It’s been over 3 days and I’m still on my cooking kick. It’s like I’m playing russian roulette. Every time I cook and manage to not ignite anything, I feel excited and enlivened and want to cook more, not realizing that every meal I make is one meal closer to my kitchen burning down.

I have become so intoxicated with cooking, I made a meal plan for the week. Here it is:

Sunday: Bacon-wrapped steak

Monday: Tacos

Tuesday: Bacon tacos

Wednesday: Bacon-wrapped bacon

Thursday: Buy more bacon and eat it

Friday: Same as Thursday

Saturday: Find interesting new recipe to make. Or bacon.

The only problem with this meal plan is that I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed. I don’t normally go grocery shopping on weekend mornings. There tends to be other people at the store on weekends and I don’t do well in social situations. When in doubt about the proper behavior for a given social encounter, I tend to juggle whatever is nearby. Grocery stores don’t like that.

But I decided to risk it and went shopping during “peak” hours.

And you know what happened when I got there?

I bought bacon.

Well, that was anti-climactic.

I thought that story would have more punch to it.

It seemed really dramatic when I was buying the bacon because I was humming music from “The Lord of the Rings” at the time.

Seeing it in writing now, though, it just wasn’t that exciting.

I probably should have skipped that story and told you about the guy who tried to pick me up.

A guy tried to pick me up at the grocery store.

I thought TV had made up that idea of singles picking up other singles in grocery stores. But there I was, standing in the poultry section, when this guy was passing by, and there was just something about me that told him I had to be single.

Maybe it was the wistful look in my eye.

Maybe it was the way I was having an audible argument with a package of uncooked chicken wings.

Yeah, that was probably it.

(In my defense, the chicken wings started it by being ambiguously priced. And you should have heard the language the chicken wings used. Quite fowl.)

So the single guy wandered over, not knowing that I was in the throws of a cooking fever that really could not be interrupted.

And so our conversation went like this:

Single Dude: I don’t mean to be forward, and I’m not even flirting, but has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful eyes?

Me: Yes, actually. Do you know where they keep the coconut aminos?

Single Dude: I don’t, but maybe if we wander around together, we’ll be able to find them.

Me: Better yet, do you know what coconut aminos even are?

Single Dude: We could go back to my place and look it up.

Me: I mean, if I had a coconut, which part is the aminos? Coconuts don’t even have that many parts. Is it the inside or the outside?

Single Dude: Look, I was lying before. I am flirting with you. I want to take you back to my place.

Me: The recipe only calls for 1/2 a teaspoon of coconut aminos. That’s such a small amount! How can that even make a difference? And this recipe makes 8 servings. So everyone’s getting an 1/8th of a 1/2 of a teaspoon per serving. Coconut aminos just seem like busy work at that point. They couldn’t think of enough ingredients, so they just kept adding little insignificant bits of random things to make it sound like a fancier meal than it is.

Single Dude: You know what, there’s a lady over there picking out avocados, and I have some great avocado-related pick up lines. So I’m going to head over there.

Me(to the chicken wings): You don’t suppose those little hairs coconuts have are the aminos?

Chicken Wings: I think that *(Expletive deleted)* guy was trying to pick you up.

Me: What guy?

Spoiler alert: I’m still single. But that’s okay because I honestly believe that for every crazy person like me, somewhere out there waiting, there is a package of coconut aminos.