The Lunch Encounter

Wonderbread nearly went belly up. Non-Atkins belly.

I am no fan of Wonder Bread. To my great good fortune I am the daughter of a dairy and bakery man. Childhood included Quaker Dairy produced milk, butter, ice cream, cottage cheese, sliced sandwich bread, flour topped hamburger rolls, swirled cinnamon loaves and donuts, all delivered early in the morning, although I believe ours came home with my dad at the end of a long days.

Truly, the world would be a better, more nourished – body and soul – place had Wonder Bread never come to be. While I have no hard facts, no statistics, no study data at my fingertips, I feel strongly that factory-produced, bottom-line driven food of any kind, and bread in particular in this diatribe, is, plainly put, bad. Not so plainly put, abominable, corrosive and a slap in the face to all preceding and subsequent dedicated bakers.

My two cents are utterly superfluous as Wonder Bread has taken its place in the culinary vernacular as dreck. The package, on the other hand, garners my complete respect. The dots entrance me.

The artist Linda St John has put the red dots of Wonder Bread to a use that deepens their authenticity, or perhaps embodies them with a hard scrap of authenticity. When Googled, Ms. St. John appears to be primarily an author. Having encountered her powerful 2 and 3 dimensional works long before reading her words, I would define her, with ragged edges, as an artist first. A compulsive and prolific artist who cuts tiny red buttons, at most 1/8-inch in diameter, from Wonder Bread bags. Buttons for fields of wavering girls. Wavering girls who appear to have been raised on foods purchased for the power of their visual bulk, a seeming bargain, such as Wonder Bread. It’ll fill you up. Not.

We’d like some chickens. This is not news at Ranch Double 18.

Did not do the Facebook 25 Random Things List, but had I, numbers 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 and 24 would all have read: My brain, left to its own devices, defaults to repetitive counting, gently forcing the world into 4’s.

We live here at Ranch Double 18 because the RR Number is pleasing to my brain. RR3618. Think about it. 3+6+1+8=18. 18×2=36. 3618. Oh the synchronicity. All these years I have wondered how could I have ended up in the suburbs. How could I have? How? My brain latched onto the numbers stenciled on the curb – 3618 – and I was done for. Signed, sealed and delivered. Well, the comfort is…the end is near, but not here, and perhaps I will make another stop along the route.

Back to the chickens. Here at Ranch Double 18 we would like some chickens. For the eggs. And for the meat, too, later. Egg salad. Roast chicken. Roast chicken you have fed, housed, stared in the eye and killed. And then happily eaten with salt, pepper and mayonnaise. After staring down the olives for their oil for the mayo.

This comes to mind – again – by way of the fact that Silvia did reiki on chickens. And brought them back to real life. Those chickens – at her parents place in Spain – were in rough shape. A shape roughly resembling chickens after the dogs roughed ’em up. You may think that reiki is not real, which renders it unreal in the thought process. Fortunately, for their own sakes in this case, the thought process of chickens is uncomplicated. Their brain waves cut a wide, slow swath, easily latched onto by reiki’s focus and cling.

The question is – back to the those dang chickens here at Ranch Double 18 – could I indeed wring the neck of a chicken? Hell’s bells, I don’t know! Lobsters are one thing. Lobsters have been many things on my plate, all of them dead things, killed with my own two hands. The last time I did it though, I felt a little queasy on the killing part. Perhaps that’s the idea. The eating part was butter nirvana, a clear conscience being key.

Silvia is connected. Well, of course she is connected, she practices reiki, the great connector. Electric. Silvia has a friend and I’m going be needing that friend because, get this, Jaume, the friend, hypnotizes chickens. Stare ’em down, hypnotize ’em, chop ’em up. Nicely. Don’t forget the sea salt and just ground pepper.

Apparently, if you watch enough youtube, you know all about hypnotizing chickens, but I don’t and I don’t, so Silvia did some primary research for me and asked Jaume for a blow by blow. Blow by blow is below:

Hello girls,

My technique consists of taking a hen, putting it on the ground upside down, with the claws pointing to the blue sky, and making it look at my finger or a little stick while I draw a line on the earth with it. After several times doing the line, I would get away from it and leave it in the same position, upside down, staring at somewhere.

Best regards,
Jaume

Know what else? There is no pond here, so we are not tempted by ducks. Good thing, my life is already hanging by a thread. Pecked to death by ducks. Slow, steady, dull thuds. And these are only metaphorical ducks. Spare me the real thing. Chickens, yes chickens. So much safer for the spirit.

There’s no news like sandwich news, sez the Divine Miss M.
A slice of Pittsburgh on menu at popular Tampa sandwich shop
Pittsburgh is everywhere lately, leading with its self, its sandwich self.

Used to love the Texas-Wisconsin Border Cafe in Richmond with its menu tipping the German side of the scale hard. To my mind Brocato’s in Tampa captures a kindred spirit and could adapt the nom de sandwich Pittsburgh-Tampa Border Cafe, a sort of culinary border blaster.

Alert in from When-I-Grow-Up-I-Wanna-Be-You, Ellen:

Go Green Lunchbox
Do you spose there are more right-side-up skulls on the back?

Lead-free I get, but what in tarnation is “leach-free”? “Unique erasable white board” on the inside flap so you can write a “loving note or simple reminder to your child.” Ha! Big Mother is watching you. Which reminds me. Once when he was tiny he asked me, “Are you gonna get old and sick and die and you won’t be my mother anymore?” I fixed him with a steely stare and said with a stone-cold tone, “I will always be your mother.” Ha! Big Mother will always be watching you.

Also available in Gator Dots and Hound’s Tooth!

Right under my nose in my hometown. How could Mangialardo’s have gotten by me all these years? How could I have gotten by without Mangialardo’s all these years??

The comm was no chicken feed. Mangialardo’s is the bomb.

Lunch hour at this sandwich-shrine brings a crowd of uniforms – deep blue with badges and starched white with ruddy winter-shaved cheeks. Calmly enraptured they stand with tickets pinched between first fingers and thumbs. Our encounter could have been a dead-drop, not a word spoken or glance exchanged. Gum shoe it to the counter, order the G-Man as instructed, step aside and wait.
Sorted throught my pocket litter to peel a little cabbage.
Mental note: Never travel without my peep. Heidi is one high-class walk-in with a good eye.

Postscript: Sent an alert to the spouse of my source.

The wife: Roger, Wilco. 10-4! Glad you liked it. I will grab the E (for enforcer) and show him.
The Lunch Encounter: You quack me up. May I post your comments?
The wife: Affirmative.

Thy will be done.

I get it now. It’s a sort of mantra. Thy will be done. Yes, you will be done. I will use butter and add heat and be patient and turn you carefully and you will be done. Maybe not well done, but done. “Done is good,” sez a friend. Mebbe, if the getting there was lackluster.

In LA some years ago, at the Apple Pan, and ever since, she has asked for fries well done. Well done?! I thought. Huh? Kept it all in my head though. She was from New York and me, well, no point in mentioning where I was from cause your eyes will instantly glaze and your view will slide offa me like jello off hot mashed potatoes. She was from New York and she knew from fries.

Tell you what though. I knew how to pack. Two pair of underpants, nine pairs of shoes.

As + Always resonant so perfectly as an audio duo.

Combination = Mass = Energy = Comfort

Chef Ryan Morgan

Q: What is your comfort food?
A: Sandwiches … bologna, cream cheese, hot peppery jelly on Wonder bread.

Υ׃§ŒκÅ∞€ξΛñ∑߉∏¿Ω‡ζΘβΨÖθþÚ€€√∂ÞÝΔîΟΞ∫ÐÏÉÅ∞¦ß¶θΘΩλ∩φΤ

Old old math. Theory of sandwich relativity. 1+1=3

Relativity of simultaneity
Mass-energy equivalence

The only kind of society you will catch me dead in is a Society of Mutual Admiration. Two way streets, baby.

As always. Has always. Always has. Always as.

I got it from an inside source. A cop. Electronic brevity. The note read:

Get the g-man
13th and Penn

I’d been briefed so got the reference.

Mangialardo & Sons

Stay tuned for the take.

Last year I fell down on the Super Bowl. To put a more accurate point on it, I fell down under the Super Bowl. Left in the wild of football I am easy prey. Did not see the Bowl in my peripheral vision and it pounced. I don’t even know that Super Bowl is two words. Perhaps it is one, compound.

This year, Superbowl 09, I am going all out. Bought a cabbage! Appealed to some Steelers (“Do I know what a Steeler is? Sure mom, they steal stuff.”) fans who like us in spite of the gaping hole that is my football spirit. Boom chucka lucka lucka.

Who played last year? Who knows, but I betchyer bottom olive they did not portend a famous sandwich.

Primanti Bros. Sandwiches
The Washington Post, January 28, 2009

Anyone who has spent time in Pittsburgh probably has heard of Primanti Bros. The historic sandwich shop has been making its trademark fried-potatoes-and-coleslaw-topped sandwich since 1933. Now with locations across the city (and a couple in Florida), it’s hard to miss.

For this recipe we use a spicy capicola ham, stocked in Italian delis such as the Italian Store in Arlington and Vace in Northwest Washington. But don’t let that limit you: Nearly any deli meat can be substituted in this great Iron City creation.

That’s what she said. And then this card arrived in the mail.

The good life indeedy. The good life is elusive if you make mountains out of mole hills routinely.

So nice to just be boring. A lake rather than an ocean. She said that too.

Give em an inch, they’ll take a yard. Give em a yard, they’ll put in a pool.

And then you got a mess on your hands. Pool service. Kids climbing over your 8-foot fence, chemical imbalance. For a taste of the good life, keep it simple – bread, ham, yellow cheese and mustard.