Tag Archives: food

What a good dog

I’m sitting here writing at my kitchen table and my dog, Steve, is just staring at me. He’s in the living room, he’s sitting on the couch, and his head is propped up at the armrest so he can stare at me without really expending any effort. I wonder what he’s thinking about, because he’s always staring at me.

I’ll be watching TV and I won’t be thinking about my dog at all, and then for whatever reason I’ll look his way, and he’ll be lying on his back on the floor, staring at me upside down. I’m not thinking about him, but he’s looking right at me. And so, no, I don’t know if that means he’s thinking about me. I can’t tell what’s going through anybody else’s head, let alone a dog’s. But when I’m staring directly at somebody or something, I’m usually thinking of them, if not actively, then my mind is at least making its mental registry.

Sometimes I’ll get up in the morning and I’ll be rushing around, trying to get out of the house on time. Right before I go, I’ll take Steve for a walk and then feed him breakfast. But, and he does this a lot, if I’m not there, he won’t eat. I won’t come back until much later in the afternoon and when I go in the kitchen, his bowl is still full from earlier in the day. And he comes in right behind me, because all he does is follow me around and stare at me, and then he starts chowing down. I’m like, were you waiting for me? Please, Steve, go ahead and eat without me, I won’t be offended.

And even that doesn’t make any sense, because while he’s nothing but a gentleman when it comes to his dog food, if I let my guard down at the wrong time, I’ll look over and, yeah, he’s staring at me still, but from under the kitchen table. That’s Steve-speak for, I just did something bad, and I’m hiding so that when you find out what I did, you won’t be able to see me.

Except that I can totally see you Steve, and you’re making it even more obvious, just constantly staring at me. I always wonder, when he busts into the garbage to start eating old aluminum foil or browned banana peels, is he still thinking about me? Is his constant eye contact really as affectionate as I’m making it out to be in my head? Or is he spending all of that time looking at me for plotting purposes, not wanting to miss the smallest opportunity to sneak behind my back and cause some destruction?

And now that I think about it, the whole not eating breakfast thing, what else are you eating, Steve? Do you have like a secret stash of garbage somewhere? I don’t want to give him too much credit, but he’s showed feats of intelligence before. Like after we realized that he was getting in the garbage, we bought a new can that closed automatically, the one where you step on a pedal to open it up. Steve learned how to work it. For months I had no idea what was going on, and then I caught him in the act, pressing his paws on the pedal and sticking his head in to bob for treasure. And when I threw that garbage can out and bought a new one that locked shut, I came home from work that day and found the entire trashcan on its side, dragged across the room.

So either he loves me, or he’s just really, really interested in what I’m up to, probably for some sort of selfish game. Or maybe it’s both. Maybe he loves me, but he also loves garbage equally. It would make sense. One time he broke through the barrier preventing him from going upstairs, he dragged the bathroom trashcan onto my bed and rolled around in all of my dirty Q-tips and used floss picks.

That was the worst, because when I came home that night, Steve was sitting on the couch like everything was cool. So I came over and started petting him, telling him how good of a dog he was. I wonder what went through his head, like wow, I really did a good job here, he really loves it when I get upstairs and make a huge mess in his bedroom. And I’m just like, “Yeah, good boy Steve, what a good dog.”

What’s your favorite?

I don’t like it when I get confronted with questions about favorites. Like, “What’s your favorite food?” or “What’s your favorite movie?” Because I have no idea what my favorite anything is. One time I went on this job interview, and the guy handed me a photocopied list of questions, mostly about my relevant experience. But at the bottom, there were all of these questions, stuff like, “What’s your favorite song? What’s your favorite restaurant? Who’s your favorite writer?”

And I sat there and stared at that piece of paper for way too long. Eventually the man came back in the room, and I had to tell him something, explain why I hadn’t finished those last several questions. “Listen sir,” I tried making my case, “These questions about favorites, it’s not that I don’t enjoy things like songs and writers, but there are lot of songs and restaurants and writers in the world, and to make me choose one, it’s like, jeez, I can’t choose just one. And if I had to, I can almost guarantee that that one answer is going to be different if you ask me two weeks from now.”

This guy nodded along, but I could tell it was over. I could all but read his mind, him, standing up over that desk where I was seated, he must have been thinking, come on dude, just write something down, I don’t care about any of this stuff. Do you think I came up with these questions? Do you think I’m really going to go over any of that nonsense? I mean, unless you wrote down “Raining Blood” by Slayer, whatever, I really, truly don’t care. And you’re not getting this job, because this is one of the most annoying interviews I’ve ever given in my life.

I mean, I can’t read minds, so I don’t know for sure if that’s exactly what he was thinking, but I never heard from them again, even though he definitely said, “Thanks, we’ll be in touch,” after he assured me for the third time that it wasn’t a big deal that I’d left the last few questions blank.

What’s the point of a question like that? Sure, people want to get to know you, maybe in an interview setting it could be seen as something to lighten the mood, maybe lower your defenses somewhat. But all questions like that do, to me anyway, are to put me on the spot. It’s like, “Hi. Nice to meet you. Quick, tell me your favorite band.”

And it sets off a thought process in my head that’s too much for me to deal with in real time. My favorite band? Like, if I could only listen to one band for the rest of my life, is that the band that you want to hear? Because even if I were able to narrow down my top three favorite bands, whatever that even means, I promise you that if I were forced to listen to only those three bands, I’d get really sick of them in almost no time at all.

Like, did you ever go to school with one of those kids that ate the same exact packed lunch every day? Doesn’t that get old? You really don’t mind the taste of baloney and cheese over and over and over again?

There’s too much, all right, there are too many good bands for me to pick a favorite band. If you ask me who may favorite author is, I have no idea what to tell you, because I’ve read tons of different books, and they all say different things to me at different times. And the favorite restaurant question, come on, what are you trying to take me out to lunch? Because after I eat something like four or five times, that’s it, I won’t crave it for another year or two.

Did anybody see Guardians of the Galaxy? I loved it. I thought it was such a cool movie. But one thing kept bugging me. He’s listening to this cassette mix-tape that his mom made him, and that’s cool, I get it. But he’s dancing around to the songs, like he’s really into them every time he hits the play button. You expect me to believe that a human being is able to listen to the same twelve songs for twenty years without getting sick of them? Don’t get me wrong, it was a great soundtrack, and it fit the movie nicely. I even left the theater with a bunch of those tunes playing on repeat in my head. But after like three or four days, that was enough, how many times can you listen to “Come and Get Your Love?”

Come and get your love, come and get your love, come and get your love now.

Over and over and over again. No way. I’m not buying it.

Rotten mushrooms

I went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of stuff to make dinner. The centerpiece of the meal was going to be a steak topped with sautéed mushrooms. I didn’t go out thinking, steak, mushrooms, but while I was shopping, I saw this package of mixed fungi, names like shitake and hen of the woods printed on the label, I thought, OK, those look cool, how can I incorporate them into a meal? And it kind of just took off around that thought process.

And then when I got home, I started taking care of all of everything that didn’t need to be cooked right away. I boiled some small potatoes, blanched the vegetables, stuff like that. And then while I set my cast iron skillet over the burner to get nice and hot, I wanted to take care of those mushrooms.

Only, I opened up the packaging and immediately I knew that it wasn’t going to happen. A really bad smell hit me in the face, and I automatically recoiled. But not wanting to deal with the reality of the situation, I tried to think of ways in which what I was perceiving might not have been as bad I was making it out to be.

Maybe these are just funny smelling mushrooms, I thought, and brought the package a little closer to my face. Nope, they smelled like fish, like rotten fish. And then I picked through them with my fingers. With an absence of any visible mold, I tried to get myself to think that, maybe it’s just the packaging, maybe this will all correct itself during the cooking process.

But feeling them in my hands, they were slimy, like oozy and wet, in a way that mushrooms never are. I got pissed. I knew I shouldn’t have fallen for such a stupid grocery store trick. Usually if I want mushrooms, I always just pick them loose out of this giant mushroom container. They’re always dry to the touch, not brittle or anything, but definitely not like these gross mushrooms were, covered in a funky slick.

I never buy vegetables that come preselected and wrapped. I don’t know why I changed my behavior this time around. And that was it, it was done, I’d exhausted all sort of justification that may have tricked me into thinking that there was some way to still make use of those mushrooms.

They were like six bucks. It’s not like those six dollars are going to break the bank, but it just sucks because, the best part about going to the grocery store and making your own food is calculating how much your dinner winds up costing, noticing that it’s significantly cheaper than going out to a restaurant.

But not when you’re just throwing money in the garbage, six dollars at a time. I briefly considered going back and getting a refund. But I don’t have a car, I live in the city, and so I’d have to carry this open package of rotting mushrooms seven blocks down, all while I’ve got most of the dinner ready to go. I guess I could just wait until after we eat, but then what am I supposed to do, save them? Keep them out? They stunk.

No, not at all worth the six dollars. It sucks, but I’ll never see that money again. You buy bad groceries, it really does feel like you just got ripped off. Because you did. I remember one time I bought a bunch of steaks at the grocery store and kept them in the fridge for a couple of days before opening them up and realizing that something wasn’t right. I actually did make an effort to go return them, and the people there were just like, “Nope, sorry, no refunds on meat bought more than twenty-four hours ago.” And what am I going to do, stand there and argue with someone about how that’s a ridiculous policy, that that’s why you guys put expiration dates on the merchandise, so it doesn’t have to be cooked all on the same day of purchase?

It’s like one time I remember I was coming home late at night, and I knew I needed milk for cereal and coffee the next day. So I stopped at one of those corner groceries, not a grocery store, but just like one of those places you’d buy a bottle of soda and a scratch-off.

I bought the gallon of milk from the refrigerator in the back. I woke up the next morning, poured myself a huge bowl of cereal, and then as soon as I twisted open the top from the gallon of milk, it was that gross, rancid, spoiled milk smell. I looked at the date printed on the side, and it told me that this thing should have been sold no later than sometime last week.

And I was just pissed, like I’m pissed right now. It’s like, you’re just an asshole at that point, you know that the milk is clearly bad, but you’re just hoping that some jerk is going to walk in and buy it without looking. Me. I’m the jerk. I didn’t look. I’m the guy that walked into a store and just kind of assumed that all of the food there would have been edible.

Whatever. It’s six bucks. I’m getting bent out of shape about nothing. But still. Part of me won’t let go of the anger steadily building up inside. I hope I can get over this someday.

Eat fresh, baby

Sometimes I have no idea what I’m going to eat. I like to cook for myself, and ideally, I’d be preparing all of my meals in the house. But I go through these spells, they can last for days or even weeks at a time, where any motivation I have to plan ahead and go to the grocery store just evaporates. I wind up jumping from meal to meal, forever stuck in the moment, nothing in the house to satiate my unstoppable hunger, no choice but to go out and buy something fast, something quick.

I had Subway for lunch. It’s fine. I like Subway. But it’s just like, I don’t know, I go to Subway, I stand in line and wait for them to make my sandwich. There’s nothing about the process of getting a sandwich at Subway that really speaks to me anymore. That same feeling I get when I open up the refrigerator and see that there’s nothing inside is almost identical to what I experience as I wait on line for the Subway people to make my sandwich.

The Subway people at the Subway by my house are all foreigners, and whenever I go there, I can’t shake the feeling that they’re all kind of judging me, all of us, anybody who goes to Subway to eat Subway. I imagine them going home and saying stuff like, “These Americans, these idiots, lining up every day to eat this … this stuff … this whatever it is,” having a good laugh at the idea of selling us these five dollar foot longs.

I only say this because one time I was waiting on line for a sandwich and I saw one of the employees run outside. He came back later with a bunch of takeout from an ethnic restaurant. They work in a Subway, and they don’t eat Subway? I thought, man, that food looks good, much better than this sandwich that I was about to eat. But I was already invested in this line. It took me quite a while to make that conscious decision, to get out of the house, to make that walk down the block. Changing plans now that I was already this deep, well, it just wasn’t going to happen. I had to be content with the knowledge that these Subway employees might at least get some pleasure out of their food. I wonder if they ever eat Subway, or is just strictly business for them, a vehicle to make money and nothing else.

When I went to Subway today, there was a guy my age behind the counter. He was clearly new, because every time he tried to do something, he did it really cautiously. Like he carefully chose his words, asked people the same question multiple times. Every time he started an action, the manager would yell at him in a different language and take over, telling him to start doing something else. He’d start doing another task, and the process would repeat itself as he was continuously chased from job to job.

It was beyond uncomfortable, the way the boss didn’t really have any sort of awareness of how loud she was barking at this poor guy. She had originally started to make my sandwich when she caught him improperly placing the toppings on a sandwich further down the line. She relieved him of duty and sent him to finish setting up my order.

He kind of just looked at me, wide eyed, totally confused, “Uh … did you want this toasted?” And he made it halfway through spreading the tuna before the manager swooped back in to show him the correct way to put out individual slices of cheese.

As a different employee rung me up and swiped my credit card, I heard more screaming behind me, followed by an, “I’m sorry he’s so slow!” to a customer to my left. This guy was beyond patient, “No, it’s OK, everybody’s got to learn, right? I was the same way on my first day, very careful, making sure everything was perfect.”

And the manager just kind of glared, almost visibly insulted that the customer hadn’t sided with her, shared the contempt for this employee that couldn’t work fast enough. I could picture her thinking to herself, “Oh yeah? You think that makes it OK? It’s not OK. That guy’s not your boss. I’m your boss.”

I got home, the sandwich, whatever, it’s a Subway sandwich. I almost wished that I could just teleport it directly inside my stomach, to save me the ten minutes or so I’d actually have to spend chewing, swallowing. All of that yelling before, all for a sandwich, something way too basic to get so bent out of shape over.

Human photosynthesis

Scientists are working on all of the wrong things. Well, maybe not everything they’re doing is wrong. Like trying to cure cancer, that’s definitely something that I hope they figure out sooner rather than later. But scientists, come on, there is so much more that you could be doing, I’m talking big picture, beneficial to humanity type stuff.

Like, what about photosynthesis? Why can’t you make photosynthesis happen for human beings? If plants can do it, I really don’t see what the problem is in making it happen for us. Just figure out how they do it, and then come up with some sort of a gene therapy or a medication or something that makes it work for us.

I’m not suggesting that we change our method of processing energy entirely, it would just be nice to have a photosynthesis option, as a supplement. Like a hybrid car, we could be hybrid people. Obviously, I don’t want to give up eating. Given the choice between eating and photosynthesis, I’m always going to go for a snack.

But what about when there aren’t any snacks readily available? Like what if I’m on a really long car trip and there’s not another Arby’s rest stop for like a hundred and twenty miles? What then? The obvious solution should be, nothing. Just sit back and let human photosynthesis take care of the rest.

And that’s just my own very limited ideas about how photosynthesis would benefit me, personally. Imagine photosynthesis on a global scale. You wouldn’t have to worry about anybody starving. “Just go outside!” we could have aid workers tell all of the poor people around the world, “Your bodies are now capable of turning sunlight directly into food!”

Problem solved. And then we wouldn’t have to feel so guilty about all of the food we waste over here. So many times I feel like I’m just shoveling food in my face because it’s better that I clean my plate than to let anything go to waste. But once the scientists finally get their priorities together and make this photosynthesis thing happen for real, I’ll eat, or I won’t eat, whatever I want.

“Give me the biggest plate of food you have,” I’ll tell the waiter when I go out to eat. And he might be like, “Sir, the biggest plate we have is a family style tasting menu. It feeds six adults.”

“Bring it,” and I’ll eat a bite, whatever, I’ll eat a little more. “You want me to wrap everything up for you?” They’ll ask me as they clear the mostly full plates from the table. And I’ll say, “No, just throw it all away, dump it straight in the trash.”

No longer will I feel like I’m being guilted into wrapping up my leftovers, making a big show of taking them home with me, looking for a trashcan a few blocks down, waiting for an opportune time where nobody’s watching me, judging me for throwing out the remnants of a perfectly good meal. “Just toss it,” I’ll repeat.

And scientists, while you’re at it, can’t you figure out some way to give human beings the ability to dig themselves into the ground and start drawing additional nutrients right from the soil? Again, I’m not saying that I’d prefer to literally start making roots into the earth, but big picture, think about all of the homeless people out there.

It costs money to house them in shelters, and most of the time, they’re out back on the streets in no time. Why not just plant them in the ground? We could use this technology at prisons also. “Just dig yourselves in, fellas,” the warden would announce as they all filed in for prison orientation. It would cut down on violence. And taxpayer money. We wouldn’t have to spend a dime, we could just make sure they get some water every now and then, direct access to sunlight.

Let’s do it. We’re at a point in human history where these types of technologies should be commonplace. If I had tons of money to spend of research, that’s what I’d be doing with it. But I don’t have any money. So all I can do is continue to urge the scientific community, let’s make it happen. Come on.