A sort of meme

Jason made note of a growing number of food-related posts at various blogs in what for the lack of a better phrase I'll call my extended circle. He made mention of a particularly disgusting foodstuff. I'll supply you neither a description nor the list he gave of blogs mentioning food. You can find both here.

The most disgusting intentionally prepared food I have ever consumed occured in college, prepared by my roommate. The first day after we moved in, we went on a grocery run. We decided that I'd cook the first night, and he the second, and aside from that we'd get some general-purpose noncomittal foodstuffs. The first night I made a fucking mouthwatering chicken stir fry. A sidenote: I prepared that very dish on the eve of game 3 of the 2004 ALDS, Game 7 of the ALCS, and Game 4 of the World Series. Each night I made it Derek Lowe pitched for a Sox win of what was in each case the series clincher. There is precisely one thing that I harbor any superstition for, and that is baseball. (Don't mock me... There is more in the heavens and on earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy dogg)

Anyways, I digress. The point is I prepared a feast of champions. Literally. He, on the other hand...

I was coming back from a late class, bushed as all hell. Saw a note on the fridge: "Hey man, went out to a party at U Chicago. Hippie scop in fridge." I was wary. I opened the fridge. There was a brownish mass in a pan. Upon closer examination, it proved to be a heterogeneous mixture of white rice, brand x baked beans in puree--You do not feed a Bostonian shitty baked beans. He may smile at you afterwards, but you'll never be able to trust it to be genuine. The real bitch of it was, this dude was from Boston, too-- pinto beans, and canned corn. the smell was fucking heinous. But I was tired and hungry, and any other dinner options would involve that pan. I was not about to wash that shit out. I took a little taste. Terrible. But it had a tolerable texture. I decided that if I could put that in my stomach without it being an ordeal, and make it stay there, I could just deal with my pallate by a visit to Café Gourmand and a couple bucks for an Americano.

Aside from my laziness, my reasoning involved two sometimes conflicting bits of food ethic. Avoid wasting food whenever possible, and avoid consuming shitty food whenever possible. For the record, after this experience I amended the first point to "good food." So I opened the cabinets. I found some various spices whose labels I hadn't bothered to read; all of them things that my roommate had liberated from the grocery store when he saw their pricetags. I also found ketchup and maple syrup. All of them got added to the concoction, in homage to the aincient culinary technique of adding strong--not necessarily good-- flavorings to bad meat. I stirred vigorously. Took a taste. Didn't really have a thumbs up or down to give it. The taste was distracting. It fit the requirements I had set for the night. Proceeded to consume the contents of the pan, which I was able to do with limited discomfort. Put the pan in the sink, next to the pan that I'd cooked stir fry in and he'd said he'd cleaned. Considered writing a note that said, "Fuck you" and leaving it by the sink, but instead elected merely not to clean. (That action led to a standoff that didn't end when he left the apartment. Though in truth he may not have been a knowing participant as its entirely possible that the concept of cleaning the fucking kitchen was foriegn to him.)

Anyways, long story short, I went down to the coffee shop, cleared my pallate, listened to some guy who thought he was James Blunt do an emasculated version of House of the Rising Sun, and afterwards went to the nearest CVS for Tums, Peptol Bismol, and the like.

The moral of the story is that if you ever hear the words, "hippie scop" raised as a meal option, your obliged response is to dig to the bottom of your hamper, remove a sock, place a spheroid of some sort into it, and blackjack the fucker.

On a different note, I would like to raise your awareness that the thirtieth day of March is now known as Mitch Hedburg Day. Essentially an internet holiday, it's basically celebrated by quoting Mitch Hedburg whenever it's germane. And since this post is about food, I'll start things off:

I went to a diner and asked the waitress for a chicken sandwich, but I dont think she heard me right cuz she asked me how i would like my eggs. I tried to answer her anyway.

Incubated!

And then raised
And then beheaded
And then plucked
And then cut up
And then put onto a grill
And then put into some bread

... Shit, this is gonna take a while. I dont got that kinda time...

Scrambled!

And now for some more:

It would be cool if you could eat a good food with a bad food, and then the good food would cover for the bad food when it got to your stomach. Like you could eat a carrot with an onion ring, and they would travel down to your stomach, then they would get there and the carrot would say, "It's cool, he's with me."

I like baked potatoes, but they take too long to make. Sometimes I throw one in the oven, even if I don't want one. By the time it's done, who knows? I throw one in and go on vacation.

More in that vein to come (perhaps much) later.