The Meal Appeal

Let's get one thing straight: I'm a big fan of eating. This is largely due, I assume, to my self-diagnosed status as a supertaster (if you're wondering, I was convinced of such status by reading the list of problem foods for supertasters on Wikipedia and realizing it matched my tastes perfectly). My love of food has caused me problems in the past, and continues to do so. You may be surprised to be apprised of the fact that not all of these problems are weight-related.

My wife has pretty good taste, but is not nearly as much of a food-lover as I am. I can't really hold this against her; she's lactose-intolerant and, therefore, cut off from a huge family of foods that are simple to learn and difficult to master. It's tough to just sit back and enjoy the flavors when you have to constantly watch your back for any insidious cheese particles. Although we've recently discovered that a large variety of cheeses contain little-to-no lactose, I don't think she'll ever overcome the crippling fear of delicious that seems to be a sort of badge of honor among the lactose-averse: a sneaking suspicion that everything good-tasting will somehow manage to make you sick.

Thankfully, I have none of her gastronomic weaknesses, and all foods fall before my iron digestive tract like cows to an oncoming train. You'd think, with such wildly divergent tastes and allergies, we'd be more interested in finding ways to eat that didn't necessarily involve us both eating the same thing. And you'd be dead wrong! My wife has a sort of mania, a phobia, an obsessive-compulsive drive about which I have no choice but to inform the world. She's crazy.

There are foods that my wife is even more allergic to, it seems, than lactose: these are any foods one gets at a restaurant. Of course, any sickness she contracts from eating out is purely psychosomatic; something about the act of handing over money for food and then having it cooked for you rubs her the wrong way. This has been the seed of more than half of the arguments we have had in our relationship. Even before we were married, she fretted regularly over her concern that I would FORCE her to eat in RESTAURANTS nearly EVERY DAY.

Crazy.

I feel that I am a reasonable man. I understand her concerns about the associated cost of paying people to cook your food for you. I don't understand how her mind manages to translate "I'd like to go out to eat once in a while," into "I demand that we eat at restaurants nigh CONSTANTLY!"

I know that she fears a descent into a restaurant-based lifestyle because of how vigorously she plans out our meals each week, leaving no room for discussion and little for complaint. Understand, reliable reader, that she and I come from two different worlds vis-à-vis planning stuff. Hers is one of methodology and detailed lists, mine of spontaneity and imagination. I would never stoop to plan a meal without taking a look at my ingredients first; my style is to go to the supermarket, buy whatever looks tasty, and make a dish out of it. She relies heavily on recipes, apparently not trusting her own sense of visionary yum.

By the time we get to the supermarket (we nearly always go shopping together; she claims to enjoy it, though I suspect this is mainly in order to monitor and control my impulse buys), every single day is planned, and the plan never says "restaurant." My friends, this is why the last month has been so amazing.

True, I had hoped to do a lot more cooking while she was gone -- in fact, I was somewhat disappointed that I only had the opportunity to cook for myself one time. On the flip side, though, in the past month I have eaten at restaurants more than in the past two years. Let that sink in for a moment, and you may realize just how terrifyingly spartan my wife's culinary lifestyle is.

The problem is more than just home cooking, though. Say you're going to be driving for ten hours one day. What's a reasonable food schedule if you're leaving at 5pm? Drive a few hours, stop somewhere for dinner, drive another few, stop for a snack. Naturally you should also walk around a bit at each stop, and pack plenty of water. This is all completely normal, and somehow my wife finds it completely abhorrent.

No, she would much rather pack a couple ham sandwiches and force me to drive past hundreds of tasty-looking restaurants, my legs aching for the comfort of solid ground and my stomach aching for the succor that only a non-hastily-prepared meal can provide. Look, home cooking is one thing, restaurants are one thing, but how can I be expected to abide a freaking sandwich? She sees it as a matter of saving money, but honestly I'd just as soon save money by never going to the doctor. She's stated to me recently that she's more interested in spending money on experiences than on possessions; well, what about dining experiences?

That's why these past few weeks have been so amazing; I've had the opportunity to try dozens of different kinds of foods that I never would have even heard about had I simply stuck to my wife's recipe book. Don't let yourself get caught in the same rut as me. Even if it's just once a week, forget about just saving money to live in the future and start spending a bit of money to live right now. When my wife gets back from her second trip, I'm going to have a long talk with her about the importance and desired orientation of restaurant dining in my life. I want to share those experiences and flavors with her. I want to show her that there's a cost that outweighs the savings when you never go out to eat, and that cost is one that can't be made up with money. I want to see her laugh in the dim restaurant lighting, I want to see her eyes widen with delight when she tastes a bit of the appetizer I ordered, and I want to hold her hand across the table while we eat. Maybe I should just play up the romance aspect of restaurant dining? I'm confident that she loves me more than she loves money; I just need to show her that, when she avoids going out to eat, her choice doesn't reflect that love.

***PAID FOR BY THE NATIONAL RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION***

Dolors and Sense

OK, so here's the scallop: she's back. I know, it seems like it's a week too early! But never fear; she'll be gone again all next week. It's technically a month, you see, just not all at once. I knew about this all in advance, and I purposely set out to deceive you. And it worked! What a maroon.

What other incredible stories can I tell you of my time on my own? The frantic canoe ride ahead of a raging flash flood? Tossing my own pizza dough for the first time in my life? The subtle art of managing a completely full social calendar? The incredible joy of reuniting with my wife again after three weeks of having thousands of miles separate us? I wish I could tell you these stories, but it's impossible; you see, there is an even greater story to tell, one that shames all these into the bleakest of memories.

This is the story of my phone.

I love my phone. It's an HTC Evo 4G, if that means anything to you, and that ranks it among the best phones in the world. This isn't a challenge - plenty of phones are great for plenty of people - but for me, this phone is tops. It's a beautiful device, running the Android operating system, and it does pretty much everything you could ask it to (except, until next week, animated GIFs). And the first month I owned it, everything was bliss. The impending disappearance of my wife almost didn't matter; I was on a second honeymoon, and it was with my phone. Apps flowed freely over the data stream and I became a roving, roaming danger to anybody who dared underestimate my interconnectedness.

But all was not well in la-la land.

Over time, my phone's responsiveness seemed to decrease, and the touchscreen grew finicky and unresponsive. These days, I'm lucky if I can press the home key properly once out of every three tries, and the phone carelessly dials itself all the time, opening up all sorts of unwanted programs and mistakenly calling unwitting people whenever I don't keep it firmly on lock mode. Sometimes it even manages to unlock itself, somehow, and I have to struggle with a device that seems to be trying to achieve sentience.

So here I am with a sleek, beautiful wonder of modern technological engineering that I can barely use. Yeah, I'll take it in to get it replaced eventually...but with a life as busy as mine, how could I find the time? All that I can think of is perhaps kidnapping a small child, and then holding him for ransom -- with the ransom price being, of course, that his family take my phone in to get repaired. Seems easy enough.

You know, the world would have a lot less problems if more people went in for a solution like that.

In the meantime, since I certainly won't be attempting any kidnappings while my wife is in town, I want to apologize for the paucity of posts last week. I assure you, I did best to completely fail at some utterly mundane task, but I couldn't screw anything up to a degree that I thought would be worth writing about. Although vacuuming is a looming chore that I will have to dive into...but it can't be that hard, right?

Those Temporarily Flying Discs!

I'm coming up on my breaking point. This used to happen all the time in college, when I'd only see my then-wife-to-be roughly once a month. About two weeks after each visit, I'd reliably begin getting anxious and unhappy. Mood swings and a depressed attitude were common as my subconscious slowly came to terms with the fact that I wouldn't be seeing her for a while. So it was, and so it is; I'm getting stressed about little things and subconsciously avoiding stuff that could make me feel better. Just calling her, for example, would definitely cheer me up, but I tend to avoid doing so (perhaps out of a sense of resentment?) at times like these. I'm crazy, I know! It's important to keep that in mind, and to work to counteract that insanity.  Because let me tell you:  madness is a bad scene.

On Saturday I finally had the time to just be by myself and unwind a bit; the first such time since my wife left!  It was absolutely wonderful.  I celebrated by finally getting myself to eat right and even working out, which was a very good feeling.  I can't really remember what I ate (food that I don't cook myself is just so boring!), but it was pretty healthy.  Eating right, for me, is pretty difficult and takes a lot of willpower.  I'm definitely a supertaster, and that means delicious foods are, to me, incredibly delicious.  I tend to overeat when I'm not being really careful, which is a Bad Thing.  I think I've gotten around this dilemma, though, by keeping very little food in my house that can be eaten without preparation.  It's working so far!  Also, I printed out a picture of me back in high school, when I was the very image of unmitigated hotness, and I keep it in my pocket as a form of inspiration.  I can turn back time, I know I can!

Fish update:  Cormorant and γ are on top of the world.  I changed their tanks today and only mildly traumatized them in the process!  Their feeding schedule has been somewhat irregular, though.  They're supposed to get two round meals a day (pellets), but you know...fish are slippery creatures, and especially adept at slipping a guy's mind.  So sometimes they get one.  But I think it's good, since it'll keep them nice and lean!  Look at me, I'm even getting dieting inspiration from my fish.  We're all in this together!

Summer job update:  the end is, sadly, in sight.  My boss, having just finished a solid year of litigating, is ready to take a break, and that means there won't be much work for me to do.  So he's going to set me free a full week before my last year of school starts up!  I still three weeks left there, though, and my wife will be around for at least one of those.  She hasn't really worked out the rest of her schedule for the summer (remember, being a teacher, she gets summers off), but I'm sure, based on precedent, that it will mainly involve finding excuses to avoid spending time with me.  Just kidding, haha!  Hoho heehee.

The apartment is still intact, except for two problems.  The first is that I really need to vacuum, because my belly button lint is seriously all over the place.  Secondly, I've gotta find some way to pay this electric bill.  My wife claims she left a check for me to use, but checks can get up to all sorts of crazy business, like being used to pay some random guy from craigslist for 224 stacks of Pogs.  Not that I did that, or would ever do that.  But, you know, some people like Pogs.  Don't judge.

Deep in the Shallows

Alright, so I forgot about ironing. What's the big deal? Leaving some wrinkles in my clothes is an intentional cry for help. After all, if I outwardly appeared to get along just fine without any wife to look after me, nobody would be able to realize the existential dread that haunts me every instant of consciousness. I'm hoping that wrinkly pants will be enough of a hint.

Last night, I hauled myself into my bedroom and prepared for the sweet oblivion of sleep to carry me into the next day. However, as I waited for the air conditioner to cool my place of repose into a balmy 78 degrees F, I decided to jump into the shower to help with the heat. I turned the shower on, and then thought I might as well lay my head down for a moment while the shower heated up (yes, I take warm showers to cool down. What's it to you?). Five hours later, I awoke to the water still running. Erk! That was a pretty bad start to my morning.

I just love to digress. But here's the deal, straight-up and true as a teenager's Angst: I'm starting to adapt to life on my own. I've done plenty of exaggerating about my living habits when my wife is around, but the truth is that I can be kind of a slob when I have somebody who's willing to pick up after me (who can't?) By myself, though, I'm developing a sort of weird desire to keep my place clean, just in case I forget to turn on the oven fan and asphyxiate myself while trying to cook some delicious bacon. I don't want my eventual rescuer/discoverer to have to drag me out of a messy place! That would just be embarrassing. And so I keep my home nice; the next step, obviously, is to wear a suit at all times, to save my family the trouble of dressing me should I slip on a discarded banana peel and do a face plant into the garbage disposal. I have a very malleable skull.

Between evolving into a semi-neat freak (compared to how I was before) and no longer deriving much refreshment from sleep, I think I might be taking on some significant insanity here. Before my wife left on her trip, I would happily have admitted to being "crazy," in the sense of "quirky and fun at parties." But no, I'm pretty sure that I've now hit all the benchmarks for lower-level derangement. I'm beginning to seriously wonder if my wife wasn't just a hallucination I had, an apparition, a mere symptom of my madness that the people I see regularly are happy to humor me about. I mean, if I have the capacity to live on my own -- if this ability was in me all along -- then who's to say I ever needed her at all? Maybe she's actually a split personality, and at one point my brain forked into two parts and assigned all the cleaning to the other one.

The cleaning, the cooking, the laughing, the smiling. That's her department.

I'm not entirely serious, but a small part of me wonders. I know the way I'd deal with someone suffering with a similar ailment; my grandmother has Alzheimer's, and I often simply go along with the fantasies she suggests rather than try to force her to face reality. I can't be entirely sure that the same thing isn't happening to me. I only really have one option: wait until my wife gets back, and then hold her so closely and tightly that I can be absolutely convinced she's really there. It'll be an unbelievably beautiful feeling to hold her again, and to reassert my sanity.

Frozen Pants & Other Sundries

So after a debilitating weekend at the beach with my family, I retrieved my overly needy fish from my sister's moderately careful oversight and dragged myself home. That was when I noticed they needed cleaning.

I realize, certain dishes aside, the c-word hasn't been tossed around here too much. Don't be surprised! It's not that I like to let my place get filthy and therefore go long stretches without cleaning; it's that I ordinarily keep my place in such order that no grime can ever manage to accumulate.  Seriously, though, despite my grumpiness about my sudden stewardship over these little aquatic balls of misanthropy, I feel a real responsibility to keep them in oxygen and food pellets.  That's why, when I spotted their little tanks all clouded up with ammonia, I knew it was time to act.  After all, those fishies need me!

Those guys are slippery.  Really slippery.  It took me the better portion of half an hour to determine the best way to get them out of their tanks without killing them.  It would have been a huge help to me if I'd had a net of any sort, but...alackaday!  'Twas not to be, and I contented myself with picking out their little decorative rocks one by one, so they wouldn't be crushed unceremoniously underneath them when I tilted the whole tank over.  It was the only way to get them out!  I tried deep spoons and the like, but those fish can JUMP.  In essence, it took me 30 minutes to outsmart a couple of fish.  A couple of fish in a prisoner's dilemma.

After I got their tanks changed and fed the little upturned-jaws, I turned to my true challenge:  the laundry.  That despicable machine has haunted my nightmares for the past few days, but I decided to overcome it.  I frantically made several loops through my apartment, finding loose pieces of clothing with every circuit.  I am a man who suffers from chronic sock shortages, and now I know why -- my wife has been hiding them all beneath the couch!  I mean, who else could have done such a thing?  I'm such a victim.

I carefully sorted my clothes into neat piles of colored and whites, feeling like a disgusting racist for it.  However, past attempts at sartorial integration had gone poorly, so I knew the time had not yet come.  Deciding that I needed nice shirts for work much more than I needed more socks (having recently found the proverbial "motherlode"), I tossed the coloreds in first (this one's for you, Rosa!)

I filled that washer up as high as it could go, and then a teense bit more.  I got it running, set it to LARGE LOAD, and tossed a bit of soap in.  Somehow I managed to get some soap on my bed (soap!), but at least this was a liquid detergent and couldn't find its way into my nose.  Not unless I absent-mindedly wiped my soapy hand on my nose.  AND OF COURSE I WOULD NOT BE STUPID ENOUGH TO DO THAT.  SO, MOVING ON.

I got the washing machine running and went to distract myself with flights of fancy and planning my busy social calendar for the week.  Epochs later, I heard the washer grind to a halt and directly ran to throw my stuff in the dryer.  I did so without too much difficulty, until I dropped one of my lighter colored socks in amongst some of my darker white socks.  It was like a lit match falling into a pile of gunpowder.

My world ended.  Trains screamed on their tracks and derailed, transforming from vehicles of convenience to metal tombs.  Airplane turbines sputtered and died, dragging their sleek-lined chassis into the seas.  Millions of panes of glass shattered at once, defying nature to invent an equally heartrending sound.  I watched that sock fall into its nearly-identical brothers, mouth agape with horror at the prospect of ever finding it again.  Its collision with the pile of clothes was as silent as a newborn's eyes.  I was lost, adrift in a pile of clothing, doomed to search for a needle in a mountain of hooks.

Then I realized it was the only sock in the pile that was wet, and fished it out without much trouble.

No, friends, the trouble came thereafter.  I loaded my clothes quickly, and even checked that there was a dryer sheet and the ridiculous "dryer balls" that my wife insists on using.  I guess she's trying to convince herself that they aren't meant to be sex toys.  At least our clothes get to roll around with them, I guess.  I set the dryer to "towels," realizing this is a necessity where multiple pairs of jeans are involved, and went to lie down on the couch waiting for it to finish.  What a terrible mistake.  You can't just out-wait a dryer.  Those things are eternal.  I felt that I had no choice, since I had a huge pile of whites I still had to wash.  I figured I'd wait until the dryer was near-finished and then toss the whites in, so I could move as efficiently as possible.  

I failed completely to consider the power of the circadian on my biology.  As soon as my head hit the couch pillow, I fell into the deep, dreamless, not-very-refreshing sleep that I've grown used to over the past week-and-change.  I awoke in the morning, just minutes before work, to find that I hadn't gotten to the whites, my wife was still in Africa, and I had slept with my contacts in (a truly miserable experience).  I had to rush about, barely finding time to perform my morning ablutions, and eventually had to toss my still-roasting pants into the freezer to cool them to a wearable state.  But, as I hopped around the kitchen, frying in my own khakis, I noticed that my fish were swimming around happily in their freshly clean bowls.  I felt a small tinge of pride that, despite all my difficulties, I had managed to care for some living creatures.  Even if they couldn't appreciate or understand what I had done for them, the knowledge that I had managed to keep them alive injected a small bit of warmth into my old, cold soul.  Sometimes, I think, that's good enough.

So good, so good, sofrito

I finally cooked for myself! As I said, every night up to now has been a busy mess of social engagements. Last night was an equally busy mess of interpersonal tomfoolery, with the key difference being that I was the host. As you must have expected, I whipped up my guests a truly unmatched meal, that being the one I linked yesterday.

You may find yourself incredulous to hear it, but I didn't have all of the kitchen tools the recipe called for when I decided to make it. Luckily, one of my outings this week took me to the mall, where I stumbled into that miracle of marketing, Kitchen Kapers. And they provided me with precisely what I needed to prepare my sofrito:















That's the ticket! This mortar and pestle was the perfect birthplace for my delicious sazon/garlic/oil/salt/pepper paste. And when I was done making that, I slathered it all over the meat like so:














Scrumptious! As per the recipe, I poked some holes in the meat and stuffed them full of sofrito just to be safe. I wasn't able to get my hands on any pork shoulder, but I figured a pork roast should work just as well. And it did! Super tasty!

For dessert we had tostones, but I forgot to take a picture. Plantains are mouth-watering, though. I'll definitely need to use them more in my cooking. Anyway, the meal was a big hit, and my friends were profoundly shocked at my culinary abilities. Not that they're newly developed abilities or anything; I guess in the past these friends always assumed my wife was doing all of the cooking. Well, I certainly demonstrated the keenness of my abilities to those lack-wits!

Speaking of my wife, I've noticed that I haven't been sleeping as well since she left. I'm not sleeping any less, but I don't dream at all, and I have a much harder time getting up in the morning. It may have something to do with my increasingly busy social schedule keeping me out and active more often. I've certainly been lucky to be able to keep in touch with my wife -- international calling seems pretty cheap from the cell phone she purchased in Ghana, and her host family has a computer with internet access. I mean, I tried stacking up the pile of clean laundry she left unfolded into a replacement pile to fill space next to me on the bed, but it's way too colorful to pass for her.

My fatigue may simply by stress from being taken so far out of my habits, and it's really not that bad. I was kidding yesterday when I said I was lonely; I haven't really had any time to be by myself at all. Tonight I'll be hanging out with friends, and then over the weekend I'll be visiting with family. Monday night again will be spent with friends, and then probably the whole week again! In fact, despite all this hanging out with friends, there are still MORE friends clamoring to hang out with me! And several friends I need to call and make arrangements to hang out with! Seriously, things were never this busy with my wife around. Somehow working in an office provides me with more solitude than being at home!

This is most likely just another case of wanting what I can't have. After all, I was looking forward to being a social butterfly! I'll miss all this fun talky-talk time when it's gone. But life is a balance, after all, and I need to find some way to keep my competing needs in order. This bears thought, so more on it will come. Just give it time.

Those Terrible Pangs

I admit, it's been a few days longer than I expected, and for that I apologize. I've had plenty to keep me busy in my wife's absence, and somehow I managed to avoid any of that being cooking or cleaning. In fact, since she left, I've hardly had any time to myself. Mysteriously, I'm alone more often when my wife is around. Is this one big conspiracy? Is everyone colluding to force me to choose between having my wife around and spending time with people who are not her? Not that having my wife around, strictly speaking, is my choice to make.

It seems that those other people in my life have "taken an interest" in my well-being, assuming from my character that, uxor absentis, I'd be dead in a few hours. On some nights, I've had as many as three separate dinner invitations (before you go thinking I'm insanely popular, be content to hear that two of those were from family). So while I had been looking forward to the thought of a bit of solitude, it seems even that solace is denied me. O me woebegone man, for whom companionship be most blessedly vexatious!

And things have come to pass such that, short of murder most foul, there's simply no way for me to be alone in my residence. The day before my wife left, we (somewhat inconveniently) had a wedding to attend. The centerpieces at the reception were colorful betta fish floating around in their own little vases. It was a nice idea, and an even nicer wedding, but when the evening's end rolled around, tradition reared its ugly head. My wife and I love to dance, so we tend to be among the last guests standing at weddings. This can result in our getting to take home a lot of leftover favors and having some more time to talk to the newlyweds, which is never a bad thing. Unfortunately, we are also complete suckers, so we wound up taking home TWO of these accursed fish -- that's right, we got a centerpiece from somebody else's table in addition to our own.

Even better, these are both male betta fish, which means they have to be kept in separate fishbowls or else they'll slaughter each other. And their bowls have to be kept far enough apart that they can't see each other. And I have to remember to feed them! Little Cormorant and γ probably aren't very long for this world.

Fish updates to follow; tonight I'm making this delicious-sounding recipe. I'll let you know how it goes, even though I don't really have to, because I am a genius and it will go wonderfully. Adieu!

p.s. I'm so lonely