hotel california.

Well that didn't take long to sort out. You would not believe the amount of technology I've been failing/cursing at for the past two weeks.

But finally, finally. Some of the good news about where I am right now (Oakland, CA) is that my walk home from public transportation today looked like this:



























The more bittersweet news is that I spent my entire day inside doing this:

And was so totally obliterated by the nonstop effort involved in reading/rehearsing a beautiful if not-so-efficiently-notated piece of music for 8 hours and then carting my way-too-heavy gear home that when I finally got back to Oakland and saw this street full of just-opening-for-dinner food trucks:

I couldn't even stop for longer than it took to take a picture. I simply had to get rid of everything I was carrying and wearing. Improperly dressed, I was. For a while I've harbored this idea that San Francisco's weather is kind of like Amsterdam's. A slight but significant difference is that a day that starts out in Amsterdam at 8am being 45°F generally only goes up to 55°F or so. This morning's Oakland 45°F garment choices proved unwise at 4:30pm when it was almost 70°F.

If it sounds like I'm complaining...well I'm just totally physically and mentally destroyed. But the great, great news about where I am right now is that the person I'm staying with could not be one iota more pleasant, considerate or helpful, and those are not even remotely sufficient words to describe how much better she's made everything.

And the day's long-dreaded music reading adventure was improved 10,000% by the person I'm sharing sheet music with (we're sharing due to the onstage logistics of 100 music stands plus 100 guitarists) being an utter professional and painstakingly trying to endlessly correct the score into a more useful form. And ultimately I didn't suck anywhere near as much as I'd expected to anyway due to semi-careful preparation.

So that has all been awesome. Plus I have a couple more stories about amazing lengths of trouble that complete strangers went to in order to assist me with something or another. Plus I now have a camera that works. If I weren't so superstitious I'd say "May it all please continue like something in that vein," but no way am I saying that.

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injured reserve.

OK so maybe you're wondering why nothing's been happening here. It's kind of a perfect storm situation of 1) not having an awesome camera that I know how to work available at my fingertips, 2) not cooking or eating very much in an attempt to not undo weeks of strong work in the weight/fitness department; and then 3) playing every sport ever invented over the last five days, which doesn't sound like it might be inimical to blogging, but consider if you will that somehow the same muscles used for typing are the same muscles you use to play, well, every sport ever invented. Mostly badminton, football, basketball, and air hockey. What I'm saying is that typing hurts. Pics soonish though.

Today is being spent the way Sundays should always be spent: watching nonstop NFL football with your mother, drinking Stella Artois and roasting sweet potatoes. And whimpering like a puppy every time you move a limb.

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for posterity.

No time for anything but a perfunctory kitchen note: our continuing quest for a satisfying non-mayo tuna salad has finally come to an end. Sing, and rejoice.

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tuna, artichoke, red pepper salad.

2 x 130g cans tuna
2 roasted red peppers from a jar
1 x 360g can artichoke hearts (240g drained)
2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp oregano
1/8 tsp garlic powder
2 tsp dijon mustard
juice of a lemon
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
freshly cracked pepper

+++

ep*c.

So this is happening in a few days. First Phoenix, then a brief detour to Oakland/SF/Richmond/Berkeley which I believe local residents have handily shortened to "The Bay Area", then Phoenix again, then Atlanta. And in between all that, layovers in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake City, which is what happens when your primary consideration while booking flights is "cheapness".

WTF you may say to yourself, and I would counter with "Yes." The Bay Area business is about a one-time convenient moment to play in a "guitar orchestra" composed and arranged by one of the two people who kind of invented the idea back in the late 70s. And see some old friends like Wendy and Al.

Oakland will be brand new territory for me, so you know what that means:

View Bay Area Epicity in a larger map

Possible highlights near my home base in Oakland:

Champa Garden: Laotian.

Olde Depot: Beer.

Hawker Fare: Cheap and unusual southeast Asia street food, not open very late.

Box and Bells. Michelin-starred bar food, inconveniently located.
Tian Jin. Northern Chinese dumplings.

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"too dangerous to go outside".

That's what city officials are saying today. We're having a windstorm, 75mph winds, two people one person killed by trees (falling trees) already this morning, etc. So we're all staying inside. It's not like we need an excuse to stay inside, but it's actually kind of nice to have one.

I did manage to dash across the street to the Dirk b/c we're out of eggs (obvs worth risking your life for), and I picked up a cute little "sale pumpkin" (€1.29 each), so I'll probably be roasting that in bit. Which reminds me, Saturday night we were changing the "couch cover", an arduous two-person job that never seems like it's going to work until it just suddenly does, and suddenly there was an obvious commotion outside involving a lot of people.

I went to the window while Moop grunted and swore at the couch. "Is it Halloween?" I asked. Mara said "maybe, why". And, all Hollywood-like, I said, "if it's not, we've got a real problem on our hands". The street was full of zombies. Hundreds of them, men, women, dripping, oozing, doing the stereotypical lurching and stumbling forward, lit from behind by some semi-massive light source. And then the house music started. Zombie parade. It went on for 15 minutes or so, frankly the most horrifying thing about it being their choice of music, totally brain dead fwwaaahahahahha.

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napa cabbage and shiitake mushroom soup.

1 head napa cabbage
200g fresh shiitake mushrooms
1 2-inch piece of fresh turmeric, peeled
4 cloves garlic
2 cups leftover chicken broth
crushed red pepper
freshly cracked black pepper

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mr. saturday night special.

Saturday? Mole rojo from my oldest cookbook, Coyote Cafe, just now finally starting to fall apart. Somehow the only ingredients we're lacking are chicken and celery.

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mole rojo.

caldo de pollo (makes about 4x as much as you need, but then you've got leftover chicken broth)
1 chicken

2 celery ribs

2 carrots

1 onion

1 head garlic

1 clove

1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp thyme

couple grinds black pepper

mole
18-24 dried chiles, comprised of
mild new mexican chiles

ancho chiles

pasilla chiles

mulato chiles

I used 18 mild new mexicans, 3 pasilla, and 3 mulato b/c that's what I had

5 tomatoes, charred under the broiler for 5 minutes

1/3 cup sesame seeds, toasted carefully

1 cup toasted almonds

1/2 cup currants, soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes, water discarded

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 tbsp butter
20g barely sweetened chocolate
20g slightly sweeter chocolate

pinch of ghost pepper salt if anyone complains about the "lack of heat"

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monday morning quarterback.

A couple things. One, that day when I took those beautiful pictures? They were too beautiful I guess, b/c they broke the camera. It can no longer focus. "System Error (Focus)" it says. So I'm back to those Olympuses that no one else wanted because they suck profound amounts of ass.

Two. I have often criticized "fake meat products" like, say, Tofurky, for tasting like the worst thing that ever happened to your tongue. How could you do that, I wondered. But lately I've been eating a little too much meat, and last night I happened to have a big block of tempeh in the fridge, and since I almost always eat tempeh the same flawless yet caloriffic way (fried), I thought I'd try something different.

An Asian tempeh "meatball" I thought. Treat it like a mushroomy kind of flavor, just sex it up with some Japanese flavors like miso, soy, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, etc. An egg for binding/moisture, etc. I made the "mince" last night and it smelled/tasted awesome.

I baked them today (for 50 minutes, so the tempeh is definitely "cooked") and...fuck if they don't taste like Tofurky. Just awful in every way. You almost literally can't swallow one without a glass of water, and they have a naaasty aftertaste that I can't trace back to any of the constituent ingredients. The only thing that I could've imagined helping at all would've been adding a considerable amount of butter to the "mince". A little sake maybe. But jesus, just a total fail...no wonder there are no recipes like this on the net.

Oh, three things. Third: I had raw broccoli for dinner last night and it absolutely decimated my digestive system. Like from 2am to 4am in the fetal position wishing for death. Apparently this can happen if you're not used to eating raw broccoli. But why in fuck would anyone want to get used to eating raw broccoli is my question. A mistake I shan't make again in this lifetime.

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enter the scimulator.

The Brown One has returned, and though she sleeps I bet her ears or some other part(s) of her is/are burning, because...well, it's a loooong boring story, but basically I was trying to continue to bludgeon my way through a very necessary "warehouse" inventory while she slept. And I found, among, literally, quagillions of old CD-Rs, a backup of this machine of ours that died very suddenly back in 2003. Or was stolen when our shop was broken into. Something happened to it.

But anyway, on this CD-R are lots of files. Some of them are just morbidly funny in retrospect: an HTML document entitled "Can You Afford Music Distribution?" (I hope I don't have to explain the pitch-black hilarity there). The first Dutch review of our record shop when it first opened ("Vooral de bakken tweedehands bieden een verrassend allegaartje. Van Beach Boys tot John Zorn en wat daar zoal tussen zit."). But of course the secondhand CDs were great: they were our years-in-the-making combined personal CD collections from America.

And lots of letters we wrote. To each other, to friends back home, to landlords, customers, universities, etc. All of which are being documented on another top-secret blog and have been being so (?) for some time now whenever I happen across them, BUT I SAY ALL THAT TO SAY THIS: one of the documents on this particular CD was a go-to recipe for a simple chocolate cake that the Mara used to make quite often. The recipe itself is quite fucked-up looking, but I put it here so that when I lose this CD-R it continues to live on.

(moments later)

Or: no. It has been redacted just now b/c apparently the results got worse and worse every time she made it which is why she doesn't make it any more. Some recipes are best lost to the sands of time after all, he said in an attempt at general consolation. She said she'd try and rewrite it soon, now that she knows something about baking in Yurp. It was a good cake.

Until such time, now, so I don't have to fking rewrite this gvd post, we'll talk about my surprisingly pleasant lunchtime invention today. Nori is something I don't often love or even especially like, but I'm trying to add more seaweed to my diet. I'm sure there's a Japanese name for something like this which I'd love to be enlightened about. Today's version used beef, but I'm pretty sure canned tuna would work too. Or a tamago-style egg. Maybe you (or "one") could figure out a way to do "mock unagi" with very thinly-sliced tempeh or tofu. I'm going to Gooooogle that now to confirm that my thoughts, impulses, etc are not unique. Voilà.

+++

nori rollup.

1 sheet nori
100g roast beef
couple tbsp smashed avocado
1 good tbsp prepared horseradish and/or significantly less wasabi
1 or 2 tbsp pickled ginger
1 tsp toasted sesame seeds
1 pinch togarashi

+++

play nice.

Substantial breakfast salads continue since yesterday's worked so well in the energy dept. Beets, lardons, egg, trout roe, mixed greenery, olive oil, apple vinegar.

+++

ignoramus.

Looks like a beautiful day, no? Sure does. A perfect day for a nice, relaxing stroll on the deserted urban playground of Java-eiland. To visit our accountant's office. For which I have an incorrect street number lodged in my memory. Very incorrect.

Just before I left the house I'd "brilliantly" remembered that our accountant had recently relocated out of the center and onto Java-eiland. I mentally high-fived myself, quickly glanced at their website for the new address and "committed it to memory".

Took the tram to Java-eiland, and started my carefree stroll. What a beautiful day. Hmm. Accountant not at "the address". In fact, there are no businesses at that address. Hmm. Actually, heyyyyy...there are no people around at all really.

In fact, not owning a smartphone and not even having my dumb old clamshell cellphone with me (I don't use it much, cause, well...it's not good for much), there is absolutely zero way for a person like myself to figure out the exact address of something that he only knows the name and approximate location of. Phone booths/books don't exist anymore, do they. I walked the length of the island twice, peering intently at every nest of doorbells on every building.

Grrr. Would I reaaaallllly have to travel back to the mainland (OK, ten minutes tops, but), find an internet cafe (ten more minutes, best case), look up the address (etc), and come back? Pbbblleh. I was back in 1995. Sighing deeply, I decided that rather than "giving up" and trying to find a computer, I would instead circle the island repeatedly, flitting from building to building in an increasing panic/frustration, while mentally calling myself many many bad names. I'm afraid that sometimes my lips even moved in a very homeless/psychotic looking way. Good thing there were no people around.

I just didn't believe I was so wrong. I thought the address was 264. I was willing to be as wrong as 642, but nothing over 1000, that's a whole extra digit. I was ready to give up. As an absolute last resort, I rummaged around in the thick sheaf of papers I had with me, which normally would have zero reason to contain our accountant's address.

Except: my wonderful business partner had amazingly updated our standard cover letter with the new address (wtf): 1537. Which, in addition to containing exactly none of the numbers I'd "remembered", was now all the way at the opposite end of the island, the absolute last, final building on the waterfront street, the building about which you'd say to yourself, as I had: well I looked at all the other 1536 addresses, it CAN'T possibly be that one.

I knowwwwwwwwwwwwww, at least I had good weather. And I got a solid two-hour walk out of it, some of it at impressive speeds once the panic set in. Nonetheless, small consolations were necessary once back in the city proper.

here's looking at you.

This was designed to be a big healthy breakfast for a busy day of physical and mental activity, or at least what passes for those two things in my life, and it was so tasty and satisfying AND healthy-seeming that I would love to do it on a more frequent basis. Look at how excited I sound.

It does however have a couple semi-luxury items, smoked salmon (€2.99/100g) and watercress (€1.89/100g). Obviously those prices aren't breaking the bank, but breakfast-wise it's more of a budget hit than say an egg and toast. I should start looking into how much cheaper smoked salmon snippets are (these are the non-beautiful offcuts that are a by-product of slicing smoked salmon beautifully). Calorically speaking this was 410 calories as written below minus the shallot.

+++

soft-boiled eggs with smoked salmon and watercress. 

2 eggs

100g watercress, washed, spin-dried, and chopped rather fine so you don't have to discard the thickest stems. If you were serving this to someone you could separate the leaves from the stems and just finely chop the stems...I didn't care how it looked really, I was just trying to not waste any of my 100g of watercress.

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp potent coarse-grain mustard
1 small shallot, minced, if you don't really have to worry about your breath

100g smoked salmon
2 tbsp chives, minced, if you don't really have to worry about your breath

no salt necessary
cracked pepper possibly, I didn't use any.

I've decided that I like my watercress slightly wilted, so I dressed my salad quite early in the process. Basically, put your eggs in a pot with cold water to cover and bring to a boil. While this is happening, make your dressing by combining the olive oil, vinegar, mustard, and shallot. Once the eggs are boiling, set a timer for 3 minutes and put a bowl of cold or icy water in the sink. Dress the watercress with the vinaigrette. When the timer goes off, gently remove the eggs from the pan and put them in the bowl of cold water. Plate the salmon on top of the dressed cress, then peel your eggs, add them to the bowl and do the green scatter on top with the chives.

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roasted cardamom applesauce.

What is it about the pleasure of watching a medium-crappy movie on TV, with extended commercial breaks and subtitles you're mostly not reading, etc. Why is this often more attractive to me than selecting a DVD I actually own and enjoy watching. Ironic distance? No chance of being diappointed? No requirement for paying total attention?

Case in point: watching the textbook Hollywood beginning of the John Grisham "classic" The Firm, whose mind-bogglingly simpleminded 1980s-ness is lent a piquantly stupid counterpoint via an often mindlessly inappropriate Dave Grusin piano score. I have yet to tire of the overall badness.

+++

So I'm still not eating sugar. Or I'm back to not eating sugar, but yesterday's wonderful dessert moment is haunting me a bit. It's a cold, dark, unpleasant day out. I'm just puttering around trying to recognize new messes I made and then got used to over the past three weeks so I can re-eliminate them.

Why not fill the house with a supportive, comfortable scent whose eventual physical manifestation will not fuck up my nutrition goals for the day I thought to myself. Thus we have this on its way.

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roasted cardamom and cinnamon applesauce.

750g apples (I used 4 or 5), quartered
8 cardamom pods, split, black seeds inside removed and crushed in a mortar/pestle
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup water
3 stevia tablets, wasn't even noticeable as stevia
a handful of crushed, toasted almonds for texture

obviously a pat of browned butter or creme fraiche or ice cream or dulce de leche or all of the above would be ideal if you were someone else

The whole thing ends up being about 400 calories as written.

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restaurant bak.

UPDATE: OK, here's what everything really looked like.

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Last night some kind person bought me dinner. OK it was in exchange for some services rendered, but still in no way was it obligatory and after a couple postponements the fact that it actually happened and that it was very enjoyable was a pleasant affirmation of some goodness in the universe (though certainly fleeting, Mr. Schopenhauer, I haven't forgotten about you).

We ate at Bak, housed in Het Veem just northeast of Westerpark. As you know, we don't do restaurant reviews around here, but since I found my meal peppered with things I wouldn't ordinarily do in the kitchen, I'll briefly run it down for you so you could also go enjoy something like my meal if you wanted.

We all four of us decided to go for the 4-course menu for €33.50, and basically they have a laundry list of ingredients that they're going to use each week but you have no idea in what configuration they're going to end up on your plate. They ask you at the beginning if there's anything you don't like, one of us was anti-mushroom for example, so she got something a little different for that course.

The first thing set in front of us was an amuse of baby beet in some kind of buttermilk reduction with an uncommon herb whose name escapes me at the moment. I liked it and will be trying this in my kitchen.

Next was my favorite thing of the night, an array of carrots. There's a lemon creme fraiche underneath. There are little al dente bits of either spelt grains or wheat berries scattered everywhere, there's some tarragon in there, and as it was served our waitron grated a roasted coffee bean over the plate. Sounds pretentious as hell, I know, but it really worked.

That surprise was followed by the least-successful dish of the night, and you can almost tell by looking at it in comparison to everything else that it just seems a bit...unfinished. Maybe they ran out of something. What you're looking at is too-lightly pickled cauliflower; pleasant enough halved potatoes, a green I should know but don't; a gigantic poached duck egg, and the tastiest thing on the plate is that white smear under the egg, it's some kind of thickened cauliflower puree.

We all agreed that something was missing, my personal fix would have been a healthy shave of parmigiano and a crack of black pepper, and maybe a tiny sprinkle of smoked salt. Or my old standby pangrattato. Anyway, we couldn't fix it, no salt and pepper on the table. Swing and a miss, this one (though I cleaned my plate).

Vegetarians avert your eyes. Our "main" was pheasant with sauerkraut, potato (?) puree (possibly another root vegetetable), and a super-nice saute of fancy mushrooms. Maybe this was my favorite thing of the night. I felt bad for the non-mushroom eater at our table b/c the mushrooms and sauerkraut together were dreamy. Yes that is a foot at the end of that leg. My war on birds continues unabated.

And then dessert, sweet sweet dessert. I really have no idea if this was any good or not objectively speaking because as of last night I hadn't had any sugar in about a week. And my first bite of this was like setting the controls for the heart of Serotoninland. My eyes may have spun in their sockets. I think it's some kind of very-carefully spiced fennel seed ice cream with a flourless chocolate cake and a swirl of unrememberable berry. And a few wonderful nuggets of caramel popcorn tucked here and there. I could easily have had another plate or two of this.

And that was it. Thoughtful, well-executed food in a gezellig room (lit more dimly than my pics suggest) that was only marred by the two giant tables of reuniting ex-fraternity boys (literally, like singing their fraternity song at one point) who were seated behind us halfway through the meal. But then moments later, in the most aggressively proactive customer service moment I've ever experienced in Amsterdam, our waiter asked us if we would like to move to a table farther away. I almost said to him "Get the fuck out of here" in disbelief. We didn't up and move, but yeah, mind: blown. Maybe things are changing, service was great all around, unobtrusive and likeable.

So, yes, go to Bak.

+++

personal consumption.

This is the foyer of our building. Coming downstairs a couple days ago I passed this frankly rather impressive marijuana plant, no owner in sight. Supposedly you're allowed to keep up to five plants for personal use, but I really can't imagine needing more than one of these.

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eggs v. eggs.

I had a very unusual day with my fellow American sufferer Phil yesterday. At 11am I was sitting at his breakfast table eating the best omelette I've had in a long time. This in itself is awesomely unusual, that I would be at someone's house for a non-work-related event before noon. Then we talked about Schopenhauer for about 45 minutes and I finally read some of On The Sufferings of The World, about 30 years later than I should've read it (it feels very wrong to get such comfort out of something called "Studies in Pessimism"). A taste for you:

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.

Then we went to the Stedelijk Museum via our Museumcards and looked at art for a while, my favorite things I saw being Willink, Calder and Breitner. Then we went and played pool for a couple hours at Sound Garden. Then off to see the Ellington band in the evening. I say off to see, but yes I mean downstairs. In other words, kind of what you'd think would be a perfect Tuesday, the kind that should happen way more often.

Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of any of it b/c my SD card picked yesterday to officially finish falling apart, and the only other ones I can find are like 16mb. Here's the omelette as described by to me by Phil. It doesn't look like much on paper, but it was really quite something.

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eggs with eggs. 

1 strip of bacon, diced fine
1 large cremini mushroom, diced fine
1 pinch thyme
2 tbsp butter

1 egg
2 tbsp medium-age cheese, shredded, Phil used a belegen Gouda or maybe a mild cheddar would work too

2 tbsp caviar, he used this suuuuper great herring caviar from Marqt (where his girlfriend works, so they basically have discounted access to everything), I must procure some for myself. But said he'd used other caviars with just about equal success.

freshly cracked black pepper

Saute your bacon and mushroom and thyme rather slowly in the butter, maybe 10 minutes. Throw the egg in the pan, cook for 30 seconds, flip it, add the cheese, close, and plate with the caviar and black pepper on top.

+++

men at work.

Today on the treadmill, after dragging myself swiftly uphill for 45 minutes, I looked down through my tears and sweat at the Accuradar or whatever thingie that demands your age and weight and then tries to make you feel a little better throughout your ordeal by telling you that you're actually burning calories, and it blinkingly announced: 740 calories burned.

Hmm, I thought to myself, gracefully skipping off the treadmill and crashing woozily into the stationary bike adjacent, that's pretty much (pausing to run some calculations) 740 extra calories to play with. I mean, this put me well into negative calories for the day so far. I high-fived myself, and then juuuust before I lost consciouness, I decided I would roast a couple of duck legs, something I haven't ever done before I don't think.

What, you say. And I say yes, that's right: I only really ever buy confit because I'm lazy and it's barely more expensive, or very very occasionally I buy a €9.99 whole frozen duck from the toko, because I don't know how to prepare duck any other way than roasting the whole thing.

Tonight's hands-off adventure involves a very simple Nigel Slater recipe, whom I've never cooked before either as far as I know. Thrilling Adventures.

+++

roast duck and citrus salad. 

I really thought this was a total disappointment at first. I mean I was doing the as-healthy-as-possible version which didn't involve using any juices from the roasting pan in the salad dressing for example, but it was just unexpectedly...tart yet flat. So I made some brief raspberry noise with my mouth and turned away from it, letting it sit there not being eaten while I did something else, but every time I kept going back to give it one more chance to redeem itself, it got better.

What was happening: most crucially, the watercress was wilting in the citrus juices. But also the two citruses were blending into each other, the duck was soaking up the citrus, the saltiness of the duck was meandering its way through everything else, etc.

So just by letting this sit for 10 or 15 minutes it went from bleh to me eventually pouring the last remnants of the bowl into my mouth (I'm home alone). I'm still not totally sure I'd make it again as written, but it had something going on. I think it probably needed a little sweetness and a little chile. Anyway, it was my first time ever using watercress, I liked it a lot after it wilted.

2 duck legs
salt
pepper
more five-spice than you think you should use

1 orange
1 grapefruit
1 bunch watercress, washed, large stems trimmed

+++

ghost gift.

Someone brought us some really excellent exotic spice blends from the American southwest, just east of where I'll be in a few weeks. Three spice blends to be exact, but we will be waiting to talk about and cook with them until the fair mooperbird returneth.

Someone else finally gave in to their sugar craving yesterday, it had been a whole week, come on cut him some slack. He made something that he has now hidden very far away in the back of the refrigerator in hopes that he will forget about it for another week or so.

Actually, it's not so bad health-wise. I do wonder if you could eliminate the honey altogether or if that's what's giving it its viscosity. I say this because it's almost too sweet the way it is right now, and plus if you were just using coconut milk and coconut sugar then damn this would be the healthiest caramel of all time.

And lastly, it's not really "caramel", in terms of consistency, it's "caramel sauce". It won't harden into a non-pourable state. It would still probably be an excellent healthier sub for something like sticky toffee pudding. I got the idea here.

In other news, I am officially sick of butternut squash. I went from "man I love butternut squash" two weeks ago to "please make it stop" this morning. That was only two squashes. Or squash probably. Two squash.

Tonight back to fish, which reminds me that the ol' Cheap Dirk Fish is not really so so cheap any more. The "Wild Alaskan Salmon" that used to be €2.99 for 700g is now €3.99 for 500g. And they've done it so slowly and just so damn sneakily that if I bought it more often I might not have noticed. The bags are still the same physical size, there's just less in them. And Dirk's price markers are so, mmm, what's the word, haphazard that it really takes some moderate effort to figure out what things in the freezer cost.

Anyway, yes, white people problems. Hey how about you be a white person that makes some heathier caramel sauce while I be a white person that goes to the gym.*

+++

salted coconut caramel cream.

1 can coconut milk (400ml)
1/4 cup really good honey or pure maple syrup
1/4 cup (I used one 60g disk/tablet) palm sugar or coconut sugar, apparently not always the same thing, coconut sugar is better if you can find it
1 tsp good vanilla extract
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt

Put the first three ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a good simmer and then reduce it for a good amount of time, whisking often but not too often. The original recipe says to do this for 15 minutes, I did 45 in an attempt to achieve extra brownness. When maximum brownness has been achieved, turn off heat, add vanilla and salt. Let cool, put in the fridge, should last 3 weeks or so.

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* For the record I mean that as "white person" as in "white people problems", a distinction of class not color. Fight the power (?).

+++

orange you glad i didn't say asian again.

Turmeric Quest 2013 still in progress, but even I as a true lovvver of most things Asian am needing the occasional break from the normal Indonesian-Thai-Vietnamese-Japanese-Burmese-Cambodian-Sri Lankan-etc stuff we cook over here.

And yet. Trying to eat orange stuff like turmeric but also squash and sweet potatoes, I'm sure you know why. And kale, you know why, everybody does. And prunes, you probably think you know why, but it's just because I've had this bag of them sitting around forever and it's time to start fresh and begin ignoring a brand-new bag of prunes.  

Thus, if not Asian, toward what cuisine do we steer our mighty kitchen spatula. Have you noticed I'm not using question marks anymore. It's more blasé that way, like I don't even care if "you" answer. More rhetorical. I've also put sarcastic exclamation marks "on pause". Quotation marks, unfortunately not (yet), and parentheses are still going pretty strong. And I'm still really likely to use more than one colon in a sentence, probably all of them incorrectly. Progress (implied question mark). 

The answer to my extremely rhetorical and questionably punctuated moronic question turned out to be: Moroccan, ish. In the end though, by the time I got around to turning on the stove I just really didn't have it in me anymore so I just scorched/steamed a chicken breast, threw some cilantro at it and dipped it in harissa, almost the same thing. The squash is still roasting, it's 9:45pm. A recipe for tomorrow's usage of tonight's detritus will eventually emerge from the shambles below. 

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calico tagine. 

100-200g leftover chicken
1 or 2 fried or hard-boiled egg(s)

2 or 3 cups kale, chopped pretty fine
1 or 2 cups butternut squash, roasted with smoked salt, cinnamon, and cumin seed

7 or 14 prunes, soaked, keep the water

handful almonds, toasted, chopped

pinch powdered ginger or ras el hanout

teaspoon cumin seed

a good bit of cinnamon

an assload of harissa, ok i used 2 tbsp 

extra-virgin olive oil if there's not already some from the squash or chicken
salt or feta if you're eating dairy
freshly cracked pepper to taste
a sprinkle of smoked paprika if you're in the mood
toasted sesame seeds

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endless sunrise.

After a challenging transitional period suddenly we're at that figuratively fresh-faced "new" place (again) where, ok, if at this jaded old age we can't stupidly optimistically declare that "anything is possible", we can at least say that "some things seem possible". And that, my dear tiny and not-so-tiny friends, is, well, as we say around here, a vas deferens.

It basically adds up to a comparative and self-aware split-second yay (a la Cage/Kaufman's split-second yay in Adaptation, which is impossible get a purely joyful-looking screencap of), and so if we were to think to ourselves how best to represent that yayness via a diet-compliant breakfast full of the nutrition necessary to power us through today's task list without weighing us down too much, we might turn to the much-ballyhooed Sriracha Oatmeal, which I also found very difficult to get a joyful-looking screencap of as you can see above.

I first heard about this via my dad, who recommended it via email, which is quite an endorsement as he's not a big emailer and when we're not together I'm pretty sure we usually don't talk about food at all. That was four months ago or something, and yeah I just haven't had the right moment to try it. I try it now, using my below adaptation, no I'm not even trying to reference the previous paragraph there's just not a more accurate word.

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sriracha oatmeal.

This was totally edible as written, and got more edible as I got closer to the bottom of my bowl where the almonds and rosemary were hanging out. It was nose-runningly spicy, but in that good way.

The only thing I could immediately imagine improving it would be something a little umami-y, a word we don't like to use, in fact it's not even a word, but as we know from last paragraph sometimes there's not a more accurate etc etc etc. I do wonder if the always awesome almond pangrattato would be a smart addition (they have almonds and rosemary in common, and I think a little anchovy would not be out of place in this mix). And/or maybe a tiny pat of butter on top when serving, which brings up the only problem with this recipe as written: if you were to eat both servings that would be like 950 calories, which, if you're CRONing is more than half a day's calories. If you're me, better to make a half-recipe.

1 cup real oats (not instant IOW)
2 cups water
1/2 cup coarsely chopped toasted almonds
1 tbsp soy sauce (seemed like a lot, but it ended up being right)
1 tbsp sriracha
1 tsp minced fresh rosemary or 1/4 tsp dried
1 clove garlic, minced

1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 large eggs
salt and pepper to taste

chopped scallions
toasted sesame seeds or maybe pangrattato instead

Combine oats, almonds, soy sauce, sriracha, rosemary and garlic. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for about 5 minutes. When oatmeal is just about done, fry your egg(s), I really only do mine about a minute a side if that. Plate or if "bowl" is a usable verb in this context, "bowl" your oatmeal and top with an egg and the obligatory green scatter and probably more sriracha I imagine. Serves 2.

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with authority.

I should really get a real Surinamese cookbook someday. I had one, but though it was really great-looking inside, or probably because it was really great-looking inside, it fell apart almost immediately, and now I don't know where all of it is. I have two others but they're kind of non-comprehensive and/or super-casual to a fault.

Some Googling has suggested that people make some things like this (callaloo for instance), but I have a feeling it's just one of those homemade improv things that happen b/c you just want something with all these ingredients in it. I also wish I had some lime leaves but I just used them in last week's soto ayam, which is still a really good recipe, actually better than this one, you should try making it next time you want chicken soup. Still, the below was not shabby (and way better the next day, I just never used to trust a shellfish stew the second day, it's a new thing but seems to be working out ok ).

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caribbean fish stew.

1 can coconut milk
1 big piece of ginger, peeled and zhoomed (not as big as pictured above, like 2 inches)
2 shallots, zhoomed
6 cloves of garlic, zhoomed
6 allspice berries
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp lemongrass powder
couple grates of nutmeg
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 scotch bonnet or more ideally 1 tbsp of some kind of habanero/shrimp sambal, or sambal trassi
some amount of water, at least 1.5 liters
salt to taste

400g or some healthy yet manageable amount of kale, chopped fine
some amount of fish or seafood, I used 250g wild salmon and 200 grams bag o' death

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ees too much.

I tend to think I've heard of most things, food-wise. Today I was faced with two pieces of new information (in one conventient article) and thought I'd share them because many many other people are already knowing about them. They're both utterly ridiculous sandwiches.

One: The Francesinha.

Two: The Pambazo.

Who can eat a sandwich that size, other than probably Nouf. That is my question.

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chkdsk /f.

Ah, nothing like some good old-fashioned computer problems to suck away your time and will to live. Ok, so it's not that bad, but it's been a while since anything this scary has happened to my main sceen. Sceen? Sceem (in the eight years of writing this blog I certainly must've mentioned this but can't find it: that Sceem is one of the terms of endearment that Sceem and I use to refer to each other interchangeably. It's pronounced "sheem", from the Italian, scimmie, etc, gross, I know. It's probably said a minimum of 30 or 40 times a day at my house, so for variety it can also be made into shim, sheemytone, scimmietoon, toon/tone, toeter, boots, scrim, shambone, shrimp, shrimpage, sheemp, chimp, ape, actually endless variations as it morphs interchangeably into Moop, I'm sure you all do this same sort of thing at home. It can also be sung/scat-sung).

So yes, I'll be here defragging and chkdsking and virusscanning and whatever if you need me. And also thinking about rice paper and if you can make a soup out of it.

Have I really had this blog for eight years? How do I keep coming up with new post names?

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chickie.

So yes, a regular reader pointed out that it's been quiet here. Nothing to worry about, I just have a few more "Draft" posts hanging around than usual. And I spent a few days being pleasantly distracted by the new hire at Megasubtiel.

I've made a couple of things worth talking about lately...one was a butternut squash, spinach, almond and smoked cheese gratin I made today, will post the recipe in a bit. The below happened a couple of days ago, based on the thing from Je Mange La Ville that Mara makes. I served it with potato mash and roasted runner beans, super nice.

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kind of southwestern beer-braised chicken with sage and bacon.

2 tbsp olive oil, more as needed
1 kg chicken legs or 4 kippenbouten
salt and pepper

2 medium onions, cut in half, then in very thin crosswise slices
2 cups dark beer
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 tsp powdered bay leaves
1 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp dried rosemary
1/2 tsp dried sage
pinch smoked paprika
a healthy pinch pul biber
i would like to try a pinch of cumin seed in here next time

1 tbsp unsalted butter
a bunch of fresh mushrooms
125g lean bacon
2 green Holland chiles, or more, fire-roasted

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spanish, haarlem.

Last night I dreamt that our house was infested with bears. One big one and five smaller ones. They were pretty cute. The Bear People had to come and get them in a bunch of UPS-looking trucks.

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DJ Deathclam and I didn't really go anywhere together this summer due to budgetary (and other) concerns, so we decided to compensate with an all-too-rare Moops Night Out in Haarlem, only a 15-minute train ride but definitely a different world than Amsterdam, slower, emptier, cheaper.

Above, walking into town. Below: Coconuts for Sex, self-explanatory; a vintage or faux-vintage Jim Beam whiskey jar/jug at In Den Uiver.

Then a bit of chomping was in order, an unexpectedly super and super-affordable Basque meal at Patxaran. I'd say it's pretty much worth the €5 euro train trip to Haarlem to eat here. Pinxtos are €2, €3, €4, or €5 each, and then there's a small but non-standard tapas menu.

We had four pinxtos, three pictured below: goat cheese with tomato, walnut, and a cube of quince gelée; pantumaca con jamón ibérico (tomato bread with ham, sounds simple but they were so mfkn good we considered filling Mara's bag with them); and the only less-than-stellar bite of the night, Little Gem lettuce with what was advertised as an anchovy cream but tasted like blueberry cream, edible but confounding and more importantly on the boring side. Next, an unpictured one, jamon and crispy asparagus with something like a goat cheese bechamel, also served on their terrific bread.

Then we ordered two tapas off the specials chalkboard: navajas, basically the best razor clams ever, just grilled with lemon and garlic and maybe a dash of white wine, totally great. And real, non-industrial calamares, perfectly fried. The whole meal, including three glasses of more than decent wine: €42. Then a beer at the Jopenkerk. Then the excellent Shannon & The Clams for free @ the Patronaat Cafe. Then homie. Put one in ze win column for Moop.

marathon, man.

I just had a marathon dream. Not about running a marathon, ha ha ha ha ha ha, that would be way way less realistic than the dream I did have: it was O'Neill's birthday, and he and basically everyone we'd ever hung out with were on some kind of celebration circuit adventure around a dreamworld Atlanta. I unfortunately was like an hour behind them schedule-wise, and this must have been pre-cellphone days b/c the only way I could ever find out where they actually were was to follow one step behind them. Come to think of it, have you ever dreamed about using a cell phone? I myself have not.

So it was like this: I go to the first place they were supposed to be, Johnny's Pizza, which used to be managed by O'Neill's sister-in-law J (who, fun fact, he slept with once or twice in real life long before she was officially related to him, you didn't hear it from me). But the O'Neill party had just vamoosed: an empty table for 20 or something was sitting there still steaming or possibly smoldering, having obviously just been vacated by a pack of blunted savages, chairs overturned, pizza crusts and empty beer pitchers strewn everywhere.

And J was like (you have to know her voice, almost every word is at least two syllables), "Oh heyyyy, they just left, yeah, they're over at Eric and Kim's now". I'm thinking oh super, that's only a half-hour away, and I turn and head for the door but then I'm all wait where do they even live? I've only been there once and that was maybe ten years ago and I was on some serious drugs at the time, so I turn around to ask J to remind me but by then she had disappeared into the back to go perform dreamland pizza parlor management tasks and the waitress would only tell me that she "couldn't be reached right now".

And on and on, place to place. It was a complete scavenger hunt: after driving for hours and finally finding Eric and Kim's, of course the party had moved on, but Kim had been left behind to wash an enormous pile of unrealistically dirty dishes and told me glumly "yeah they went over to Churchill's to meet Al (her brother, dead) and Mason but that was only for one drink". She handed me a warm can of Miller Lite, already opened.

I took a swig and grimaced. Why did they insist on going to Churchill's? They would always pick the oddest, least cool places to drink. In real life I marveled at this for years, but I now understand that they just carefully selected corrupt, rundown places within drunk-driving distance where they would be likely to befriend the disgruntled bartender (free drinks!) and/or would be highly unlikely to run into anyone they knew who wasn't a total alcoholic.

Anyway at some point I ended up on foot, downtown, but not in a big-building part, in a deceptively rural-seeming part (these exist), where I ran into Cynthia Nixon (Mara and I had half-watched a Sex and the City rerun just before bed), who I totally, completely don't have a thing for at all but she really looked the best she'd ever looked, rather unrealistically good. Almost actually in flames, very nearly on fire.

She was also surprisingly friendly. It was getting late and after a few minutes she confided that she was lonely, so lonely, thus although the clock was ticking and I was falling behind schedule, she eventually talked me into an exploratory kiss. I totally expected this to be a pleasant turn of events, but she tasted exactly and shockingly like fresh blood, super-realistic and very unsettling, and so while being profoundly repulsed I then yes also understood why she was so lonely and I felt quite bad for her.

So I said something semi-reassuring like "let's try this again later" and then we immediately ran into Occhalini (also dead in real life) and Berrell on the deserted road outside a third unrememberable friend's house who was on vacation with his parents. Cynthia and I decided to try and use the bathroom there and coincidentally see if we could find a drink, we were supposed to be celebrating right?

But on our way in we ended up accidentally letting the dogs out, or so we thought, but then I saw a doggie door, so maybe the dogs were supposed to be out anyway? There was no way to know for sure, but then screams from outside suggested probably not: the dogs were now out in the road, cars whizzing by frantically. Of course one of the dogs was Trinka, my first dog.

Cynthia and I ended up somehow putting the dogs back inside but she wanted to take with her this trashy antique wooden cupboard which is actually one of our coffee tables in real life. And on and on. I only eventually caught up with everyone at O'Neill's parents' house at like 5 in the morning. The sink was full of dirty dishes crusted with a bolognese sauce, the only non-microwaveable food O'Neill knew how to cook for many years (not counting these soup sandwiches).

It took me about an hour to say hello to everyone (dreamtime), it was quite the rogue's gallery. By the time I got to O'Neill, I found him standing in his finished basement looking quite satisfied, with a chewed-up cigar and a giant tumbler of gin and ice, which I took from him without a word and drank in one sustained gulp, saying "let me freshen this up for you" and heading for the refrigerator.

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Questions for discussion:

1) Is it really so unrealistic for me not to have a cellphone in America?
2) Why would everyone choose to go over to Eric and Kim's anyway?
3) Why do I continue to have "romantic" dreams about women I'm definitely not consciously attracted to IRL? This is a first for me. Mirtazapine, I'm looking at you.
4) Exactly what am I doing watching Sex and the City?
5) etc.

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gingerly.

Since you know by now that we loves us some dieting around here, how bout let's start an anti-cancer diet, what you got to say about that? Why, you might ask? Why not, I might reply. What exactly does an anti-cancer diet mean? We don't know really.

We do know that turmeric is almost definitely a good fixer-upper, and that it becomes exponentially more bioavailable when you combine it with black pepper and olive oil.

This here is a recipe that ALREADY HAS MOST OF THAT SHIT IN IT (no disrespeck but we was Thug Kitchen long before they was any such thing as a Thug mfkin Kitchen). It's from Cradle of Flavor, and it's for Singaporean black pepper crab, but I'm betting it would be pretty righteous on anything that used to live in the water. 

There's also a super-long version of acar kuning in Cradle of Flavor (more turmeric and useful rhizomes), I'm wondering if a simpler one would do. 

AFTER A LITTLE GOOGLING: No, they're all complicated. This one looks good too.
AFTER A LITTLE TASTING: The below recipe is awesome. But really, unless you "like spicy food", this is probably not for you. I myself am going to keep making it until I'm sick of it. 

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singaporean black pepper paste. 

4 tbsp black peppercorns

8 cloves garlic

3 inches fresh turmeric, peeled with a spoon or 2 tsp dried

3 inches fresh ginger, peeled

3/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp mild olive oil

3/4 cup water

Basically, process the five ingredients in a food processor. Fry the paste in the oil over medium-low heat, about 5 to 7 minutes or until the garlic no longer smells raw. 

If you're going to be adding seafood to this now, add the water and your seafood and cook til it's done. Otherwise just keep it as a seasoning paste and use it over the next week or so.

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defroster.

Above: tonight's highly, highly successful Spinach Delivery Mechanism, which involved sauteeing bacon, sage, onions, and dried mulberries (expensively subbing for raisins) then slightly wilting the spinach in that melange. Throw some pecans in there and this would certainly work as a side for catfish at some point, hold on I'm having a brainstorm, catfish coated with the spices from Damon Lee Fowler's mama's sage and onion cornbread stuffing (cornmeal, black pepper, sage, lemon zest, nutmeg, celery salt).

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I kind of feel like I've come out of the defroster, if there is such a thing. I guess there is. It was a weird week, full of bubbling energy and no emotions, I felt more like myself but simultaneously like someone I've never felt like before. I think that by now, Day Six or something, things have settled...I'm going to give it a few days of non-alcohol-related free time to see how the nights are, and of course I'm sure I'll say something about the results of that experiment here.

So what else: Homesick Texan's carrot-habanero condiment was delicious and healthy so I'll post my adaptation of it below. It's nowhere as spicy as you'd think it would be given the ingredients, and even your first taste of it sets off a bit of a panic attack ("this is where it starts?"), but the usual slow fade-in of heat never arrives, it's just pleasantly piquant. No idea why, though I read somewhere that the smaller you cut your habanero, the less spicy it is.

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salsa carote. 

1 tbsp olive oil
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium ripe tomatoes, cut into quarters
1/4 sweet onion
3 habanero peppers, cut in half with most seeds removed
3 cloves of garlic, cut in half
Juice of one lime
2 tbsp cider vinegar
Salt to taste

So, saute the carrots in the olive oil for 5 minutes, then add the tomatoes, garlic, onion, and habaneros and cook for 5-7 minutes more. The main thing is for the carrots to be just cooked enough and for your garlic to not be burned. Then puree everything to your desired consistency. 

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return to me.

Mmmmraaaagh (yawns, stretches). Oh (tjap tjap)....hi everybody. What year is it? Goodness, that was some dream I had. I dreamt that I was asleep for four months (yawns, rubs eyes). And I was really hungry the whole time. What's that you say? No dream, you say? Hmm.

Yes, so. Day 2 of mini-mirtazapine is continuing where Day 1 left off. Day 1 was basically like someone replaced my blood with Red Bull. I'm down to 7.5mg now, and if it stays like this, this being: feeling like "myself", minus most crippling neuroses, plus bags of macho brain power and enough energy to consider cleaning things UNBIDDEN...well there's no way this can last. But since I have also been sleeping 6 hours a night, we'll keep it like this for a bit and take one o' them "wait and see" approaches.

Lunch, if i feel like it: un petit portion du cornmeal catfish + a slice of smoked gouda (to emulate actually-smoked catfish) + Homesick Texan's carrot-habanero salsa, lots of it. Still thinking about food, yes, but not in the same zombie "must eat brains" way that I was.

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braketime.

 

Above: the Zeedijk at sunset Friday night.

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After a three-party weekend, it's time for a little clean livin' methinks. Green apples! Ginger stuff! Cabbage and other farty-smelling cruciferous things! Oily fish! Lots of chili peppers. Cottage cheese and peaches for whenever real decadence seems in order.

Today is mirtzapine reduction day. Of course last night I had the best sleep ever, revolving around an amazing dream in which (deep breath): I was part of a crew that landed on a vast alien world, yes, like Alien/Aliens/etc but apparently not dangerous at all, although one crew member and I (Maggie Gyllenhaal, who I do not have a thing for) got separated from the rest (of course), and encountered this one sort of friendly but not-functioning-correctly cowboy alien, and he eventually kind of passed out, so (as anyone would in this situation) we carefully popped his cowboy-hatted head off (like a Lego) and underneath the head was a 0.5 liter (approx) flask of thick dark red viscous liquid, which of course we drank, and then we became (no pun intended) spaced out for a while and the rest of the crew couldn't find us, and then we wandered around kind of drunkenly a bit, giggling and generally having a good time, until we stumbled across a set of computer screens in which we were represented as video game characters, and on the screens we could then see where the rest of the crew was, so we physically located them and I immediately told the ship's doctor that we drank the red stuff and he looked horrified (understandably, in retrospect) and called off the mission (everyone back to the ship!) but then he immediately got a text message on his mobile telling him that he'd had his medical license revoked and he said he'd been "scrubbed out" (a surgical joke! in a space dream!) and looked rather cross, then Maggie and I went over to a semi-secluded area and somehow exchanged space suits and then went back to the video game screens and started killing aliens that way, it resembled Robotron X quite a bit.

At least that's the part that I can explain. Many many other things happened that I only sort of remember. Mirtazapine, I'll miss some things about you.

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life, lemons, etc.

Combine some of this homemade lemonade with an equal amount of ice-cold seltzer water/club soda/fizzy water of choice and you might even forget you're not drinking alcohol. It's that good!!! (INSERT INFINITE LOOP OF SMILEY EMOTICONS HERE).

OK but it really is really good. Especially on a mthrfkin hot-ass day in the middle of September. We went to see the Henry Moore shit at the Rijksmuseum b/c it's free and we've been meaning to see it and we almost forgot about it. We were going to go to Boca's after but then lemonade started sounding really really good, and we kind of became fixated on it, like nothing was going to satisfy us except lemonade. And there was no way we could afford to pay anyone else in this city to make us the amount of real-lemon, real-sugar, ice-cold lemonade we would need.

So we rode back home to Ali Baba (formerly Interfood) and bought a bunch of cheap lemons and other bargain vegetables, and rendered those vegetable bitches into slight variations on the ol' Fish Taco Condiment Array, including a real slaw with mayo. Plus yes we made lemonade, and it was goooooooooooood.

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lemonade.

1 cup boiling water
3/4 cup raw sugar

2 cups freshly squeezed lemon juice (5 or 6 lemons? maybe more)
3 or 4 cups water

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habanero guacamole.

3 ripe avocados
1/2 large red onion, chopped
Juice of 2 limes
0.5 to 1 entire habanero pepper, seeded, deveined and minced
3 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 tomato, cut into chunks

salt to taste!!!

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napa slaw.

2 cups shredded Napa cabbage (or spitskool)
2 tbsp good European mayonnaise, sorry it's elitist but it's totally true
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
2 scallions, minced fine
2 tbsp cilantro, minced
salt and pepper to taste

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DIY.

We just reminded ourselves of the most perfectly illustrative example of why I don't do home improvement projects.

It was back in our suburban Atlanta compound, late 1990s, and we were "having guests". I have no idea who, but they were sufficiently important that we would be cleaning the toilets (in no way am I suggesting that we don't always clean our toilets before "having guests").

Anyway. Mara was doing 312 things simultaneously and I was just...not doing anything useful. This was before we'd really figured out how to assign housework tasks, so basically I would just do one useless thing of my choosing for an hour, like "organize the CDs", while Mara would do every other damn thing that actually needed doing. She was also handling most of the cooking at this point in our relationship as well, so you can imagine that by the time the first guest rang the doorbell, she pretty much wanted to kill me.

This particular evening, I was finally starting to wise up, and requested that she "please give me something useful to do so that you don't kill me", and she said over her shoulder on her way to mow the lawn or paint the porch or something, "honey why don't you clean the bathrooms, thank you".

Awesome. I can do this. I went into the kitchen to retrieve the "bathroom cleaner", a toxic spray rather famous in the minds of Americans my age because of their TV commercials, which advertise that this product's "scrubbing bubbles" do all the work "so you don't have toooooooooooo". In the commercial this last sentence is heroically bellowed by one of the animated scrubbing bubbles as he slides down the now-sparklingly-clean drain, the bellowing bubble rather pleased with himself and decidedly upbeat despite the fact that he is almost definitely about to end up in some kind of permanent sewage situation.

Discursive writing can be exhausting, I do apologize. So I went into the kitchen. I reached under the sink to grab the can of Scrubbing Bubbles spray. I went into the downstairs bathroom and thoroughly doused the toilet with the poisonous foam and then left the room so that the Scrubbing Bubbles could do their work, "so I wouldn't have tooooooo" etc etc etc.

After who knows how much time, I guess the amount of time it took me to forget and then remember that I was in the middle of an important task, I went back into the bathroom with a roll of paper towels and confidently/optimistically gave the seat a quick swipe. My paper towel stopped immediately in its tracks, almost as if it had been, well, glued to the seat.

For a second or two I seriously thought I was having a stroke or other major brain incident: I'd used these Scrubbing Bubbles before, so my expectations were high, I knew how to do this...and these results were so thoroughly illogical and opposite....it just didn't make any kind of sense.

Maybe I'd applied it wrong? Was that possible? Maybe it was past its "use-by" date? Who knows. I looked at the can to check the instructions. As you can probably already imagine, it was not in fact the Scrubbing Bubbles can. It was a can of Spray Mount, which, according to the 3M website, is an "artist's aerosol adhesive, that bonds practically any lightweight material instantly, yet allows work to be lifted and repositioned."

Needless to say, much hilarity ensued around the perfection of not only this failure but the resulting brainstorm of purposely using Spray Mount on all of the toilet seats and seeing what our guests had to say about it afterwards.

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