Pardon My French, But Revisité

The crazy granny proudly pulled a tart cake from her greasy navel and declared it well-baked.

    

"Everything in my kitchen is low-fat except me." –anonymous

    

song recommendation: Mashed Potato Time by Dee Dee Sharp

  

  

Pardon My French, But Revisité

    

My older and much less attractive brother was telling me about a book he’s reading called No Green Bananas. Or something like that. To tell the truth, he talks so much I tend to tune him out. The point of the book is that life is short, so why buy green bananas when there is no guarantee you’ll be alive to eat them when they finally ripen? My first quibble with the book is how do you get 50,000 words out of what I just summarized in one sentence? I’ve run across similar books. I would name them, except that would take research and I'm not up for that kind of effort since, according to Green Bananas, there’s a good chance I’ll be dead before I finish the task. On the other hand, I agree with the premise, but for a different reason. When I’m in the mood for a banana, I’m in the mood for a banana now, not tomorrow. The only thing buying green bananas does is give me a reason to live for the next few days. I look at life experiences the same way. You’ve heard of Delayed Gratification? Call it Delayed Expiration. Everything I’m looking forward to gives me a reason to live until then. When my favorite TV show ends with a cliffhanger, I look forward to the next season when it will be resolved. Waiting for the resolution gives me a reason to continue existing because I don't want to meet my maker not knowing what happened. Who knows when the next James Bond movie will be released, but waiting for it extends my License Not To Kill Myself for an additional year, maybe two. Speaking of movies, I saw Tom Cruise’s new movie Digger. It’s the best movie I’ve had the pleasure of sleeping through. I can understand why it’s flopping at the boxoffice. Unlike most movies, it asks a lot from you. It asks for 2½ hours of your life that you won’t get back, but I still recommend it highly. In the cinematic world of prequels and sequels, you should reward films that are original and don't insult your intelligence, otherwise Hollywood will stop making them. That’s why I strongly suggest you see it as well. Preferably, the next time you need a nap. My only real complaint with Digger were the nachos I purchased at the concession stand. The question “Would you like tomatoes and onions?” should have been my first clue that something was wrong. I wasn't ordering a salad. I was ordering nachos, cheese sauce poured over a bed of tostadas with pickled jalapeno slices sprinkled generously on top. “Would you like a drink?” the cashier asked. Since I was sneaking one in, I smiled and said no. I didn’t get a drink, but you know what else I didn’t get? Nachos. What I got instead was a bed of tostadas topped with a white sauce I can only assume was made from some kind of cheese. On top of that puddle were little squares of chicken.

“I ordered nachos,” I told her.

“That’s how we make them,” she told me.

I tried a few, but ended up throwing the rest away. The sauce was as flavorless as it was colorless, but, mainly, IT WASN’T WHAT I ORDERED. “That’s how we make them” seems to be code for “Get ready to be disappointed.” When I order something, it’s because that’s what I want. I don’t want to be served someone’s version of it. Someone’s version of something is a different meal entirely. I don’t want my food reimagined or deconstructed. I want it what it’s supposed to be. For example, I went to a recently opened restaurant to show my support for a new business. I ordered their chicken enchilada plate. On the plate were cheese enchiladas with a small pile of shredded chicken on the side.

“I ordered chicken enchiladas,” I told the server.

“That’s how we make them,” the server told me back.

“The chicken is supposed to be on the inside of the enchiladas,” I explained.

“Why does everybody keep saying that?” she wondered.

Um… maybe because that’s the way they’re supposed to be? If everybody is telling you the same thing, maybe what you’re doing is wrong. One hungry morning, I ordered a breakfast burrito. How do you screw that up? You can’t, right? It’s just a rolled-up flour tortilla filled with scrambled eggs mixed with bacon or some other protein, maybe even some hash brown thrown in to fatten it up. They served me a burrito where the scrambled eggs were mixed with leeks. I doubt there’s ever been a person in the world who, when asked what they want mixed with their eggs, has said, “Leeks! Lots and lots of leeks!” To be fair, bacon came with it, but you had to order it as a side. And that wasn’t the end of it, over the breakfast burrito they poured an abundance of salsa, and decorated the pile with a Mexican fiesta of shredded cheese. I ate it. It was good. But it wasn’t what I wanted. Food trucks are pretty good at giving you what you want. They don’t have the space to do otherwise. I was at one that featured sausage rellenos on their menu. There was even a hand-drawn picture of a chile relleno next to it, just in case you needed a visual aid. I love chile rellenos, so that’s what I ordered. It sounded different and delicious, but what my expectations expected, they didn’t get. What they got instead was a polish sausage sliced down the middle with long strips of cheddar melting down the groove. It looked like a hot dog canoe. As I looked down at the sausage cheese boat I reminded myself:

I know, I know… that’s how they make them.

    

  

This Old Spoon

    

In the drawer it rests, worn soft and thin,

Once cradled by hands now long since gone,

Stirring broths of comfort, love within,

A silent keeper of meals that linger on.