A simple recipe for you absolutely lonely and pathetic souls who hunger for only the truest of romances.
Ingredients:
16 tins of sardines
3 sticks of butter
1 gallon of vanilla ice cream
1 Russet potato
8 liters of canned green beans
1 box of chocolates
2 “Eyes of Newt”
30 Mason jars filled with molasses
6 gallons of glow-in-the-dark food dye
15lb baking soda
20 gallons of vinegar
1. Realize your true love is already dating someone else.
2. Consume 1 stick of butter. Comfort food.
3. Whoa there, sadsack, not all the butter. You’ll need some for later.
4. Strap the 8 liters of green beans to your arms and legs; commit yourself to a daily exercise regimen with cans attached to limbs. It is much easier to attract your true love with perfectly sculpted glutes. Continue for 30 days, or until appropriately ripped.
5. Sneak into true love’s date’s house, dorm, or place of residence. Lay 13 tins of sardines, now opened, in various locations hidden throughout the place, so that the person will eventually reek of rotting fish. Eat 1 tin of sardines because who are you kidding, you can’t resist the delicious zest of seasoned bite-size fish. Allow tins to sit for at least 20 days.
6. Approach true love with 1 Russet potato. Explain how potatoes are infinitely better than roses because instead of withering away and losing beauty, potatoes grow from within themselves, and become so much more useful than roses. Supplement explanation with smooth metaphor suggesting a “potato partnership” would grow so much better than a “rosy relationship”. Proceed to unabashedly flaunt muscles.
7. Expect warm embrace. Receive “Hey, aren’t you that guy who runs around with vegetables strapped onto his body?”
8. Run away.
9. Prepare a love potion. Pour molasses and luminescent food dye into cauldron situated in middle of your basement. Realize Kroger does not sell “Eye of Newt” required for this recipe. (Way to read the instructions, blockhead!) Pretend that love potions do not necessarily require “Eye of Newt” and open 1 tin of sardines into cauldron as substitute. Stir cauldron, chanting charms and hexes you copied from a spare Harry Potter book you have. Pour entire contents of baking soda and vinegar into cauldron to finish concoction.
10. Apologize to roommate for the condition of basement, now filled with glowing, foaming molasses.
11. Clench 1 stick of butter in one fist and the last tin of sardines in your other fist. Voraciously shove in mouth to comfort yourself. Breathe deep, friendo, you got this. Keep your cool.
12. Lose your cool. Immediately run to true love with box of chocolates. (Get uncomfortably close, if possible. If not possible, do not proceed with step 12 until appropriate discomfort can be achieved.) Scream directly into true love’s face that they are the only one for you.
13. True love will faint into your arms after smelling the sardine breath you generously exhaled into their face. Make sure to catch true love, or injury will occur! You wouldn’t want that.
14. In the event that you did not catch true love (which let’s admit at this point is pretty likely) gently drag true love back into house before she wakes up.
15. Run away.
16. Returned to basement, construct model of cemetery out of mounds of vanilla ice cream, using your true love’s unused chocolates as gravestones. Erect obelisk in center of cemetery using final stick of butter. Dedicate monument to the love life you never had.
17. Consume obelisk. Consume entire cemetery.
18. Realize that, in your erratic quest for love, comfort food never abandoned you, that comfort food never insulted your unorthodox exercise techniques, and that even now in your lowest state, comfort food is here to ease your sorrows. Appreciate that comfort food is not just your only love, but also your truly true love.
19. Accept that you are currently knee deep in glowing molasses with butter and ice cream smeared across your face. Embrace your new reality.
-Jacob Conrad, Contributor