Tag Archives: 2014

2014 was a great year for chicken curry

Sure, it’s been around forever, but 2014 is the year chicken curry finally hit its stride. In a sort of quiet culinary coup d’état, chicken curry mounted what can only be described as gastronomic guerrilla warfare, catapulting itself from boring Indian restaurant mainstay to a perpetual flavor-of-the-week. People are finally getting excited about chicken curry, and rightfully so.

Seemingly overnight, the modest “chef’s special” menu standby has transitioned to a standout dish at Indian restaurants across the country. Gone are the days when your sister Jane would be the only one to order chicken curry. “Where are we going for dinner? Indian food? Come on, I don’t want to go out for Indian food. Can’t we go somewhere else? What’s wrong with Luigi’s? Ugh, fine, I guess I’ll just get that chicken dish, what’s it called? Yeah, curry, chicken curry, I guess I’ll just get chicken curry.”

And it’s not just Indian restaurants riding the swollen wave of chicken curried popularity. The past year saw a variety of establishments cash in on the versatility and easily adaptive nature of one of America’s favorite ethnic meals. Select TGI Fridays offered limited time chicken curry entrées as part of their “Two For Twenty” value menu, and a rogue McDonald’s franchised out of Spokane, Washington bucked the corporate kitchen by unveiling an east-meets-west McCurried Chicken Sandwich on its limited “Flavors of the World” sandwich of the month menu.

Probably the most dramatic sign of chicken curry’s inevitable western crossover can be seen in the results of 2014 Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” consumer vote-in potato chip flavor competition. While the snack-eating majority ultimately decided to give the starring role to Kettle Cooked Wasabi Ginger, chicken curry came in third, which would have been unthinkable even five years ago. Just the idea that consumers would be willing to snack on curried flavored potato chips shows that chicken curry’s surge in popularity is much more than a passing trend.

I’m anxious to see how high chicken curry is going to climb in 2015. If I had money to invest, and there were some sort of a stock exchange where you could bet on foods, I’d without a doubt put all of my money on chicken curry. We’re at the chicken curry tipping point, much like the chicken parmesan tipping point twenty years ago. You can’t go anywhere without finding chicken parm on the menu. Even Subway does a chicken parm sandwich. Mark my words, chicken curry is on the exact same trajectory.

If you’re not a big fan of chicken curry, do yourself a favor and learn to like it. Because ten or twenty years from now, it’ll be all but unavoidable, completely saturated into all aspects of modern society. Kids are going to eat it served by school cafeterias. Hospitals will serve it to bedridden old people. “What’s for dinner?” won’t even be a question worth asking anymore, because chances are, the answer is going to be “chicken curry.”

I know what I’m making for dinner tonight. It’s chicken curry, and I’m pumped.

When I say World, you say Cup. World. World.

That’s right, it’s the World Cup. Has it been four years already? It feels like just yesterday that I was saying to myself, “Wow, is it 2010 already? It feels like just yesterday that …” you get the point. I never think about soccer at all until it’s the World Cup. So when I think of my life in relation to soccer, it’s always about how fast time goes by, in these really quick four-year lurches.

And then when it’s actually the World Cup, time does a complete one-eighty and comes to a halt. It’s like somehow those four years that flew by in between World Cups get compressed into thirty days where the clock barely moves at all. I find myself constantly asking myself, “Seriously? Is it still the World Cup?”

There’s always a moment for like half a second where I tell myself that this year I’m going to get into it, that for thirty days at least, I’m going to start paying attention to soccer. But the other day I went to the gym and one of the games was playing on all of the TVs. So that was a little discouraging, that I’d already neglected to find out when the games were on or who was playing.

And whatever, all of the machines were facing in that direction, so I tried to follow the gameplay as I worked out. But after like ten or fifteen minutes, I really had trouble maintaining focus. The ball was going up and then to the side and then back again. For a while I looked at this guy to my left, he was watching the TV with an intense focus that let me know that he was serious. And I’d look to him, every once in a while switching from the screen and back to his expression.

At one point he clapped his hands together, muttering something to himself, “Yes!” I could tell he was pumped about something that just happened. But, and I was watching, I had no idea what he got excited about. As far as I could tell, there hadn’t been any significant change in the game’s momentum. The ball looked like it was bouncing back and forth and up the same as it had been the whole game.

It’s stupid to rip on soccer. Obviously the rest of the world likes it. And I can’t get mad at people for only watching soccer during the World Cup. I mean, how else is the sport supposed to gain followers if not during these huge international competitions? It’s just a really easy target, soccer, with its gigantic field, seemingly three hundred players on the “pitch” at the same time, running this way and that, the dramatic embellishment, the ridiculously corrupt governing organization.

I want to like soccer, I really do. But I also really want to keep throwing cheap shots at soccer, because it’s just so easy. Whatever, if the US wins the World Cup this year, I’ll never say anything bad about soccer again. So don’t let me down Landon Donovan.

Wait, what?

Rob’s guide to 2014

Do you feel like you were just getting to know 2013? Like it wasn’t until October or November that you finally thought, oh, OK, I get it now, 2013, this is what it’s all about, this is great. And now it’s over, and for what? The teased promise of what could have been, if only you knew what you were doing for the first nine or ten months? It’s kind of like that really cool friend you made during your last semester at college. Where were you hiding this whole time? Why have we never hung out before?

And then it’s graduation and you both go your separate ways and, even though you make an effort to stay in touch, one of you moves away and the other gets a job and, well it’s not like you have that much of a shared history to fall back on. I mean, yeah, it was cool watching the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation together on the Sci-Fi channel. But time flies by, people enter and exit our lives seemingly at random.

Is this what 2014 is going to be like? Are you asking yourself, am I fated to stumble around blindly through the ages, never really getting a grip of where I’m at or what this year is supposed to be all about, not until it’s way too late?

Of course you are. But I’m here to make things a little easier. Even though we’re only at day one, I’ve got 2014 practically all mapped out. And I’m going to share with you some tips and tricks to really squeeze the most out of this year, what would have been the second new-world New Year, if only the Mayan apocalypse had arrived like we were all promised.

Let’s talk 2014 TV. Breaking Bad is over. That’s so 2013. And all of your other favorite TV shows aren’t getting any younger. Do yourself a favor and make sure you catch the second half of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Yes, it’s on Fox, and nobody really watches Fox. But I’m telling you, this is definitely the most underrated show currently on TV. I started watching it almost by accident. I have my Netflix and Hulu all streaming to my TV via a little Roku box I picked up at Costco, and for whatever reason, when one show ends, it gives you like five seconds to play a new program, or it starts streaming something else automatically.

When Brooklyn Nine-Nine started up, I made a pretty decent attempt to find the little wand remote that the Roku came with, but after forty-five seconds or so of not immediately eyeing it within my general vicinity, I gave up and thought, OK, well at least I can dick around on my iPhone until this thing’s over.

I had no desire to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Aside from the Lonely Island SNL videos, I never found Andy Sandburg to be particularly funny. But this show had me roped in almost immediately. I don’t know what to say besides the fact that it’s really funny. If it survives past season one, I know that it’s going to blow up into something huge. But that’s a big if. Fox has a reputation of cancelling strong shows that don’t immediately post stellar ratings.

And from what I’ve heard, there’s not too much buzz about it. I’m saying this not from looking online or reading any reviews, but just by asking around. Nearly everybody who I’ve inquired about Brooklyn Nine-Nine gave me the same dead stare, like they’d never heard of it, wondering if I was talking about something maybe I dreamt of, but a really strong dream, one that I carried into my waking life, mistakenly believing that I’d happened upon a hidden cool show. But it’s cool. Watch it.

More 2014 advice: Did I talk about Brooklyn Nine-Nine already? I did. Right. OK. What else? Actually, I don’t have anything else. I thought I’d get the ball rolling with the TV show thing and that it would naturally lead to all of my other great 2014 plans, but here we are, I’ve basically written what’s usually a blog post’s length of material here, and I’m kind of thinking that, why force any more out of it? So what, so I only have one half-hour network sitcom serving as the bulk of my plans for the New Year. Whatever. And yeah, I guess I should have just turned it into a straight up review post instead of making it like it’s going to somehow be topical, about today, about New Years. But like I said, I’ve already lost interest. I’ve got plenty of the year left to waste everyone’s time with this nonsense.

Happy New Year.