not falling down

For your convenience and edification, I present herein the Brendan Adkins Lunchtime Heuristic Decision Chart. It has served me well for years, and I can confidently recommend its immediate adoption.

I have these two recipes in text files on my desktop, which is dumb because I can’t see my desktop when I need to use them and I am separated from my desktop by three hours and a mountain range. Both are extremely healthy and require a sophisticated palate to appreciate.

Dirty Chicken
(so named by Kara & co on True Blood night; brought to us from Kentucky by Monica)

1 cup shredded or cubed mozzarella
1/2 cup cheap ranch dressing
1/2 cup hot wing sauce (yes, you can buy this in bottles at Safeway)
8 oz cream cheese
1 10-12 oz can chicken (like canned tuna, only… it’s chicken)

Mash up in a glass or ceramic bowl. Microwave for three or four minutes, stirring every minute. Eat with chips. Serves party.

This next one is what I made for months when I wanted potatoes until I discovered an amazing secret recipe for perfect french fries, which I am not going to link to because it is too awesome. MY THIRD-BEST POTATO RECIPE: I HEREBY BEQUEATH IT.

Boiled Fried Potatoes

About 8-10 new potatoes, either Yukon gold or red
3 Tbsp butter
Kosher salt
1 Tbsp thyme
1/2 tsp white pepper
Water

You need a seasoned cast-iron skillet for this because otherwise they’ll stick like demons.

Mash up a tablespoon of the salt and the thyme with a mortar and pestle. Scrub the potatoes and chop them into 2-3 little discs per potato, cutting off the ends so both sides have an exposed surface. Place the potatoes in a single layer on the skillet, add just enough water to cover them, turn the burner to medium-high and add the mixed salt and thyme and the butter. Then wait for the water to all boil off.

When it’s gone–you will know because the tenor of the hissing sound has changed and the bubbles look different–turn the heat down to medium. Continue to fry the potatoes, flipping once and moving the interior potatoes to the sides of the pan once the first side is golden and crusty. When both sides are golden and crusty, add more salt and pepper, then eat. This serves about two hungry people.

NOTE: You can substitute olive oil for the butter but it’s not as bad for you.

Maybe everyone already knows this, but whenever I make a cream sauce for pasta, the recipe calls for heavy cream and I never have any on hand. What I usually do have is sour cream, which works way better! The taste and texture are great, you don’t have to reduce it, and it combines with olive oil more easily. You can splash in a little milk or water if it’s too thick.

(Awesome things to sauté and toss in said sauce: garlic, shallots, tomatoes and shrimp or smoked salmon.)

(Imagine there is a succulent picture of an orange-yellow-brown lamb dish in a skillet here, because I forgot to take one.)

I’m writing this down because it’s something I synthesized from whatever came up when I typed “lamb tagine raisisn raisins” into Google and I don’t want to forget it. It was really good. Thanks again, cast-iron skillet! (Thanks for the cast-iron skillet, Mom.)

We used a package of little loin chops for this, but the originals say shoulder or leg would work fine too, and since it’s marinated I don’t doubt it. Serves two and a half.

Meat
1 lb lamb of some kind
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp chopped cilantro
Pinch of saffron threads
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
2 Tbsp tomato paste
Salt and pepper

Toss this all around in a plastic container or bag, seal it and marinate in the refrigerator overnight. You can probably get away with a couple hours if you’re in a hurry.

Vegetables

1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 sweet onion, halved and sliced radially
3 more cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1 1/2 cups stock of some kind
2 carrots, or 2 cups baby carrots, chunked
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup chickpeas
1 cup golden raisins

You also need a cast-iron skillet with an oven-safe lid. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Put the butter and olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and melt. Put the onions in and brown, then toss the garlic in just long enough to toast it. Add the stock, cumin, carrots, and cinnamon. Get the lamb out of the refrigerator and put it in, keeping it on the heat just long enough to get it white on both sides; the whole dish should be simmering.

Cover the skillet and put it in the oven; cook for 1 hour. Remove the dish and add raisins and chickpeas, stirring around a little bit so the raisins will flavor the liquid. Cover again and put back in the oven for 30 minutes.

Now you’re done! We had this with couscous, but you could do rice, of course, or put some chopped and peeled potatoes in when you add the carrots.

Leonard was here for a week! It was great! I didn’t blog about it because I was too busy hanging out with Leonard. Leonard didn’t blog about it because he apparently spends two weeks out of three on airplanes, to the point that travelblogging has become passé. The world demands Leonard.

Kara and I tried to show him the good side of the city: we ate at a lot of restaurants, played a lot of games, climbed a waterfall and discovered that happiness comes in gourds. Leonard also fixed my stupid hard drive (twice!) and helped me find a new grip on a game design problem that’s been bothering me for months. I can only assume that when Sumana visits in November, she will improve my gas mileage and teach me how to get free money from the government.

By the way! Kara and I are dating, in case you care but are not on Facebook. It is also great! Dating, I mean; Facebook is mostly okay.

This is mostly for my own records. The correct way to rejuvenate your roommate’s leftover half-steak (kept in a Ziploc container overnight) is as follows: slice thin and put it back in the container, splash a little balsamic vinegar and olive oil on it, seal the lid and shake around to coat. Let marinate for ten minutes. Dump on a piece of foil and broil in the toaster oven for a couple minutes more. Sandwich with farmer’s market lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise between halves of crusty roll from the bakery down the street. Ride the flavor horns.

What you have to understand about the Burger King Loaded Steakburger is that I had no choice in the matter. The moment I spied it billboardwise, during the long drive west, I was gripped by the same potent mixture of revulsion and lust that came upon me once in college, when Jon and I first saw the commercial for the Bacon Club Chalupa. We turned to each other, then, eyes wide and desperate, like two men drowning who each believe the other can swim.

Neither could.

So it was only a matter of time before I ran out of excuses for not planting this particular meatbomb in my face. Leaving the drive-thru not ten minutes ago, I left steering to my nervous left hand while my right fumbled through wrappers. The first thing I saw was the edge of the patty, protruding a full inch beyond the hapless bun like a beckoning pseudopod; the second was the utter absence of traditional dressing. There is no pickle here, no tomato. The bastards have delivered a sullen daub of gray potato and onion shards instead, and they have somehow transmuted lettuce to bacon. The rites involved are none I care to imagine.

The sandwich is not good. I stress this even in the full knowledge that it will accomplish nothing; those who weren’t going to eat it won’t, and the rest of you will have no more agency than I did. But like any Lovecraftian narrator, I am bound to commit these desperate words by sheer force of narrative. I must write of its taste, like barbecue Spam fried in motor oil. I must write of its texture, which is also like barbecue Spam fried in motor oil. I must tell you how it sits in my stomach e’en now, heavily roiled, plotting its course downward with the slow cunning of a brain-damaged tiger on spelunk.

Taco Bell recently reintroduced the Bacon Club Chalupa. Should I even have time to post this missive, I cannot imagine that I will outlive it long. The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some crispy flatbread, sliding deep-fried fingers up to caress the latch.

Hillary has pretty much the best title ever for her personal journal, but today I’m plugging her food blog, Kimchi for Beginners. It meets the Gramazio-Richardson test of always making me hungry, except it doesn’t have recipes. Not that I make the recipes in Leonard’s or Holly’s blogs nearly as often as I want to.

What Hillary’s blog does have is the clever thing where it sneaks in glances at Korean culture from a unique perspective. I wish I’d been anywhere near as responsible a documentarian on my two international trips. Maybe I should try living in Canada? I understand they do startling things with ketchup and mayonnaise.

After a TV show about Edwardian cuisine, the household tonight spent twenty minutes in goggling horror at the idea of a duck press. Here is what a duck press is used for: squishing a duck so hard that all the blood comes out. That’s it! Apparently they were later bastardized into lobster presses (do lobsters have blood? I thought they were insects) and now duck presses cost thousands of dollars and are impossible to find.

But the ones you can find have little webbed feet.

Ride the flavor horns. Dammit! I knew there was a better joke than the “hyperspace” thing in the last entry, I just couldn’t get the bat off my shoulder. Oh well. There’s always next year.

Thanks to all the people who have offered further sandwich suggestions in the comments. More! More! I should clarify that I am quite familiar with the unholy power of bacon, but will generally not eat sharp or nontoasted cheese.