Coffee Tabled
The word is no. I am therefore going anyway. Give me what I want, and I’ll consider it.
My wife and I were driving around the big city on a Sunday morning. It was almost lunchtime. We had skipped breakfast.
“I could go for some kibble,” I said.
“Actually,” she replied. “Me, too.”
I was a little surprised but excited, too. We were going to eat out. But where? We took out our daggers and prodded each other, as we are often wont to do.
“Wherever you want,” I said.
“No,” she replied menacingly. “Wherever you want.”
Clink. Clink. Clink. The cold steel of our daggers danced their elegant dance.
“Let’s go to the bar you wanted to try. The one with the fried chicken.”
“The hell you say!” I turned the car around. “We’re going to that coffee shop you mentioned the other day.”
“All they got is coffee and baked goods.”
“Excellent,” I emoted, channeling Commander Kruge, the asshole Klingon from Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. “Perfect. Then that’s the way it shall be.”
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Bung is a word, and more
Why am I always the last to know?
Fred Armisen, of SNL and Portlandia fame, was recently announced as a 2014 James Beard award winner. It seems that way back on Jan. 11, 2013, the podcast This American Life had Armisen on board as a guest host (because he does an impression of Ira Glass) and that episode entitled Doppelgängers included a segment (heh) by Ben Calhoun that theorized about pork bung being used as “imitation calamari.”
Listen here: This American Life – Doppelgängers
I know! You people are supposed to bring things like this to my attention. Stop sitting down on the job. (Heh.)
Sadly, the podcast ultimately wasn’t able to prove that this sort of switcheroo has actually happened. The piece pretty much relegates the idea to an urban food legend. But it did quite convincingly prove that it is possible. They threw some real calamari and some bung in the deep frier and did some blind taste tests and some of their tasters picked the decoy as the real McCoy.
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Freedom fries again
Freedom fries have been attacked. Freedom fries will be defended.
Remember the good old days when politician hyperbole was limited to things like “freedom fries?” Well, maybe not. Maybe that golden era never existed. But that’s a far cry from things like a “Satan sandwich” and “Satan fries.” No, I’m not making that up. Google it. It’s there.
But this isn’t a post about that. This is a post about foods.
Last Monday the Cow Orker was hungry. She said she was going to the Mexican fast food drive thru restaurant up the street. She asked if I wanted anything.
“I’ll take some french fries, please.”
Everyone thought I was nuts. French fries at a Mexican restaurant? “We’ll see,” I said with a wizened look in my eye.
She came back with a huge container of piping hot fries. They had made them fresh just for me. They were delicious, gorgeous, plump, beautiful and served up in a large styrofoam container. And the whole order was only $1.80. I think a large order at McDonalds costs almost twice as much.
The Cow Orker was insanely jealous. “I’ll just sit here and eat my chips. The English contribution to world cuisine: the chip!” Mwuhahaha!
Today she decided to go back and get her own. She was positively beside herself with the wanting of the chips. She came back in the office talking about “disappointment.” For a moment, that made me jealous. What the hell is my personal companion doing flirting with someone else?
We gathered around the sad little bag she had returned with. She reached in and pulled out this tiny, greasy mess that looked more like a potato massacre than anything resembling what we had seen on Monday.
Limp. Lifeless. Greasy. Mushy. Lackluster. Wanting. Decidedly not served in a big stryofoam container but a little cup. Sad. Pathetic. Impotent. Spent. Waste. Different. Barely warm.
“What happened?” we asked.
She explained that she had ordered the exact same thing as before. It was $1.80, just like before. But the server had no idea what she was talking about when she explained that these fries were completely different. “No, no,” she was assured. “That’s how they always are.”
Except for that apparently make-believe land of 48 hours ago.
And that’s how I earned the title, Lord of the Fries.
FREEDOM!!!!!!
Shouts from the Abyss 
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