Seafood

I had two different varieties of fish while out between assignments today. Swedish and Gold. The Swedes, as I've written about before, play an important role in helping me to get through trying days at work. The goldfish are comforting too, but in a different, salty way.

I'm not all that sure how I feel about the goldfish having those big grins though. Maybe they're just resigned to the idea of being eaten alive (headfirst if they're lucky, otherwise it's the slow painful death of going tailfirst) and are enjoying their last moments with their cheese flavored brethren.

It's still a little disturbing. Maybe they know something that I don't, and are actually getting the last laugh. Such as the impact that eating too many salty crackers and candy will have on the long term health of my heart and teeth. Those bastards.

Couscous

Last night Maureen made another recipe by Jeanne can't name her recipes right Lemlin. This one was from the cookbook "Quick Vegetarian Pleasures". The well written, wonderfully prepared, but poorly named recipe is called "Vegetable Couscous".

For this one I'm thinking "Kick-ass couscous" might work. That's still a work in progress though, I'll have to work on it some. It's a little too close "Kick-ass chocolate chip muffins".

Jeanne Lemlin should really start sending me royalty checks for all the help I'm giving her on recipe names. At the very least she could dedicate future editions of the book to me. Right now this one is dedicated to her husband and her mother. That would be easy enough to change.

HOAGIE NIGHT!!!!

Tonight was hoagie night!!! Yeah! Hoagie Night!!!

When faced with the option of going to an actual restaurant to order off the menu, or going to a Wawa gas station to order sandwiches with a touchscreen, we will often go with the gas station.

Here's why.

First, Wawa just makes a good hoagie. I'm not going to say it's a great hoagie, but it's good.

Second, it's not like one of those places where you have to interact with an actual person who takes your order and then makes your hoagie for you. That's the beauty of the touchscreen. It's just you and the screen. Nobody to rush you, nobody to judge you for getting horseradish and extra mayo on your egg salad sandwich, plus you can see all of your options right there on the screen.

After you order, pay, and pick up your hoagie, you drive home and eat at the dinning room table the same way you would if you'd cooked something. Except that you didn't have to cook it, and you didn't have to talk to somebody, you just pushed buttons on a touchscreen.

The other option for where to eat, which I've done on occasion, is to eat the hoagie while sitting in your car in the Wawa parking lot. When you do this you end up looking like a loser who eats their touchscreen ordered hoagie while sitting in their car. I find it best in this situation to park over in a corner of the parking lot. This way you'll have fewer people walking by and staring at you while you stuff your face with hoagie, drip mayo on your shirt, and sing along to "Hammer Time" on the radio.

I also had some nuggets with the hoagie, and some mustard for dipping.

Hardboiled

Maureen hardboiled the rest of the eggs that were starting to get old. We don't usually go through eggs fast enough to finish a dozen before they expire. We'll bake with them, scramble or fry them, or use one with bean burgers, but that all requires planning, and work.

However, like a caterpillar that's transformed into a butterfly, eggs that are hardboiled change from a boring food that requires tedious cooking before I can eat it, to a magical food of convenience. Something that can be easily found and eaten with a minimum of labor while grazing through the kitchen. Just like butterflies.

These little bundles of cholesterol just aren't the same without a nice boosting of the blood pressure though, so I like mine with salt.

Leftover garlic breath

Dinner yesterday was leftover "Rigatoni with tomatoes, white beans, and zucchini". Still very good, still with the wrong name. We had bread with it. It wasn't Italian bread though, it was a French baguette. It made for a multinational dinner.

Garlic Breath

Yesterday Maureen made "Rigatoni with tomatoes, white beans, and zucchini", a recipe from Jeanne Lemlin's cookbook "Vegetarian Classics". The recipe is quite good, hot or cold, with massive amounts of cheese of course. We substituted penne for the rigatoni though.

Maureen did a good job making this dish, and Jeanne did a good job coming up with the recipe, but whoever named it really dropped the ball. I think that a more fitting name would be "Garlic breath pasta dish". 6 cloves of garlic go into this culinary creation, and you can smell every one of them.

If Jeanne is reading this I hope she considers my suggestion for a new name while working on future editions of the book.

berry

There's a little patch of wild strawberries growing on a tiny strip of grass between our and our neighbor's attached house. They look nice, and give our row-home with a 2 square foot lawn a more rural feel.

Today Maureen picked some. As soon as I saw them I started to imagine what they'd taste like, and more importantly how great it would be to eat something that grew wild in our own backyard. My poorly suppressed inner hippie starting grooving to visions of living off the land, growing all our own organic produce, and sitting around with all of my new hippies friends talking about all of our various problems with "The Man."

While I set-up my camera and photographed these little gifts from Mother Earth, I moved on to imagining new scenarios where my independence from "The Man" would finally free me to quit my job and pursue some new found passion like pet massage, hand-crafting pillows made out of human hair, or operating a Ponzi scheme.

As I finished photographing them I popped one of those tiny miracles of earth's bounty into my mouth. I was confident it would be the single greatest piece of food I'd ever eaten, nourishing body and soul, and fundamentally changing my outlook on life.

I chewed it once before realizing the horrible mistake I'd made. Somehow this plant must have been genetically modified to grow bitter red pieces of styrofoam that look like wild strawberries. A wonder of science for sure, but disgusting to eat.

All hippie plans are permanently on hold, and I'm afraid I won't be accepting any orders for hair pillows.