Ever have one of those kitchen-disaster days where it’s better just to walk away than try and fix it? That was me, earlier this evening.

A few months back, our dog, Cybil, stopped eating. Since she was a total chow-hound prior to this, we took her to the vet, where we learned she had kidney failure… At 12 years of age, she’s getting old. They put her on a special renal diet – that she promptly refused to eat. They changed the diet and she ate for a few days – and then quit, again. After another vet visit, they said it was okay for us to just cook for her. I’ve written enough renal diets in my life that cooking a renal diet for a dog really wasn’t that difficult.

For quite a while, she was pigging down on the beef and chicken stews I was making – and then, a few days ago, she decided she was getting tired of them, as well. This, of course, was right after I had make a beef and pasta and rice dish with about 5 pounds of beef. Being that I can be the cheapest SOB on the planet, sometimes, I packaged it up and put it in the freezer – I sure as hell wasn’t throwing it out. She’s back to eating regular canned dog food and loving every bit of it. Go figure.

Last night, I pulled a container out to rework as a stew for us for tonight’s dinner. Heck, I can rework just about anything. It was still pretty frozen when I went to start dinner, so into the microwave it went for a few minutes. It was still icy, but I put it in the pot on the stove.

Well… that was my intent, anyway… What I actually did was get part of it into the pot and the rest of it all over the stove – under the grates, all over the burners… A real mess. My first thought was no wonder the dog won’t eat this crap and I threw it all away. All of it – including the two other containers in the freezer. What I didn’t do, however, was curse, yell, or otherwise lose my temper. I mean, a couple of expletives did come out under my breath, but definitely not the string I’m capable of. I was actually quite proud of myself.

Victor came walking in after I had cleaned everything up and was getting ready to thaw some chip steaks for a quick Swiss steak dinner when I semi-laughingly relayed my story.

He said “I’ll go get sandwiches.”

As if I need another reason to love the guy… he just knows the perfect thing to say at just the perfect time.

And in moments he was off to Jake’s Wayback Burgers. We’re pretty equi-distant from both Jake’s and Five Guys. We’ve become Jake’s fans over Five Guys… Good burgers, good service, and less expensive, to boot. Victor came back with a chipotle burger and a bacon burger for us, and a plain cheeseburger for Nonna – and lots of fries.

We split the burgers so we could both have a half of each and enjoyed every not-overly-greasy bite.

And clean-up was a snap.

In the meantime, the puppy girl is eating and we don’t have to cook for her. We’ll see what next week brings, but I know what she won’t be getting…