The Lunch Encounter

Why is it, when you can’t sleep, or you are waiting for lunch, time passes as slowly as a slug in lead boots, and when you sleep, or you eat, time speeds past like a millipede on skates? Most agonizing of all, time moves in warp speed as a person gets, ahem, older. Sleep, creep, leap. I’m in the leap part for all intents and purposes. What gives with that?!?!?

While my brain is all tied up being time-boggled, another wordpair that causes cerebral stretch is this one: Time being. What in the name of Father Time does it mean? Does it mean NOW? Being what? I think of time, therefore it is. Now, that is. The time is now.

Exhausted now. Only antidote I can imagine for the time being, time being short, is a sandwich! Sust-sandwich-enance.

Thank you for the excellent clipping service, Mike of ComicsDC.

Tell you what, this Ginger Beer may come in a plain white wrapper, but it mixes up into a mighty fine Moscow Mule, with vodka, or into the Mule’s more laid back cousin, with rum. A few ‘o these under your hip huggin’ belt and you’ll be scrounging for bread and ham. Keep a little smelly cheese in your cottage, wash the arugula when you can still see single, and don’t worry bout burning yourself on the toaster. You won’t feel a thing, darlin’.

I’m feeling it now. The price of a mighty fine vacation – twelve hours on the east coast corridor where there is no guarantee you will get home, until you do, in fact, set foot inside. Sure could use a Mule in a Collins glass. Would he kick his way out?

Trim the crusts, wouldya lovey?
Too too tired to chew.
Home sweet home. Trew.

The Lunch Encounter is Closed for Vacation Until July 8th. Thank You for Your Patronage.

We stopped at the Super Duper Weenie on our way north again this year. The fries were thinner and even more toothsomely deelish.

Had every intention of posting from this heavenly island, thought I’d be relaxed and all, inspired. I am, believe you me, but the wifi only connects under the clothes line, in the back forty. It takes more fortitude than my holidaze self has got, to sit in the weeds and think sandwich over a keyboard. Nope. Rather play it safe up here on the patio where my glass is always three quarters full.

Serenely-Sonic Karin turned me on to this quirky catalog, sending me a warning note not to recycle it upon arrival. Up there in my home state, the pin on the map of my dreams, Karin lives between serene Green Bay and sonic Lake Michigan. She is one stake in the tent of my heart, holding me down when my mind is spinning away on east coast rogue winds.

I hope no one is reading this, seeing as I am getting carried away by melodramatic analogies. Open me another Leinie, wouldya honey?

Green Bay is the door to the door, swing through it and you are in Door County. Happy in the limestone steeped soil, sour cherries grow there. See pie below.

Definitely not on trend for locavores, this Foods Across America catalog will none-the-less cause deep yearning for your past locales. If you need it, NEED it, an airplane will bring it to you. Before your heart bursts from missing your accumlated life. I know that hotdogs are not part of the jet set, more badminton net set, and that flying ’em in as an indulgence not without repercussion, polar ice cap and all…     Still…..

 Amoroso rolls…
Usinger brats…
Boom, boom, boom, I don’t just wear my heart on my sleeve. That would be too subtle. I am a walking, breathing visible woman and you can read my heart‘s desires with no special high-tech equipment. Surprised it doesn’t bust right through my rib cage some days, from wanting things long gone up in smoke. Just give me a taste now and then – my imagination can fill in between the dots.
Add these five to my fridge door and that would bring us up to 17 mustard varieties. How much mustard could a housekeeper chuck, if a housekeeper could chuck mustard? None! Ya leave those jars with mere scrapings in ’em alone!

So see, if your cravings are wilder than your travels, you can armchair it, or maybe you better stick to the picnic table so your mom don’t yell at ya. “What’re these crumbs doing all over the sofa?!” Sandwiches go better with the smell of clovery grass and the ache of a splinter in your elbow anyway now, don’t they?? Don’t let the screen door give your PF Flyers a flat tire on yer way out.

The phrase “wash it all down” does not sound good to me. Does it wash down clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counter clockwise in the southern? These sugar-sweetened sodas with the labels that do not scream BRAND BRAND BRAND at you deserve a slow sip through a straw. Concentrates the carbonation and elevates the sensation. Up, up, up through a stripy tube to you. Them bubblez are good for your heart.

≈The owner offered up his 18-month-old boinging, fur-spewing, joy-lathering collie mix. Tempted, tantalized, tickled, I asked, “What’s his name?”
“Thomas.”
Feeling all happy – bright morning, 11 extra minutes of pure freedom before work, handsome dog making his paws, head, chest comfortable on my lap – I took a hard look down the narrow alley. 
Light at the end of that tunnel. A tiny sliver of freedom. I’m turning the corner gently into a sunny street and hope I live long enough to wallow.
Maybe we’ll get a dog in the fall. I’ve got Thomas’ number in my mobile.

The Bean Counter is in upper Georgetown. On sunny mornings you can simulate an exuberance pill by sitting at “just the one” table out front and waving to passing truckers chugging their way downhill.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

“The sandwich was as good as ever — the best sandwich in Georgetown,” reports longtime customer Peter Smathers Carter, 24. “Their Cuban is the best authentic Cuban sandwich I have ever had.”

The sandwich ($7-8) was the standout on the menu, with the sweetness of the ham and house-roasted pork mixing harmoniously with gooey, buttery Swiss cheese and the tartness of pickles and mustard. The bread adds to the texture and flavor, its thin and greaseless grilled crust veiling the tenderness inside. Washingtonpost.com

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.