Prompt: The worst Thanksgiving dish you ever had.
Wet clotted spoonfulls of stuffing, made from the rubbery crusts of day-old baguettes, wormholed by limp strings of sautéed onion. The cook attempted to “crisp” the thing, flashing it in the oven at high heat. This had rather the effect of an as-seen-on-TV food dehydrator, leaving behind a vomit-brown casserole the consistency of shoe leather, with little charred tips like the points of a meringue.
If you could get beyond all of that the–the texture and appearance–the sound of it squeaking between your teeth, the flavor would hit you. Not rosemary, thyme, or sage, those Thanksgiving standards, but oregano. Dusty green handfuls of oregano. The monstrosity tasted like nothing so much as a frat-party pizza, waxy and abandoned the day after the party in a grease-stained box.
Lucy dutifully raised another a spoonful to her mouth. She wondered if she had the nonchalance to spit it into the fancy embroidered napkin in her lap.