Some Pig!

Newsweek published a brief article about the renaissance of pork in New York’s upscale restaurants. According to the article, area chefs are only recently discovering the deliciousness of pig and all its jiggly parts.  I had to laugh because the rest of the world was already well aware of the wonders of our snout-nosed friend and I’m sure New York is no exception. It probably just hasn’t been as in your face as it is now.

My friends and I agree. If we were relegated to eating the meat of only one animal for the rest of our lives, it would be the pig because it gives you everything — bacon, sausage, ham, pork chops, ribs, and of course, the unrivaled Spam (in musubi form ). Truly, the pig is God’s gift to man.  No other animal is quite as versatile.

Yep Wilbur, you sure are “some pig” and and I’ll bet you taste “terrific” grilled over an open fire with a spicy dry rub.

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Wired at Midnight

Sure, you can call me a broken record. It’s late and I am wide awake again. But unlike other things in my life, I know with certainty what’s been keeping my eyelids propped open.  It’s a habit I picked up at work of drinking cup after cup of green tea owing to the cold of winter. Without fail, if I’ve been scheduled to work that day, I am guaranteed to be awake until I cry myself to sleep in frustration.  And then the snooze fest starts in the morning at five minute intervals. I’ve tried to wean myself off the caffeine but I just can’t help myself.

Clearly, I’m writing because I worked today and I have to work for the rest of the week.  I know there’s no pity coming my way and there’s none expected.  It’s just been kind of crazy you know? Between traveling back to the OC while having to work over the weekend and suffering from lack of sleep, I’m about to lose my sunny disposition.  My weeknights and weekend are completely booked with stuff and people and I’m almost wishing I had saved a few hours for myself somewhere in there.

Random Notes

Been busy busy busy. Doing what, I couldn’t tell you. Not because it’s a secret but because I’m just realizing that it’s March already and I have no idea what I did for the past couple of months, besides turn another year older.

Let’s see, the Slumlord and the Doctor went to Cartagena last month and brought back some tasty treats.  Yuca and plantain chips!! So delicious. And they are made by Frito Lay. Why don’t we have them here in the states? I’ll never comprehend the utter lack of flavor diversity when it comes to chips in America. Sure it was all fine and retro when they brought back salt and vinegar chips. And we all thought olive oil and black pepper was a brilliant gourmet twist on snacking. Then we branched into red potatoes, blue potatoes, sweet potatoes…But really, that’s all very pedestrian, just like seeing creme brulée and chocolate souffle on the dessert menu.

I’m Musing Myself to Sleep

Been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately (like right now) even though I’m thoroughly exhausted from consecutive nights of  frustrating wakefulness and a lingering cold.  I keep trying to analyze the causes of this nocturnal prison but they escape me for the moment. Or maybe there’s just too many to list and I’d have to start paying those who read this blog for cyber-therapy and frankly, I don’t have the cash flow. But I’m tired and desperate so I figured maybe I would blog myself to sleep.

This past month has been fast paced and full of change.  Within a week’s time, I went from unemployed to self-employed, through luck, good friends, and of course, my sparkling personality. Though I’m happy to be off the proverbial government cheese, it’s been hard to adjust to lower pay, regular hours, and oddly enough, low stress work. I’ve never known anything other than a rat race.

An Onion a Day Keeps the Virus at Bay

So my mom forwards me an email today filled with yet another list of dos and don’ts for health and safety written by some anonymous author. In the past I’ve received forwarded emails from her filled with advice written by “experts” about plastic, microwaves, SARS, H1N1, cell-phones, parking lots, beef, going to sleep with wet hair, etc. The list is endless.  Today’s email, written in Chinese with English translations, touted the medicinal benefits of onions. Not about eating them, but rather, about taking the bulbs to bed.

Why the Scallion?

I can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment when the gag reflex kicked in but I can trace my dislike of scallions as far back as fourth grade and the last time we had a dark brown carpet. And it was also the last time my parents forced me to eat scallions.  Until the day they discovered lumps of desiccated scallions wedded to the twisted strands of carpet underneath the dining room table, I was always instructed to eat everything on my plate no matter how much it made me want to regurgitate the contents of my meal.

Scallions courtesy of nelag on flickr

Back then, the number one enemy was the soft, cloying, disgusting taste and texture of green onions that presented themselves in every dish at every meal.  The unpleasantly squishy texture of the white bulb along with the off-putting taste induced an involuntary gag reflex that any bulimic would kill to have.  When faced with a dish teeming with those things, I would either swallow the offenders whole to avoid acknowledging tasting or biting them, or I would  surreptitiously dispose of them on the carpet below me.