No Love in the Kitchen This Christmas

Oh, No! I'm about the be chopped!

Forget the violence of video games, the viciousness of cyber comments, or just good old-fashioned war, oppression and mass murder. For real mayhem, tune into a television cooking show sometime. Now that’s brutality!



Cupcake Wars, Kitchen Crashers, Chopped, Cutthroat Kitchen and Hell’s Kitchen, these are cooking competitions to rival a cage fight. Chefs brawl, trash-talk, and vow to crush their cooking opponents.

Now that they’ve added Dinner Party Wars (no joke!), I feel compelled to speak out against such hostility during this, the most peace-filled, time of year and post the following homage to the holiday classic.

‘Twas the night before Food Wars,

And all through the house,

Not a Top Chef was pleasant, acting more like a louse.

The sharp blades were hung by the braised hens a-sneer,

In hopes that Miss Julia* soon would strike fear.

The rivals stood seething all sure they’d smack dread,

While visions of beat-downs danced in their head.

And Rachael’s just-folks, and Guy won’t shut up,
They all settled in for a shreddin’. Whassup!

More angry than Ramsey his minions they came,

And he spewed, and he shouted, and called them vile names:

“Now Dumb Shit, Now Dill Whip, Now Clueless, and Screw Up!

“On Loathsome, On Weakling, On Dim Wit, and Spew Up!

“Win the judge’s top score, win the judge’s top haul,

“Now, clean away, mop away, wipe away, all!”

And giving a nod, downed a bottle of wine.

They sprung to their stove, to their foes gave a finger,

And away they all cooked, staged like Jerry Springer.

But I heard them exclaim, ‘fore they put down their pans.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all tainted spam.

*In order of appearance:

• Julia Childs, renowned and beloved French chef.

• Rachael Ray, super bubbly television cook and kitchenware hustler.

• Guy Fieri, spiky-haired loudmouth of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

• Ramsey Gordon, television cook who verbally and emotionally abuses contestants.

• Jerry Springer, instigator of girl fights and revealer of paternity tests who is the definition of lowbrow television.

 

 

 

All I Can Remember Are the Rats



Three-and-a-half foot pit.

Yeah, sure I’d spent a week in California’s quiet high desert, only a stone’s throw from Mt. Lassen. I’d helped to painstakingly excavate three-and-a-half feet of dirt from an archaeology pit. I’d held in my hand gem-precious artifacts –smooth, cool obsidian points and perfect grinding stones. Awesome to behold.

I’d watched the sky immediately turn from playful white puffs to fearsome kingdom-come storm clouds. I’d listened to birds and bugs zip and buzz across the summer-yellow meadow. I’d discovered that a sage flower is really the sum of its zillion tiny blossoms. The stuff of poetry.

 Yes, I’d heard and seen all of these rare and beautiful things.



There's a rat incisor in my screen!

But now all I can remember are the rats –



common, pervasive, repulsive rats. Carriers of disease. Destroyers of car wiring. Rats skulked around the edges of my life during the week I spent last summer on an archaeology dig in Mapes Cow Camp near Susanville.

Unit #1, where I worked, was a beast, the energizer bunny of archaeology pits. All week it produced fine obsidian pieces, grinding rocks, and nice ranch-era metal, buttons and buckles.

Then weird things happened. Way down in the pit, beyond the turn of the last century, bits of plastic showed up. After some head-scratching, we determined that the plastic had been dragged down there by rats who’d created a little rodent love nest, which was confirmed when we found a yellowed rat tooth. Yuck.

And then, on my final day in Mapes, hot, tired, filthy, ready to head home, my car wouldn’t start, the victim of a rat invasion. Yeah, nice. They’d chewed at the insulation around hoses and wires, and even left behind their mobile nest on a ledge beneath my battery.

Hey, rats, way to ruin my romantic-high-desert-wind-swept-bigger-than-life notion of archaeology.

It's not all glamour out there.

What struck me about that week is that rats have always been among us. They refuse to live quiet, secluded life, but choose to skulk near human populations, making our lives a misery. And we’ve always battled them. We poison them, trap them, chop them in half with shovels, sic dogs on them, and puncture their eardrums with sound waves, but they live on and on and on nerve-damaged and deaf.

Why don’t more pleasant species, like butterflies or the polar bear, have the survival skills of these vermin? Why indeed. Read on.

 Rat facts that will make your lip curl in disgust:

·         They’re, of course, responsible for the plague and a number of deadly fevers.

·        They’ll eat grain, macaroni, pizza, scrambled eggs and their own feces for nutrition. Yes, their own feces!

·        They can survive a flush down the toilet and three days treading water.

·        They reproduce like the Brady Bunch and can pop out 2,000 rats each year.

Why, as a society, we’ve tried to make peace with rats by making them loveable is beyond me.

·         Mickey Mouse will slap you with a lawsuit if you as much as appliqué his image on a kitchen hand towel.

·         3 Blind Mice just play on our sympathy.

·         Tom and Jerry’s chases, poisonings, and head slams are adorable.

There’s really not a moral in here somewhere. Being sneaky and destructive pays, just look at Wall Street. Eeekk!  

My Childhood in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks

Farm to Factory to Fork

I endured unimaginable abuse as a child. Oh, I don’t blame Mother. She thought she was doing the right thing. And good old Dad? Well, he blithely stood by and allowed it all to happen.

Mom praised my every move. I wasn’t spanked. She encouraged me to excel in school; she invited my friends to stay over; and never use alcohol or drugs (unless you count her belief that Aspirin cured everything from a cough to a complete disembowelment).

Sounds wholesome and nurturing, right? Not so fast.

My mother was one of the worst cooks of the mid-20^th century. She fully embraced the post-WW II industrial manufactured foods industry in all of its preserved, dehydrated, soul-sucking, life-draining glory.

If mashed potatoes are good, boxed potato flakes were better. If fresh green beans are delicious, canned and boiled-to-goo were healthier. If Virginia ham was mouth-watering, spam was, well, at least it was trichinosis-free. She took a cake decorating class one time, and we kids imagined iced goodies and home-made petite-fours. No, sir. That woman used a cardboard cake form as a practice dummy. It was like waving an empty pizza box in front of a college student.

 It was a horror.

Compare my tale of torture to those of other more well known down-and-out children, and mine wins hands-down any day.

·         Oh, sure, Oliver Twist was subject to the filth and squalor of a 19^th century London workhouse, but at least his food was good enough that he held up his bowl to inquire, “May I have more, sir?” You never saw me asking for seconds.

·         Harry Potter was forced to live in a tiny closet under the stairs, but his Aunt Petunia produced a bounty of food to turn Uncle Vernon and slothful cousin Dudley into obese slobs. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t digest that cardboard cake.

·         And let’s not forget Sybil, the young girl with multiple personalities created by her crazy mother. Okay, that’s all bad and everything, but I remember from the movie that Sybil’s mother cooked a sumptuous pot roast dinner, with potatoes and carrots and the whole she-bang. I didn’t even know what a pot roast was until I was an adult. 

Yes, it’s tragic, but my story has a happy ending. Through years and years of intense, daily food therapy (i. e., stuffing my face), I’ve overcome a childhood that was almost beyond belief. I’m a survivor, and a chubby one at that.

 

P.S. – Please don’t tell my mother about this blog post.

 

I Dreamed I Was Naked

This is not really me.
I wouldn't own a trashy
designer bag like that.

A curious thing happened last night. I dreamed I was naked.

 

Not an I’m-sexy-and-I-know-it-dream. But an Oh-shit—I’m-wearing-only-a-bath-towel-and- I’m-about-to-meet-the-president-of-the-United-States-in-the-oval-office-dream!

 You know. One of those.

Normally, I’d chalk it up to too many episodes of Orange is the New Black, but not this time.

You see, my life has changed irrevocably, and I mean that in the most government-speak way.

I retired eleven days ago after 29 selfless years toiling away for the people of the great state of California. (Cue the marching band.)

 There’s no going back, and I can’t help but wonder what my life will look like for the next several decades, provided I’m not cut down in my prime by a runaway wheelchair.

Oh, sure. I have my plans, but I’ve always had plans. Will I end up a fan of Live with Kelly and Michael (A pretty good show that I watched for the first time this morning, god help me.)? Maybe I’ll become a gold member of the Bus Trips to Branson Club (I don’t think that exists, but someone more industrious than I is welcome to run with it.)

Anyway, back to the dream. Noble people, selfless people dream of Africa or of human equality. Not me. According to Dream Moods.com dreams of nudity mean either:

1.    I’m ashamed and unprepared. Yeah. Duh. Read previous paragraph and all previous posts.

2.    My fears are unfounded. Please, please, be this one.

If plans go as, well, planned, I’ll be writing more of these posts (sorry), and if you stick with it, you’ll be treated to the likes of:

• If You Board a Plane Pantless: the Lighter Side of Alzheimer’s
• There’s a Rat in My Unit
• Bad Moon Rising Over a Shuttle Bus in Vegas
• Confessions of a 59-Year-Old Virgin

I hope you stayed tuned.

Yes, George Clooney, I Will!



The closest I'll ever get to George.

I’ve been thinking about discipline lately. Mostly that I don’t have any. Back on the eve of 2013, those around me made their annual vows to lose weight, read more, feed the hungry, or reconnect with loved ones.

Me? Here it is two months into the New Year, and I’m just now thinking of resolutions.

Flawed, and tardy, as I am, I’ve devised my own set of profound goals for 2013, but I better get crackin’. What takes most folks 12 months to do, I must accomplish in a mere 10.

1.    I finally say Yes! to George Clooney and make him the happiest man in the world. Oh, sure. I possess all of the qualities he looks for in a woman: the body of Beyonce, the brains of Natalie Portman, and the unmarked smooth face of Justin Bieber. Until now I’ve been resistant to his subtle, nearly imperceptible, come-ons, wanting to be to more than eye candy. But what the heck. George, I’m yours. I can’t wait for him to meet my mother.

2.    I stop my intimidation on the American River Bike Trail. Fellow bicyclists must feel less-than when they see me hunched over my Schwinn 3-speed, Wal-Mart helmet bobbing above my head. They pass. First, it’s the young, well-muscled dudes, and then the fit and focused females, followed by wobbly children, and finally trained Labradors on skate boards. Their cries of Left! or Get off the trail, granny! make me wish they’d just relax. Keep at it, fellow cyclists, and you, too, will be an imposing athletic specimen one day.

3.    I refuse the Pulitzer Prize. I’m sorry, but I cannot in good conscience accept your little award. It would crush the spirits of so many struggling writers. I’ll content myself by sharing company with the likes of J. D. Salinger and Ernest Hemingway, fellow auteurs who didn’t win. Salinger for Catcher in the Rye and Hemingway for For Whom the Bell Tolls. There are some things that transcend a simple medal.

4.    I recommit myself to keeping up with the average American. Researchers say that we watch 34 hours of television per week, consume 3,800 calories per day, and one-third of us nap daily. It’ll be tough, and I may have to train. Get out of my way. I need to grab a pizza before I hit the couch for sleep and a Walking Dead marathon.