Turn your ticket in.

Today was one of those days where a genuine problem was a relief to deal with because it was something instead of even more nothing. I'd rank it as one of my worst kitchen incidents, up there with my attempt to make risotto with brown rice and that time I found a feathered baby chick inside an egg.

Today's leaned more towards the latter. I've brought several species of what I euphemistically call passengers home with me before, but always on produce. Finding out it could happen with pasta was new. Small, something akin to a weevil. In a really cockeyed way, I'm glad I found out the moment after I poured it all into the boiling water, passengers, eggs, pasta and all, because that meant everything was very much dead when I had to figure out what to do next.

In a move I wouldn't be able to replicate if I lived pretty much anywhere else on the planet, I was able to walk to the 24 hour grocery store two blocks away from my apartment, fueled by adrenaline and singularly focused, to pick up a new box of pasta I made sure to check was fresh, walk back, and after everything got a good scrub-down, keep on going with cooking dinner.