Try it again

After a long day at work (and no dinner) I was H-U-N-G-R-Y.

Not expecting much, I opened the fridge. Ortega taco sauce. Leftover stir fry. Mayo. Sigh.

Let's check the freezer. Frozen peas... cheese... hmmm.... peas and cheese. It rhymes - maybe it'll work!

Just to make sure I wasn't off my rocker, I googled "peas and cheese" to make sure that somewhere on the internet, someone had attempted this peculiar concoction. To my delight, I found a respectable-looking recipe, and I began to gather ingredients.

To begin with, I would need to make a roux. For the non-culinary of you, a roux is when you melt butter and mix a little flour into it until the flour dissolves and cooks a little. Then you add milk and you can build a nice smooth cheese sauce which doesn't get clumpy.

My first roux was a dud. Way too much flour. Plus, not enough milk. After a quick run down to the HRASC, the milk problem was solved. I started again, making sure to put in only a little bit of flour.

At that point it occurred to me that garlic would make a delicious addition at this stage in the game. But, being severely limited in cutlery options, I knew that I would have to pulverize the pungent root with an improvised tool... aha! I will crush the garlic with the frozen carton of soy milk I have been thawing! It's hard as a brick! It will surely do a wonderful job.

So I momentarily abandoned my roux. In retrospect, this was my fatal error. NEVER, EVER, ABANDON A ROUX! A ROUX MUST BE TENDERLY CARED FOR, LIKE A HIGH-MAINTANANCE SIGNIFICANT OTHER.

So I began slamming the garlic with my frozen soy milk carton as hard as I could. But I slammed a little too hard, and the carton burst at one of the seams. I pondered this for a moment, then quickly rushed my garlic over to the roux, which had taken on an ugly shade of dark brown, and was beginning to smell like (according to Brad Rubin) saganaki.

I discarded the spent roux into the sink, where it - of course - solidified and stubbornly stuck to the porcelain. I rolled my eyes at it, and went back to contemplate the soy milk. I decided to rip open the carton and slide the block of frozen stuff into a pitcher to melt. Only it didn't quite make it and there was a lot of messy shoving of icy soy. By the time I got it in the carton my hands were shuh-nasty and there was soy-snow on the floor.

Maybe that stir-fry is still good..