"Dear Food Thoughtz": Binging to Deal with Sexual Malevolence

This installation of Dear Food Thoughtz deals with Jian Ghomeshi, but not really. It's pretty directionless.

Dear Food Thoughtz

With the nation reeling from the intimate details of Jian Ghomeshi's wild and crazy sex life, no doubt people are turning to food in order to cope with having to wait for the full story to break in the press about what really happened. What foods are you relying on to sublimate your anticipation about what really happened? I need some inspiration here, because all I have is a giant jar of fermented corn, and I don't know how long I'm going to have to wait for this news to be released.

Sincerely,
Someone who thought for way too long about how to make a sign-off name that was an acronym of BDSM

Just when you thought sauerkraut couldn't get any worse.

Dear person who aspires to be known by the acronym BDSM,

Might I first of all suggest "'Bout to Dig-in to SauerMaize" as a future sign-off name that would translate to an acronym to BDSM? I haven't put much thought into it yet, but this is what came to me first. Also, I have no idea what "sauer" actually means, unless it just means sour. Which it might.

The good news is that you have your choice of any food to eat while watching how this whole thing shakes out, unlike all of those other idiots who initially rushed to his defence (I'M LOOKING AT YOUR TORRAH JANG) who now have to scarf down a bunch of crow baked into a humble pie.

Something about Jian Ghomeshi's facebook post
being a ferment-crock of shit.

Personally, I guess I would have to say that I've been eating a lot of potatoes. Not because I think they're well designed for scandal-binging (although ... they are. They are well designed for any kind of binging; they are delicious) but because they keep showing up in my oven when I get home. So, I don't know. I've never really considered that certain foods are better than others when waiting for a horrific story about violent assault against women to unravel before your very eyes. You know what? I'm going to go with potatoes. I think a lot of people would say popcorn, but popcorn is too light. This is the kind of story that only gets worse and worse as more information is revealed (but also more and more satisfying), so you should match that with a food that makes you feel heavier and heavier the more you eat of it, but leaves a taste of satisfaction in your mouth. Eventually you will get to the point where you feel so sluggish and worn out from all those potatoes and all of the terrible, skeezy revelations about Jian Ghomeshi that you can't be bothered to pick yourself up off the floor again. But at least you'll also have the sweet, sweet taste of potatoes and justice lingering on your taste buds.

Something-something, Jian Ghomeshi is as revolting as this sauerkraut.

I certainly would not recommend eating fermented corn, no matter what the scenario. I mean, unless you wanted to prove to everyone how disgusted you are by Jian Ghomeshi. I guess you could induce vomiting by eating that corn. I guess that is something that you can do with fermented corn. If you're going for BDSM food-bingo, the fermented corn would definitely cover the masochist aspect. For me, potatoes definitely cover the B, D, and S: I am bound to them through love, they dominate my diet, and the ferocity with which I devour them could probably be described as being sadistic (toward the potato).

Apple Sauce

Everyone: fall has arrived. The reason I know is because I just made my first batch of apple sauce from discount apples—and it was a roaring success!

Apple sauce is one of those foods that I really love, but that I don’t eat nearly often enough. For some reason I always think that I am going to have to devote an entire week to making a few jars of apple sauce that I will likely just gobble up in a matter of hours. But this is never the case! Nothing could be easier than making apple sauce! It takes only as much time as it takes to cut up however many apples (usually five apples for me, because that’s the maximum number that can fit in my pot), and then you just put those apple cubes in the pot with a bit of water, and just go away and do something else. Usually I add cinnamon during the cooking process, and sometimes I also add a bit of brown sugar as well, but the sugar is rarely necessary.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am currently enrolled in a Master of Information program at the University of Toronto. But when I was first applying to schools, I also applied to McGill as a safety-school and got in because I am a rising star. To celebrate my success, a West Coast celebrity gifted me a jar of apple sauce that was made in a crockpot. And it was delicious. Until I found out that what made it so delicious was the addition of cloves. I associate cloves so strongly with hams that the apple sauce kind of lost some of its magic. But it was still really good apple sauce. I just wish I didn’t know about those cloves.

My mum used to always make and preserve apple sauce. It was usually that puréed apple sauce, which is good, but I think isn’t as good as the chunky apple sauce. She also used to whip up a dish of chunky apple sauce for breakfast sometimes, which was great because it tastes like apple pie without the cumbersome pastry. Recently she has started to bake the apple chunks, which is also really delicious, but then she made me two jars while she was visiting and put way too much butter in the baking dish so that when the apples were transferred to jars and then to the fridge, the butter re-solidified, and looked really gross and it was difficult to want to actually eat it.

One thing I am realizing as I desperately try to think of a single interesting thing to say about apple sauce and my experience with apple sauce is that it can be difficult to speak and think about certain foods in a  way that could be considered even remotely engaging. Usually it’s foods that I really like, but don’t necessarily love—a food that that is, and always have been, a part of my life, and which I expect to always enjoy and consume. I mean, what can I say about apple sauce? It’s really good. I like eating it. I like eating it cold and I like eating it hot. I like eating it plain and I like eating it with vanilla ice cream. I like the feeling of accomplishment that I get after making a batch of apple sauce. I like getting good deals on apples that are perhaps too bruised or soft to eat naturally. I like apple sauce.

The way that I mark the arrival of fall
Is with a discount-rotten-apple-haul.
Boil it, add cinnamon, and store it in a jar:
You’re all set for a fall-fruit consumption bazaar. 

The Crabapple

Can someone please confirm for me whether or not crabapples are actually edible? Because I know about the jellies, so don’t even start with me, but is it possible to just pick a crabapple off of a tree and eat it? And if it is possible, is it possible to enjoy it? Crabapples look like apples born in reverse: they are born like rotten, shriveled up little apples and then … well, I guess they also die that way—this isn’t Benjamin Button. 

But really, aside from the jellies, is anyone eating these things? Is anyone even eating the jelly? And if so, why? Do you think it’s the case that anyone who eats the jelly honestly doesn’t know that a whole other host of jellies and jams exist in this world? Like strawberry jam? Raspberry jam? Blueberry jam? Grape jelly? Orange marmalade? Peanut butter? Regular butter? Any of these options would be better than crabapple jelly. Lord knows I’ve never tried it, but my only encounter with crabapple jelly is as something that appears to be recycled through various people as Christmas presents. It doesn’t really seem like anyone is eating it. Its value seems to be as a generic, kind gift to give to someone you’re not very close with but feel obligated to do something for. And then that person passes the same jar onto someone else that they have a similar relationship with. It seems entirely possible to me that there are only about 2,000 jars of crabapple jelly currently in existence in the world today, and that these jars are passed around over and over again until someone finally throws one out and someone else finally makes a new jar. It would probably be a pretty interesting social experiment if everyone wrote their name, the date, and who gave them the jelly on an attached sheet—like that book exercise, where you write your name on the cover or register online, and then when you’ve finished with the book, you leave it in a public space and someone else repeats the process.

It’s weird to me that crabapple trees are even still alive. I think that if I encountered one, I would be terrified that it was a sign of the apocalypse and wonder how I missed the first five seals. This will take some pushing and pulling, but after all, isn’t that what hermeneutics is all about? (It’s worth noting that now that I have read the first three books of the Old Testament I consider myself a bit of a hermeneutics scholar.) The sixth seal of the apocalypse references a fig tree casting off its unripened figs (Rev. 6:13), so if you ever see a fig tree shaking off her little figs, you know that the apocalypse is upon us, that repentance is futile, and that you’re most likely going to Hell. But if you see a crabapple… I don’t know, isn’t it kind of like a slow and resilient reminder that the apocalypse is coming? Its fruits are always untimely—there is no time for them—and they are always falling off the branches. I don’t really have the patience to continue with this train of thought. Honestly, it might be the case that there’s just not much here. 

I will try to end on a somewhat positive note: during my time at the tree farm I had to work closely with different strains of crabapple trees, and some of them are remarkably beautiful before the fruit begins to form. I even brought home a weeping crabapple—the most beautiful of the crabapple trees—and it promptly died. Crabapples are the worst. More like crapapples, am I right? 

(Finally: it’s worth noting that when I google image’d “crabapple,” google suggested I might also want to browse pictures of Lil Wayne. And you know what? I did.)

Why is this apple known as a crab?
Because it’s crinkled and gross and resembles a spherical scab.
And why does such a fruit exist in this world?
Only because the Apocalypse has not yet unfurled.
And does this awful thing have any practical use?
Only to bestow on others as less of a gift and more of an excuse.

Review: Azores Food Round-Up

About a month ago my sister and I embarked on an ill-conceived journey to the Azorean island of São Miguel. If, like me, you have only heard of the Azores but have no idea where they are, the short answer is they are in the middle of nowhere, and the even shorter answer is that you can just google them. Initially I thought I would write a diary post every day about what I had been eating but that plan failed immediately when I decided instead to spend all of my spare time reading in front of a raging fire.

São Miguel was a pretty nice place. Sometimes it looked like this:

And other times it looked like this:

Portuguese cuisine has never been something I’m even remotely interested in it. I don’t know much about it beyond that they have a lot of roast chicken, custard tarts, those ceramic rooster that probably are not for eating, and fish. But the Azores seem to be a bit different. I don't recall seeing any roast chickens or even very many custard tarts or ceramic roosters, but they did have piles and piles of disgusting fish-products and a few other things that made me sick to even be in the vicinity of.

I think the best way to tackle this post will be to divide up the food I encountered into two categories: the food that I ate while I was there and the food that utterly repulse me. So here we go!

The Food I Ate:

When we first arrived at out cottage—which was the absolute best—out host greeted us with some Easter chocolates and a delicious Easter cake, which was so delicious that we waited until Easter was over and then bought a second, discounted Easter cake which we couldn’t finish and ended up throwing in the garbage at the airport.
At first I was kind of hesitant to try the Easter cake because it looked like a small turkey covered in cloves and waiting to be stuffed. My sister tried it first and we were both pleasantly surprised that it was just a mound of sweet bread dotted with chocolate chips and some chocolate cream filling. It was delicious. That said, I wouldn't put it past the Portuguese to sell small turkeys as "sweet Easter treats" based on some of the other things they tried to pass off as Easter delicacies.

For our first dinner we had silly ronis with meat sauce. I have to be honest here. Even though my sister was kind enough to cater to my every need on this trip, which more often than not included feeding me, this was not my favourite thing. I love the silly ronis of course—they were as silly as I could have ever dreamed of—but the sauce was just too sweet. I can't even remember what went in there, but I guess maybe there was too much red pepper? I'm not sure. It was just too ... tangy. And I really don't like that in a pasta sauce. But it also definitely was not the worst thing, and the pasta shape was so novel to me that it almost made up for the tangy sauce.

One experience definitely worth talking about is that I had a kiwi for the first time in over twenty years. I seem to recall eating kiwis at my dad's when I was very little and I had probably had them once or twice since then if they were in a fruit salad, but kiwis are fruits that I typically avoid. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think it probably has to do with the labour involved in preparing them which, admittedly, is quite minimal. The kiwi I ate had been peeled by my sister, presumably for my benefit, but I honestly don't think I would mind eating the skin. It seems like it might be a bit thicker and tougher than peach skin, but I really like peach skin and think it's disgusting and wasteful when people eat the peach without. Anyway: the kiwi. The kiwi was just fine. I don't really feel comfortable saying much more about it, and I'm not convinced that I will eat another kiwi in the next twenty years. It was certainly good, but it just wasn't good enough to warrant eating again. I'm so used to eating the same thing over and over again that I have never felt the need to really change up my diet, so I would never eat a kiwi just because I wanted a change from the regular fruit I eat. But whatever. I guess it wasn't really worth talking about. Anyway, it looks pretty great sliced up here:

Because the island was so small (so small: it was only 15km wide and 60km long), we never really found ourselves in the position of needing to eat out very often. We typically ate in our cottage. In addition to the pasta on the first night, we also ate rice with some sliced up ham coil, roasted cauliflower, buns, those delicious chocolate flutes, and pineapples.

The rice was fine. I specifically requested that we have rice with pepper and onion fried in a pan, but once again it was just a bit too sweet, and once again I am blaming the red pepper. It's my understanding that if you want to have rice with pepper and onion, there has to be a bit of jalapeño because red bell peppers are just too sweet on their own. The rice was served with roasted cauliflower, which my sister assured me would be the best cauliflower I had ever tasted. But it wasn't. I didn't really like it. It was at once too crunchy but also too mushy. It just didn't work for me, although I will admit that when it came out of the oven, it certainly looked like something I would like (the picture of it looks disgusting).

We had the ham coil cut up and fried with the rice, which was probably the best part. But later I tried the ham coil on its own, and I didn't like it. It was too salty and too something else.

I will probably go out and buy a pack of these right now.

By far the culinary highlight of the trip were these chocolate flutes that you can find everywhere but that I have always associated with "Europe," probably because they're often marketed as a European delicacy in here. They did not disappoint. I love these things. If I could stop gobbling them up for just one minute, one day I would like to see what it's like to use one as a straw for drinking coffee. They're probably one of the best cookie-foods that are on the market today, second only to Dad's chocolate chip cookies (the ones made by Mr. Christie—definitely not my dad's cookies, which if they exist, probably have zucchini and cayenne in them).

 We did go out to eat a few times on this trip, but usually only for a quick lunch or for multiple galãos, which are essentially just lattes. A fun fact about our linguistic adventures in the Azores is that galão is the only Portuguese word either of us bothered to learn on our entire trip. I guess my sister probably ate a few different things, but I only ever had fries and one time a burger. The fries were pretty hit and miss in Portugal. The first plate I had was in the town of Furnas, which is famous for its geothermal activity. One thing I learned about myself is to stop being lured to a place by the promise of geothermal activity. I hate geothermal activity. It stinks and is disgusting. Someone described it as "earth farts," which is 100% correct. At one point we drove through an unexpected cloud of sulphur with our windows rolled down, and I was certain that I was going to throw up. All of this is relevant because each time I brought the fries to my mouth, they seemed to smell like sulphur and it made me sick. I still ate all of them. The second plate of fries I had was in Ponta Delgada and were delicious precisely because they tasted almost identical to McDonald's fries, but with the added bonus a delicious pint of beer on the side (the Portuguese seem to be pretty into lagers, which is great for me because generic lagers are pretty much the only beer I'll drink). Last, but certainly not least, on our last night on São Miguel we went out for a great dinner at a restaurant recommended to us by our host. I must admit I had my doubts about this place: it looked like a weird and not very good beach snack-hut, but it turned out to be really great. I had a burger with fries, and was relieved when the burger came just as I ordered it: totally plain with cheese. By no means was the burger great, but it was pretty solid and I don't really have any complaints about it.

Left to Right: sulphur fries, McDonald's imposter fries, and the best fries of the trip.

 Before moving on to all of the gross food that I didn't eat, I want to speak briefly of the pineapples. I don't want to spend too much time on them because I am tentatively working on a separate post for them. For whatever reason, the Azorean islands grow pineapples. Not because they grow naturally there, but because they used to grow oranges, but then some mysterious orange-plague wiped out the entire crop on the islands, so they switched their focus to greenhouse pineapples. And you guys: these pineapples are no joke. The Azorean pineapples are, hands down, the absolute best pineapples I have ever tasted in my life. Maybe this has to do with filling the greenhouse with smoke, which has the exact same life-restoring qualities as an eighteenth century tobacco enema. These pineapples were so sweet, so juicy, and so adorably round and small that we couldn't even bring ourselves to care that they were twice the price as the imported Costa Rican pineapples.

My sister tried to rouse me from my slumber with this plate of freshly slice pineapple - and it worked! I would get
out of any bed just to taste that delicious pineapple once more.

 That pretty much covers everything I ate on this trip. I had a bag of chips once and some yogurt, but they didn't seem work talking about. I also tried a bite of my sister's Mister Corn chocolate bar, and I wasn't sure whether to put it in the "Food I Ate" category or the "Gross Food" category, so I'm going to opt for the latter because it is actually pretty gross.

The Food I Didn't Eat / Was Afraid Of:

Turns out Portugal in general and São Miguel more specifically has a tonne of really disgusting and frightening food on offer, most of which we observed at the grocery store and some of which I observed my sister eating.

The first gross food I encountered was this horrific bread loaf with whole eggs in it. It's called folar and is eaten in Portugal during Easter because bread was served during the Last Supper (also: every other supper) and because the eggs are supposed to be a symbolic representation of the Resurrection of Christ. Except it's not really all that symbolic of anything and I would rather take a bite out of the literal body of Christ, even after it had been sitting in that dank cave for three days, than to be unpleasantly surprised by an entire egg in my bread.

We also saw these pig heads on display in the grocery store, and I'm going to be totally honest with you here: I have absolutely no idea how one would go about actually eating the head of an animal. Do you just scrape the flesh off the skull and onto a plate? Does each person get their own head and you just gnaw at it like one of those giant jaw breakers? Does anyone actually eat them at all, or are they just for decoration? I really don't understand. It's not even that eating flesh off of a skull disgusts me that much more than eating ribs or a drumstick, but I just can't understand how it's done, and I am too afraid to watch a Youtube tutorial of it, although you can be guaranteed that one exists. If any of you know, please don't tell me because I think I am happier not knowing.

The grocery store also had a huge fish display, and each day the display was more disgusting than the days that had preceded. In addition to the consistent offering of what appeared to be dumb and revolting group fish, there were also daily specials, like silver eels, some giant yellow python-eel, squids, and on one day, two giant rays layered on top of each other. Every day that fish display was a more grotesque parade-of-horribles and seeing it had a really profound effect on me. I have always known that I hate everything that comes out of the ocean, but I don't think I had ever seen this kind of sea garbage on display before, and certainly not as something that could possibly be edible. What does one even do with a ray of that size? Do you grill it? Will there be a crab inside of it? And if there is, do you have to pay extra for the crab?

My sister and I more or less ate fairly similarly on this trip, but on our last night (when I had the burger and fries), my sister ordered a disgusting, fat tuna steak covered in pumpkin seeds. She said it was good, but I'm pretty sure it was disgusting. There's something about "steaks" of fish that just doesn't sit right with me, and not only because I hate all fish. I guess I don't like thinking about how some fish are large enough to actually provide a slab of meat that could for all intents and purposes be referred to as a steak. Anyway, here is a picture of it. The potatoes did look pretty delicious though. I was too afraid to try them because I couldn't be certain they hadn't touched the fish at any point.

Finally, my sister bought a Mister Corn chocolate bar in the grocery store. It really was just a chocolate bar with corn nuts inside, in the same way that you might get a chocolate bar with almonds or hazelnuts inside. I did actually try a square of it, and it wasn't half as disgusting as I expected it would be, but it still wasn't for me and I still think that the idea of combining corn nuts and chocolate is a mistake. I get that some people like sweet and savoury together (I think it's a disgusting combination, with the notable exception of salted caramel), but ... I don't know. Corn nuts?

The good news is that they really didn't skimp on the corn nuts.

A Few Stray Thoughtz:

We also went to a tea plantation. I think the Azores are the only (or at least one of the few) places in Europe with large-scale tea plantations. The Portuguese even brought over two Chinese tea masters to teach the locals how to farm tea, and then I believe they had them build a massive rail system and then sent them on their way. The tea really wasn't very good. I'm not sure if that's because tea wasn't meant to be grown here or because the Portuguese have never been able to manage it properly, but the safest bet is probably to blame the two Chinese tea masters who clearly weren't very masterful at all.

I wore this military for the duration of our trip, and it was great.

So... anyway. That's it. That was the trip. At least in terms of the food I ate and the food I avoided. It was pretty good. I would recommend it if you can find a $300 return ticket.

Onion Salad

This onion salad enrages me.  I hate it.  I hate it so much, and my mum seems to make it about once a month.  I know it shouldn’t bother me because I don’t have to eat it or interact with it beyond having to look at it (and sometimes smell it), but it makes me so angry that this is even a thing that a person would eat.  It has absolutely nothing going for it, like absolutely zero redeemable features:

Later I will compare this to tapeworms covered in sperm, but it also kind of looks like fettuccine alfredo.  I guess if
forced, I would eat the fettuccine alfredo first, then probably the tapeworms covered in sperm, and then I would
kill myself before I had to ingest this disgusting mixture.

1. It’s a salad. Okay, I will let this one go because I know that most people eat salad in one form or another and that it’s pretty normal. But still, gross.
2. With the exception of the sauce/topping/dressing, it’s actually just onions.  Raw onions.  In a bowl.
3. Saying that they’re “raw” onions might have been a bit deceiving because they’re actually pickled onions.  They have been soaking in vinegar!  It’s disgusting.
4. There are other things involved in this salad that I don’t even know about.  Is it mayonnaise?  Is it sour cream?  Who knows!  But whatever it is, it’s white and creamy and I can guarantee that it doesn’t go with onions and I can almost guarantee that it’s probably mayonnaise (maybe).

Revolting.  Let me say it again, but this time like this: Re-volting. Revolting. This salad is revolting.

God, I hate this salad so much.  In addition to how disgusting it actually is, I always have to endure the inevitable conversation of how good it is, and how no one can believe how good it is because it looks like the aftermath of taking your cat to the vet because her body is riddled with tape worms. Did anyone else watch that episode of the Tyra Banks Show?  The one about girls who give themselves tapeworms to lose weight?  Because those tapeworms are almost exactly what this onion salad looks like, if you collected them all in a bowl and then stored them in your fridge.  I would include a picture of a tapeworm for reference, but I think it would be too stressful for me.  Tapeworms are very overwhelming for me.  Much like this disgusting salad.

Maybe once you get up close to it you can tell it's onions, but it really doesn't make it any more appetizing.

Should I have included this in the more general salad post?  Perhaps.  Did I?  I can't remember.  But in any case I am posting it here now because I am back in Grand Forks for reading break and I had to encounter this salad and it made me really upset.

Both the subject of onions and the poor quality of the poem that you're about to read reminds me of one of my earliest posts on the shallot, from all the way back in September 2012. 

Here's something that makes me puke in my mind:

Pickled onions in a bowl like a tangle of so many tapeworms

And if that isn't the word "revolting" defined,

Then imagine if those onions were coated in billions of sperms.

"Dear Food Thoughtz:" Pickle & Pudding Problems; Heartbreak

Welcome to the second installment of Dear Food Thoughtz.  Today's installment tackles a disgusting pickle addiction, my struggles with a steamed Christmas pudding, and eating emotions.  Email questions to: food.thoughtz@gmail.com

Dear Foodthoughtz!

I am writing you because I am in a terrible pickle. Although, not really. By which I mean that actually I am not in a pickle or in pickle juice—and this is part of the problem.

All my life I have had a burning passion for sour and savoury things, disjunctively and conjunctively. I love chips, cheese, yogurt with salt in it, pickles, pickle flavoured chips, mustard, nuts... you name it. As a teenager I survived for years on sauerkraut, apple and pickled peppers. However, in the recent past, I got married to a person who is averse to all things pickly (although she is acceptant of some savoury things, and vinegar on its own, or as a chip-flavouring). To be honest, at first I have tried to conceal my desires. I have abstained from pickles, or consumed them away from home. I have been pickle-free for 6 months, except for the occasional slice of pickled cucumber on my burger.

As you can imagine, these unhealthy, restrictive behaviours soon took a toll on my health. I began craving pickles. And by craving, I mean CRAYving. I wanted to be showered with sauerkraut and bathed in picklejuice. It did not take long to give in to my secret desires. I became a secretive picklemuncher, snacking on stashes of sauerkraut under my bed and picklejars hidden in the toilet-tank. At this point I fear that the smell might betray me and that my secret will be discovered.

I don't know what to do. Should I reveal my secret and face my wife's contempt and disgust or should I try to suppress my burning desires for acids?!

Help me! Please!

Sincerely,

A sourpuss

Dear Sourpuss,

This is a tough one to answer.  Of course you should by now be well aware of my thoughtz on pickles.  You are a depraved individual for whom very little can be done.  It seems as though your addiction is one that is ruling your life and could potentially ruin your marriage.  In general, I would rarely recommend attempting to overcome any kind of addiction because it will probably lead to a life devoid of meaning, but because the future of your marriage hinges on your ability to exercise restraint and self-discipline when it comes to pickles (and presumably, by extension, all savoury preserves), you are in a very precarious position.  Here is my advice:

Your wife seems like a reasonable and level-headed individual, so perhaps you can strike a deal.  There might be something that she is deeply attached to that you want her to give up, and perhaps you can use this as leverage.  It might even be something as simple as a ratty old t-shirt.

Ultimately, if you can manage to keep your depraved dietary addictions to yourself,  and ensure that pursuing your love of all things pickled does not infringe on your wife's highly-evolved culinary sensibilities, this shouldn't really be much of a problem.  What might be a problem, however, is storing your pickles in the toilet tank.  I would be worried about fecal contamination, the possibility of which is probably increased by such a revolting diet.

Dear Food Thoughtz

Tonight I watched you eat a steamed Christmas pudding that had fruit and carrots in it. I feel confused, like I don't even know you anymore.

Your sister

Dear Concerned Reader,

No one is more confused than I am about that steamed Christmas pudding.  Honestly, when I saw it approach the table afire, I hope that it might entirely be consumed by flame so that I wouldn’t be put in the position of having to eat it.  Unfortunately I was put in that position, and in order to avoid being rude, I forced it down.  Thankfully it was mushy enough that I didn't need to chew before swallowing, so it wasn't as difficult as I initially thought it would be.  It was also served with whipped cream, and I made sure to keep a stash of whipped cream untouched in a corner so I could cleanse my palate afterwards.

Dear Food Thoughtz,

What is the best food for soothing compounded heartbreak? 

Dear Anonymous,

Pizza.  I think pizza is probably the best food for heartbreak of all kinds.  It's also the food I turn to during periods of elation.  Pizza is always the best way to deal with extreme and oscillating emotions.  It is best consumed in bed.  Just bring the whole box in with you and settle down with some TV.  One great thing about having emotions is that they can almost always be eaten.

The Pickle

One time an incorruptible-Huxtable  babysitter chased me into the basement and threatened to force me to eat a pickle. To this day I don’t know if she was merely exercising her authority over me or if she thought that pickles are so good that it would be criminal to let me live another day without trying one myself.

But I was triumphant, and to this day, I have never tried a pickle.

This is what I imagine the outcome would be if I ever tried a pickle.

It wasn’t until 2008 that I figured out what a pickle is. I remember this moment very clearly. I was working on an organic vegetable farm for the summer because I like to be close to the earth and I respect the welfare of our planet. I was directed to gather some cucumbers and some pickling cucumbers. As I repeated “pickling cucumbers” over and over to myself while looking at the pickling cucumbers, it suddenly dawned on me that cucumbers are pickles--just pickled. And I thought to myself that I better keep this little insight to myself because it was 2008 and about 17 years too late to make this connection.

I don’t want to suggest that I was totally unaware of the pickling process or that the final pickled product must have pre-existed in a non-pickled state; of course I knew these things. But pickles have always been so far from my mind that I never really thought about it. And I certainly never considered that this was an activity that everyday people engaged in. I assumed that pickles just appeared on the shelves of our grocery stores, fresh from a container from China. And besides, even though we all (now) know that pickling is a process to preserve food, “pickles” are always referred to as just “pickles,” whereas “pickled asparagus” is never referred to as just asparagus or just pickles, or “pickled beets” as just beets or just pickles. I think as a society we have accepted pickles as a food unto themselves with no important connection to cucumbers in a way that we have not done so for other foods that can be pickled. As a result, I don’t think my late in life discovery of the nature of pickles is all that embarrassing. 

It is my understanding that a pickle can be either crisp or soft, and come in a variety of flavours, like sweet or... I don’t know, sour? Bitter? Are these even flavours? Maybe you can put some other food in the jar with the pickles and it flavours them? Oh, dill obviously. Dill pickles. I know that because you can get everything in dill pickle flavouring. I don’t know how these things work, and it doesn’t matter because I would not be more inclined to try one flavour of pickle over another flavour of pickle. However, the varying texture does interest me somewhat. I find nothing immediately offensive about biting into a crispy substance because I think it would be similar to biting into a carrot, which is a sensation that I enjoy. Similarly, a soft pickle might have a similar texture to a banana. Except in both cases I expect that a pickle is much more slimy than a carrot or a banana, so why would I bother? I can’t imagine that that pickles taste very good and I also can’t imagine how my life might be improved if they became a part of my diet. Pickles are almost always served a as a side dish and are therefore easily avoided. Plus, I can’t get it out of my head that pickles are just scientific specimens of syphilitic penises stored in jars. I also don’t know how the flavour of the cucumber interacts with the brine, and as of yet I have not been convinced that a cucumber marinated in brine for an unspecified period of time would taste any different from a syphilitic penis sample that has undergone the same process.

Are these animal penises preserved in jars or various tubers marinating brine?
I'll never tell...

When does the cucumber cease to be and the pickle to became?
Is there no change in substance and merely change of a name?
What is the exact moment of transition?
We shall place all our faith in the powers of human cognition.
Let us test our hypothesis; grab a jar from the shelf.
For the purpose of science we shall sacrifice the self.
It doesn’t matter which one you pick--
I’m certain they all taste like a pickled syphilitic dick