I Fed His Million Dollar Palate Cat Food

Twenty years of marriage, a million-dollar sensory insurance policy, and one catastrophic dinosaur chicken nugget.

Jillian Romero is the invisible culinary genius and ghostwriter behind her husband Miles, a pompous food critic whose palate is supposedly insured for a million dollars. When Jillian discovers a hidden folder of photos showing Miles's twenty-something blogger mistress eating her carefully prepared meals on her grandmother's china, she doesn't scream or throw a pan.

Instead, she hires a terrifyingly theatrical lawyer and begins a masterclass in culinary gaslighting. Jillian starts feeding her husband twenty-cent frozen Piggly Wiggly beef patties masked as A5 Wagyu, which he proudly boasts about. She then serves a literal can of "ocean medley" cat food at an elite dinner party, watching in silence as Miles praises its "artisanal terroir". But her ultimate revenge is scheduled for a live-streamed blind-tasting event at the Taste of the City festival. Jillian is about to plate a dish that will expose his fraud to the world, and serve him divorce papers strapped to a deep-fried hot dog.

A hilarious, razor-sharp short story about karma, culinary pretension, and the joy of a perfectly executed recipe.