Revenge of the Cube Steaks

Occasionally I find that I end up doing something so stupid that I can't help but laugh at myself. This is one of those little episodes:

Last Tuesday, Christy and I decided to go grocery shopping together - not exactly a party, but it had to be done. Christy dutifully went down the aisles picking out items for our week's meals while I pushed the cart and looked at snacks and other things that I could wish I were eating.

Ultimately the trip was as uneventful as any other shopping trip and I remember only two things in hindsight: 1) Wondering what cube steaks actually were and why they got their name, as Christy added them to the cart and 2) That the cube steaks were privileged enough to get their own bag when we checked out. Weren't they special?

Sunday dinner is one of our nicer meals of the week. Christy will usually throw some things into a crockpot before we go to church and then we can eat right when we get home. So it was no surprise that this past Sunday, Christy had planned to use the cube steaks for our meal. Only she couldn't find them. And my second search of the freezer only confirmed that they were truly missing.

My mind ran through the possibilities: Fridge? No luck. Store? Very unlikely. Car? Uh-oh.

I went out to the car expecting the stench of rotten meat to spew out of the trunk the moment I popped it. To my surprise, there was nothing: no stench, no cube steak. It wasn't until I went back inside that I realized where the cube steaks were. In our otherwise fairly clean house there were two assumed-empty Smith's bags next to the kitchen table. One of them wasn't empty and held the rotten cube steaks. How we could have left them to rot on the kitchen floor for 5 days is beyond me. How they even got there is a mystery since we put our groceries on the table when we bring them in. But the facts stand that we left them to rot (and we're just lucky that the packaging contained most of the smell).

So while those cube steaks may not have made it past the slaughterhouse, they had the last laugh. And instead of a lavish Sunday dinner, we had corn dogs.