Category Archives: Uncategorized

The forecast was:
Sunny with a chance of buttered toast. 

The air was breezy and summery and rolled over and around me like fresh nostalgia. Gently drifting Corabelle toast accumulated, forming crunchy moraines. Magnifying glass in my rucksack, brownie-sized pyre of twigs and a concrete cooker at my feet, the urge to put on the kettle for tea was fierce. Home on the Kettle Moraine.

What’s that in my monkey dish?! PO-TA-TO salad. I want some stuff on the side, stuff on the side, man alive, I want some stuff on the side. Chips are nice and all, a potato in any form is king of the side, but this time of year you gotta go with the salad and, if you are lucky, it will be midwestern style, with thinly sliced ruby radishes and hard boiled eggs. Nice sticky potato cubes with ever so slightly softened corners. Ever so slightly. And ever so slightly salty to the core.

My mother knows how to do it right. Yes, I know you knew I was going to say that. When she learned it, around the middle of the last century, men wore hats like this jaunty, faceless everypotato, and woman wore hair do’s that did not move. You wore them, they did not wear you. And you did not get out a battery of products and power tools each morning. You went to the salon, they fixed your hair, you wore it. End of story.

I am on a one woman crusade to bring back helmet hair. Give me a rock hard, once-a-week-under-the-dryer do. Gonna put in my time at the parlor and then ride off into the sunset with Mr. Rouges Biologique. Come breeze or gale or squall or gust, the pair of us will remain unmussed.

Don King Enjoys Grandilomentitudinous Sandwich

Onionilliciousdelectiousness

ONYUM!!!

Thanks much to One-Always-Needs-a-Napkin Michele!

and I did not correct him. I don’t correct you even when I think you’re wrong.

(Mountain to Climb, Bottle Rockets)

He said, “I want a happy meal, mom.” And I said, “How bout a sad meal? I could have the angry meal.” Lo and behold, Burger King beat me to the punch…line.

The last few weeks I have been way too busy to sit for lunch. Have barely set foot in the Lunch Encounter, let alone put bum to swiveling counter stool and relaxed with a BLT.

Sent a request to my assistant for some, well, assistance.

Me:

If you could help me out, I will try to keep my head from exploding:)

Her:

Ya, that would be messy.

Me:

 My all time fave Enquirer headline:

 
Cheating Wife’s Head Explodes
She Burst in Her Lover’s Arms

 Now, that writer should have received a Pulitzer.

Her:

I wonder if she had the Chicken Caesar before she blew.

 A few years ago the Enquirer’s headline was:

Sadam Hates Hummus

I burst out laughing at the checkout.

 Me:

All I really need to know I learned in the checkout line.

Hummus sandwich at the Which Wich.

File under “This is Why You Need a Stylist”. Not to be snarky. Forgive me.

≈¡Sabich!≈

Gesundheit!

The Accidental Vegetarian

Herbivoracious
(Is that not so pretty? It is! It is!)

What exactly is Sabich?  I asked around and this is what I found out:  It’s more modern than when I was in Israel. Had falafel, humous, tahini, all that stuff. Yum. But not a sabich. It sounds like someone with a bad cold trying to say sandwich. 

I tried to talk to an actual human, rather than getting it all from cyber-space. See where it got me? Right back in Google’s lap. 

From Master G: It is hummus, fried eggplant, steamed potatoes, (browned) hard-boiled egg, salad and amba (a mango pickle), all tucked neatly into a pita.

Neatly? This I would like to see, in real life, 3-D. And eat. Not neatly. A tidy construction till it meets my teeth. Press my face right into it, like you do with a wedge of watermelon. 

Well, it ain’t true that any old dude’ll do, but the joke is funny anyhow. Told it before and I will tell it again. Now. With an every so slightly different inflection. Fresh every time. If Ralph Stanley can tell it, I can tell it. Again and again and again. Wisecracks do wizen, but not this one, dudes.

Q: What’s the difference between a rooster, Uncle Sam and an old maid? (Yeah, yeah, I hate that word combo too, but w.t.h.e.doubletoothpicks?)
A: The first goes cock a doodle doo, the second says yankee doodle doo and for the third any old dude’ll do.
I’m quite sure this “any old dude” who we lured to our table with a promise of bacon would not want to be considered “any old dude”. One would hope not. Out of the driving rain came packs of any-old-dudes pouring into Ruby and Ketchy’s and hunkering down at four-tops. We snagged one or two as they passed. 
Ruby and Ketchy’s is the place you think has gone the way of the passenger pigeon. To come upon it rachets up your faith higher than the knotholes in the knotty pine.Snug as bugs we were. Fog-hushed murmuring, waitresses in soft-soles shoes, car tires gently mashing wet gravel out front. Crossing east from Illinois, West Virginia came upon us at lunch time. Not a moment too soon. Rain, rain, rain. Moving down the highway, the water bolts down onto the windshield and froths up off the truck tires with so much more vigor than when you are standing still. Makes a passenger – and the driver too, I presume – road weary and hungering for familiar food.Ruby and Ketchy’s is in the Cheat Lake area, outside Morgantown, which I understand is all that, but we had no way of knowing. Exit, eat, return.And there were milkshakes. Slurped up in record speed on my side of the table. None for the road.Opened in 1958 by Ruby Nicholson, this sweet spot is still run by their descendants. Ruby’s original recipes include meatloaf, vegetable soup and chili. Dang, we will have to drive that way again and partake. Heard a word about piiiiiiiie.

Wordplay by Jon, a thin Perkes

Indianapolis.

Indi-man-apolis. Man-sized-sandapolis. Sand-wich-man-apolis.

Indianapolis.

We did not snooze, and we did not lose. Mercy, those hoosiers. Mercy me.

Nickel Plate Bar and Grill

8654 E 116th Street

Fishers, IN 46038

(317)841-2888

At the railroad Xing.

Heidi I-love-the-obscure Leech has a smile as wide as an Indianapolis waitress’. Sure as shinola.(As wide as her smile, not as wide as the waitress, dummy.)

This is the land of Otis Gibbs and one can expect authenticity.

The Nickel Plate was the 2005 Indy Men’s Magazine pick for best pork tenderloin sandwich.

Pork tenderloin. So they say. It hadda be the loin, ladies, that crispy fellow was sliver/slice/slab/slob. It was a slab, man. A crispy, make-me-moan slab of sammy.

The burger wazzz, ummmm, none too shabby. On that buttery toasted bread. Never seen that before. Still finding crumbs behind my ears.

Just outside the outer belt on the northeast side. Excellent stop as you cross the country on Route 70. We only went so far as Champaign/Urbana, just far enough to wonder about the Urbana thing. Champaign/Urbana is not the only /Urbana metropolis. What does it mean? Where did it come from? Perhaps, had we driven on further, to the other coast, the mystery would have come clear. But we did a loop de loop, Illinois and back, the rental car turning its nose automatically at the Mississippi. Outta bounds beyond.

Fantasize holistically, he said.

Homegrown Sandwiches: Fantasies Fulfilled
The Fremont counter knows exactly what you want, and they’re going to give it to you as sustainably as you can handle.
By Jonathan Kauffman

Homegrown, Sustainable Sandwich Shop