The Lunch Encounter

Vic Firth, Percussionist
Vic Firth Gourmet
The finesse of the grind ~ it’s all in the wrist.

As Seen in Champaign, Illinois

SIMPLY AMISH

(Is there any other kind? Ahem, Department of Redundancy Department.)

Further commentary from the peanut gallery. END ONE WAY? Yes, what a lovely idea. BEGIN ALL WAYS.

From Alacritous Chicago Correspondent Bottle Rocket(s) fan Linda:

april 3
hey lisa,

no, not monster mash.

L

april 14
the bubbles are sparse. are they s’posed to keep happnin?

if i stir it it revives a bit, but if left alone, the movement stops.

may 31
will send update on my amish experiment when i can….

back to the laboratory,
linda

june 3
the amish friendship bread turned out great!  one of life’s mysteries i suppose.  it was very moist but i think turned out as expected. i will be baking the next batch this week, as it is a perpetual kinda thing with the starter, every 10 days.  mark loved the bread, especially the loaf i put raisins into.

sending photos along of the batch that shouldn’t have turned out.
(2 year old starter, kept in the frig….REALLY???!?)
mark and i ate it and lived to tell. going in for more!

this new batch is very bubbly and gaseous. the bags keep falling off the counter due to the gas movement. L

Gaseous, bubbly, bags falling off counters. Friendship is so complex. And dangerous.

Does the superlative “ultimate” look comfortable preceding “turkey burger”? Nope.

How bout this? Wild Turkey Hot Dogs. Seen at the Rhinebeck Farmer’s Market this summer. Wild Turkey Hot Dogs. Took me a minute to gather together the critters. Turkeys, dogs, hot, wild. How many were going to St. Ives?

She said, “The Net Result is better.”
And I said, “We like Sandy’s Fish and Chips.”
“Oh yeah,” she said,”You have your things. Your things you like to do.”

We hadda do every kinda every summer thing. Fish Sandwiches at Sandy’s, Lobster Rolls at The Galley, fireworks on the beach, an Awful Awful from the Newport Creamery. Yadda, yadda, yadda, we hadda.

We had to do it last year, too. Barbara’s sandwich handle is Hold The Onion, and they did not. We like it like that, too. Onyum.

The two young looking-a-bit-more-each-year-like gentlemen held the table. The Youngers. Kids do move big. Nothing subtle atall about two nine-year-old boys. They move big. And transparently. Just like a slice of onion through a Handy Wack.

You know I can see your tonsils from here?

The fries, oh mie. Oh me oh mie. If we are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat? If we are not supposed to eat fries, why are they made of crispy potato and salt?

I would say that “Fish Burger” is a misnomer. I would index our lunch under fishwich. Burger? Wich? What’s the diff?

burg·er (bûr’gər)
n.
1. A sandwich consisting of a bun, a cooked beef patty, and often other ingredients such as cheese, onion slices, lettuce, or condiments. Often used in combination: a cheeseburger.
2. A similar sandwich with a nonbeef filling. Often used in combination: a crab burger; a tofu burger.

pat⋅ty  [pat-ee]
n.
1. Any item of food covered with dough, batter, etc., and fried or baked: oyster patties.
2. A thin, round piece of ground or minced food, as of meat or the like: a hamburger patty.

Well, for cryin’ out loud, lemme get this straight. A burger contains a patty, and a patty is covered with dough and fried. Hence, our fish burgers were fish burgers. Who woulda thunk?

You gotta put the accent on the proper Syl-‘La-Ble to trip lightly over Rubixcubewich with teeth and tongue. Clunky construction. Does one deconstruct and reconstruct, to the soft sound of sand falling in an hourglass?

InSANEwiches

“I’ve never liked pastrami,” Ms. Rutland said as she sat in sight of a granite-framed fireplace at the flagship of the Crown Burgers chain. A homemaker from nearby West Jordan, Utah, she was in town to watch her son dance the Lindy hop at a Mormon Church pageant. “And I still don’t like pastrami, but I like pastrami burgers. They’re something else.”

PASTRAMI MEETS THE PATTY IN UTAH

Frankly, I would call this a burger pastrami, not vicey versey. Frankly, I did not get much further in the story than the Lindy Hop speed bump. Actually, more like a Lindy Hop Jersey barrier.

Wham, hit that sentence, brain stopped dead, bumper crumpled. I do hope that poor boy has a partner in his hopping. Left and left, and right and right looks so much prettier when done in duo.

Lindy Hop/Mormon Church/Pageant?? It would be easier to wrap my bumper around a pole than to wrap my imagination around this combo. Burgers with pastrami – conceptually easy peasy. I served my share of smoked brats topped by burgers with (with CHEESE, in Badger-speak), to ride, while dishing up grub and beer at Shorty and Lamby’s brathouse circa 1975.

Writing in The Los Angeles Weekly, Jonathan Gold described the presence of pastrami on Los Angeles burger house menus as an “atavistic souvenir of the decades when Chicanos and Jews both lived along Brooklyn Avenue in Boyle Heights.”

Mr. Gold preaches food gospel in the church of me.

In a recent issue of Salt Lake Magazine, Mary Brown Malouf tallied the “Utah Locavore 100.” Though her roster ranged from puaka tuna, a Tongan dish, to Navajo fry bread, she pegged Jell-O at the top.

Pegging Jello at the top. Can one peg Jello? You’d think that would create quite a wrestling match. Nailing jello might be more apt.

Alacritous Chicago correspondent Bottle Rocket(s) fan Linda turned The Lunch Encounter onto this dognificent relic:

A steamed “red hot“ is often known as a Chicago-style hot dog adorned with some unique ingredients such as the bright green relish sometimes known as “nuclear relish“. The cart was often found on busy street corners, with a large umbrella mounted above (note the mounting pole on the top). The cart used steam and boiled water, with the heat source compartment on the bottom right. The top section is pulled down to reveal the slots where the trays would rest. We were told that this cart was used during the early 1930’s at the Maxwell Street market and was discovered in the basement of a building in the Pilsen area. Urban Remains

Whaddya say we open the Hot Dog Hall of Fame with this cart as our centerpiece?? Relish the dream.

Then why shouldn’t you simply enjoy it?

I have figured out, once and for all, the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to enjoy it. My deductive process included time spent with someone who appeared not to be able to truly enjoy anything. Huh? All I could think was, point missed. Therefore, an ample and paramount point to living must be…pure, glorious enjoyment.

Same relative, an, ahem, influential person in my life, once told me, perjoratively, that I “have a maddening way of seeming to always enjoy myself.” Taking that, more and more in fact, as a complimentary apex.

End of repetitive rant. Won’t mention it again. Just gonna live it.So, we went to Wisconsin and Along-for-the-Ride Heidi came along for the ride. Whoa, what a ride it was, from picking, to seed spitting, to pitting with the old-fashioned gadget, not this one – the Cherry Chomper(although we sure were tempted by it in the cherry paraphenalia shop), to plain old eating, and culminating with a grilled cheese and tart cherry sandwich.Well, dang-a-lang-clang, he picked out the cherries. Why oh why is children’s medicine cherry flavored? Couldn’t they make it licorice, or lettuce, or some other rarely eaten (by small boys) item? Did they have to put him off cherries???

Just in from Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, producer of the new Bottle Rockets cd Lean Forward:

I can go into all kinds of detail about what I’d want
on any particular sandwich but years ago my good friend Lou Whitney (of The Morells and the Skeletons – terrific bands both) gave me this pearl of wisdom that I’ve found to be ultimately true.

A sandwich given is always a lovely thing to receive.

A sandwich enjoyed while listening to the new Bottle Rockets cd is always a lovely thing to eat.

Just spent time trying to avoid emotional contagion from some folks who do not seem to have picked up the knack for enjoyment along the way. I think they have missed the point of living. Roscoe and the Bottle Rockets (not to mention many other wild bands – cds, live shows and in my head) provide me with extreme amounts of enjoyment.

My cd arrived a few days early of the release date, pre-ordered, and I am in rocknrollheaven. The LP? Wild and sophisticated, sez I. Like a sandwich, sez Eric. Stocked up on bread, ham and pickles, no need to leave the house.

How big do you spose this thing is? It could be 2 inches or 2 feet. Well, not two feet cause there is no muscle on the cow that big, but you get my drift. Is it the wild west for elves, or humans, or Barbie dolls? Aww, who cares? I can put myself there, rappelling down the slippery drop of beefgrease. Look at me, I’m an elf in carabiners. A lean, powerful elf.

My adventurous dreams waft to these miniature landscapes. I am in charge now, and I want to see these things in beef. I want to see them in beef, and plan a summit attempt. Canyon de Chelly, the Smithsonian’s castle building, Mount Rushmore, a Mies Van de Rohe house, and more Canyon de Chelly cause you can’t have too much. Somebody get me a food stylist here! And a sherpa or two, elf-size sherpas.
To be mapped for future outbeefbound adventures.Going to scale these heights with beef au jus in my canteen.Picture this. In beef. Lean and powerful by design. Yes.