(untitled)

I just licked the mayonnaise off an onion.

potency and robustness in our mornings

When brewing coffee, I learned a new trick. I, and I am referring to French Press coffee here of course, first grind up enough, or basically enough, beans and add them into grinder, these are ground quite finely, but not to extremes, and, then, atop this more finely ground pile of coffee, I then add another batch of grounds, this ground more coarsely, with little bits and shards and the occasional whole bean, ensuring a best-of-both-worlds cup in which the fine grounds keep my coffee potent and crisp while the chunky bits on top keep my coffee flavorful and robust. Ooh, and another one is, and this comes from alcohol practice, is to drink a coffee not with milk in the cup, but with milk on the side, a “milk-back” this would be in bar parlance, so a cup of black coffee with a nice tall glass of skim milk beside it to ameliorate some some of the cup’s cut while allowing her blackness to shine

For more on these fascinating caffeinating techniques please refer to the ‘coffee’ tab under topics.

Sugar Lips

Brooklyn’s finest new band North Highlands have been talking to soundbites.com about what they eat, and where and why. The oft unasked questions of music interviews of late such as “has food ever influenced your songwriting?” and “what food would you imagine your music being paired with?” came up, and rightfully so. Food and music occupy a similar place in society. They fill us up, sustain; they inspire our minds and they get us laid; they bring us together and both react directly to changes in season. Learn what to eat when hungover and how to enjoy cabbage with a “chamber-disco” groove, and more, at the intimate aforelinked interview. Music, Food, Brooklyn: North Highlands has it all.

it is summer and there are flies

so i am having a drink. the drink is dewar’s, bitters and ginger ale. it’s called a dark and stormy. and since it is summer and there’re flies, i am up walking around my apartment. scratching, swatting. smoking. lighting candles, putting them out; spilling the wax, cleaning that up. i’d use bug spray if i had it. anything to get rid of these flies. outside it is raining and there probably aren’t these flies, but i’ve been inside and i’ve been working all day and as i goto pickup my drink, i see a fly has flown into my drink and died. shit. i’m not going to drink that, drink flies. (fish ‘em out, yea, but what’s the point?) so i goto throw my drink away, see, and i am looking at the fly and i see that it is not one fly in my drink, not one fly but two flies. i see that i am looking at two flies lured by the sweet sugary ginger into diving headfirst into a toxic pool that is my cocktail at 1:30 in the morning when flies aren’t what i need (at least they are together.), and i goto throw out the drink and i start to think (at least they are together, at least they have company. besides it seems…),why should i be throwing the drink away at all? i’m not going to finish it at this point, it’s full of melted ice and gnat guts. (company?) but i start to think, (why throw the drink out? who needs smoking, and pacing and swatting? lighting candles and scratching.) anything to get rid of these flies. (it’s shit.) i set my drink aside and i sit. i don’t smoke, i don’t scratch. i just sit and watch, alone or in twos, as the rest of these flies dive inside my scotch and die.

i had a party

all of my friends were there at once.

There was music, live pieces, some. And more music for dancing.

All the booze is gone, and the couch has been moved.

But no one ate the cheese.

(no one ate the cheese)

It was a battle between snacks and gin,

a survival of the fittest to see who would win.

…and it wasn’t even close.

Now I can’t let this cheese

spoil. can’t let this gin die in vain;

So before I leave town in twenty four hours, it looks like I am going to have to eat

a whole thing of manchego,

a large box of variety entertainment crackers,

a jar of chocolate covered espresso beans,

about two dozen fresh olives peppered with cigarette ash,

another thing of this cheese called “robusto,”

and the better part of a liter of white table wine.

What a fun fucking Friday.

i have nothing to eat

soda is for fatties

High fructose corn syrup is the devil. Stay healthy and please don’t drink soda, ever.

i’m not wearing pants

but am eating tomatoes.

And with them, slices of bread and cheese.

techie tacos

Anna’s Taqueria. A Cambridge classic. So, after heading across the river to see some Cellular Automata music with live improvisation, some friends and I stopped into MIT’s dining hall where sits a little Ana’s franchise. Fine purveyors of Mexican food, they are. I went for a “super burrito” with carnitas (pork). It was, save some yoghurt, the first things I had to eat that day, and I ate it quickly and heartily and was completely satisfied. The weight of the tortilla is just right. It doesn’t fall apart, tho it is oh-so-soft. Everything tastes fresh. It was perfectly spicy. It was a treat. Afterwards, I biked back across the river for a beer and came home.

you, jonathan

“I go to bakeries all day long/there’s a lack of sweetness in my life.”

“She eats garbage, eats shit gets stoned/I stay at home, eat health food, alone.”

“The girls would turn the color of an avocado when he would drive down their street in his El Dorado.”

“You can’t talk to the dude no, he’s just hanging around/no he don’t taste food, he’s just shoving it down.”

“I eat a pound I eat a ton and no there ain’t much I cuts up/and while I’m having merry fun bystanders puke their guts up.”

vanilla

When I was younger, in the days of ice cream, vanilla meant plain. It was the variety of ice cream that had the flavor turned off. It was the null set. Now that I am older, and eating yoghurt, vanilla means something else entirely. Plain yoghurt, the real deal, can be quite extreme. It is bitter and set in its ways. But vanilla, vanilla is a little sweeter and more full of hope, an inspired tableau into which toppings can be readily incorporated. Let’s not overdo it, but a lil’ vanill’? Hmm.

Poem

Wouldn’t it be funny

if The Finger had designed us

to shit just once a week?

all week long we’d get fatter

and fatter and then on Sunday morning

while everyone’s in church

ploop!

-Frank O’Hara

1959

a middle ground

What did I eat today? It is about midnight. In the morning, I remember rushing to school, trying to get some work done before class, and making just a small bit of strong coffee in my French Press. (Did I tell you? I accidentally bought ground coffee the other day, which, if you read this blog as much as I do, you will know is below my normal standards.) Now, this was followed by a red-eye and a bagel with sausage and havarti and onions from the coffee shop. (Oh yea.) A second cup of joe led me to my class, after which I did some more work and had a slice of pizza, (the coffee still in tow), and from there I have had nothing, other than the many requisite cigarettes and trips to the bathroom. I am tempted to start meditating.

eating like a kid

Today, I had a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. I resisted the urge to get interesting. Nay, I kept it simple. Real plain. White bread, sliced cheese, mayo, and creamy tomato soup. Nothing more. It was lovely.

“Several times a day.”

I put milk in my coffee, not because I can’t handle it black, but because I want my coffees to feel more like a meal and less like a cigarette.

in this world, there are burgers,

see, we don’t know if there is a god, but we know there are burgers. They have cheese, some, they have condiments, others, they come from cows, usually, and a few, a few even get eaten by Andy Warhol.

“Paradise and Lunch”

I’ll let this one speak for itself.

pbj

I just enjoyed a lovely sandwich, a sweet little number, chunky with blueberry. Lunch was chicken. Turmeric is my new favorite spice. I put it on early, with oil and maybe some pepper, let it soak, adding garlic powder and crushed red pepper along the way. At the end, I hit it with balsamic and some lemon, maybe, yeah, some lemon. Meanwhile, I was boiling brussels sprouts on the side, but as the chicken was going, I realized I was out of onions. Oh no! What to do? I love onion, and now I was left with a situation. So, I subbed sausage. Yep, chicken and knockwurst, a little bit of garlic, thyme, etc, and a side of brussels sprouts; ooh, and a V8. Further, this lunch was elided into smoothly from the dregs of the morning’s coffee, right on time so that I was cooking and still enjoying a lukewarm coffee and cream, and later, after working for a few hours, I went out for a nice latte.

good scotch

I am prone to “chugging,” in most aspects of life. This is why I enjoy a good scotch, for it gives me a situation where I have to sip, and it is nice to have something that won’t let you rush, that won’t offer a cheap thrill and passing sensation, but a real deep scotch, or a perfect espresso or black coffee on a late morning. Yea, good scotch is good. But sometimes I prefer a cheap scotch that you can just drink, pour it in a glass and enjoy without the complexity and the seventy-dollar price tag. “Come on,” says a good cheap scotch, basking in loads of ice on a warm day, “have one me. I am cheap and my name is Dewar’s.”

Ah, yes. Love has its many forms.

You Hear What You Eat

Wilco is now something more than a band. Apparently, these Chicagoan rockers have recently received music’s ultimate homage, that is, a Canadian has decided to open a sandwich joint in their honor. Hurray Wilco! According to pitchfork, Toronto’s brand new Sky Blue Sky Sandwich Company boasts a menu in which all items are named after the band’s songs. We have already seen a number of such eateries across the country, like “The Yellow Submarine,” “Beggar’s Banquet,” or the vegetarian friendly “Hall & Oats.” So, readers, what restaurants would you like to see named after bands and how would their cuisine be unique?

“Um, can I have the ‘Ashes of an American Flag’ on wheat, and an ‘I Must Be High’ with butter? And let me get a side of “Jesus, Etc.” to go, please.”

someone to share my meal with

carrots and mushrooms would make this house a home,

this lettuce a salad;

peel back the onion (and see)

the joys of vegan

I am going to stop chugging milk from the carton and start pouring it into a glass. My biggest fear is waking up, staggering with that dim, bovine look of morning in my face, and heading straight to the fridge to take down a healthy gulp of 1%, only to find, just as the swig is ending (since of course it wouldn’t occur to me right away), that the milk has seen better days and here I am gagging on bitter meal of milk chunks and separated dairy particles, acidic, complex, the chunks dissolving on my tongue releasing new levels of tangy poison, no longer a milk, not yet a yoghurt, a bleu moment of gagging and deceit and I am hunched over the sink, hair in my watery eyes, spitting into the running water, cursing cows and those who raise them. Even worse, would be to spend half an hour cooking something like mac’n'cheese, only at the end to see that the milk is bad and that you are out of butter and that this is going to be some odd macaroni.

I came, I saw, I ate frozen pizza

I use real milk and butter, along with vegan sausage in my Mac ‘n’ Cheese. Why vegan sausage? I don’t know. Not at all as good as the real thing. That was all I had yesterday, 1/2 for lunch, 1/2 for dinner. I don’t think I have eaten meat in days. To ease the transition back into the carnal, I am now going to have a Chicken Caesar Pizza! Weird, right? It’s like a salad, but with dough where the lettuce should be. Oh god. Let’s see, earlier today I had a garlic bagel with tomatoes, onions, and scallion cream cheese for lunch, an intelligent order, if I may. The day also featured three smoothly elided cups of coffee, and give or take as many cigarettes. Oh, and of course a pot of coffee in the AM and some strawberry Kefir. Also, I need to be drinking more water, since occasionally I get coffee related headaches in which the only cure would be more coffee. A conundrum if I’ve ever seen one.

Guest Poet

Below is a poem by composer, percussionist, and chef, John Mehrmann. A master of voices, a lover of language and a personal friend and collaborator of mine, John is tall man from the northeast with ear for harmonizing and a tongue for gourmandizing. This poem, with its constant rhythmic meter and ever shifting accent, is as humorous as it is funny, and I chose to publish it for my eaters since I feel it embodies much of the nature of this blog. Thanks, John.

Lunch is a time
For eating a sandwich
With carrots and mushrooms and cheese.
Lunch is a time
For eating a sandwich
With green avocados and peas.
With peas, with peas!
What madness is this,
A vegetable sandwich with peas?
Lunch is a time for eating a sandwich
But leave out the peas, if you please.

morning of my life

Leftover coffee.

Ran out of beans, almost out.

Put the last 12 beans

in with yesterday’s

dank grounds and heated it back

up. It did the trick.