mmince meat

Growing up I always thought mincemeat was some kind of minced meat. That made sense. The first time I tried a mincemeat pie was on a road trip with some friends several years ago. One of our tires went out after getting passed by an open-bed truck, like just a mile or two after we passed a roadside establishment that said DORIS’ TIRES--WE ALSO MAKE PIES.

It was one of those days I was really hungry and pretended to be fasting.

It was late afternoon and Doris, maybe it was Doris, had run out of the crowd favorites, apple and blueberry. But she still had pecan, which surprised my friends, as well as cherry, lemon meringue, coconut and mincemeat, which surprised me. It would be a hearty meal.

I didn’t know what kind of meat mincemeat was but I guess I expected some kind of chicken pot pie or ground beef maybe.

I didn’t expect herbs and spices and dried fruit, and spit out the first bite out of shock, even though the taste that settled on my tongue was pretty good and I ate more. Still, it was confusing.

Doris tried to comfort me. She was worried I was allergic, but I ended up eating the whole thing. I explained to her that I was surprised.

I said I didn’t know about mincemeat because of my underprivileged upbringing but my friends made fun of that. No one actually knows what mincemeat is, they said.

Later, when I got back home, I went out to the grocery store to look at mincemeat. It looked like potpourri in gel, not edible.

I ran into Doy there. He would buy vegetables and fruits from the grocery stores right when they started to look bad, haggling for a pretty steep discount. Then he’d cut off the parts that looked bad and diced and froze the rest.

He’d tried to find a way to flip the diced vegetables and fruit. I told him to try to make mincemeat but he said you needed dried fruit for that, not frozen. It wouldn’t work. He knew what mincemeat was.

Doy stored the diced vegetable and fruit in gallon Ziploc bags by type, and eventually just by color. When he ran out of space in his freezer, he asked some of his friends to keep some in theirs, but then accused them of stealing from his bags.

I bought a bag of bananas from him once. I had been on a smoothie kick, but they made me sick. That was when I used to exercise.

I don’t anymore. I’m too tired. You have to be able to do it when you’re tired.

Doy was a little strange, I guess.

He had never had a scheme before. He just kept to himself.

After I bought the bananas from him he asked if he could keep some of the diced vegetables and fruits at my house. He left onions and cantaloupe. I took from both bags but he never accused me of stealing.

He came once for an onion, excited about a big sale, but then came back with his chin down and the onion still in hand.

I don’t know what happened to Doy. He left a few bags in my freezer. A couple weeks ago the therapist I got from the new job ended up telling me I had to throw the onions and cantaloupe out. I wasn’t opening the freezer because I didn’t want to smell it.

It was like a science experiment.

I’ve done it with the fridge at work, picking up the kind of stuff you’d compost and putting it in a Ziploc bag in the freezer to see what would happen. Nobody really used the freezer so it wasn’t very interesting, but in just a couple days they sent a note around so something must have happened.

I promised you a story. I know what happened to him.

I killed Doy.

He was leaving all kinds of things in my freezer, actually, and came by once as I was helping myself to one of his onions.

It’s all fictional.

He lunged at me, screaming about his onion, which was weird, because I’d never heard him scream before, and because I was holding the knife I was going to cut the onion with in my hand already.

It was like he ran into it. Do you know what that feels like?

I had to. I had to keep stabbing. Otherwise it would’ve been worse. One of us soiled ourselves.

I took a shower before anything else, then I ended up giving him one until the bleeding stopped. I needed one after that but the shower was unusable. I don’t like gore.

I thought I could cut him up but it’s not something a knife from a kitchen can accomplish. Not for a human.

But it wasn’t Doy, it was a rat. I cut it up and kept it in one (1) Ziploc bag. That’s true. I didn’t feed it to anyone though. It’s not mincemeat. It’s just meat. I don’t know what that tastes like. We’ve probably all had some along the way.

But I shouldn’t have told this story yet. Fine.