I’M FEELING IN A MAGNANIMOUS MOOD TODAY.
I feel like reaching
out to my fellow bipeds and seeing if I can be of help. So, I have declared that today is officially:
FREE BAD ADVICE DAY!
For today – and today only – I will be dispensing free bad advice on a wide range of topics.
Let the games begin!
Throwback Thursday – from August 2016 – “The Good, The Bad, And The Crispy”
I LOVE PIZZA. CORRECTION: I LOVE MOST PIZZAS.
Pizza is a very simple dish (or pan). It is not difficult to make. I suspect that you could make a passable pizza in one of those old “Suzy Homemaker” or “Easy-Bake” ovens.
NO! NO! NO!
The only way to screw up a pizza, IMHO, is to use ingredients that just don’t belong. Strawberries? On a pizza? Some chef has posted a recipe for a “Strawberry, Balsamic Pizza with Chicken, Sweet Onion, and Applewood Bacon.” Really? I suppose I could pick off the strawberries if I had to.
“Deep Dish Apple Pizza?” That’s not a pizza – that’s an Apple Pie. Blasphemy! I don’t think that fruit belongs on a pizza. I’m sorry if that offends anyone, but – I’m right. Get over it. And there is no such thing as a Breakfast Pizza or a Dessert Pizza. No!
Where Anchovies Belong
I also think that one should omit Olives and Anchovies. Olives? That’s like chewing on erasers. Anchovies? I’d bet that Anchovies were first put on a pizza as a prank. The eating of Anchovies should be left to other, larger, fish in their food chain.
The reason I bring this up at all stems from a chance encounter last week involving pizza.
It was a Sunday Evening and both my wife, the lovely and pizza knowledgeable, Dawn, and I were both pooped. It was about 7 PM and neither of us had the energy or desire to go into the kitchen for any reason beyond using it as a shortcut to the Toyota.
“Why don’t we order a pizza?”
More excellent words could not have been spoken. I took my phone and actually used it to place a real phone call for the first time in weeks.
“Yes, a medium, thin crust, Pepperoni with extra cheese.”
Now, THAT is how you order a pizza!
Twenty minutes later I cut a path through the kitchen and drove off to pick up our pizza. I don’t
mind taking the effort to pick up a pizza. It makes me feel like I have worked to put the food on the plate. It’s a guy thing – part of that Hunter-Gatherer mystique. Hit the dinosaur on the head and drag it home to feed everyone in the cave.
When I got to the Pizza Joint (All places that sell pizza are, by definition, “Joints.”) I had to wait a few minutes for our pizza to finish baking. It was then that I heard someone calling my name.
“Krafty. Hey, Krafty.”
Sitting at a table were two members of the Usual Suspects away from their pew at St. Arbucks. Being the sociable sort that I am, I toddled over to their table. It was then that I had one of those “Run that past me again” moments. One of the Suspects asked me…
“Are you here to get some Pizza?”
There I was standing in the middle of a Pizza Joint surrounded by about 20 other people munching away on pizza. The air was redolent with the heavenly aromas of the pizza ingredients and I was standing next to two people who had a Pepperoni Pizza on the table just
inches away from their mouths – and he asks me, “Are you here to get some Pizza?”
I gathered all of my Grown-Up civility and politeness skills before answering – then I realized who I was talking to.
“No, I came in here hoping to find some new shoes.”
…
Our Pizza was delicious and there was just enough left over to make a truly classic breakfast. No strawberries. No Olives. No Anchovies. Just some real Pizza.
I JUST READ THE DARNDEST THING – a restaurant review that made me lose my appetite.
Straight from the home town of Godzilla and Hello Kitty comes a story that, under other circumstances would probably reconvene the courtrooms of Nuremberg. (Under 40? Look it up.)
The restaurant named “Resoto Ototo No Shoky Ryohin” has opened its doors in Tokyo and somehow gotten all of the usual permits and government approval to become the first eatery in the world to legally serve (Brace Yourself) Human meat. The name of the restaurant translates into English as “Edible Brother.”
Pizza! Food of the gods! A seven course meal all on one slice! The Ultimate Survival food for when the Zombies attack!
But who can eat just one slice? Nobody I know.
Last night the whole Texas clan gathered around the dining room table and ate like there was no tomorrow. There was Meat Lovers Pizza, Pepperoni Pizza with extra cheese, Pepperoni Lovers, and Chicken with Bacon and Buffalo Sauce Pizza. That was good for starters. Along with the big square boxes there were other boxes filled with Garlic Breadsticks, Cinnamon Breadsticks, some rather odd Potato thingies, and some little apple pie-like pastries. Oh, yeah, and two gallons of iced tea. Gotta love those “Meal-Deals.”
THE OTHER MORNING, I and my wife, the lovely and the usually asleep at that hour, Dawn, both got up at about 7 AM. That’s my normal hour, but for Dawn it is not. I am her Organic Alarm Clock, waking her at 8:30 AM most mornings.
This “temporal distortion,” to borrow a phrase from Star Trek, threw off my schedule for the entire day. I was at St. Arbucks before 8 o’clock, back home by 10 and finished with lunch by 10:30. It was like having a chicken salad sandwich for breakfast. But – Why not I say!
It set me to thinking about your basic chicken salad sandwich and how incredibly versatile it is. I just had it for breakfast. It digests well with me early in the day. It has some bits of egg and mayo (made with eggs) in it so I think it can qualify as a technical breakfast.
THERE AIN’T NUTHIN’ LIKE A GOOD BURGER. It doesn’t have to be fancy (and probably shouldn’t be). It doesn’t have to be expensive. It sure doesn’t have to be in some high class restaurant. But it has to be prepared with gluttony in mind.
About a five minute drive or twenty minute crawl from home is a small neighborhood joint (that’s the only appropriate word) that does a burger right.
This particular watering hole has been around for about two million years. It is on its third or fourth owners now and doing well. It is probably also on the Hit List of the American Heart Association.
TAKE ME TO THE BUTTER CHURN is a cry I hear on a regular basis when we go south to visit family. “The Butter Churn” is a restaurant/feeding station aka buffet just a waddle or two away from the family home in Sinton, Texas. And every time we visit, along with an assortment of several generations of nieces and nephews, we go to The Butter Churn.
I’M A CITY BOY. Well, a Small Town Boy who grew up in town. I’ve never been hunting. I’ve never been camping. I have no desire to do either of those things. My idea of roughing it is a hotel without room service. If I need food I go to the Kroger store. Stalking down a deer or a turkey is too much work and holds no appeal for me. If my turkey doesn’t come wrapped in a net bag with one of those little “I’m Ready” pop up thingys in it I consider it unnatural.
LIFE IS A SERIES OF CHOICES. The choices that some people make mystify me. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have the right to make their choices – I just don’t get the why and the how sometimes.
What I’m talking about today is People and their Pets.
Don’t get me wrong. I love animals. I love pets. I have been a pet owner many times and cried like a baby when they died. I’ve had dogs, cats, fish, and, for a short time, a parakeet. That bird and I just didn’t get along. I’d give him seeds and he’d throw them back at me. I got him to perch on my hand only once. He called me an obscene name, bit me, and went back into his cage, slamming the door. I gave him away to a friend who owned a cat.
I PUT THE BLAME ON THE CURVATURE OF THE EARTH. How else can it all be explained?
Twice in the past week there have been unusual events on America’s highways .
That may be a bit overdramatic. How about, “In the last week a couple of weird things have happened involving trucks.”
Better? Then let’s proceed.
NO MATTER HOW MUCH PEOPLE HAVE, THEY WANT MORE. No matter what people have, they want something different. That behavior pattern may be deep seated in our DNA going back millions of years – back to the days of our “Hunter-Gatherer” subsistence world. If we hunted and gathered the same things millennium after millennium we might like a change. Given the odds that we might starve to death – we would want more. Of course, one does not expect to such behaviors exhibited today.
Oh, yeah? Have you been to a salad bar lately?
YOU WOULD THINK THAT AN ENTIRE WEEKEND would be enough time to recover, but I still feel like that beached whale. I am still giving thanks – only now it is thanks that I’m still alive, having survived my gluttony.
By this time of life I should know better and be more into a Zen-like state where I don’t engage all of my senses in a spate of overdoing it at the dinner table.
“Oh, Grasshopper, you are personally responsible for the famine in Asia. Because of you millions of people will go to bed without any pumpkin pie. The children will never know the meaning of Kool-Whip.”
WHAT’S FOR LUNCH TODAY? If you’re anything like me it is a last minute decision about some form of organic matter on a plate. After a quick scouting mission through the kitchen I usually end up with something that falls under the general heading of “Leftovers” – also known as “Muzgos,” – as in “If we don’t eat this today – it Muz Go.”
This morning while driving down to St. Arbucks Sunrise Service/Brewing I heard something on the radio that might change the concept of Lunch for millions of people.
A CRISIS HAS ARISEN.
For a number of years we have gone out for the traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. With just the three of us doing it all at home seemed to be more trouble than it was worth.
When we dined out we headed to a local hotel that put on a buffet worthy of the Roman Emperor’s Palace. There was enough of everything edible there that it would make the Front Line of the Chicago Bears faint dead away.
I LOVE PIZZA. CORRECTION: I LOVE MOST PIZZAS.
Pizza is a very simple dish (or pan). It is not difficult to make. I suspect that you could make a passable pizza in one of those old “Suzy Homemaker” or “Easy-Bake” ovens.
WE RECENTLY SAW A PROGRAM on TV listing what the creators of the show decided were the 100 Most Important Inventions in History It was interesting, although I think that some of their inventions would more likely fall under the heading of discoveries rather than inventions – such as Nuclear Energy and Fire. But they never consulted with us about any of this so – Na, Na, Na, Na Boo, Boo. The show is over and Basic Cable remains the same.
The only reason I bring this up at all is that I think that, in their efforts to sound erudite and High-Techie Nerdo-Hipster, they have omitted one true invention that has changed our lives in a significant and earthshaking Physio-Ecomomic-Gastro-Enviro sort of way. (By “Our” lives I really mean Dawn and myself. I can’t speak for the rest of you.)
SHE HAD A GREAT IDEA LAST NIGHT.
We were having dinner, polishing off some leftover roast as “Pork Manhattan.”
For the first fifteen minutes there was complete silence as we stuffed our faces – then my wife, the lovely and entrepreneurially minded, Dawn, unleashed a thunderbolt of an idea.
I DID NOT EAT CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. I did not do that for several reasons – Number one – It is as authentic an Irish dish as Couscous and Lumpia. That meal is an American invention. How it came to be associated with St. Patrick’s Day I have no idea, but there will be no foisting it off on the fine folks of Ireland.
Reason number two – I think it is a terrible, foul smelling way to destroy my appetite 
as well as the corned beef that, by all rights, should belong, thinly sliced, on a slab of a nice dark rye bread with mustard and a “glass tea.”
I’M FEELING IN A MAGNANIMOUS MOOD TODAY.
I feel like reaching
out to my fellow bipeds and seeing if I can be of help. So, I have declared that today is officially:
FREE BAD ADVICE DAY!
For today – and today only – I will be dispensing free bad advice on a wide range of topics.
Let the games begin!
Down the Hall on Your Left 