You said he got off easy, but nobody’s talking about the part where he had to choose between fixing a customer’s floor and answering three voicemails while sitting on the shoulder of I-135. That’s not just a bad day, that’s a moral gut punch. You can’t call a tow truck and reschedule jobs without knowing somebody’s gonna post a one star review about you being unreliable. And the floor? That’s not a quick fix, that’s water damage that keeps showing up in photos weeks later. The alternator dying was the easy part, the real weight was knowing you let people down before noon even hit.

Man, I gotta say I tried that dry fridge trick and it just made the fat stiff and brittle on me. Felt like I was fighting it with the knife instead of getting those clean slices everyone talks about. I actually like trimming it right after it comes out of the cryovac, still a little tacky, so the knife glides through the soft spots and you can really feel where the deckle rolls over. But hey, whatever works for your cook, right?