Anger Burger

I’ve let it be known on my other website that I’m a fan of the Red Bull, and for good reasons, the primary of which are:

• it actually works
• it does not contain high fructose corn syrup

A few weeks back I read about Red Bull’s 2008 venture of making a simple cola, and my spirits soared¹.  As I initially suspected, they were going the all-natural route, but surprised me even more by eliminating phosphoric acid as well.  Phosphoric acid is what gives Coca-Cola (and most sodas) it’s peppy tartness, and as you might expect it is used only because it is cheap cheap cheap.  The awesome part?  It destroys bone mass and contributes to kidney problems.

Enter (uh, again) Red Bull Cola.  Natural flavors, no phosphoric acid, cane sugar, an adult flavor and is available in their classic petite 8.4 oz. can, also known as the bestest size.  The sweetness of Red Bull Cola is a full 10 grams less than a can of Coca-Cola, but it is the almost medicinal-spiciness that appeals to me.  It starts with a clear galangal/clove punch, but there’s a savory finish to the beverage, something possibly due to the inclusion of mustard seed and pine in the ingredients, but also easily attributed to the lack of high fructose corn syrup.  It’s a clean flavor, one that is actually refreshing rather than cloying.  My mouth is not physically sticky after drinking it.

While I appreciate all of these flavor qualities, I think one of the most valuable aspects of Red Bull Cola (at least, I really hope) is its availability – it could very well be the only readily available, gas-station-purchasable natural soda.  There are plenty of other tasty all-natural sodas in the world, but in my real world I don’t carry icy-cold hippie sodas around with me to bust into when I’m out walking and realize that what I really need right now?  Is sugary, sweet precious caffeine.  Previously I went for Red Bull in this instance (remember: still better for you than a Coke), but I appreciate having a classic cola option now.

And now, for the hypocritical, self-contradictory switcheroo: I don’t know that I’ll be buying it again soon.  It doesn’t taste like Coca-Cola.  Nothing else does.  And if I’m going to be spending $2 on a can of something caffeinated and bubbly?  I’m going to buy a regular Red Bull.

As a side note, perhaps you’ve heard that Pepsi and Mountain Dew now have “natural sugar” versions?  They do.  I’ve only seen them at 7-11 here in Los Angeles, and they are hard to spot since their labels look almost exactly the same as the HFCS versions.  However, Mike and I tried them both and realized that: they are still sort of gross.  Crazy sweet, too.  In fact, the Mountain Dew tasted very strongly of artificial sweetener, something I couldn’t wrap my brain around.  How can natural sugar taste more like aspartame than aspartame does?  I don’t know, but it was unpleasant.  Also: I remembered that regular Mountain Dew is totally grody.

¹This cliché is a bit of an exaggeration.  I think I said “Yay!” out loud, though.

I Can’t Believe it’s Not Asian!

(Just wait for the avocado smoothie post.)

So, a while back I told my dad I was interested in juicing because of a theory I had that raw fruit and vegetable juices without the fiber would be okay for my intestines.  Which is what juicing is, right?  Right.  Since he is an avid garage-sale-man (he calls it “flim-flamming,” which isn’t exactly accurate) I asked him to keep on the lookout for a good used juicer.  And what should arrive at my doorstep but a brand new Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Deluxe?

He had been at Costco and there it was, significantly below retail cost and he thought, because he’s a sweet, caring, loving father, that he would just buy it for me and send it to me as a surprise.

Surprise!

Internet, heed my words: this juicer is awful.  In a flurry of excitement I ran out and bought a heap of fresh produce (a sack of carrots, a bag of beets, some apples) and hustled back home to juice those fuckers.  It was nearing dinnertime, but I figured a bracing glass of beet juice was as good a way as any to pique the appetite.  And long story short: 20 minutes later I was still trying to get that beet juice.  The motor was just too weak to process anything but apples, taking minutes for a single length of carrot to render down, and longer for a hunk of beet.  I went online thinking that I was doing something wrong, but no, other people had the same complaints.  I didn’t even take photos of the ordeal I was so distracted, which is saying something.

So, I returned it to a Costco here in L.A., who insisted on giving me cash back (!) after which I promised my pop I’d spend the money on something fun.  So I did.

Behold, the destroyer of matter!

I bought a blender.  I chose the one that looked the coolest at Target, and when I got home I set about making a smoothie.

When I was a kid my mom went on a brief smoothie-making rampage, and the important thing I remember from this period is COCONUT MILK.  Coconut milk makes everything better.  I also genuinely believe that the saturated fats from coconut milk are good for your body,  but I don’t base that on science so much as blind hope.  Nevertheless, a tablespoon or two of coconut milk isn’t going to kill anyone, and it makes the smoothie taste a bazillion times better.

This one isn’t quite ripe, but I ate it anyway.

I was also pretty shocked to find my 2nd favorite New Zealand fruit at my local Ralph’s grocery store, and at a mere $1.99 a pound!  Holy shit!  They’re called feijoa, and to my delight Kiwis pronounce it with a hard j, fee-joe-ah.  Anyhow, at 30¢ a fruit these fellas add a really fabulous tropical fruit flavor to anything.  The Kiwis have feijoa cereal, yogurt, vodka, just about everything.  It is called a “pineapple guava” in other countries, which is an accurate description.  It tastes primarily like a guava – again, a fruity, tropical flavor hard to describe with similes – but with a high acid note like a pineapple.  The skin can theoretically be eaten, but is often bitter (when not bitter is is tart, which some people don’t like but I do).  The texture of the flesh is what makes is better, perhaps, as an ingredient than an eating-fruit, as it inherited the grittiness of a guava along with the flavor.  But oh, what a flavor!  Here’s a true story:

How Feijoa Saved My Life
by Sunday Williams

When I was in New Zealand on a solo trip, one day I was out in Wellington enjoying a sunny, summery day when I suddenly had a blood sugar crash.  I was pretty familiar with the feeling, though surprised (I’d eaten breakfast) and took my time finding some lunch.  As there are a lot of Indonesian and Malaysian restaurants in NZ, I stopped at one for a noodle plate.  Except, even as I ordered the plate I felt almost faint with hunger.  Why was I so hungry?  My hands shook as I handed over the money.  I sat and waited at a table for an epic 20 minutes, too out of it to seriously consider just leaving and heading to the corner market for a candy bar while I waited.  When my food finally arrived I packed it into my eat-hole as fast as I could, not tasting a single noodle (I still only remember it as “oily”).

Within 10 minutes of leaving, I felt the familiar, toxic flush of MSG poisoning.  Now, I have a decent tolerance for MSG (I can eat a lot of Doritos, for instance, and never feel goofy) but high doses make me have a strong reaction.  I first discovered this in my early teens after eating at a Chinese restaurant with my mother and sister and then having the worst migraine of my life within an hour.  More recently I’d eaten a bowl of phở and narrowly avoided the migraine by a near-instant ingestion of Excedrin and a gallon of water.  But here, on a strange street corner in a country 10,000 miles from home?  The zingy, hyper-sensitive flush spread over my face and neck and I looked around in a panic.  I estimated I was a 20-minute fast walk from the hostel, if I could get my bearings and head straight there.  I took out a map as the flush turned into a high-pitch ringing in my ears.  My eyes were getting light-sensitive already.  My throat itched.  I determined which way to walk and within five minutes was really worried – this one was coming on hard.  That was some industrial-fucking-strength MSG.  I skidded to a stop next to a small drugstore and ran inside looking for aspirin.  Except, out of all my preparation for this trip, I didn’t know that:

• acetaminophen is called “paracetamol”
• aspirin is generally not sold as a generic and is instead called a brand name like “Dispirin”

Which led to me looking for painkillers for probably 10 minutes in the store while I became increasingly disoriented.  I was well into the floaters of a full migraine, the vision-blocking clots of light that hit just before the pain really does.  I grabbed a few boxes of Dispirin and practically ran my ass back to the hostel.

For the next 4 hours I lay in a dark room (thank Cheebus I got a private room) sweating and gripping the sheets.  I draped a wet sock across my face in lieu of owning a washcloth.  By the time the worst of it broke I remembered that I had a pint of feijoa icecream in the freezer.  I crept out to retrieve it and terrified some German tourists by hissing menacingly at them as I approached the fridge.  I crept back to my room with the icecream and a spoon, where, in the dark, I ate it.  And it was the best thing I’ve eaten in my life.

Now, it might not have really been the best thing, but at that moment it was.  Sweet-tart, fruity without tasting like candy, creamy, cold.  The last sharp talons of the migraine left as I ate it.  Sugar surged through my veins. I would survive.

Fin.

Anyway, so smoothies.  I was super-excited to see the feijoa and set about making a banana, feijoa, mango, berry, yogurt, coconut milk and maple syrup smoothie.

I believe there was also some orange juice in there.  Looking at the photo I’m going to have to vote yes, yes there was also orange juice.    Also!  Algae, there is a spoonful or two of green algae somewhere in there.

Result?  Blender works great.  I read some reviews online out of curiosity, and most people complain it is too loud, which I have to say: the engine is housed in METAL.  Yes, it is too loud.  But it’s also a blender I didn’t expect it to sound like mice sighing.  Other people complain it can’t even blend frozen fruit to which I say, huh? It suffers from the same problems most home blenders do, which is that the underpowered blade creates an airpocket that doesn’t promote easy blending (you have to stop and stir it a few times), but it blended with enough success that we were slurping down a totally fucking awesome smoothie in a mere five minutes.

In conclusion: thank you dad!  Thanks for the awesome blender.  I know it’s not the same as helping me try and healthify myself with juicing, but it’s close.  Actually, it’s not close as I have already had a milkshake for breakfast this morning (TRUE!), but still.  I love it.  It’s perfect.  And I have money leftover to buy a new pepper grinder!  Yay for papa!

I am formally announcing my change of this website from Anger Burger to Asian Burger.  Which, as Mike’s dad pointed out, is a bao, one of those BBQ pork buns.  So, maybe Anger Bao?

I’m not actually changing it, I’m too lazy.  But what is my issue?  What the fuck with the Asian-explosion?  Frankly, it’s going to keep happening until I run out of the fresh ingredients purchased from the Asian-market last week.  Deal with it.

Fried rice is an obvious choice.  We don’t make it very often because its messy and that sort of thing rules daily life.  Can you imagine what it would be like to be so affluent that you didn’t care what dishes/walls you dirtied while cooking?  Far out.  Anyway, fried rice.  Which resulted in fried rice stuck to the stove, the floor, the cupboards and the side of my face, but it’s delicious and I also — once again — make Mike to the cooking.  I do the prep.  That’s why I have the missing knuckles in the household.  I’m not going to give you a recipe for fried rice but I will tell you what I think makes it taste best:

• Chinese sausages (lap cheung) – they are dried, come in packets like hot dogs, and are the most astonishing combination of ultra-greasy, salty-sweet.  A common way to prepare them is to throw them in with the rice when it’s cooking (before the rice heats up, just lay them in the rice and water and then set to cook) and when its done, extract them and chop the sausages according to whatever you’re eating.  The rice will take on a slight umami, and the sausages themselves are superb, like sweet salami.

• Egg.  Egg.  Egg.  Fried rice needs egg.

• Some other meat/primary flavor.  We used shrimp in the photo above (leftover shrimp from the potstickers from the other day, actually), but often use leftover Spam.  Yes, Spam.  Spam fried rice is a thing of great universal beauty.

• Small vegetables.  It doesn’t really matter what you use, but it should be diced small.  Encountering anything of unwieldiness or mass in your fried rice is really a  sad affair.  Fried rice is comfort food: it should lack challenge both in palate and consistency.  With this in mind, frozen peas are the vegetable of choice.

And that’s basically it.  That’s not the whole recipe of course, but those are the most important parts.

Last night I wanted something on the opposite Asian spectrum from fried rice, something clean-tasting and virtuous.  Buckwheat noods!

Beautiful buckwheat noods.  Look at them sit there, so demure and unappealingly-colored.  And yet, they are miracle food for my poor bowel.  In the case of last night I quickly poached two boneless, skinless chicken thighs in boiling water and then boiled the noodles in the same water.  When they were done I rinsed them in cold water and reserved them to drain in the sink while I heated up some broth (a weak mix of a little miso, some sugar, soy sauce a teeny tiny dash of fish sauce, adding little increments of each until it tasted good) and prepared some simple bowls.  Also: if the Ministry of Asian Affairs doesn’t show up at my door demanding I stop butchering their recipes, I’ll be shocked.

Pour the hot broth over after you’ve assembled the stuff.

Basically each bowl gets some noodles, some shredded poached chicken thighs, generous portions of green onion and shiso leaf, a small mound of chopped fresh ginger and my personal favorite, a little Japanese-style egg omelette.  The omelette is simply two eggs, a teaspoon of sugar, a pinch of dashi granules (which is basically fish-flavored MSG) and a teaspoon or two of soy sauce.  In a pan, spread the egg thin and as it cooks but before it is totally cooked, roll it into a tube.  As it sits over low heat it melds into a solid tube of egg. Unless you fuck it up, like I did, and it stays a little runny on one side, but you know what?  It was delicious, and the slightly runny part added to the soup broth in the bowl, and everything was exactly what I wanted.

Like this.

Honestly, I felt like I could have eaten an entire second bowl, but I remembered the part where I wanted to feel good and not like a human beach ball.

Also, I had this conversation with Mike:

me: “Are you getting tired of Asian food yet?”

Mike: “I’m a white boy from Seattle, of course I’m not tired of Asian food yet.”

Despite not having had a dog for quite some time, I still see food drop to the floor and walk away thinking, “The dog will get it.”

For years I bought bags of potstickers from the Asian markets because they were cheap, tasted good enough and seemed impossible to make.  It was Mike — whose friends Christina and Melissa made him an honorary half-Chinese — who pointed out they they are even cheaper, even tastier and totally possible to make at home.

Apologies to my non-meaty friends.

The internet abounds with potsticker/gyoza recipes, though one should be advised that the fewer ingredients, the more authentic.  A basic, common potsticker is merely ground pork, salt, pepper, some chives or leeks and maybe a little sesame oil for flavor.  We build it from there by adding some more aromatics (garlic and ginger), some egg for a binder, cilantro, and some Chinese black vinegar for that unidentifiable “Chinese flavor”.  But even still, simplicity is key: no need for both chives and leeks, and to be honest, even the garlic is overkill.

Some ingredients of my “Sort-of-Thai Potstickers,” recipe listed below.

One thing I will likely never do is make homemade wrappers.  Fuck that.  Real dumpling/potsticker afficianados prefer a thicker dough, but I prefer thin (I lean toward the Japanese gyoza, which are practically tissue-thin) and even I have to draw a line in the lazy sand somewhere.  Anyway, finding a brand preference is up to you: most grocery stores carry Dynasty brand gyoza-wrappers, which as I said are thin but also small in circumference, and most Asian markets will carry a half-dozen or more brands ranging in size.  I buy which ever ones are packaged the sloppiest.

These are not the Dynasty wrappers, these are big, nameless Chinese ones.

The other secret to potsticker-making is to not over-fill.  Better to under-fill.  The small Dynasty wrappers need no more than a lightly heaping half-teaspoon, and a larger wrapper about double that.  While I’ll leave you to figure out how to shape them by Googling it, rest assured that by the time you get the hang of it you’ll be addicted to the forming process.  Which is good, because you’ll be making several dozen.  Line them up on a cookie sheet (with wet paper towels draped over to keep them from drying out) and then put the whole thing (minus the towels) into the freezer and let them set up for at least 20 minutes before bagging.  This keeps them from sticking together into a block as they freeze.

From there, you cook them.  Or, I don’t.  I leave it to Mike.  The gist of it is: fry them nearly as brown as you want them in a little hot oil, then pour in about a half a cup of water and cover to steam until cooked through, about 10 minutes (keep adding water and steaming until the edges of the wrappers are soft).

Yeah, fry it.

Porky Potstickers/Gyoza
when I say “finely” I mean it: the smaller the chop, the better the texture

½ lb ground pork
¼ C. finely chopped chives (green onion can substitute)
1 egg
1 tsp. sesame oil
2 Tbs. black vinegar
2 heaping Tbs. finely chopped ginger
1 finely chopped clove garlic
¼ C. finely chopped cilantro (stems too, they have more flavor)
1 Tbs. brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper

1 pkg. small wrappers (buy one for back-up and freeze if you don’t use)

Mix all ingredients but the wrappers together in a bowl, stirring vigorously until well-combined.  If it seems too runny to work with, let sit in the fridge for 15 minutes and it will firm up a little.  Form each potsticker as you please, but basically: brush 1/2 of wrapper edge with water (I prefer using a pastry brush in an attempt to keep my fingers dry) or with your finger (I’m warning you: it’s harder if your hands are sticky) and then fold over in some kind of decorative manner.  Just make sure they are stuck closed.  This makes about 40 of the small Dynasty wrappers and about 30 of the bigger ones.

Sort-of-Thai Potstickers/Gyoza
these can be vegetarian by substituting the shrimp for either tofu or more cabbage or chopped mushrooms, but if you do do all-vegetable, very quickly fry up the veggies to knock out a little of the water first – also, same rules apply for chopping finely

½ lb raw, shelled shrimp, finely chopped
1 egg
¼ C. finely shredded carrot
½ C. finely chopped cabbage
¼ C. finely chopped leek whites
¼ C. finely chopped cilantro (stems too, they have more flavor)
1 Tbs. fish sauce (nam pla)
2 Tbs. sweet chili sauce (failing that: 1 Tbs. hot chili sauce + 2 Tbs. brown sugar)
2 Tbs. finely chopped ginger
1 tsp. salt
2-3 finely finely finely chopped lime leaves**

Same general idea: stir it all up really good until totally incorporated. It’s a lot of ingredients, yes, and specialty ingredients to boot, but I use both fish sauce and sweet chili sauce a lot. You don’t need them, but I have to admit they are what make these potstickers taste vaguely Thai in origin.  Prepare as for pork potstickers.

**A note on the lime leaf: there’s some back-and-forth about whether we call these “Kaffir lime” anymore. The term “Kaffir” is derogatory, but it is still commonly (and innocently) used in reference to Kaffir limes and leaves.  The alternate suggestion for use is “makrud lime,” since “makrud” is the Thai name.  As you can see, I prefer just “lime leaf.”  Anyway: lime leaf is super-powerful and a little tough to chew, so chop it as fine as pepper.

• Hippie food with whole flax seeds in it.  The human digestive system cannot break down a flax seed. Think of it as a sleek rock.  It has that much nutritional value.

• There is a popular health-food blogger who seems like a very nice woman but who writes that every single recipe is “kissed” with a flavor.  “Kissed with salt,” or maybe “Kissed with lemon.”  Every time I read her posts I think about how she uses this in her daily life.  “Oof, those antibiotics made me kissed with diarrhea,” or “This internet connection is kissed with failure.”

• Speaking of bloggers, it’s common in the food-blogger community to use the phrase “Need I say more?”  It’ll be a photo of a package of bacon and underneath is “Need I say more?“  Well, yes, you need.  Because what is your fucking point exactly?  I think I’m going to start writing “This tastes good,” under images.  That’s all.

• Now that I mentioned it: bacon.  Bacon tastes good.  LET US ALL NOW MOVE ON.

• The way that some Europeans eat a piece of cheese-toast with a knife and fork.  I find myself offended by the implication that they are so cultured that they need to chip off unwieldy pieces of dry, room-temperature cheese-toast with metal utensils rather than use their fingers.  Like when people eat a sandwich with a knife and fork – why did you have a sandwich in the first place?  Why not order a salad and some bread?

• Recipes utilizing pureed avocado.  Avocado is already smooth and creamy.  I get crushing it up for easy scooping and spreading – for guacamole, for instance – but pureeing?  There’s a reason adults don’t eat pureed bananas: it’s baby food.  Exception: avocado milkshakes.

Do you ever catch yourself saying that you were a ____ in another life?  A Mexican?  Italian?  And just because you find the food delicious?

I’m pretty certain I was Polynesian in another life, though not just because I love Spam (more on that at a later date) but that’s another story.  Food-wise, I’m sure I was Korean in another life, and Chinese before that one, and Japanese before that one, and Vietnamese before that one.

Mostly, though, it’s that most Asian foods agree with my digestive system.  They tend to be lighter in fiber and have a variety of probiotic elements like miso and fermented vegetables.  A proper Asian meal of virtually any provenance almost never sends me packing in a gut-clenching Crohn’s 100-Yard Dash, which still somehow does not translate to me actually cooking like that at home.

I mean, I eat a lot of rice and as we should know by now I eat a lot of pickles, but there are certain meals that just make me happy and I never seem to remember to make them.  My friend Junko in Seattle would prepare these lovely, quick meals of a dozen little dishes of pickles and a cup of miso and some rice and maybe some broiled fish, and it would all come together in no time because she already had everything she needed in the fridge, and they would inevitably be among the best meals I’d ever had.  I would feel invigorated and, well, nourished, instead of full.  And she’d look at me like I was crazy when I flipped out over the whole thing, much like my friend Leesa nearly had a panic attack when I made whipped cream from liquid cream.  She thought whipped cream was just something that came from a can.  This was when I first realized that I loved her.

Aaaanyway, I couldn’t locate any Korean shredded squid, but I found this possibly Vietnamese, possibly Chinese (the package says it is made in China, but there is Vietnamese printing on the package) shredded squid and tried to make my first batch of my favorite side-dish, the spicy squid strips.  And guess what?

It turned out great!  I didn’t even follow the directions very well, I just dressed the dried squid straight and ate it.  I made it again today and instead soaked and then fried the strips in the sauce, and the texture was a little improved, but still, I’m inordinately pleased with myself.

I mixed up a little side of miso, which made me reflective on a time when I was having dinner at my friend Kanako’s house a lot, where there was almost always a giant commercial-size soup pot of miso simmering on the stove in her communal house.  They’d add heaps of vegetables and pounds of tofu and everyone would sort of dig in as they pleased while a rice-maker kept pounds of cooked rice hot for kids to eat from as the evening went on.  As I age, I forget that being punk rock meant trying to keep healthy in between bouts of alcoholism.

Takuan, the knife that nearly took my thumb and some shiso leaf.

I bought a giant daikon pickle (often used as an ingredient in vegetable sushi) called takuan and was home before I read the ingredients and saw it was sweetened with aspartame.  Giant sigh.  I’ll eat some of it, at least, but I tend to put up cross-fingers before the beast aspartame.

Those homemade gyoza were from about two months ago, but some fresh ones are coming to Anger Burger soon.

Still, as we set up to eat our little buffet in front of the TV (how entirely American!) to watch Lost Boys again for the first time in at least ten years for each of us, I had to marvel at what started out feeling like a cobbled-together dinner.  This is how I want to eat most nights.  Try and help me remember.

Mike is a marzipan connoisseur in the same way that I am a ginger ale connoisseur: we’ll generally take what we can get, but we have great reverence (and will part with wheelbarrows full of money¹) for the good stuff.

Lets cut to the chase: this is the good stuff.  Italian Stramondo marzipan is unquestionably the cream de la crack of the almond paste circuit, a perfectly smooth, creamy, intensely almondy brick sealed in plastic to retain moisture.  It’s soft enough that a thick piece will slowly bend as you hold it, and milled so finely that it melts like chocolate on the tongue.

To be completely honest, I don’t recommend baking with Stramondo; at an average cost of about $13 for a half a pound, it’s not really pocket-friendly.  But as a nibble?  Painfully delightful.  Addictive.  Offensively delicious.  I say this with a level of embarrassment, so I hope you allow it the credence it deserves: I get sort of faint when I eat it.  It’s so overwhelming that the endorphin rush is like the quivery adrenaline pop of being startled by a loud noise.

When I lived in Olympia, Washington, I bought it at the local food Co-op, though I can’t say if they still carry it.  In Los Angeles I buy it at Whole Foods, though it’s readily available online for around $12.

¹Zimbabwean money.

Lately work has been sucking my will to cook, which isn’t surprising.  I’m on my feet for 7 hours — which includes running up and down the central staircase and/or pushing carts full of books and a combination of squatting and stretching to shelve them — and I walk to and from work for a grand total of 4 miles.  I bought a pedometer to try and track how much I really walk during the day, but I bought the cheap kind and it keeps stopping its count at 1650 steps¹.

Anyway, by the time I get home what used to be a calming, grounding activity instead is something I have to stand during.  Which makes me reach for the pack of turkey bologna, a bottle of wine and a relatively clean spot on the floor where I can curl up and suckle on each.

A few days ago I made what has turned out to be one of my all-time favorite comfort foods, chilaquiles.  It’s supposed to be a breakfast food that uses leftover tortillas, but like all great breakfast foods it tastes a little better at dinnertime.  I’ll be listing a more in-depth recipe in the next month or so (I sort of forgot to take photos of my last venture), which is no longer terribly Mexican, as I’m sure you can imagine a household with a Norwegian and an Irish Scottish-Melungeon would produce.

If you don’t want to wait for my walk-through, be advised that the frying of the chips isn’t as necessary as the recipes would make you believe.  Instead, I suggest using a pastry brush to lightly coat a stack of corn tortillas with canola oil, after which you can cut them up and toast them in a 350° oven for about 15 — but watch them closely!  They go from well-toasted to nearly-scorched in about a microsecond.  In a hung-over pinch, a bag of unsalted tortilla chips from the grocery store comes out nearly the same.  Not as tasty, but nearly the same.  The darker fried the chips, the better (again, avoiding the scorched level), as the whole thing gains a mature, nutty flavor.  Like me!   Minus the mature part.

Basically, chilaquiles are the lazy-man’s enchiladas, which is perfect because I’m lazy and I love enchiladas.  I poach some chicken, fire up a big pan of enchilada sauce, crush in a heap of crispy corn tortillas, stir in the shredded poached chicken and some monterey jack cheese and voila.  Well, almost, I’m leaving out some stuff.  You’ll just have to wait for it.

On another recent night I just wanted some bread and salami and while talking to Mike managed to hack the end of my thumb with the knife.  It was one of those moments where I had a freeze-frame sensation of the knife hitting something hard.  Mike, for his part, heard it hit, a sound that pretty thoroughly queased him out.  We both assumed I’d cut my thumb clean off.

Three days later and it looks like a paper cut.

After a minute of gripping it with my other hand I finally took at look at the damage … and saw that I’d basically barely nicked it.  Or rather, it was a lucky fucking hit: I indeed had pretty much ricocheted off the bone, but my thumb had been completely bent and provided a very thin, very healable level of tissue.  In other words, I’d barely cut myself.  To the bone, yes, but in a way that sounds about 1000% more dramatic than it really was.  And it smelled like salami.

¹Of course the best part is how many times it took me reading little piece of shit before it finally dawned on me that I was probably not walking coincidentally the exact same amount every day.

I’m no hippy when it comes to food – or rather I am, if we’re talking about free love.  See, I generally believe you should eat what tastes good first and what makes you feel good second.  Except for the obvious new point: those two rules are often in direct opposition to one another.

Or are they?  The fact of the matter is I just don’t see it as black-and-white at all.  Life is all about making these complicated, conditional grey choices.

Let’s use an example here.  I love brownies from a box.  I love them.  In fact, I don’t ever eat brownies unless I’ve made them from a mix, and I used to bake professionally.  I tried for years to make something like the stuff from a box, that perfectly chewy, dense, crackly brownie and I could never get it right.  After a few years you have to ask yourself, what am I gaining by not making these from the box?  I assumed all along that they were made from nasty shit, and to be sure, some of them are.

In the Ghirardelli mix, the ingredients are:

sugar, flour, walnuts, partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oil, cocoa, modified food starch, artificial flavor, sodium bicarbonate

Alright, partially hydrogenated oils are poison, that is true, and they are here in the place of good ol’ butter.  That is sad.  The only other iffy ingredient is artificial flavoring, which is probably vanillin for all we know, and I don’t give a shit about it.  So, all this struggle and pining when I could just eat some trans fats every once and a while and be happy.  You know what?  I’m going to go ahead and vote for  “happy” because I don’t get a vote too often.

I don’t even know if — under pressure — I can trot out the “all things in moderation” mantra.  I understand it as a statistical key in wagering for a longer life, but even then I wonder if we aren’t denying ourselves the little things all for a blanket philosophy.

Not to get all Sandra Lee on you, but my mom taught me a little trick back in the bakery days: coconut mixed 4-to-1 with sweetened condensed milk and dropped onto any brownie recipe magically results in “coconut macaroon brownies”.  In other words, for every cup of coconut you use, pour over about 1/4 cup of sweetened condensed milk.  That will make enough for a 9×9 pan.

You’ll have to bake the brownies a little longer to make up for the new moisture and mass of the coconut & milk paste, but if you keep testing with a toothpick you’ll get it eventually.

While you’re waiting, prepare yourself a real American treat: sweetened condensed milk over a saltine cracker.  My dad and Carson McCullers can back me up on this one — in the American South, a can of sweetened condensed milk was (is!) cheap and could be stretched long enough to sate many a sweet tooth when drizzled over a few saltine crackers.  If you pretend it’s homemade dulce de leche on a fleur de sel’d homemade soda cracker then ta-da!  Look how authentic you are!