How Peef and Lo Spend Valentine's Day

It's not what you might expect.
We did end up having a very lovely dinner last night. But first we had to live through a pretty traumatic experience.

Imagine this.
It was about 7:15pm. IPOD was playing a collection of songs with the word "love" in the title (there are a remarkable number of songs that begin with the word love!). Peef was busily unloading the dishwasher and finishing up the last of the pans we'd neglected to put away the night before. Lo was slicing and dicing and prepping everything so that they could start cooking dinner. She had a small saucepan of bagna cauda simmering on the stove (which SMELLED fantastic), and she had just heated up a bit of olive oil to begin sauteeing the mushrooms. She went into the cupboard (the corner cabinet with the lazy susan) to get a bit of cornmeal, in which she planned to dredge the sea scallops, when she saw a horrifying sight. Somehow, the molasses in the cupboard had been upset. It was lying on its side, uncovered, and molasses was dripping slowly down the side of the cabinet, and into the cupboard space below the lazy susan.

This is NOT Peef and Lo's cupboard. But, it gives you a visual to work with. Imagine the entire space below the lazy susan filled with blackstrap molasses.

Lo was horrified. She tried to tuck her hand under the lazy susan to begin wiping up the mess. But, there simply wasn't enough room for her to adequately reach underneath. The molasses had seeped all the way to the back of the cupboard -- and had coated the entire cupboard floor with 1/4 inch of oogey sticky blackness.

Lo's brain filled with visions of a summer day -- ants marching two-by-two into the house and gathering underneath the kitchen cabinets, where they could happily slurp molasses to their hearts' content.

Lo fiddled with the screws on the lazy susan. Peef unscrewed the post which supported the carousel. Panic hit when they realized that there was no good way to remove the lazy susan from the cupboard to get underneath. Their only option would be to remove the cupboard door and try to wedge a rag back under the carousel to get the sticky mess out.

And that's what they did. Well, first Lo took a spatula and scraped out as much molasses as she could from underneath. Then, Peef filled and refilled buckets of water for her as she swabbed the area to get rid of the sticky mess.

Finally, at about 9pm, the cupboard was back to normal.
Peef finished putting the canned goods back into the cupboard, and Lo got back to preparing dinner. By 9:30pm, they were half collapsed on the couch, trying to enjoy their very late (but delicious) feast.