The Kitchen Ninja

I have a sometimes roommate named Nutrageous. Nutrageous has been a mutual friend of Butterfinger and I since high school, probably even before high school for Butterfinger. He is an amazingly talented artist and a genuinely kind individual, but he is lacking in the area of domestic intelligence. I am not sure whether he was simply created with this handicap and is missing the household sector of his brain, if he was taught this behavior, or could just care less. Whatever the reason may be, I hope he becomes betrothed to a compulsively tidy and understanding woman.

It is evident that Nutrageous has made his grand reappearance when two identifying factors are in place. The first clue that Nutrageous is in the building is the tell-tale pile of clothing and art supplies in the corner of the living room and piled on the kitchen table. Now I can not lie, we hardly, if ever, use our kitchen table, but for some reason when someone else’s items are piled on top of it, I feel the need to use it! I know that if I asked Nutrageous to move his anime drawings and monster sculptures he would me more than happy to oblige, but I choose not to because the mere thought induces feelings of guilt and I know I will no longer be able to eat my dinners in peace in front of my computers.

The second sign that Nutrageous has once again come to grace us with his presence is dining space devastation. Since his first stay at our humble abode, Nutrageous has gotten better about cleaning up after himself, but he is still a class-A kitchen klutz. Within his first month as a roommate he managed to destroy 2 pots and one t-fal frying pan (it was a damn good pan!).

The pots both fell victim to the ancient chinese curse of the unstirred rice. Nutrageous is able to pay attention to intricate detail when creating his masterpieces, but has a very difficult time with the complexity of simple starches. This compounded with the fact that he insists on stirring all cooked items with chopsticks, has resulted in two pots with so much blackened and burned rice stuck to the bottom that not even Mr. Clean himself would have been able to rehabilitate them. The t-fal pan met a similar fate when hunks of chicken were seared so well that they became fused to the nonstick coating of the pan. Not only did this create a very displeasing pan appearance, I am pretty sure that the flaky black chunks that came off the pan, and subsequently adhered to any food cooked on its surface, causes cancer in laboratory animals and possibly sasquaches.

Mixing other items besides rice also poses a challenge for Nutrageous. If you are unlucky enough to enter the kitchen after a kitchen ninja rampage, you will be able to determine exactly what meal was eaten within about .2 seconds. A simple ramen dish will show itself as a mystery powder on the range top with the sodium-rich powder covering mostly the entire surface, except for the circular area where the pot once was. A spaghetti dinner can be spotted by the remnants of pasta still hanging out of the pot that has been placed back on the hot burner, and the splats of tomato sauce on the counter top to the right of the sink.

Nutrageous, I am just glad you have found something you excel at, because being a housewife would not be a good occupation for you.