just call me rachael ray

i just did something i may never forgive myself for. so don tito, one of the guardians of the clinic, gave me 6 very cute eggplants today, so i says to myself, i will eat some. i cut up 3 of them all nice, throw out one when i find a wriggly maggot in it, fair enough right. get out the ol fryin pan and throw it some olive oil and garlic and red pepper flakes whabam eggplant. cookin. throw in some scallions. cookin. throw in a whole lot of hummus - rather edgy perhaps. oh yeah and cumin. i go to get the pasta to start that up and next to it i find that tin of sardines in spicy oil that i bought on a strange whim a few weeks ago. i suppose my thinking was, i need protein, i like spicy oil and this tin looks fun to open.
i guess i didn't consider the consequences. the tin was in fact fun to open, but in doing so i sprayed spicy red oil all over my khakis. i was inexplicably dismayed to discover that the tin was actually full of tiny fish. but i had no choice now, i thought. i poked at the little fish and found out that they had spines, and then i went through and poked all the spines out while the eggplant-hummus was getting a little fried. then i put the sardines in with the eggplant hummus. what the hell was i thinking? hindsight is 20/20, as they say. but i knew it was a terrible idea even as i was letting the little fishy parts rain down on the eggplant chunks. i was looking hopefully towards the spicy oil as the rug that ties the room together, you know.
with great skepticism i scooped a whole bunch of the mixture over the pasta and mixed it all around. it looked kind of, um, sinewy. look i'm sorry you have to read this. but you have to. it didn't taste as weird as i expected, nor as fishy. while i was eating it, i was thinking, this is not so bad. towards the end my opinion was transforming. my eyes were tearing a little bit from the spicy oil. the hummus, because it is not translucent, masked the eggplant and the sardines, so when i picked up a chunk with my spoon and bit in it was sort of an awful surprise. juicy or fleshy?
i ate it all. then i went back to the kitchen and gazed upon the large remaining portion of the hummus eggplant sardine paste. it had gained a crustular appearance in the pan while i was away. i stared. do i...containerize this...to eat...again...later? do i have to? i can't eat this later i shall not. but to just throw it out? rather harsh. OH perfect! i will feed it to the clinic dog tomorrow, i thought, as i scooped it into a black plastic bag. i am teaching her to play fetch - what a delightful reward. OH wait. i am taking the bus tomorrow morning - no one likes to sit near that person on the bus with a bagfull of yesterday's sardine hummus baba ghanoush paste for an hour and a half. i twisted the bag closed and held it in my hand. it was warm and squishy and lumpy and i threw it in the trash and went to wash the spicy oil off my pants.