How I wound up here (Part 1)
Many of you have asked...clamored, even..."How can I become a foodie like you, Joke?"
I cannot say I recommend this path to everyone, but here are the autobiographical Cliffs Notes of a foodie.
In early 1974, my mom handed a Better Homes & Gardens Junior Cookbook to my sister. My sister being who she is* tossed the book aside on the assumption she'd always have someone else do the cooking, which at any rate was no biggy, since all she cared about was chocolate. I picked it up because I had just had something deliciously exotic at the school cafeteria** which I had never had before and I simply needed to replicate this thing...this ambrosial...meatloaf. To someone weaned on garlic & lime marinated pork roasts and plantain chips and poached taro root with EVOO, and chorizo and all that, this was bewilderingly exotic stuff.
Anyway, all the cookbooks in the house were tomes which enshrined recipes for Iberospheric edibles and therefore, in a fit of desperation, I took possession of the aforementioned cookbook. Not only was meatloaf represented in these pages, but also other delights such as pot roast, macaroni and cheese (both the creamy AND the crunchily-topped casserole), salisbury steak, "chili con carne with meat" (stop and ponder that for a bit all of you who are down with the Castilian), PB&J sandwiches, as well as hot dogs and burgers, which my parents only allowed as a rare treat, and quite reluctantly at that.
So I took hold of the book and made the Mini Lunchbox Meatloaf even though it said quite explicitly to "ask Mother to help you" and it was pretty good. Wow. This works! I am not bound by the conventions of the patriarchal hegemony. I am liberated, hear me roar! I can eat whatever the Hell I want!
Cool.
For the most part I kept to the eleventy zillion variations of hot dogs and burgers and cookies and brownies. This kept me going for 3 years, until, one fine spring morning I discovered girls.***
Seeing as how girls had suddenly replaced the GI Joe Submarine Base as the focus of my existence, I decided to apply my intellect towards perfecting an approach that would yield success with the distaff side of the species. For reasons (and under circumstances) which are well beyond the scope of this blog entry, my research took me to Playboy magazine. I regret to say that I also read the articles, on the assumption that a guy who absorbed and acted upon all the information contained therein, would somehow manage to surround himself with girls such as those also showcased within those pages. (The logic seemed impeccable to me.)
While I have not sounded out those who knew me way back when, I fear that I must have resembled the Andy Kaufman "Vic Ferrari" character from Taxi. Be that as that may, the way I figured it, a serious component in being a successful Lothario (or, if you prefer, Casanova...I'm in no mood to split hairs) was being able to fix a SPECTACULAR dinner for--as we said in the 70s--Your Foxy Lady.****
There was only one solution: Buy The Playboy's Gourmet by Thomas Mario. Yes, you are right to wonder what the Hell sort of 14 year old gathers up his pennies to buy such a book, but I was that sort of kid and, sadly, the boy is father to the man. Anyway, this book had HUGE vistas, never seen in the pages of the BH&G book. Beef Wellington. Coq Au Vin. Veal Oscar. Chocolate Mousse. Peach Melba. Cherries Jubilee. ***** The way I saw it, I'd have a harem before the time my driver's license had cooled in my wallet.
But, as my friend Eric cautioned, I had to beware making something the first time and through inexperience and/or nervousness, misreading the directions and wind up with something tasting, as Eric put it, like "monkey shit." The boy had a point. I then struck upon the notion of using my family as guinea pigs. They are going to help me become an irresistible chick magnet and they don't even know it! I guess this is what Lenin meant by "useful idiots," the fools!!
So I convinced my parents to let me make Beef Bourgignone for dinner. Since my mother's idea of the finest cooking was whatever was cooked by someone else and my father was quite curious, they nodded assent and off I went into the kitchen, where I read the recipe with the care normally reserved for a defibrillator.
The thing was a hit. I received the first uncompromised compliment from my father that I could ever remember. It also tasted amazing. My sister even said it was "y'know...awright" which is worth 3 Michelin stars, right there. I was hooked.
My parents couldn't make sense of my humor, my sister thought I was a weirdo, and her friends thought me a sort of mad genius. This was my ticket. "Lock up your daughters," I thought.
Shortly thereafter, a mere 4 months after turning 17 I was off to college, far away from home and VERY far away from the confines of an all-boy's school. There were girls to conquer and I had my own apartment with my very own (shoebox-sized) kitchen.
* This will come as no shock to those who know her.
** I'd forgotten my lunchbox.
*** I still haven't recovered.
**** How I was going to bring--with clearly prurient intent--a Foxy Lady for an intimate dinner at my parents house, I never gave any thought.
***** Hey, quit laughing! That was serious foodie territory back in 1978.
I cannot say I recommend this path to everyone, but here are the autobiographical Cliffs Notes of a foodie.
In early 1974, my mom handed a Better Homes & Gardens Junior Cookbook to my sister. My sister being who she is* tossed the book aside on the assumption she'd always have someone else do the cooking, which at any rate was no biggy, since all she cared about was chocolate. I picked it up because I had just had something deliciously exotic at the school cafeteria** which I had never had before and I simply needed to replicate this thing...this ambrosial...meatloaf. To someone weaned on garlic & lime marinated pork roasts and plantain chips and poached taro root with EVOO, and chorizo and all that, this was bewilderingly exotic stuff.
Anyway, all the cookbooks in the house were tomes which enshrined recipes for Iberospheric edibles and therefore, in a fit of desperation, I took possession of the aforementioned cookbook. Not only was meatloaf represented in these pages, but also other delights such as pot roast, macaroni and cheese (both the creamy AND the crunchily-topped casserole), salisbury steak, "chili con carne with meat" (stop and ponder that for a bit all of you who are down with the Castilian), PB&J sandwiches, as well as hot dogs and burgers, which my parents only allowed as a rare treat, and quite reluctantly at that.
So I took hold of the book and made the Mini Lunchbox Meatloaf even though it said quite explicitly to "ask Mother to help you" and it was pretty good. Wow. This works! I am not bound by the conventions of the patriarchal hegemony. I am liberated, hear me roar! I can eat whatever the Hell I want!
Cool.
For the most part I kept to the eleventy zillion variations of hot dogs and burgers and cookies and brownies. This kept me going for 3 years, until, one fine spring morning I discovered girls.***
Seeing as how girls had suddenly replaced the GI Joe Submarine Base as the focus of my existence, I decided to apply my intellect towards perfecting an approach that would yield success with the distaff side of the species. For reasons (and under circumstances) which are well beyond the scope of this blog entry, my research took me to Playboy magazine. I regret to say that I also read the articles, on the assumption that a guy who absorbed and acted upon all the information contained therein, would somehow manage to surround himself with girls such as those also showcased within those pages. (The logic seemed impeccable to me.)
While I have not sounded out those who knew me way back when, I fear that I must have resembled the Andy Kaufman "Vic Ferrari" character from Taxi. Be that as that may, the way I figured it, a serious component in being a successful Lothario (or, if you prefer, Casanova...I'm in no mood to split hairs) was being able to fix a SPECTACULAR dinner for--as we said in the 70s--Your Foxy Lady.****
There was only one solution: Buy The Playboy's Gourmet by Thomas Mario. Yes, you are right to wonder what the Hell sort of 14 year old gathers up his pennies to buy such a book, but I was that sort of kid and, sadly, the boy is father to the man. Anyway, this book had HUGE vistas, never seen in the pages of the BH&G book. Beef Wellington. Coq Au Vin. Veal Oscar. Chocolate Mousse. Peach Melba. Cherries Jubilee. ***** The way I saw it, I'd have a harem before the time my driver's license had cooled in my wallet.
But, as my friend Eric cautioned, I had to beware making something the first time and through inexperience and/or nervousness, misreading the directions and wind up with something tasting, as Eric put it, like "monkey shit." The boy had a point. I then struck upon the notion of using my family as guinea pigs. They are going to help me become an irresistible chick magnet and they don't even know it! I guess this is what Lenin meant by "useful idiots," the fools!!
So I convinced my parents to let me make Beef Bourgignone for dinner. Since my mother's idea of the finest cooking was whatever was cooked by someone else and my father was quite curious, they nodded assent and off I went into the kitchen, where I read the recipe with the care normally reserved for a defibrillator.
The thing was a hit. I received the first uncompromised compliment from my father that I could ever remember. It also tasted amazing. My sister even said it was "y'know...awright" which is worth 3 Michelin stars, right there. I was hooked.
My parents couldn't make sense of my humor, my sister thought I was a weirdo, and her friends thought me a sort of mad genius. This was my ticket. "Lock up your daughters," I thought.
Shortly thereafter, a mere 4 months after turning 17 I was off to college, far away from home and VERY far away from the confines of an all-boy's school. There were girls to conquer and I had my own apartment with my very own (shoebox-sized) kitchen.
[to be continued...]
* This will come as no shock to those who know her.
** I'd forgotten my lunchbox.
*** I still haven't recovered.
**** How I was going to bring--with clearly prurient intent--a Foxy Lady for an intimate dinner at my parents house, I never gave any thought.
***** Hey, quit laughing! That was serious foodie territory back in 1978.
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