C.I.A. Soup

Brewed up a butternut squash soup last night, extending the winning streak of the above-depicted C.I.A. cookbook. So far, there's nary a bad recipe in the tome. I augmented the butternut by adding some Lyle's Golden Syrup, and pulled it all together with the immersion blender, which is the universalizing life force.

The Elephant & Butter, by the way, has been taking longer than usual sabbaticals in order to plan other things. A great pork cheek caper is in the works, though.

Sweet and Carbonated Vernacular

The Elephant and Butter was reared to call it soda, but vacationed in pop territory. Seems like everything can be precisely computed in map form these days. I guess this means we're pretty close to knowing everything.

Jennie, I'm Beginning to Lose Faith in the Human Race

{Above: Samak Sundravej, whose career was cut short by food.}

A number of years ago, The Elephant and Butter became stranded overnight in the Denver International Airport. My flight had been canceled due to weather, and sensing the opportunity to have a new vantage on life, I decided to sleep in the airport rather than take a bus to a motel. It seemed rather romantic at the time. I would get to watch the late-night cleaning crews. I would get to bathe sparingly the next morning in the men's room sink. Perhaps even, I thought, I would meet a fetching young lady who also had been stranded, and we'd talk effortlessly until the sun emerged from the eastern plains.

These wispy thoughts soon disappeared, though, as I ended up spending the night trying fitfully to sleep on a row of hard chairs. My only companions were two senior citizens--a husband and wife. The wife tried to make the best of the situation, but the husband was extremely angry at his airline, but also at the world, and he didn't mind sharing some of his vitriol with me well into the early hours of the morning. His name was Jennie, and he explained to me that he had known since World War Two that life was tough. As he explained it to me, at one point in the war, somewhere in the European theater of battle, he found himself secluded with a soldier friend in a foxhole of some sort, in inclement weather, and they both watched as some machines of war crept forward to kill a great many people on the other side of the battle line. His friend turned to him and said: "Jennie, I think I'm beginning to lose faith in the human race." Having conveyed this story to me, Jennie turned around and went to sleep on a bank of chairs behind mine, using his windbreaker as a blanket.

That utterance comes to mind as I read the news today, which is full of oddity. The Thai Prime Minister just resigned because he hosted a cooking show. Meanwhile in Fresno, some dude broke into a house, rubbed spices on a couple of sleeping people, and smacked one of them with an 8-inch sausage. I can't pretend to understand this world.

Doo-Wop Echo Thai Curry Library

The 100% perfect lunch has been discovered. Today I went to the generally below-middling cafeteria on the University of Massachusetts campus, and ordered a bowl of Thai chicken curry soup. I chose to include rice noodles, dried onions, limes, ginger, chopped green chilies, sprouts, cilantro, and a few vigorous shakes of Sriracha hot sauce. This culminated in a pretty good soup, which I put in a sack and smuggled up to the 12th floor of the library, and ate whilst reading some Bob Kaufman poems.

Upon finishing the curry--and undoubtedly the reason for the praiseworthiness of the meal experience--I chose to walk down the stairs from the 12th floor. Since the stairwell is tightly-wound and made entirely from concrete it can serve as a pretty good Phil Spector-style echo chamber. Twisting down to the right, to the right, to the right, I started to sing a fabricated doo-wop bass line all the way to the first floor.

Then, finished with a banana.

Listen, Apple

Please know that while I am about to say some things that will not be easy to hear, I say them out of great concern for you as an apple. Because I know that you can do better, and want to do better. You are an apple, and I am a man. That much is clear, and it might seem offensive for a man to tell an apple how to be an apple, just as I would question any apple telling a man how to be a man. But I've known you for a long time, and I hope my thoughts will be received in the spirit of a man who understands more than most men what it means to be an apple, and loves you no matter what sort of apple you are.

Right now, you are not half the apple you could be. Your skin is distressed, your insides soft. You seem uncertain of your relation to the world, and unwilling to assert yourself. When I bite you, you do not respond. It is like biting a lack of ambition. Have you forgotten yourself, dear apple? Also, there is this matter of you coming all the way from the state of Washington. What's the use in traveling all the way from Washington only to be a lesser version of yourself? It is as though you don't realize that travel allows one to be an ideal version of oneself. Take a risk, apple. Don't let the sun be the only one to shine you.

Persist With Feta

The Elephant and Butter, obviously, has been submerged. A new apartment has been decorated, a table has been sanded and refinished, cabinet drawers have been wood-glued, a toilet seat has been replaced, a horse has been ridden, a new short story has been written, a new job begun, a large-print version of "Blubber" has been abandoned, a currently-secret artistic project has been devised, and a throat cold is currently being urged out of my body. The air is thick and not so easy to push through, for some reason. Much needs to be done, and much is getting done. These are the times for the thing called comfort food.

Many years ago, as a collegiate lad living with my septuagenarian grandparents, I felt a need to devise a meal that was slightly less heavy than the offerings in my grandmother's repertoire.
Between multiple jobs, classes, and a reluctance to sit still for any length of time, I needed to eat something sustaining and quick. One night I boiled some bow-tie pasta, diced some red and green bell peppers, and added feta and Parmesan cheese. My grandmother looked on.

"It's awfully colorful, ain't it?" she said, not as a compliment. "You should have some meat in there."

I explained to her that I ate meat constantly--she, in fact, put a mound of bacon on my breakfast plate every single morning whether it was requested or not--and that it wouldn't hurt to take a break. Also, cooking meat would take longer. She shook her head, and went downstairs to continue watching television. The culprit was due to be revealed in her favorite mystery show, and she wanted to see if she'd picked the right suspect.

And now, both grandparents having passed away some years ago (but not until after I'd captured them both in a short film I made about, of all things, breakfast), I sit eating my comfort food. The bacon on my plates comes only from me these days, my colorful meal is questioned by no one, and the television is off. It feels good, and it feels bad. Salty feta, though, does not waver in its virtue--it is only good.

Systems, Maneuvers, Prawns and Soda

Those who know me well know about my ineluctable weakness for grand theories and tidy systems. The latter category includes much to be excited about, for example the renowned nervous system! The incomparable sewer system! The hella-awesome solar system! The wacky honor system! The very elegant Heimlich system! [Oh wait, that's a maneuver.] And then there's the system from which I recently benefited: the barter system.

The other day, the phone rang as I was tending to the effects of my domain--folding my felicitous collection of underwear, in fact. My pal Sarah, it seemed, had a gift for me, and she and Jeremy were en route. My prospects brightened. I am a man made exultant by the pop-in.

So along comes Sarah and Jeremy flush with the vitality common in people who choose to move themselves around via bicycle, and Sarah presents me with a very intriguing bag of Malaysian prawn crackers and a cosmic-looking bottle of Thai coconut soda, both acquired from the curiosity-laden shelves of our local "world" grocer and given to me as a gesture of thanks for my bicycle consultation services. Sarah obviously knows about my love for the world's variety of snack foods. One prime reasons for traveling, I think, is so one can prowl the aisles of foreign supermarkets and convenience stores, examine the wrappers, giggle, and take photographs. 

So, the prawn crackers. The bag opened with an impressive scent-burst of prawn--the sort usually only smelt in prawn discotheques at three in the morning, after hours and hours of dancing to 80s music, right when "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" comes on and all the prawns go crazy and rush to the dance floor and their antennae shake and they start to sweat out the rum and cokes they've been drinking. That sort of prawn smell. The taste, though, was pretty subdued--like toasted, puffed starch. And despite the enticing inclusion of something called "permitted colouring 19140" in the list of ingredients, the crackers were only a mundane shade of yellowish-beige. Still, they were pretty fun to eat and ponder.

The coconut soda, however, was excellent. The wrapper promised "young coconut juice," which seemed a bit racy, but I personally thought it had the composure and maturity of a much older coconut beverage. No preservatives graced the soda, and it was composed only of coconut juice, water, coconut meat, and sugar. I particularly liked the sweet, nutty taste of the floating bits of coconut. I enthusiastically recommend this drink to anyone seeking a tropical soda with floaty things in it. It's like holding a universe of coconut in your hand.

Also, non-culinarily, here is a thing one can watch.

Smuggling Bagels Over The Border

{Exhibit A: The non-contraband.}

Border Patrol Officer: Do you have any food with you?

Me: No.

Border Patrol Officer: No food of any kind?

Me: Nope.

Border Patrol Officer: Okay, can you open your trunk please?

Me: Sure.

(The trunk opens and the officer pretty much immediately finds a dozen Montreal-style, wood-fired bagels in plain view. There are some sounds of a plastic bag rustling, and he comes back to my window.)

Border Patrol Officer:  Okay, you can go, but next time declare those bagels. It's important that you answer our questions.

Me (very lamely): Ohhhh, I thought I only had to declare meats and fruits.

Border Patrol Officer: No, you must declare everything.

Let this be a lesson to all readers on how NOT to smuggle perfectly permissible items into the country.

Field, Field, Soft Serve

Recently, The Elephant and Butter walked out of town, over a river, along the side of the road streaming with traffic, past some cricket-laden hills and dales, and ended up at a carnival-esque soft serve stand located in the middle of some fields. This three-and-a-half-hour peregrination was recommended to me by the world infamous No School University of School. I've never quite understood how this boardwalk-style vendor ended up amongst the fields and in front of a junk yard, and I'm not even much of a fan of ice cream, but I commend the ingenuity of putting garish enterprises smack dab in the middle of the countryside. It's quite a sensory experience to walk or drive through so much greenery, and suddenly see a blaring stand from which hot dogs and elegant cones emanate. 

I had a small vanilla soft serve on a waffle cone, with rainbow sprinkles. It was enormous, and cost only $2.50. And then I turned around and walked back.

Dancing Tikka to Cheek

The Elephant and Butter descended into New York the other night for a dandyish bachelor party involving fancy outfits at a horse race track, feasting on Korean barbecue, and twenty males stripping down to very abbreviated cut-off jean shorts and wearing them around midtown Manhattan. I took leave of the various forms of juvenilia sometime after midnight, and walked up to Grand Central Station, the God-sized main room of which never fails to make me giddy.

The night prior, it was some of my beloved chicken tikka masala that made me giddy. We have some history, the tikka masala and I. A few years ago, I ate it a couple of times a week. When I moved to the east coast, I wrote a letter to my favorite Indian restaurant back in San Francisco reminiscing about the many virtues of their rendition of the dish. (They never replied.) On a trip back to the west coast once, I persuaded the same restaurant to give me a couple of their tikka masala bowls for sentimental reasons. Once, tikka masala gave me very serious food poisoning. More recently, I got my brother-in-law hooked on it, and after he passed away we served it at his funeral reception. 

The other night I sat on the floor with a bowl of take-out tikka masala, and had communion. It was amply spiced, and by the time the bowl had been emptied I felt like my entire head was emanating hot rays of tikka masala presence. Which is how I prefer my head to feel.