Slice, Dice, And Trip The Light Fantastic

The chicken nuggets were a hit. I’ll give you the recipe, but you’re probably not going to like it. In fact, if you count yourself within the ranks of the epicurean geek corps of The Alton Brown Army, you’ll absolutely hate it. I say this not because the dish is in any way inferior to the results of Mr. Brown’s culinary acumen, but simply because I don’t go in for pesky annoyances like measurements and baking times. I’m a dumper and a taster, and I cook things until they’re done. For acolytes of Archchancellor Brown’s school of cookery, not measuring things out to the within the most anal retentive degrees of absolute accuracy is the stuff of heretics and heathens. For people more interested in how things taste than how things work, however, dumping and tasting is the accepted dogma when it comes to working in the kitchen and creating truly good eats. Read More

Cry “Oven!” And Let Slip The Chicken Nuggets of War

Our oven stopped working one day, quite unceremoniously and without fanfare. It simply stopped getting hot. I’ve been meaning to call someone to come fix it for ages now, but for one reason or another, I never got around to it. In a few brief bursts of ignorant enthusiasm, I tried to fix it myself. However, since I’ve been neither trained nor tested in the delicate art of natural gas oven repair, I never met with much success. I thought that I knew what the problem was, and I even formulated a very scientific hypothesis concerning how to make the blasted thing work again. The only problem I kept running into was the bizarre and arcane construction of the accursed appliance, which thwarted my every effort to open it up for surgery and get a good look at its innards. I even called in the big guns one sleepy Sunday, and had my father come take a look at it with me. Read More

Something Bridal This Way Comes

As of today, our wedding is officially two months away, and the days are starting to slip past us a bit quicker now, with every terrible tick and ominous tock of the countdown clock accelerating us faster and faster to the I Do Deadline. It’s a funny thing, a wedding. When it’s far off in the hazy glimmer of some distant day, it’s exciting and joyous and – perhaps most importantly – it’s all theoretical. But as the days slide off the calendar one by one and bring you ever closer to the event, things begin to change. And, with the exponentially increasing speed that accompanies the arrival of any deadline that’s been victimized by excessive procrastination, what was once merely theoretical suddenly becomes inescapably inevitable, and the excitement and the joy start to give way to the stress that comes from having so much left to do and the panic that results from having so little time left in which to do it. It’s a common theme, really. They have reality shows about it, wherein future brides channel the ancient spirits of antediluvian Japanese reptile-gods and set about devouring whole cities with the homicidal fury of their nuptial rage. Or something like that, anyway. Read More