Since I do all the cooking for myself and the girlfriend, she only sees the finished product, not the (somewhat messy) process. This started of necessity, because for some reason, in the kitchen I turn into my mother, and I can’t stand anyone in my space when I’m cooking. It also serves me well if I, hypothetically, were to lose part of an omelette onto the floor, and decide to simply put it back on the plate because I wasn’t about to cook another entire omelette. ‘Three-second Rule,’ am I right bachelors?

Sometimes, however, something goes wrong in the kitchen that you don’t realize until you’re already eating the mistake. So, I’m making my Rustic Maple Turkey Meatballs™. I am one with my mixing bowl, using my bare hands to lovingly knead the egg into the ground turkey, blending in the garlic cloves, onion and celery, then some hand-crushed crackers, cracked black pepper, himalayan salt, and of course, the maple syrup—you heard me, maple goddam syrup!

I finish communing with the pre-meatball goop (I believe that’s from the French term, ‘goopée’), put it in the oven and 40 minutes later we’re enjoying some Rustic Maple Turkey Meatballs©™. Correction—we’re enjoying nine of the ten meatballs.

As I cut into meatball number ten with my fork, I unexpectedly meet resistance. I continue, actually sawing with the fork now, baffled by what could possibly have gone wrong with this one meatball. Determined to solve the mystery, I pick up the meatball with my hand, and inside I see what looks like…a note?

After eliminating more fanciful explanations (someone working at the butcher shop is being held captive and slipped a plea for help into the ground turkey? the girlfriend, in a romantic mood, wrote me a poem and hid it in a pound of raw meat?), I realized that in my zeal to mix, I might have neglected to take ALL of the butcher paper off the meat. I missed one piece, about two inches square. Most of the paper, though, I removed before cooking.

I’ve always tried to find the positive spin. For example, one of my front teeth hangs a little lower than the others, the result of an ill-advised walk in the snow after drinking too many Liquid Viagras. But instead of being self-conscious about my snaggle-tooth, I realized this means that when I become a celebrity, cartoonists will have something to draw. like with Leno’s jaw.

So I’m thinking about my cooking disaster, and just then, Inspiration slaps me in the face (apparently, my muse is a dominatrix). I have accidentally created America’s next great snack sensation—Fortune Meatballs! Think about it—why are marginally clever, mass-produced epigrams only available inside cookies?

What if you’re craving a more…savory glimpse into your future? Fortune Meatballs! What if, at that corporate meeting, instead of the usual cold cuts and pretzels, you could have hearty meatballs with motivational slogans tucked right inside? Fortune Meatballs!

Granted, there are some technical issues involving how best to get the fortune out of a cooked meatball, and I should probably have a lawyer look into the risk of litigation in case someone swallows their fortune (“Warning: contains piece of paper. Do not swallow paper.”) Maybe I could use rice paper—can you write on rice paper? I don’t know, I’m more of an idea man.

Sadly, as good as these meatballs were (the ones without the ‘surprise’ center), we’ll probably never have them again. Oh, we’ll have something similar, but I am, unfortunately incapable of duplicating a recipe. This is because A) I don’t measure, and B) I don’t write shit down. My recipes would need to say things like, “Cook until it looks like it did the last time, then let it sit for a while.” My cookbook would be filled with units of measure like “a bunch,” “just a little,” and “long enough so that it all sticks together but isn’t burnt on top.” But I will say, if I had to write out the recipe for Rustic Maple Turkey Meatballs (patent pending), I would leave out the paper.