Someone has to speak out for all the dicks of the world
And I’m just the guy to do it.
Before getting down to business, let me say a few things. Sis, don’t read this one. There are some things you don’t want or need to know about your little brother. This goes for anyone in my family, although I think the rest of you gave up on me a long time ago.
Let’s see — patients, hospital employees, my employees, persons under the age of eighteen, psychopaths, stalkers, my SON (just in case you don’t realize you’re under eighteen) — all of you can just click away right now. Here, you want a fun place to click to? Read Waiter Rant. That guy is freaking hilarious.
Y’all gone? Good. That should leave my usual crowd, who are more than welcome to chime in. The topic: rug cleaning and door knob polishing. You know what I mean.
Flan Wars
So, Kate’s flan recipe? Big hit with me and Karen. Don’t know about Jake yet, since the boy is odd when it comes to sweets. Loves Nilla wafers and orange Tic Tacs (though not together), dislikes most chocolatey desserts. Usually, he doesn’t even want dessert, which might explain why at ten years old he still only weighs about 50 pounds.
I don’t understand Beth’s animosity towards flan. Count on Beth not to be vague in her opinions:
Oh please, you have to be willfully blind to the gelatinous, slimy, jiggly, sloppy-wet texture of flan to NOT see how very snot-like it is. All you flan-lovers are kidding yourselves. You’re eating snot-like food. It’s okay, you’re ALLOWED to like snot-like food. You probably are okay with steamed okra, too.
Beth, you do NOT know booger foods until you eat fish stomach. Or some damned thing. I have this dim memory of my high school girlfriend’s mom feeding me something protoplasmic that tried mightily to climb back out of my esophagus. I think the Chinese word for it sounded like “jook,” and I was told it was fish stomach, although this may have been merely another of that woman’s many hazing rituals for me. May, you’re Chinese, aren’t you? Care to figure this one out?
I’m waiting for someone to say, “Oh, jook! That’s delicious!!! But you wouldn’t understand — it’s comfort food.”
It’s true. No one can understand comfort food except for the comforted. Like Jim yesterday with matzoh brei. How can anyone not like matzoh brei? But then I remember how much my wife likes mochi. If flan is snot, mochi is snot allowed to dessicate a few days under the desert sun.
Two questions. One I’ve asked before, but it was ages ago and I have new readers. The second is self-explanatory.
1. What is your comfort food?
2. Flan: snot or not?
D.
Thirteen easy pieces
It’s Thursday on the East Coast, and that’s good enough for me, especially since my only other ideas for tonight were
- I am a Warcraft Widower (or, How My Son Used a PC Game to Win the Oedipal Challenge)
- I’m average! Praise the Lord, I won’t have to get my suspensory ligament severed after all! (Been reading about average erect penis lengths in Redbook lately.)
Yeah, that’s it. Slim pickens, my friends. The muse has been working her hiney off on my romance novel, so she tends to kvetch around blog-writing time.
Below the cut: thirteen simple and delicious recipes to get you through the day.
Author in need of a bitch-slap
No, not me, at least I’m not in any more need of a bitch-slapping than usual. Uh-uh. This guy, and for this book:
Portrait of Christopher Walken as a Young Man
Yet another adventure in Random Flickr Blogging. This week’s random number: 0382. Image shamelessly copped from Chapster.
For those of you who consider this post a little odd, I spent the last fifteen minutes of my life washing the dishes and singing (in baby talk) Romeo Void’s Never Say Never to my Tabby, Faithful.
I might like you better
If we slept together
But there’s somethin
In your eyes that says
Maybe that’s never
Never say never
There. That should put everything else into perspective.
Portrait of Christopher Walken as a Young Man
I always did feel sorry for the little bastards
From the Outhouse Rag, get a load of this Slovenian Durex Condom commercial.
I particularly enjoy the look of terror on the girl’s face when the li’l white buggers charged her.
D.
He seemed like such a nice young man . . .
Those of you who slavishly follow my every word know that I’ve been reading Tam Jones’s books all back-asswards, first Threads of Malice (reviewed here), now Ghosts in the Snow. Not that that’s a problem. As she has mentioned on her blog, she wrote Threads as a stand-alone — no knowledge of Ghosts necessary.
I think it’s a good thing that I read Threads first. Tam commits more than a few heinous acts in Threads, jaw-dropping moments when I thought: No. She didn’t. Oh sweet Lord NO, she DID! Did I read that right? She couldn’t have! . . . and so forth.
(And Tam seems so gentle and soft-spoken on her blog. It’s difficult to believe these words have flowed from her pen. Her muse must be one right bastard, a genuine Mr. Hyde.)
Anyway, thanks to Threads, I figured Tam was capable of anything — thus making Ghosts all the more suspenseful. Here’s the set-up: someone’s killing the naughty girls of Castle Faldorrah, killing them in ways that would make Jack the Ripper beam with admiration. Dubric Byerly, Castellan of Faldorrah, must find the murderer. Dubric is Faldorrah’s top cop and, thanks to a run-in decades ago with the Goddess Malanna, he’s cursed with ghosts. Specifically, the ghosts of all those who have been killed on Dubric’s watch plague him until he brings their killer to justice. Only then can Dubric rest easy.
Hell of a carrot and stick, eh?
She would pick the one who survives her husband
I made Karen take this “Which wife of Henry the Eighth are you?” test. Did she get Anne Boleyn? Naw.
Congratulations! You are Katherine Parr.Katherine Parr spent nearly her whole life married to crotchety old men: Henry was the THIRD old fart she was forced to marry. Is it any wonder she turned to books and religion to occupy her time?Katherine wasn’t just smart, she was a tiny bit uppity, too: she almost got herself thrown in jail for arguing with His Royal Fatness about some theological issues. After Henry croaked, Katherine dropped the prim and proper act and married Thomas Seymour, a handsome, dashing pirate kind of guy who was also as dumb as a post.Which goes to show you that even bookworms know how to get it on.
Which of Henry VIII’s wives are you? this quiz was made by Lori Fury
D.
B’stila, bstila, pastilla, bisteeya . . . aw, whatever
Karen and I tasted our first b’stila at a Moroccan restaurant in Palo Alto. Know what I remember from that meal?
- The bellydancer
- B’stila
- The funky way they pour coffee at Moroccan restaurants
- Stuffing dollar bills into the bellydancer’s skirt
- The bellydancer
As you can plainly see, the b’stila made a powerful impression. What an amazing blend of sensations: crispy fillo, savory chicken, sweet almonds, satiny egg. If I could have eaten it off the bellydancer’s belly, my life would have been complete.
It took me a few years to try this on my own. Is it difficult? Naw. Is it time-consuming? Oh hell yeah. Anything involving fillo is time-consuming. Is it worth it? I think so.
For tonight’s b’stila, bisteeya, pastilla, whatever, I adapted this recipe from The Traveler’s Lunchbox (thanks, May!) Melissa gives her sources, and my God, does that woman have one ass-whomping cookbook library. Makes my cookbook library want to run off into the broom closet, tail between it’s imaginary legs.
Here’s the result. Notes below the cut.
Ultimate leftover roast chicken
I made saltwater chicken tonight, which means that since we’re small eaters, we now have half a leftover roast chicken in the refrigerator. What do you do with leftover roast chicken?
I love chicken pot pie, but no one else in my family feels the same way. They don’t even rave when I elevate the dish to ludicrous extremes — dry roasting the vegetables, making a sauce from homemade chicken stock, and so forth. Oh, well. I shouldn’t be eating all those empty carbs anyway.
Sandwiches? Leftover saltwater chicken makes awesome sandwiches, but sandwiches lack creativity. Unless I make panini. There’s a thought.
But I know what will score me the most points with the wife: b’stila. (The hardest thing about b’stila is remembering how to spell the damnable thing.) B’stila is a Middle Eastern chicken pie with layers of crispy, buttery filo, chicken seasoned with saffron, parsley, and cinnamon (and sometimes ginger), roasted blanched almonds coarsely ground and combined with sugar and cinnamon, and scrambled eggs. Bake until golden brown, top with powdered sugar and cinnamon.
I can’t think of any better treatment of leftover roast chicken than b’stila, but I’m open to suggestions.
D.
Note: A moment ago, I did a Google image search for bstila and b’stila. No one has uploaded any pictures of this beautiful dish. Now I have to make b’stila, take pictures, and blog about it.
Second Note: Ooooh, now I know what Brad is gonna fix for Lori (in my work-in-progress, for those of you who are wondering WTF I’m talking about). Nothing says love like b’stila. Except perhaps challah. Or perhaps a crown roast of lamb.