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My coworkers love when I have parties, not so much because they go but because they get the leftovers.  I had a lot of s’more parts and a goodly quantity of meatballs and those went quickly.  A coworker complimented me on the spicing:

Coworker: You’ve outdone yourself.  The spicing was spectacular.
Me: Thank you?  What did you like about the spicing?
Coworker: I don’t know, it was smokey and fuller tasting and I think there were bits of cilantro.
Me: I don’t think I added any.
Coworker: Well, whatever the dark flecks were added something to it.

I had no idea what they were talking about so I poked around the sauce that was left and found a small grey needle-like fleck.  It was a pine needle and there were about 1/2 a dozen in the portion of sauce I looked at.  I think each time we added a tree to the fire, the cloud of ash that came off would deposit a few needs in the very large meatball pot.  Luckily, these bits having been on fire weren’t a germ vector but just… added to the flavor.

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I’m taking Tuesday – Thursday of this week off for a trip during a holiday rush week and also needed time to finish some personal things so brought in my greatest culinary weapon, meatballs.

I plugged in the crock pot, put in 4 lbs of meatballs, 3 cans of sauce, and set it to high.  Then I realized I had forgotten to get rolls and quickly rushed out without telling anyone.  My boss called:

Boss: Uhm, Terry, where are you?  You don’t appear to be, at work.
Me: Yeah, I had to run and grab something.
Boss: I need your signature for something immediately.
Me: Ok, I’ll return now and get the meatball sandwich rolls later.
Boss: No, take your time.

When I returned, there was a line of people near my office with plates waiting for rolls.  My boss’s boss was there and looked at me while saying “we were getting hungry”.

For the rest of the day, people stopped by to thank me for bringing in meatballs and cheesecake while totally overlooking that I was filling out Christmas cards.  Several of these people were well within their power to fire me and  I couldn’t have been more obvious if I had a blinking sign.  I hope that the protective power of meatballs doesn’t slip into the hands of those that’d abuse it, like mine.

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I warned my coworkers that any extra food from my party would be brought into work today.  After five trips from my car, these leftovers made it to our break room.  People seemed happy at the choice offered between cake, cookies, truffles, crackers and cheeses, and chips but the biggest star were the meatballs.  I brought in about four and a half pounds of meatballs and the first meatball sandwich was consumed at around 7:30 AM with the crock pot still cold.  The last meatball was consumed a little bit after 10.  I never considered a meatball sandwich a breakfast food but obviously other more avant garde stomachs had.  I brought this up to boss who had an idea on reflection:

Boss: Meatballs are essentially tiny meatloaves.  Meatloaf is one of the kings of comfort food.  Mondays are stressful and people want release from that and latch to things that most seem like comfort food.

I like that explanation even though I’m pretty sure it’s utter malarkey.