The Desperate Art of Mail-Order Food Surgery
I've been thinking a lot about the promise of HomeChef. The idea that a box shows up, and suddenly you're the kind of person who makes things from scratch on a Tuesday. The concept of concise, complex meals that even a limbless troglodyte could figure out.
So we subscribed to it because pizza and spaghetti have a sort of mental taxation and eating cereal and beans and rice after noon makes you look like a poverty-stricken Dickensian waif.
It comes in a sopping wet box they leave on your stoop like an Uber Eats order from the ocean. You've got precious seconds until the shrimp grows fur or the ground chuck gets slick, so you better dump all that shit across your kitchen counter. You'll start by throwing that shit in your fridge. Stuff it around your leftovers and your condiments and your beer. It doesn't matter as long as you fit it in there and the door fucking closes.
WHAT'S IN THE BOX
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One large bag containing several smaller bags of beef and shrimp and chicken that could be wet or weirdly slimy or just all munched up like carpet at trade show
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One to several more plastic bags, each containing:
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Plastic containers of bundles of cilantro and rosemary (I hope you like gardening, motherfucker)
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A plastic pouch of brown syrup called demi-glace concentrate
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Small plastic cups of garlicky goo
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Plastic pouches of gritty spices
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Plastic squeeze packets of salad dressing or spiced salad dressing
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Small plastic baglets of nuts you'll have to deal with later
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Sometimes you'll get plastic tubes of crème fraîche like a bitch
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Multiple loose vegetables
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The fucking documentation, which are multiple sheets of paper that function like LEGO instructions for your big fat wet mail-order LEGO set.
This week, these motherfuckers sent me unstemmed thyme. Have you stripped herbs? Do you own a herb stripper? I hadn't finger-plucked so many tiny leaves since I worked at Elon Musk's Neuralink rat insemination factory.
Goddamn, next time just send me your taxes.
At some point you might ask yourself if this is reality. If any of this is real — if YOU, are real. In as little as a generation we went from Service Merchandise to Disservice Merchandise. I never generated so much trash making baconed milk spaghetti.
Throw that fucking bushel of herbs and those tiny plastic cups of bacon and garlic or whatever. Toss in the vegetables. Laugh like they laugh in the HomeChef commercials. You're free of whatever tenuous tendrils that held you to reality as you handle the shrimp whose bag has opened and is dripping slick, thickened slime onto your hands and arms. Throw it in the trash and wonder what disease you have now.
Am I saying HomeChef gave me Cyclospora? What I'm saying is Theodore, who does our taxes and once microwaved an entire fish, saw the TikTok about it and now texts me bowel updates like one of his collaborative ideation sessions.
This entire thing exists solely to sell herb strippers and that is only something people named Herb Stripper should care about.
Then it's Sunday already. Get your trash can out, cause that pile of soupy meat is already ripe.
The next box comes Monday. It's cavatappi and a sausage andouille and boeurf bourgugigngiuginini. You haven't opened the email yet, but you're sure you'll read what your new dark plastic sorcerers want from you.
Pairs well with good intentions. Serves one — the fucking trashcan.
Here's our presentation. It's a magnet of a Herb Stripper. You are most assuredly welcome.
