today i had lunch at petsmart.

Trip report for Monday: woke up, had a Kashi whole-grain waffle and a cautiously tiny bowl of some incredibly fiber-rich cereal, the content of which appears potentially explosive; took a freshly-shaven Siberian Husky for an hour-long walk in the desert; went to Costco and watched my dad buy a few things that included a 9ft plastic Christmas tree, and then receive a $300 rebate (more than I spend on groceries in a month) at the checkout register (we still spent $44); became semi-stranded at a Guitar Center for 3 hours where the soundtrack was Disc 2 of The Essential Iron Maiden on infinite repeat; eventually I had to leave in order to try and have just a few minutes of something coming into my ears that was not Iron Maiden ...

...but then I realized that, gadzooks, Iron Maiden was being piped into the parking lot. Normally an awesome thing, it's true, but today my desire for greasy British metal had already been thoroughly sated. The rest of me, however, was far from it (this last transitional bit reminds me of the abominable Amsterdam food writer the Undercover Glutton, pleeeeeeeease shoot me). I hadn't eaten since my waffle, so I went on a on a pitifully unpromising Quest for Food in the Quintessential American Strip Mall.

My options included: the Costco (except not really because I didn't have Dad's Costco card and therefore would be turned away at the door); Guitar Center; Mattress World; Staples Office Supplies; PetSmart; and a Kyoto Bowl noodle house that wasn't open. There was also a restaurant seriously named Guam Cuisine, no kidding. They must use a tractor beam to get people into the restaurant because no American I've ever heard of would willingly enter a restaurant with that name (EDIT: sorry, it's actually called Island Roots Guam Cuisine, but the big sign on the side of the building that alerted me to the fact that it was a tractor beam-wielding restaurant in the first place does say "Guam Cuisine").

I ended up getting a (I just imagined making an ellipsis here that stretched for about four page lengths) Starbucks Frappuccino out of the checkout isle cooler at PetSmart (the bottled version, not the Britney version...160 calories). There's not much else to say about this lunch other than Possible Low Point of Trip.

Although: probably not as Low a Point as the people who were working in these completely empty retail megastores were probably having. Muzak, A/C, fluorescent lights, a uniform, and...billions of pet products. Or office supplies. Maybe flourescent lights would've helped, which is what I originally typed, hah haha haha hahha. Thanks, Google Toolbar. Anyway, who knows, maybe they were on meth and having a great time. I just assume that's the case when I'm in Phoenix and I run into something that doesn't seem like an explainable way to live.

Annnnnnnnnnywayyyyyyyyy, I was becoming mildly bummed out about the proportion of my extremely full schedule that was being blown away by my guiltily loitering around this strip mall (guilty not because I'd done anything wrong [yet], but because of the 28 No Loitering signs that seemed to hover around me as I pointlessly shuffled from pointless superstore to pointless superstore), until I realized: when I am I going to have a chance to do this again? Make the most of it.

But how? No idea. Whippits? Thankfully, no. Eventually I was able to identify Dad's pickup out of the more-than-a-little-creepy crowd of identical pickup trucks circling the parking lot looking for stray pre-teens to abduct for organ harvesting (I'm sure I'm kidding), and the "being alive" part of my day was rejoined already in progress. We zoomed 12 miles away to the previously mentioned El Nopalito, and returned home with a pile of real Mexican tacos that were just perfect. We got a bunch of other stuffs too, but the tacos (plus the guacamole and the ancho-spiked red salsa to go with them) were the highlight for me.

A curious bonus: enough plastic cutlery for Earth, Wind, and Fire at their most populous.

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later that day.

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By the way, eGullet and I are friends again now that the bad man is gone. Here's an informative and gawjus new pictorial from some lucky duck who was in Oaxaca for the Day of the Dead celebrations this year.

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sundays.

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4:44PM, Sunday. All of the sudden, it's almost like I was never sick (as long as I remain seated). And at this very moment, it's a bit like I never grew up, left home, did anything other than wait for the weekend.

Right now, somehow alone in the kitchen, I can smell baked potatoes on their 74th minute of baking at 350°F, they themselves probably looking forward to bathing in butter and sour cream; there are carrots braising in chicken broth and a little maple syrup and butter; water is boiling for corn on the cob which we hope will still be OK though it's the last of the season; and ludicrously expensive dry-aged steaks are waiting to be grilled. NFL football is on the gargantuan TV screen (Dallas vs. Washington, Redskins down by 5, 8 minutes left). I've been told that there's a cherry pie waiting in the wings somewhere as well.

I myself am marinating in nostalgia, which will probably be short-lived, as the twins are due to arrive at any moment. I'm not saying it won't be nice when they get here, it just won't be nostalgia anymore, it'll be dinnertime. Or maybe this is fuel for future reminiscence, who knows: my mom just came in and said that Dad is installing some sort of Christmas decoration in the front yard that involves penguins.

controversy.

Still recovering from The Virus, but miraculously my stomach is interested in food again. So of course my mind turns to the abandoned chile verde burrito from Friday night.

















Worth comparing the size and contents of this one to the last chile verde burrito I had in Amsterdam. Note that this one has no vegetables, starches, or accoutrements in it, just pork and chiles:

















Bringing it significantly closer to the kind of burrito you might actually find in Mexico. In fact, I'll be photographing a few more burritos this week if I can, for the curious and desperate back in Amsterdam.

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abdominal death virus: contracted.

Perhaps my nausea yesterday had less to do with just being offended by a laughably selfish man-pig subhuman dork of a man-pig (not a typo), and more to do with actually being sick.

We'd just ordered some takeout from Filiberto's, a local Mexican fast food joint, when it became overwhelmingly obvious that I was not well.

The diagnosis: ADV is in da house. And, maaaaaaaan does it totally suck. It's a bit of a mystery why it took me so long to get it, but yeah, I did. The nice part about being the last person to get it is that everyone else knows the arc of the symptoms pretty well by now: intestinal collapse; your body temperature doubles; muscle cramps twist all of your individual limbs into corkscrew shapes, etc.

Adding insult to injury, the cleaning lady (yes) brought over two dozen pork tamales and I can't even almost have a nibble of one. All I'm able to eat: my wonderful dad actually went to the store at 10pm to get me Popsicle brand banana popsicles, and if I had the capability to enjoy anything right now, I'd say they're amazingly good, but I am not quite even ready for popsicles yet. See you in 36 hours.

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Why does it cheer me up when I come across somebody wasting their time and energy in more profoundly geeky and useless ways than my own self?

(censored).

Oh, dear. Excuse me. My tolerance for pampered Americanism is dwindling rapidly. This time it's eGullet that is bringing me down. This bummery moment is a feeling that I have occasionally when I'm browsing the list of active topics and I see something especially offensive, but I can usually just take a peek at the thread and shake my head and move on to less depressing areas of discussion.

Yesterday, however, I made the mistake of actually participating in one of these topics, and I really really wish I hadn't. I eventually became really disgusted and didn't feel seeing that godawful color scheme ever again. And then today I went out there and...did it again. And now I am befouled anew by this blind, petty sense of entitlement that powers so much of The Crybaby Nation, personified by eGullet member #1. Boo, unfortunate. But he's got such good people skills...hard to believe there was ever any friction between him and the rest of the old-timers.

No more computer 'til this semi-nauseated feeling passes. I'll be out in the backyard.

all you do to me is talk, talk.

On an uncharacteristically somber note, I want to put this here so there's a chance I'll remember to look at it more often. I didn't know Bob Lassiter, I don't like talk radio, and I didn't know why this grabbed me in the first place until I listened to it again and found myself re-grabbed. Even now I'm not sure I can articulate my fascination with it, so I won't waste too much time with an attempt.

But should someone find themselves with time on their hands, you know, the kind of Internet Time where you can somehow justify to yourself sifting through someone else's detritus for a couple of hours instead of creating your own, here are some entry points.

I found out about him through WFMU's obituary-slash tribute, here. There are many links there to MP3s of Lassiter in action, but the two that I find engrossing are ones that I can't find online anymore, only my copies:

1) This incredibly direct interrogation of an unfortunate high school student who made the mistake of calling to air his politically conservative "views" without actually knowing why he had them.

2) This equally direct examination of a heckler who waited 25 minutes on hold to toss some puny insult Lassiter's way. Lassiter seems to really want to understand why someone would want to waste his time doing something like this when the caller must've known that it wouldn't bother Lassiter in the least.

These calls are not relaxing listening. I find them incredible, though, in part because he says exactly the things you would want to be able to say to those not only mean but also stupid people who feel compelled to befoul you with their malevolence...but also because he does it with such humanity. As misanthropic and cynical as he must have been, he sounds as fascinated as I feel by the absurdity of it all. Most importantly, there's something as yet indefinable by me in his voice that compels me (and apparently many others) to listen.

Anyway, the somber part is here, the journal of his last days. Tough reading, but it seems valuable to me.

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not in kansas.

Some quick grocery store notes: the nearest grocery store is 3 miles away and it's bigger than the biggest Albert Heijn I've ever seen; walnut oil is 11 dollars for the same amount that costs 2 euro or whatever in AH; the produce options here are amazing, though I don't know if they taste like anything; TVP burgers are cheap (Boca Burgers)*; lemongrass is exotic; it's not always a bad thing when the cashier asks for your phone number...I almost didn't give it to them, and if I hadn't I wouldn't have gotten my parents' discount, which saved me about 30 percent on my bill.

* and utterly terrible. Granted, this was the vegan version, but eww, they were like wet grilled toilet paper inside-roll-things, probably is a close approximation.

el patrón.

How often does this happen? A website has decent, appropriate background music. Keep in mind that there's slightly less good music when the site loads, but if you manage to snag one of the whizzing-by specific flavors of Patrón, you'll hear what I'm talking about. I point this whole thing out b/c I found myself accidentally grooving out to Patrón Silver (the one without the bassline), and my brain nearly fell out of my head at the shock of it.

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Also, I watched an episode of Barney & Friends today, my first. You don't get many posts about Barney and tequila, do you. Maybe you should. I'm also strictly limiting my access to my twin nephews so that I can continue liking them a lot, which is going pretty well.

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I'm desperately trying to get back to something like healthy eating. Today I et: steel-cut oats with almonds, blueberries, cranberries, and maple syrup; two fruit/nut bars (the current version of the CLIF bar); two cups of coffee with a little chocolate soy milk; I made a multi-day portion of my Sicilian tuna salad with an obscene amount of Dad's expensive balsamic vinegar + fresh mint + almonds + raisins + Vidalia onions and had two small sandwiches of that on going-stale whole grain bread; and a tiny piece of Scharffen Berger chocolate. Dinner? Undecided. Most everybody's stomach is still useless from The Virus. I made chicken soup for the parentals yesterday so I 'spect that's what they'll have. I myself will strive for something a bit more excellent, I know not what.

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how's treats.

File this under Unexpected Sentences: beautiful vegan blog. Actually, that's not a sentence at all, it's a noun and a couple of surprisingly chummy modifiers. But The Conscious Kitchen seems to be an expertly-written site about the challenges and possibilities of edible gorgeousity that don't come from no stinkin' animals.

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That picture up yonder, though...that 'un's mine. These here caramel apples is strewn all about the kitchen, leftover from Trick or Treatin and whatnot. I can't resist me a bite now and then.

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BTW, I'm blaming them dang Coen Brothers for this twangitty banjo-soundin dialeck we gots goin' on here.

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last man standing.

OK, everyone in this picture is sick, plus there are a couple more unpictured people that are sick. You don't want to know the details, other than that you don't want to know the details. My parents are both staying home sick from work today, which I don't think has ever happened before in the history of the universe.

I am the only person in the family not currently experiencing extreme technical difficulties, which means that either 1) my European immune whatsis is the only thing between me and dire misery, or 2) I'm next. My money's on number 2 (as usual). Wish me luck.

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The above photo captures many details that crystallize the differences between my current lifestyle and another previously possible lifestyle. For fun someday I may count them, like the old brainteasers used to make you do.

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hold still.

As I mentioned yesterday, today the parentals and I embarked on a promise-filled adventure that ultimately served up one resounding expectation-surpassing success and one overall disappointment.

The success? The massively good new Coen Brothers movie, just possibly the most satisfying and unaffected film they've done yet, which I'm just so happy to be able to say.

I'd need to see it again to have a more unshakable opinion, and I will, but to even be able to say that it's in the same class as Blood Simple signifies a completely unexpected return to sublimity (and movies about Texas) for those two.

What this film does, in fact, is to interweave Blood Simple's strongest characteristics (mastery of noir-style genre conventions and Hitchcockian suspense) with funnier humor, heavier pessimism, and Javier Bardem. And Tommy Lee Jones. And a host of supporting-role Texans that made me feel like I ain't skipped the True South on this visit at all. The Coens should obviously just keep making movies about Texas until they make a bad one.

Speaking of Blood Simple, the Director's Cut was just released on DVD, and I loved Roger Ebert's quote about it: "If you are squeamish, here is the film to make you squeam."

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Oh right, the disappointment. Zinc Bistro. Almost great, but yeah, too many little things wrong with each dish, like no one really cared. Like whoever was cooking was cooking "someone else's food". Dad suspects that the chef wasn't in the building, and that would certainly explain it. Out back in the parking lot, maybe, running a game of three-card Monte.

Whatever, yeah, the food: not exactly bad at all, just very obviously not what it could have been. Great recipes, slightly haphazard execution. I give it 7 lukewarm poached eggs out of a possible 10. Maybe even subtract an egg for Scottsdale's general gross plasticity and the ghastly, inappropriate Eurolounge music that I can't believe anyone working or eating there enjoys.

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thanks, giving.

It might seem as though there are a lot of posts happening here. But if you read closely, you'll notice that very little effort is being expended on them by me. I'm just firing them off thoughtlessly like burps after a Duvel.

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My dad gave me a rather awesomely timely cookbook yesterday: The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine by John Folse. It's considerably more than a cookbook actually. Yeah, it's chock full o' recipes, but there's boatloads of history and background detail in there that I just haven't seen anywhere else, 800 pages' worth. And plus the cover photo features the author looking like he's just been brained.

One of my favorite things about the "book" thus far (I use the quotes because I actually only have it on CD, so it's more of a "file" than a "book", truth be told) is the section of menus for festive occasions, because I think of New Orleans food as being festive by nature, so it's nice to see what a big ol' party menu might look like when cooked up by someone knowledgeable. Fer example, here's the pretty over-the-top New Year's Day menu (linked where applicable to recipes on Chef Folse's website):

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Terrine of Smoked Catfish
Crawfish-Stuffed Mushrooms

Duck, Andouille and Oyster Gumbo

Roasted Beet Salad
Seafood Jambalaya Rice Salad

Cajun Black-Eyed Peas
Smothered Cabbage and Andouille

Shrimp and Redfish Courtbouillon
Black-Eyed Pea Battered Shrimp

Baked Long Island Duck

Rosemary-Stuffed Leg of Pork
Fried Oyster Dressing
Pecan Rice Dressing

Sautéed Apples Calvados

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Oh yeah, I have a funny story to tell about my initial discussions with my mom about who makes what on Thanksgiving, but I'll add that later. For now I'll just share Chef Folse's Roasted Turkey with Shoepeg Cornbread Stuffing recipes that we'll hopefully be using for our little ol' Thanksgiving.

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chili, summer weather.

One of Dad's R & D guys made this batch of chili seasoning for him last year, and tonight it was deployed in some serious quantities as the Big Boss cooked up a batch of red.

Tonight we were supposed to be dining at Zinc Bistro (eGullet thread here), but half of the family (the half with young children) has contracted some form of Abdominal Death Virus and they are all sequestered across town in what sounds like a House of Horrors. Dad and Pitty each spent half the day over there mopping up after everyone, and as a result dinner has been relocated to Casa Here, and is consisting of chili and green chile cornbread. Yay!






















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Dad and I spent the day driving around in the summery winter hotness punctuated by occasional stops at incredibly expensive grocery stores where we didn't buy much of anything. I swear you couldn't find prices like these in Amsterdam if your life depended on it.

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And then we watched the most unpleasant movie I've seen in a long time, 28 Weeks Later. Unpleasant not because of its relentless and nonsensical videogame gore, but because it didn't make us care about any single element of the nonsensical story before it turned into a videogame. So it was like watching someone else play a nonsensical videogame for 80 minutes...you just kept thinking, "When's my turn?" Boo. Avoid.

Tomorrow, though, even though every single plan we've made for the weekend has fallen through so far, we've made plans to go see the new Coen Brothers movie, mmm, called....No Country for Old Men, maybe? And retry Zinc Bistro. Sounds like a Can't Miss afternoon of entertainment, don't it?

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be prepared, be very prepared.

This is really a continuation of the previous post, because once a post gets to a certain length, Blogger still isn't an awesome editor for mixing photos and text, kind of odd considering that THAT'S WHAT YOU DO WITH BLOGGER.

Ahem.

All I wanted to add was that, yes, there are good examples of healthy-ish prepared foods as well. This soup from Trader Joe's is simple, tasty, and useful not only as a standalone soup, but as a sauce or flavoring ingredient as well. And its ingredient list is refreshingly straightforward:






















OK, well, I think that's about all I can stand to say about this aspect of eating and cooking in America for now...it really makes me a little nauseated and all I want to do now is roll around in a fragrant pile of undressed fresh salad greens until the feeling passes. Maybe I'll go do that.

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prepare to be prepared.

Land of Convenience, is that actually even a catchphrase? I could Google it to find out, couldn't I. Maybe I will someday. But for now, let's assume it is, and that way I can bring this paragraph to a close by finishing its initial thought: America's convenience foods are light years beyond the other developed countries in the world in terms of sophistication and taste.

This, my friends, is not news, is it. Nor is it a particularly good thing under normal circumstances, as it robs the consumer of the satisfying, creative experience of cooking and replaces it with the brainless consumption of mind-bogglingly long lists of chemicals and preservatives that have who-knows-what kind of long-term effect on your body.

However: if you suddenly decide to scrap your dinner plans for the evening only to find out that there's no "real food" in the house, then, mmyeah....maybe it's OK to pop a package of these in a 375°F oven for 26 minutes:

































They were all totally fine, the crab cake was less weird in fact than the crab cake that Pitty had when we went out to dinner a couple nights ago. And, I did not do one creative thing to these, but if I'd made a sauce or two, and been careful about keeping everything juicy, this might even have been an above-average dinner.

The down side would have to be the nutritional content. Pictured at the top of this post is the tilapia ingredient list, and it contains more non-food than I normally consume in a month. And I know that you people out there who work for convenience/processed food companies (and who are reading over my shoulder at the moment) are saying, "Whatever, I'm sure you're eating tons of chemicals all the time that you don't know anything about." I'm sure that's true, but I'm also preparing 98% of what goes into my mouth, and very little of it could be considered "prepared" before it gets to me. After it gets to me, well...I don't exactly know what you'd call it.

up in my grill.

Finally. I have my very own copy of Cradle of Flavor in my hot little hands. One of the things I imagined doing when I was here was grilling constantly, and in most of these imaginary cases I was making Indonesian food.

I have been grilling often, and even better, at odd hours. I was grilling andouille sausages yesterday at 6:30am, as the sun rose, which was beautiful in a number of ways, and I would've taken pictures of the event but the camera batteries were dead...

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But back to Cradle of Flavor. Here is the eGullet thread wherein ultrageeky people like me cook recipes out of this book and photograph the results. I didn't really have time or energy to pull off anything grand, so my first Cradle of Flavor recipe turns out to be something that this site has seen me make before: Garlic-Marinated Tempeh.

Well, in my previous versions I didn't marinate the tempeh. And....I'm not really sure that marinating it made any difference at all. The recipe specified 15 minutes I think, I did it for 30 minutes, but...next time I'll try a couple hours or so.

just deserts.

Something has been been busily nagging at a brother for the past couple of days. It took me 72 hours to acknowledge, then decode, then believe it, but I think I've got it now: uh...I'm happy to be here*.

This is literally an unbelievable feeling...moving to Europe revealed to me so many previously unseeable things about America and Americans that at some point I suddenly felt very much like Roddy Piper's character in the John Carpenter movie They Live.

Like Roddy, once I saw "the truth," my new perspective began to fill me with a hot indignation, and thermos-like, I kept it glowing uncomfortably inside me (yes, quite a bit like John Parr as well) until it just ate away my internal insulation and at this point the thermos metaphor resists easy extrapolation and I haven't had any coffee yet.

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The point of this touchy-feely moment we're having here is: this burning drive to share my findings with everyone else seems to have been extinguished in the two years since I've been here. I can guess why, but it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that 1) the overwhelming feeling I'm enjoying at the moment is less "solemn outrage" and more "sweet relief", and 2) I've extended my stay so that I'm now going to be here for Thanksgiving.

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* Here is strictly limited to this house. I'm spending as little time as possible out amongst the general public.

new mexican platter @ dick's hideaway.

My dear mother had a rare weekday off today and wanted to go out for lunch, so we went to Dick's Hideaway (a next-door sibling of Richardson's) for New Mexican lunch from the folks who got me hooked on the stuff from the get-go.






















Pork tamale, chile relleno, and chicken burro, all happily nestled under a plush layer of red chile sauce that was not kidding around in the heat department.

So how was it? You know how when you try to revisit a significant restaurant from your distant past, the food almost never lives up to your memory? This was not one of those times...everything on my plate was excellent: moist tamale; lightly coated poblano filled with pork and queso blanco; and most surprisingly, superb beans and rice.

It was about twice as much food as I could eat, so the rest followed me home, American-style. Hopefully I'll be hungry again by tomorrow or Wednesday.

















In a nice bit of global synchronicity: in addition to opening Dick's, the Richardson's owners have opened a new place called the Rokerij as a tribute to their time spent in Amsterdam.

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Well...how could I not have these leftovers for dinner:

















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constant craving.

NOTE: these last few posts contain no artfulness whatsoever, I'm generally just bumbling about, trying to attain some kind of "purification through microtasting." Plus I thought I'd take a couple of pictures with this new camera. Artfulness will have to be retrofitted.

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I have some terribly good news in that the cable TV picture now fits on the TV screen, and the DVD picture is no longer mint-green and magenta only. In other words: the home theater system is up and running. That'll be $1600, please! Now all we need is a movie to watch.

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I keep feeling like I should be taking better advantage of the perfectly sunny 33°C weather outside (and not doing things like watching movies), but that's because I keep forgetting that it's sunny like this every day. So there's no hurry, the sun'll be there, though the temperature's supposed to drop to 27°C by the end of next week. Brrr!

Actually, the pool water is freezing, if that's any consolation to those of you wintering in less sunny climes. I didn't find that out until I jumped in today...it's usually substantially more balmy.

I said Balmy.

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One of the disorienting things about visiting the Phoenix outpost is that it takes a few days to get re-acclimated to American-style abundance. Here's half a pantry:





































Part of it comes down to nothing more than available space: this is one of the refrigerators here, and it's itself twice the size of our cumulative refrigeration space at home. And there's another refrigerator of equal size in the laundry room here.

Some of this storage area is devoted to toddler food, which we won't be test-driving much of on this trip (though we may cast a morbidly curious raised eyebrow at its nutritional content at some juncture).

The rest of it, however, is fair game for this tooth of mine. Many of the edibles are either officially "bite-sized" or individually portioned for convenient snacking, and this allows for equally convenient curiosity nibbles. I've tasted teaspoon-sized portions of, oh...about 30 different snack foods since I've been here, most of which don't deserve our attention really, but a couple of recent noteworthy subjects include:






















The first actually tasty rice crisp product I've ever put in my mouth. There's none of that vaguely chalky and insipid texture that many "healthy" rice snacks have, it'd be a lovely vehicle for some kind of equal and opposite cheesy product.

And another rather delicious healthy product is Ben & Jerry's frozen yogurt variation:






















You'd never mistake it for ice cream, but it provides a satisfying dessert moment on its own terms.

Something completely unsatisfying and verging on disturbing was Gianna's Artisan Baking Company's Coconut Macaroons with Chocolate:

















Um: eeewwww. They smell like coconut, but how to describe their taste....imagine if you could isolate the nasty sulfur-y taste of cheap dried fruit and somehow imbue a dry, grainy biscuit with that flavor and then drizzle tasteless plastic chocolate over top of it. And then charge 6 dollars for 12 of them. NOT a coconut macaroon, people.

ETA: This is a coconut fucking macaroon:

















Made by Bakker Bollebof and sold at the Dirk, they're very much like the macaroons I grew up with, moist and fantastic, if the tiniest bit oversweetened. I can only eat one of them per day, whereas I used to be able to go through a whole tin of macaroons in my youth. And the price is probably 1.20 euro for 320 grams' worth (almost a pound by my careless estimate).

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turnkey systems.

There's nothing quite like spending all day reading badly-translated technical manuals. I always wondered why people paid other people to set up their already-expensive home theater systems...12 hours of creative cursing later, now I know.

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In happier news, I'd like to present a brief survey of what went into my mouth yesterday. During the breakfast hour, I made some bulgur that did exactly what I was just bragging about mine never doing (turning out gummy and useless), and Dad presented his first exotic American grocery item of the day, ice-cold pumpkin-flavored soy milk:






















....which was very unusual and actually very good. It's hard to believe that enough people thought that this was a good idea to turn it into a released product. Yet it exists. Nice!

For lunch, my dear mother put some more ribs on the ol' grill:























...while I had some more of my gummy bulgur (mmm!) and a leftover spring roll from Friday.

For dinner, there was a bunch of already-cooked shrimp strewn about, so I used some of them for a shrimp + habanero-pineapple salsa quesadilla or two:

















...and the rest went onto the grill for a minute, after which they chilled out on top of a nice salad.

















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When I first listened to the new Radiohead, I thought it was something that I couldn't really imagine listening to again, or more like I couldn't imagine where I'd listen to it. But it now sounds like it belongs here in the vast sandy-colored space we call the kitchen, looking out into the rocky foothills behind the house.

It makes me wonder how this jibes with their intentions....would they be juiced to know that In Rainbows is one of the few whole CDs on my laptop that I thought my parents (average age: 57) and I (mental age: 5) might both enjoy (or at least not find obtrusive or disagreeable), and that I thought it adequately soundtracked the expensively beautiful suburban kitchen in which I'm currently situated? Are we the target audience?

intelligence.

I'm not kidding: 10 minutes before this picture was taken, this room was spotlessly clean. This is what can happen when two very well-behaved, quiet twin 2-year-olds come home to find that someone has cleaned their room. Their vengeance was righteous, it reminded me of what happens when we clean the catbox...the kitties have to immediately run in there and fuck it back up again, reclaiming it as Feline Turf. Granted, the kids did not shit on the floor (this time).

But as I've been trying to emphasize: these are very calm kids. They performed this task with a ritual seriousness, methodically, in complete silence, like very small ninjas in sneakers. I can't even imagine what kind of daily cleanliness negation is possible with the kind of unruly, malicious little demons that you see asking for domination on a daily basis in Amsterdam (I'm singling out Amsterdam toddlers only because I haven't seen many American toddlers on this trip, and frankly I'd like to limit my exposure to these two who already know me by my name, which by the way they think is "Uncle Monkey").

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Meanwhile, in my secret hidden lair (which by the way I just realized is exactly as messy as the boys' room), I am compiling a list of targets for external meals. I'm definitely keeping it minimal, but there are some things I'm going to need to eat while I'm here: New Mexican (as in, from New Mexico) and real Mexican is at the top of the list, closely followed by some eGullet-touted locations. I figure if I divide my time evenly between free weights, the elliptical trainer, and New Mexican food, I can still come out of this trip a kilo or two lighter.

Driving around in Phoenix is just terrible, and quadruply so on the weekends. Unfortch, my dad is really only reliably home on the weekends, so part of the strategy here is to figure out which destinations he'll enjoy and are also reachable on Saturday or Sunday without becoming involved in a road rage incident. Here's what's Mexican on the viewscreen right now:

El Nopalito, 2831 North 24th Street, Phoenix. Real strip-mall Mexican that looks perfect from the outside. Chowhounders have good things to say about it, and the pictures look like what I'm looking for.

Rosita's Fine Mexican Food, 960 West University Drive, Tempe. I would really love to get there for their Dia de los Muertos celebration, but that means that we would have to go there today, a Saturday, in Tempe, which is a definite no-no as far as traffic goes. Maybe I'll just go for huevos rancheros whenever I eventually end up in Tempe.

Pepe's Taco Villa, 2108 West Camelback Road. Looks like good, standard Sonoroan Mexican food.

Los Dos Molinos, 8646 South Central Avenue, Phoenix. This place is a Phoenix institution, you should never go on a weekend, the food is not spectacular, etc. But, it is very consistently above-average Arizona Mexican food, and if we're in the neighborhood on a weekday, I don't want to forget about it.

Dick's Hideaway, 6008 N 16th St, Phoenix. Not Mexican but New Mexican actually, this is the lunch counter version of Richardson's, the kitchen responsible for my now decade-old obsession with southwestern cooking.

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I'm also doing some exotic chile shopping on this trip, and eG has suggested that Phoenix Ranch Market III, 1602 E Roosevelt St in Phoenix is where I need to be heading.

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pho king, ace.

Today's Surreal American Moment found me pushing a gargantuan shopping cart complete with Ritz-cracker-eating toddler in it through a suburban Phoenix Asian megasuperstore called Lee Lee's, and seeing the very same Verkade cookies that I see every day in Amsterdam (literally marked up 500%) on the shelf, along with stroopwafels, marzipan, poffertjes, speculaas, and a full-height shelf of other Dutch products.

Actually, the most surreal part was that I had 1) a shopping cart with 2) a toddler in it. A very well-behaved toddler in fact, who spent much of our time there helpfully pointing out things he thought I might find interesting such as pineapples or live catfish. My own attention was caught by a wealth of fresh herbs and produce that I haven't seen very often in Amsterdam: pea shoots, shiso leaves, mehti (fenugreek), curry leaves, chrysanthemum leaves, and lots more that I didn't recognize.

After which, the boys and their grandmother went to McDonald's for Happy Meals (I'm shrugging helplessly here), and I went next door to the Vietnamese restaurant attached to Lee Lee's called Pho 68, and picked up some pho to go. This was the only Asian restaurant I've ever set foot in that didn't have a paper version of their menu available for you to take home with you. You know, for take-out.

Anyway, I mention that bit because it's why I don't have the proper nomenclature for anything here, so I'm reduced to describing things in "American". Along with our pho I picked up some fresh spring rolls and a spicy chicken something. Spring rolls:

















The pho was very good after a healthy shot of sriracha, but while all the rest of the food was fine, fresh, competently done...it was a little on the bland side (Mara's spring rolls are better). Still, a nice inexpensive and unexpected light lunch from a cuisine that isn't very prevalent in Amsterdam.

And yes, those are Holiday Plates.

in america.

I've been here about 12 hours, and I'm marveling at my ability to marvel anew every time I come back here: at the size of everything (big), the cost of everything (very different), the weather (sunny and 25C), the incredibly comfortable furniture, and the sheer breadth of consumer choice that is present in every conceivable niche of retail goods.

I'm still at the point in my acclimation where I just shuffle around like a bobbleheaded doofus soaking up the feeling of simultaneous sensory overload and absolute easyness, punctuated by bouts of feeling like a totally retarded alien, for example when I don't know how to check out at the grocery store anymore (they bag your groceries for you and take everything out of your cart for you), or buying something with a credit card (I guess you sign digitally these days) etc. etc. etc.

I had a very nostalgic salad last night with poppyseed dressing, which I'll talk about in detail the next time I have one, probably in about 5 hours. I also had a baby back rib or two from the outdoor grill (tasty), and a chicken wing from Costco (less tasty). In fact, the Costco wings were pretty gross, flavor-wise...some kind of black pepper concept that tasted like a Scratch and Sniff book.

In general, lots of food plans 'n' shit coming up, still trying to work out the camera situation, both of our cameras died in some sort of unexpected murder/suicide deal last weekend...luckily there are unused digital cameras just lying around the house here, so I should be back to photo-ing pretty soon.

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