The Waiting - 2022 Wrap-up

Looking back over this past year, things seem a little unreal, like they happened to someone else. My wife and I both turned 40: my near-vision started to blur a little, I cut a lot of my hair off and found it was, as I suspected, thinning. I continue to forget things people say to me seconds after they say them. Nothing seems real. I'm not interested. I've been waiting for something, but I don't know what it is. Maybe for things to go back to the way they were in 2019. Maybe something else entirely. I've spent a lot of days in the forest searching for something. Jokes about death seem somehow less funny, but at the same time less serious. Even writing this, I wonder how deeply I feel any of the preceding. Everything sort of scratches the surface. I yell at strangers in traffic, but I'm not really mad. I yell at my kids for doing dumb things, but I guess I sort of get it. I curse all the time. But casually. I say all of this, not as a way of complaining, but maybe as a way of accepting my gradual slide into decrepitude. Speaking of which, here's some famous people that died this year: 

Sidney Poitier

Bob Saget

Meatloaf

Louie Anderson

Mark Lanagan

William Hurt

Taylor Hawkins

Gilbert Gottfried

Naomi Judd

Ray Liotta

James Caan

Merry Christmas 2022

 

The Curry Rice of My Childhood

 When we were very small, anything green at mealtime was a signal that something unpleasant awaited. Seven layer salad. Canned asparagus. Groene bonen on boiled potatoes (again). Salad-courtesy-of-the-chef's-back-yard. Spinach fandango.

Mem's Curry Rice was an exception. It was green in a not entirely natural way. In a nature-says-stop-this-is-not-edible way. In a 90s turn-a-turtle-into-a-ninja way. In a definitely-not-a-vegetable way. I still don't know how she got it so green.

I loved the way it smelled cooking down in the plug-in skillet. I loved the way we passed around the can of tomato sauce with two triangular punch-holes from plate to plate as we impatiently waited our turn to create a masterpiece in livid green and red or play tic-tac-toe with our food. It was the meal I most associate with the gezelligheit of my upbringing. It must have been convenient to make too, because we ate it a lot. Mem usually ate something else, though Heit dove right in with us.

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef

1 onion, chopped

1 tsp curry

1 cup rice

1 3/4 cup water

1 tsp salt

1 dab butter

8 oz tomato sauce in can

Process

Brown the hamburger in a skillet with the onion. Drain off the liquid. Mix in the curry, Add the rice, water, salt and butter. Cook on low for 20 minutes. There it is, dead simple. The art comes in when serving: get an old fashioned can punch-style opener and put a small and a large triangular hole in the lid of the can roughly opposite each other. Pour the tomato sauce into the individual bowl in your favorite impressionist style.

-Thanks to Reanna Bergman for codifying a lot of this recipe.

NB: while looking for a picture of an old-fashioned can punch, I learned that the tab on the back of some bottle openers is for lifting the tab on an aluminum can.

Shouting Hollowly into the Void - 2021 wrap-up

 This is the fifteenth year of the death list, which is a sort of anniversary I suppose. Every year I look over my running list of celebrity passings, scan wikipedia for a few nights to confirm I didn't miss too many, and put it all together. I've been doing this long enough now that friends send me notice when someone famous dies, as do coworkers. It feels a little more pointless this year, and I'm not sure why. It may be the general feeling I've had recently, where every goal is put on hold, and I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I can't help feeling that every time I react emotionally to a stimulus, it's an act, and I can view it objectively while still responding in an expected way. I guess I'm maintaining. So as we enter this, our fourth year of pandemic, I adjure you all to do your best to stay healthy; I knew several people on this list personally.

Bret Hoekema
Siegfried Fischbacher
Phil Spector
Hank Aaron
Larry King
Dustin Diamond
Christopher Plummer
Larry Flynt
Chick Corea
Carmen
Rush Limbaugh

Merry Christmas 2021

 

Halloween Pumpkin 2021

 

The Garlic Bread of My Childhood

 This is the first garlic bread I remember having. It isn't much, but every time I have it, it reminds me of all my favorite parts of mealtime together. 

Ingredients

1 loaf french bread*

1/3 cup of butter

1/3 tsp garlic powder

Process

Heat oven to 350

Melt butter in the microwave (probably ~30 sec)

Mix garlic powder in the melted powder

Pour mixture into a 9x13 pan

Dip one side of the bread and swipe around until evenly coated

Flip bread, swipe around again

Bake for 12-15 minutes**

*The crumb of the bread seems to be important here. If the bubbles left from the yeast are two big, the bread isn't as easy to coat evenly. If you use a different style bakery roll, the results will taste about as good, but it's more worrying during the process.

** I pull the bread out when the top of the bread has firmed up.