TMI Questions: Kiss the Cook!

Someone’s in the kitchen with my heinie

Someone’s in the kitchen I know-oh-oh-oh

Someone’s in the kitchen with my heinie

Stuffing my big old hole…

(Sung to tune of ‘Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah’)

Sigh.  Yes, there is one hole more important than ‘my big old hole’.  And that be my pie hole.  It likes to get stuffed, too.

I love food.  Comfort food being the best.

I love making mashed potatoes.  And that is pretty much the extent of my culinary repertoire. Still, that has not prevented my delusional self from wasting expensive ingredients in the hopes of becoming a chef.  In my wake?  Lots of burnt, under-cooked food and a sink full of hard to clean pots and pans.

Still, I soldier on…

TMI QUESTIONS:

Questions designed to reveal Too Much Information

Link: http://tmiquestions.blogspot.com/

TMI Questions: Kiss the Cook!

How good of a cook are you?

Pretty average.  I aspire to be a bit more, but, sigh, am too lazy to actually do everything one needs to do in order to be a better cook.  You know, like take classes, pay attention to recipes, and, ummm… actually cook. As in, on a regular basis; familiarity breeds efficiency breeds well-prepared food.

There was a period of time when I was into meat and potatoes meals featuring heavy gravies (I thought I was Betty Crocker and that was the way to a man’s heart) but I took a lot of short cuts and hence don’t consider that actually cooking.

And that pretty much sums up my skill level in the kitchen.  If I put in a little more effort I might be better.  I certainly enjoy it and enjoy learning more about food preparation.  However, I do not consider opening cans and heating things or boiling water real cooking. 

Who taught you how to cook?

Self-taught.  And in the beginning I was not very smart about it at all. 

Frequently, with my theater schedule, I would eat things straight out of the can, usually late at night, lying on the floor with a tiny black and white television providing the only light in the room.  I would then use the can as an ashtray before falling into an anxiety-induced coma.

A collection of cans would form around my mattress on the floor… mostly pork and beans, or green beans.  The cigarette butts that filled them adding to the room’s ambiance.

If the gods be kind, at some point I would end up getting laid, and before the person I dragged home woke up in the morning I would tidy up the place and those cans would disappear.

Yeah, I was a pig.  And not the fun sexy kind, either.

Now the kitchen is my favorite room in any home.  And it doesn’t need to be much or very large.  But I have come to respect it.  It offers me a lot of comfort.

Who does the cooking in your home?

Me. 

Though, I actually spend more time preparing meals for my dogs than I do for myself.  Their food involves a sweet potato-based dry food which needs to be pulverized in a Cuisinart, before adding crushed cooked carrot, chunks of lean white chicken breast with a bit of broth, and a teaspoon of a special powder containing glucosamine among other helpful things.  Mix in a bit of hot water before microwaving for eight seconds, stirring occasionally.  Be sure to check the temperature before serving.

Yeah.  Kind of nuts when it comes to those dogs.

Me?  Boil a box of dry pasta, open and heat a can of sauce. Sit in front of television and consume.

Yeah. It’s a life.

Do you cook more or eat out more?

Currently eating out a lot.  Maybe, way too much.  (And thank God!)

But I’m in that whole ‘getting to know you’, ‘making an effort’ dating mode; which I enjoy immensely (I can’t stress that last part enough – I am a fortunate schmuck). 

But it is expensive. 

Still.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Restaurants are neutral ground for testing the ‘I can put up with that’, ‘that is not a dealbreaker’ kind of conversations. 

You know, like:

“I was a big slut before I met you.”

“Well, how big of a slut.”

“Umm.  Known in several states, big.  I sort of used to blog about it and kept an excel spreadsheet detailing my exploits.”

“Really?  Huh.”

“You want me to send you a link to the blog?”

“No, but… You can pay the check now. I have to go home.  I think I left one of my cats on the stove.”

Are you more of a cook or dessert maker?

Cook.

Not much into desserts.  Though I did go through a period when I was making these huge, multi-layered cakes with fruit fillings and the most awesome butter cream frosting made with Wondra flour.  They were delicious and frequently quite beautiful.  I even started a photo collection of them.

I began making them for other people – birthdays, anniversaries, mid-life circumcisions…

Then I got drafted for a wedding at this resort in Duluth.  The ceremony took place on the shores of Lake Superior.  The woman actually rented me a suite with a stove so I could bake her wedding cake on the premises the morning of the wedding. 

I made the mistake of bringing my OCD business partner with.  He’s a control freak and basically took over the actual cake creation after he’d obsessed about it most of the week and then peppered me with trouble shooting / what if scenarios the entire day before the actual wedding.  He took control of the whole thing and I just stood around wearing a Charlie Brown ‘life sucks’ moon face.

I sucked it up.  But that experience ruined cake baking for me, and I have never made one since.

What was your worst/funniest cooking moment?

Thank you for asking.

This was clueless, eat-out-of–the-can, me. 

A theatre company that I was part of had a tightknit core of eight actors who selected the plays each season and were featured in all the shows imploded mid-season during our second year of production, due to personality clashes and creative differences.

Unfortunately, we had booked theater space for the remaining productions and that meant, not only was the company on the hook for honoring those rental contracts, but that meant the company would lose all that down payment money.  We’d also made a commitment to several other actors who had planned their theatre season based on our season.  So, I decided to host a tiny dinner party, inviting the two members I was most interested in continuing to work with (who happened to be gay and still speaking to me). 

Being a clueless clod, I decided that creating a salad bar would be the foolproof way to go.  Unfortunately (for my guests), my only experience with salad greens centered on iceberg lettuce.  I also had no idea how much three people could eat, so I bought three heads, just to be safe.  Celery, carrots, green peppers, etc.  Anything I could remember seeing at a salad bar I bought and chopped up.  I ended up with enough food to feed a small battalion or all the customers during a dinner shift at the local Sizzler.  If I’d had a sense of humor about myself at the time I would have laughed, but instead, of course I internalized the experience, ashamed of my lack of common sense. 

Fortunately one of the guys kind of knew I was a clueless oaf and he brought some wonderful weird beet-based soup.  He was also the only one interested in soldiering on, honoring the commitments the company had made.  He played George in my production of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and went on to be my best friend for twenty years. 

Then there was the lesson of ‘Never cook fish on a first date’. 

Turns out cooking a meal for someone you don’t know very well on a first date is a bad idea.  Number one, you are in your home, so there is potential for you to come off as a sort of tragic Tennessee William’s heroine, especially if you play cryptic ballet barre exercise music on an old phonograph while explaining why your Christmas tree is still twinkling in your bedroom mid-March.

Secondly, one tends to over-think one’s table settings, making for a Victorian age sense of propriety not normally associated with hoping to get a little something-something at the end of the night. 

Yeah.  Dude fled my apartment before dessert arrived.

Can you blame him?   

I think he said something about leaving one of his cats on the stove... or something.

What's your best dish?

Vegetable stir fry with brown rice, I guess.

I like making spaghetti, too, but cheat.

And grilled cheese with tomato basil soup (again, I cheat). 

I used to make a kick-ass chicken and dumplings (cheated).

And soups. Homemade!  The best.  (No cheating!)

Is revenge a dish best served cold?

I don’t believe in seeking revenge.  I simply offer up my experience to the universe and let karma take its toll.

Sometimes it works a bit too well.

I had a production of ‘Boys in the Band’ where the cast mutinied a week before opening (after all the hard work had been done).  It was based on greed and devastated me (also, I was informed that I had hurt their feelings). I ended up moving to the middle of Iowa for a year to recoup, before fleeing to L.A.  

During the three years that I was away?  Three of the cast members died – two of which were the biggest instigators of the coup!   (One of them hurled himself into the mighty Mississippi!)

And those were only the ones I heard about.  Who knows what happened to the rest?

That was proof to me that evil begets evil and that the universe has a way of taking care of these things. 

These days?  I am very careful not to wish people ill.  I may not wish them well, but know better than to wish them ill.  That shit will only come back and haunt you, baby.

Is the best way to a man's heart truly through his stomach? 

No.  That would be his anus.

Trust me on this.

It’s called a prostate massage.

Bonus

Have you made whoopee in the kitchen?

Yes.  And so what.  Fucking on a kitchen counter isn’t that big of a deal.

But being fucked while bent over a running dishwasher? 

Now that’s some fancy cooking.

Which foods have you used to spice up your love life?

Is Gin a food?

Things I'm grateful for in 2008

In light of my previous post, I though a little sunshine was in order.

So here a list of things that I am grateful for in 2008:

Obama: Could things look more hopeful? I was wrong to doubt this man. He may be the one person left on this planet who could bring integrity back in the White House. He’s one smart cookie… and when you have a cookie factory that has been allowed to churn out crap for eight years you kind of need a smart cookie to take the reins. He’s JFK minus the baggage. A new beginning. I pray he’s not Jimmy Carter II. So, while I’m holding my breath, I’m also assuming that I needn’t hold it for long.

Kristine W.: While her upcoming, much-promised albums ‘The Power of Music’ and ‘Straight Up with a Twist’ have yet to appear (they are now being promised for 2009), 2008 did have several really choice tidbits trickle out of the Fly Again camp. Her cover of the old Diana Ross classic “The Boss” hit the #1 spot on Billboard’s Dance/Club Play charts. And November brought forth her holiday offering, an EP entitled “Hey, Mr. Christmas” and the second single from ‘The Power of Music’, ‘Never’. She continues to amaze me. Her vocal style is becoming more defined, which is not to say predictable in anyway (check out those Michael Jackson like trills on ‘The Boss’. She is simply one of the best vocalists. I’m always tempted to qualify that with “on the dance scene today”. But no… she is simply one of the best vocalists – period. No need to auto tune her vocals. She’ll never be caught lip syncing. Nor does she have one of those barely-a-whisper-oh-so-frail-waif-like voices. She’s a powerhouse who knows when to rein it in. She writes, too. Ah yes, she is the real deal.

Solange, Estelle, M.I.A., Santogold, and Lady Gaga: Just when you thought Jill Scott and Macy Grey had done all they could do to revive a glorious, feel-good ‘70’s vibe along come these five to place all sorts of intricate twists into the soul/dance/new wave/world music/disco mix. Solange is the biggest surprise. ‘Sandcastle Disco’ alone guarantees that she’ll never have to stand in the shadow of her famous sister again. Estelle’s ‘American Boy’ didn’t need the stamp of Kayne West, but it probably helped it gain a lot of attention. M.I.A. almost fell between the cracks, despite all the accolades heaped in her direction in 2007 – but thanks to stoner pic ‘Pineapple Express’, ‘Paper Planes’ finally got her the chart action she deserved. Santagold’s debut has yet to yield a breakout hit, but the album continues to generate lots of buzz. I just love the whiplash, new wave (The Waitresses, Missing Persons), knowing smile of ‘L.E.S. Artistes’. And Lady Gaga? Well, I suppose for someone with her writing history this type of success comes as no surprise. Watching the rise of ‘Just Dance’ (with or without Akon) throughout the year has been a lot of fun. That she managed to top the Dance Charts and then break through to the top ten of the Hot 100 – and has a second #1 (Pokerface) in Canada, makes me think we’ll be hearing more from her album ‘The Fame’ during the first quarter of 2009.

Kathy Griffin: I saw her live! At the final show of her 5 night sold-out run at the Orpheum in Minneapolis, MN. It was surreal. Kind of like seeing the Muppets Live, only much better than you could ever expect it to be! She worked the house like a jack hammer and her energy never dimmed once. I can’t imagine the inside of her head – it must be like a billion sparks with magic hamsters running around in circles and tiny internet gnomes Google-ing their brains out. I just love her. Look forward to another season of ‘My Life on the D-List’, am hoping she wins her Grammy (I tried to buy the album at Target, no luck – why? I wonder.), and finds the love her life (Girl needs it bad). Just a note – she’s the first woman since Joan Rivers in 1984 to have a #1 comedy album on the Billboard Comedy Album Charts. For god’s sake – give the lady her Grammy!

Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Yeah, I know – the pundits that be say the show sagged a bit and lost some luster this season. But they’re wrong. This show single handedly justifies owning a television. The writing is sharp, the ensemble chemistry is amazing, and its cutting edge continues to draw blood while carving away at society’s norms, television conventions and the American psyche.

Christine Applegate/Samantha Who?: I avoided this until about two months ago. Now I’m hooked. ‘Samantha Who?’ is the true inheritor of the throne vacated by ‘Sex and The City’. It’s got a much better cast, a better premise and better writing than those other pretenders (Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia). Key to this success, and to the success of numerous movies of dubious quality, is the charm, talent and presence of Ms. Applegate. Never would I have thought this possible, back in the days of when I caught the occasional episode of ‘Married With Children’. Her grace, humor and beauty just blow me away. Oh – and with Jean Smart on board – how could she go wrong? (Though I do hope they do more with Melissa McCarthy’s character.)

The Big Bang Theory: At my house, we refer to this show as “The Nerd Boys”, as in “Hurry up, the nerd boys are on.” It has yet to fail to delight. I like the cast. The timing/telepathy on display at times rivals that of ‘Fraiser’. I especially like the addition of Sara Rue this season, although something tells me that her stay won’t last through the premiere of next season. There’s a lot of smart stuff here, and I think it is just going to get smarter.

Gordon Ramsey/Kitchen Nightmares: Fascinating. And Mr. Ramsey isn’t nearly as stupidly nasty as he is on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’. This is a great tutorial on what not to do with money, how not to decorate a restaurant, what not to put on a menu, how not to run a kitchen, etc. It is business 101 for budding restaurateurs. I have learned so much. I think Gordon Ramsey is one hell of a great teacher. Very insightful.

Little Britian: I love these guys. They pick up where ‘The League of Gentlemen’ and Kids in the Hall left off. Cheeky to the extreme.

Other TV Programs of note: Sordid Lives, Clean House, and The Soup

Sex in The City:The Movie: Okay, so it was too long. In fact, it was like watching an entire season of episodes without a bathroom break. Putting it all together like that, the weaknesses couldn’t help but show. This premise is a serial. But, like seeing old friends that you haven’t seen in awhile, it was nice to get together again. There were no revelations. Nobody died. Everyone remained just as self-centered as ever. So, yeah, it was your typical reunion. I just think that the price of a movie ticket should have come with a complimentary martini. Gin, please!

Hillary Clinton: She made this election year very exciting. And though most would disagree, I think she played the game very well – stepping down only when it was necessary. My admiration for her is immense. I hope she has a great run as Secretary of State and helps restore this country’s tarnished image.

Happy holidays... and have a great new year!