Anger Burger

I want to make vegetarian chili, but I have a lot of don’t-wants.

Don’t want:

• Just vegetable soup with big chunks of vegetables in a tomatoey chili-seasoned broth.
• Just bean soup in a tomatoey chili-seasoned broth.
• Brothiness of any kind.
• Lentils.
• Grains.
• Chunks of identifiable tofu.

I want comfort food.  I want medium thick, finely textured, rich, brown chili that I can heap with a mountain of cheddar and chopped onions.  And I want my dad to be able to eat it with me.  So riddle me this: why are all the vegatarian chili recipes in the world just vegetable soup recipes with some chili seasonings?  I suspect that the answer lies in something like textured vegetable protein, which I have never cooked with before.

Someone help a sister out, here.

I think maybe I didn’t emphasize the excitement yesterday when I wrote about the storm.

Mike the Viking went out and took some photos while he robbed the peasants of their larder goods.

No big deal.  Just a couple of power lines and houses and stuff.  Nothing that seven days of freezing rain can’t finish off.

My thoughts exactly.

I’m tired.  I’d say it’s a Crohn’s thing, but I’m at the point where I can’t honestly place the blame on having an autoimmune disease that prohibits my body from absorbing useful nutrients.  It might be more honest to say: I’m winter tired.

Don’t get me wrong, here.  I love winter.  I missed winter.  It had been a handful of years since winter and I had a chance to be intimate, and we’ve been making up for lost time, let me tell you.  But I had imagined something a little more romantic, something log-cabin-hot-cocoa-bear-skin-ruggy, instead of coming into work and finding that someone thought it’d be a good idea to have a vent drilled through the sterilization room during work hours.  For example.

My mom accused me of being unhappy, and I can tell you and her with all sincerity that she is wrong.  I missed the Puget Sound more than I was willing to let on, and each day I slog to work through sideways rain I breathe a sigh of somewhat damp relief.  Weeks are flying by faster than I care to acknowledge, and the internal timeline I’d had for getting back on my financial feet is now a hilarious blip in my review mirror, but you know.  It’s winter.  We hibernate by watching too much TV and eating nachos and telling ourselves that the reason we can’t find a second job is because it’s winter.

And then!

My co-workers and I crawled into work like a cannibal soccer team each morning to see if the power was on (mostly!).  Ice-encased branches ripped from trees with the heart-stopping sound of china breaking.

It’s always heartbreaking to see the damage of an ice storm, and I worry every single minute about my mom out in the forest by herself with just a little generator and spotty cell phone connection, but it’s just so fucking gorgeous, I can’t stand it.

Every blobular twist, each straining and drooping branch; nature simply cannot more clearly put her arm around your shoulder and steer you back toward the electric heater and say “Just one more cup of tea.  You’ll have time to go down to the basement and start the laundry later.”

We decided to take it easy.  No parties, despite being invited to one that has a potential for illegal debauchery on a level that I still sort of can’t believe I’m turning down.  NEVERTHELESS.  Easy taking.

So, waffles are in order.  Except, the yeast decided to give me it’s yeasty middle finger.

It’s been two hours, and the batter should be doubled in size and fizzy-gloppy, but it remains smooth and thin and completely unperturbed by my attempts to rouse it.   I’ve resorted to a hot water bath.  If this doesn’t work we’re eating microwave popcorn for dinner.

So, happy New Year, friends.  May your yeast be active.

I have a lot of sympathy for cookbook writers, if you can believe it.  It can’t be easy to compile a couple dozen recipes and have them all be interesting or reliable.  In the several years I’ve written Anger Burger I can maybe – maybe – construct a cookbook of recipes that aren’t outright stolen from other writers and bloggers.  And theme?  The Anger Burger cookbook would best be described as a tectonic collision of ethnic misuse.

But all that being said, there’s one cookbook  that has repeatedly made 2011′s Top Ten cookbook lists, and it’s a book so disappointing that I was angry that I wasted calories carrying it home from the library.

Pam Anderson’s Perfect One-Dish Dinners has great range.  We have:

• Curiously banal Perfect Spinach-Artichoke Dip that is made “perfect” by the substitution of low-fat cream cheese and low-fat mayonnaise for the full-flavor versions.

• Hilariously questionable Indian Six Layer Dip consisting of layered curried sour cream, cheddar cheese (?!), yogurt chutney, flaked sweetened coconut, peanuts and green onions.

• Guaranteed super-flop Braised Salmon, which has you boil carrots, shallots and potatoes in unseasoned broth until tender, remove them to a platter kept in a warm oven, then simmer salmon fillets and asparagus in the same unseasoned broth until cooked all the way through, removed to the platter with the vegetables, and then watering down the broth and heating it in the microwave to pour over your totally fucking bland and overcooked fish and vegetables.  THIS IS PERFECT IF YOU’VE RECENTLY BEEN HOSPITALIZED FOR STOMACH SURGERY.

• Roasted Almond and Cream Cheese-Stuffed Green Olives, which is a cocktail olive that you remove the pimento center from and replace with a little piece of cream cheese and an almond and then serve on a platter.  Which, you know.  Okay.  But It’s not like I’d ever put this into a cookbook, which is pretty much the same thing.

There are plenty of normal-sounding main dishes, but they are all just that: normal sounding.  They’re on the whole blander and plainer than I cook, though I appreciate having solid recipes to personalize.  But I don’t need to be told how to make enchiladas from store-bought enchilada sauce and pre-cooked chicken.  And I don’t think anyone in my family would eat a stew of cubed pork, sweet potatoes and prunes.  And I realize that I should back off and let the good recipes stand on their own, but I keep coming back to wondering how this made more than one Top Ten list.  But people love it.  They repeatedly describe it as “simple” and “doable,” which I can’t argue with.  And lord knows I respect a woman that refers to a pan of macaroni and cheese as a “complete dish”.  But I’m once again reminded of how entirely I am not the intended readership of the cookbook industry, and that makes me grumpy.

I don’t think I yet made it clear that I’ve moved into my dad’s spare bedroom.  This is a temporary arrangement, and one that I’m deeply grateful to have as an option – I really believed I’d get a royal razzing for moving in with my dad, but every single one of my friends has said a variation of a deeply sincere “Oh, that’s nice.”  The tone is clear: it’s a unquantifiably lucky thing to have nice parents, and especially ones with bedrooms to spare.

Dad, I love you.  You’re the best dad ever.  Everyone agrees.  But THIS FUCKING STOVE IS TESTING MY PATIENCE.

This is the most astonishingly, completely, improbably inefficient and unusable cooktop ever manufactured.  I’d rather be cooking over a dung brazier in a mud hut.  But Sunday, you say, how can it be so terrible?  I’ll tell you dear reader: to begin with, the element takes a very long time to get up to heat, and then continues to ramp up to carbonizing sun-surface temperatures for just a moment before shutting itself off for upwards of two minutes at a time.

To put that in running commentary form: I’ll set the dial to medium heat.  I’ll wait five minutes for the pan to warm.  I’ll set a grilled cheese on the pan, and nothing will happen other than a warm dampness.  Without touching the temperature dial, within a few minutes the sandwich will go from humid and sweaty to suddenly scorched in a matter of seconds, after which the burner will “maintain” the heat by not coming back on for several more minutes.  ENJOY YOUR HALF BURNED, HALF COLD SANDWICH, MORTAL.

For fun, the oven door has a very strong spring on it that requires that I put my knee on the door to keep it open.  While the oven is on.

In conclusion: get a Whirlpool Accubake¹ as soon as you can.

¹ Or as those on the inside call it, Satan’s Anus.

The punchline is that I went to a Star Trek trivia night and it sort of sucked.

I wanted my first night back on the town in Olympia to be worthy, and when my friend Fraoigh invited me out for Star Trek trivia I knew we were on the same page.  Unfortunately, it was at my least favorite bar in town, The Voyeur, and the entire thing relied on a room full of drunk people shaking noise makers – toy tambourines, bicycle horns, baby rattles – in order to be called on to answer questions.  Clearly this was not going to end well.

First, though, I had to be pissed off by one of the hosts announcing that “Anyone dressed in Star Trek outfits gets a drink!” and then when I, a dude and a girl in a short red skirt all showed that we had outfits, he gave the girl in the skirt a drink and ignored me and the guy.

There were a lot of other things handled poorly, and mostly it was my fault because I hate chaotic games and the more that people shouted answers over each other and before the questions were even finished, the angrier I got.  The final straw was someone answering that Majel Barret’s character as Deanna Troi’s mom is named “Roxanna” and the quizzer telling them “Close enough!” and giving them the points¹.

Also, let’s discuss this Klingon bloodwine:

I ordered it, of course, mostly because I couldn’t believe without physical proof that they were serving bloodwine cold – COLD! – and with kombucha as an ingredient.   But they were.  So it’s pretty official, I’m never stepping foot in The Voyeur again.

But can I tell you what makes up for all of this many times over?  During a break and before I decided to split early, I stood outside and said “This thing is stressing me out!” in response to which a guy turned to me, pulled a bottle of lavender oil from his fanny pack, handed it to me and in total genuine seriousness, expected me to self-aroma-therapute myself.  So I did.  It was not effective.

¹ Her name is Lwaxana.

I want to say up front that everything could not have turned out better. It really couldn’t have.  Given all the things that could have gone terribly wrong, and given that nothing did, I’d be the first to admit that I should just shut my trap and accept that we’ve been incredibly lucky.    But I’m me and I like a good yarn, so grab a Big Gulp of 7-11 coffee, buckle up and take a ride with me.

I don’t have photos to share and I don’t want to talk about why not, but I will try and share with you the gibbering terror of moving 1,100 miles through bullet points:

• When you rent a moving truck, it turns out that when you ask for a specific size and they confirm it?  In the fine print it says that you will get that size or larger.  I reserved a 22-foot truck one month and advance thinking that the 22-foot was already ridiculously large, but that I could handle it.  When I went to the Penske place to pick it up the guy says to me “Oh, we give you free upgrade!”  I’m unclear what the fuck could be upgraded about a truck, but when they pulled a 26-foot moving truck around for me I basically shit my pants.  Seriously.  TWENTY-SIX FOOT TRUCK.  I realize that people drive those giant RVs and stuff all the time, but everyone I know who saw this truck said something along the lines of “They just let anybody drive off the lot with that thing?!”  Me being the highly suspect “anybody” of course.

• We again used the REAL RocknRoll Movers of Los Angeles, and once again their premium fees are totally justified.  We  hired two guys for just labor this time, but they arrived on time, were downright jovial and packed the truck in two hours flat.  I wanted to pack them in the truck and bring them with us so they could unload it on the other end, but I didn’t have enough Rohypnol on hand.

• We had the truck loaded two days before we intended to move and planned on cleaning and finishing up for one whole day, and man, was that even cutting it close.  We worked way too late, ended up all getting low blood sugar and being generally cranktastic and awful and then ate sad Subway sandwiches and passed out at 8 in the evening.  And then were woken by drunken partiers knocking on our front door at 1am, one of which who answered my dad’s gruff demand of “CAN I HELP YOU?” with the sort of peculiar and interesting response of “I was instructed to come here.”

• Did I mention that my dad flew down just to ride in the moving truck with me?  He did.  He’s a pretty amazing dad.  Mike the Viking’s dad offered too, and we briefly debated letting the two of them move our stuff north and we’d just fly up.

• It turns out the truck is so hugely massive in every way that Mike had to construct a wooden platform for me to place under the gas and brake pedals so that I could press on them while keeping the heel of my shoe on the floor.  I mean, I’m 5’6″ and have huge feet, so I feel like I have a pretty average body.  The brake pedal ended up being so hard that I had to literally stand on it to press it anyway, so that wasn’t fucking terrifying while driving through several major mountain ranges or anything.

• Also, in order to pull the parking brake I had to put my feet on the dashboard to brace myself while I pulled it up.  It was seriously at the limit of my physical ability, which seems vaguely dangerous.

• So, the morning that I leave I decide to take the 170 freeway north that connects to the I-5 – it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, just keep reading.  Anyway, I’ve driven this way a dozen times or whatever, no big deal.  But at 6am (yes, 6am) when we departed, in the black of pre-dawn, I missed the merge onto I-5 and realized the exact second that it happened that I was now driving toward Palmdale instead of north.  Why did I do this?  Because there is major construction and only a sign that read “PALMDALE – RIGHT LANES ONLY”  I figured at some point I’d get better instructions on when to merge for I-5, but nope.  While near tears and shaking with fear (remember: 26″ truck, basically no backing up allowed) I made a 15-minute detour around the middle of the Antelope Valley while trying to get back to where I was supposed to be.

• I’d forgotten that I have a secret affection for the McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwich.  After 11 hours of driving a giant wall of a truck at 60mph, it was the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.

• At some point in Oregon, the fuel tank gauge got stuck.  It was like fucking Apollo 13 up in that shit, doing math to figure out what our miles per gallon was, how far we’d gone and how much was left in the tank.

• And then the anti-lock brake warning light came on.  The truck manual said that if it wasn’t blinking, to not freak out.  So I just freaked out a little.

• My dad and I called in a drunk driver after we passed into Washington State.  First time either of us has done that, but the guy was seriously terrifying us and when I passed him on the left to just get away from him, we both saw that he had his hoodie pulled up over his head and was blearily rubbing his face while swerving over the lane markers, so we called 911.

• We rolled into Olympia about 5:30 in the evening, I made Mike assemble our bed frame which was like those exhaustion tests the military does where they limit your oxygen and make you play patty-cake and stuff¹.  It took him about 500x longer than normal to do it, but he did it.

• I had my friends John and Nathan come and help me unload the truck today and they totally busted ass and are my heroes for ever and ever.  I also gave them some money.  Not as much as it was worth to me, but it is what it is.

• The morning was so bright and crisp and sunny and fall-y that it was breathtaking.  I even passed a friend while walking back from downtown after getting a coffee before unloading, and even though we haven’t seen each other in months the first thing he exclaimed was “This day is amazing!”  And it was.

• And now that we’re done it’s pouring down rain; like I said, everything that could have wrong?  Didn’t.  Imma go eat now.

¹ Everything I know about the military I learned from An Officer and a Gentleman.

Goodbye Guacamole House.

Goodbye California.

Goodbye squirrel archenemies.

As you read this we hurtle forth along I-5 for wetter pastures.  It is time for me to wallow in the beaver swamps for a while and rejuvenate my newt skin.  And for Mike the Viking to hunt and pickle some shark fat.

All things must end, including ThinkTank’s dignity.

I keep waking up thinking that I’d had an especially dust-allergy aggrivating nightmare and then I REMEMBER THAT IT IS ALL REAL.

But the great dragon has been slayed, at least:

The kitchen is formally done, minus the stuff we’re still actively eating over the next week.  And all the cleaning supplies.  And that one giant pan that won’t fit in any boxes so I guess I’ll just throw it in the back of the moving truck by itself.

My mom sent Mike the Viking the greatest birthday card I have seen in my entire life:

And now I will attempt to drink an entire bottle of wine out of a single paper cup before the wine seeps through the welds.