Driving me bananas

Bananas.

The dreaded obstacle that doubles as a food.

While bananas are nutritious, great mixers in smoothies, and supposedly full of potassium, they also moonlight as a dangerous and playful gag. One of these seemingly harmless peels usually lay in wait around a corner, past an item box, or just after a jump. Unsuspecting, you drive over it and slide from first to fifth or sixth place. 

On the other hand, the fruit fits nicely between two slices of bread, slathered with peanut butter.

Odd how video games can skew our ideas about food.

Inspections

Murphy's Law—whatever can go wrong will. 

It's a truism of the postmodern American age, the cynical American mindset. 

Of course I'm always dining at a favorite location when my mom rings my phone. Here's another truism: nobody ever calls with good news while you're eating. Enjoying that steak? Your dog died. Fancy restaurant first date? You're a father. Forgive me for having my cake and eating it, too.


Every Monday I get a phone call. Usually around 1pm, the time I am having lunch. Without looking I answer, hey Mom, and I lay down my fork or set down whatever finger food is in my hands. No greeting back. Just a list being read to me. 


Did you hear CiCi's got a 70 on their inspection? 

I choke back greasy pepperoni and stale crust and try not to think about rat droppings beneath the layers of cheese. 

Panera scored a 72 last week; don't you eat there on your lunch breaks at work?


Not anymore. From the table in the break room I arch my wrists and toss a bowl of potato soup a good five feet straight into the trash. 


Sometimes we're better off not knowing certain things. There are levels of expectations we should have about our food—make it clean and sanitary. Stop dear newspaper editors, please stop printing these every week. If you simply must, sell it sealed so actual work has to be done to find out. 


Because honestly.


I can't eat anywhere anymore.

Birthday Cake

After polishing off the last piece of a family member's birthday cake, I found myself pondering something. Where does the tradition of a birthday cake come from? Why do we feel so entitled to have one?

This tradition dates back to the Roman empire. Flat cakes adorned with nuts and honey for a sweet flavour were served on birthdays. More commonly, cakes were served at Greek weddings. For many years, the words for bread and cake were interchangeable, the only difference being that a cake is sweetened and bread is not.

Because cake is a treat, oftentimes it was available only to the wealthy. Over time it became more accessible to those of lower income, and eventually an almost guaranteed item presented on your birthday.

Rant

         Wendell Berry makes arguments that we should de-structuralize the food industry—take away the mechanical nature of it and “return agriculture to agriculture.” He gives plenty of reasons why food as a business is a bad idea: quality, culture, and health effects are all great causes to champion for, but he gives little guidance for how to fix the problems.

            If almost all seeds are patented by one international corporation, a company that also owns patents on life, how do you reconcile this David and Goliath fight? Wendell Berry has no offerings about how to take on a corporation that will use endless lawyers to cost you endless amounts of money in court, effectively bankrupting you in the process of discrediting your claims. Food Inc reports on the intricacies of the evil corporations and their practices that destroy lives, but also offers no way in fighting against a regime bent on doing as they please.

One commenter in the film says every day we vote with our wallets. Voting only works if the system you’re voting in isn’t broken and corrupted by politicians in bed with big business. While it is easy to roll over and be run over by those in power, there has to be a way to fight back and take control of what we are putting into our bodies. Maybe it is just laziness, but I can’t help but feel as though I’m waiting around for someone else to tell me how to do it, rather than figure it out myself. I’m sure others feel this way too. Berry and Food Inc are great rallying points, but at the moment their views seem like pipedreams for those of us who feel too small to make a difference in the world.

Jerky

One of my favorite snacks is jerky made from any animal. Alligator, deer, moose, I've eaten it all. Most interesting is watching my dad make his own jerky from animals he's killed. Every winter, when deer season opens, my dad will nab a few unlucky bucks or does. The entire process is gruesome, but a necessary part I'm willing to accept.

First he strings the deer up by its legs, skins it, removes the organs, and washes it out with a water hose. The meat is chopped off the body, cleaned again, then dumped into a cooler. No part goes to waste; he fashions things from the fur, sells the organs or gives them to anyone willing to take them off his hands.

Inside the house, he uses a meat processor to slice thin strips which he will prepare for dehydration later. A mix of spices, Tabasco and Cayenne pepper mostly, is applied on both sides of the strips. Satisfied with his work, my dad unboxes the dehydrator and meticulously scrubs it. Like Tetris, he places as much as will possibly fit on the racks. Full and plugged in, the vacuum turns sloppy wet pieces of meat into crispy and spicy bits.

A night of dehydration is required for the perfect texture. We bag the jerky, seal it, and eat it as a snack, giving it to neighbors and friends as a social offering. My dad manages to make food, even something as odd as jerky, communal.

Oreos

Certainly, my diet is not the healthiest. What with all the processed foods, additives, and sugars I consume, it’s probably a medical wonder I’m not dead or at least diabetic. Of all the foods I enjoy, there is one thing that I over-eat: Oreos. The crunchy cookie filled with the sweetest cream center that works as a standalone treat or a great addition to any dessert.

For instance, whenever I have ice cream I add several Oreos. What this translates to some is, whenever I have ice cream I add several thousand calories because ice cream doesn’t have enough apparently. I bake cakes with Oreos in them. Sometimes I take a whole pack of Oreos, strip them of the cream, place it all in a bowl, melt it in the microwave, and make a sugary dip for the cookie remains. And worse yet, my deathly concoction of Oreos wrapped in cookie dough and baked in the oven. Supercookies if you will. Or Insta-betes, as I like to refer to them. 

The point is, none of these things are any good, and my roommates and I go through a pack of Oreos like chain-smokers do cigarettes. I’m positive if I removed them completely from my diet, my lifespan would increase by a good ten years. But I would rather live in a happy, cookie filled world than miserable and old never again knowing the deliciousness of an Oreo.

The Art of Potato

Numerous are the lost arts in the world. Anyone who has taken Dr. Butcher's Medieval Women Mystics class can attest to this, having seen ancient etched manuscripts, painstakingly handmade. Beautiful designs adorn these. But the art I'm talking about is a much simpler one. The art of peeling a potato.

It seems an easy enough task. Peel, discard, wash, and boil. After observing people waste a quarter of the potato while removing the skin, I realize how impractical it is to let anyone of lesser expertise handle the peeling process.

Just how hard can it be, you might ask. Consider the task at hand. Removing a millimeter thick layer of skin while savoring as much white potato as possible.

Good cooks are but surgeons among men.

The precision necessary takes years of practice, years of dexterity exercises. For instance, I've been playing stringed instruments, like the guitar, since I was ten years old. At the ripe old age of near-twenty-two, I still struggle to get the peelings thinly sliced.

What's all this for? The picture doesn't really give you much detail. And I promise that's not a bag of weed on my stove-top. It's basil, borrowed from my mother. I'm in the stages of preparing potato soup, a dinner I'm making for some friends. While they may come to expect a great meal, what they have no idea is the painful laboring process that lies behind each savory bite. Every compliment and smile makes those whiny years of "why are you even showing me this, Mom" worth every bit.

Popcorn Shrimp, among other things.

Today my great-grandmother turned 80. I'll give you a moment to let that sink in. It seems odd writing that, much less saying it knowing that many of my peers have grandmothers at least a decade or so older. But no, I have an 80 year old great-grandmother, a 64 year old grandmother, a 43 year old mother, and I'm turning 22 in four weeks. What does this have to do with food? We decided to celebrate this monumental birthday by eating out at a restaurant in Rockmart called the Pizza Farm.

Now, for a place called the Pizza Farm, I found myself disappointed that pizza was barely on the menu. Like it was an afterthought. As though someone picked out the name, felt clever, wrote an entire menu and then said, "Oh shit, we forgot to put pizza on here!" Noticing that steaks and seafood were more plentiful, I assumed those were the house specialty. I chose the popcorn shrimp; simple and usually delicious. A hard to screw-up food, if you will.

The whole time I ate, I wondered, how can I describe the taste of shrimp to someone? I always found them to have a metallic taste. Like eating a butter-flavored battery. If a AA was malleable enough to eat, I imagine that's how shrimp would taste, sitting on your tongue silently melting away as your saliva drips down on it in a pool of acidic sludge. I swear it's more appetizing than it sounds. My side dish was the also safe bet baked potato, loaded with what must have been a cup of butter, salt, and sour cream.

As I sit with a bloated belly pouring over my blog, I can't help but think how easy it is to eat too much delicious food. If there were no delicious foods, would we still eat as much? I eat, therefore I am? Come at me, Descartes.

Rice, chicken, and more chicken.

As my blog pertains to foods that are oft grilled, hence the clever title, I decided to take a previous posting's food of choice and expand upon it. Recycling the spicy chicken recipe was easy enough; I've grilled my chicken this way hundreds of times. The same blend of garlic, cumin, and chili powder coated the chicken that sizzled and popped. Meanwhile I began making the very basic instant rice. I added a tablespoon of butter and a pinch of salt for flavor, and opened a can of cream of chicken soup. The soup came to a slow boil and I removed it from the eye.

By this time, the chicken was thoroughly cooked, or so I thought (more on this in a moment). I began slicing it into small, bite-sized chunks. I emptied half of the rice into a bowl and poured half the contents of the soup into the mix. I garnished the top of my concoction with the chicken, then ran a spoon through it, blending all three ingredients. And just like that, the dish seen in the picture was made; both piping hot with a fiery burn of spice and soothing and creamy. Sadly, I undercooked the chicken, resulting in a long night of stomach cramps requiring a day to recover.

Spicy Grilled Chicken

If I'm completely honest with myself, and others, being a healthy eater is not on my list of priorities. Most meals I consume have five-digit calorie totals. Of all things, I do enjoy a nice grilled chicken dinner, an actually healthy entree, being that white meat does your body well in comparison to the red. So I begin by mixing a series of spices; cumin, garlic powder, salt, pepper, Cayenne pepper, and chili powder all in combination to create an exotic blend that teases the tongue which its richness and lays carpet bombs of spice on the soft flesh.

The sextet covers every space of raw chicken before it is cooked thoroughly on the grill. Even with the glass door leading outside closed, I can stand in the kitchen looking outside and smell the chicken sizzling on the hot iron.

While the chicken cooks, I start making instant rice with tons of butter and salt, as well as a single corn on the cob. Timing is everything when preparing a meal. The chicken comes off the grill just as the sides finish up. Each bite of the chicken has a nice bite that causes aches in the throat as the chunks are swallowed, but the rice calms it down, and the sweet corn rounds out an already delectable meal.