For starters, I know people were wondering how my stew turned out, and I can assure you that it was palatable, if not necessarily tasty. Today I tried another attempt in the guise of chicken, and I was very pleased with the result, though it gave me hives.
Actually, I wanted to post a post because of two food-related discoveries I made today, and this chicken was one of them. You see I realized that the secret to preparing chicken -- which I’ve always abhorred and suffered by – is to be really, really hungry when you’re cutting it up. You see, it’s so incredibly disgusting and gives me formidable heebeejeebies (and I’m sure I’m not spelling that right) that I’ve largely kept it off my menu entirely, except for the chicken that comes breaded and frozen and merely requires heating. Anyway, I found myself just throwing chicken caution to the wind today – leaving a remarkable variety of entrails and veiny things intact, and just throwing it all in the pan for consumption, because I was so bloody hungry that I had no compunction about eating any of it. (And let me tell you, over 150 Blah-ugh! entries and all this time I’ve been dying to use the word “compunction” in a post!)
The other food-related item is one I’ve had on my mind for a very long time, but never remember to get down – namely the issue of tong etiquette. It’s a ridiculous and remarkable phenomenon how people use their grubby hands on tongs and then lay them atop food. Have you watched salad bar behavior with the kind of hyper-vigilant fear that’s so much a part of my pathology? If you have, then you must have noticed how people somehow find it okay to lay the tongs directly atop the food. It’s so strange that no one things twice about it, and stranger still that people then pick up the tongs and serve themselves after the bacteria-infested paw prints of some knucklehead have been unsoundly transferred into the group food plate.
I spent some time observing it today at a social event. For a while I’d been eyeing a succulent cheese ball resting innocently in the middle of a large platter of handsome cold cuts. I was close to going over and showing it who was boss when, as if on movie cue, a fat woman came forward, grabbed the tongs and helped herself to a generous serving of salami and stuff, then thoughtlessly, unconsciously, laid the big black plastic tongs right there on top of everything, like it was custom … And it is, sad to say! … Then the next man did the exact same thing. And for one hopeful moment he couldn’t balance the tongs on the pile, but then he solved the little problem by just throwing them right on the middle of the plate, where they touched everything.
Like me, you’re probably thinking there’s a good chance either one of these people may have their hands up their asses, or perhaps somewhere worse, and now we were all going to share in their experience, though obviously without some of the same joys. Not me. This was one of those times when my acute paranoia and hyper-vigilant fear paid off … No ass salami for me!
Over the years I’ve adopted some intelligent practices when it comes to getting a share of group food. I’d share them with you, but in all likelihood it would somehow impede my progress were we to end up at a social event together. Suffice it to say, I’m not falling for any of this …
So that was my day, at least in part. I’m still wondering if and when I’ll ever find time to finish the myriad projects I’m involved in, or when I’ll at least have the nerve to start giving them less psychic energy … Most importantly, at this rate there’s a good chance that I’ll complete 150 new Blah-ugh! entries by the end of the year … But don’t count on it!
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