Fancy Feasts Come in All Sizes

 Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Guys, if you've made it this far, 
you're probably safe.

I'm not making turkey this year. Or stuffing. Or mashed potatoes. Or cranberry sauce. In short, not making a traditional turkey dinner at all.

It's just Precocious Daughter and me tomorrow. And we don't want to mess with all that just for the two of us. Well, there's Tacocat, but I don't think he's ever seen a Thanksgiving dinner before, so we'll just toss him a few extra treats and tell him that's it, that's the holiday. 

Don't anybody show him this, though.

Instead we're making a couple of family-favorite dishes together that are delicious, nostalgic, and hard to screw up. And don't create a lot of dirty dishes, which is just extra-thankful. 

But I have a co-worker...I'll call her Edith, because with all affection and kindness, she's kind of a dingbat.

Look it up, children.

Like me, Edith is also planning a quiet Thanksgiving with just her, her spouse, and a pet or two. Unlike me, Edith is going pilgrim-shit crazy over Thanksgiving dinner.

Candied whole cranberries. Roasted sweet potato medallions. Probably something made with phyllo dough. Hoo-boy, nothing jacks up your effort-to-results ratio like making shit out of phyllo dough.

Don't get me wrong, I love phyllo and phyllo-centric dishes. But if I'm going there, I need there to be a house full of people to congratulate me on the lighter-than-air delicacies I've created. PDaughter is totally worth the effort, but her GenZ default enthusiastic reaction of two head bobs and a "Yeah, nice" does not provide my USRDA of validation.

I slaved over sheets of premade frozen phyllo
and all I get is a goddamn thumbs up emoji?

Also on Edith's Thanksgiving Day menu: A salad that has more than three ingredients, rolls that didn't emerge from a cardboard tube that was smacked against the kitchen counter, and an appetizer involving foreign cheese and artisanal shaved prosciutto. And I'll bet her stuffing has sausage and hand-scraped thyme in it.

No hate to any of this food. It all sounds pretty delicious to me. (Except for stuffing with sausage in it - why does that mess seem to have gone viral this year and how can we stop it in 2025 and/or perpetuity?) Yet in almost exactly the same way that I wouldn't hire Timothée Chalamet to scour my bathtub in a g-string and not livestream it to all my friends, I can't be arsed to put all this work into a feast that only two people will ever see.  Never mind the fact that my refrigerator wouldn't hold a fraction of the leftovers generated by this meal. If I can't shovel it into Rubbermaid containers and send it home with six different people, it's going to get fed to the neighborhood raccoons. 

And I don't even mean throwing it in the dumpster for the trash pandas to raid - I'm talking about heaping paper plates with food and sailing them, Frisbee-style, off my balcony to their little waiting paws.

Ermahgerd, charcooteries!

So, while I wish Edith all the best and an enjoyable high-end Thanksgiving meal, PDaughter and I will be happily eating peasant food and treating Tacocat to a can of Fancy Feast turkey-flavored slop in gravy. I think we'll all be happy.

And to all my Drunkards I wish a happy, healthy Thanksgiving that is just the right size and shape to hold your gratitude. Internet hugs and sweet little raccoon kisses.

Black-Eyed Peas: A Comedy in Three Parts

There are a few things you should know about me.

I don't do TikTok challenges.

I don't vote Republican.

I don't eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.

The first two are self-explanatory: I want to leave a better world for the children, which precludes voting to sustain a patriarchal, wealth-based oligarchy in the latter case and filming myself doing weird shit in yoga pants in the former.

The black-eyed peas are a bit more complicated.

Part 1: The Tradition

Growing up in the Midwest, it was traditional to eat pickled herring for good luck on New Year's Day. Or maybe it was New Year's Eve. It doesn't matter, as there is no day in the calendar year on which I'm going to eat pickled goddamn herring. I never saw the correlation between good fortune and consuming half-liquefied fermented fish out of a jar. In fact, to everyone who did this on New Year's Day last year, I would just like to gesture expansively at literally the entirety of 2020.

I rest my case.

I've now been living in Texas for my entire adult life. For the most part I love Texas food. If I were a Lone Star-themed Statue of Liberty standing proudly on the shore of White Rock Lake (work with me here), the words engraved on my pedestal would include "Give me your chili (no beans), your brisket, your chicken-fried steak smothered in white gravy, your deep-friend corn dogs but with ketchup not mustard because I have my limits, people..."

Yet black-eyed peas are a Texas staple whose appeal has alluded me. My background in beans (because black-eyed peas are deceptively-named little bastards and are in fact beans) is in the baked or pork-and varieties. I like my beans tomatoey and/or molassessessey. I was always a little suspicious of a pot of watery spotted legumes cooked with a few hunks of salt pork and not much else. They just seemed so...naked to me.

More importantly, eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day wasn't a tradition I was brought up with (up with which I was not brought...forget it). I was never introduced to it by a Southern friend or by the Texan side of my ex-spouse's family. And because the alternative in my childhood was eating the aforementioned goddamned melted stinkfish, I didn't have any food-based good-luck rituals in my life at all.

Until this year.

Part 2: Spam

According to the good people at Hormel, the potted meat product SPAM should always be written in all-caps. This seems slightly pretentious to me, like the way Ted Allen on "Chopped" refers to Twinkies as "sponge cake snacks," and also my pinkies are going to get tired if I have to hold down the shift key that much. So for the purposes of this post, I'll risk the wrath of the purists by using Spam henceforth.

So. How did we go from black-eyed peas on New Year's Day to Spam? Actually, it was the other way around.

Until January 1st, 2021, I had never in my life eaten Spam. The reasons are similar to the reasons I had never eaten black-eyed peas, so I won't repeat them. If you've already forgotten or are in the habit of only skimming what I write, hoping something interesting will eventually catch your eye (did you think I didn't know what you were doing? pfffft), go back and re-read Part 1. Slacker.

OK, so I already knew that Spam was going to be on the menu at Casa Baudelaire this weekend. I knew that my darling Drummer Boy has been in the grip of a mild Spam mania recently and had purchased several cans of the stuff to "cook" at my place. 

I don't know exactly where his sudden interest in Spam came from. It's healthy to preserve some unplumbed depths in your partner's psyche, I guess? I also didn't know just how many varieties of the spicy, fatty, ostensibly meaty processed foodstuff are available.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam spam...

Yeah. That's a lot. 

So on New Year's Day, Drummer Boy brought over a can of this:

Because boy, if there's anything that a can of uber-processed, salty, fatty, nitrite-filled meat needs added to it, it's BACON.

But I was game. New year, new me. Same old colon, which clearly was about to be subjected to a workout it had never before experienced and wasn't asking for now. Still, nothing wrong with a little indulgence to kick off 2021. I haven't eaten a burger in nine months, my colon should be clean as a whistle and ready to cut loose. Slice it, fry it, eat it up, that's my motto. It works in a surprising number of situations. You should try it.

Anyway, then shit got real. From inside his cooler (the man travels with a cooler, he doesn't screw around), Drummer Boy pulled out this:

Not gonna lie, I felt ambushed.

Part 3: The Recipe

Once I decided not to unceremoniously kick the man I love to the curb for this blatant abuse of my trust, I threw up my hands and said, "Whatever, dude." It's that spirit of compromise that has carried us through the tough times. 

Actually, we basically broke up for several months during 2020, because fuck the pandemic, but we patched things up and emerged stronger than ever, also because fuck the pandemic. But that's a story for another time. I'm here to talk about goddamned black-eyed peas right now.

So Drummer Boy started doing things in my kitchen. He sliced up the Spam.

He fried it up.

And then, just as I was getting comfortable with the whole thing, he added...cocktail weiners.

If you're going to try to kill your girlfriend with unhealthy meat products, you should just go all the way. That apparently is his motto. I can't really recommend it.

Then he added chopped onion. Pro-tip: If you loathe the disgusting crunchy texture of onions, as I do, keep some on hand in the freezer. When they cook up, they turn quickly to undetectable mush while retaining their flavor-enhancing, um, flavor.

Can't have onion without garlic, so in it went.

I gotta admit, so far this pan full of fried meat was cooking up pretty damn tasty. But the Spam and Li'l Smokies concoction was not destined to remain on its own. It was time to add the namesake ingredient.

Am I the only one who heard Bernard Herrmann's score from Psycho just then? No? Skip it.

By the way, per Hillshire Farms, the correct nomenclature is "Lit'l Smokies Cocktail Links." I don't know what Ted Allen calls them. He never returns my calls, although he did like one of my tweets one time. 

I LOLed.

Moving on. In a big old pot, Drummer Boy simmered up some broth (Better Than Bouillon, half-chicken and half-vegetable) seasoned with a secret blend of herbs and spices. "Secret blend" sounds better than "I wasn't paying attention." There was definitely black pepper. And maybe, I don't know, nutmeg? Probably not nutmeg. If you make black-eyed peas you surely know how to season them. Knock yourself out.

So he let all that cook down for a while. And then - game changer - he removed some of the beans and liquid to a bowl and went to town with my immersion blender. OK, this is actually a super-common technique for thickening soups and other dishes, so not really a game changer. There's only so much dramatic tension I can create from a goddamn recipe. Play along.

Anyway, Drummer Boy poured the warm bean slurry (which is totally the name of my 00s alt-rock playlist on Spotify) back into the pot and stirred it all together. 

You guys. It was delicious. I mean, obviously a dish consisting mostly of salt, fat, prayers to the cholesterol gods and also tangentially black-eyed peas is going to be delicious. But damn.

Sloth-tested, sloth-approved.

I now feel lucky, punk. Seriously, I am going to look 2021 in the eye and punch it right in its stupid face while singing showtunes and dressing inappropriately for my age. That kind of lucky.

And it's all thanks to a pot of black-eyed peas that, honestly, I would have wanted no part of had it been brought to my attention ahead of time. Oh, and had it not been cooked by that guy who keeps coming around and telling me he loves me for reasons I can't entirely fathom.

The love of a good man and food ambushes. It's all I need this year.

Oh, and some of that dismantling the patriarchy and remembering the lives lost to Covid-19. 

Those beans have a lot of heavy lifting to do.

Good luck, Drunkards. Let's have a happy fucking New Year if we can.

Ramen Forever, Am I Right?

OK, so there is a brand of ramen called IndoMie.

You won't find it your local grocery store.

BUT...if you're fortunate enough to live in a cosmopolitan area that supports Asian supermarkets...

...as I am fortunate enough to live in an area that has large Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Indonesian, Pakistani, Indian populations, all within 30 minutes of my home...

...then you can find IndoMie at a local Asian grocery.

Or on Amazon. Because Amazon sells all the things.

$18.00 for a case of 30, and free Prime shipping.
Why the hell do I continue to eat literally
anything else?

 The amazing thing about IndoMie instant noodles is that it's not just a block of curly noodles and a packet of mostly-salt "seasoning." IndoMie actually provides five (FIVE) separate sachets of various oils and spices, which you combine in your ramen-eating vessel of choice prior to adding the boiled noodles.

The result is an effing wonderful confluence of sweet, spicy, and savory notes that you simply cannot achieve via the 22 cents-per-serving mass-produced garbage ramen available in most stores.

And it takes literally five seconds longer to open and combine these flavors than it does to dump in the highly salty packet of shit that I almost always just toss because I'd rather flavor my noodles with peanut butter and a hint of soy sauce than open that foil square of garbage that comes in the package.

Seriously, am I the only one here who thinks that way?

I do NOT enjoy this comparison, you guys.

But here's my main point.

I made myself a package of IndoMie ramen a few days ago.

Honestly, I've done a shit job of taking care of myself while Precocious Daughter has been out of town.

It turns out that when I'm alone, I don't give a flip about food. That's probably not healthy, which is why it's a good thing I remembered the ramen.

So I made it, and opened the five packets of flavoring, and really enjoyed it.

Today, PDaughter is back home with me. But she's with her dad.

So, 10 hours after waking, I decided I should probably eat.

I made my second packet of IndoMie ramen.

You guys.

The five seasoning packets...were different.

I swear I got two of the same flavor of noodles.

Yet the configuration of the five packets was NOT the same as the one I'd made a few days earlier.

Like, there was a chili pepper powder that was not present in the first package. And the packet of "Bumbu Sauce" was substantially larger.

The results both times were absolutely delicious, mind you.

But now I'm wondering if IndoMie is a magic brand that provides a different flavor palette every time you make it.

I'm not in the least against this.

Because so far it has been excellent ramen, believe me.

I'll return to the local Asian grocery soon and purchase more IndoMie instant noodles.

This is so much more exciting than buying canned tuna or pork-and-beans at Target, honestly.

I feel so alive.

Coconut 101: A Tutorial

You guys, this is a young coconut.

It may not look young, but it is.

I bought one of these at my local Asian supermarket over the weekend. It was intriguing, and it was 50 cents cheaper than the standard bowling ball-looking specimen.

As seen on "The Flintstones."

Right off the bat, I admit that I didn't know what a "young coconut" was. I made a fundamentally incorrect assumption: that what I had purchased was a standard coconut from which the hard, hairy shell had been removed, leaving me with nothing to do but drain the heavenly coconut juice for future use and then process the delicious coconut meat.

Vegans, juicers, and foodies are tittering right now.

Hipster foodie vegan juicer ROFL.

It didn't take long for Drummer Boy to set me straight. He lived in Florida for many years and therefore knows a few things about coconuts. I'm not sure how that works - maybe to get a Florida driver's license you have to demonstrate at least intermediate-level knowledge of coconuts? I don't know.

But he took a look at my conehead coconut and broke the bad news: The small, brown, three-holed fruit of my dreams was actually ensconced inside the husk I had purchased. Only the very outer shell had been removed. It fell to me to extract the actual coconut from this shrink-wrapped conical spheroid before me.

It's like this, Drunkards:

I HAD NO IDEA. MY LIFE IS A LIE.

No wonder they say these bastards kill 150 people a year. These fuckers in their natural state are more than a foot wide and weigh more than three pounds on average. If you're standing beneath a coconut palm tree and one falls on your head, you may sustain a blow equal to 2,000 pounds of force, or roughly 3.2 Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks to the skull.

Or not. But do you think I'm going to pass up a chance
to post this picture? Paff.

You literally have to burrow into a coconut to uncover the cute, innocuous fruit we learned to love by watching "Gilligan's Island." And so, determined not to have wasted two dollars because I'm a goddamn single mother, DB and I proceeded to remove the husk of the coconut.

As it turns out, the proper way to decapitate one of these things is to slice horizontally across the cone-part, low enough to remove the pointy-bit AND the coconut crown simultaneously.

Totally not labeled anywhere.

Ya know, sometimes you just have to own the fact that you're a sheltered white American omnivore and say, "WTF NOBODY TOLD ME THAT."

DB and I did not follow young coconut protocol. Instead we ruined a couple of my best kitchen knives painstakingly hacking away the thick husk until we finally revealed the small brown coco shell. At which point we had no freaking idea what to do, so we stopped and watched the Dallas Cowboys take down the Philadelphia Eagles in a nailbiter instead.

But a couple of nights later, with Precocious Daughter at her boyfriend's house and me on my own, I became determined to finish the job of discovering my inner coconut.

I had this before me, more or less (not my picture).

Only messier and whatnot.

The three coconut eyes were mostly showing. With my largest flat-head screwdriver, I punched holes in two of them. Just like when I was little and opened the can of Hawaiian Punch by poking a big hole in one side and a little hole in the other. Right?

You all totally remember when Hawaiian Punch
came in a big can, right? I'm not old, right?

Anyway, having finally accessed the inner workings of the coconut, I poured out a surprisingly generous quantity of coconut juice. Like, 8-12 ounces, somewhere in there. Way more than I thought one smallish coconut would hold.

Then I looked at the coconut meat inside the shell. This was the biggest surprise of the night.

Typically, when you think of coconut meat, you picture an inch-think slab of fibrous white material, ready to be scooped out and shredded into Mounds bars, correct?

Mmmm...meaty.

Well, when you're face to face with a young Thai coconut, that's not exactly the case.

The "meat" of a young coconut consists of about one-quarter inch of soft, gelatinous white flesh that spoons away from the shell like scrambled eggs from a non-stick pan.

Except not as goddamn disgusting. Eggs, eww.

Anyway, I scooped out the ridiculously squishy and glistening coconut flesh, combined it with the juice I'd drained, and simmered the mixture in a saucepan. My hope was that the too too solid flesh would melt (Shakespeare reference, yo) and create a kind of coconut...ragout? Paste? Delightful goo?

Whatever I thought might happen didn't happen. So I decided to apply my immersion blender in hopes of emulsifying the coconut constituents into a creamy, happy whole. This seemed like a solid plan.

Immersion blender tip: If you decide to pour the contents of, like, a saucepan into the vertical plastic cup that comes with your immersion blender, you should be aware that agitating those contents (i.e., using an up and down motion) can create a bit of a vacuum. Said vacuum can be broken safely and effectively. Or you can do it the way I did it and cause a very messy overflow of the contents onto surrounding surfaces.

In other words, YOUR IMMERSION BLENDER WILL FUCKING SPEW HOT COCONUT SLURRY ALL OVER YOU AND YOUR KITCHEN IF YOU DON'T KNOW WTF YOU'RE DOING.

You guys: Hot coconut juice mixed with half-processed coconut flesh looks and feels remarkably like vomit. Now imagine it all over your countertops and dripping down the front of the stove.

Yes, ma'am.

So. I poured the remainder of the semi-adequately mixed coconut milk and flesh into a plastic container and stashed it in the fridge. I will attempt to use it as a base for an amazing soup or stir-fry or smoothie or some goddamn thing.

It may be a disaster.

Or it may turn out awesome. If anybody has any recipe ideas, I'm sooooo open.

Bottom line: There is a straightforward and fairly easy way to process a young Thai coconut. I learned that the hard way. But I still totally recommend you get one, using my experience to not screw yours up.

If you can avoid hot coconut vomit, you're probably doing it right.

The Sweet Smell of Success (Cooking Edition)

You guys, my apartment smells incredible tonight. And it's because of rice.

No, no, not Condoleezza Rice.
But thanks for playing.

A couple of days ago, Drummer Boy and I went grocery shopping. Because we had an afternoon together, and I needed groceries. So we took a slow, romantic stroll...through Target. He pushed the cart.

Romantic AF, in case you're wondering.

When we shop together, Drummer Boy usually tosses a few things into my cart because a) he thinks I'll enjoy them or b) he likes them and wants them available when he visits. And that's fine with me. I don't care what you do in the bedroom; if you don't feel comfortable mingling your grocery preferences with those of your significant other, then you're probably not as intimate a couple as you think you are.

Dr. Ruth absolutely backs me up on this. Trust me.

Anyway. First he slipped in a package of King's Hawaiian Rolls. OMG. Yaaassss. Perfume, flowers, lingerie...all crap compared to a package of King's Hawaiian Rolls for romantic impact, IMHO.

Sweet yeasty roll porn. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Then, a few aisles later, he tossed in a bag of jasmine rice.

Exactly like this. Have mercy.

I didn't know what to think. Rice? Jasmine rice? Seems a tad bit random, but what do I know? Putting jasmine rice in your girlfriend's shopping cart could be some ancient fertility ritual, as far as I know. But hey, if Drummer Boy wants to put his rice in my basket, I'm all for it.

Sounds like a fertility ritual to me.

As it happened, he wanted to show me how to make perfect rice in the microwave. Which didn't exactly pan out, because actually it turned out perfectly awful. I forgot to tell him that my microwave is insanely overpowered, and you can't cook anything for as long as the recipe says or you'll end up with [insert food name here] jerky. His sweet face was so disappointed, I almost ate some anyway. Almost.

Anyway, he left me the rest of the bag, so tonight I made teriyaki chicken and jasmine rice. But I cooked it by my method, which I finally recently perfected after a few mishaps of my own, edibility-wise. My method is to melt some butter in a pan on medium-high heat, then saute the uncooked rice for five to 10 minutes until it starts to get toasty.

My stars, when I did that, something amazing happened. Precocious Daughter said the apartment smelled like cookies. And it did!

Like a scented candle you can eat!
(Please don't eat scented candles. That's gross.)

The combination of warm butter and the naturally sweet fragrance of jasmine rice smelled like home-baked yummy goodness, you guys.

But that was just step one. Step two in my rice-making routine is to add HOT water to the sauteed rice. It has to be hot, so that it comes to a boil almost immediately on hitting the pan. Add a bit of salt, give it a good stir, and let it boil for about a minute, then cover and reduce heat. Twenty minutes later, remove it from heat, take off the cover, and let it sit for five minutes. Fluff with fork, as the saying goes, and you have some delicious-ass rice.

But I'm leaving out the most important part. For those 20 minutes that the jasmine rice was cooking, the apartment smelled better and better until I thought I was going to have a grain-induced orgasm. It was incredible. If I'd known jasmine rice smelled so good, I would have stopped using the boring old white rice years ago.

You're dead to me.

The teriyaki chicken with the moist, tender jasmine rice was delicious. I'll leave it for another post to rave about how you should never, EVER buy teriyaki sauce because it's so easy to make fresh at home. Also, baby corn should win some kind of award for being both adorable and tasty.

The point is, the apartment continued to smell like heaven for hours. I fell asleep to the sweet, lingering fragrance of the amazing dinner I'd made. PDaughter loved it, by the way, which only made it sweeter.

So enormous hugs and kisses to Drummer Boy for introducing me to a new delight, one that I can actually eat. Next time you come over, I'll teach you my way of cooking rice.

We'll put on some Marvin Gaye and see where dinner leads.

Down-Home Cooking from a Fourth-Floor Apartment

It's recipe-sharing time, mofos.

Just call me Julia Childish.

Although I love to cook, recipes aren't my favorite thing. Most of my go-to dishes are concoctions I invented (or adapted) and have refined over time. Earlier this week I prepared pork medallions in a complex lemon-herb-red pepper sauce that I basically made up off the top of my head. Drummer Boy seemed to enjoy it, so I'll add that to my repertoire, assuming I can remember exactly what ingredients I actually used. If I can't, I'll improvise. That's how I roll.

Most of my favorite things to cook are simple, hearty, down-home creations based on what I have in the house at the moment. And that to me is the essence of cooking: Seeing what you have and figuring out how to make it into something delicious.

Not saying I'm ready to compete on "Chopped," though.
I don't think I can find a way to make calf eyeballs palatable.

Tonight I made my signature Ham Hash. And it turned out so well I thought I'd share it with you beautiful people.

This is not a high-class recipe. I'm sure it could be upscaled by using premium ham, fresh fingerling potatoes, and organic string beans. If you must.

That would be totally missing the point, mind you. This is quick, easy comfort food. If you like your comfort food slow and elaborate, then OF COURSE you should indulge in the finest ingredients and most time-consuming preparation.

But geez...missing the point.

Also, if you like precise, unambiguous recipes, please stop here. I dirtied not a single measuring cup or spoon in the making of this meal. My philosophy about how much of a given ingredient to add is essentially "do it until it tastes good."

Honestly the least NSFW image I could find related to my last statement.

You guys, that philosophy is useful in a variety of situations. You're welcome.

Anyway, do you want to make some goddamn Ham Hash or not? Then here we go (notice that if your answer is "hell no," I'm ignoring you. Go read a blog about scrapbooking or the Illuminati or some damn thing. You can come back when we're through here).

First, melt some butter in a frying pan. I typically use about 1 1/2 tablespoons. Note that it says BUTTER. If you want to ruin your life by using margarine, that's your business, but you kind of suck. You could also use some heart-healthy extra-virgin olive oil, I guess. But it's not BUTTER. Butter is tasty in a way that only butter can be. I can watch my cholesterol when I'm dead.

Throw in some minced garlic. Let's call it a teaspoon of minced garlic, although really I have no idea. I keep a jar of minced garlic in the fridge, and I dig out a blob that's about quarter-sized. If you live somewhere that doesn't use quarters (or teaspoons, for that matter), then just add as much damn garlic as suits your fancy. Sautee until the fumes make your eyes water, or until the garlic starts to brown. Whatever.

Now open a can of those little whole potatoes. I think they're called new potatoes, although I doubt that by the time they're harvested, peeled, cooked, canned, and shipped to the store they're exactly new. See, here's where you could get all fancy and peel and cook your own fresh new potatoes. But that seems like a lot of work when you can buy a perfectly good can of the little fuckers and watch them roll out onto your cutting board like wee adipose babies.

I mean, I suppose we can be friends if you don't get that reference.
I suppose. But still.

Oh, but first drain and rinse them. Let's face it, that slightly slimy potato juice they come in is pretty gross.

Cut the spuds into 6-8 pieces each, depending on size. This makes pretty big chunks, and you can feel free to cut them smaller, or even buy the kind that come pre-cut into little cubes. Me, I like big spuds and I cannot lie.

You're going to cook them taters in butter and garlic, stirring frequently, until they start to get brown and smell like heaven. Then sprinkle with a little grated Parmesan cheese - a teaspoon or two, I guess, I don't know. You don't want to make your hash cheesy, you just want a little of that Parmesan flavor in the mix. You know how you have to bang the container against the table a couple of times to loosen up the clumps? Do that, and shake out as much as comes out.

Now add your ham. Personally, I always have a ham steak on hand because ham is one of the few meats Precocious Daughter will eat. But if you have leftovers from a whole ham, they'll work great, as well. Cut up about a half-pound into pieces that complement the size of your potatoes. No, I didn't say "compliment the size of your potatoes." That sounds vaguely naughty, and I won't have that shit here.

ISN'T THAT SPECIAL?

And yes, if you use the little pre-cubed potatoes, you can also use a package of pre-cubed ham. You're totally outdoing me in laziness at this point, but there's no judgment here. Unless you use margarine instead of butter. That's ridiculous and you deserve mockery.

Toss that ham in the pan and keep cooking, baby. You're going to want to throw in a bit of salt and pepper (keeping in mind that ham is already pretty salty, so don't overdo it). Then add the seasoning of your choice. I've made this with ginger, I've made it with oregano, and I've made it with rosemary, and they're all good. I don't measure herbs and spices as a rule, so you're on your own with quantity. The good news is, you get to sneak lots of little tastes while you adjust the seasoning. The bad news is, you may end up bringing a half-empty pan to the table if you can't control yourself. You gotta take those risks if you're gonna cook.

The last ingredient is green beans. DO NOT USE CANNED GREEN BEANS. THEY ARE GROSS AND EVIL AND I'M NOT JUST SAYING THAT BECAUSE I SPENT MY ENTIRE CHILDHOOD EATING CANNED GREEN BEANS AND, JUST, NEVER AGAIN.

Sorry, was I shouting? Just a bit of residual trauma. Nothing to worry about.

I'm fine.

Anyway, I use frozen green beans. Now, you don't want to be throwing frozen beans into your sizzling pan and bring everybody down. On the other hand, if you fully cook them first, you're likely to end up with limp, soggy beans that are barely a step up from canned, and I don't think you want me to have another canned-bean-related meltdown, do you? So I pop them in the microwave for 30-60 seconds, just enough to thaw them out. You should use enough beans to create a pleasing meat-to-spud-to-bean ratio, or alternatively, enough to convince yourself that you're actually having a serving of vegetables. Whatever makes it easier on you.

Stir in your beans, adjust your seasoning to taste, then turn down the heat a bit and slap a lid on that pan. Let everything simmer for five to 10 minutes, or until you're pretty sure you've killed whatever parasites live in undercooked ham.

Eat. Eat it all. Eat until you're stuffed but there are still a few morsels of delicious fried potato left, then eat those. Push your chair back and make the Homer Simpson drooling noise.

By the way, this makes two generous servings. It's a snap to double or triple, though, so stock up on those canned taters and make sure you have BUTTER in the house.

I'd like to think that Gordon Ramsay would have a profanity-laced tirade if presented with this recipe. That would make me happy. Who doesn't want to have multiple f-bombs lobbed at them by a master chef? But I firmly believe that once he tasted my Ham Hash, he would get all doe-eyed and fluttery and ask me to be his wife/mistress/personal chef. And of course, I would reply, "That's very flattering, Gordon, but fuck off." Because who doesn't want to say that?

Anyway, that's dinner, Baudelaire-style. And remember: Real butter. And NO. CANNED. GREEN. BEANS. EVER.

On Separation Anxiety and Quality Beards (In One Post, Really)

Tomorrow Precocious Daughter is flying to New York to visit her paternal grandmother for a week.

Which is wonderful for her. She doesn't get to spend enough time with any of her grandparents, and of course any opportunity to spend time in the Big Apple is not to be missed. The last time she was there she visited the Jersey shore, saw a Broadway show, and toured Radio City Music Hall. This time she may hit up MOMA, Ellis Island, and of course, see another Broadway show.

I will miss her terribly.

Also, I will put my house up for sale while she's gone. One less teenager in the house means it will be infinitely easier to keep clean for showings. I sort of wish her father were going away for the same reason.

Aside: Why does it require three butter knives to cook a plate of spaghetti? Because that's just one highlight of what I had to clean up this morning. I don't know if it's wrong to divorce someone for being a slob, but it sure as hell doesn't feel wrong to me.

But I digress.

I would love to book a hotel room and have a bit of a staycation while PDaughter is away. But I just know that if I'm not at the house 24/7, he will sabotage all my efforts to sell it, just by making a goddamn mess, which is his default mode.

Did I already ask if it's wrong to get divorced because you're tired of living in someone else's pervasive, thoughtless filth?

Is it possible to love someone and absolutely not want to spend one more minute living with him?

Back to where I started: PDaughter leaves for New York tomorrow, and I hope she has an amazing time, although I will miss her every moment she's away.

There is a chance, because of the red-hot local real estate market, that the house will be under contract by the time she comes home.

If it's not, I'm going to start to panic, because I sort of require the proceeds from the sale to start the new life I've already set in motion for my kiddo and me.

How freaking ironic would it be if I became financially dependent on my spouse after 25 years of being the breadwinner?

Very ironic, if by "ironic" you mean "horrifying and unthinkable."

On a completely different topic, I'm thinking of creating a "How Wonderful/Terrible Is Your Facial Hair?" quiz for my male Drunkards. I just have to find a code shell and customize it. Do any of my male readers want to know how wonderful/terrible his facial hair is, according to a 100% objective and not subject to my input program?

If you're a bearded lady, same question.

The world is full of wonders.

First Through Fourth...Again

First of all, I think I'm going to have to steal an idea from The Comics Curmudgeon and institute a Comment of the Week. I just love reading comments my Drunkards leave on my posts. Seriously, I usually end up laughing or saying "D'awww" out loud every time I review them. You guys are so funny and sweet and smart. So if you think a Comment of the Week is a good idea, let me know...you know, in a comment.

Bring your own popcorn.

Second of all, I cleaned my kitchen counters with bleach tonight. Because my spouse kindly volunteered to prepare dinner and made the most god-awful mess putting together packaged tortellini and sauce in a jar.

You think this is an exaggeration, don't you?

I literally couldn't identify some of the stains he left behind. So I sprayed bleach solution on the countertops and wiped them good and clean. They look great. And my kitchen smells AMAZING. You guys should invest in Clorox stock. When I have my own place, I am going to be the Bleach Queen.

I need this. I'll wash it in bleach, I promise.

Third of all, Precocious Daughter is watching "Friends." I just heard the greatest quote via Rachel:

"[These] are not tears of sadness, or anger, but just of me having this conversation with you."

I have had those tears. So many times. And I've had to pretend they were something else, because I could never explain just what they were. But that is what they were. Conversational tears.

Thank you, Alison LaPlaca.

Fourth of all...the contractors still haven't started work on my renovations. I'm just rolling with it, because I've seen The Money Pit. It was funny when it happened to Tom Hanks, it can be funny when it happens to me. I'll look back on all the delays and laugh. I promise.

There is no fifth. Sometimes there's only four.

Ode to Soup

Next on my World Poetry Day-a-thon, the topic is soup.

Homemade

Broth is love.
From the bones of a chicken
Comes a new beginning,
A seasoned pot of potential.
What will we add to make it new?

Garlic, potatoes, cheese, thyme,
Milk, pepper, love.
Combine and stir.
Heat until good.

It needs tasting,
It needs more.
Baby it,
Then leave it alone.
Make it hot, make it cool,
Let it breathe.

It will be soup
When it's ready to be soup.

Waiting.
Worth it, but hard.
I'm giving birth to soup.
It starts with broth.

Yes, Pecan!

This is my last post about Thanksgiving until next year, I promise.

Regular readers know by now that I no longer eat sweets. I didn't give them up, per se; I just stopped wanting (and being able to tolerate) sweet foods. I don't know how it happened, because if I did I'd be writing this on a much more expensive computer...or dictating to my hot, overpaid personal assistant.

photostock/FreeDigitalImages.net

Not too overpaid...wouldn't want him to be able
to afford a shirt.

Anyway, I made a pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Precocious Daughter likes pecan pie, so I made one. I make sweet things all the time, knowing that I won't be eating them. I just put that part of it out of my mind and do it anyway, because I'm so freaking loving and giving that way.

foto76/FreeDigitalImages.net

Also, if you're sewing designer jeans in a Bangladeshi
sweatshop for 12 cents a day, you don't want to think
too much about whether they'd make your butt look good.
It's like that.

But last night, after sitting around digesting a massive turkey dinner for a few hours, I decided I wanted a little something more to eat. And what I decided I wanted was a slice of my pecan pie.

I don't trust pecan pies where the pecans are all
neatly lined up. Seems like witchcraft to me.

I cut myself a small sliver, put it on a plate, and steeled myself for the disappointment of not being able to handle more than one bite.

And then...a miracle occurred.

Sort of like the miracle of Joey Ramone, in that nobody knows
what the hell that has to do with anything, Bono.

My pecan pie was delicious. And I loved every delicious bite. Maybe the nutty topping and the flaky crust balanced out the sweet, gooey filling and made it palatable to me. I don't know. But let me tell you, the second slice was every bit as good as the first.

Probably I should not start baking pecan pies every week. My body is better off without sweets, after all. And I don't actually miss them that much. But I can see me polishing off at least a pie a week, if it continues to taste like heaven in a glass plate the way my Thanksgiving pie did.

Not great for my waistline. Still, it gives me hope for the future.

Hope and change, baby. If that's not something to be thankful for, I don't know what is.