Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

food

I Nearly Died.

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Today I nearly died.

I am not a fan of lunch. Or breakfast, actually. Essentially, daytime meals just aren’t my thing. My ideal workday starts with a twenty ounce, all fruit smoothie and includes a brief, protein-filled snack, enabling me to power through my afternoon in a frenzy of incisive edits and timely project management.

Some days, though, I need more serious refueling, and at noon when I came out of four back-to-back meetings over three hours I decided today was one of those days.

Mindful of my pre-wedding, pre-house budget, I turned down an offer from our designers to pick up sushi (sob), and instead headed for my #1 most reliable lunch destination – Mama’s Vegetarian.

(Note that on my proverbial desert island all that is served is sushi and falafel.)

I ordered my usual, “large mama’s, whole wheat, hummus, not hot,” and headed over to the salad bar to stock up on pickles, extra tahini, and something I hadn’t seen there before – some awesome, super-green tabouleh, dotted with couscous, or maybe pine nuts?

A good falafel causes me to maul it with wild abandon, as if I’ve been starved for weeks. Crumbs and tahini explode in every direction – I have no semblance of restraint.

Today was no exception, except for when I took that first voracious bite I discovered that my “not hot” got translated as “with hot.”

This is not how I nearly died. Mama’s hot sauce is hot, but not too hot. I can and do enjoy it from time to time. I just wasn’t prepared for the hot sauce – it caught me off guard.

I glanced around my desk for a method of fanning the flames now active on my tongue. I ate a pickle, which helped. I eyed my extra tahini, but I would need that to douse the rest of the falafel.

My eyes settled on the tabouleh. Leafy, grainy – perfect to scrape the hot out of my throat so I could better prepare for the next bite. I scooped up a heaping portion of the tabouleh on my fork – at least a tablespoon, and crammed it into my mouth, swallowing some as soon as it hit my tongue.

This is how I nearly died. You see, the tabouleh was not tabouleh. It just looked like tabouleh. It was actually ground up hot peppers.

Oh yes. And that couscous and/or pine nuts? Those would be the hot pepper seeds.

It was the hottest thing I have ever tasted. Or felt. Or contemplated. I don’t have a word for its hotness. And, take note, my father is a hot pepper farmer.

My face flushed with blood and drained of color in rapid succession. My tongue went absolutely numb from shock. I couldn’t breath.

I reflexively – foolishly – swallowed the entire tablespoon of not-tabouleh just to get it out of my mouth.

This was the incorrect stratagem to ameliorate the situation.

To its credit, my body – perhaps sensing my impending peril – did everything within its power to expel the offensive material from my esophagus. I coughed. I trembled and heaved. I began to rapidly hiccup.

All to no avail – I was committed to digest this foul pepper paste – a paste so hot that for the rest of the day I could physically feel its exact location within my digestive system at any given time by pinpointing the intense burning sensation within my body, and which resulted in several occasions of me lying prone on the floor of my cube, praying to whatever gods would listen to purge me of this awful misery.

Let’s just say that the average adult has four to seven meters of small intestine, and that after today I am acutely aware of that fact.

Some like it hot. Me, not so much.

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It occurs to me that so far I’ve presented a sort of sterilized view of myself for NaBloPoMo, and I’ve decided that the only cure is to shock you out of your complacency by telling you something very personal.

After a day of soul-searching I think I’ve finally seized on the right detail; something deep and secret that Elise only knows by virtue of living with me for the past three years.

Here goes.

I don’t like hot food.

It’s not that I like to eat all food raw, although given my mostly vegetarian state I certainly wouldn’t mind being left with a diet of hummus and sushi, since that’s practically my desert island ideal.

I do like things braised, or blackened, or melted. I just don’t want to eat them while they’re hot. I don’t like the way flavors work in hot food. I don’t like how it feels on my tongue. And, I don’t tend to slowly savor it.

Just about any hot food you can name I prefer cold. Pizza, for sure. Back in my more omnivorous days, any sort of chicken. Pasta dishes, out of habit, especially lasagna or creams that won’t separate.

Chinese food, categorically. Fish, increasingly. Hot dogs, even.

The list goes on.

There are few specific exceptions to my rule. Drinks, for one, are categorically excepted. Frequently so are french fries (or, at least, they aren’t the same after they’re refrigerated). Anything with over 50% of its volume as eggs, which includes some quiches and mega-french toast are excused on the basis of texture. Food that is primarily liquid, like broth-based soup, is often an exception (though there are some hot soups I prefer cold). And, I find red meat especially distasteful cold, thought it’s pretty much always distasteful as far as I’ve ever been concerned, and I don’t plan on eating it ever again, so the point is moot.

Also, I admit that there’s a certain thrill to certain foods being warm. Warm breads and pastries, those are always a treat.

On the whole, though, I prefer 90% of the culinary world straight from the refrigerator.

There you go; deep, meaningful, previously secret aspects of my life out there for the whole world to read. Never mind that in the last post I snuck in a confession about my deep-seated fear of navy blue. Plus, I rambled in a sort of personal way during Trio.

Hmm, maybe this NaBloPoMo hasn’t been as superficial as I thought…

Return of Girlfriend and Prickly Pear Mojitos

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After a week of her absence, every aspect of life involving Elise seems like an adventure. Let’s cook rice! Let’s light candles! Let’s go for a walk!

Okay!

The dizzying newness of every trip up the stairs to see the light on in her office only serves to emphasize the advice I received from my-former / Elise’s-new co-worker Dan: a couple needs to vacation together and apart.

Since I had Bonnaroo in June and we had St. Louis together in July, Elise was suffering from a one-vacation handicap. She needed time away from me to have an adventure, and I needed time to shuffle around the house and pretend to be a bachelor. With her returned from San Francisco it feels as though our balance has been reset.

Our walk this afternoon took us through the Italian Market*, and afterwards past Pat’s and Geno’s** to wander down Passyunk to find a fabled Mexican restaurant with excellent margaritas.

It had been fabled by an old professor of mine who, apparently, has only a relative sense of location. We didn’t have directions, or the name of the restaurant, but he told us that we would have arrived when we were able to see a mural, a parking lot, and the Mexican restaurant all at the same time.

We came to such a point, and were faced with a drab Mexican restaurant with multi-colored blankets in the windows. It did not look like the home of excellent margaritas.

“Do you think that’s the place he was raving about?”

“Well, consider the source.”

The source being my motorcycle-riding, monochromatic- dressing, ponytailed senior project advisor.***

“Well, i suppose…”

Elise tapped on my shoulder. I turned to regard her and noticed that we were standing in front of a giant orange slab of a building with no sign and a huge wooden door.**** It looked like it needed a moat.

“Yeah, that’s probably it.”

Indeed, it was. And, not only were the margaritas excellent, so were the mojitos. Several drinks later I learned how to use Elise’s new camera, and bit my poor drunken tongue so badly that we thought I would need stitches.

It’s nice to be having adventures together, again.


* Note to self: The Italian Market is a ghost town by two on a Sunday. Start getting out of bed before one.

** Note to the internet: No Philadelphian who enjoys cheesestakes would ever eat at Pat’s or Geno’s. They are for tourists and people in South Philly who don’t know any better. If you want a good cheesesteak go to Jim’s or Tony Luke’s. Trust me.

***Yes, essentially my father as a communications professor (except i don’t think prof owns several dozen rifles).

**** Name, undetermined. It’s just above Morris on Passyunk, and both we and Prof. Steggy highly recommend it.

Weird Is Relative

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Last week at work everyone was buzzing about Emmitt Smith winning some sort of television show about dancing.

Since I am totally divorced from the magical land of time-suck known as television I thought they were just putting me on. You have to admit, it does sound improbable, aside from the fact that it’s altogether blasphemous for such salt-of-the-earth Philadelphians to be happy about a former Dallas Cowboy winning anything.

Yet, strange as it all seemed, it was true. My work friends once again took this opportunity to mock me for my self-imposed teevee blackout, as if i had given up using adjectives or basking in the light of the sun.

I wanted to shoot back, “How many concerts have you been to this month? How many have you recorded? And how many blogs (over a thousand) have you read?”


Of course, my weirdness doesn’t end in my eschewing of the boob tube. Another point of endless fascination is that I don’t drive – I don’t even have my license. I’ve had my permit a few times, and am actually flirting with getting it again, but when it comes down to it I’m distrustful of cars, and moreso of the people who drive them.

Still, people always ask, “Why wouldn’t you want to own/drive a car,” and in my head i complete the sentence “…in the city recently named as the second-most expensive in the country to do so?”

Usually my tv blackout wins out against non-driving as weirdest trait, but a competing one is my flirtation with vegetarianism – which is patently ridiculous, as my current state of consumption is incredibly lax in comparison to when I was a rules-obeying vegetarian for my latter teen years.

By comparison, my current rules are so loose i can hardly coin a term for them … lacto-ovo-pesco-broth-o-vegetarian? I’m not trying to make a statement; i just don’t like red meat, and i eat healthier on the whole when I can’t rely on variations on chicken nuggets for every meal.

A few years ago it would have all gotten under my skin, crawling around in my subconscious, making me doubt myself. Now it’s more like, eh, if they tried it they’d understand. Because, all weirdness is relative.

Plus, He Hangs Out With Santa

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I really, really have no experience with children.

I was, at one point, a summer camp counselor for four years, but children in a group setting are not children, they are CHILDREN. An entity. You know, like Borg. It’s about managing all of them in relation to each other.

Having no child-skills to speak of, in my limited interactions with wee ones i just do what my mother did – treat them like fully functional small adults who are slightly hard of hearing. I don’t engage in baby-talk, and i don’t engage in tacit little white lies about coal in stockings and Easter Bunnies.

Last night we had a wee pre-Thanksgiving for our friends that happened to include a toddler guest. As Elise and I are both blue state yuppies to the nth degree, dinner was slightly peculiar and entirely vegetarian. Not exactly toddler-friend fare. So, everyone spent the meal coaxing the infinitely cute toddler to try some of the peculiar offerings on his plate.

“Try the creamed corn! It’s like Mac’n’Cheese, but without macaroni. Or cheese.”

Eventually they hit upon the superhero angle. Superheroes definitely ate their food.

“How could the Flash be so fast without eating his fennel?”

They were on the right path, but it still wasn’t quite working. As i had the vastest comic knowledge of all in attendance (and was at this point slightly inebriated on my second or third Rose Martini), i felt the need to chime in.

“You know, Superman doesn’t just eat his vegetables. He eats everything. Superman invented the clean plate club.”

The toddler looked at me, eyes innocent and wide, while the guests regarded me in mute amusement/horror.

“Why,” i posited, “do you think he has so many more powers than all the other superheroes.”

The toddler dubiously lifted up his fork as a tiny part of my soul withered and died.

How the hell do you mommy bloggers do this every day?