I opened a Chef John Tastemade video. They were over-focusing on his stupid technique. If you can stomach that, you cannot even download or print their recipes. Selling their stupid jars of who knows what on Amazon? Primadonna much? I don't need it.
I do love Vincenzo's Plate Pasta Grammar reviewing Giada De Laurentiis' videos. And Samin Nosrat: "But I'll never forget the lesson I learned that day; Food can only be as delicious as the fat with which it is cooked. I saw fat as an important and versatile ingredient in its own right rather than a cooking medium."
I am currently in a very rough place with coffee. I sail along for several years in a pretty good place, and one day, I am shot down with the likes of a ground-to-air missile. Then, all coffee is expensive. I avoided the price hike for a long time because it took Amazon a significant time to raise prices on our formerly beloved New England Coffee. The pricing assault is not the worst, though. The fact is, I am left wanting more. I can taste the changes (most likely due to supply and sourcing pricing); this stuff is not half as good-tasting as it used to be.
So I brought a couple of bags of Starbucks into the house because they were on sale that week. For Donna, that worked ok because she is a mocha coffee drinker. For me, not as good. Starbucks has a bitter note for me. They also dust with other things, including cocoa. I overdosed on flavored coffee in the 1990's. I am never going back again.
I was at my local Hannaford (rhymes with "Can't-Afford"). I always referred to them as "Scamaford," but these guys have grown on me a little over the last 6 years, so now, there are actually items that I prefer to buy here. If I had to completely shop here, with their limited produce selection and ridiculously high dry and dairy prices, I would need to take weekly trips to Shaws, for perspective, where they literally hold you hostage with rifles and clean you out of all your money, and your belongings, and perhaps even your offspring. Am I bitter? We now return to the point.
Hannaford had these very environmentally responsible-looking bags of coffee that are green and white: Nature's Promise Organic Colombian coffee. The price was reasonable (by current standards, in 1972 it would be enough to buy the ingredients for a meal for a family of five). The coffee, it turns out, is weak, stale, tobacco-like, and, overall, an assault on the senses. In fact, I would dare say, it tastes like one of Nature's OTHER Promises, if you catch my drift.
One hundred fifty-five dollars is all that stands between me and getting you food on the weekends. It is sustainable, it is the right direction, it has to happen! I am in such a weird spot right now. It is like my own version of "All Good Things." A colossal merry-go-round of untethered collisions across space and time. "No, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no...I love Italian, and so do you... Yes."
Show me your heart in your words, in your drawing on the vessel, the gift comes in, in your food. Make me laugh, make me cry. Feel something, make it real. Be brave.
Sail on, o mighty ship of fragmentation. What is it that holds you together? The storms of bad decisions, the shortage of needed sustenance, and the aftermath of marauders stealing all power, how do you not just disappear across the night sky until you are nothing?
I know one thing. I want to scream, but I don't know why. When I think of all of the adjustments I made, I think of that lonely 7 Eleven at the end of an 18-mile road, on Padre Island. I turned dials. I filed and sanded. Polished and painted. Desolation was what I was made of. I took apart every conversation that settled wrong in my gut and asked myself why. I charged myself with keeping quiet, not reacting, cool, seemingly cold. Fool the masses, fool yourself.
It's May. Sickness squelches all that I wish to accomplish. It won't hold me down, I tell you! It won't. But as I look out the window, I see the sweet new green leaves contrast against a deep purple sky. Trouble. The one thing I cannot fix or control.
When I look through the window that is painted silver on the back, it is hard to see because I feel he should have more answers than I do. It is all facade. You know how I can tell. I read the news of the day. It said the current adult generation is at a disadvantage. We held that storm back. Blood, sweat, and tears. We did it.
What I want to see now is all that I will see in November. What a gift that would be. To know what is truly important. Spring took 100 years to arrive, and now that it is here, I don't even know where to start. I know I am churning and burning, though. Kimchi made, Desert Storm story finished, 1985 finished. I am checking boxes, and yet it never seems soon enough for me.
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