Keep Your Nuts to Yourself

As Thanksgiving descends upon us like the advance vanguard of an invading green and red armada of suck, and as the kitchens of America all go into high gear, and all of you talented amateur (and professional) cooks, chefs, and weekend caterers all dive into your treasured stack of recipes, and start posting pictures on Facebook, and even as some of you are considering sending along plates of sweets and Christmas tins full of home-made treats, allow me to offer one direct request:

Keep your nuts to yourself.

Not a year goes by that some well-meaning person doesn't bring me a plate of home-made brownies, just the way I like them, with the satin-sheen glaze across the top, that crust that breaks open and allows you access to this thick, rich, gooey, chewy chocolate center, and then all of a sudden--BAM! I'm digging a piece of a pecan out from between my teeth, looking for all the world like an Alpaca chewing a cud, and I'll ask, through gritted teeth: "ARE THERE NUTS IN THESE BROWNIES?"

They'll look confused, as if I just asked them if they could see grasshoppers were crawling out of my ears. "Yeah," they will answer, in a kind of dazed wonderment. "Of course. It's brownies. Why wouldn't there be nuts?"

This is acceptable. Why?
Because they are out in the
open where I can see them. 

Why, indeed. I'll tell you why: BECAUSE the NUTS ARE ALWAYS OPTIONAL. That's why. And yet, there are some of you with a hidden nut agenda, who will try to sneak those little brown tree stones into every single food on the table. Why? What's wrong with you? Were you hit on the head by a stray pecan as a child?  Buried under a bushel of walnuts? Why would you pass your damage on to the rest of us?

Look, let me say this up front: I don't have a problem with nuts that I can see. Toasted pecans, in a bowl, or mancala almonds, or even pistachios...wonderful. Great snacking. And while most of the world's nuts look, taste, and crunch like tree bark, I'm willing to let that slide because you can do an awful lot to a nut and it'll taste just fine. This is not an anti-nut rant.

My problem is with stealth nuts. Don't make that face at me; you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that half a cup of chopped pecans that you dumped into a cake batter "to give it some texture." Hey, news flash, genius: The texture of cake is soft, spongy and cake-like. It's not cake-like with hidden, errant little granules of hard, sharp fragments that get caught between your teeth and tear your gums and hurt the top of your mouth because you were biting through a giant mouthful of cake and, frankly, expected no resistance from the local peasantry.

Who's idea was that, in the first place? "Oh, this chocolate cake is so delicious! I think it would be even better if I dumped a cup of bitter pecans into it." Honestly, I don't know how these things got started, but they need to come to a screeching freaking halt, here and now.

This is my nightmare. I shudder just
looking at it. What a waste of baking.

Some of you are hovering over your keyboards now. I can sense it. You can't wait to reply to this with some scathing rebuke. Let me see if I can't head your objections off at the pass.

"It's just a few nuts. Can't you pick around them? Why are you being such a baby?"

Listen, it's children who break their food apart, looking for suspicious foreign matter, not adults. I don't want to have to comb through my food for stray debris. I'm over forty. I don't need my mealtime to become a game of I-Spy.

"Are you allergic? No? Then why are you making such a big deal about this?"

It's not allergies. It's texture. I don't like rock-hard surprises in my soft, mushy food. If you don't like soft, mushy food, and feel that you can't properly digest anything without swallowing a few gastroliths, like an ostrich, then quit making Jello Salad and banana bread. You take care of you, and stop foisting Ninja nuts on the rest of us.

"But Mark, EVERYONE likes nuts in their brownies/cake/ice cream/mashed potatoes/chocolate pudding. It's expected. What's wrong with you?"

At least all the nuts are on top. No surprises,
here. I still won't eat it, though. It's soft
underneath that armor coating.

It's only expected if you are a family of tree-dwelling squirrel-human hybrids. Go back and read your recipe again. Better still, I dare you to find me a recipe for brownies where the crushed walnuts are structurally integral to the brownie. I double-dare you, Nutty McNutface. There's not a cookbook in the world that advises you not to skimp on the nuts or your flan will fall apart. They have always been an optional garnish-like thing. In fact, you don't need them in soft food at all. Trust me on this. They add nothing to the flavor of anything, and only produce irritation for the people like me who hate crunching down on nature's only mistake. Your Aunt Rose never once said, "Oh, I'm only eating this brownie for the pecans." Well, maybe she did say that, but come on, look at Aunt Rose. She's never turned down a brownie in her life. You could put a spark plug in your brownies and she'd never notice. She's like a billy goat, Aunt Rose is.

You want nuts? Grab a handful and squirrel it up. Stop hiding them in food you're going to give to other people. It's sneaky, dishonest, and it smacks of passive-aggressive mothering.

"Okay, smart guy, what about X? Or Y? Or Z? It's got nuts in it, and you eat that!"

Let me explain the difference between eating a Snickers bar and biting into a soft, fluffy brownie full of tree pellets. I know there's peanuts in the Snickers. I'm braced for it. If the nuts are on top, like a Pay Day candy bar, or you have a brownie with a pecan mooshed into the top of it, like it's wearing some strange druidic award for bravery, I can deal with that. I'll eat the nut separately, using an entirely different chewing system, and then tackle the brownie. But I won't--ever--eat them together.

And this goes double for savory dishes, too. The latest atrocity is people putting nuts in their dressing (or stuffing, if you prefer). What the bloody hell? I've seen some of the recipes that even say, "a half-cup of pecans," followed by the words, "for texture." It's CORNBREAD STUFFING, you asshole! You don't like the texture of soft, savory, delicious cornbread stuffing? Well, let's get crazy, Emeril. How can you improve it?  Ding! I know! Just dump three full cups of whole pecans into the mix. Go on, go hog-wild, why don't you? Serve that to Uncle Billy, you sadist. He'll think you're insane, and he'll be right. And now you've ruined Thanksgiving with your freakish nut obsession. Are you happy? This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm not sure where it came from, or who started it. Probably the English, with their figgy pudding and spotted dick and their mushy peas. Hey, if I had to eat like that, I'd probably be crazy for something to distract myself from the thought of eating beef that's been boiled in water so as to remove all flavor and nutrition.

But we're not English anymore. We're Americans. We have more nuts than we know what to do with. We're milking nuts, we have so many of them. We're all nutted up. So, serve nuts this holiday season: up top, out in front, in the open, and all by themselves. You'll be surprised at how quickly they disappear. But stop trying to make us eat nuts we didn't know existed, like some strange Schrodinger experiment.  Quit tucking your nuts away in the soft, squishy stuff, and instead show them off; let your nuts stand out, on their own, proudly, for everyone to enjoy.

Thank you, and Happy Holidays!

Chicken Pride Day and What It All Means

No doubt, the memes and cartoons and movies and sniglets and bumpersticker wisdom that has choked FaceBook over the last week regarding Chick-Fil-A and its owner's conservative values have managed to once again polarize friends and families alike, and polarize them where they hurt the most--in their stomach.

I won't recap the battle, because all you have to do is log into FaceBook and scroll down for six or seven seconds until you find examples of what I'm talking about above, and probably links to the story of how the Muppets ditched Chick-Fil-A after what their owner said, because, well, it's not widely known, but Jim Henson was gay.  And since the Muppets are about everyone getting along together with no hang-ups, you can see how some people close to the creator of Sesame Street and Kermit the Frog might have gotten their noses Gonzo'ed out of shape over that.

This, to me, is a rare peek at a much, much larger concern: who we are doing business with as consumers. I know it's not a pleasant conversation to have, and moreso because no one has ever asked us, as Americans, to have it. In fact, there's been a lot of effort to suppress it. Anytime slave labor or grossly inadequate wages regarding goods and services are brought up (usually in a Wal-Mart discussion), someone who doesn't want to have to make a choice about where their $8 t-shirt comes from will pipe up and accuse someone of being a Communist, a Socialist, or Anti-Capitalism in general. This, of course, derails the conversation completely as the accused now has to assure everyone that they are not, in fact, a Pinko. And so the topic seems to sit out there, bobbing in the mainstream, and only occasionally nudged to the right or the left as it suits people.

Well, in fact, it's not a red or a blue issue. It's a voting issue. It's democracy 101, and most especially since we don't elect presidents anymore, but the Electoral College does, and most people can't name their state senators, and wouldn't take the time to write them a letter if their head was on fire and the politician had the last glass of water in the world. No, I'm talking about the only votes that ever seem to matter in America: the bottom line. The Red and the Black. Profit and Loss. These are our new Overlords, and I do not welcome them. But they are here, nonetheless.

It's really simple: since corporations exist as a firewall between themselves and their shareholders, and the stated intent of all corporations is to make money for their shareholders, you cannot really punish a corporation the way you punish a person (and Mitt Romney is wrong--about so many things--but most emphatically that "corporations are people"). All you can do to send them a punitive or encouraging message is to vote with your dollar. Spend it or withhold it as you deem necessary. When the shareholders see the bump, or the dip, the next quarter, they will know why, and they will correct whatever is causing the bump. And it's just that easy.

There were lines around Chick-Fil-A restaurants across America yesterday, and I suspect they were all in line for one of three reasons:

1. Their chicken is delicious and they wanted a sandwich. This would have been the smallest group yesterday, incidentally.

2. They felt that poor old Chick-Fil-A had gotten beat up over the past week and they were making a show of supporting them (really a sympathy purchase) to help them in these trying economic times. I need a minute after that last sentence; it's hard to type while laughing out loud.

3. They honestly, earnestly believed in the sanctity of Chick-Fil-A's stated policies of not being open on Sunday to observe the Sabbath, giving donations to Right to Life organizations, and admonishing the gay and lesbian community in general for their hedonistic ways. These would have been largely the politicians and pundits who needed a photo-op and something to Tweet about.

I've known about Chick-Fil-A's practices for some time, and I've curtailed 98% of my spending there, which amounts to doodley squat for their bottom line, but it mattered to me. It meant the chicken sandwich I bought didn't contribute to a Right to Life group, however legitimate, who may have taken a donation from Chick-Fil-A, and then that money somehow got handed off to a more radical sect, who thinks it's okay to firebomb clinics and kill doctors and nurses in order to justify the existence of what amounts to a parasite growing in someone's body. An extreme example? You betcha. But understand this: I have no say in how Chick-Fil-A spends its money. None whatsoever. And neither do you.

If a corporation wants to fund overseas heroin farms with its profits, then I don't want anything to do with that corporation. And neither should you.  Another extreme example, but I'm making a point. It DOES matter where and how we spend our money. In the wake of scant to no regulation of things like investment banks, companies doing business overseas, and so forth, it seems clear to me that the message is not self-regulation but fiscal regulation. We send the message with our purchases, or lack thereof.  We the people tell the corporations what we will and will not accept.

Think about it: no matter how many negative Wal-Mart stories you see on the news about cheap Chinese labor, they don't change. Why? Because people are still buying $8 shirts, whether they need them or not, because "it's a good deal!" Consider what would happen if Wal-Mart got 10 million signatures asking to buy clothes made in the USA again, and that we'll stop buying t-shirts from them until they do: they'd laugh at first, but after one month of their t-shirt sales being down 75%, they'd have a textiles factory in the midwest up and running in a fortnight. Think about it. Does Wal-Mart like to leave money on the table? They do not.

The problem is, we've never really used that power. Not until this, until now. And it was kind of a bust, really--so many people signed on for a Chick-Fil-A sandwich yesterday in some kind of righteous indignation, even as this picture made its way across FaceBook. And this is always--ALWAYS--an option for Christians to lead through action rather than to get drawn into a debate with other people. I would think that if someone was really passionate about their beliefs and the opportunity to both support a multi-million dollar chicken restaurant and also feed the homeless with delicious sandwiches presented itself, it would be a real win-win for everyone else involved, including the homeless. But of course, the last thing a lot of the people who espouse these values  seem to care about is putting a sandwich into a needy person's hand. There's irony in there, somewhere, I'm sure of it.

So, now the door is open. You can peek inside and see how they make the sausage, and if you don't like it, you don't have to buy it. You can even tell them why. My suggestion is that you start doing that very thing. Of course, most of the people who read this blog already do things like this anyway, so I'm just preaching to the choir. Therefore I have to ask you to start talking this idea up with the people you know who don't know any better. It's time America started thinking for itself again.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go figure out how to reverse engineer their secret recipe so I can make Chick-Fil-A sandwiches at home.

By Popular Request: Drunken Black Eyed Peas

My approach to black eyed peas is to treat them much like the rock in your favorite Stone Soup recipe. In order to make them work, you have to cook 'em with just about everything but a gym sock. So, this recipe is less a "follow the instructions" job, and more of a "go with whatever you have" kind of thing. For example, all men know that you can add bacon to this recipe. Just cook five or six strips until the fat is rendered, and then chop up the bacon and add it AND the drippings to your peas. If you didn't know that you could do that, then just step back slowly out of the kitchen. Everyone else, follow along and make your own modifications as we go.

Okay, you need:
1 package of dried black eyed peas
1 pound of sausage (sage is a nice touch)
1 medium onion, nicely diced
1 bell pepper, cored and seeded, also nicely diced
2-5 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 box of chicken stock
1 bottle of your favorite beer (and use a real beer, okay? Something with flavor. Shiner Bock, or darker. Killian's Red or better. Get crazy. It's New Year's. Ditch Bud Light. You can't cook with it.)
1 bay leaf
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons of butter or evoo

Prep: Soak the beans overnight in water. Do it. It's not hard. Just cover the beans with water, about 1 inch over. If you're one of those busy bodies in the kitchen, you can go ahead and do your dicing and chopping.

Start with a medium sized skillet. Add butter or evoo and heat over low to medium.

Add diced onions and bell peppers and get them sweating. when the veggies have become clear and tender, add the garlic and the sausage. Moosh up the sausage so that it browns evenly and break up all of the big clumps. You want browned sausage crumbles, here.

While that's browning, drain your peas, which should have doubled in size overnight. Make sure you've got no dirt or debris in the peas. Drop them into a stock pot or other large cooking vessel. Add the chicken stock, about 1/2 of the bottle of beer, the contents of the skillet, and bring to a boil.

Taste your broth. You should be able to taste the beer and the chicken stock. Salt and pepper the hell out of peas. Add a bay leaf and any other herbs or spices you might want to throw in. Rosemary and Thyme are great, especially fresh. Just chop up a couple of table spoons worth and add 'em in. If you like your BEP spicy, drop a chopped jalapeno or a cup of your favorite salsa in. Do it now, give it a good stirring to make sure that the peas and the stuff you really want to eat are all evenly dispersed and coated. Cover, and reduce heat to a simmer.

Keep this simmering for an hour. After one hour, lift the lid, take a whiff, and give it a taste. Are the peas tender? They should be firm, but not hard. Easily mushed. Get a couple of peas with the broth, some sausage, and some veggies. What does it need? More salt? Are you nuts? You put the Sargasso Sea in there earlier--okay, go for it, it's your dish. Put your final seasonings in (Chipotle Tabasco sauce, for the win)...and then continue to simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, for another thirty minutes. If the liquid gets low, add the rest of the beer. If the broth is too strong, cut it with water, a little at a time, until you get the consistency you like.

These peas can be served over white rice, as it is basically a Hoppin' John Recipe. They will keep overnight, and taste even better the next day because of science and chemistry.

You're welcome, America. Merry New Year!

Your Highly Refined Cola Palette

We're getting a new Taco Bell in Vernon. This is pretty exciting for a town of 11,000 people, the kind of happening that doesn't occur very often. Now, I like Taco Bell just fine, but let's call it what it is: it's Lego Food. There's never any new ground broken at Taco Bell. We'll never get fish tacos from them. That's not what they do. What they DO do is combine their seven or eight pre-existing ingredients into a new form or shape and call it something peppy, like the new Beefy Crunchita. It's all the same stuff. Mathematically, they're bound to run out eventually.

It was during one of the frequent recent conversations about Taco Bell that someone told me they don't like Taco Bell. When asked why, the replied, "Because they serve Pepsi products."

"Well, yeah," I said, thinking we were about to shift into a 'corporations are evil' talk, one I'm always ready to have. "Pepsico owns Taco Bell."

"I just can't stand Pepsi," this person continued. "I drink Coke, or nothing at all."

"I don't support them if I can help it," I said. "They're a little too pervasive for my tastes."

"I don't know about all that," he said. "I just hate the way Pepsi tastes."

Ooookay, I've had this talk with people before. You may be one of the people I'm about to start complaining about. If that's the case, I'm really sorry, but we need to have this discussion. Next time, I'll pick on the Amish, or something, fair enough?

In the depth and breadth of human achievement, we've got an incalculable number of cheeses to savor and sample. There are such foods as truffles, with complex flavors that can be experienced different ways every time you eat them. Wines distilled from grapes which produce distinct bouquets in the nose and mouth. Other spirits that evoke complicated notes across the tongue. A multitude of comestibles and potables from around the world--and you've chosen to cultivate a highly developed Cola Palette?

I'm amazed at the sheer number of people in my life who tell me that Brand X Cola tastes like bum urine and Brand Y Cola is ambrosia, and refusing to recognize that they both taste, in fact, like cola. They won't and cannot accept it. And believe me, I've tried. In fact, it's just the opposite: they look at you with a mixture of horror and sympathy, as if you had your nose shot off by a Sengalese sniper and now you can't smell for that gaping hole in your face. "What do you mean, you can't tell the difference? They're night and day!"

Let me say this as gently as possible: no, they are not. The formula for the taste of cola--the flavors that make up the cola taste--are the same. You can vary two things in the formula to change an aspect of it. You can add or subtract sugar (or corn syrup, blech)...or you can add or subtract carbonation. That's it, really. I promise. Cola is cola. Just like root beer is root beer. And Dr. Pepper is Mr. Pibb. No, it really is.

I'm not saying there aren't differences in the drinks. There are. Barq's has that weird metallic aftertaste because they inexplicably add caffeine to their root beer mix. I guess that's the "sparks" in the slogan. For the record, I think Pepsi tastes sweeter, and I think Coke has a little more carbonation in it. But they still taste like COLA. Like RC. Like Shasta. Like Faygo. It's not rocket science. It's not even rocket fuel. It's just soft drinks. And no, I can't tell the difference between Sprite and 7-Up, either, and please don't tell me that you can.

And even as some of you are howling with disdain, others may be asking, "Why do you care? It's just Coke vs. Pepsi." My answer to that is, I don't, not really. But when I see how people get worked up over it, to the point that they will berate another person for their apparent lack of taste and breeding, it reminds me of the old Ford vs. Chevy controversy, and so on and so on. And it's a reminder that most Americans will find anything they can to care about, provided that it's not something complicated, like contemporary politics. In fact, I think most of the political fights of the last fifteen years have been of the Coke vs. Pepsi variety, and the passion with which they are argued tells me that the political strategists took a page or two out of the cola wars playbook. Even the cans are red and blue. Funny, really, when you think about it. People will boycott a Taco Bell because they serve Pepsi instead of Coke, but they won't boycott a Chik-Fil-A because they support Right to Life organizations with their corporate dollars.

But hey, it's all about freedom of choice, right? Right.