Anger Burger

I’d be a terrible review blogger.  I am a terrible review blogger. I used to think I should try and solicit products from companies, that it’d be fun, but I’m reasonably certain that the entire food industry knows better than to let me form a public opinion about anything.

Take for example this packet of Hot Pockets Snackers in Fiesta Nacho Bites flavor, which I purchased from the local Grocery Outlet¹. I was shopping with my pal Fraoigh, and we laughed at how utterly, totally teenage these things are, and since I still don’t have a working oven, they went into my basket.  I paid less than a dollar for them as well, which helps with that decision-making tree.

Perhaps the best part is that they don’t give instructions for heating them unless you have a microwave.  It appears that we have evolved beyond the toaster oven, sort of how a teenage friend of mine said she didn’t understand what the hell the icon for the “save” was supposed to be at the top of a document program, and I had to explain floppy disks to her.  I toasted them at 400° until they spooged their innards ala Totino’s Pizza Rolls.

Anyway, Fiesta Nacho Bites Snackers.  NOT A LOW FAT FOOD.  I stared at this warning on the label for some minutes, exhausted and hungry, before realizing that because the product boasts they are BAKED Not FRIED, the company had to clarify that they didn’t actually mean anything by this at all.  Everything is always so complicated with processed foods.  I’d forgotten that my avoidance of them wasn’t entirely dietary as much as scholarly.

They actually smelled good.  I was starving and alone in the house, so that may have been a factor, but they smelled pleasantly nacho-y, like cheesy and corn tortillas, despite having no corn in them.  Right then the dog told me she had to go outside, where of course it was pouring rain so I had to stand outside with a flashlight getting soaked while she read the Wall Street Journal and took the world’s most leisurely dump.  Upside: the Bites were not nuclear hot by the time I got back to them.

And, no.  They taste like breakfast sausage and fake cheese,  anything “nacho” or “fiesta” totally evaporated.  Literally just breakfast sausage inside.  Not wretched, but off enough to make me wonder if there had been some kind of test-kitchen mix-up back at the food lab.

I guess I’m not a teenager after all.  And then!  Proof arrived:

¹I should note that in the Anger Burger household, we call the Grocery Outlet the “Used Food Store.”  I don’t remember how this started, but I now have to concentrate on using the correct name when speaking about it to other people.

I didn’t get a photo of the man across the street sitting on his porch while wearing a sarong and playing a large wooden flute, and for that I am sorry.  I want you to understand what Olympia is like, and that photo would have nearly summed it up.

Fig Manor is coming along, with some setbacks.  But first, let’s talk about the basement.  Which isn’t really a basement so much as a hole under the house.

That’s pretty much it.  Nothing peculiar has happened down there or anything, if you don’t count the part where the light switch is that blue box there on the right side of the photo, at the bottom of the stairs.  Let’s let that sink in for a moment while you imagine going down in the househole to do your laundry at night.  Getting down to the bottom.  So you can switch the lights on.

The topic of discussion today is that I have not had an oven since we moved in two weeks ago.  Because I am a total fucking moron and didn’t wonder why the range was unplugged, or who had unplugged it, and why they hadn’t plugged it back in again.

Turns out there is an electrical component in the control panel that flashes an error message and SHRIEKS LIKE A BANSHEE EVERY THIRTY SECONDS.  Just to let you know that there is an error.  In a part of the range not in use.  So while the burners still work when lit with a match, the oven portion is controlled entirely by an electric interface, an interface that the landlord has sent off to be repaired with no real way of knowing when it might be fixed.  Two weeks?  Four?  And if you’re helpfully wondering why I didn’t check to ensure it worked before we moved in, I did: I plugged it into the wall socket, checked the burners, and then unplugged it in under 30 seconds, so the error code didn’t have a chance to cycle.  Lesson about being a tenant #1,007,935: check an appliance for longer than 30 seconds.

Still, we have burners and a rice cooker, even though I realized that 90% of my cooking takes place in the oven.  We do not have a microwave, something I’d forgotten since for the last two years we’ve lived places that came with them.  I bought several hippie frozen meals before realizing they take 45 minutes to cook in the toaster oven, by which time I’ve had a few beers and then walked to the burger joint two blocks away.

Say what you want, but Spam pan-fried with a little not-too-sweet homemade teriyaki sauce served with rice and fried runny eggs is sublime.

Mike the Viking has been waging a bloody and disheartening war against the Internet Providers.  We tried DSL and immediately discovered that when the saleswoman assured us that it was perfectly adequate for normal usage, she was being incredibly literal.  It’s adequate.  As in, it works.  Ish.  We went crawling to the evil troll Comcast and begged his mercy, and we have suffered for it.  There have been new wireless routers purchased.  There have been phone calls, for assistance both foreign and domestic.  Mike the Viking used a raised voice to tell someone that Odin would destroy them, and then had to explain who Odin was.  Last night a total system failure resulted in several hours of product assistance calls this morning, which for now has granted us access to the great Net that is Inter, but how long we are blessed here I do not know.

Life!  It just keeps being here.

There is not enough murder in the world to deal with the emotions produced by moving.  I’ve tried my usual coping mechanisms, but alcohol just makes me sleepy and hungry, and until today I didn’t even know where my toaster was, let alone a plate or fork.  We moved in last Saturday, and then each day I spent 10 hours out of the house at work, came home, unpacked for maybe one hour before becoming magnificently grouchy and delirious, ate either a banana and some crackers or a cold cheese sandwich assembled with a dirty knife, and then passed the fuck out and did it all again the next day.

Friends have asked “Aren’t you excited to be all moved?”  And I have a totally automatic and unintentional facial spasm that I imagine is not unlike what my dog looks like before she throws up a bunch of mucousy grass.

Because right now, this is my new dining room:

It looks like we live in a box fort.  A box fort that we a pay a lot of fucking rent for.  But at least the kitchen is… well, it’s a total disaster.  I can’t even take a photo of the rest of it, it is just too dismal.  Why do I have so much stuff?  I feel like I got rid of so much when we moved out of the Guacamole House, but The fact that I’ve uncovered the 7th large box of just pantry goods pretty much proves me wrong.

We are pros at moving now, but this move we really fucked up on a couple of things.  Because we had friends help instead of hired dudes, we felt pressured to just get the stuff into the house in any way it would fit at all, and didn’t boss them around on breaking things down into room-by-room piles.  We always fix up the bedroom first so there is at least one retreat in the house, but we keep finding more bedroom shit and the whole thing never feels complete.

But you know.  Fuck it.  House.

The goal is to get the kitchen done today (ha! ugh) and then… The rest of everything.  Oooooh, man.

Also known as: eating like a teenage boy during moving is inevitable.  Also I’ve been eating handfuls of pseudoephedrine, Excedrin, guaifenesin and buckets of my own tears, because it is moving week, we have no internet (I’m at work as I type this) and there was that extra unpaid¹ day of work this week that involved a test².

But soon I will be able to tell you about Fig Manor, which has a motherfucking gas cooktop. And the creepiest basement I’ve ever seen, even counting “Spider Dungeon,” the basement of the 100 year old apartment building from when I was briefly a resident of Cincinnati.

In the meantime I need to try and remember what else teenagers eat so I can continue on this theme.  Bagel dogs? Stouffer’s french bread pizza? Mountain Dew? I’m getting acne just thinking about it.

¹ Even worse: the bloodborne pathogens certification class actually costs about $100, which my boss paid for me because he’s a prince amongst scoundrels.
² I passed! I actually had anxiety dreams last night that I failed, which were deserved because I was on so much cold medicine that I could only perceive myself in the third person.

We moved into the new house!  Haaaay!  Then I got the flu!  And then we discovered the shower doesn’t work!  I hope the Easter Bunny brought me opiates.

If I hadn’t been reading Food Junk this morning on my way to work, I wouldn’t have ever known that Anger Burger has made semifinals for Best Food Humor Blog at Saveur.

I briefly believed that Food Junk had pranked me by Photoshopping Anger Burger in with The Food in my Beard and My Drunk Kitchen, because, you know, I’m not competition for those guys.  I’ve had this conversation more than once:

someone: “Oh, Sunday has some kind of food blog.”

me: “Oh pish.”

someone else: “OH MY GOD! Have you seen My Drunk Kitchen?!”

So there it is.  After a few months of some of the worst blogging I’ve ever scraped off my shoe, Saveur decides to send a bazillion people my way.  Or ten, really.  No need for hyperbole.

*Edited to add: it appears that if you aren’t “signed in” as a free member of The Saveur, then your vote appears to count, but doesn’t actually. So, that’s neat.

Short version: we will be moving into a new house in a few days (huzzah!) but there have been some postponements (hiss!) and I can’t even really show you photos of it yet or anything because I basically haven’t seen it since we signed the lease a month ago.  This is my long, beleaguered sigh. This next week is going to be brutally, awfully painful, combining moving with an extra day of work that I’m not paid for that involves an actual test (bloodborne pathogens certification! Sounds SUPER FUN), and!  Easter!  With the extended family!  I actually want to do that last part, but still: Oh my god I’m going to die.  I keep telling myself that this time next month I’ll be mostly settled into my own house.  This time next month.  This time next month.

Meanwhile at the bar the other night a guy sat for hours drinking beer and watching ST:TNG on his laptop.  He’d pause when he got up to get fresh beers.

My friends and I sat and talked about nerd stuff for hours, and every once and a while we’d look over and find this sort of universal comfort glowing back at us, this perfect, gentle encouragement that even though were are all broke and overworked and bewildered at how we got here, there’s still Q.

Back at my dad’s house, ThinkTank’s favorite TV show is Animal Planet’s Too Cute: Kittens.  I swear I am not shitting you.  Look:

We eventually have to turn the channel because she watches it so intently and with so many muscles flexed that we’re afraid she’ll hurt herself.