Kitchen Invitational

The Banquet Director spent the better part of two days preparing for the annual AI Italian night singing Verdi while slicing, dicing, mix mastering and simmering not only tomato sauce but her temper after pot of sauce #1 overstayed its time on the burner a tad too long resulting in a malodorous scent wafting through AI HQ.  Fortunately our acute senses of smell allowed us to diagnose the situation in mere hours which is really all that can be expected given that we were ensconced in our barcaloungers at least 27 feet away from the stove during the entire process.

Never one to allow a small conflagration to stand in the way of her appointed rounds, The BD soldiered on and also produced dozens of balls of meat, rolls of dough and casings of ground pork leading to The Director's favorite pre-AI morning wherein breakfast and lunch consist of the aforementioned piping hot balls of meat eaten directly from a sizzling frying pan.  This diet is the result of The AI Nutrition Department recently concluding a double blind study affirming the hypothesis proffered 3 decades ago in "Sleeper":

Dr. Melik:  This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik:  You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or...hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon:  Those were thought to be unhealthy...precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true
Dr. Melik:  Incredible...