Choke Me

I'm coming back to the artichoke. I said before that as a food, it was a cruel joke. But it's not. Well, not really. It's more like a good date. The kind that makes you work for it. Waiting at it's core: a beautiful, tender heart. An elusive flavor that is unlike any other, something that doesn't play well with many other kids on the food playground. It perplexes the complex, such as wine, and it can alter the perception of your tongue.

Then again, it's also like lobster. But if your date looks like a lobster, then call me; I'll give you some tips. No one should have to date anything with a carapace. I don't care how tasty they are; foreplay just isn't the same with an exo-skeleton.

Treated well, artichokes will shed their clothing for you, piece by piece. And you'll want savor every bit, sliding it between your teeth, dipping it in hot melted butter. As butterfat and liquid solids slide off the tip, steam rising from the wood-green leaves....it's rustic food ecstasy.

And non of that Smart Balance shit, ok? I'm all for giving props when necessary, but Brandeis Butter does not a sexy food story make. Neither do fatty, sweaty man-folds on your stomach, so don't go overboard.

So the artichoke exudes beauty and modesty in its design. It can stand on its own; it doesn't need to hide in pasta or sauces just to feel included. It's my rose: although the violet hues are hidden within, it blends sensorial satisfaction to the patient and pain to the trembling tips of the impatient.

And like any good relationship, there must be compromises. Should you steam an artichoke, there's a chance the stem will be reduced to a slightly mushy mass. If you clean them, and cut and roast the stems, then you inevitable lose the chance to easily eat the leaves.

So this is what I like to do when I'm 'choking it. Um.....yeah.

In a dry wide, straight-sided pan, toast 1 Tablespoon each paprika and cumin over low heat until fragrant.

Add 1 Cup of your finest cheap white cooking wine, raise the heat to medium-high, and cook, stirring frequently, until liquid is almost entirely evaporated.

Place four artichokes, cleaned of only the outermost leaves (and perhaps the very end of the stem if it looks less than appealing), in the pan, and swirl so they are coated with the remains of the liquid and spices.

Add 2 cups vegetable stock or water, and raise the heat to high. The liquid should come about 1/4 the way up the pan. Cover with a lid when it begins to steam.

Swirl pan occasionally, to evenly turn the artichokes, as they steam/braise. You may need more liquid, so add as necessary.

The artichokes are "done" when a knife slides easily in and out of the point where the stem meets the base.

Place artichokes on a plate, and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Serve with melted butter. And a large bowl for the leaves.

Now get your hands dirty and eat the damn thing. The base of the leaves are edible, as is the base and stem, once the hair-like center (the choke) is removed.

If you're feeling soupy, you can make some from the beat-up remains of your cooking conquests. Bring whatever scrap is left over to a boil with just enough water or stock to cover, using a kitchen towel to keep it submerged. If you have any of the initial cooking liquid left over, this will add another layer of flavor. Cook until wicked tender. Blend with a high-powered stick or standing blender (this can get fibrous, so be careful not to overwork your blender). Strain it through a fine mesh strainer, and adjust as needed with salt, pepper, cream, water, etc.

Vive l'artichaut!

I loves ya America….

But you’re already starting to piss me off. And I’m still in international waters, or rather, 33,000 feet above international waters. At this point, the only America I’m experiencing is in a long metal tube packed full of Americans retuning from their British experiences. And while I understand the basic physics of flight, I also believe in Newton’s law of gravity. As in, what goes up may come back down in the form of a fig-filled tasty treat. Or at least resemble one after hitting the ground. So instead of dwelling on the void beneath my feet, I instead try to fill it with the thoughts of my return.

Yes, this redhead has left the British Isles, on his way to America, the land of opportunity and firearms. Man, I can’t wait shoot something.

There are things I’ll miss though. For instance, the Glasgow airport was fantastic. It really was. It has to be the only place that gives you the opportunity to buy cases of beer AFTER you go through security. The last four rows on my flight to London became a mile-high game of beer pong. It was great. And despite the plane being thrown in every known direction with the turbulence, they were still able to pour a mean gin & tonic. British Airways: We don’t just fly. We live. To party. But in that reserved, austere British way.

After getting selected for “random additional screening,” I couldn't help but wonder what it really was about the States that I missed. My friends? Of course. The food? Definitely the food. But definitely NOT having someone touch me intimately, when we’re not on a first-name basis. And they’re telling me to relax? Bringing stool samples to the local clinic every day for a week after getting sick in the Domican Republic would be less awkward. Was less awkward. At least they stayed away from touching my bathing suit area. I need an adult!

Sushi. Mexican. Stimulating conversation. REAL bacon. I hunger for these things, and none of them are to be found within the rectangular borders of my in-flight meal. My choices? Beef stroganoff or cheese tortellini. Or rather, grey slush or yellow slush. It’s too hard to choose. Your senses are already dulled due to the high altitude and the time change, and so the airline chooses this precise moment to culinarily SCREW you. Half the things on your tray don’t exist anywhere other than at 33,000 feet. Your food actually starts out, Shrinky-Dink style, as tiny hard versions that expand in water. Your only hope is to dump the entire ¼ teaspoon of pepper from that wee packet on one bite of your chosen slush, then have a mild freak-out from the piper nigrum, which will hopefully get the flight attendants attention, and then maybe score you a specialty meal. Just try not to convulse too much from the pepper overload, or some wanna-be hero is likely to tackle you and claim you’re a terrorist, and then the plane gets diverted to Greenland, where the real punishment begins. No one wants to go to Greenland. Not even Greenland wants to go to Greenland. Even Iceland, broke and poorly named, when offered to start over fresh in Greenland, said “No, we’re good. We’ve got enough whale blubber and pickled puffin to last us a while.” Maybe if they had a McPuffin burger, the Icelandic McDonald’s wouldn’t be closing down. Now with more real puffin.

So once the worst excuse for a “square meal” gets taken away, and the roll-y cart, which is the airline’s version of the giant boulder from The Temple of Doom is safely gone, I settle down to watch the movie. Except, due to some error, we get 5 hours of Top Chef instead. And it kicks off with guest chef Eric Ripert, one of the few men to whom I would willingly kowtow. The contestants are asked to fillet different fish, including salmon, anchovies, and live eels. Sweet!

Savoury! They blur out the fish! Are you freaking kidding me?!

What, they don’t want to offend our delicate American sensibilities by showing us the insides of a fresh fish? Apparently the sight of real, natural food would be harmful to some viewers. Or maybe it’s because if we saw good, fresh food on the tv, while eating the regurgitated, reconstituted, recycled food they serve us, the airline would have a mutiny on their hands. Parents would complain that their children are being exposed to disturbing images. And I’m not talking about Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve.

We’re beset on all sides by corporations and larger powers telling us how to bring up our children in this modern food world. Under their tutelage, formula would replace good old fashioned breast milk, and chicken and fish would only come in stick or nugget form.

But no! Fight the power! Breast is best! And all fish needs to be filleted, even if it ultimately will become rectangular and frozen. Stupid people. So you piss me off America. Somebody complained about having to watch fresh fish becoming good food, at the hands of skilled professionals. If you don’t want to watch, then don’t. Put your head down and eat your slush. That’s the crap they should be blurring that out instead.

America, here I come!

The Language of Food

I’ve always had trouble spelling broccoli. Crazy, right? Broccoli. Not that difficult. Sure, there’s a double “c” in there, but that’s really the only hurdle. So why is it hard for me? Maybe because they never spent any time on foods in school. I can spell Mississippi with my eyes closed (yes, blind people can spell too,) because it came with a cute little diddy in school. But I’ve never been to Mississippi. I’ve had broccoli a million times in my life; why can’t I spell it? It’s not fair.

It didn’t pose too much of a problem until a few years back. I was working the daytime sous position at Lumiere, which made it my responsibility to keep everything in storage properly labeled and organized. And in comes a beautiful case of broccoli (local, of course. Right, and I’m Tony Curran. Seriously, I might be. Look him up. Same birthday too! I know!). And I start writing out the label with my Sharpie, and I stop. Two c’s? Two l’s? Two of each? Crap! Luckily, with a slightly blunt Sharpie, I could fudge a line to look like one or two l’s. So that’s what I did. And then I went into the office and had to LOOK UP how to spell broccoli on the computer. Me, the spelling bee kid. Ah, how the mighty have fallen.

Crêpes farcies aux champignons? Got it. It didn’t even take any getting. It was gotten before it was even got. Get it? It must be the harshness of English getting in the way. We all know food should be sexy (we do know that, right?), so we should look to the French for help. Où est le pamplemousse? C’est sous le parapluie, et à côté del’hippopotame! Mais non! Mais fucking OUI! After six years of French class, it comes easy. The only thing that came close to food language in our schools involves ooples and bononos. They’re not even real!

And the pamplemousse? Grapefruit is as much a cop-out name as Grape Nuts. There’s no relation to a grape of any sort, and adding fruit onto the end of the name of a fruit is, well, stupid. Today at the store I picked up some beanvegetables, melonfruit, and milkmilk.

Courgette is better than zucchini, which I just spelled zuchini. Aubergine instead of eggplant. Hell, aubergine instead of Andrew. The only way I ever spell my friend Jon’s last name right is by thinking of beer (BraunSTEIN, and yes I know it’s brown stone, and not even beer-related).

Even in cooking school, with students from eight different countries, we were less interested in trying to spell what we were cooking, and more interested in reducing our sauces “au sec.” Well, that and stabbing each other. If the National Spelling bee included a fight to the death while spelling for the last two contestants, than those little dorks would at least earn some more street cred. It would probably earn them some time on ESPN, instead of Univision, or whatever channel hosts it these days.

Spelling is one of those skills that you don’t truly need to make it through life in one piece, but it does help. It only really pisses me off when I see menus with typos, at which point it’s fun to be the critical hypocrite. As such, I’m reticent to ever put broccoli on my menu….that beautiful, perfect, non-existent menu that I’ve got at the moment.

Self-help

We all know people that have done it. C’mon, you’ve done it too, even if you won’t admit it. It’s not normal; it can feel wrong, a bit dirty even, like you’re cheating the system. But it’s right there, after all. And if all your friends are doing it, why shouldn’t you?

The self-checkout aisle. You love it. You hate it. You can’t live without it. You’d go buy your girlfriend some tampons just for the chance to MAYBE use it.

Because you don’t decide ahead of time that you’re going to use the self-checkout, you can’t decide that until you’re done shopping. You may get there, and decide that there’s too many people, but you want to use it, so you go buy something pointless, at the other end of the store, on the hopes that when you come back, there’s less people to see you screw up. I’ll throw you a bone here. Lipton onion soup mix. It’s the old stand-by. Find out where it is in your supermarket, and whenever you need to buy yourself some time, you can stride to it with confidence, like you meant to buy it all along. Besides, how great is that stuff anyways? It probably saved your ass more than once. You gotta have instant respect for anything that can be mixed with sour cream or water with equally good, if over-sodium-ed, results. And, if you ever get attacked by a badger, Lipton’s onion soup mix will instantly cauterize the wound. But don’t take my word for it. Take LeVar Burton’s. There’s a reason he wears the visor. Yes, they had badgers on the Enterprise. I can’t believe you’d ever think otherwise. If they’ve got Puerto Ricans, why wouldn’t they have badgers?

Racism isn’t funny kids. Then again, neither are badgers.

But let’s live in the now for a bit, shall we? You’ve got your basket, and you can see the self-checkout….area, for lack of a better word, lurking at the other end of the store, that no-man’s land that’s a bare step up from the diaper/cleaning supply aisle in terms of popularity, is also happens to be located close to both the exit and the locked gun closet in the manager’s office, in case things get a little out of hand. And you know they will.

So you saunter over there, all hot shit with your free-range tofu and Canadian pine/lemon hybrids (ever wonder where the idea for Pine-Sol came from? You’re welcome). But there’s a line. At least, you think it’s a line. Maybe it’s two lines. Maybe the lady reaching for gum isn’t in the line, but she’s going to be. Is there one line per block of terminals? Is there one line total for all the terminals, and you just veer slightly left or right depending on which one is free? The second one is far more efficient, although then you’ve got no one to “beat” in the other line, which detracts from the overall vindication of the thing, but cuts down dramatically on inter-line violence.

Bingo! You spy the one slightly obscured terminal which isn’t being used, but is it because no one else notices, and you’re just that observant, or is it because it’s broken? The red light’s not flashing, but maybe the bulb’s burned out. Do you go over there? If you do and it doesn’t work out for you, will the rest of the line let you back in? And in the front no less? You already screwed up once, what makes you think you deserve a second chance? Trust me…NO ONE KNOWS. This is the reason that God invented lemmings…so we’d have something lower on the intellect chain to relate to, and then follow suit appropriately, while avoiding blame for our actions. Damn, it feels good to be American.

The best situation to be in is either A) there is no line, so you can get your groove on in the space that’s supposed to be a line, or B) there is a line, but you’ve got earphones on, which allow you to follow suit and remain just oblivious enough to the people around you that you can be held even less accountable for following said suit. And who is this suit that we’re following?

Yes, press that button to start. Or don’t press it, and just start scanning away. Because you can do that. It may not seem like much, saving those 2 seconds. But it’s no longer about you. It’s about everyone else in line behind you. Feel those beady eyes bearing down on you, impatiently waiting with their fat-injected rotisserie chickens and Glade plug-ins? They want you to scan faster than any normal check-out person who has ever lived. There’s a reason you never, ever see someone with a shopping cart in the self-checkout. They would be beaten to death by everyone behind them with those crappy plastic baskets. Because self check-out is like Lord of the Flies…it’s survival of the fittest, the quickest. Better find that bar code quick. Actually, you should already know where it is. What were you doing while you were waiting in line? If you look back and the guy behind you is putting on war-paint with a tube of tomato paste, I’m sorry dude, but you’re screwed. If you wanted to piss away your time, maybe you’d have been happier in one of those dictatorial regular checkout lines.

After all, that’s why you’re in the self-checkout in the first place, right? Because you think you’re faster than Ned, who’s been working the register in aisle 4 since you moved to town 6 years ago, and who by now you’re pretty sure had that gold star on his name tag cut-and-pasted from a 1st grade spelling test by his mom. This is Ned, who stumbles when you hand your club card to him a split second before he asks, and only the metronome-like gum-chewing from the bagging girl helps to bring him back from the brink of needing the shock paddles. Ned, who makes you roll your eyes when he doesn’t know his Spanish onions from his white, and needs to consult “the book,” or worse, the floor manager. C’mon Ned! WTF? And then you watch the monitor, making sure that the price comes up right, because if not, SO HELP ME GOD NED, it’s all YOUR fault!

Back in the self-checkout world, where you have no one to blame but yourself, it’s all about speed. You’re gonna kick ass at this. But the stakes are high. You’ve got a head of broccoli; what do you do? You have to “look up item,” then remember how to spell the damn thing, and find it on the list. But wait, is it broccoli, broccolini, broccoflower? Organic, or *gasp* conventional? That’s why you have a couple of boxed items…you can scan them quick, make up time for your ineptitude of veggie knowledge. Where’s your precious Ned now, eh?

And bringing your own bag just proves that no good deed goes unpunished. That whole bagging shelf is a fine-tuned scale. Look at it wrong and the machine shouts out “unknown item in the bagging area! Stacy, get the fuck over here!” and then the infamous red light blinks, letting everyone know that you failed…you, and only you. And the entire line behind you gives this exasperated sigh, because you let down the whole team. It’s high school JV soccer all over again, and now tomato war-paint guy has just snapped the end off his Swiffer mop, looking for blood.

So you have to out-think the machine. You scan the first item, something heavier and with a larger surface area, like that industrial-sized block of gouda. You look at the gouda, then at your bag. Then, being the bad-ass you are, you Indian Jones that crap, and place it in the bagging area together, in one fell swoop, praying the machine can’t tell the weight difference. Suck it, “skip bagging” button! You know you’re faster than the machine. By the time it’s saying “please scan your first item” you’re already feeding it dollar bills like a North Shore stripper.

Of course, you can tweak the whole operation a bit…make it your own. Scan your discount card at the beginning. Personally, I like to do it at the end, which gives you enough time for a nodding “Who’s the man?!” half-smile to the line behind you as all your savings pile up like nickel slots. Go ahead and wrap that receipt around your neck like a silk scarf…you’ve earned it. Then give Stacy a slap on the ass, a wink and a nod to Ned, who still has no idea who the hell you are, and skate on out of there.

Get Goosed

Artichokes are God’s idea of a cruel joke, and yet we’re continually playing into his hand, as we try desperately to get them into our stomachs by any means possible. In all my years as a chef, I’ve seen few other edible objects in this world that require so much work for so little reward. And then I’m reminded of my story about the Canadian goose. So choke lovers, I’m sorry, but you will have to wait.

When I was working at a restaurant many years ago, the pastry chef hit a Canadian goose on his way to work. Yes, a Canadian goose. Lower on the culinary food chain than pigeon, even. Pigeon can be squab, but Candian goose will always be Canadian goose. But as a Mexican coming from California, this guy saw Canadian goose as “goose,” as in Christmas, as in food. And so I arrive at work one day to find this guy tossing around this inverted pillow with a beak, trying everything to get at it what he thought was a treasure trove of awesome meat inside. He boiled it, roasted it, butane torched it, smacked it with the rolling pin, called it names…everything. Had the ASPCA had known about this, he’d be up on criminal charges, even though the goose was dead already. You know that honk that geese make? Just picture the honk reflex from smacking a dead goose with a rolling pin. HILARIOUS. It’s like a Whoopie cushion with wings.

Several health code (and moral) violations later, the focus of his ire was finally looking more like a poorly constructed football with a beak. Now, as any good Bostonian will know, one of the by-products of our aerial friends to the north is the snow-staining liquid land mines that look a bit like spinach puree on a bad day. Pretty soon, that group also included our pastry chef.

He continued undaunted though, and now free of feather and feces, he hit fat. A lot of it. Of course, we didn’t want to say anything, because this man was determined. And the only way it could’ve provided any more entertainment is if John Madden had shown up to give us a poultry play-by-play.

And yet he soldiered on. It was a matter of principle now, and he didn’t want to lose face. So many hours after taking its last breath, and with about 90% of it in the garbage, the victim of vehicular goosicide ended up as a small strip of leathery meat, disgraced and alone on the plate. I’d like to tell you I tried it, and found that it hadn’t died in vain. I’d really, really like to tell you that.

The pastry chef learned several valuable lessons that day. First, fewer animals die when you bike to work instead of drive. Second, there’s a reason we don’t eat Canadian geese, and it’s not because it’s "un-Americun." And finally, when the electric knife gives up, so should you.

Now, I can’t tell you that pastry chef’s name was Ernie Quinones, and he’s now the chef at the UMass club, because that wouldn’t be nice. So I won’t.

Man vs. Woman: Part 1

It takes a woman on average 15-30 seconds to determine your skill at general hygiene, which has a direct effect on how she’ll view you, for the rest of your life. That whole up-down look you get? You’re being judged on no fewer than 72 different points of your being. And if you pass that test, and she comes to you place, you’ll be getting it again, only this time it’s your apartment, not your person that she’s judging. Next time a woman comes into your home, watch her closely. She’ll immediately look from side to side, for signs of dirt, grime, and emergency exits if the first two don’t meet her needs.

So when you’ve got a woman coming over, it’s all about the sheen and clean. Get rid of the whiskers in the bathroom sink, and try to clean up all the errant nail clippings; despite being your private place, the bathroom shouldn’t look like the killing floor of a Mounds Bar slaughterhouse. The quickest fix, in fact, is to stuff a pipe bomb into a gallon of bleach, throw it into your bathroom and shut the door.

Now for the living room. Put things in those empty vases. If your skills lean more towards horticultural homicide and you can’t be trusted with flowers, then fill them with cool coins, dirt that you’ve pilfered from the Fenway track over the years, anything. Except condoms. Get the drool marks off the couch, and the crumbs while you’re at it. Leather cleans up real easily. Burnt orange shag does not. If your carpet looks like my hair, then it’s time for a new carpet. Trust me, my hair requires daily upkeep…you don’t want that for your carpet. Put away the ironing board, and all the “to be ironed” clothing bling that’s hanging off it. Contrary to popular beliefs, having an ironing board out is not going to impress a woman. There’s a reason that that “wrinkled look” is so popular, and despite what kind of therapy your naked ironing may give you, it’s like picking your nose: everyone does it, but no one wants to see evidence of it.

Brush your teeth. Now for the mouthwash. Go on, you bad ass….kill that Gingivitis like it’s your step-brother who used to fall asleep on top of the remote with professional wrestling on the tv, until you duct-taped him to his mattress and threw him out in the yard one night, and you were going to super-glue the remote to his forehead, but you could never get the needle into the nozzle of the superglue thing, and it was all dried up anyways, and you knew that that duct tape would be painful enough to get off, and besides, he did give you that Pearl Jam CD for Christmas one year, and so you really can’t hold a grudge, and you called off the step-fraternal fatwa. Huzzah for repressed memories!

The kitchen is the best part. You may know it as the room of eating, the food Thunderdome, or the place where hunger goes to die. Any other superlatives are now legally owned by Snickers, after their last craptastic advertising campaign.

I’ve just been informed that “Craptastic” was bought by Hershey’s for its upcoming anti-Snickers campaign, so to avoid any legal smiting, let’s go with “blow chunktastic.”

In any case, put the dishes away…it’s not conceptual art to have them strewn haphazardly in your drying rack. Use your one ubiquitous sponge to wipe down everything. That’s right baby, spread those germs. What you need is a true all-purpose cleanser. Not just kitchen or bathroom-specific, but something better. Something that you can use as deodorant, to season your steaks, to cure Athlete’s foot. Tastes great on popcorn, and fixes squeaky door hinges. Know what would solve that? A wood pellet burner. Aww, it’s sad that it’s become a joke already. The Arctic Monkeys of the fuel world.

Back to the kitchen. It’s nice, but not required to have a 2:1 ratio of non-alcoholic food items to alcohol (by volume, not weight. I’m not cruel.) And, if you can somehow swing it, the smell of warm cinnamon buns or popcorn are like culinary Spanish Fly to visitors. Just imagine if your breath could smell exactly like hot cinnamon buns. Hang around a Weight Watchers and you’d be fighting off the ladies with a stick. And no one would give a shit what your apartment was like.

Back in the real world, if you’re prepared for it, bring her in. If you’ve got some Wal-Mart-trained “greeter” ninjas, then now’s the time to let them loose; they’ll help ease her into the awesomeness that waits around every corner of your (hopefully) clean abode. See if they can incorporate some citrus slicing into their routine, to segue smoothly into a welcome cocktail.

Good luck!

Cereal Killer

What happened to you, Crispix? You used to be cool. You stayed crunchy, EVEN IN MILK! No other cereal could claim such greatness. How have you not become overlord of the nation of cereals? The cereal experience nowadays is a race to get it all in your mouth before it hits the milky amoebic glob phase. You don’t even have time to enjoy it. You’d have thought we could come up with something more effective in this department by now, but we’re forced to suffer the indignity of mushy cereal. I know we’re still devoted to the internal combustion engine, which is terribly outdated, but cereal? Mmm…..internal combustion cereal. Now with more methane.

When do you not want crunchy? If you didn’t, then you’d want porridge. But when you pour a big bowl of grainy shrapnel, with mummified strawberries and bran flakes coated in what looks like tasty clusters of nuts and leprosy, you want to feel all that food love in your mouth. Of course, in the states, this would require a warning, because some kid would find a way to slice up his throat with high-fibre goodness. And then BAM!, a lawsuit.

Don’t get me wrong, lawsuits make the States great. Without them, creativity would run amok, and the cereal world would be plagued with steak clusters and gin & tonic flakes. Hey, maybe the law got a hold of Crispix, and slammed it with a gag order to keep the non-sogging secret from getting out. Because then people would take their sweet time (gasp!) enjoying their breakfast, which would lead to them being late for work, and in turn would cause a systematic break-down of the our country’s economic stability. Oh wait, too late.

But not too late to employ another key American strategy: blame someone else! So I’m wrong. Commence the fist-shaking at your nearest box of Crispix…bastards ruined capitalism, forced me to flee the country, do my own ironing, and emasculate my spelling of the word fiber.

Restaurant wrongings

You will be wronged by a restaurant at some point in your life. They will cheat on you, lie to you, and you will find out, but not before it’s too late. I’m sorry, but that’s life. You will get over-charged and under-served, and told that something is sugar-free, low-fat, and has “subtle tones of vanilla.” We can only hope that the “wronging” will not extend to anaphylactic shock due to a nut allergy.

But there are a few things that restaurants seem to do over and over, the world over. That’s a lot of over. You may think you’re just a customer, a bit o’ plankton with the restaurants as the whale, but that’s not a bad thing. Because they need you. You’ve got your place on the food food chain, you see. The food² chain. And despite this, they still somehow find a way to piss me off, for all the small reasons.

1. Once you’ve gotten the food you’ve ordered, you’re dead to your server. In fact, I’d be more content if they actually came up and said “you’re dead to me.” It would eliminate the guessing game. Do they like me? Do they not like me? Are they faking it for a better tip? If so, are they from the west coast? In any case, they disappear exactly when you’re looking to get your bill and get the hell out of there.

2. The wait staff doesn’t even know what’s on their menu. I don’t need to know if your virgin olive oil was produced by actual virgins, but some semblance of food knowledge would be nice. Soup du jour? A la mode? If you don’t know what the physical words on your menu mean, then any monetary tip from me will be a la mode of non-existence, tous les jours.

3. If something’s missing from your plate that was listed on the menu, they act like it’s your fault. Because you’re probably hiding that red onion chutney in the lining of your jacket. Idiots. You could hide tater tots and Hot Pockets in your jacket, but if you already had those you wouldn’t be in the restaurant, would you? And then you worry that they’re mocking you to the other servers, even though they’re the ones that screwed up? Well, they are. You can’t win; get used to it.

4. “Let me tell you how our menu works.” Need I say more? Ok, I will. No, wait, I won’t.

4a. Argh…fine. Does your menu come with batteries? Is that why your hostess is so chipper at her stand? I utilize my reading skills, which were put upon me largely in the first grade with plenty of Berenstain Bear-based reinforcement, to choose food I would like to put in my mouth. After overcoming that incredible hurdle, everything else seems pretty simple, no?

5. Bread & butter: The butter’s ice cold, rock hard, and unsalted, and the bread is a cold chunk that you can then use to throw back at your server, getting her to bring you some of the warm stuff. I’ve got many a steam burn from putting trays of bread into a convection oven for a scant two minutes. And I’ve learned to pull butter and let it sit at room temp before serving. It’s not a hard thing to do. So it’s irritating when you get a brick of yellow stuff that you can’t get into your mouth in smooth fashion. Now what? Do you put an un-spreadable chunk of the stuff on your bread, and eat it in one bite? Do you cradle it in your hand and speak softly to it until it warms up? No, you throw it, ninja-star-like, at the next table over and steal some cutlery during the ensuing chaos. Doesn’t it piss you off that they don’t facilitate an easier way for you to fill up on cheap, free carbs before they arrive with the food that you’ve paid for? Well, it pisses me off.

Ironically, man and restaurant seem to coexist more peacefully on the lower rungs of the food² chain. For instance, go through a Taco Bell drive-thru and buy your tacos. Then park, go inside, and say that they forgot something, anything on your order; you’ll probably get it. Try hanging around a donut shop when they’re about to close, you’ll probably be able to get yourself a couple dozen of whatever’s left, without having to perform any immoral acts in the parking lot.

Customers are certainly not without their faults, though. A request of “Can I have scallops instead of french fries on my steak?” and I’ll just assume that you have no concept of worth, and that you were probably that over-privileged single child that didn’t need to play nice in the sandbox because they had their own sandbox, complete with Zen gardener.

Scary part? I had my own sandbox. It’s where I could go to escape the culinary atrocities that occurred on a regular basis in my kitchen growing up. So following soon will be the horrors perpetuated by customers, so as not to show favoritism. For in the world of restaurants, there are no true angels.

Dinner Conversation

"We sat at the bar,

Eating bread from Forfar,

And she said 'And what are you doing here?'”

Questioning authority delegates someone as the author. So it is to you I write as the author, allowing you to question. You can take it as fact or fiction. Take it with Billy Joel in mind; take it as a bagel with not enough cream cheese, spread too thin.

It started with the bread; it culminated with the starters. I was interrupted in the middle of eating pork belly. That’s not right. Pork belly is a pinnacle of food. It parties in the food halls of Valhalla, has a rightful throne atop Mt. Food Olympus. I would wrap myself in a blanket of it, to provide protection and warmth. If Luke could choose pork belly or Tauntaun belly to keep him alive on Hoth, you bet your ass he’d choose pork belly.

The room was already stifling, something that you could write off as the charm of a centuries-old farmhouse, but it was only at that moment that I began to actually realize it. A hot dining room can come off as a burden that each diner feels is theirs alone to shoulder. Do you debase the austerity of luxurious fine dining by removing your blazer? Throw couth out the window by rolling up your sleeves? Verbal fisticuffs were close at hand, but damnit, my cufflinks were cool, and given to me by someone I love very much.

Downhill skiing requires an athletic stance; so does a terrorist attack. Somewhere in between the two, fork tines plunged into the remnants of scallops and pork belly came the questioning of not only my lifestyle, but my existence at this place, in this time. Time for that athletic stance; and at the dinner table no less. The uniquities of international life give me single note coins, much better chocolate bars, and better access to the BBC. I’ve learned to love where I am, even if I’m yet to fully love myself. I’ve learned to not extend that love to others, though. Some people out there I neither love nor hate. I nothing them.

The way conversation can swirl like bad tye-dye is something that can bring joy or pain to a meal, where food and verse exist like infused oil atop a blended soup. They’ll never fully mix, but they can certainly compliment each other and work in harmony if done correctly.

I was thinking this as indeed, a soup was placed in front of me. Lightly spiced curry soup with a mint oil garnish. What struck me was not how the flavors melded in the cup, but was in fact my own appreciation for get only a demitasse cup of it. You see, you can’t throw a demitasse cup of soup in someone’s face. Fury doesn’t dissipate well in 1 ½ fluid ounces.

I can only pray that the lying, cheating, and stealing I’ve perpetrated throughout the years is somewhat curtailed by the penance of suffering through this poorly scripted dinner scene. I want to believe that pork products could indeed solve the majority of problems, when in fact history may prove they have only perpetuated them.

So, as the pork disappeared from the table, so did the tension. Entrees brought highland beef filet with braised cheeks, a cooled room and lowered sleeves. Cufflinks shone in the rise and fall of glinting cutlery, reminding me of those who were in my camp, and of those who could exist in the food badlands, alongside mango salsa and raspberry vinaigrette.

Morty

Maine Coon cats are voracious eaters, which you’d think goes against the culinary traits of drama-queen felines. Instead of “I’ll just have a salad,” Maine Coons need to mercilessly shred any meat put in front of them, and then typically submerge it in their water bowl, effectively killing and drowning their tasty morsels. It’s awesome. We had one named Max that also had a thang for the spice. I remember giving him some spicy shrimp, and the boy just licked all the hot sauce off, and left the shrimp. Max also had a penchant for that pressed deli-sliced turkey, but I won’t hold that against him. Sometimes they get accustomed to whatever faux foods that their feeder (my mother) gives them.

Can you pluralize a superlative like “best?” Can there be many “best” things about someone you love? Morty’s got several best things about him. The thump above your head when you walked into the basement, which was him coming off of some furniture he wasn’t supposed to be on in the first place and down to meet you. His, along with Rudy’s, downright refusal to eat from their bowls if either one of them was less than full. (Here’s another “best”: my mother’s frighteningly manic dedication to keeping their bowls full. They would literally starve themselves, not eating for days, if these food requirements weren’t held up.) The way Morty’d be more than happy to sleep on your legs at night, but if you tried to move, he’d just get pissed and lay into you with his claws. You’ve got to appreciate love that’s almost entirely on someone else’s rules.

Morty passed away this morning in the waiting room of the vets. Apparently he had an inoperable mass in his stomach that spread faster than expected, and my mom watched him have a seizure and die in front of her before anything could be done. I know I always try to be upbeat, if not really really sarcastic on here, and I also try to include food, because it’s something I love. I also know this one’ll come off rough, unkempt, and very poorly structured, but death’s no time to make things neat. Because I love food, but I also love Morty. He couldn’t kill a mouse worth a damn, but that’s ok. He had soul without being a soldier. He was also a rock star cat, being the center of attention at pretty much all our family gatherings, and had pretty much edged me out in terms of offspring priority. I’m still coming to grips with that one. In any case, close to midnight on a Friday night in the Scottish Highlands, I’m missing my cat.

Sales Pitch

Hey there, we’re GETTO. We’re radically different from other wood pellet suppliers. How, do you ask? Well, we do sell wood pellets, wood pellet burners, wood pellet boilers, wood pellet bathrobes, wood pellet tampons, even wood pellet models of wood pellets. Just like the other wood pellet guy. So how are we different?

Our costs are low. Real low. Practically nonexistent. Like the sketchy mattress guy in town, our costs are less, so we sell for less. That’s right. Don’t believe me?

How about this: we don’t pay our employees, so we’re able to pass the savings right on to you. Who says slave labor is no longer in vogue? GETTO is the ONLY U.K. wood pellet supplier that offers a feudal system benefits package to all its employees. Mmm….you like hard tack, don’t you? We do!

And we don’t have a web site, which means we can pass those savings right on to you. The internet’s just a phase, anyways. .com, .net, .org, .whogivesashit? We don’t!

We don’t even have an office. That’s right…SAVINGS. Pour vous. But wait, there’s more….

At any given time, our employees only have three working tires on their car. And by not getting that fourth tire? Oh yes, that just means more savings for you. But it also means we’re environmentally friendly, because our cars don’t go anywhere. We’re not bothered by gas prices, or wars for oil; nope, we’re all about you. Now see if your regular wood pellet guy is that focused.

We won’t bug you with annoying phone calls….we don’t have a phone. Call us: we’ll be happy to give you a number to the local pub, where you can usually find one of us. During normal business hours, of course. Aw, what the hell…we’ll be there day AND night, just to serve you better.

We don’t have any of that annoying paperwork that usually comes with construction work. We hate documents of any sort; for our workers, our certifications, anything. Let’s face it: you don’t want ‘em, we don’t have ‘em, and paper cuts suck. Besides, we’re trying to save the earth, people!

We don’t have tacky stickers guaranteeing safety, regulations, and quality, nothing to gunk up your front window and affect property value. We’re not just looking out for you; we’re looking out for your future.

What we CAN promise you is that we’ll give you the best prices in town. Because we don’t really want that fourth tire. Why ruin a good thing? In fact, if we ever do make enough for that fourth tire, we’ll give it to you, no questions asked. Throw your baby in it, spank his ass, and call him Michelin! Where else will you find a deal like that?

And depending on where you live, you may even get service! If you do, consider yourself lucky, because you are. It’s a pretty good chance no one else is getting it.

If you sign up now for our Compromise Service, you’ll get just that: the promise of com. Or at least the promise of something. As in: we promise to give you something, sometime. It could be a wood pellet burner; it could be herpes. But it will be SOMETHING. It may even be one undocumented person from a country definitely not of your choosing, but probably adapted to look vaguely local. If you happen to have a car on cinder blocks in your front yard, then he may already be there. GETTO cars and installers blend in perfectly with their surroundings.

Don’t have enough money for GETTO products? That’s fine: you can have some of ours! To show our dedication to you, we’ll give you one of our personal credit cards. With PIN! Treat yourself to a nice dinner. Go buy that really freaky porn that you’ve always wanted. Rent a hotel room to eat your food and watch your porn. No one will know. It’ll be your little secret with GETTO. We’ll be pals.

So call or email us today. Or just keep an eye out for a three-wheeled car. The guy inside, however unsightly and unwashed he may appear, could be your ticket to a whole new lifestyle.

GETTO: Because if you don’t GETT it, all you’ve got is O.

Not Poodle

My eyes passed over an ad that said “This isn’t just coffee. This is Starbucks.” This isn’t just a headache. It’s a tumor. This isn’t just one garden gnome. It’s angry garden gnome mob. And they’re coming after you, Starbucks.

The death of the independent coffee shop gives me a feeling in my gut that, up until now, was reserved for the intestine-purging, extreme fiber power of Kashi Go Lean. They’ve managed to turn a Starbucks barista into an oxymoron. They’re not baristas. They don’t make your coffee. They’re slaves to the Terminator-esque machines in the back that make it for you. The first “self-aware” machines will be the ones that know you like a double half-caff, low-fat, no whip mocha, with a twist of lemon. And then they will taunt you, giving you ¾-caff, just to piss you off.

We’re losing the ability to think with our stomachs. It’s coming to be that we’ve got artificial stomachs thinking for us. And that’s liable to hit us where it hurts.

And then we’ve got this, something that perhaps only artificial stomachs can, uh, stomach: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy2nqEfSx3Q

We’ll ignore the “sausage with a pen” bit; it’s too easy a target.

For those of you who don’t know, a doner kebab is essentially a hot dog in concept, but styled a bit more coherently, and with less mystery. Strips of meat (typically lamb), are molded together in a cylinder-like fashion, then skewered and roasted slowly. A good kebab comes with a garlicky yogurt sauce, some sliced raw onion, lettuce, and sometimes tomato, in a pita. Often they get cut using a slicer that is somewhat akin to a Flobie with a bucket-end. It shaves the twirling, skewered meat better than an adult film stylist, and for a few more pounds, the kebab guy will outfit your poodle with some racing stripes.

Let me be clear, though….pot noodle is not poodle. Ha. Pot noodle only succeeds in giving you more sodium, faster. I can only shake my head in sadness for Tony, at the undermining of his apparently delicious, if fictional, kebab. But I would assume that everything is delicious at 3am, when you’re back from the club, and you’ve sweated through your chiffon/polyester blend leisure suit. The fictional aspect of this product comes when you try to decipher what you’re supposed to taste. Now this is the first time I saw an ad, and as a direct result bought the product. I even followed the directions on how to make it. But that was about where the reality of the food ended; with the water. I appreciate water, I understand it, I know what exists within it, and what it does. I can’t say any of these things about this pot noodle, though. I just know that it contained some meat-like bits of flak (or flak-like bits of meat….scary how interchangeable they are), and some collection of noodle-like objects that came across more as the internal organs of a flour-based life form. All gussied up with a touch of curry powder, and it’s supposed to be doner kebab? That’s your in? Curry powder? You think a touch of spice is going to completely awesome-ize your food? (I’m looking at you, caraway. Carrot soup was doing fine before you came along; it even had ginger to fool around with, if it felt saucy. But you ruined it, and for what?)

Here’s what you do. Do a blind taste test of all the different flavored anything (potato chips, instant noodle, even sodas), and try to figure out what flavor you think they are, versus what they’re supposed to be. Do we really need chips that taste like Peking pork ribs? Or roast chicken and thyme even? When you’re eating instant noodles, why are dreaming of a doner kebab? That’s very naughty of you, mentally cheating on your food like that. If you want the doner kebab, tell the noodles it’s over, and go get your kebab. As long as you’re honest with you food, it’ll understand. But don’t come crying to me when your tofu dog tastes like tofu instead of dog. When you cheat your food, you cheat yourself. (Insert “The more you know” rainbow here.)

The problem is that we’re too quick to develop false food friends. The crinkle of packaged food should, but rarely does, give a sense of dread in people who trust the personified, smiling Chips Ahoy cookie (Chips Ahoy? Is he a pirate cookie?), or the script writing that makes you think that the very, very, very old Mr. Kellogg is still signing his boxes, fighting through some crazy bouts of carpal tunnel syndrome with regular amounts of heroin and hookers. Come on, you know he did it. There’s only so much you can do in Battle Creek Michigan. And what do I have to keep my interest piqued after liquid kebab? A second tub of pot noodle, this one telling me that I’m a Bombay bad boy. Or maybe that it’s a Bombay bad boy, which gives me only a tinge of concern about homosexual tendencies in my personal food world when I dive into it. The taste profile of that was so unremarkable, I won't even go into it here. In any case, it’s not nearly tasty enough to make me switch full-time, to boys or noodles. What it did tell me, though, is this: I’ve got a moustache-turn-kebab trimmer. If Andrew wants a kebab at 3 am, then that’s what Andrew will get. No more noodle nonsense.

Sportin' a Woody

Hey there, I’m Andrew. I’m in alternative energy. Hell, I am an alternative energy. I could say that I sell wood fuel systems, but such a long drawn out title, along with the word “sell,” well it makes me feel like I should be wearing a plaid suit, and giving the wink-and-a-gun smile. While in Glasgow to see a client a few weeks back, someone tried to get my attention to donate money. Save the children, save the whales, stop overpopulation by feeding the children to the whales…I wasn’t sure. But to get out of it, I told her I was on my way to a meeting to “save the world.” If anything, it made her smile.

I was kind of serious, though. What I’m doing here is trying to change the way we look at energy. We’re on the cusp of having wireless electricity. Our air is already charged with countless radio waves, satellite beams, and countless other invisible threads of energy. Like my food, I wanted to deal with something tangible, real, that people could see with their eyes, feel with their hands, and hopefully understand the real impact on their society, without any fru-fru gimmicks, be it curly parsley sprig, fried leek garnishes, or “paint” on the plate. I know I’m supposed to talk about wood fuels here, maintain some linear-style writing, but seriously….who wants “paint” anything on their plate? It looks like a skid mark, doesn’t add flavor, and at best just looks like your dishwasher is broken.

Alternative energy though? When will it no longer become alternative? I understand that most people are content with writing a check to NStar, then waiting it out, grumbling when they hear about oil and gas prices rising, but for the most part remaining on their collective asses, without thinking about the other options out there. But when a Rhode Island-sized chunk of ice breaks from the Arctic shelf (sadly, the actual Rhode Island is still very much attached), you have to wonder what kind of profound steps we’ll all have to take, and more to the point, what steps we should take on our own.

It’s up to you to do something about it. It’s rare that someone just stumbles onto this blog…you’ve got to know what you’re looking for, and what you’re in for, when you come to this darkened page of random coolness. As such, I’ll retain the faith that my readers have eco-concerns coursing through their veins in the way that I do. Why else would you keep coming back to my writing if it weren’t for some belief that we share a passion or two?

Frankly, I like rooting for the underdog in this case, that “crazy, alternative” form of heating. I like being able to convince people that wood pellet burners can give you hot air AND hot water; that it won’t make your boiler room hotter than a Swedish sauna, complete with Swedes. It’s a beautiful thing, in fact. We’re streamlining wood heat. The same kind of wood heat that people use to get their sexy on, sitting on a polar bear skin rug, sipping their ’84 Haut Brion. But instead of a roaring log fire, we use a closed system of roaring wood pellets. A good number of us can probably attribute our conceptions to wood heat, then; isn’t it about time we gave it a chance? And you can even keep your crackling logs and polar bear rug. Give me the wine, though…it’s fantastic. What we use is something that takes all the leftover wood, the stuff that falls on floors, gets into corners, and is found alongside discarded peanut shells on either really cool or really sketchy bars, and turn it into energy.

Wood pellets look like a more approachable version of what your rabbit would leave behind after going house on a carrot or three. The “official” size is somewhere between 6 and 8mm in length (Andrew, you mean 7mm then. Yes I do. I just love when people try to generalize like that,) with almost no moisture content. They’re compressed sawdust, hopefully no bark, and held together only by their natural resin, and God’s will. But mostly resin. Sometimes they’re scraped together from the by-product of common wood production; everything that’s left over after the majestic 2 X 4’s are cut and put into play. They are, in terms of the movie Twins, the Danny DeVito of wood production. Or, at least, they were.

Now, they’ve gained some confidence on the playground of fuel sources. In both scientific and haberdashery terms, they beat the pants off oil, gas, and coal. They’re much more fun to play with, (though who doesn’t like rolling in a good vat of natural gas?) they’re the least environmentally hazardous, and they are the most easily replenish-able. They are also carbon neutral, as any emissions from burning are equal to those given off through the natural decomposition of the wood. Huge factories are producing wood pellets at an astonishing rate. They’re safe, and best of all, efficient. Wood pellets burn at 94% on a bad day, and can burn at nearly 98% on a good day. By comparison, nuclear power? Yeah, it’s running at an all-time high of 6%. SIX FREAKING PERCENT. They’d be better off giving fuel rods to the kids to wave around at raves than use them to power our cities. The only good thing to come from nuclear power is the cool radioactive symbol, in my opinion.

What that 98% means is that there’s almost no left-over. A tad of ash, perhaps, maybe a Tablespoon a week, but that stuff is pure calcium, which spells awesomeness for your garden when used as fertilizer. Or, in culinary terms, boil it in some water, and make yourself some lye to use in such awesome recipes as Cretan donuts. I’ll send you the recipe.

So I’ve (we, I should say, as there’s also a Finn, 2 Hungarians both named Zoltan, and a ruddy English plumber…not the opening line for a joke, just a serious list of characters) been installing one at this hotel, this quaint little place where they only get 15 meters of rain a year. Go ahead, figure that out in inches. Yep, exactly. That much rain. It’s absurd. And I like the rain. My hair likes the rain; it gets all curly and sexy. But waking up in that kind of weather, day after day, makes you yearn for the chance to Google “ark building.”
I’ve learned several things from the past months of time up there, and I’ll take a second to share them with you:

1. Rocks are like snowflakes. Dirty, heavy, painful snowflakes.
2. Metric is SO much easier than Imperial. Cooking school taught me that, but this confirms it.
3. Hungarians quickly tire of you waving food at them, asking them if they’re “Hungry?”
4. Hungarians never tire of making jokes about the sexual relations of Scots and sheep.
5. As an American, I’m deemed instantly intelligent by everyone, now that Obama’s been elected.
6. If, while digging, you uncover shiny liquid that easily ignites, it’s probably not groundwater.
7. Dealing with the occurrence of #6 helps with #5. A lot.

So I’ll keep you informed of my current life in wood pellets and wood pellet accessories. For all your timber burning needs. Stay tuned.

Tube Steak

Hell, I’d hate Americans if all I had to judge them on was what I see on the supermarket shelf. I’m thinking this as I stare at a jar (yes, jar) of brown tubes that are advertised as “American Hot Dogs.” Floating about in a way that reminds me of something from the Medical Oddities museum in D.C., even the stars & stripes on the label can’t help these things be construed as anything CLOSE to food. From the point of view of the Brits though, they must love it. They’re thinking: “We give them their own country, and this is the best they come up with?”

We all know how in cinema, the really, really bad stuff goes straight to video, right? The last few American Pies, Road House 2, pretty much any time a cinematic series is in its death throes? Well, a similar thing happens in the food world. There are clearly some disturbing food products out there, and the ones that don’t make the cut, be it because they come with warnings on the label to avoid prolonged exposure, or are advertised as “also great as a disinfectant!” Well, those products go straight to foreign countries, to places like Thailand, where their Red Bull is sold over the counter…..in pharmacies. Or, apparently, to Scotland, as I gaze at the embryonic tubular monstrosities set before me in the…..condiment aisle? What? “Would you like salt and vinegar with your chips sir?” “No thanks, I’ll have hot dog instead.” Then they watch as you try to club together limp hot dog and limp French fry…er, chip, giving those chimps from 2001 a run for their money in the motor skill development department. Should you ever encounter jarred hot dogs, my friends, walk on by. Pay them no heed. They’d probably be more useful stuffed under doors to make them less drafty, or even as a swizzle stick in a slurry cocktail for the pigs on the farm. Instead, head over to the aisle of flour and sugar, where “baking needs” has been renamed “frying needs (I’m not kidding about this),” so the Scots know the quickest way to get that fattening protective layer of goodness around whatever their straining heart desires. “Life Slowing You Down? Get to death faster with any one of our delicious fried foods!”

Food is life. Duh. Sorry, not trying to blow your mind with any of this stuff, but it’s true. So supermarkets should cater to this belief, have things divided up according to ones place in life. The newborn aisle, easy enough, with mushy peas, pureed foods, the usual slop stuff. The “I got dumped aisle,” with ice cream, junk food, and it would be conveniently located right by the alcohol aisle, which is kind of the multi-purpose room of the school of food, and with the “holy crap, I’m drunk/stoned” aisle. And then you could have the aisle devoted to the unique aspects of life, like “Food for those with third nipples,” or “I like the way ketchup feels on my skin.” It could be a circular-shaped store, so the “I’m old” section mingles with the “I’m wicked young” section. I’m opening up the floor to other suggestions here.

By the way, supermarkets are really not fans of you taking pictures in the store. The only way I got out alive was by getting all Genghis Khan on the security guard with a frozen leg of lamb.

5 Years Later....

Urbsfest started out as a New Year’s party…freezing our high-school asses off in my father’s basement, under trippy colored lights, hiding our low-end liquor in low-end soda bottles. There were maybe 12 of us that first year, using the snow for ice cubes, desperate for the limited amount of fun one can have in the middle of a New London winter.

But we all know what Urbsfest became by the time 2004 rolled around.

So, with all those great memories in mind, I can only say two things. One: I’m sorry I won’t be at Jonaroo. It promises to be something that any friend of the Braunstein would be honored to attend. And with the pouring rain of a Scottish summer falling around me, I’m even more jealous for the sun and pool that are promised in New Jersey next weekend.

Secondly, I can’t help but think of my own 30th. It’s inevitable. But, so should be another Urbsfest. Inevitable. Remember Sean Connery’s death scene in “The Untouchables?” I pose you the same question: what are you prepared to do? Would you brave a weekend in the New England winter for the sake of a comeback?

It’s funny, the crazy ideas the mind can come up with before that first hit of caffeine. But I put it to you, readers…is a winter Urbsfest possible? How dedicated are you?

Klau Kalash!

You asked for it…sticks. A couple stories about things on sticks. First, go rent “So I Married an Axe Murderer.” There’s a great discussion of foods on sticks. And a bagpipe solo. And some great anti-afro redhead sentiment. Why it never got an Oscar nod, I’ll never know.

I once worked with a chef who had an extreme fear of popsicle sticks and mayonnaise. This led to my first experience with mayo popsicles; also to my first experience of a grown man screaming like a little girl at a Backstreet Boys concert.

To me, there’s something great about chewing on a stick after whatever it’s been holding is long gone. You get that latent grape flavor of a long-gone popsicle, the fried aroma of what once was a corn dog. I can’t however, express the same dedication to the fortitude of stick-held food than my friend Jon, who very nearly came to blows over a corn dog’s “wardrobe malfunction” after a night of drinking in Brighton. Jon has never failed a good stick; that night, the stick failed him.

One of the many, many fried foods that has made itself enough of a mainstay of common cuisine here to be featured in the meat cabinet at the local supermarket in the Scotch Egg. A hardboiled egg that’s been covered in sausage meat and deep fried, this is something that would benefit from a stick. Like those blessed Arancinis that were like a small smoldering fire for your mouth on cold Italian days. It would help keep the grease off your hands, and therefore off your ridiculously expensive Italian clothing.

But you’re not in Italy, are you? You’re back in the U.S. of A., where consumerism makes popsicle sticks like manna from heaven, and we can stick them in whatever kind of food we want. Now that’s freedom.

One day you wake up from that sickeningly sweet desire to save money that lures you into the darkest depths of Benny’s, Ocean State Job, or, worst of all, The Christmas Tree Shop. The Christmas Tree Shop is to intelligent Catholics what Foxwoods is to intelligent Mashantuckets: a disgraceful sellout of your culture to the masses. When you get to the cash register, the clerk’s got that look like they’re either counting change in their head, or contemplating how they’re going to kill themselves. And it’s such a misnomer: they don’t sell anything that would pass for a Christmas Tree, besides one that hangs on your car mirror. And you certainly don’t shop there: you suffer. That’s if you even admit to going. They should call it Useless Item Suffering. UIS. Gives me IBS.

Not today. Today, you’re in the back, talking to the 1.99 chalkboard that has the cutest little elves dancing all over it, and you’re about to buy 3, because…well, the elves are talking to you. Also, you’re high. And everyone needs that one thing in their house that makes them a little sick whenever they look at it. For me, chronologically, it was Heathcliff cartoons, my sister, Brussels sprouts, and tequila.

And just as some female linebacker in a sundress larger than the actual sun tries to get her not-so-wee sausage fingers on your elfish hoard, you spy an overlooked box of 10,000 popsicle sticks. And then all you think is about how now, for the next 10,000 times you need to apply ointment to anything, or get drunk enough to make some stupid home-made freezer pops from a Martha Stewart cookbook…well, you’ll be set. You drop the chalkboards, spend a moment watching the “sun” set over the lower shelves as your foe struggles to pick up her new gain, grab the sticks, and run for the door.

Are you nuts? When have you used ten thousand of anything? Those sticks were once a tree that housed those damned chalkboard elves, before they had to sell their images to the Christmas Tree Shop in exchange for a few square feet of space at one of the many, many, many trailer parks in Wareham. Have you ever really looked at how many there are? You’re driving down the strip, and when you look to one side, you catch a glimpse of them through the trees, but you really don’t believe your eyes enough to realize what kind of danger you’re in. Remember when Daniel Day is walking with the English through the field in Last of the Mohicans? Just like that, except replace the Hurons with white trash. You could give one popsicle stick to each trailer in Wareham, and you’d still find yourself running back to that wind milled monstrosity for seconds.

But I’ll give credit where credit’s due. There is in fact one stick that has withstood the test of time, a food focused, stand-alone marvel: the Hoodsie cup. That wood stick tastes good, all by itself! And it’s not all Excalibur’d in the food already…you get to disgrace it as you see fit, on your terms. I have no idea where Hood gets its wood (“Every man wants Hood wood”….a sexually charged marketing scheme for the summertime), but it pairs perfectly with the chemical laden ice cream duo in the cup.

Dryer Sheets

Have you ever heard a boxer fart? I’m not talking about Tyson after too many buffalo wings. Ha, Tyson…buffalo wings. I didn’t even mean that double entendre. I mean a boxer…the dog. 8:30 on a Sunday, and my neighbor downstairs has let out her dog into her gravel, and this thing starts farting so powerfully, I can hear it through my closed window, followed by the gas-propelled pebbles hitting the glass. Impressive.

I stumble out of bed, still reeling slightly from the flu-like systems of the past two days. Striking up a conversation with myself in the mirror, I wait for the water to boil, one step closer to that magical combo of coffee and decongestants, a legalized blast of uppers and downers. The result? I’m contemplating just what kind of advanced stamping machine Campbell’s uses to churn out thousands of doughy letters on a daily basis for their alphabet soup. Would the ever consider producing a foreign-language soup, with umlauts or accented e’s? They could minimize wasted dough by just throwing in some leftover dots and stringy bits, and pass them off as whatever their customer wanted.

And why not abstract alphabet soup? Just random pieces of something, to stimulate creative thoughts in the kids. Rorschach…the soup. Or fortune teller soup. Intuitive AND nutritious. Might not have made much difference in my day, I still would’ve seen Tommy Ellison picking on me in the schoolyard. Red hair, buck teeth, braces, intelligence? I was doomed from the start. Doomed to be SEXY. I just had a couple decade-waiting period. Why do they even give you the option of rainbow-colored bands on your braces? So you can draw even more attention to the metal structure that looks like some junior architect’s sick joke?

And all this from the bathroom mirror. Why can’t I just think about sex like a normal guy? I’ll blame it on the drugs.

Can you guess this product from its ingredients?:

Aqua, alcohol, Benzoic acid, Poloxamer 407, Eucalyptol, Menthyl salicylate, Thymol, Menthol, Sodium benzoate, Caramel.

It’s Listerine. The Caramel bit kills me. In what focus group did they decide that urine was a good color for something that you swig in your mouth on a daily basis? Did they need to round out the ingredients with something that didn’t have an x,y, or z in it? It certainly wouldn’t fly as a Crayola color, that’s for sure.

It’s funny the things we’ll put in our mouths because they’re so nicely packaged and labeled. Take Coke, for instance. In the bottle, you don’t question it. But do you honestly think that if you came across a pool of fizzy black liquid, somewhere out there in the wilderness, you’d start drinking it up? If you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake….

DRINK IT UP!!!

Neti time. More time with my thoughts, as salt water courses through me. Because I need more time to ponder the outrageous. Like, what the hell is Nancy Kerrigan doing on the box for my Neti pot? She looks like she’s filtering crystal meth through her nostrils. Or signing the papers on a new car. Or both.

But enough about ice queens, their bad knees, and their drug habits. My saline-saturated eyes fall on the one thing that’s been gathering dust in my kitchen since I’ve moved in: the dehydrator. Why the hell haven’t I been dehydrating everything? Forget strips of marinated meat…I wonder how long I could keep a stray cat in there. Can you reverse the effects of a dehydrated cat, like Shrinky-Dinks? You could make tabby throw rugs real quick. Or organic edible dryer sheets, using some dehydrated apricots or something...throw them in with your colored laundry. All the stuff you see in the supermarket looks like it would taste good as a summer cocktail anyways. And why not just have alcohol-scented laundry detergent? Gin and tonic fabric softener perhaps? It’s the perfect scent to bring a harmonious balance to your next AA/sexaholics mixer.

I guess the point that I’m trying to make is that I’ve been seeing a lot of redundancies in the world around me. When the line between cleaners and fruit cocktails becomes blurred, separated by an aisle or two in the supermarket, it makes you look around a bit. In this world of over-production, there should be one or the other. Ok, perfect example: commercial packing peanuts, and commercial Chinese prawn crackers. They look the same, taste the same, and are completely interchangeable. You’ve seen those corn-starch packing peanuts that dissolve in water. Just add a touch of salt, write “great with a sweet chili dip!” on the outside of the box, and you’re good to go.