Observation: if you don't bother to wash the knife after
cutting the jalapenos, subsequent cheese snacks will
be piquantly tangy.
Followup: recent cheese snacks have been piquantly tangy,
redolent of garlic, reminiscent of cilantro (so-called
Chinese parsley! ha!), amusingly oniony, distractingly
tomatillo-scented, and kinda rancid.
Conclusion: toss the cheese, wash the knife.
If you ate playdough and rarely made a distinction
between fingerpaints and hair tonic, you probably are
already a practitioner of hands-in cooking. If you're
also cheap, lazy, hungry, and sort of vegetarian, then
this is what I suggest you eat tonight, and then again
tomorrow if the beans haven't clotted overnight. (You
did throw some saran wrap over the pan, didn't you?)
Open up the can of black beans that's been sitting in
the back of the cupboard. Dump 'em in the colander and
rinse off that sticky black stuff (Iquor de Goya) real
good. Chop up an onion, a fistful of cilantro,
some hot peppers, some cheese. Put it all on a tortilla
and put the tortilla on that thing that makes things hot.
When it's hot, eat it with Cholula or Jufran Banana Sauce.
How about this one? I got it from a famous chef in
exchange for a handful of magic beans. HAH! What
a sucker. "Magic" my ass.
OK. You buy a cross-section of a fish,
something hearty like swordfish or tuna or even cat.
Let your partner struggle to get the ****ing skin off
the thing while you saute the onions, hot peppers,
red bell peppers, and whatever tangy stuff is lying
around, in expensive olive oil that comes in a cool
triangular bottle. Hoist the piscine fragment therein.
Now, more olive oil, some of that extra-virgin soy sauce,
a few good splashes of cheap but heady red wine.
Montepulciano has never failed me. Throw in some
cilantro leaves, and then some more when the fish is
almost done. Now would be a good time to take the
sweet cornbread out of the oven... did I mention the
cornbread? Serve fish over cornbread with leftover black beans and
the rest of the Montepulciano. Eat it all now; it'll
stink tomorrow. Maybe you should've saved those beans.
Here's a trick I learned in Kaohsiung, City of Concrete.
Mosquito season is almost over, but if you don't
print this out and save it for next summer, you'll
be kicking yourself and I'll come over and help.
The mosquito, you see, is the degenerate descendant of
vampires, and has inherited their inexplicable distaste
for garlic along with their lust for warm blood.
Now, one clove of raw garlic about the site of the ball
of your thumb, sliced thinly, is just about enough to
cover half of a bagel. The cream cheese helps the garlic
stick to the bagel, and also moderates the taste.
Fresh-ground pepper is optional. Administer half
an hour before you go to bed - don't wait til the last
minute, or your toothbrush will reek. The vampire-proof
cloud which now surrounds you should fade just as the rising
sun banishes the mosquito to his tiny coffin behind the
bookcase. But you may want to try this one out on
the weekend, just in case.
