Kimberlee K.

It was all fine.

It was a good day with no complications.

I went to work, I took an evening exercise class, I had endorphins running through my veins as I mixed together spices for a homemade taco seasoning—life. was. good.

Then I realized that the ground turkey I planned to brown was still in the freezer.

Okay. I thought. We can pivot.

My upstairs neighbors dropped something, sending a bang echoing through my apartment, my stomach growled, my living room clock ticked loud. We can pivot!!

Earlier in the week, I’d picked up ingredients for three different dinners at the grocery store. So even though I had my heart set on burger bowls, I had other options, I could make something else.

I played music from my phone and plugged in my InstaPot, I told my grape tomatoes they were benched and asked them to hold strong for a few days longer, I stuck out my tongue while chopping an onion because I heard it helps make your eyes not water. (My eyes still watered.)

I’ve always found the InstaPot a bit frustrating, never quite got the hang of the way it preheated, shut off, delayed, etc. After getting it on Prime Day years ago, I’d mostly confined it to the cabinet on the small fear that one day I’d do something wrong and accidentally blow up my house. But every once in a while, I got a burst of bravery, so I’d bought ingredients for pork fried rice.

Needless to say, I was delighted when it preheated with no issue. I was delighted when I put in a tablespoon of oil and then added onion and carrots and heard the sizzle of them sautéing. I was delighted when my upstairs neighbors stopped stomping around and I could properly hear my music. I was delighted when the time remaining until dinner ticked down and down and down.  

But then I added the pork, and suddenly the smell was…wrong.

Was it the meat? Had it gone bad?

I leaned down and smelled the contents of the lidless InstaPot—no, the food smelled fine, delicious actually.

On second sniff, I realized it was more of a melted plastic smell. But with no obvious source—no plastic spoon sitting too close to the InstaPot, no open window wafting in the smell of a teenager setting something ablaze in the dumpster, no change in appearance, temperature or texture of the InstaPot itself—I could not figure out what, if anything, was going wrong.

So I cooked the meat and then emptied the food into a separate bowl so I could cook the rice. Once that cooked, I would put the meat + veggies back into the pot, add an egg and frozen peas and call it a meal. But after I secured the lid and hit the rice button, I stared at the bowl of pork.

I stared at the bowl of pork as the InstaPot shut off for no reason.

I smelled the bowl of pork as my upstairs neighbors once again started to trample around in what sounded like steel toed boots.

I tasted a piece of pork as the InstaPot beeped and yawned and beeped and continued to just soak the rice in water rather than cook it.

I stared and smelled and tasted another piece as my stomach growled, suddenly spiraling into the question of whether eating this pork was going to give me food poisoning.

I wanted to have already eaten and been showered and in my pajamas. I wanted to have made burger bowls and had leftovers for the next few days. I wanted my upstairs neighbors to stop doing the choreography to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” and for my InstaPot to COOK THIS DAMN RICE.

These were all minor inconveniences. And yet.

“YOU KNOW WHAT,” I said, enraged, before opening my trash can and tossing the contents of the bowl inside, decidedly too uncomfortable to eat the pork—or perhaps just too aware of what awaited me if I did:

Do I have a stomachache? Do I have a stomachache? Do I have a stomachache? Do I have a stomachache? Do I have a stomachache? Do I have a stomachache? Do I have a stomachache?

The thought of facing the anxiety loop angered me further. I needed to throw this disaster of a meal away—with such attitude that the creators of the InstaPot would sense it—and then move forward. It would be a necessary outburst. A dignified tantrum.

But alas, I tossed the food from a few steps too far away, because in the moment taking even one rational step forward would have too much to ask. So when I threw the food into the trash only half of it made it in.

Some of it went on the wall.

Some of it went down the front of the trashcan.

Some of it pooled on the floor beneath the door of my pantry.

And the moment I registered this, I was devastated.

“I deserved that,” I said in a whisper, feeling thirty-four and seven at the same time.

I paused my music, put on my kitchen gloves, and sat down on the ground and scrubbed the wall. I boiled water and added a package of Trader Joe’s ravioli from the fridge, letting it cook while I cleaned the trashcan and Swiffered the floor.

I then ate the ravioli in silence, as if in time out, before taking a shower and going directly to bed.

The next morning, I found a stray onion on the wall. I rolled my eyes and laughed.