Sundays with Sparky - Cthulhu Sandwiches

"In his kitchen at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu simmers...dreaming."

With a gnawing at their vitals, three young men, of apparently sound mind but empty of stomach, resolved to venture into the kitchen for some sustenance. Little did they know the horror that awaited just beyond the sink….

The first of the three first braved the sulfurous stink of one large onion, cut into dice.  This he browned in a hot iron skillet with a pound of...raw ground beef. When the beef was well-seared and an enticing smell came from the pan, using arts that he knew, he added an 8oz jar of salsa, which his own mother had canned at the dark of the moon.  He reduced the flame and allowed the contents of the pan to bubble and spit together until thick and redolent with the heady scent of peppers and tomatoes. Unbeknownst to him, on the other side of the room, the scent had an unexpected effect on his companions…

...clearly overcome by dark forces, they were spearing innocent grape tomatoes with skewers and (gasp!) poking capers into their sides with a toothpick, thus making eyes with which to offer sight to the innocent beef sandwiches! (Other sorcerers have been known to use sideways pimento-stuffed olives, but our local alchemist was out that day.) Aaaaah!

After the ends of the skewers were trimmed with heavy kitchen shears, and the rolls piled high with the filling, each sandwich was impaled through and through with two of these eyes of horror, and the filling spilled out, screaming with the ghosts of a thousand innocent vegetables. Were they alive? We know not...we only knew that the slightly squashed-in eyes followed us no matter where we were in the room!

Then, oh, then, my friends, the golden-haired but sinister boys turned ordinary skinless sausages into….(sharp intake of breath)... flabby appendages by cutting them in half and then into strips. To add to the potion, they cut a purply-red onion into halves, and then sliced it into half-moon “worms.”

Both of these were added into a cauldron with BBQ sauce to coat thoroughly (although Wilbur later admitted he’d have preferred a sauce of plain ketchup) and were cooked until they were a silky, wormy, red-tinged mass.



But of course, these self-possessed youths did not stop there. They opened a stick of string cheese, and pulled the ‘threads” into...still more worms! The worms in bubbling-hot sauce went onto another roll, and then the pale, flabby cheese-worms went on top. Cthulhu, eyeless and struggling from inside the bun with his many arms, covered with the funk and mold of ages...or at least the funk of a safely-pasteurized cheese stick.  Oh, the horror, in sandwich form!

 The three surveyed their work, and finally succumbed to the deep despair of it all...or was it the hunger, the hunger that made them swoon?

 Me, I think it was the giant basket of unfolded laundry that looms in the distance...