Manwich, Marriage & Meat Bombs
Laura Finney
5/27/2026
We used to have a Victorian fainting couch. Which does beg the question, were the Victorians just dropping like flies? I mean, wouldn’t it have been better to delve into the reasoning for the preponderance of fainters rather than create a unique piece of furniture?
I always found the thing both hilarious and deeply impractical, so I was secretly thrilled when we finally got rid of it.
Unfortunately, due to this allergy, I now occasionally find myself longing for a dedicated recovery chaise on which to dramatically wilt like a woman dying of consumption. Which is all very theatrical until real life barges back in with new and confounding reactions. Because after spending September alone on the Vineyard — quietly adapting to a fins-and-feathers existence — I returned home to Maryland and remembered that I was no longer cooking for one.
My husband never particularly liked poultry or fish. He’d eat them, certainly, but he would never seek them out. He planted his culinary flag firmly in the 1950s stew-and-shepherd’s-pie camp and never looked back. That said, he was willing to embrace our new diet. But I was determined to maintain his current culinary course.
It brings me such joy to prepare someone their favorite meal. It’s a love language involving peas and potatoes. So, when Alpha-Gal arrived and flipped my entire culinary world upside down, I was initially hell bent on continuing to serve up platters of love drowning in beef gravy.
Yes, in hindsight I was probably leading my husband directly toward clogged arteries and heart disease, but he would have died happy, knowing he was deeply loved.
On one of my first days home, I decided to prepare one of his favorites: Manwich. Which brings me to the Great Manwich Debate of 2025. For those unfamiliar, Manwich is essentially seasoned sloppy joe sauce sold under a name that suggests it was created by a 1960s advertising executive who had apparently only recently climbed out of his cave.
My husband firmly believes everyone loves a Manwich. I have repeatedly explained that women, as a demographic, do not appear nearly as enthusiastic. And frankly, I don’t think the marketing team is even trying to win us over. The evidence, frankly, is right there in the title. He, however, is willing to die on that hill so I was willing to prepare it for him.
Clearly, meat preparation had become a more extreme sport than it once was, but I still felt oddly committed to seeing this through. I had gloves and an open window, what could possibly go wrong. It was, in many ways, an almost flawless system. Unfortunately, it relied heavily on my ability to coexist with simmering beef. This was an issue I had not anticipated.
As I pushed the ground beef around the pan, wondering how exactly I was supposed to make food without tasting it — my preferred and until now wildly successful cooking strategy — my head began drifting away from my body like a balloon escaping a distracted toddler. What the heck?
In the time since this initial incident, I’ve learned that fume reactions are very much a thing. Inhaling cooking meat can take me down with surprising efficiency. Lightheadedness, nausea, a racing heart, confusion — all crash in. Unfortunately, confusion likes to lead the charge.
And that’s problematic because confusion is extremely convincing. It whispers things like, “You’re probably fine,” while my body is actively trying to reboot itself. It tells me I should therefore soldier on rather than immediately exit the building like a person with basic survival instincts.
Quite honestly, I’m not even sure what happened after this. At the end of the day, I know there was food, and I hope he enjoyed it because that was my last foray into the bizarrely deadly world of meat preparation. Where’s a fainting couch when you need one?
Back to the AGS support groups I went seeking answers. I had never heard of this happening and was sure it would be met with raised eyebrows and dismissive hand gestures. But no – what I found was that a small but not insignificant number of people with Alpha-Gal are fume reactive and must be very careful to avoid meat cooking. Another pivot. Honestly, at this point I felt like I spent so much time pivoting that I must look like I’m trying to tango.
As I find myself a little older, considerably wiser, and somehow simultaneously more bewildered, you won’t find me lingering at cookouts or wandering through food courts these days. They feel a little too much like spaces filled with aerosolized meat bombs.
Which, unfortunately, they essentially are.
While my husband is free to enjoy whatever dining experience he wants – out in that great big meat filled world, home is reserved for fins and feathers. We’ve settled into a comfortable rotation of our favorites. We’ve had Thanksgiving at least a dozen times since the New Year. It turns out that the more you pivot, the easier it becomes. I made him a Manwich the other day – with ground turkey. He said it was great, he couldn’t tell the difference. A marriage can survive on lies like that.