Spending time at my dad and stepmom’s house yields interesting information about food, as they are both passionate cooks. Subsequently, they have a lot of food-related magazines lying around. One of my favorites is Cook’s Illustrated, with its no-nonsense New England-y take on food preparation. It’s what happens when Protestants get their hands on what could otherwise be a very decadent Catholic supper.
The best parts of the magazine are, of course, the delicate illustrations of gadgets, produce, cookware and quick tip how-to (contrast the tiny color photographs on the last page of the issue’s featured recipes, which make the food look very Betty Crocker, in a bad way).
Today’s most fascinating facts and tips involve onions and apples:
#1 Did you know that the way you cut an onion affects its flavor? I did not. Apparently cutting with the grain (pole to pole) makes the onions less pungent than cutting across the equator. Wow! This has to do with odorous substances that are released when the cells of the onion are disrupted. Onions cut against the grain = more disrupted cells. But if you’re dicing them, I guess, all bets are off. (On a related note, I recommend slicing with the grain first when you’re dicing. The onion holds together better when you’re doing your second perpendicular cut).
#2 To keep a cake moist (when it’s underneath a cake dome), place a whole apple alongside the sliced part. The moisture from the apple is like a built-in humidifier.
And one more fact, courtesy my stepmom when I had my “oh wow” moment with the onion, if you chiffonade a basil leaf and want to keep it from going brown when you cut it, slice parallel to the vein instead of across it. This is useful if you’re topping pizza with it, and want maximum decorative effect.
Everything from “beet it” to an observation on how much these beet roots resemble dismembered rat tails, which would then need to be followed by a link to 13-year-old Jackson’s song Ben, about his pet rat.
Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight” performed at The Anna Copa Cabanna Show, January 24, 2009. Guest starring what are quite possibly the sleaziest silken pants a man could wear.
Este amor apasionado
Anda todo alborotado por volver.
Voy camino a la locura
Y aunque todo me tortura, se querer.
Nos dejamos hace tiempo
Pero me lleg el momento de perder.
Tu tenas mucha razon;
Le hago caso al corazon
Y me muero por volver.
Y volver volver volver
A tus brazos otra vez;
Llegar hasta donde estas;
Yo se perder, yo se perder;
Quiero volver, volver, volver.
—
This impassioned love
Goes on, compelling me to return;
I’m on the road to madness
And although everything tortures me,
I know how to love.
We parted ways some time ago
But the moment of loss arrived.
You had every reason;
I heed my heart
And I’m dying to return.
And to return, to return, to return
To your arms again
I will arrive where you are
I know how to lose, I can take it
I want to return, return, return.
He’s wearing a royal blue polo shirt, standard issue black slacks and generic black work shoes, the kind that masquerade as a dress shoe but are nothing more than a sneaker. He looks like a Blockbuster employee, minus the badge. He half-mutters, half-bellows like a street preacher, except he is constructing a dialogue with himself, as though practicing lines for a play by performing both parts.
“You will bow down to me! And you will bow down to the Almighty!” is said to no one in particular, followed by an almost-whisper, “Too much Samuel Jackson, motherf*cker.” As the train approaches the next station, he turns to the doors to get off, catching his reflection in the window: “Gerber baby, you’re my hero…I get it, motherf*cker, I get it.”
As the Metro Mutterer, he is the opposite of the Dog or Horse Whisperer. Instead of communicating with animals with therapeutic aims, the mutterer sounds off to random people with unsettling results.
After a darkly comedic and psychedelic meditation on censorship and race in late ’60s Brazil (see: Macunaima), we refuse to pay a $7 cover for the privilege of drinking in the closest watering hole, a pirate-themed bar. And forget about $10 for the light bulb-themed bar. The all ages-themed bar is free, but being surrounded by all that youth comes with a price. So how about a spotless bar blaring banda, a hand-drawn illustration of hot tamales (a cauldron of steam atop two burning sticks) and dried sting ray whose pointy bits are accessorized with miniature plastic cowboy boots? We split our sides thinking about the long-winded city councilman and his elaborately calligraphed proclamations presented to the film’s central star.
He gets out of a yellow cab. The sunlight is intense, even through sunglasses. She’s on the phone talking about her previous evening’s disaster. “I was embarrassed to be seen next to him. Like I was on a date with my cousin. He must have lied about his age.”
Large coffee, milk with no sugar. Roasted peas. Sleeping wife.
“I feel nauseous. I’m going to vomit. I’m just going to stand in the back.”
They sat around discussing kangaroos and the news that Tom Cruise was a bottom. Previously, between pirouettes, he related that story about phone sex with the sadistic top. “Your penis has been removed.” Said two times for emphasis. “Your penis has been removed. Silence. *click*
The pool table is covered with a varnished piece of plywood so that now it functions as a proper table. Or, at least, as proper as a table can be in a place that sells 25 cent hot wings on Wednesdays and has the most flat screen televisions in the whole city. Across the table there are two petite Mexican girls with braces on their teeth. They are either best friends or sisters, and they smile and laugh at whatever their male companions say to them, which is not very much. Mostly, all eyes are glued to one of the many screens, all tuned to ESPN but not all in synch. One side of the bar cheers about five seconds before the other side when a particularly exciting play occurs.
The guys across the table are in t-shirts or sports jerseys, which would be oversized on anyone but these guys, who are oversized themselves. Two pitchers of Bud Light on our side of the table are nothing compared to the two mini-plastic kegs of Budweiser—not light—that they methodically consume, along with buckets of wings and a quesadilla with goopy orange cheese that doesn’t have a chance to spill from the sides of the tortilla, because the guy eating it finishes the triangular piece in two quick bites.
There’s a guy with a closely clipped mohawk wearing clear framed glasses. He’s talking to a dark haired girl with perfect boobs and tanned skin, licking sauce off some wings and wiping his fingers on a napkin. When someone across the table cheers, he raises his hand in a high five to the large man in a maroon jersey sitting to his left, who obliges. Then the guy with the mohawk turns back to the girl, shifting his chair ever so slightly. The large man turns to him, all solidarity gone, and tells him that he needs to move his chair because they are sitting too close to one another. He’s touching his back, he says. The rules of masculine contact have been established: Hard and fast, not soft and slow.
At the end of the night, a french fry pudding of hot wing sauce and cheese congeals in red and white checkered paper trays lit by a blanket of fluorescent bulbs.
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