I FOUND A CIGARETTE BUTT IN MY FOOD AFTER HOURS OF COOKING

Or, ‘The most WTF moment I’ve ever had in the kitchen’

I’m breaking my self-imposed rule of writing every two weeks because yesterday as I was cooking dinner, something happened that was rather shocking and gross (not exactly burying the lede here as the event is the title of this post). Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Awhile ago, we were over at a friend’s house for dinner. She made rajma masala, a North Indian curry made with kidney beans, tomatoes, onion, ginger, garlic, and spices. Also at that particular meal were some fresh blueberries that my friend had set out as a snack for the kids. My kids loved the rajma, and they unconventionally paired it with the blueberries, so this dish is now forever known as ‘the curry that Alisha’s mum makes with the blueberries’. I’ve attempted it once before, at the beginning of the year, and it turned out pretty well. Not as good as Alisha’s mum’s rajma, but close enough. 

Last week, Tilly requested Alisha’s mum’s curry that we eat with blueberries, so I put it on the meal plan for last night. I picked up extra blueberries at the farmers’ market last weekend so that we would have the correct and oh-so-traditional accompaniment, got all the actual ingredients for the curry, and thought that was that. Simple and easy.

Yesterday morning, I soaked the beans (I used King City Pink Beans from Rancho Gordo because they were the closest I had to kidney beans). I rinsed and sorted them first, then left them in a clear glass bowl covered with a couple of inches of water. The usual bean routine. After lunch, after the beans had been soaking for about six hours, I started the cooking process. I put the beans and water in the Dutch oven, added a couple of cardamom pods, a few cloves, a bay leaf, a cinnamon stick, and some salt. I did think that fishing out the cloves at the end would probably be a pain but could not think of a better solution so decided that was a problem for my future self. Brought the whole pot to a boil, let it go at a hard boil for thirteen minutes, then turned the heat down to low and let it simmer for an hour.

An hour passed. My bean timer went off. It smelled good in the kitchen; the aromatics had done their thing. I lifted the lid and tasted* a few of the beans to check that they’re done. They’re great. I started to fish out the aromatics (I was right; the cloves WERE a pain to try and get out. The problem for my future self to deal with had arrived). The cinnamon stick had unfurled, and my first thought was, ‘Cool, so that’s what happens to a cinnamon stick when you simmer it in water for an hour’. Out came the cinnamon sheet. Then the bay leaf and cardamom pods. Then one clove. I was looking for three more cloves and found something white. And cylindrical. And like it was made of paper? And… foam?

I fished it out and looked at it more closely. And thought, ‘Holy crap that looks a lot like a cigarette butt how the hell did it get in there?!’. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing things, or misinterpreting something, or missed something in high school science classes where we learnt that spices and beans can magically transform into objects that look like cigarette butts but were still food-safe… I snapped a photo and texted my husband. Who promptly replied that we were not eating those beans; my suspicions were correct and that was a used cigarette butt. 

There were multiple thoughts running through my mind. Primarily, ‘HOW DID IT GET THERE?!’ and ‘ergh gross this is disgusting wtf wtf wtf’ and ‘how am I meant to make rajma without beans?! I don’t have another seven hours before dinner!’. 

To answer the first question, how did it get there? As best as we can figure, it came from the cinnamon stick. The only things that were in that pot were beans (that I’d rinsed and checked for debris, and even if I had somehow missed it in that process, I thought it would have floated to the surface during the soaking time), cardamom pods, cloves, a bay leaf, and a cinnamon stick. The cardamom pods, cloves, and bay leaf were all small, individual objects that did not change shape or form in the cooking process. They could not have hidden a cigarette butt. But the cinnamon stick! It was a rolled up thing that had unfurled by the end. It was the only place for the cigarette butt to hide. 

And to answer the second question, I ended up making the rajma with lentils instead of beans, which I guess doesn’t make it a rajma anymore because I think that word actually refers to the kidney beans. But I had all the other ingredients all prepped, and lentils only take half an hour to cook (and no soaking time). So we ended up eating lentils with rajma flavours. And blueberries. It was still pretty good. 

In a moment of delightful cosmic irony, the book I’m reading right now is Swindled by Bee Wilson, a book about food adulteration, food fraud, and how various scientists and politicians in the 19th and 20th centuries worked to reduce or eliminate fraud and adulteration in the food system in the UK and US. I’ve been reading it thinking that I’m glad I live in 2023, where I don’t have to worry about lead and formaldehyde in my food, and that even though the FDA is over-worked and understaffed and food safety is still an area of concern (detailed in Marion Nestle’s great book Safe Food), I can generally assume that the food I buy is safe to eat. 

Until I find a bloody cigarette butt in my pot of beans, that is. 

*When I told my husband that I ate three of those beans, he made a sign of the cross and said, ‘My next wife won’t cook beans.’