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Tuesday Afternoon BLT
But my tomatoes had gone so bad. Cute little cherry tomatoes, with cute little green mold colonies all over. So I had to make due without them.
Actually, my credit card was maxed for the past week and a half so I’ve been scraping around trying to find things to eat, slowly diminishing my pantry reserves. As of this moment, my refrigerator is all condiments and orange juice. The last of the cheese is gone. There is no lemonade. My credit is back, I just need to go grocery shopping. Yesterday I had bacon, lettuce, swiss cheese, cheddar cheese and a fresh loaf of sourdough bread from the Little Bakery. Time to get creative, with the BLC – an honest sandwich, an American original.
It all starts with the bacon. Do you think I eat too much bacon?
I cooked this in the oven for about 13 minutes at 425ºF, in an uncovered anodized dutch oven. Pro tip: I saved the fat that rendered out and fried a chicken breast in it for dinner last night.
You can’t have a sandwich without bread. I don’t believe in low-carb shenanigans like lettuce wraps. Sourdough is delicious, so I used that. You can use what you like, unless it’s Wonder bread. I’ll fuck you up.
Cover both breads with a thin layer of good old mayonnaise. I actually did use lite mayo, because it tastes the same and I’m fat enough as it is. Oh yeah, and put some bacon on there.
I’m making a sandwich. You can’t possibly need these directions.
This is “cosmopolitan lettuce,” which is a “new lettuce.” Surprise of the century: it looks and tastes like lettuce.
Once the top bread hits the lettuce you have five seconds to eat it. Your tongue and stomach will join forces and eat your brain in mutiny if you wait any longer than that. As such, the picture is blurry.
I also happened to make enough bacon for two sandwiches. I had two sandwiches. Don’t tell anyone.
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Tags: bacon, blt, sandwich
Overheard in Rochester
A conversation about bicycles:
Guy 1: “I haven’t settled on whether I want to get 26-inch or 700C wheels yet, though.”
Guy 2: “Well everyone will agree that the bigger your wheels are the smoother your ride will be. You know what those guys riding around on little BMX bikes remind me of?”
Guy 3: “Dorks?”
* * *
So I went down to Corning to see Boston and Styx in concert last night with Brian. I never thought that I would get to see either of them live – hell, I never thought they’d be touring again – but I have, and let me tell you, they’re still awesome.
Styx was very well-dressed and lively. They set up with a keyboard on a lazy Susan and Gowan was just on fire. Come Sail Away was a religious experience for a lot of people, I think.
I started a lighter movement during that song. I got it out and a VERY enthusiastic middle-aged man screamed into the crowd for everyone to follow suit. He was almost in tears. I was, too, because my cheap-ass lighter exploded and burned my thumb. They played Renegade as an encore and a gigantic woman seated in the VIP section erupted out of her chair and and convulsed violently, not unlike she was suffering an upper-body seizure. Even her husband stood up and left to disassociate himself.
Boston is what I came for, though, and they didn’t disappoint at all. They set up with a wall of blinking lights and a gong. They never did use the gong but damned if I don’t respect that. They opened with a song from Corporate America, surprisingly, and played nearly all of their debut album. They still rock, and I can’t believe that they will ever stop. There’s not a lot to say but that they were amazing.
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Tags: Boston, concert, explosion, lighter, Styx
Freuding the Coffee Shop
Which do you think is worse: a guy sitting alone, facing the wall, or the guy next to him writing about it on his blog? But I digress – the real reason I’m writing is to share with you the Phrase of the Day.
PHRASE OF THE DAY!
Butter Continents. Melt a pat of butter in a sauté pan, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
On a more substantiative note, today and Sunday, there is an air acrobatics show at ROC, with military pilots doing ridiculously dangerous things in billion-dollar jet aircraft for shits and giggles. When I first heard about it, the event struck me in a way similar to how monster truck shows do; it sounded like jangling keys to entertain suburban John Q. Public with shiny technology and fire, and on one level that is exactly what it is. And then, earlier today while eating a sandwich in my apartment, an F-someteen roared above my building and described a loop over downtown.
If a motorcyclist is having a good day just by screaming down the city avenues with the wind in his face and the streets left in a blurry wake, then those pilots must be having the times of their lives. I would gladly give years of my life to military service and training for the chance to make supersonic fly-overs of our cities, weaving between the skyscrapers and seeing the arterial sprawl of transportation networks and eras of development like the rings of a tree, first hand, not from satellite photographs or maps or hearsay. What an amazing experience it must be. I have a real respect for the air show, not because I enjoy watching it, but that the people that do enable a life-changing experience for the pilots running it. Seeing the plane over midtown is enough for me, to take a minute to live vicariously. To get some perspective of people in war-torn parts of the world, terrorized by the same machines that could vaporize the buildings around me in an instant if so equipped. I am not above being dazzled by technology – I think it’s great how technology expands human experience, for better or worse, to give perspective and wonder and delight and fear, for better or worse, to our lives.
Neat-o.
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Tags: air show, butter continents, perspective, phrase of the day, technology
Tuesday is Panini Day
Last night at around 9PM I took an intense night ride down East avenue, and ended up at Wegmans. After recovering and catching my breath, I went in and put together a killer checkout combination:
- Fresh Italian Pane loaf
- Lite Mayonnaise
- Hair Dye
- Pack of Gum
Filed under: food, photo | 3 Comments
Tags: cheese, panini, sandwich, tomato
Weekend Stir-Fry
Yesterday evening I set out to make good and prodigious use of my stockpile of vegetables before they started going bad on me. Delicious, theatrical stir-fries have been a tradition of mine and I haven’t made one in a while, since I’ve been cooking for myself almost exclusively as of late. So here’s the mis en place:
That’s a bowl of mushrooms, a scallion, a lime, vidalia onion, three cloves of garlic, oyster sauce, sriracha chile sauce and – not shown – bell peppers, fresh basil, dried basil, soy sauce and mirin.
Shrimp which I clearly caught and prepared myself, and my first order of business is to soften them up a little:
I like to run frozen seafood under a trickle of cold water; it’s no slower than microwaving, there is no danger of cooking them, there is no odor released, and it’s sanitary best that I can tell.
The peppers are first onto the chopping block. These are locally-grown heirloom bell peppers from the Public Market; not quite red, not quite green, some are brown, but they’re all tasty.
I’ve shown you how this goes. There they are.
A handful of Crimini mushrooms, sliced into cross-sections.
Joining the party. A lot of my friends don’t like mushrooms. I secretly hate them all.
Half of that big-ass onion, roughly chopped. Some of my friends don’t like onions, too. I’m going to burn their houses down.
And they, too, join the party. Brace yourself for this next one.
Streaky Gold.
Zested lime with an accidental frown.
Bacon chopped up into bits,
ready to meet its maker, on medium heat.
Love me.
Render all the fat out of the bacon and rescue it to the safety of a prep bowl. Put the spurs to the burner and let it get super hot, then deliver the veggies. Stir them while they fry up in the bacon grease. This is a stir-fry.
Get your flavorful herbs and cloves ready, and find them beautiful. Put a couple shots of soy and mirin into the wok to season.
Throw the lovelies in and stir it up.
Send in the shrimp and cooked bacon, keep up the good work until the shrimp turns pink. Put in a couple tablespoons of oyster sauce and a hearty shot of chile sauce, and mix it up good.
Love me.
Serve it on a bed of rice. I was out of the organic basmati, so I went with medium-grain… something. It’s white.
Dinner time.
Filed under: food, photo | 1 Comment
Tags: cooking, moire, shrimp, sriracha, stir-fry, wok
Laundry Day
Doing laundry is the least pleasant thing that I do on a regular basis. I generally don’t do things that I strongly dislike, but laundry is unavoidable. I hate carrying the load all over the building, I hate spending money on the machines, I hate finding machines that work, I hate the sauna that is the laundry room, I hate the uncomfortable interactions with other residents, I hate kicking around in the most uncomfortable and unflattering clothes I own, I hate folding.
There is a saving grace to laundry day, however, and that is the Wardrobe Color Index. I love seeing the lint in each machine’s lint trap, displaying the average color of all the clothes the person that used the machine last wears. It really speaks enormous volumes about people; I have to wonder about the person who used the dryer before me, and their baby blue average, or anyone whose average is hot pink.
For reference, mine is Pantone 5467. I think it suits me.
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Tags: laundry, pantone
Locked Out
I had been planning on going to the bike shop’s customer appreciation day, sit in on some seminars and maybe pick up sorely-needed panniers or cargo baskets at discount. So, after coming home from the public market and taking a while to decompress, I changed and went out to the sidewalk only to realize that I had left my wallet, keys and everything else in my other pants.
My apartment building has an airlock with card-swipe at both doors, and the apartment entries all lock behind you when you leave.
I panicked for a second and went into the vestibule, and thankfully someone was coming through and I was able to sneak in like a diamond thief. Of course, being a Saturday, the office was closed and my only hope was the pager number listed in word-art posted in the window of the office. So, I called that a few times and tried to figure out how to leave a message, then waited over an hour.
By chance I went back to the office and read the paper again to find that I had put the number into my phone with two digits transposed. The wrong number was still a pager to something, though, and I had been calling it repeatedly. I called the right number and Rick came by to unlock my door for me. I guess sitting in the hallway talking on my cell phone was too much excitement for me to handle, because by the time I was in and the bike shop was closed, I made dinner and hit the sack for half an hour. Finding my station to be tragic for a Saturday, I took a ride around the neighborhood and stopped at Java’s for a cappuccino and read for a couple of hours. Now I have the energy I wanted six hours ago.
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Tags: the mundane occurrences of my life
Without the Burden of Dignity
the great modern cities
whither and die
in a spectacular blaze of technology
the elderly kept alive
with chemical miracles
the ends unbearable to see
a welcome overstayed
leaving emptiness and remorse
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Cool and Sunny
Not a groundbreaking day in my life, but the weather was spectacular. I’m trying to keep a regular sleep schedule now, and woke up at 9AM to an apartment much colder than the air pocket contained in my blanket cocoon. I wrestled myself out of bed and moldered in front of okcupid for a little while, then headed out for a wholesome breakfast at Java’s:
And it was lovely:
After which I rode down to Highland Park to check out the blues and barbecue festival. It didn’t tickle me, so I came home for lunch; some Annie’s, tomato and black pepper over light rail construction in Sim City.
I rounded off the daylight hours with Atlas Shrugged at the park, and then a nice ride around Brighton and back home for the daily show and this journal entry. Pardon my breaking the fourth wall, I’m not feeling so literary tonight!
Pleasant.
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Tags: annie's, atlas shrugged, ayn rand, genesee, highland, Java's, nat sherman, park
Some More Thoughts
My hamster is so obnoxious. Every night, no matter how much attention, food, exercise and excitement I give her, she chews on the bars and makes the worst grating sound. She does this to grind down her teeth so that they don’t grow up into her tiny brain. It is the sound of teeth being ground away into dust. My, god.
Last weekend, my friends and I spent the fourth (as well as the third and fifth) at our friend’s house in Red Creek. The moment of perspective in this instance came when we drove for twenty minutes at highway speeds to the local metropolis, a Family Dollar with a population of 1700. The stars were again spectacular, as were my allergies. I’m getting accustomed to sleeping in atypical types of furniture; I think that’s maybe a good skill to have.
Saturday, having come back to the city, I was hanging out with Beth and we made – she made, I “helped” – delicious banana bread. I took a couple of photographs of the end product, but I can’t take credit for anything but eating it…
This was a good night.
What I love most about pictures from Beth’s kitchen is that there is always some brightly colored object nearby; mine is always very beige.
I’ve finally resolved to see a therapist and pick apart the tangled yarn that is my conscience. There are a lot of things bothering me and a lot of things wrong with me and, even though I’ve made a lot of progress on my own, I need to finally commit to straightening it all out if I’m to grow further. I had intended to stop by the counseling office today and schedule an appointment but I made a pit stop in Witmeyer Lab beforehand and became absorbed working on something for so long that it had closed. It was worth it, though, because I finally decided on what to get permanently drawn into my skin; I made this, and it means nothing:
I signed up for okcupid again last night, having been too tired to go and do something worthwhile. God help me. My past experiences with this have been suboptimal, but I need the entertainment.
Today I rode down to Southtown Plaza in suburban Henrietta to drop into a shop that I need and want to work at for the rest of my undergraduate career. I am so hoping that my job hunt is coming to an end, because my savings certainly are, and I’m super bored doing nothing all day. I was granted a brief phone interview last weekend but thought it would be a nice touch to show the manager my beautiful shining face and be charming in person. Since it was about four hundred degrees – all humidity – today, by the time I got there I was a mess, so I took a break at Jitters to grab a slice of pizza and read while I settled down.
I didn’t get very far into my slice or my book before something started really bothering me that I couldn’t ignore any longer, like a swarm of mosquitos eating your head while you do your best to convince yourself that the citronella is working. The place was packed with thirty-something polyethylene suburban housewives, complacently saturated with paxil and stretching their exposed legs around at everyone else, perfectly toned and tanned like rotisserie chickens. Even the younger crowd seemed vacant and somehow manufactured, sitting alone with nothing to justify their existence, begging each other with their eyes for companionship that nobody has the courage to provide. An overwhelming need to escape took me and I moved on to my interview. From there I went to my new apartment complex for information, and then on to campus to get some illustrator time in. The good word from the apartments is that I can paint any room anything I want, as long as I paint it back to white. I caught up with a friend that I had forgotten was in town this summer, and rode the bus back downtown.
Dinner was uninspired and unphotogenic, but there was a lovely situation out the window for dessert.
And that is today’s moment of perspective; even when you can’t really see it, life is still pretty good. Remain positive, and I’ll do the same.
Filed under: food, journal, photo | 1 Comment
Tags: apartments, bread, Jitters, job hunt, paxil, suburbanites, sunset, tattoo, therapy
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