wideeyedfunk

Category: Food

Food should only startle in a good way.

  • Are you heading to the basement?

    Cruising on the Kulana Huli.

    Are you heading to the basement? The Spouse asked me. I glared at him, turned a page in the LL Bean winter coats catalog. I didn’t want to head to the basement. The basement is where the fitness gear is kept. The stationary bike. The weights. The Bowflex that came with the house. The basement is a place of boredom and discomfort. I dislike it. On the other hand, I do like reasonable blood pressure and the ability to be agile as my person betrays me with age. So, as a household the Spouse , the dogs, and I frequent the basement. The people use the wretched gear. The dogs sniff the cat box and chew things.

    Joe’s Deli has new specials up today, the Spouse continued on in an apparent non sequitur. It was a sneaky tactic. In the secret language of our long association he was suggesting two things: 1) Get take-out – and house rules state that if you SAY take-out, we GET take-out. Period. He didn’t quite say it though. 2) Avoid the basement – take-out and basement rarely occur on the same day.

    I flipped more pages in the catalog.  It was a crummy choice. The basement and good health but no delicious take-out OR take-out and an escalation of the impending waistband emergency.

    What if – and here I looked up to make direct eye contact with the Spouse – what if we rode our bikes over to the deli to get the take out?

    The bright light of my genius flared the room and the Spouse stood straight and tall. He looked at me with love and awe. And so it was.

    Buffalo Zoo bison at dinner. Dining in tonight.

    And it was great. I saw wondrous things on the ride to the take-out. A small red rubber ball, the kind that come from gum machines and dentist office chests, sadly lost and alone on the street. A jogger, a thousand joggers in the park, sweating and puffing. I smiled at them from my dignified, scarfed position aboard the mighty Kulana Huli. I bet they weren’t getting take-out.

    I stopped at the zoo to look at the bison munching  their hay. We saw a butt made of pumpkins – with a stuffed straw person built around it to look like someone’s pants were drooping as they bent over. An angry or mean young person was flinging cds into traffic from atop an apartment building. A dog ran into the street and was saved. A cop car went by in massive fury, sailing over bumps at high speed. I smiled at a guy mowing his lawn and he smiled back.

    Blurry Pumpkin Butt. Me and the Kulana Huli cruised by too fast for a clear shot.

    Within 30 minutes of the decision, the Spouse and I sat the stools at the kitchen table with a cheesesteak for me and a turkey reuben for him. His beer bottle fitzed when he opened it, and my wine gurgled into a glass. We smiled pretty smugly at each other and I think at the same time sneaked soggy take-out chips to dogs.

  • A goldfish escaped in the car.

    It isn’t what it sounds like. I didn’t actually lose a Carassius auratus auratus in the car. It isn’t like the time the lobsters got free and headed for liberty under the seats. We could hear them shuffling around under there while we sped for the house. I held my feet up, sure one was going to get me. The Spouse had to keep his foot on the gas, his Achilles tendon vulnerable to lobster attack.

    Today I lost a tasty, cheddar cheese flavored multigrain Goldfish™. I like to buy them in the 30 ounce milk carton. Probably there are about a million in there. 75,000 servings of crunchy saltliness. And as we were driving along in the new all-black nearly perfect Pathfinder, one of them flopped its way out of the carton and disappeared in the crack between the seat and the console.

    The Spouse didn’t turn his head but I could feel his awareness of the escape.

    I casually reached two fingers down into the crevice where I could see the fish stranded on a small ledge. Nothing. I peered down into the crevice. Gone. Disappeared into the underseat ether.

    Uh oh, I said. The spouse laughed. Not like a hah-hah laugh, but an oh-great kind of laugh. He claims not to care too much but I sort of doubt him.

    I doubt him so much that I debated whether or not to tell him about the other two escapees who hid under my leg for a few hours. Maybe he won’t notice the Goldfish shaped oil smootzes on my seat.

  • Chips Weren’t Meant to Be Baked

    Offending baked chips. Note the clear "Baked" marking. They don’t want us to be surprised. They know there are disappointments inside.

    I just ate a thin piece of ranch flavored cardboard. Oh. Wait. I’m looking at the bag I pulled it from and I see the problem. It’s a bag of BAKED potato chips. BAKED.

    Friends, let me say to you: chips were not meant to be baked.

     I know. We eat too much fat. We eat too much salt. We eat too many chips. And by “we”, I mean “I”, but I am not alone because some food scientist/dietician fool decided to bake chips. And some management fool decided that this was marketable. And what is truly remarkable is that taste testing fools told them this resulted in edible, even maybe good snacking. They lied.

    I am at the least a third generation chip snacker. I know chips.

    The Snack Man at the chips.

    Grandpa always had a bag of chips at his house. Those chips were always open, the top of the bag carefully rolled and clothes-pinned. They were always tucked up high – on the top shelf above the cereal, the crackers, the unused old dried soup packets. We kids needed to climb onto the chair, to get up on the stool, to stand on the counter, to reach the chips. Friends, those chips weren’t baked.

     My dad was known as the “Snack Man” for years, after one of my brother’s girlfriends noted that he spent a certain amount of time munching from bags of chips at the pantry door. I used to lie around in bed reading a lot when I was a kid, but the sound of a foil bag rustling in an entirely different wing of the house sent me running. If the Snack Man was at the chips, an empty bag was sure to follow.

     I am broadly experienced in chips. I’ve eaten chips on three continents. I’ve had chips deep fried in lard, peanut oil, various vegetable oils, and once in the Russian Far East, chips that perhaps had been cooked in industrial waste oil.

    Deep fried chip goodness.

    I love chips. But again, friends, not baked chips. A baked chip is just a chunk of potato. It tastes…like a potato. Or, if it has flavor chemicals all over it, it takes like a piece of cardboard with flavor on it. Baked chips are no kind of chip at all.

     After the apocalypse, zombie, nuclear winter, whatever, who cares, I’m heading out with my shotgun to find a chip delivery truck. I’m going to pry open the cargo doors, make myself a chip bag chair, and snack. I’ll eat chips until I run out of shells for the ghouls or chips for the belly. Because, of course, no one is going to have time to make chips in the aftermath. Like prescription antibiotics and gasoline, chips will be a finite resource.

    If you are reading this and you work for a chip company, I beseech you, tell your people to stop baking chips. Spend your time making more deep fried chip goodness. If you are reading this while eating chips, I can only applaud your good taste. If your chips are extra dark, small-batch, kettle-cooked, I bow to your greatness.