Category — Uncategorized

I was going to write about smoothies this week but it just seems easier to write about pork belly.

Now, even I can’t be “The Bacon Guy” every day.   I’ve worked hard these past seven months or so to change my eating habits, making sure I have plenty of fruit in the morning and trying to center my evening meals around vegetables and whole grains.  I’ve developed a strange affinity for turnip greens and no longer grimace when unsweetened iced tea crosses the threshold of my mouth and I really, really think the world would be a better place if we were all a little bit thoughtful about what we ate.

Okay… I get it.

But at some point we have to take stock and remember who we are. Yes, I still eat bacon. Yes, this is still a blog about pork products. Yes, I still think about ways to adding bacon to popcorn and toffee and yes I still grunt primally when I smell it from eight miles away, and yes I would fight man three times my size in an alley in the seedy back alleys of Barcelona for the last piece of perfectly seasoned chorizo (I would totally frikkin win, too) and yes, I want to lurk in the trees like Rambo and pounce upon wild boar with my knife and build an elaborate necklace out of its rib bones and yes, I want to smear myself in pig fat and run through the streets singing “alouette” at the top of my lungs.

But I’d settle for some pork belly.

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I am not a very spontaneous person.

But sometimes seeds are planted.  Ideas can lodge themselves in the throat like a sliver of popcorn and remain there until you spend every ounce of your energy bringing the Thing into reality.  This is what happened to me a couple of nights ago.

I haven’t been sleeping.  But in between my typical dream vignettes of loosing my teeth and my being roused at 4am by a phone call and trying to speak into the end of my stick deodorant on my nightstand (I am an extremely heavy sleeper) - I saw it.  A tomato tart.

WANT.

So this was my thought process for the remainder of Tuesday:
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Stop what you are doing.  Just stop.  Turn off the computer and proceed immediately into the kitchen and make this.  Right now. Baring that, proceed to Jeff’s place. Break in if you have to (if you can get past the Cat Lady on the front porch who will leer at you, you should be able to get inside) and use all necessary force to pry these crunchy, salty, cinammoneous (?) caramel-ey sweet little things out of my gooey, sandy, coma-induced fingers.

I suppose I should back up.
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Hunger has its own logic, doesn’t it?  I don’t mean the everyday pangs one becomes accustomed to after a long day in the cubicle, the kind easily remedied by a few bites of fruit or the occasional order of cheese fries.  I mean… HUNGER.  The sort of desperate and carnal weakness that overpowers your entire body.  It moves at times all the way from the searing pain along your temples to the feet that can barely move - the sort of creeping desperate, agony where your soul is in panic mode but your body cannot rescue you. 

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I’m still weak in the knees.

This isn’t sated, or full, or even satisfied or happy - this is one of those moments where you’ve spent hours with your eyes glued to the back of your skull and your jaw slack from what you’ve just felt - and all of your favorite smells and tastes have just shouted to you in a mysterious language you only at this moment understand.   And you realize, right then, when you’re done sitting in the dark corner licking the unctuous charred bits from the edge of your plate or trying to fish those last grains of rice from the tines of your fork even though you’ve already finished dessert - that THIS this is the meal against which all future versions will be Judged and Found Wanting.

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Shapiro’s Delicatessen, Indianapolis Indiana

So this is probably not the proper forum to confirm or deny the “Karaoke in a giant green sombrero” rumors.

I did, however, spend a long weekend in Indianapolis.

The trip had a bittersweet feel to it, as a couple of my close friends are moving away.  Things won’t change much in a day-to-day sense, but hastily planned day treks up I-74 are no longer possible, and the whole “late-night-the-tequila-has-kicked-in-but-im-not-in-jail-yet-and-there-is-a-guy-in-a-Mountie-uniform-asleep-in-my-yard phone call” dynamic becomes more complicated when one has to take time zones into account.

One upside is that my pal Rachel has taken an interest this past year or so in healthier eating/cooking/and thinking about where her food comes from, so it was fun to visit a couple of her favorite places- I always love it when people share their passions with me (my trip to a yarn store with two obsessed knitters remains one of my happiest memories of 2006), but it’s an order of magnitude more amazing when you yourself feel the same way.

But first things first.

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I am married to bacon.

Goetta is my friend, ham is sort of the Meat Next Door, BBQ and I go too far back for there to be passion,  pork tenderloin and I exchange long glances when we pass each other by the water cooler, the Pork Belly Mac and Cheese at Mayberry is on my Laminated Celebrity Card, and pork hocks and I have an understanding.

Chorizo is what calls me at 2 in the morning.

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I broke a couple of my little rules on Sunday Night.

First Broken Rule?, I had guests over. I almost NEVER do this. While Friday night and Saturday find me eager to be social, Sunday is about ME. It’s about finding the perfect balance of solitude, sloth, and the gentle sort of productivity that demands little effort but scrubs the soul -  It’s about making sure I have enough clean socks for the week, a perfectly soft loaf of honey-tinged bread to gnaw on, and the other emotional mise-en-place that I’ll require by whatever time on Monday morning I realize the snooze button is no longer a viable option.

Second Broken Rule?  Dinner consisted of something I had never made before… Candidly, the main course I had never even TRIED before, leaving me without an expected rhythm to its preparation (as if I am the model of grace under other circumstances) but more importantly, without a frame of reference when assessing its taste or texture.  Which, for something with sharper flavors, does make a few demands.

Anyway, I learned a few things.
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Indulgent breakfasts are one thing. Indulgent alcohol doused brunches are another. And, forgive me for sounding like I’m channeling Jennifer Love Hewitt, homemade crepes and mimosas for breakfast is totally the most amazing and awesomest thing ever.

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Some of you may know that I spent my childhood and college years in and around Lansing, Michigan.  You know, state capitol, birthplace of Oldsmobile, and home to a large and reasonably well-regarded public university.  It wasn’t a horrible place to grow up: there were parks, trees, video game arcades, a good local theater and a few thriving independent businesses.  I’m still thankful for its four distinct seasons, good public schools, and modicum of diversity.  And despite being an early casualty of the auto-industry-collapse Diaspora, I only moved about five hours south, to Cincinnati. While my sister is quite happy and prosperous in Phoenix, I’ve sometimes felt an affinity to one of Darwin’s Galapagos finches, well suited to my surroundings, but completely out of place anywhere but my own native habitat.

Now, despite my grounding in the Midwest, our family did have one other important geographic connection, one which I had to think clearly about when i received a small package from “home” this past week.  My father grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and all of his side of the family still lives there.  Our family vacations typically involved the twelve-hour trek down I69/65 to visit, sight see, guzzle the absurdly sweet tea I’m only now shaking off an addiction to, and absorb the culture shock of the slower, genteel Deep South.

But Birmingham is also home to my first real Food Memory.  Ollie’s Barbecue.  No matter what the circumstances of our trip south, no matter how much or how little time we had, our extended family always made it a point to go.  It’s one of those traditions kids get caught up in, but by the time I was a teenager I could never wait to go to Ollie’s and sit at the ancient Formica counter top and watch the meat being smoked.
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