Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Strangeways, here we are.

Dear Internet,

Some days are great and you walk around giddy. Some days are harrowing nightmares and you pass out from adrenalin poisoning. Some days are boring and you go all comatose from boredom.

Today is none of the above.

How?

My house has begun to spring forth nail clippers.

Yes, you've got that right. Nail clippers. All over the bloody place. Cropping up like asparagi or mushrooms. One minute there's nothing on, say, the kitchen counter...then bam! There's a nail clipper there. In the last 20something hours, I have harvested about 8 nail clippers. I dunno what sort of progression we're staring at, but you could be reading about a tidal wave of nail clippers surging forth and leveling cities.

We only have 40 fingers in this house, and at the current rate we're looking at one clipper for each five available digits.
=========================
Wow. October's overwith already.

Today being Hallowe'en we start the stupid decoration/pointless engorgement season that won't let up until Easter. The idea, as near as I can figure it, is to eat your own weight in food you normally wouldn't touch (let alone in these quantities) and then fool yourself into thinking you can burn off the eleventy gazillion calories by decorating and redecorating.

Example:

Hallowe'en. You get your pumpkins, gut them, mutilate them, stick a live fire in their carcass. Maybe you toast the seeds with assorted seasonings. You put up fake spiderwebs, corny/scary signs with cartoon ghosts, vampires, witches and infernal minions. Then you go around gathering the least healthy food imaginable: mass market candy. Your kids, being the precise sort of issue only you could have offsprung, will ingest only those sorts of candies they like and they leave the rest for to you compliantly consume. (Because wasting food is something hardwired into your mind as being a Very Bad Thing...setting aside the thorny issue of whether ChocoBombs can actually be considered food.)

You immediately launch into Thanksgiving. You turn the pumpkins around, evict the faux-scary ghosts, etc. in favor of scarecrows and turkeys and 17th Century religious fundamentalists and 17th Century indigenous tribespersons. This leaves you with barely three weeks to plan THE pinnacle of eating, ostensibly to thank the Almighty. You try to make foie gras (excepting those poor benighted souls who reside in Chicago or California, where cannibals must do without) out of your own liver with the ingestion of turkey, stuffing/dressing, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, some variant of cranberry, corn, three kinds of pie and maybe a nice salad to assuage your conscience.

Then you leap into Chanukah/Christmas (sometimes both, if you're wired that way) which is very decorating-intensive, deluding you into feeling thinner. Maybe you'll do something nice for the less fortunate and feeling virtuous sort of translates into feeling slim. Christmas Eve/Day arrives and you eat a ridiculous amount again. Maybe it looks like Thanksgiving II, or maybe it has some particularly ethnic (English, Italic, Iberic, Lithuanian, whatever) vibe to it. Either way, roast suckling pig or roast prime rib, you start trying to outdo Mr. Creosote. If you're on the Chanukah side of the ledger you have EIGHT nights of fried potatoes and sour cream to look forward to.

Developing quite a thirst, you slide into New Year's Eve and attempt to quench it with (depending where you go) with anything ranging from Champale to upper midmarket California champenoise. Feeling the weight (!) of your resolutions, you nibble casually throughout the night and each nibble goes down with a flute of the bubbly stuff. You recover just in time for Epiphany, which is the day when the Three Wise Men came over to take down the lights in Bethlehem.

If you're romantically entangled, St. Valentine's Day is careening straight at you. You must have a romantic dinner (in or out, you must eat) and you must plaster the place with little cupids, for that pagan frisson which would have St. Valentine spinning like a lathe in his grave (on the Via Flaminia, if you're ever in Rome). Right after that, comes St. Patrick's Day, when everyone has to drink some sort of beer from green mass-market brewed-through-a-mule stuff to KC's Boulvard Brewing's Irish Ale. You wear something green and hope you get kissed.

Then, if you're halfway pious, comes Lent/Passover and you take a break. If you're not halfway pious, you kinda still take a break because you have enough friends doing the Passover/Lent-down. Finally...Easter! With one spasm, you wrap up the Eating Season finale with the celebratory eating of a Thanksgiving and the crap candy of Hallowe'en.

Then you look around and realize Daylight Savings Time is at your throat and you wake up every morning in total @#$%ing darkness.

-J.

Posted by Joke at 10:58 AM 6 comments

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Today is my FAVORITE day of the year.

Today, boys and girls, Daylight Savings Time comes to a full, screeching halt and exits my life for the next six months or so.

As you all know, I HATE Daylight Savings Time with a fierce, purple passion I normally reserve for collectivism, artificial fibers and food preservatives. And now, I am temporarily rid of the damned thing. I wake up in the morning and the sun is shining, and we have dinner when it's dark out. Perfect.

AND I got an extra hour of sleep, or I would have, if NTS the Vampire hadn't woken me up to watch Buster Keaton. (Don't ask.) At least TFBIM will get extra sleep, as she needs 15-16 hours a day.

Anyway, there it is.

-J.

Posted by Joke at 6:41 AM 8 comments

Friday, October 27, 2006

And so...a meme.

This is from Suse via bb.

1. Flip to page 18, paragraph 4 - in the book closest to you right now, what does it say?

"So we are here tonight in a kind of anti-matter protest -- an unpolitical undemonstration by deeply uncommitted inactivists. We are part of a huge invisible picket line that circles the White House twenty-four hours a day. We are participants in an enormous non-march on Washington -- millions and millions of Americans not descending upon the nation's capital in order to demand nothing from the United States government. To demand nothing, that is, except the one thing which no government in history has been able to do -- leave us alone." (P.J. O'Rourke, The Liberty Manifesto)

2. If you stretch out your left arm - as far as possible, what are you touching?

The stack of books on the side table.

3. What's the last program you watched on tv?

Oliver's Twist.

4. Without looking, guess what time it is.

9:40pm (It's really 9:38pm)

5. Except the computer, what can you hear right now?

Kids watching a DVD

6. When was the last time you were outside and what did you do?

When I came home, and I came in.

7. What are you wearing?

PJs

8. Did you dream last night? If you did, what about?

Didn't. Sorry.

9. When was the last time you laughed?

About an hour ago.

10. What's on the walls, in the room you're in right now?

Architectural prints.

11. Have you seen anything strange lately?

Um, no.

12. What do you think about this meme?

Meh.

13. What's the last film you saw?

In the theater or at home? Open Season and Jonah, respectively.

14. If you became a multimillionaire, what would you do with the money?

Donate and hide.

15. Tell us something about yourself that most people don't know.

I can go 48 hours without sleep.

16. If you could change ONE THING in this world, without regarding politics or bad guilt - what would it be?

EVERYONE would be required to be polite and considerate.

17. Do you like dancing?

Meh.

18. George Bush?

Meh.

19. What do you want your children's names to be, girl/boy?

NOS was going to be Veronica and NTS was going to be Isabel.

20. Would you ever consider living abroad?

Not fulltime.

21. What do you want God to tell you, when you come to heaven?

"On my way here, I saw a lot of bewildered and surprised people in Purgatory." (I think this is really more of an "if" than a "when" question.)

22. Who should do this meme?

The usual suspects.

-J.

Posted by Joke at 9:36 PM 9 comments

Thursday, October 26, 2006

At last it can be told.

Over the weekend I was slinging emails back and forth with the lovely and gracious BabBab. Somwehere in that exchange of epistles and missives I told the tale of a glorious something I'd had as an appetizer during dinnah on Friday. It was so delish I simply had to share this with someone even though I hadn't deconstructed and reassembled it yet.

Well, relax, because, by George, I think I've got it.

Our default spot is this amazing little Venetian trattoria. (We tend to get Italians from Italy, as
opposed to Brooklyn, down heah.) The place is decidedly unfancy. Just a Mama & Papa place that makes unfussy food from the Veneto. Being a child of the tapas culture, I make a dinner out of the antipasti. Anyway, as I had told BabBab, they had something on the "specials" menu that had me so damned giddy that I thought I might have broken my wedding vows and 3 of the 10 Commandments.

This is what it was: thinnish slabs of polenta, say 3" x 6" x 3/4", grilled crisp on the outside
and spectacularly creamy on the inside. The polenta slabs were topped with sauteed cremini mushrooms to which bits of gorgonzola had been added, melting with the mushroom juice to make a GLORIOUS sauce. If I hadn't been in public, I would have twirled the plate like a
steering wheel and cleaned the damned thing with my tastebuds.

Here's what I have figured out:

1/2 lb. cremini mushrooms (button mushrooms will work OK in a pinch)
2 T. butter
1/2 t. salt
4-6 T. Gorgonzola
Leftover polenta (use whatever basic polenta recipe you like), cooled

Cut the polenta into whatever shape suits you. Brush with melted butter and grill until it "colors" (you could also sear this in a skillet if you simply had to). Set aside on a rack (so as not to accumulate steam on the now-crisp surfaces). In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Slice the mushrooms 1/8" (or 1/2 cm) thick. Add the mushrooms to the pan and toss immediately (if not the bottom mushrooms get sodden with butter and the top ones don't get any) and sprinkle with salt, which will encourage the juices to exude. Lower heat to medium low. Once the juices have begun to leave the mushroom slices, add the Gorgonzola in bits and stir to melt and dissolve and create a sauce. Plate immediately over the polenta bits.

It fairly screams autumn.

I defy you to eat this and have a rosy outlook on life not result.

-J.

Posted by Joke at 10:13 PM 6 comments

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Here's a "why."

Dear Internet,

I'm sure you've wondered -- possibly even lost sleep over -- how I became the internationally recognized foodie I am today. Well, I'll tell you.

For reasons WELL beyond the scope of this post* I had always sort of daydreamed of being a suave sort of bachelor guy. If you remember Otter from Animal House, that's what I wanted to be to the extent I wanted to be that even before there was an Otter or an Animal House. Part of the whole Mr. Smooth Bastid thing was being able to wow the distaff side with yummies. Yummies, in the context of a Romantic Dining Experience, would inexorably lead to my Casanova-ish exploits. Or so I thought, but then again I was merely 13 and as big an idiot as I've ever been.

Anyway, at some point it struck me that waiting until:

1- I had managed to find someone worthy of inviting over for a romantic dinnah, and
2- I had a place suitable for same, and
3- I had managed to be acceptable to that someone

in order to figure out what to cook and how to cook it was likely to not work out well on about 17 different levels.

So I figured I might as well practice. I had glommed on to my kid sister's Better Homes & Gardens Junior Cookbook but that book was basically 101 things to do with Sherbet, Frankfurters and Pancake mix. I reasoned that if I was to be an International Romantic Icon I'd need stronger stuff than that and, about 1977, that meant I had to look to that pinnacle of masculine sophistication: Playboy Magazine.

Since I was only 13, the actual magazine itself was out of bounds. BUT they had published a cookbook entitled Playboy's Gourmet, written by Thomas Mario, their food & bev. guy. If anyone knew how to work that cooking angle to romantic advantage it MUST be those devilish operators at Playboy, who have scientifically worked it all out. Well, that's how my mind worked in 1976, sue me.

My family thought I was deranged in wanting to fix dinner. (They had begun to suspect my sanity might be substandard a couple of years earlier, at a Monty Python film.) My dad finally said yes and gave me $__ to procure ingredients. Naturally, the outlay was insufficient to cover what I wanted to do, and in hindsight I suspect he was just giving me money to shut up, stop pestering him and otherwise leave him in peace. Not realizing this I biked over to the supermarket with the book in pocket to see what may be done.

There is nothing more painful to an adolescent male than realizing reality is not something he has the privilege of altering. My dreams of Chateubriand evaporated. The only thing I could afford for which I had the recipe was "Braised Short Ribs of Beef." Short ribs were pretty much the cheapest hunk of cow there was. So I bought all the ingredients and biked back home.

I dredged up the recipe and I post it here. Basically it was a Boeuf Bourgignon, with short ribs in lieu of the usual cubes of beef. It came off without a hitch and the only thing that sticks out in my mind is that my father gave me an unalloyed compliment. Which is something which NEVER happens. (God bless him, compliments and apologies are not his thing.) I had never heard unqualified praise come out of his mouth in my direction. I was floored.

The ribs WERE great, juicy, flavorful, fall-apart-tender. Ideal fall/winter food. My dad loved them so much he unbelted the aforementioned compliment. The way I saw it, if cooking yummies could crack a nut as tough as my old man...why, the world was my oyster.

Here goes (keep in mind that we're looking at something written THIRTY FIVE years ago, my 2006 comments are in italics):

6 pounds beef short ribs, cut "english" style
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil (obviously this means EVOO)
3 medium yellow onions, chopped
4 large garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 cups dry red wine
1 (28 to 32-ounce) can diced tomatoes (these days I'd use Pomi in the asepctic cartons)
1 1/2 cups beef broth (today we'd say "stock")
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
6 (3 by 1-inch) strips fresh lemon zest
1 teaspoon dried rosemary, crumbled (now that it's regularly available, let's go with 2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves, instead)
10 ounces pearl onions (about 2 cups) (frozen is fine, actually!)
1 (1-pound) bag peeled baby carrots
Finely chopped fresh parsley leaves, for garnish

Pat short ribs dry and season with salt and pepper. In a heavy Dutch oven, heat oil over medium-high heat, until shimmering (but not smoking, EVOO gets bitter) and brown the ribs in batches, transferring to a bowl.

Add chopped onions to Dutch oven and cook over medium heat, stirring, until translucent...make sure they don't brown or burn. Add garlic and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add wine, tomatoes, broth, Worcestershire sauce, zest, rosemary, and salt and bring to a boil. Add ribs including any juices that have accumulated in bowl and barely simmer, covered, 30 minutes.
Add onions and carrots, stirring (make sure they are submerged in liquid) and cook at a bare simmer (covered) about 4 hours. Fish out the meat, onions, and carrots and then reduce the braising liquid, if necessary. Before serving, put back the beef and veggies until heated through.

This is even better the next day!

-J.

* That means it had to do with girls.

Posted by Joke at 11:37 PM 11 comments

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Joke's Book Club

OK, I just started it, but so far it's pretty great. When you read through this culinary memoir there will be a temptation to compare it with Tony Bourdain's work. At the very topmost layer of the surface there will be some passing similarities, two famous chefs who can wield a pen as well as a Wusthof without the aid of a ghostwriter...but that's where it ends. In a way Jeremiah Tower is a photonegative, a bookend of Bourdain. Where Bourdain swaggers, Tower is genteel. One is NYC bravura, the other California cool; one is a journeyman with a survival instinct, the other a creator with penchant for self-destruction. What is really different is the while Bourdain is rather a morbid and caustic optimist, Tower is all polish and charmingly embittered.

Foodwise, nobody will ever confuse Bourdain with an innovator, he is like Michael Feinstein: an interpreter of standards. Tower is an innovator and the recipes he sprinkles throughout are indicative of this. In the end what fascinates me is that Tower tells the tale of how self-sabotage strikes even (especially?) the most gifted among us, in a way the reader can spot Hubris breeding Nemesis but the author can't.

The book is worth it for the recipes alone, the prose is a bonus.

-J.

Posted by Joke at 8:44 PM 3 comments

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Stolen meme (from Badger)

Who stole this one, allegedly, from Karla.

1. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up? Whoever talked me into going along with the Big Autumnal Project in the first place.

2. You can flip a switch that will wipe any band or musical artist out of existence. Which one will it be? Mariah Carey.

3. Who would you really like to just punch in the face? Every single person related to my being involved in the Big Autumnal Project.

4. What is your favorite cheese? Anything that is not labeled "processed cheese food."

5. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your immediate disposal. What kind will you make?
It's a tough call. My favorite as a kid was roast beef, smoked cheddar, tomatoes on sourdough bread with horseradish and brown mustard...but these days I'm partial to Jamie Oliver's "Brekkie Sarnie" of smoked bacon, sharp cheddar, tomatoes and brown mustard.

6. You have the opportunity to sleep with the movie celebrity of your choice. We are talking no-strings-attached sex and it can only happen once. Who is the lucky celebrity of your choice?
Thus pressed, I'd lean toward Uma Thurman for no reason beyond pure curiosity, but you have no idea how badly I blanked on this question.

7. You have the opportunity to sleep with the music-celebrity of your choice. Who do you pick?
Um, anyone who took Lilith Fair(e) VERY seriously would be good, just to have a soppy song written about me.

8. Now that you've slept with two different people in a row, you seem to be having an excellent day because you just came across a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Holy crap, a hundred bucks! How are you gonna spend it?
I'd get a custom-made tie.

9. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere. You have to depart right now. Where are you gonna go?
Rome.

10. Upon arrival to the aforementioned location, you get off the plane and discover another hundred-dollar bill. Now that you are in the new location, what are you gonna do?
Get a pair of Schedoni driving gloves.

11. A demon rises out of Hell and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. It is...?
Knob Creek Bourbon, but why it'd have to be a demon makes no sense. Iberics are under the assumption it's angels who provide this sort of thing.

12. Rufus appears out of nowhere with a time-traveling phone booth. You can go anytime in the PAST. What time are you traveling to and what are you going to do when you get there?
Germany in the early 1800s to strangle that @#$% Marx.

13. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place?
"Rule Numbah One: No pooftahs!" Seriously the rule would be: Everyone leaves me alone, in peace and quiet.

14. You have been given the opportunity to create the half-hour TV show of your own design. What is it called and what's the premise?
Titled: "It's Not That Complicated!" wherein I explain things and make other people do things the right way, to their astonished betterment.

15. What is your favorite curse word?
@#$% is good, but @#$%er is good too.

16. One night you wake up because you heard a noise. You turn on the light to find that you are surrounded by MUMMIES. The mummies aren't really doing anything, they're just standing around your bed. What do you do?
Unwravel their wrappings.

17. Your house is on fire! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don't worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what's the item?
Laptop.

18. The Angel of Death has descended upon you. Fortunately, the Angel of Death is pretty cool and in a good mood, and it offers you a half-hour to do whatever you want before you bite it. Whatcha gonna do in that half-hour?
Go to Confession and PRAY like a bastid a mere half-hour covers it properly.

19. You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what's even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What's it gonna be?
The ability to read the financial pages of the WSJ 24 hours early.

20. You can re-live any point of time in your life. The time-span can only be a half-hour, though. What half-hour of your past would you like to experience again?
The first half-hour of my honeymoon seems rather agreeable.

21. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?
10 years from now (or 2 months ago) the choice would be WAY different, but for now the Big Project sounds like a good one.

22. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool stuff... you can move to anywhere else in the world! Bitchin'! What country are you going to live in now?
Italy. Or somewhere tropical and tax-free.

23. This question still counts, even for those of you who are under age. You have been eternally banned from every single bar in the world except for ONE. Which one is it gonna be?
Harry's Bar in Venice.

24. Hopefully you didn't mention this in the super-powers question.... If you did, then we'll just expand on that. Check it out... Suddenly, you have gained the ability to FLOAT!!! Whose house are you going to float to first, and be like "Dude, check it out... I can FLOAT!"?
My penultimate GF, in the hopes she'd mistake me for something spectral and befoul herself.

25. The constant absorption of magical moonbeams mixed with the radioactive vegetables you consumed earlier has given you the ability to resurrect the dead famous-person of your choice. So which celebrity will you bring back to life?
Phil Hartman.

26. The Gates of Hell have opened, and Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person, etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?
My friend Felix. (No, a real person.)

27. What's your theme song?
"Are You Gonna Go My Way?" by Lenny Kravitz.

Posted by Joke at 7:57 AM 7 comments

Friday, October 20, 2006

Stuffing, you say?

Here ya go:

http://thejokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/thanksgiving-101-stuffingdressing.html

-J.

P.S. While the Great Autumnal Project is getting better, I'm still sweating it out for the next 2 weeks.

Posted by Joke at 9:41 AM 2 comments

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Luverly.

[If you are reading this post on a site other than Same Thing, But Different or with Bitacle.org in the address, you are reading scraped and stolen content.]

As I was reading the lovely and gracious Julia's blog I ran across this little lovebomb: some imbeciles at bitacle.org are STEALING various blogs' contents and posting them on their own site and appending advertising thereto and--surprise--not compensating the bloggers whose contents they steal/stole. As it is, it seems my blog is not yet caught in their machinery, but that could change at any moment.

Oh, and they utterly ignore any and all copyright* notices.

To see if your blog (they seem to prey on blogs which have feeds**) has been one that has been pillaged, read this article. So far, nothing's been done to me or my blog...but I feel soiled and violated anyway.

-J.

* Unfortunately, I'm too dense to append such a copyright to my blog.
** Fortunately, I am too dense to know HTF the whole "feeds" thing works.

Posted by Joke at 8:40 AM 11 comments

Just goes to show you, it's always something.

Over the last 3-4 days, my household has been o'errun with sniffles of the not-quite-cold variety. A little sneezy, a little stuffy...that sort of stuff. As a consequence, NTS (the lightest sleeper of us) has been particularly insomniacal. Two nights ago, I hear rattling and movement and such coming from the direction of the family room at 3am. At first, when awakened so suddenly, one supposes "burglar!" until your brain grinds to life and you realize 1) you'd've heard the burglar enter, and 2) burglars generally don't turn on the TV to enjoy a bit of their favorite programming.

It was in fact, NTS. He had assembled several effects (including a toddler's rocking chair!) to allow him to climb up* to turn on the DVD player and press "play." His new favorite TV series? Jeeves & Wooster. This is pretty impressive stuff, but to those who know the sort of seven year-old NTS is, it's simultaneously hilarious and perplexing.

-J.

* It's on a shelf a good 6ft/180cm off the ground.

Posted by Joke at 7:56 AM 5 comments

Monday, October 16, 2006

It just might be all right.

Dear Internet,

I received a very encouraging phone call not 20 minutes ago that has led me to the conclusion the Big Autumn Project stands a good chance of being salvaged. Two weeks ago I would have put the odds at 4:1 against, but now it looks like 3:2 for* so I am, if not quite exhaling relievedly, breathing a bit freer these days.

So that's good.

Expect blogging--albeit somewhat lighter at the beginning--to resume at any moment.

-J.

* Keep doing what you're doing...you know who you are.

Posted by Joke at 10:03 AM 9 comments

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Mad Libs

Fill this in:

Joke is not on "blogstrike" he is simply up to his ____ [body part] in _____ [profanity] work stuff. As the more scriptural among the assembled will recall, God made work as a punishment.

__________ [adverb],

-J.

P.S _________ [expression of gratitude] for all your emails, messages, sending of good vibes and positive energy. Keep doing whatever it is you're doing.

Posted by Joke at 10:33 AM 9 comments

Monday, October 09, 2006

Still here. Sort of.

Things are s-l-o-w-l-y getting less stressful, but sorting stuff out will take some time. Talk amongst yourselves.

-J.

Posted by Joke at 3:11 PM 5 comments

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

This is why.

Dear Internet,

Yesterday I got a phone call that put The Very Big Autumn* Project in very serious jeopardy. I've spent all day yesterday and today, and very likely all day tomorrow trying to:

1- Salvage the thing or
2- Escape unscathed (or tolerably minimally scathed) from the debacle.

Beyond the time spent -- busier than a one-armed paperhanger in a drafty room -- I will likely spend some considerable time sweating bullets awaiting the outcome of whatever I end up doing.

So.

That will explain my impending silence. If anyone wants to get all theological and sling some prayers my way, they will be humbly and gratefully accepted. (God knows, literally, what you're talking about.)

I'm hoping to be back in the next couple of days.

-J.

* The Very Big Spring Project worked out fine.

Posted by Joke at 2:02 PM 7 comments

Monday, October 02, 2006

Stop and ponder this for a moment.

It is an amazing sight to behold.

Think about some weird Spanish recipe that, over a colonial occupation of 500ish years evolves into a recipe emblematic of Cuber, which is then modified by a woman whose ancestral whatsits extend back to Italy (a part, ironically enough, once ruled by Spain) enshrined in a blog by that woman's grandson in Florida, rechristened by that grandson's pal Poppy in Illinois and then reproduced to great effect by that grandson's e-pal in AUSTRALIA (coincidentally, an island just like Cuber).

Well, that's exactly what has happened.

The lovely and gracious Bec, the lady with the lounge, has done such a thing.

Stop pondering for a moment, because this is going to get complicated. Much like when Badger's pal Jaye posted the recipe for the Best Roast Chicken (which Badger asserts cures cancer, and I'm inclined to believe it regardless what modern medical thought says) and I rejoiced and began pelting all and sundry with this poultry goodness...I have now managed to pay it forward with Cuban Granny Pants.

I think I've earned myself some well-deserved slumber.

-J.

Posted by Joke at 12:43 AM 3 comments