Dinner

Pork tenderloin is my favorite meat.


(Add greens, grilled apples and bread. Frozen dough works well as a dinner roll.)

New Shock: POTUS-Elect Tips Well

Ben's Chili Bowl has modified its Bill-Cosby-Is-The-Only-Person-Who-Eats-Free-Here policy to include the Obama family, but when he visited today he handed the cashier $20 for his $12 meal.

"No thanks," he said. "We're straight." *Sigh*


Also, bread is very messy to prepare, but delicious:

I Blanched Something

TWO straight days at the gym makes a body want some green beans.


It doesn't make one crazy, though: toss those bad boys in some sherry vinegar garlic butter reduction and enjoy. Oh, and forget to snap then ends off.

Tomorrow I'll be continuing my path to baking greatness with the NYT's no-knead bread. Also, dough is gross.

Child Cooking Proves Something About Portland, + Sorry Arlington!

From a 5-year-old's Portland public access cooking show.

Also, for those of you who either thought you would be driving (or biking!) from Arlington to the Inauguration--or anything--in DC on Jan. 20, tough luck! Better hire a limo.

Work Story. Plus Housewares!

This is a little late but still a gem. On Friday, a customer hit all the bases:

1. Started yelling her order at me while I was not only making somebody else's drinks, but speaking with someone else at the opposite end of the bar.

2. String ordered (ie kept adding more drinks every time I came back).

3. After I lectured her on the rudeness of yelling her order, did so again three more times.

4. Told me that I'd get a good tip if I gave her my number.

The best part? Her friend closed the tab out when she wasn't around, and seemed unhappy with the total. So he tips a penny.


I pointed out to him that this was a bummer thing to do, and he began listing his reasons for the poor tip:

1. Poor service brings poor tip (even though he had never actually interacted with me before this)

2. My coworker had punched him in the face (not true and just weird)

3. My coworker was a dick (asked him to move)

4. I didn't include an itemized bill with the credit receipt.

At this point I gave him an itemized bill, which he didn't look at but rather balled up and threw at me before telling me to fuck off. I then escorted him out. His name is Brian Roach, btw. Feel free to not serve him if you have the chance.

Something awesome to counteract Mr. Roach: new fry pan to replace sad old one.

Fanksgiffing Travel Tips

We took a quick trip to Atlanta for Thanksgiving to see my family, and to eat. Which is how visiting the South works, basically.

First: drive around for 5 hours looking for a CVS or a Walgreens or some place that sells things to cure Ana's typhoid. Next, breakfast at Ria's Bluebird Cafe. (Travel tip #1: Do this.)


Next: check into brother's girlfriend's apartment, which she is lending us while she's out of town. What do we do? Contaminate it! Sorry about the typhus germs, Sarah! Ha, ha! Another dose of Airborne, please!


What's good for typhoid, you ask? Beer!


Travel tip #2: watch local news. Because you don't care about the scary parts, the feel-good stories are a source of pure comedy.


So Thanksgiving rolls around, and because consumptives can't sleep very well, the best idea is to visit Waffle House. This particular Waffle House was a "Hash-Slinging Zone," which was fine with me. They also don't like firearms. But those things don't matter, really.


What matters is that Waffle House produces delicious, delicious food. Get that shit on Texas Toast, people. It's good for you.


Later, Ana is released from quarantine long enough to do some cooking at my parent's house. Travel tip #3: do things the way she likes, or she'll yell at you.


Then eat and go visit Grandma. I'd give you a picture, but if I had tried to get my camera out she probably would've broken it. Grandma weighs about 80lbs these days, which is not cool at all. But she still rules. As if she couldn't.

And later, we go with my brother looking for a place to get a beer. We found one called "Pufferbelly's" which included this Monster® Energy Drink poster of a woman's backside with a can of Monster® Energy Drink tucked conveniently in her thong:


In short, Pufferbelly's ruled. Happy Thanksgiving.

Novella Friday

Clean little narratives don't just create themselves, people. Sometimes you have to put things together and let enthalpy figure it out.

CHAPTER ONE

The other night we got home and there were a few signs that something was afoot:

1. There is a backpack that must belong to a dude.
2. There is an iPod.

What can be happening?!


Empty can of Schlitz malt liquor is happening.


Snoop on vinyl + Starbucks has been happening.


I totally figured it out at that point though because there's this dude that works at Starbucks that we know and I have this picture of him:


Evan: You're welcome.

CHAPTER TWO

All the anger and violence toward sea bugs from a couple days ago wasn't just for funs. It was for eating!


Ana made four sauces to make the notoriously dry, tasteless lobster meat come to life.

1. Cerrano pepper something sauce
2. Mango chutney something sauce
3. Roasted tomato something sauce
4. Cerrano pepper something sauce with mint (mint is gross to eat so she made two separate batches-one for people that like to eat gross things and one for people that don't)

Then we each ate the equivalent of two lobsters and passed out for six hours.

CHAPTER THE FINAL

Cats!

Punk has taken to sitting on this empty Budweiser case outside of PJ Winkleman's hovel. It gives her a more advantageous vantage point, what with the elevation and everything. She likes to sit there and stare at PJ or where she thinks PJ may be. I'm pretty sure Punk has gone blind, for serious.


Blind people walk toward shiny things, right? Like big flashes of light?


Anyway, so this morning I was at the store and the guy that works there was all, hey, you're early today, as if it's any of his business, but I was there like five hours earlier than normal and I wanted to say yeah, it's hard to keep sleeping when new cat is peeing on you, but I thought he wouldn't have understood and it probably would've been really depressing for him when all he was doing was being nice.

In other news, new cat almost used the litter box this afternoon.

I'll let you put the pieces together.

She's also not allowed in the bedroom for the time being.

In place of the bedroom, she's building a bomb shelter:


BONUSBONUSBONUS you're gonna get some more of this


and maybe a dash of this (Vegans with guns! Eep!)


come Monday. Git ready.

What Happens on Thursday: Tuesday Edition

Our friends went to Maine this weekend, which is famous for lobsters. On Tuesday, a box showed up:


The box was full of lobsters!

So then I went to work. Everything there was pretty cool. Then I got home and Ana had already murdered two of the lobsters! She said that the directions told her to, and I wanted to point out that she didn't always have to do what pieces of paper tell her to, but it was late and I thought that might've been rude.

She said she hadn't ever cooked lobster before but then she started pulling all the meat out at lightning speed:



I didn't have anything to do, so I tried to cook a third lobster by shooting lasers out of my eyes


but it didn't work so I dropped it into a boiling cauldron to see if I couldn't get an artsy/creepy photo out of the whole thing:


Done and done.

Surprisingly, mean fat boy cat kept hanging around like the lobsters were for him. Which they AREN'T. Didn't you read the note, idiot?


Lobsters all over the world are probably scared of Ana now.


PS The best thing is that all this happened at 4 in the morning.
PPS Thks 4 tha shoutout, Jenny "Hecks" Miller.

BONUSBONUSBONUS ANOTHER PHONE PICTURE

Pat two years ago after work + FunFrame: