation, but realistically, those apple trees, and thereby their apples, are made from water that got peed out and rained with, and the dirt is all kinds of dead plants and animals, and so on. Those apples were formerly other living things with their own sets of goals. Dust to apples.

What I'm getting at is that nobody wants to end up being the apple shoved up the chicken's butt and then thrown out with the bones. The world's most chilled-out bald dudes in saffron robes would probably be like "Man... You know, if I have to be an apple, I will be an apple, but I don't want to be the chicken apple."

It sucks already to be an apple. You have to accept that your fate is to be an apple and that it is a pretty short time. Even if you hang out for six weeks in a temperature-controlled warehouse, you still eventually got to be sold and eaten. Once you accept that, though, it has to be even worse to realize "Oh god I'M GOING IN A CHICKEN I'M GONNA BE THE CHICKEN APPLE." In my mind, this is how bad it is: Your uncle comes in and he makes you sit down at the dining room table (which is weird cause nobody ever goes in that room or eats at that table) and tells you that he has cancer. Then you stand up and punch him in the neck so he goes unconscious, and you kick him in the ribs for thirty or forty seconds before your parents run in and pull you off of him.

(Your uncle is the chicken apple.)

The final detail to this story. When you cook vegetables, the water inside heats up and turns to steam. Which has a tremendously higher volume than the liquid water that existed at room temperature. So when you roast or microwave vegetables, you have to poke a few holes in them so they don't explode. If there aren't many holes or the vegetable is particularly hot in a certain spot, the vegetable may start whistling loudly.

"aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I'M THE CHICKEN APPLE"

It's screaming because it is horrified that its life is going to end inside a chicken's cavity.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHH I'M TURNING INTO STEAM"

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