Something New, Something More

I had a notable meal late yesterday afternoon. Some friends and I went out rather on the spur of the moment in order to celebrate a happy professional development of mine, and it's common for us to hit a local sushi restaurant at such times. It's mostly been my modus operandi to order a few of the basic rolls (usually after quickly looking up the difference between hand and cut rolls), but I found myself remembering our last visit and something that happened during it.

A big group of us were there then, and I think we may have been marking the occasion of someone's birthday. The restaurant's staff was, understandably, tested by our numbers, and depended on us to say who was supposed to have which order as they brought it out. You wouldn't think it would be hard to know what order was mine, particularly given my above-stated penchant for certain items, but then that would mean you didn't know me.

Blade Cuisine

There's this picture of rough, uncultured masculinity that I idealize in my mind. It looks something like a thug from the Adventures Of Mark Twain. He's uneducated, slovenly, mean and violent. When I see myself doing anything that meets part of that description, I kind of like it. It's not good to be like that, but I must confess a certain charm in it nonetheless. It's hard to explain it, and I'm sure I've failed, but there's something to it. Maybe you just get tired of sticking to the rules, even the good ones.

Something that makes me think of this is how I eat. I often eat poorly, both in terms of the food's nutritional content and the manner in which I consume it. Suffice it to say that I don't lay out multiple forks and spoons on the table, both because I don't have the silverware and because I don't have the table. I'm certainly capable of eating in a sophisticated manner, but I don't make the effort to do so generally.

Drinks

Things mostly are not cheap anymore anywhere. Even at the "99 Cents Only" stores, many items in their inventory now exceed that price. Indeed, they all do, as the cheapest price now is 99.99 cents. Knowing that, it is a surprise to me whenever an item sold represents any kind of a bargain. I even lose perspective on what a bargain is, and a four dollar beer at a bar can sound pretty good. That is, of course, no bargain whatsoever.

There are still bargains out there, and one in particular comes to mind. I don't shop at Trader Joe's often, though I probably should. It would be good for my health (though I fear it would be bad for my checking account balance, the name of which I must confess I wince while typing). They have many find offerings, but there are only two that I have had great enthusiasm for at any time. One is their bread, which is pretty good. I can't eat as much of it as I used to.

The Process

Ordering from a menu can be hard. There is the matter of overcoming the paralysis by analysis that is brought on by very many choices. One must discard many choices right off the bat by seeking out something more than food that merely seems good. I luckily am very good at introducing other factors, of which cost is merely one. Most of them are less reasonable factors than that. Cost is a very useful thing to consider.

It's nice when the cuisine derives from a culture whose language I am especially inexperienced at pronouncing. That way, I can discard as a possibility any food item I am unsure of being able to pronounce correctly. It feels important to me that I look smart and not stupid in such situations, and this feeling helps me further winnow down the options before making my final decision. It may not matter to other people, but it need not.

Yet Another Lesson

There are many things that you do poorly, get a lesson about, and then continue to do poorly. It sometimes takes many lessons, and sometimes no number of lessons is enough. I have struggled to learn about eating properly. There have been a lot of lessons that ought to have set me straight, stretching back plenty of years. The lessons keep getting more severe, which is the nature of these things.

When I was a teenager, I could eat anything. There was then no evidence of my vulnerability. Not long after that, there started to be foods that actually staggered me. More than once I ate something like a Jack In The Box meal, quickly feeling sick to my stomach afterwards. Why would I ever have done that a second time? The memory of faintly enjoying the food should never have been adequate to compensate for the nausea that always accompanied it.

Dictated But Not Read

There is a tray in the lobby of my apartment building that is sporadically stocked with complimentary fruit. It's usually something like oranges, or, more likely, apples. Upon noticing as I was heading out the other night that there were some apples on the tray, I paused. I wasn't exactly hungry, and to the extent that I was, apples were not what would sate me. I grabbed one apple and then considered that I was about to be with some four or some people, each of whom could theoretically want an apple.

I started to grab four apples, but stopped myself out of concern that I was abusing the privilege so kindly (if inconsistently) extended to us by the building management (who, incidentally, can well manage to absorb the loss on account of their ever increasing rent). I put back all of the apples but one, which I offered to the friend who was waiting outside to pick me up. She declined the offer, leaving me rather at a loss.

Tea Totaler

I bought a different kind of tea recently, plunging deeper into something that I never thought I'd be into at all. I had long resisted tea, fearing what seemed to be a far greater minimum investment of equipment. For while though, I didn't have so much as a tea kettle. I now have one of those, which costed a few dollars. There are a few other things I could get, but I doubt whether they would do much to enhance the experience.

This new tea is stronger than the other one. That tea, called Throat Coat, is an herbal tea meant to help sore throats and such. That's why I bought it. I would make two cups of tea out of every bag, the second cup being much weaker. I just drank it as it was, without any milk or sugar. That is the traditional British way of taking tea, I gather. There's more to it besides that, but the milk and sugar are very important. I learned that from "The Great Escape".

A Grand Mystery

A couple weeks ago, a friend and I were doing some brainstorming for sketch comedy writing. I don't know how it came up that we started looking at videos online, but we're easily distracted, and even the best of writers will accept any excuse to not do it. In any event, we came upon something rather jarring. We discovered that people once drank Doctor Pepper hot, and perhaps still do so. This was very troubling to us.

The video in question was an old commercial specifically promoting the practice. it seems that you boil it in a pot with lemon. My friend and I debated a number of points, not the least of which was whether people ever truly did this, or whether such ads were just a fanciful pipe dream. The evidence we uncovered after our curiosity had been piqued suggests the former. I never heard of any such thing in my life. I've heard of warm beer, but that was not even in the United States.

Something Red, Something New

I love pistachios. I don't know anyone who doesn't, although I'll allow that there probably are some (if only because there are bound to be those stricken with an allergy). Mainly though, I think that they are impossible to hate. For that reason, there has been no good reason to meddle with the formula. Sure, you can get shelled pistachios, but I've always felt that the flavor lost something from the absence of effort expended to open them.

That one thing aside, I've not seen pistachios in any different form until now. A care package from my dear mother arrived recently, containing in it pistachios that were dyed red. I momentarily questioned whether there was a naturally red variety, but reasoned that even if there was (and I doubted it since I'd never seen or heard of one), this could not be it as it was obvious how artificial its coloring was. There were areas of the shell that were not red, and the edges of the dye job showed.

Coffee, Tea, All Neat, Sir!

I have for a while not had any coffee. I have lately suffered occasionally from a sore throat, and what I had heard for a long time was that a particular brand of tea was fairly good for that. I decided to switch from the coffee that I'd been drinking to that very tea, known as Throat Coat. It has been an interesting change. The coffee is prepared in a manner that I have done so many times that it is not exactly a thrilling operation.

The tea is a little different. With the coffee, I would of course insert the coffee (possibly grinding it from beans) into a filter (probably made of paper), dripping through that water which I would pour into the proper chamber after measuring it in the very carafe which ultimately contains the finished coffee. I would then pour the coffee into a mug, adding cream and sugar. It's a process as boring for me to type as it must be to read.

A Big D (Not Dallas)

I made another of those big moves in my diet recently. English Muffins had lost their appeal as a breakfast item. I got the idea that I was taking in too much starch and not enough Vitamin D, so I did something that is radical only for me. I bought a jug of milk. I had previously regarded it as a risky investment, as I can recall few times that I managed to consume an entire jug of milk before its expiration.

The desire to maintain good health makes you do crazy things though, and so it was that I bought milk to have cereal for breakfast as I did most days in childhood. It has an interesting impact on the morning schedule, or at least it's mildly interesting to me. Instead of taking several minutes and dictating when I have my first cup of coffee, it is instead the readiness of the coffee that dictates when I pour the first cup of coffee. Also I find that the coffee sits a bit before I have any, because the hot coffee and the cold milk do not mingle well.

So, Lad!

As I have said plenty of times, diet is a concern of mine. It may not be one that I act on very forcefully or successfully very much of the time, but the fact that I don't improve much along those lines is no evidence that I lack the interest. I do care, and there are a couple of successes that I've had. I did give up canned ravioli, which may sound like an easy and obvious thing to you, but for me it was not. I also recently have been edging away from hot dogs.

Add to those triumphs a very singular incident born of that universal inspiration, desperate need. Now, I had a few things on hand that didn't quite add up to a sandwich. All that was missing was the bread, really. I had the meat, the cheese, the mustard (in addition to various packets of taco sauce, dressing and hot sauce), the peppers, the lettuce and more. I just couldn't do exactly what I wanted, which was a sandwich.

A Victory For Health

It has become more and more important to me that I eat healthily, but I have not managed all the time to walk the walk. I am perhaps doing better than I was, but it remains very easy for me to fall on bad habits out of some sense of ease or out of excessive frugality. I used to eat a lot of hot dogs, which I know is bad. I don't eat so many now, but I still eat perhaps a few too many. I like getting a hot dog or two once a week before my improv class.

I was going to do that again the other day, but something was working on my mind. Early in the day, a friend sent me a link saying something or another about processed meats being bad. Now, this is nothing new to me. I know the hot dogs are bad the same way I know that binge drinking is bad, but you do bad sometimes because it's no fun to do good or it's too hard. No, the facts from this article really didn't sway me.

Pizza With Chemicals And Additives

The other day, I was doing some quick grocery shopping before going out to catch a late movie with friends. I often like to pick up something ready to eat (or nearly so) to have first thing after I get home, and there are a few options that I look to on that. One is a sandwich. Others include burritos and chicken, but on this recent occasion, I went another way. Specifically, I bought a frozen pizza. This one was supposed to be one of the good ones.

Indeed, it was better than most, and came at not too dear a price. Whimsically, I picked the Hawaiaan- style one instead of something more conventional. I wish I had not done so, although in the short term I was not sorry for my choice. The pizza was pretty good, with the pineapple and ham holding up fairly well. I had a couple slices, but then put away the rest for later. I figured by the end of the night I'd be ready for more.

Dynamite Sandwich

I have really come up with something, and as is so often the case, it happen without trying. I have been eating sandwiches again for lunch, as I had finally gotten tired of potatoes spoiling before I could eat them all. You'll recall that dramatic crisis, I'm sure. In any case, I had bought bread, some sliced turkey and chicken, lettuce and peppers. I was liking those sandwiches pretty well, and finally using the nice mustard I'd had sitting around.

I went and ran out of the bread, and I haven't managed to get to the store lately. I've been busy much of the time, and I've been lazy when I haven't been busy. Having run out of bread, I would ordinarily start eating the components for my sandwiches piecemeal, which is a terrible thing to do. My father would be critical of me for failing to add value to the various foods by combining them, and I have taken that to heart.

The Steaks

A little while back, I received a gift from my dear mother in the form of some steaks. They were a mixed assortment, some being beef, some pork and some chicken. I was delighted to get them, of course. They came in two parcels, the first arriving in my absence. I was somewhat startled to see the large styrofoam cooler in the refrigerator, and extracted the steaks in order to move them to the freezer. The second box came later, and while I haven't eaten the steaks, I have made use of the boxes.

I have had, you'll recall, some difficulty with any food that entails a lot of preparation. Currently the most sophisticated thing I'm eating is sandwiches, followed by spaghetti. Those are not complicated. To me, a steak is a rather involved process. To make it delicious and safe, you have to cook it for so long, and neither longer nor shorter. Figuring that is just a little more brain power than I would like to use, honestly.

A Blight On My House

I have been struggling with a food issue lately. I have been eating a fair amount of baked potatoes lately. I think it makes a nice lunch, and so I buy ten pound sacks of potatoes, eating one or two a day. One might debate the nutritional impact of that, but I like them and they are better than some things I've eaten. The problem I have is not with them, but with making sure they keep until I eat them all. It's not like I take breaks from them, but they spoil faster than I can eat them.

You might suggest that I buy a smaller quantity of potatoes, but one saves only a dollar by buying a sack of potatoes half as big. I find that unfair, and I won't be victimized by it. I insist on the larger, more cost-effective amount. Unfortunately, as I get into the second half of it, they start to sprout the roots. It's a relatively novel experience. I have spent time in Florida and seen potatoes do that, but most of my life has been spent in Arizona, where the dry climate generally precludes that activity.

Cold In Cold

Yesterday I mentioned a pole competition that I attended recently. Thought it was, as I said, in a bad neighborhood, the area was not without options for food. There was one anyway, if temporarily. One of LA's ubiquitous food tracks was on hand outside, selling ice cream. One might question the choice of ice cream on what was a brisk night, but it was by then too late, and it is certainly too late to quibble now.

The specialty of the truck was ice cream sandwiches. It was awfully high quality (and rather exotic) flavors of ice cream in between equally high quality and exotic cookies. As I had decided to wear a suit and tie to the thing, I reasoned that an ice cream sandwich was a real gamble, and somehow it seemed like a bad thing to get a cookie on the side. It meant paying more and seemingly getting just one cookie and not two.

Fast Pass

I was shopping for groceries last night, and managed to gather together the essential to actually produce a few meals, rather than just something I could eat as a late dinner that very night. The latter is what I had done several times, and I was determined to do more this time out, as the trip over to the store is not one I relish making every single day. Well, I got my food, so I'll be all right for at least a couple days, I think.

I noticed while shopping that I had so successfully gotten out of the habit of buying the old, bad foods that I hadn't even thought about it since I could remember. I really tried to recall the last time I had entertained the idea of buying canned pasta, chili or the like, and I couldn't. I used to buy them almost exclusively, struggling to get through the week with fewer than ten cans. I had begun to regard myself as a connoisseur with a good sense of what brand was what.

One Potato Two

When there is no one to eat any of the food you buy except for you, it can get problematic. If I buy a jug of milk, I have to drink it consistently. It will spoil if I lose interest for a few days. The same is true for bananas, if I buy very many. I've gotten turned off of bananas lately for that very reason, and I haven't been in the habit of buying milk for a long time. They say that adults don't need it anyway, which I'm happy to believe.

Even foods that should last a while can be a problem. I have been eating a lot of baked potatoes, and buy them in sacks of ten pounds. I should buy the five pound sacks, but the miniscule price difference always dissuades me. I get down to those last six or seven potatoes, and they're sprouting roots. They look pretty rough, but looks can be deceiving, so I only rid myself of the ones where I'm sure they must be rotten.