I love to cook. After a shitty day at work, filled with failure and stupidity, I can come home and do something that 1. makes me feel reasonably competent, and 2. reasonably productive.
Also, whereas at work everything I do counts as pearls before swine, here at least The Boy will appreciate my efforts.
Further, new skills I learn at work inevitably only open doors to new and interesting wells of suffering. Very rarely does a new cooking skill leave me wishing I'd never heard of it, and in the rare instance it does, you can bet your ass I won't be using it long.
Like cream sauces. The secret, I now know, is that I need to be much less of a chickeshit when it comes to heat. Big fire, don't turn around, whisk. Who knew?
Don't answer that.
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2009
Monday, November 26, 2007
Tonight, On PBS
So, tonight Le Boy and I were watched a documentary about a lunatic Frenchman exploring the most dangerous place on Earth. Oddly enough, it was not a visitor's guide to Detroit, but a film about a dude in a submarine exploring the bottom of the ocean.
One of the shots was of all these phosphorescent jellyfish, blooping and floating through the sea. Watching their aimless, mindless, actions all I could think of was my co-workers. And calamari.
Which leads, logically, to the next thing, I want to corner the market on the aquatic beasties that inhabit the darkest depths of the ocean--floating around in super-heated toxic water, blind and thoughtless. I want to gather them up, raise them out of the depths. The lack of pressure will cause them to swell to many times their normal size and I will SELL them to snooty gastronomes and the Japanese for thousands of dollars a pound, never mind the fact that their flesh stinks of sulfur and tastes of briny rotten eggs.
Think about it.
One of the shots was of all these phosphorescent jellyfish, blooping and floating through the sea. Watching their aimless, mindless, actions all I could think of was my co-workers. And calamari.
Which leads, logically, to the next thing, I want to corner the market on the aquatic beasties that inhabit the darkest depths of the ocean--floating around in super-heated toxic water, blind and thoughtless. I want to gather them up, raise them out of the depths. The lack of pressure will cause them to swell to many times their normal size and I will SELL them to snooty gastronomes and the Japanese for thousands of dollars a pound, never mind the fact that their flesh stinks of sulfur and tastes of briny rotten eggs.
Think about it.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Pie, Bitches
I did it. Finally. I finally manned up and did it. I managed to put on my big girl panties and wash away the terrible stench of failure.
I made a pie. From scratch. Take that, bitches.
The last time I tried to make a pie, all hell broke loose. Flour was spilled; dough was thrown; I called apples motherfuckers. And when, finally, I dispatched my then husband to get frozen pie crust, the pie wasn't that good. It was runny and stupid and it pissed me off.
Today, though, the triumphant glow from my unclogged sink drain filled me with a strange sense of confidence. I wanted apple pie, and no pansy-assed frozen pie crust was going to do it for me.
And I did it.
Granted, my pie looked like a C effort in a Home Ec class for the emotionally disturbed, but it tasted pretty goddamn good. Further, I think I broke the code. I actually learned something this time, and I think I can do this again.
My god. The bitch can bake an apple pie. I'm officially perfect.
I made a pie. From scratch. Take that, bitches.
The last time I tried to make a pie, all hell broke loose. Flour was spilled; dough was thrown; I called apples motherfuckers. And when, finally, I dispatched my then husband to get frozen pie crust, the pie wasn't that good. It was runny and stupid and it pissed me off.
Today, though, the triumphant glow from my unclogged sink drain filled me with a strange sense of confidence. I wanted apple pie, and no pansy-assed frozen pie crust was going to do it for me.
And I did it.
Granted, my pie looked like a C effort in a Home Ec class for the emotionally disturbed, but it tasted pretty goddamn good. Further, I think I broke the code. I actually learned something this time, and I think I can do this again.
My god. The bitch can bake an apple pie. I'm officially perfect.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Prisoner's Dilemma
The good news is, my co-workers have started making coffee. The bad news? Someone has introduced decaf into the building.
Our break room has three identical coffee pots. One of these things is not like the other. Some communist has put decaf in one of the coffee pots, and I have no way of knowing which one.
With good coffee, one can generally tell decaf by smell. One can certainly tell by taste. It’s like someone playing a chord incorrectly—something is just missing. There is a note that’s just missing from even the best decaf coffee.
Now, I have friends who for various reasons have given up caffeine. Sort of the way mother pandas sometimes forsake their young, or guppies eat their babies, but that’s their business. They’re good people and I don’t judge them. There are even occasions on which I have been known to order decaf, namely, after dinner on a school night with dessert. Tiramisu without coffee is crime against nature, and if I know I need to get sleep shortly after leaving a restaurant I will order decaf, as long as I know that it has been made from what were once decent beans.
With bad coffee, though, there is no point to decaf. Bad coffee already tastes out of tune. The one real perk is the jolt of wakefulness and the way it can sometimes evoke decent coffee. Bad decaf, though, is just . . . bad. When Jesus looks down from heaven and sees His children drinking decaf coffee, He cries. He did not die on the cross so that sinners could drink decaffeinated Folgers. He wanted us to enjoy his Father’s blessings. Do you know how hard it is to hold a tissue to dry your Holy Tears when you have big, gaping holes in your hands? DO YOU?
Whatever. I don’t care what other people choose to put into their bodies. Their diets of canned peas and stale Krispy Kremes are none of my affair. But the first time I figure out that the reason I’m falling asleep at my desk because I accidentally drank decaf I’m replacing it with Euro Roast cut with methamphetamine.
Our break room has three identical coffee pots. One of these things is not like the other. Some communist has put decaf in one of the coffee pots, and I have no way of knowing which one.
With good coffee, one can generally tell decaf by smell. One can certainly tell by taste. It’s like someone playing a chord incorrectly—something is just missing. There is a note that’s just missing from even the best decaf coffee.
Now, I have friends who for various reasons have given up caffeine. Sort of the way mother pandas sometimes forsake their young, or guppies eat their babies, but that’s their business. They’re good people and I don’t judge them. There are even occasions on which I have been known to order decaf, namely, after dinner on a school night with dessert. Tiramisu without coffee is crime against nature, and if I know I need to get sleep shortly after leaving a restaurant I will order decaf, as long as I know that it has been made from what were once decent beans.
With bad coffee, though, there is no point to decaf. Bad coffee already tastes out of tune. The one real perk is the jolt of wakefulness and the way it can sometimes evoke decent coffee. Bad decaf, though, is just . . . bad. When Jesus looks down from heaven and sees His children drinking decaf coffee, He cries. He did not die on the cross so that sinners could drink decaffeinated Folgers. He wanted us to enjoy his Father’s blessings. Do you know how hard it is to hold a tissue to dry your Holy Tears when you have big, gaping holes in your hands? DO YOU?
Whatever. I don’t care what other people choose to put into their bodies. Their diets of canned peas and stale Krispy Kremes are none of my affair. But the first time I figure out that the reason I’m falling asleep at my desk because I accidentally drank decaf I’m replacing it with Euro Roast cut with methamphetamine.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Kate Does Nothing Day
Last night, the woman at the grocery store didn’t recognize my eggplant. In a world of foodstuffs, I would have thought that the distinctly purple eggplant would have stood out. I was, it seems, wrong. She also mistook my cilantro for spinach, en error that I can’t even follow because one, the only thing they have in common is being green and two, the checker had just rung up the spinach that I did in fact buy. The spinach was easily distinguished by the large, white lettering that read “Spinach” across the front.
I then went home to make a meal for The Boy and me. Black bean burritos with fresh pico de gallo. This was meal was followed by a carbohydrate coma so profound that I wound up having to hide the pillow on which I dozed off because it was so sodden with my own drool. That’s the last time I add rohypnol to my black beans.
After our nap, we took Bennet for a walk. Bennet spent most of her time trying to trip and/or drag me while The Boy and I spent most of the stroll discussing the possibility for a series of children’s books featuring Bennet and my other beasties. Some titles:
Bennet and the Short Bus to Obedience School
Bennet and the Rolled-Up Newspaper
Bennet and the Remote-Control Shock Collar
Jack Does Nothing Day
Bella Destroys the World
and my personal favorite
Bennet Goes to the Korean Deli
Yes. I fully expect to go to hell. That’s okay, though, because my work life of late has done a fine job of preparing me for an eternity of suffering.
The details of the disaster are irrelevant, but I will paint a quick picture in broad strokes. I took a promotion for the opportunity to start up a new corporate department in a brand new facility. Our computer system is notable not only for the things it does not do well, but also for the things it does not do at all. I have spent the past seven weeks either doing nothing, doing nothing and pretending to do something, or testing the worthless software.
I finally realized yesterday that it will require a miracle, a-hand-to-god-Gabriel-on-a-shaft-of-golden-fucking-light-comes-down-from-heaven-and-saves-our-asses-miracle, for this project to do anything but disappoint and frustrate for the first year or so. After that, ho knows? It might just be too late. I am at peace with it, though. I keep up my corporate charade, then I go home and complain to my wonderful boyfriend and drink myself into a stupor. Thus does time pass.
Adding insult to injury, though, today we have corporate muckety mucks come in. I suppose that this is to re-emphasize to us, the peons, the importance of lying to people outside the building. Fine. Something different at least.
Through it all, though, I’m going to keep a smile on my face by imagining the following exchange:
Muckety Muck: “So, how do you feel about being here at Exciting Corporate Startup?”
Me: “I wish my mother had aborted me.”
I then went home to make a meal for The Boy and me. Black bean burritos with fresh pico de gallo. This was meal was followed by a carbohydrate coma so profound that I wound up having to hide the pillow on which I dozed off because it was so sodden with my own drool. That’s the last time I add rohypnol to my black beans.
After our nap, we took Bennet for a walk. Bennet spent most of her time trying to trip and/or drag me while The Boy and I spent most of the stroll discussing the possibility for a series of children’s books featuring Bennet and my other beasties. Some titles:
Bennet and the Short Bus to Obedience School
Bennet and the Rolled-Up Newspaper
Bennet and the Remote-Control Shock Collar
Jack Does Nothing Day
Bella Destroys the World
and my personal favorite
Bennet Goes to the Korean Deli
Yes. I fully expect to go to hell. That’s okay, though, because my work life of late has done a fine job of preparing me for an eternity of suffering.
The details of the disaster are irrelevant, but I will paint a quick picture in broad strokes. I took a promotion for the opportunity to start up a new corporate department in a brand new facility. Our computer system is notable not only for the things it does not do well, but also for the things it does not do at all. I have spent the past seven weeks either doing nothing, doing nothing and pretending to do something, or testing the worthless software.
I finally realized yesterday that it will require a miracle, a-hand-to-god-Gabriel-on-a-shaft-of-golden-fucking-light-comes-down-from-heaven-and-saves-our-asses-miracle, for this project to do anything but disappoint and frustrate for the first year or so. After that, ho knows? It might just be too late. I am at peace with it, though. I keep up my corporate charade, then I go home and complain to my wonderful boyfriend and drink myself into a stupor. Thus does time pass.
Adding insult to injury, though, today we have corporate muckety mucks come in. I suppose that this is to re-emphasize to us, the peons, the importance of lying to people outside the building. Fine. Something different at least.
Through it all, though, I’m going to keep a smile on my face by imagining the following exchange:
Muckety Muck: “So, how do you feel about being here at Exciting Corporate Startup?”
Me: “I wish my mother had aborted me.”
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Corporate Super Happy Fun Trip
So. Wednesday night was one of my co-worker’s birthdays. To celebrate, she, I, and another girlfriend from work decided to go out for happy hour—the celebratory choice for pink-collar wage slaves the world over.
Of course, happy hour is generally conceived of as a cocktail party of limited duration, consisting of a few composed cocktails and a snacky, to be followed by a wholesome dinner in the privacy and comfort of one’s own home. The guy who joined us for a bit followed that basic outline, returning home before dark like a good little soldier. The women, though, starved for intelligent conversation and relationship moral support, not to mention gossip, stayed out for hours. HOURS. As I was leaving I looked down and saw it was 11 p.m. Happy hour had become a long evening spent splashing about in a bottle of tequila.
I went home, where I proceeded to raid my kitchen for anything that didn’t move as fast as I. I could have skeletonized a tofu cow in under 3 minutes, like a school of hippie piranha. Then, instead of using the sense god gave me and going to bed, I wound up in a conversation with a friend of mine about the vagaries of romance in this, our modern world, that went on far into the night.
The next morning, despite my shower before bed, I woke to find that I smelled like a key lime pie that was off-gassing grain alcohol. Ordinarily, going into work under such circumstances would be less than appealing. Yesterday, however, I was scheduled for a company field trip to our corporate headquarters. Three hours coming and going in a car with five co-workers to whom I am not close. With a hangover. Yea.
Having gotten out of bed an hour before my usual time, I did what I could to masquerade as a normal employee with out an incipient drinking problem. I arrived at work and climbed into the mini-van, where I promptly attached my iPod to my head and went to sleep.
We stopped in Litchfield, Illinois for breakfast. Considering the hypoglycemia brought about from the previous evening’s excesses, breakfast was certainly a welcome thought. As we’re climbing out of the mini-van in McDonald’s parking lot, I look across the way and see a group of church kids pouring out of their own van like so many clowns hopping out of a car.
Like clowns, these kids were simultaneously amusing and frightening in almost equal measure. It was clearly one of those sects where all the women wear skirts and most of them don’t cut their hair, instead sculpting it into ridiculous poufs and curls and buns. And the skirts, oh god, the skirts . . . I wish these women would just embrace their decisions to dress like dowdy schoolmarms, instead of bastardizing fashion. Please. I mean it, just swath yourself in yards of calico and call it done.
And, let me just say, Jesus might do a lot of things, but he’s not going to do suntan pantyhose and open-toed slides. If you believe that he loves you, please believe that he wouldn’t want that for you either.
Although I was a bit worried that the church-clown-kids might try to throw a sack over the head of my gay co-worker and hustle him off for re-education, we escaped McDonald’s without incident and continued our drive/nap to corporate headquarters.
The visit itself? It was fine. Whatever. Blah blah blah happy drink the corporate Kool-Aid bullshit. I don’t care. I like my job okay, it is what it is and I’ve certainly worked at far more wretched places. It was neat enough to see the joint, and now I must try to formulate a plan for how I can get them to transfer some of the money the spend on rented plant upkeep to my paycheck.
We get in the van to come home; I promptly go back to sleep because—well because I don’t really want to talk to anyone in the van. Does that make me a bad person? Probably. Fine. I slept.
So, on the way home we stop for dinner at RubyAppleFriday’sGarden. Whatever, it didn’t absolutely suck. It was food. What killed me, though, was how all my co-workers kept going on and on about how good it was.
No. No it isn’t. It doesn’t have enough salt or pepper. It’s not interesting, or special, or anything. I think most of it came out of a bag. It’s just some decorative crap on the wall casual chain shithole, so by definition it can’t be that good. It’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be mediocre enough so that rubes will eat there.
Clearly, the business model is working like a charm.
After dinner, for some stupid reason, I chose not to go back to sleep. I listened to my iPod, looked out the windows. I can’t read in the car, which is sucks, but I listened to Neil Gaiman read “Chivalry” and it was almost better. Everything was fine until my dumb ass decided to turn off my headphones for a minute to see what was going on in the car.
What was going on is that someone had turned the radio on to some worship at the feet of Jesus shit. I don’t want to hear that, ever, much less trapped in a fucking mini van with six co-workers. I was tempted to insist they pull over and let me try to hitchhike back to the Lou. Instead I just listened to Cyndi Lauper sing about masturbation, and tried to forget where I was.
Finally, I arrived safely home. Jason came over. We put on pajamas. We watched The Giant Gila Monster. And all was right with the world.
Of course, happy hour is generally conceived of as a cocktail party of limited duration, consisting of a few composed cocktails and a snacky, to be followed by a wholesome dinner in the privacy and comfort of one’s own home. The guy who joined us for a bit followed that basic outline, returning home before dark like a good little soldier. The women, though, starved for intelligent conversation and relationship moral support, not to mention gossip, stayed out for hours. HOURS. As I was leaving I looked down and saw it was 11 p.m. Happy hour had become a long evening spent splashing about in a bottle of tequila.
I went home, where I proceeded to raid my kitchen for anything that didn’t move as fast as I. I could have skeletonized a tofu cow in under 3 minutes, like a school of hippie piranha. Then, instead of using the sense god gave me and going to bed, I wound up in a conversation with a friend of mine about the vagaries of romance in this, our modern world, that went on far into the night.
The next morning, despite my shower before bed, I woke to find that I smelled like a key lime pie that was off-gassing grain alcohol. Ordinarily, going into work under such circumstances would be less than appealing. Yesterday, however, I was scheduled for a company field trip to our corporate headquarters. Three hours coming and going in a car with five co-workers to whom I am not close. With a hangover. Yea.
Having gotten out of bed an hour before my usual time, I did what I could to masquerade as a normal employee with out an incipient drinking problem. I arrived at work and climbed into the mini-van, where I promptly attached my iPod to my head and went to sleep.
We stopped in Litchfield, Illinois for breakfast. Considering the hypoglycemia brought about from the previous evening’s excesses, breakfast was certainly a welcome thought. As we’re climbing out of the mini-van in McDonald’s parking lot, I look across the way and see a group of church kids pouring out of their own van like so many clowns hopping out of a car.
Like clowns, these kids were simultaneously amusing and frightening in almost equal measure. It was clearly one of those sects where all the women wear skirts and most of them don’t cut their hair, instead sculpting it into ridiculous poufs and curls and buns. And the skirts, oh god, the skirts . . . I wish these women would just embrace their decisions to dress like dowdy schoolmarms, instead of bastardizing fashion. Please. I mean it, just swath yourself in yards of calico and call it done.
And, let me just say, Jesus might do a lot of things, but he’s not going to do suntan pantyhose and open-toed slides. If you believe that he loves you, please believe that he wouldn’t want that for you either.
Although I was a bit worried that the church-clown-kids might try to throw a sack over the head of my gay co-worker and hustle him off for re-education, we escaped McDonald’s without incident and continued our drive/nap to corporate headquarters.
The visit itself? It was fine. Whatever. Blah blah blah happy drink the corporate Kool-Aid bullshit. I don’t care. I like my job okay, it is what it is and I’ve certainly worked at far more wretched places. It was neat enough to see the joint, and now I must try to formulate a plan for how I can get them to transfer some of the money the spend on rented plant upkeep to my paycheck.
We get in the van to come home; I promptly go back to sleep because—well because I don’t really want to talk to anyone in the van. Does that make me a bad person? Probably. Fine. I slept.
So, on the way home we stop for dinner at RubyAppleFriday’sGarden. Whatever, it didn’t absolutely suck. It was food. What killed me, though, was how all my co-workers kept going on and on about how good it was.
No. No it isn’t. It doesn’t have enough salt or pepper. It’s not interesting, or special, or anything. I think most of it came out of a bag. It’s just some decorative crap on the wall casual chain shithole, so by definition it can’t be that good. It’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be mediocre enough so that rubes will eat there.
Clearly, the business model is working like a charm.
After dinner, for some stupid reason, I chose not to go back to sleep. I listened to my iPod, looked out the windows. I can’t read in the car, which is sucks, but I listened to Neil Gaiman read “Chivalry” and it was almost better. Everything was fine until my dumb ass decided to turn off my headphones for a minute to see what was going on in the car.
What was going on is that someone had turned the radio on to some worship at the feet of Jesus shit. I don’t want to hear that, ever, much less trapped in a fucking mini van with six co-workers. I was tempted to insist they pull over and let me try to hitchhike back to the Lou. Instead I just listened to Cyndi Lauper sing about masturbation, and tried to forget where I was.
Finally, I arrived safely home. Jason came over. We put on pajamas. We watched The Giant Gila Monster. And all was right with the world.
Monday, February 19, 2007
On Monologues and New Year's Non-Resolutions
I came, I saw, and I . . . moaned. A lot and loudly.
This weekend was The Vagina Monologues. It was a great experience, if not entirely what I expected. In future, I hope to get some direction from any directors with whom I work. “Thanks,” while appreciated, is not exactly useful in developing a character.
Still, though, a good time. I stood in front of a roomful of about 100 people and moaned—loudly and repetitively. A year ago I wouldn’t have thought I could do such a thing.
I find that I’m in an interesting place right now. I turned 30 in October, a milestone that I greeted with much the same enthusiasm as my annual gynecological exam. Like my trip to the stirrups, I figured it as a necessary evil that would pass more painlessly if I mostly ignored it and tried to relax. While my actual birthday was about that good (attention boyfriends of the world: do not stand up your girlfriends on their 30th birthdays—no excuse is sufficient or will staunch the inevitable flow of tears), my 30th year has, thus far, been rather enlightening.
My friends who are a couple of years older than I told me that being 30 was a self-changing thing. That I would feel more secure in myself, more certain, and less-inclined to the struggles and self-doubt that characterizes people’s 20s.
I don’t know if it’s the passage of the mile marker that is 30, or if it’s the fact that the latter part of my 20s were filled with sundry disasters that, at the end of last year, culminated in a sort of interpersonal Armageddon—wherein the worst thing I could imagine happening to me (that did not involve death or physical harm to self or close friends/family) actually happened. Once “the worst” has happened, it becomes increasingly difficult to give any more than a fleeting fuck about “the rest.”
I said before on this blog that I don’t much go in for New Year’s Resolutions. I still don’t. I have, however, embraced a couple of mottos:
1. What are you trying to prove?
Whenever I look at taking on a new task/chore/job/challenge/whatever—I ask myself what it is I’m trying to prove, and to whom I am trying to prove it. If I realize I’m trying to prove something not in question (“I’m smart”) to a random “them” about which I really don’t give a damn, then I opt out. If I’m trying to prove something that I care about to myself, then into the breach.
2. If I don’t owe you money; I don’t owe you anything.
Civility, decency, respect—sure. Otherwise, unless your name is Chase Manhattan and you are holding my freakin’ mortgage, then I don’t owe you a damn thing. There are some exceptions made for very dear friends who have a right to expect some things from me, and who pay me back in kind, but in general I’ve spent far too much time worrying a great deal about what others want or need, or think they want or need. Fuck’em and feed’em fish heads.
3. What could happen?
Thank you, Julie Powell of the Julie/Julia project, for this one. Want to try out for a play . . . what could happen? Want to take time off school/quit school entirely? Refer to Motto #1 to and quit already . . . what could happen? Stand in front of a roomful of people and pant . . . what could happen? Yes, this does lead to things like my recent Peanut Butter Dessert Disaster—but it also leads to fun things like first kisses with new people.
This weekend was The Vagina Monologues. It was a great experience, if not entirely what I expected. In future, I hope to get some direction from any directors with whom I work. “Thanks,” while appreciated, is not exactly useful in developing a character.
Still, though, a good time. I stood in front of a roomful of about 100 people and moaned—loudly and repetitively. A year ago I wouldn’t have thought I could do such a thing.
I find that I’m in an interesting place right now. I turned 30 in October, a milestone that I greeted with much the same enthusiasm as my annual gynecological exam. Like my trip to the stirrups, I figured it as a necessary evil that would pass more painlessly if I mostly ignored it and tried to relax. While my actual birthday was about that good (attention boyfriends of the world: do not stand up your girlfriends on their 30th birthdays—no excuse is sufficient or will staunch the inevitable flow of tears), my 30th year has, thus far, been rather enlightening.
My friends who are a couple of years older than I told me that being 30 was a self-changing thing. That I would feel more secure in myself, more certain, and less-inclined to the struggles and self-doubt that characterizes people’s 20s.
I don’t know if it’s the passage of the mile marker that is 30, or if it’s the fact that the latter part of my 20s were filled with sundry disasters that, at the end of last year, culminated in a sort of interpersonal Armageddon—wherein the worst thing I could imagine happening to me (that did not involve death or physical harm to self or close friends/family) actually happened. Once “the worst” has happened, it becomes increasingly difficult to give any more than a fleeting fuck about “the rest.”
I said before on this blog that I don’t much go in for New Year’s Resolutions. I still don’t. I have, however, embraced a couple of mottos:
1. What are you trying to prove?
Whenever I look at taking on a new task/chore/job/challenge/whatever—I ask myself what it is I’m trying to prove, and to whom I am trying to prove it. If I realize I’m trying to prove something not in question (“I’m smart”) to a random “them” about which I really don’t give a damn, then I opt out. If I’m trying to prove something that I care about to myself, then into the breach.
2. If I don’t owe you money; I don’t owe you anything.
Civility, decency, respect—sure. Otherwise, unless your name is Chase Manhattan and you are holding my freakin’ mortgage, then I don’t owe you a damn thing. There are some exceptions made for very dear friends who have a right to expect some things from me, and who pay me back in kind, but in general I’ve spent far too much time worrying a great deal about what others want or need, or think they want or need. Fuck’em and feed’em fish heads.
3. What could happen?
Thank you, Julie Powell of the Julie/Julia project, for this one. Want to try out for a play . . . what could happen? Want to take time off school/quit school entirely? Refer to Motto #1 to and quit already . . . what could happen? Stand in front of a roomful of people and pant . . . what could happen? Yes, this does lead to things like my recent Peanut Butter Dessert Disaster—but it also leads to fun things like first kisses with new people.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Extreme Elimination Challenge: Dining Edition
There were a disturbing number of suckers on my friends plate. And one of the side dishes was looking at me with surprise.
Such is my lasting impression of my first experience with Korean food on Thursday night.
I have, over the years, become a reasonably well-rounded diner, after a fashion. For a mid-America dweller, I have a reasonable sense of dining adventure. Prior to Thursday, I had eaten what I think of as a tolerably decent sample of the cuisines of
Suckers and fish peepers. That's what.
I should, before I go on, confess that until last June I had not eaten meat in any identifiable form in almost 15 years. There is fish sauce in Thai food, I know that. And I'm sure that over the years I'd consumed various sauces and soups that undoubtedly contained stocks and meat leavings, but otherwise I was a lacto-ovo vegetarian for a long damn time. Ultimately, my foodie leanings and hedonistic nature led me to have a shrimp risotto, and since then I've eaten seafood here and there. Crawfish, shrimp, strange square Filet'o Fish sammich, and a truly exquisite scallop--I'm still rather new to this whole seafood thing, and although I have liked it thus far, it's a constant decision to eat it or not to eat it--touch and go all the time.
So. Thursday night. Dinner with a friend, and we decide to go for Korean. Him? He LOVES Korean food, and when that's what we decided to do he responded like a kid who has just been told that OF COURSE he could have the extra-large banana split with extra chocolate sauce and sprinkles.
I take this as a good sign, as any time someone whom I respect is that enthusiastic about a thing I assume that it bodes well for that thing. So, cool.
Now, to leap ahead a bit, what I had was quite good. It was some sort of spicy soup with seafood and tofu and green onions and egg. Quite tasty, with a clearness of flavors that belied the incredible richness that I can only assume was a result of all the soft tofu and what had to have been an outrageous fish-stock base.
That wasn't the problem. The problem, if you can call it that, was one of side dishes. Apparently, everything comes with a variety of sides. Kimchee. Lotus root. Something that I assumed was a fried tofu, but in retrospect might have been something quite different (a fact upon which I choose not to dwell). A dish of whole, cooked minnows.
Yes. You read that right. Okay, I don't know that they were minnows. I don't know what species of fish they were exactly, but really, does it matter? Think small feeder goldish, or large guppies without the fancy tails.
So. The waiter brings this all out, sets it down, walks off. My dining companion explains to me what everything is. He gestures to the dish o' fish, and says he thinks it's seaweed.
I peek at it.
It peeks back.
"Nope. Those are fish," I respond.
"Really?" he says, digging in his chopsticks.
I actually felt myself blanche.
The little fishes didn't like my outfit; they questioned the way I held chopsticks. They wanted to be eaten, quickly, because I bored them. "We are so happy to be your dinner," they said.
I tried not to giggle. Or make eye contact. I glanced over at my friend's plate. Or should I say, I glanced at the giant pile of tentacles in chile sauce sitting in a fajita skillet in front of him. The visible proliferation of suckers was . . . distracting. I looked at my own food. There was something floating in it, mostly submerged. I was very, very afraid to know what it was. I pushed it under with my spoon, Scarlett O'Hara style . "I'll think about you later when I can stand it better," I thought. I focused unwavering attention on my rice. I’m sure that my friend thought I had finally gone round the bend because to all appearances I was talking to the table throughout dinner.
As dinner progressed, my soup dwindled, and it was increasingly impossible to ignore whatever it was that was floating there. I applied my chopsticks and was relieved to see that it was merely a shrimp. At first I was somewhat flummoxed by its head; its eyes; its antennae; its whiskers; and its many, many legs. I found that it did turn out to be quite tasty once I removed its exoskeleton and hid it behind my teacup.
Because I had been a vegetarian for so long, and because of the reasons why I had been a vegetarian, I am very conscious of the idea that meat is made of animals. I don't do a very good job of separating what is on my fork or in my hand from what it used to be. I think that is a good thing, I think that it is part of what makes me who I am. In future, though, I think I would prefer to leave a tad more mystery to my meals. Either that, or I can return life as a vegetarian.
As for Korean food more generally, I would certainly eat it again. It was tasty, and it no longer has the advantage of surprise. Also, I am going to begin recommending it to my male friends as the perfect means by which to screen the humorless princesses from the women they date. Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke.
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