The Contentment

I'm in the contentment zone, with a nice bagel and a few drinks, milk, grape juice, and coffee.

I felt myself drifting a little bit into a reverie while reading some comments at Daily Kos. I look through some of the diaries but usually avoid the comments. But with the contentment, I drifted down lazily into the comments. That's a nice feeling, a kind of foggy feeling, allowing me to take those moments to read a few comments slowly.

Then -- I wasn't exactly awakened from the foggy feeling but I started processing the debate that takes place in comments, those who are offended then realize that the diarist's comments were "snark." I'm not going to get involved. So, like I said, I wasn't exactly awakened, but I became more conscious of what I was doing.

Meaning there's no place like home. Close that out and do this. Think about and note my reverie, in part induced through this morsel of food and these drinks ... also a fun size Reese's peanut butter cup.

My Bagel Was Gummy

My dog's unpredictable ways forced me to leave my heated up bagel on the stove for an extra 10 minutes, meaning by the time I got to it it was gummy and tough to chew.

For quite a while -- maybe it was because of the winter darkness -- she stayed in bed and I was able to fix breakfast, eat it, check out the computer, etc., before she appeared, wanting to go outside. Now it's been more like this, that she makes an appearance right when I'm about to grab my food and head for the computer.

The same thing happened today. I didn't hear her footsteps on the stairs, so I thought maybe ... maybe I'd get away with doing it in the order I want. So I heated up the bagel, had it buttered, had some juice, milk, and coffee ready. Then ... on cue, she shows up!

We went outside and dilly dallied longer than usual. She made more near approaches to taking a crap than Apollo missions before they actually set one down. She was creeping around, looking for a place to land. Reminds me of crab walking. I was barely containing myself, feeling annoyed. And once when she was moving closer to some fresh mud I did yell out, "Hey!" I told her come this way, and "Good girl." I have to show that we're on the same page or she'll never go.

I finally got in and now here I sit. The coffee was cooler, the milk warmer, the juice was good, but the bagel was super gummy. Two things, bagels and macaroni and cheese have to be eaten right away or they're not fit to eat.

When You're Here, You're Family

We ate at Olive Garden today, which is a pleasant experience for us.

Since their slogan was or is "When you're here, you're family," it was nice to see several of my cousins serving tables. Including one cousin who tended to us in particular.

I had the Tour of Italy plate. That's a big plate with a few different things on it, including lasagna and noodles alfredo or something and I don't know what the other thing was, some kind of chicken. It was good but I started filling up, after all the bread sticks and salad.

I've been wanting to get over there for a while. I had a $25 gift card someone gave me back in June. That plus a little bit of money, twice that actually, and we had a decent time.

Then when you leave, you're no longer family.

No Buzz From Oysters

I believe I said the other day that oysters were the new peyote. That when I eat them I get a buzz, not exactly hallucinations but a buzz.

But tonight I ate a whole can of them and didn't get anything. The stew kind of burned my tongue a little, but that's not desirable at all.

Someone says, What about your buzz? Yeah, I have a burnt tongue. OK, that's really worth it. The best thing, it satisfied my craving for it.

The Oyster Posts

Wanna have a mystical experience? Overdose on oyster stew.

Oyster stew gives me a buzz. I haven't had any junk for a month. Don't tell anyone, OK? Let's keep oysters legal.

Seriously, oysters are the new peyote. I went out in the wild and made some oyster stew over a campfire. I saw strange beings all night.

You ever heard of the merkabah vision of Ezekiel? It was oysters that did it. Babylonian oysters, the good stuff, very rare, black market.

I tried to enlist and go to the Iraq war, just to get closer to old Babylon. Risking my life for oysters. Didn't pass the physical.

The blood test of course is what did me in. I tested positive for oysters. And the weird thing is I hadn't had them for six months prior!

Grilled Spareribs

I grilled spareribs today for the Fourth of July.

I went to the store for some baby back ribs and they didn't have any. This is weird. I was there a few weeks ago and got some. But I haven't seen them since.

So I got a big rack of spareribs, which I've never grilled before. But they worked out well. It didn't seem like there was much meat on them, but once they were cooked and we were working through them, they were plenty meaty enough.

Umm, that's good. That great BBQ (charcoal) taste, cooked like that from beginning to end. Then brushing on some KC Masterpiece sauce. Umm. I had more than I could handle, and I was the one saying they didn't seem very meaty.

Still, I'd rather get regular ribs (should've), or baby back ribs.

Golden Corral

I ate at Golden Corral for the first time ever tonight.

Quite an experience. I wasn't familiar with the process, but it turned out just to be a bunch of departments for the buffet. Just go up, although at one point it looked like people were in lines.

The food was good. The seating arrangement not so good. I can see why they call it Corral. Just tables and you're very close, to the point of being suffocated by your neighbors. No real privacy and as busy as any restaurant can be. I had several near crashes with people in the place since it was packed.

I won't go there on a Saturday evening again, that's for sure.

(The steak guy also puts a tiny, small piece of meat on your plate. They don't want to over satisfy you.)

Actual Mexican Tacos

I have a Mexican restaurant I've gone to quite a few times. I like their tacos, but they're very small. I also like good values and I'm not sure these are.

I've been thinking about it and a couple nights ago I bought ingredients that resembled the ingredients on these guys' tacos. I wasn't going to make tacos the same way we've been making them for the last 30 years, which gets boring.

These tacos are the corn shells, some meat, some onion, some kind of lettuce that's not exactly the head of lettuce type. Very simple, but who knows what might be in their meat sauce? That's where the Colonel, to mention another restaurant, can hide some secret ingredients. And not having a laboratory or even a microscope, I'm not going to be able to discern precisely what's in it. And I'm not going to ask them.

Anyway, I put the ingredients together and they weren't bad. Still not exactly like theirs, which I might need to work on a little more. One thing, I made way too much meat and wanted to finish it off rather than letting it go to waste. So that was a bad move. The lettuce I bought was called "Butter Lettuce," which I've never bought before. I don't think it was precisely the same thing, but it was leafy like theirs. The onions were good. And I tried to pan fry briefly the corn shells, soft shells.

They were definitely good. And even though I had to pay more upfront for the ingredients, I still have quite a bit left over (30 corn shells were only $1.89), and can have them at least one more time, just going by how much hamburger and sauce mix I have left.

All Oystered Out

I just finished an enormous bowl of homemade oyster stew.

An entire can of oysters, two cups of milk, the few other things it takes. Now it's time to just sit back, loosen my belt, and wait for the rush. Oysters do something to my mind. But I'm being brave tonight. Almost went for half a can, but then wondered when I might ever get to the other half if I saved it in the fridge. Don't want them to go bad.

It's very good, though. If you like it.

Prairie Belt Smoked Sausage

It's a big world and I'm sure there's lots of things I haven't seen. Here's one of them, till just a couple days ago. I was back at this store today and decided to get a can. I still haven't opened it. Might be good.

It's definitely a funky label, like from the days of Leave It To Beaver. You see a label like that and it suggests many things. Such as why so old looking? Is that the best way to sell smoked sausage? To me it looks like something that time forgot. But I assume the sausages inside were recently alive. The expiration date on the bottom is in 2011.

I was thinking it reminded me of one of the strange products in the National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper parody. But I looked and this isn't as strange as those.

GOING TO OPEN IT - OK, I'm going to open it. This will mean going to the kitchen and getting a plate and some water. So ... I'm pausing here ...

There were seven little sausages, the same height as the can. They have the appearance of normal weiners, just smaller. I put three of them on a plate and ate them. They weren't real pleasant to eat, not a taste or consistency of meat that appeals to me. I can't see myself buying these again.

Soup Bloat

I've recently heard of something new, people going to the hospital just for the food. That is, they have a cafeteria there and people go across town to eat there ... on purpose. Everything I've ever heard before of hospital food was how bad it was. But now, somehow, it became good.

When my dad was in the hospital we ate at the cafeteria a lot, in a different town, and the food there was tolerable. They had things that weren't bad. There was sandwiches if you wanted that. And chicken, etc. But I wouldn't drive across town and go there by choice.

Now, though, it's good, or at least that's what they say. So how would you get there faster? The hospital might advertise how food their food is, and say, "People are calling an ambulance just to get here quicker ... it's that good!" But an ambulance is an expensive thing, although it's definitely a sweet ride if you can lay down the whole way.

As for me, I had a big bowl of some kind of soup. Progresso, I would guess, which humongous noodles and big chunks of chicken. I had the Papa Bear bowl, so that was a lot of soup. I didn't think I'd be able to finish it, because I had more of a Baby Bear appetite. But I worked at it and kept working at it. Now I have soup bloat, being on top of the pot of coffee I drank in the last couple hours.

Not a good feeling. Maybe I should go to the hospital.

A Bowl of Noodles

There's a post of a bowl of noodles that made a guy sick. They look so innocent, like a moment of Zen. But the post notes how "ironic" it was that he took time to take a picture of this exact bowl of noodles. To which I would say -- depending on how often he takes pictures of food before eating it -- that is weird. The "bug in the soup" made him sick for the next four days.

I would probably never have a bowl of noodles like that again. Not as a superstition, but because of a lack of appetite. But if you ever have a hangover and want to do something about it, they suggest the "hair of the dog that bit you." So the cure might to eat more noodles. At least, you're showing who's the boss when it comes to food -- you or the bug.

But who am I to talk? I haven't had Pizza Hut taco pizza for 25-30 years because our whole family got sick on it one time. Came home, as I recall, and got totally sick. So ever since, no more. We were at Pizza Hut the other day, for the buffet, and we thought it was a taco pizza just put out -- which would be no go -- but it was something else, so that was OK.