surimi fasolatedo.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Ha. So this morning I get a message from Blogger saying that a nine-year-old post of mine has been taken down for copyright infringement. My first thought is naturally WTF, but then quickly...well yes ok it's true I borrowed a few images back in those first weeks of blogging, but I thought I'd eventually mostly given appropriate foto credits.

So then I go look at what post they're talking about and it's the below, a total rant about gross food photography, which, really, is a case where giving a photo credit would've been more ugly and mean-spirited than actually allowing it to remain anonymous.

The photo in question truly is educationally nauseating if you consider its ostensible original purpose, I can only describe it in terms of sick excreted material and bloated viscera. Thus, though I can't figure out why you'd want to claim it as your own...yes it's gone now. But I hope Mars and I are going to both try and draw it by hand later for entertainment purposes and post our results.

Lastly, if you know Mars at all you know that the above photo did not need to be specially taken for this editorial moment, this was snapped last week at the central office with the O'Neill family.)

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MOSTLY ORIGINAL POST (AUGUST 2005): I mean this in the nicest way, but...this photo could really only be European, couldn't it? Specifically...yes, German!!!

In other words, the above is not something I'm responsible for having cooked.

We had this fantastic, ghastly book in America called German Home Cooking, or Modern German Cooking, or something of equally nebulously promise, but all of the pictures in it are at least this puke-inducing, both in the presentation and physical consistency of the foods and the morgue/autopsy lighting and styling to which they were subjected. Except that additionally, most of the dishes include things that are actually far grosser than surimi and, uh..."salmon pate" (is what we'll call that puddle of muck) in the photo above. I'm talking about, yes...brains, organs, feet, ears, you name it ("eet ees how you say, vat zee leetle cow seenks viz.")

It was a gift, that book. In that it was given to us. Never did cook out of it much for some reason.

Anyway, before I get to the second spine-tingling installment of Indonesian sandwiches, I have a brief imitation-food-related interruption: what exactly is surimi, and why do I like it. I probably eat it because it reminds me of crab salad, which reminds me of mayonnaise, which who doesn't like to be reminded of. I guess the good news is that it's not too bad for you aside from 4000 artificial flavorings and colorings.

OK so crab salad. Surimi fasolatido? Think solfege, baby...just like you always do.

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recidivism revisited.

Above: De Kletskop, on the Zeedijk, one of my favorite bars in that neck of the woods.

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I'm totally absorbed by my southern cooking reminiscences at the moment. Today I found myself slowing down as I passed the poelier, like H. I. McDonough and his convenience stores. Recidivism.

And then my slowing down became stopping and buying a leg of duck confit. Because yes I'm still thinking about New Orleans, and somehow the idea of duck confit and sweet potato bitterballen came into me mind (you know, instead of beef and mashed potato bechamel). Spices would be smoked paprika, orange zest, scallion, and...thyme? Cinnamon? Allspice? Chipotle? Whiskey? Cream cheese? Not all of these obviously, suggestions for refinement in the comments please. I imagine that the dipping sauce would be either something sour cream-like or something chutney-like. Maybe an orange crème fraîche like the lemon crème fraîche I had in Sweden last summer (hmm, not as crazy an idea as I thought).

UPDATE: So I tried this, but via grated sweet potato instead of mashed. They're good, but I think part of what I wanted was the texture of fully-cooked sweet potato fried rather than the al dente hash brown kind of approach.

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Virtual tourism continues via Trip Advisor, and I must say, although Trip Advisor is a wonderful resource for many reasons, sometimes it all becomes too much for me and I wish I could had time to hack into their servers and install a global banner that said "While traveling, please keep in mind: you are in a foreign fucking country. People might not speak English. This does not mean that they are "not catering to tourists", this means they are just going about their business. And even if it does mean they are not catering to tourists, it's not "a shame", it's completely OK. Because a lot of tourists suck, many many many.

For example, some tourists, I'm not mentioning any names, will come in to your traditional, basic tapas bar, sit down, order a couple of meat and cheese tapas, and wonder why there's no bread on the table to go with them. So they ask the waitress if they have any bread, she says: si, we have pa amb tomaquet. You say great (whatever that is, ha ha), she brings it and then you complain that it has tomatoes and garlic and oil on it, sorry, can you get one without all the stuff on it. You complain that the waitress "seemed confused and reluctant to honor this request".

And then the bread she returns with: it was kind of stale and tasteless. (pan amb tomaquet is known as a way to use up leftover bread). So you asked for some balsamic vinegar to "make it taste like something" (cause you're in fucking Spain, known for their balsamic vinegar), and the poor waitress was like was like, "ehhh, damn I love tourists, remind me why don't I speak English again?", and trudged back into the kitchen to ask the chef for his bottle, I would love to have heard that conversation, and, wow, "it tasted like it hadn't been used in years. Horrid." Yeah, guess what: it hadn't been used in years. You're in fucking Spain. "Needless to say, we did not enjoy the food here at all" you say. I say "GGG-GGG-GGG-GGG-GGG-GGG-GGGG-GGGG-GGGG-GGG-GGG"...(or however you spell machine gun fire).

Then you complain about the experience on Trip Advisor. Later reviews for this same place might say "staff seemed unwelcoming and unaccommodating for non-Spanish speakers". You know why? THEY'RE TIRED OF YOUR CRAZY FUCKING REQUESTS. And can I split this bill six ways?

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die.

I think in order for ranting to really be done properly, one needs to be both appropriately inspired (the easy part), and then have the time to carefully hone one's pointy pointy thoughts into some kind of venomous perfection.

Today, I, sadly, only have the former, and what is it over, you may ask, if your English has been destroyed by living in Europe like mine has: it is over music stores.

Yes. I'll be sad if/when the last physical bookstore closes and we then buy all of our reading material online. And I'll seriously lament the shuttering of the last record shop or adventurous film/DVD seller (FUCK: since writing this, I learn that it has in fact already happened).

But music stores, the places where you go to interrupt bored, jaded employees from whatever it is they're doing besides knowing anything about their products or whether their mysterious products are even in their store at any given moment....these stores I will happily watch slide into the bog/sea of pre-Internet yesteryear or whatever.

How bad could they be? you might ask if you've never been to one. Forget for a moment the ever-present teenage guitarists stumbling their way through Stairway or Sabbath (still? still these same songs?). It's not just that you have to ask for someone's help once you're there (unlike a bookstore or record store). It's that 99.38% of the time, that person upon whom you depend in order to continue shopping is profoundly uninterested in helping you do anything except feel like an intruder. Actual conversation from this morning on my way out the door of Dijkman.:

2nd Employee I've Talked To So Far: can i help you with anything?
Me: yeah, I was looking for the Alesis Micron, but your colleague said you didn't have one.
2EITTSF: Oh, sure we do, it's in a box.
Me: Wow, great. I'm trying to compare it against that microKORG over there that I just listened to, I need to buy one of the two very soon.
2EITTSF: Ah, OK.

(silence and head nodding for a bit)

Me: So, is there any chance I can listen to the Micron?
2EITTSF: Yeah, well...it's still in the box.
Me: Yeah. Yeah. It's just that....I kind of need to play it before I buy it.
2EITTSF: Mmm.
Me: I mean, I could just buy it online...for less money, without leaving my house, while having an experience that is in every way less defeating than this one...I could do that, if only I didn't need to actually hear this piece of equipment before giving you 400 euros for it. Because it's a musical instrument. And that's the one reason your store still exists, because this is where I can come hear it.
2EITTSF: Mmm.

OK, that's a bit of an embellishment. What actually happened is that 2EITTSF said "Mmm, yes, hold on a minute please", and then went and answered a phone call and started looking for something for whoever was on the phone and forgot all about me.

Before the above conversation, I'd asked if I could see something else and:

Employee 1 said, "Ah, yes, sorry, we're sold out of that."
I say, "Ah, your web site said you have it in stock."
"Ah, yes, we don't."
Me, looking around for 3 seconds and spotting one on the shelf: "IT'S RIGHT FUCKING THERE, YOU LAZY FUCKING DOUCHE."

Actually what I said was,
"Ehhh.....isn't that one right there?"
He says: "Oh! Yes, you're right."
Me: "Could I possibly fucking look at it you lazy fucking douche? AAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE killkillkillkilllkillkillkilllkilllkillkill..."
Him: "Mmm".

Actually what I said was...

ETC
ETC
ETC

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flattened.

Accidental, that's what I'm talking about. I could be exaggerating, but seriously the whole thing happened so fast and with so little input from me that it truly is just luck that I didn't seriously bust up my dome permanent-like.

I was standing on this chair to get something, and in my haste to grab the thing I stood on my tiptoes, and the chair immediately saw the potential to escape, so it took off (make bullet ricocheting sound) and I have no idea what happened next, other than about one big slow-mo second of me thinking "oh you dumb piece of noooooo£$%&*o". The mid-air contortions required to save myself from serious harm have left this duck in a world of ouch.

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I don't spend any time on eGullet anymore because most of the interesting characters or topics have gone, or gone silent, and the moderators have begun following some random and/or sinister policies about "decorum and topicality".

Some smart person somewhere knows what this phenomenon is called, right, when critical mass stops feeding something's positive evolution and finds something better to do, and the thing just stops growing in good or productive ways and slowly dies from inertia and being ignored, or by actively being watered down into mediocre boring irrelevance. For some reason OS/2 springs to mind.

This all has something to do with Mark Athitakis's post about Advancing Genius, but I'm too fatigued by cognitive surplus to research what the applicable term is here.

So anyway, as I said I don't read or contribute to eGullet anymore because it's not very compelling or inspirational or creative, right. But like once a month I optimistically click my eG bookmark and see what's happening.

I did this today, and was all hey, cool, pleasantly surprised by the goodness of a newly active topic on Lebanon. Great photos and informed, passionate commentary that made me want to go to Beirut immediately.

It reminded me favorably of the weekly foodblogs that eG used to have, these usually-awesome little microscopic documentations and dissections of people's daily foodlives from around the world. In fact, it reminded me so favorably of the ol' foodblogs that I made a post on the Lebanon topic to that effect, upon where it was deleted by a moderator as being "inappropriate", which seemed like an awesome feat of impersonal cluelessness, deleting a post that tried to constructively explain why I don't post there anymore, so I whined about it here, and then after I got all the badness out of me I deleted my own whining.

And in doing so I may have just stumbled on a solution to this whole Cognitive Surplus thing: lots of deletion.

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hey asshole.

So, eh...we live in something like a housing co-op. We've just gone through an episode where it slowly became apparent to everyone that one of the newer tenants was, mmm, how should I say this...a big inconsiderate asshole dickface. Serieus, yo. Let's call him R.

I could go on for a good while about R. (who can totally go suck a bag of dicks), but I'll limit my scope in the interest of finishing this post. In his brief but memorable tenure here, R. accomplished many annoying and/or dangerous things, but one of my faves was the endless constructionizing: R. loved power tools, and had no compunction at all about using them at all hours of the day.

Not inside his apartment. Out in the common hallway that five apartments share (so as to not get sawdust in his apartment). 8am, 10pm, all day from 8am to 10pm, whenever. I'm feeling whiny here, but trust me, after a couple weeks into a project it would begin to wear at one's composure, as in this actual re-enactment.

Me: "Hey honey? Have you seen the--"

R: "GHKGHGKHGKGHKGHKGKGHHKKGGHKGHKGK...."

Me: (waiting)

R: "...GKGHGGZGZGZZWERVGVGVKVKGVKGVKVKVK...."

Me: (waiting)

R: "GHKHKhkzkzkzkzzzkz. Wzzz. rrrr."

Me:

R:

Me: "Honey?"
R:

Mara: (can't hear me anyway b/c she's got her headphones on to block out the power tools)

Me: "Do you know where my--"

R: "GHKHKGHKZXZHKSSKHXKZCHHKZKCKZHCKZKCH..."

Me: (soils self in impotent rage)

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Over time, everyone who lived here developed their own personal pet peeve(s) about R.: his mistreatment of the bathroom he shared with his next-door neighbor (don't ask); his obsessive need for more and more storage space (no lie, he eventually took to furtively cramming his belongings up above the ceiling tiles in the common hallways, furtively b/c it's a fire hazard); hmmm, right, his shutting his screaming child out into the common hallway as some sort of punishment ("Papa, pleeeeeeeease let me in....puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeze", etc.); eh, his propping our security doors open for hours at a time, unattended, after everyone asked him a zillion times not to; his blah blah blah.

By the time he'd lived here for few years, he'd rather impressively managed to alienate everyone in the building, and after weathering a few public shitstorms of criticism, he moved out (in true form, he left behind a truckload of stuff he didn't want...although I can't complain too too much about this, that's how we ended up with a piano, which has almost made it worth having known R.).

My point is!!! After a lengthy interview/screening process, we selected a new neighbor from the 15 final candidates, and she happens to be the long, long, longtime girlfriend of one of the longest-term residents. A pretty good pedigree. She's very laid-back and sweet (so far), and she (with the help of her boyfriend) have been moving in for the past couple of weeks, painting, decorating, building, sawing (inside her apartment) etc. Normal shit.

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This morning my eyes open at 6:45am, even though I don't really have to be up until 9-something to go to Rotterdam, and I'm wondering why I'm awake. Then from the hallway I hear the distinctive whine of hi-speed metal-on-stationary metal. Someone is sawing through metal in my hallway at 6:45am. Am I dreaming? This can't be. Certainly, Long-Time Resident and Girlfriend are not out in the hallway with a saw???

I don my ninja gear and prepare to terminate. Or, I put on pants and stumble into the hallway. There is no one. Que pasa? Then, from the back courtyard, I hear the power saw, 120 times louder now that I'm in the hallway. It is quickly joined by a jackhammer, twice as loud as the saw. Someone ten houses down is having their foundation rebuilt.

Ehh...sorry I doubted you, Long-Term Resident and Girlfriend. My next question is: how is this person with the jackhammer not being killed by his even-closer-than-me neighbors?

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i'm so high.

(Photo credit: The 4-year-old Cole Mitchell)

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Wi-Fi again at 30,000 feet. This is a good invention.

Unrelatedly, I have some questions:

1) Americans will not only apologize for accidentally running into you, but they will also apologize for accidentally walking too close to you. A woman walked past me today and whispered, "Sorry". What about? We weren't standing in line, she wasn't obstructing my view...what had she done wrong???

2) As my good friend Terrill Soules once observed, "It is impossible to not think about sex in an airport." I'm pretty sure I'm paraphrasing him as usual, because that sentence sounds a bit awkward, but nonetheless: in my experience, he is absolutely right. But why???

3) Delta Air Lines is serving an "Almond Butter Sandwich" as part of their breakfast menu (you have to pay for it). What percentage of the passengers on this flight know what almond butter is???

4) Who, who, who brings a child on to an airplane and gives them a DVD player to watch WITHOUT HEADPHONES??? This is the kind of thing that gives parents a bad name. This person has somehow not noticed that every other living creature on the airplane is listening to audio via headphones EXCEPT FOR THEIR CHILD. This is a rhetorical question by the way, the answer is "the inconsiderate assholette in seat 41B".

5) This isn't a question. You may have noticed that the links off to the lower right here have changed recently, as they tend to do. I'd like to highlight Poesy Galore, a blog run by a librarian/cartoonist that is really hitting the spot for me lately. She's a great filter for catching intellectually stimulating bits that are careening around out there on the Information Superhighway.

6) Also not a question: I must be really, really tired, because I just fell asleep for 20 minutes on an airplane, which I never, ever do. I truly cannot wait to see my bed and all the creatures that normally hang out in it.

7) I guess the questions are over for the moment. I had a very good shrimp burrito last night, from Baja Fresh, who I've maligned on this site before I believe. Not everything we got was good, the chips were stale as all get-out, but that burrito was pretty darn perfect.

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revenge fantasy #7b.

In my idle time between iterations of completely re-doing all of the malware fixes I did yesterday, I came up with a number of hare-brained vengeance scenarios. In one, I finagle a job in the catering kitchen of a cracker con, if they even exist (I need to look into it) and spike the goods in a variety of apocalyptically stom4ch-turning yet wholly non-lethal w4yz. See 7ha7? 1'm pr3pp1n9 4lr34dy.

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