Bulk

It’s only after I’ve poured the fourth box of pasta
into a 12-quart stock pot of roiling, toiling water
that I pause to think: Hmm.

Perhaps I should consult the back of the paper box
to see for how many minutes I need a timer set.
So, only now, upon this review, do I notice the directions state:

“One quart of water for every ounce of dry penne”

And I look back at my pot.
And I flip the front of the raccoon-shredded box
back upside to read the net weight,
where the package states: "12 Oz dry."
And twelve times four is –
more than the ten quarts in my pot.

No matter.
I’ve gone too far
(haven't I always?)
I will say this again
When mixing sixteen cups
of fresh shredded cheddar,
Jack and Gruyère.

When fluffing and folding
with a spider strainer,
until a uniformly distributed casein confetti,
a fall foliage of value-add aged cow milk.

And then when my bionic sitting arm pauses
and I hover over to the open, twenty-two-year-old,
ingredient-stained cookbook to re-read
the volumes and proportions of cheese needed.

I sure hope these middle schoolers like
the forest-y punch of aged alpine 
because I was meant to add but four ounces
and instead I mixed in the whole
Costco-sized paper weight of a wedge.
And further yet,
I'd shred a two-pound block of Monterey
and four pounds of New York Sharp 
and forgot to allocate proportions to recipe
prior to tossing each of the three
into an inseparable mélange. 

Further, further:
Perhaps I should have taken the time
to write out on paper my strange
2.3 times multiplication of the standard recipe.

Because now I’m remembering
that I don’t carry math well, in head or otherwise –
and don’t hold on to thoughts longer
than a hormone zing can shock lose from
my perimenopausal neural pathways.

What’s that lesson on sunk costs?
Keep going, right?

Now it’s eleven eighteen, pushing midnight
and I’m elbows deep in congealed béchamel.

Seventeen bowls pans
colanders strainers spatulas
(“Just fold it in, David!”).

Scrubbing at the coffee stain streaks
of burnt milk proteins that ring the bottom
of my decidedly not “heavy bottomed” pasta pot
(🎶 Thick-bottomed girls make the world go round! 🎶)

It’s on me, I fear
for flaunting the command
(the one I've followed eighteen times in the past to great effect)
to use a Dutch oven, a Le Creuset,
actually, a robust enameled steel pan
coddled to precisely moderate heat.

But with 4x pasta, can I concede?
That would have been its own catastrophe. 
I wipe the visions of seven seas of cheese sauce
tossing over the side of my demure French oven
like Lisa Frank dolphins
breaching the rainbow mist
off some unnamed island
(Am I lucid? No.)

Short on sanity, but big on breadcrumbs,
I sprinkle fresh-blitzed clumps
across miles of ooey noodles,
a final flourish of unfettered fingers on Friday eve.
After a short four hours, I have two cafeteria-sized trays
which I mummify in whirls of cling wrap
– a harried Top Chef contestant as the buzzer bleats.

I have fresh bread crumbs
crammed under my fingernails.
I have a trail of warming cheese shreds
lining my work triangle.
My bench is strewn with chaos, despite cleaning as I went.

Lacking my own sheet pan rack on casters,
I am left to sequentially heave each tray,
in tentative turns, down the stairs
and through the woodshop to the overflow fridge.

As I press refrigerator swing door closed, firmly,
I compress the handle with my full body
once, then twice for confirmation.
Chastened, I remember, always,
from prior tragic lessons learned:
always check the fridge door twice.

I grasp the bannister,
pull myself upwards,
leaving greasy handprints in my midst.
I am bleary; buttered and battered.
Bulk hospitality awaits,
as does, at last, my bed.