To celebrate?  Denver Biscuit Company with friends.  Can I tell you how excited we are?  I mean, we found Denver Biscuit Company right before we started this and have been thinking about it ever since.   So very excited.  Maybe abnormally excited.

How could you not want this? Do you hate America?

That and Duffeyroll.  We had a close encounter the past two mornings with Duffeyroll.  It took the sound of my cereal hitting the bowl to shatter the dream for Denny that we’d give up the ghost a few days early and get coffee and Sammies(the actual name of their smaller sandwiches, by the way), and delicious Duffeyrolls.

Not to mention my cravings for Pumpkin Spice Lattes getting in the way.  That’s something I need to tuck away in my little heart for a few days.  I think Denny dies a little bit each time I mention getting coffee and then we have coffee at home, or work, which really damages Denny.

This is the true test time.  We’re so close to the end that it’s a “well, we made it 26 days, we’re not keeping up with the blog, who cares?”  Especially when we have cash on hand.  Cash makes it so much easier to not pay attention.  The financial data doesn’t show up on your bank account, staring you in the face, wagging its ugly little finger in shame at you as it adds on extra zeros and commas.

Also adding to the difficulty is the staggering failure that is the cookbook bought two weeks ago.  Those dutch oven meals?  They’re totally lacking in flavor.   A large part of their failure is garlic.  It lacks garlic.  So I’ve been dosing them up with a healthy 5-7 cloves instead of their skimpy 2 cloves called for.  Obviously we’re not talking organic, fresh from the ground, farmer’s market garlic.  If that were the case, I’d actually follow the directions instead of loading up on weak-sauce garlic.

Once we get comfortable with this cookbook, I think we can modify the recipes enough to make them the taste sensations that we enjoy.  The whole dutch oven thing is so new that we’re scared to change a bit.  Sauces would help a lot, and we’ve learned to take the recipes out earlier than called for or else the meats end up totally dry.  But Denny was pretty darned excited about one pot meals, so I think we should try to make this work.  Not to mention, I love using that dutch oven.  I made a kick-ass cheesy potato soup in it on Sunday with odds and ends from the veggie drawer and it was ha-mazing!  Just like Mom’s.

Can we make it until the bitter end?  Stay tuned to find out.  Maybe we’ll write another blog post before it’s all over.

-M

Around this time every year, the company I work for gives everyone cash gift cards as a holiday gift. This is completely rad, as it’s a fairly decent chunk of money. Until this point, I have always spent the money on random crap for myself like video games, Snuggies (a man’s gotta have a full range of colors, amiright?), or candy corn. One year I went on an 80′s music spending binge. When’s the last time you listened to Walk the Dinosaur by Was (not Was)? It’s aural sex, I promise you.

While my taste in purchases is eclectic when it comes to random holiday gift cards, one thing has always remained constant: I have always purchased inconsequential shit that I immediately regret.

Always, until this weekend, that is.

My special lady friend works in the book industry. A direct correlation to working in the book industry, believe it or not, is being exposed to a lot of books. As such, I usually expect to see a couple new books in our house every few days. Meg especially likes bringing home two genres of books almost exclusively: fantasy books and cookbooks.

Until about 3 weeks ago, I guess both genres could have classified as fantasy in our house.

Anyway, I’d usually quickly thumb through the cookbooks, looking for the token Thai recipes they contained before tossing the tome back on the kitchen table, not to be used except in my uttermost need. Seriously, Frodo could have hidden the Ring of Power in any of our cookbooks and no man would have ever seen it again.

About the same time we started this 30-day challenge, Meg brought home another cookbook. However, this one immediately caught my attention for two reasons: you could prepare food ahead of time, and everything just required one pot. The cookbook claimed to contain delicious, nutritious one-pot recipes that would layer an entire meal in the pot, structuring everything in such a way that each type of food would cook correctly and completely, retaining its own flavor while at the same time adding to the overall meal. Once the meal was done cooking (which you could judge by smell, by the way), you simply spooned down through all the layers, taking a bit of everything, and you were ready to go.

Sweet Fancy Moses, I thought. This cookbook not only offers to help cook everything in one pot, it will give my wife a complete meal in one pot. No more trying to piece together pairings of meat and whatever else goes along with meat. No more guesswork. It tells me exactly what to put in, and I get a full, correctly proportioned meal for my better half.

There was just one problem with this magical book: every meal required a dutch oven. I should have realized that by the name: Glorious One-Pot Meals: A Revolutionary New Quick and Healthy Approach to Dutch-Oven Cooking.

Glorious One-Pot Meals by Elizabeth Yarnell. It's great. Buy it!

In case you don’t know, a dutch oven is a big-ass cast iron pot. There might be more to it than that, but I don’t really understand anything else. The only things I understood were that dutch ovens were big and heavy, and that I didn’t have one.

No problem, I thought. I saw dutch ovens in a big pile at the grocery store. They cost like 30 bucks. Luckily for me, Meg knows a thing or two about cooking, and more importantly, she knows herself. Invariably, the things that we use in the kitchen the most often are the things that are meant to last and meant to be used often. We have 5 good knives and use them constantly. Our two favorite pans come from a company called Swiss Diamond, and I hardly use anything else.

This, she realized, would be the same. If I bought this $30 dutch oven, it would ruin our food, or it would taste gross, or it would be hard to clean. We would stop using it, and it would be another wasted purchase. “We’re trying to make our dollars go further,” she said. “This would be no different than buying a cheap ass meal at Burger King on the way home. We’ll use it once, and throw it away cause it sucks.”

Of course, Meg was right. And luckily, Meg had answers. Her parents use, and have become loyal followers of, a company out of France called Le Creuset. They make cookware. More importantly for me, they make enamel-coated dutch ovens. This makes them incredibly easy to clean while retaining all of the benefits of a good dutch oven, which I guess cooks food real good. However, the problem is that Le Creuset cookware is pretty spendy: my dutch oven was going to set me back over $200, or ‘Two Notes’ as I never say.

One day, my kitchen will look like this. Except for the teal. Dear god, never the teal.

A couple weeks later, we heard about a pop-up store opening about a mile from where we live. Pop-ups are surprisingly popular nowadays, especially in an economy where ‘for lease’ signs litter strip malls like, well, litter. This particular pop-up would be open for about two weeks, and would only sell…well. You know. This wouldn’t be a very good blog post if it was selling Christmas trees, would it?

We stood there in front of stands of multi-colored Le Creuset pots and pans, when we noticed that almost everything was on sale. Our dutch oven, normally well north of two-hundo, was selling this day for just over $160. Suddenly, without thinking, I grabbed my brand new holiday bonus gift card, and before you could say, “I would like to purchase this dutch oven, please,” we had purchased a brand new, heavy-ass orange bowl of sexiness.

I have to say, the meal was friggin’ AMAZING. We made an asian salmon rice bowl, layering jasmine rice, salmon, fresh veggies, avocado, and a spicy soy sauce in the dutch oven. It flash-cooked everything in just over 30 minutes, and created perfect rice (just a little burnt on the edge of the pan, but not truly burnt, just making a delicious layer of brown, crispy goodness to peel off and eat), crunchy carrots, and perfectly flaky salmon. The avocado provided an incredible creaminess to the whole dish and took the edge off the surprising amount of spiciness created by a tablespoon of red pepper flakes.

I gotta say it. I’m SO happy I didn’t go cheap on this thing. I’m sure the whole experience would have been a nightmare otherwise, forcing me into a life of shame and sadness because I accidentally burned the house down thanks to my crappy dutch oven. I would have invariably tried to put out the flames myself, but everyone knows better than to pour water on a grease fire, so now the skin is sloughing from my bones, flames terrible and hot, my nerves deadened. I stand there in shock, collapsing to the floor in a burning mass of flames, flesh, and failure, my mind reeling at how quickly and completely things have spun out of control. The dog walks by, realizing my terrible need, but she smells the abomination I’ve created in my $30 dutch oven and she recoils, too frightened and disgusted to even urinate on my desiccated frame. I survive, barely, thanks to a firefighter’s pity, and I’m forced to live out my days, alone and nerveless, because Meg realizes that I was never going to improve as a cook, so what’s the point?

That’s right. In my fantasy creative writing session there, my wife leaves a burn victim because he makes bad decisions. I know it’s not true. That’s why it’s called creative writing.

Hello Adrian,

I was recently referred to your article by a friend on Facebook. Gotta love social networks, eh?  (Note: I have linked to the actual article at the bottom of this post, if you decide he deserves a click)

It was quite the interesting read, to say the least. In case you forgot, I just wanted to remind you that you suggested that roller derby wasn’t really a sport. Quoted:

“As far as I can tell it involves a number of well-built young women in various stages of undress, roller skating with malicious intent. I have no doubt that there is an element of sweaty physicality involved and there might be some tactics employed. But, basically, it looks like an excuse for violence and brutality with a dubious element of perversion thrown in for salacious pleasure.”

I have to say that I completely disagree with your position, because I don’t really think you even had a position. I honestly can’t tell if your article was meant to be satiric, because the only argument you seemed to make against Roller Derby as a sport (written further down in the article) was its rampant use of fishnet stockings.

Man, this would totally be a sport if not for the tights with holes in them! Woo! I think I saw a nip slip!

…Really?

So just to clarify: your definition of a sport is one that only allows certain articles of…clothing?

While it is true that some women are undoubtedly ogled while playing derby, there are people ogled in every sport you listed in your article. Athletes are People love athletes for a reason: people love a perfect figure. I have seen plenty of magazine covers featuring a nearly naked David Beckham, a nearly naked Serena Williams, and a nearly naked Dennis Rodman (with wacky hair colors, to boot!). A two-second Google search even netted me a picture of four rugby players using rugby balls to cover their genitalia. I could send it to you if you like, or you can just do a Google image search for “good looking rugby players.”

Just make sure you’re boss isn’t around. Trust me on this one. I would link to it here, but I’m not interested in getting blocked by NetNanny for the foreseeable future.

In the interest of comparing apples to apples, Adrian, please do another search with the phrase “good looking roller derby players.” Let me know if you find anything as revealing in the latter as you do in the former, won’t you? Because I sure can’t.   Note: In the interest of full disclosure, SafeSearch was set to ‘Moderate’ in both instances.

You know what I do see in these pictures, though? I see women. I see strong women of all shapes and sizes coming together, skating and playing a sport together. They aren’t trying to fight over a man or over a nice pair of shoes, as Sex in the City wants us to believe that all women are hard-wired to do. They are simply playing a sport together, using their guts and their muscle and their brains to try to beat one another for an hour. Then they go have beers together and compare bruises.

I’ll try not to read between the lines too much and assume that a sport dominated by women scares you (then again, I guess I did assume that. Turns out we can all make sweeping generalizations, huh?).

You are correct on some points, however: there is indeed “sweaty physicality” and tactics are employed. Come to any bout in the world and you’ll see women shouting plays, changing strategies mid-jam, and performing blocking maneuvers on par with any other sport (these are commonly referred to as “screen plays” by those apparently so “freakishly tall and ungainly” that a whole sport was invented just for them). Derby girls do all of these things in a pack of ten people, separated by inches from one another, while on roller skates. Do me a favor, Adrian: this Friday night, go to a local roller disco with nine of your friends and try to skate in a pack separated by a few inches from everyone else. You’ve mastered that? Great.

Now hit another friend with your shoulder.

These women are athletes, plain and simple. This sport requires finesse, agility, strength, stability, explosive speed, and a keen mind. How is that different than any other sport?

Finally, Adrian, could you explain to me how Roller Derby displays “violence and brutality with a dubious element of perversion?” How is roller derby any different than rugby, for example? I would argue that rugby is much more violent than roller derby ever hopes to be, and as my quick romp on Google shows, anyone can be sexualized (even those in sports predominantly played by men. The horror!). At least derby girls wear a full complement of safety equipment, including helmet, knee and elbow pads, wrist guards, and mouth guards. What is required of rugby players? A mouth guard. Roller derby is about as brutal as sleeping on a memory foam bed by comparison.

In summation, I would like you to immediately remove football “(the real one with the round ball)”, tennis, basketball, and rugby from your comprehensive list of actual sports. Clearly these are “crude amusement[s]” as well, since they are both violent and can be sexualized.

Some might argue that tennis isn’t violent enough to be removed from the list. John McEnroe just stopped by to non-violently throw a tennis racket at your face.

Thanks bunches for the thought-provoking article. Grade A stuff.

Sincerely,

-Denny

P.S. I have a great idea for your next article. Can you suggest that Michelangelo’s David isn’t art, since everyone notices his penis right away?

NOTE: The actual article can be found here. I copied it exactly in the link at the beginning of the post, in case you don’t want to click through to his website.

This is the perfect time to be doing this.  Having a few weeks off from derby totally allows us to share time in the kitchen together, which makes it so much easier.  But it makes it easier for me to grasp doing this when I don’t have derby practice, and getting up a little earlier to eat before scrimmages on Sunday.

Denny had more gift cards, and when it’s dumping snow, coffee starts its little manaical chant in the back of both our brains.  We’ve been to coffee shops twice in the past two days, but it’s all been gift card purchases, and both times, we were gleeful on the way there.  I may or may not have felt like Denny was cheating on me due to his response at first sip, but I’ll forgive him if I did.

What I’m starting to take away from this boils down to enjoyment from moderation.

That’s right, America.  Moderation.  That crazy concept that other countries seem to grasp and thrive with.  I will savor going to restaurants on occasion with friends, for food instead of just company, or a quick bite on days that we’re just too busy or something unexpected pops up.  Coffee shops will be the treats they were when I started enjoying coffee, going from the speed driven drink demon that I have been to a coffee-sipping vagrant.

As cheesy as it sounds, I think I’m starting to like, if not love, eating in.

Work to eat: 0, Be Lazy as All Hell: 1

Score!

-Meg

It uses less energy than a lightbulb (it’s scary to think that an incandescent bulb could potentially cook your food) and it makes your house smell like a french…um…cook…house. Seriously. There is nothing better than coming home from a long day in the salt mines and smelling braised beef stew coming from every nook and cranny. Is there anything the crock pot can’t do?

Well, there are a couple things I would like to see in a crock pot. I’m sure they make one with the features I am about to list, but it’s hard for me to justify a whole new purchase when I already have a perfectly functional crock pot, but this is my blog post, so I’ll say whatever the hell I want, and you have to accept it. Or I guess you could just stop reading, but where’s the fun in that?

So, anyway. Things I would love to see in a crock pot:

- A physical switch. Mine has buttons that you press to start the crock pot, but that sucks for one reason: sometimes I want to have the crock pot start cooking when I’m not there. Meg and I are usually gone for a minimum of 11 hours during the day. Most crock pot recipes max out around 8 hours. What normally happens is that when your time is up (ours lets you pick either 2 or 4 hours on high, or 6 or 8 hours on low), the crock pot switches to ‘keep warm.’ Sometimes this is fine if the recipe calls for 8 hours. Three extra hours of warming isn’t going to fuck up a stew. But if the directions call for 4 hours on high, an additional 7 hours or warming is going to eff that food up. If I had a physical switch, I could attach a timer to the crock pot and it would just turn on at the appropriate time. Kinda like an automatic light timer, but for delicious food instead of burglar prevention.

-I’m going to take the previous point a step further: I want to have a bunch of programmable settings on my crock pot. That would solve the problem listed above (I could just delay the start time by a few hours), and it would allow for more complex recipes involving switching temperatures. I’ve seen several recipes from my favorite crockpot cookbook (Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook) that call for 2 hours on high followed by 5 hours on low, or something to that effect. It would be rad to have our crockpot just do that automatically, so I can be even lazier than I am now!

-An oval-shaped crock pot. We have a round one, and it’s great, but I would love to be able to put a whole chicken in there without trying to somehow cram it in at an angle and hope for the best.

-Cast iron. Ours is ceramic, but I have become a convert to cooking in cast iron a few years ago. There is nothing better than a nice seasoned cast iron skillet, and the iron is good for you! Plus, that would allow us to put the cast iron part in the oven if it asks for that, or I could even braise meat on the stove without having to dirty more than one thing! Laziness powers activate! Form of: one less dish to wash!

Soon, this little guy will be able to slowly cook my dinner AND be suicidal! Yay, technology!

-The last thing I would like is probably not even a real thing, but it’d be rad nonetheless: A crock pot that can refrigerate food until it starts cooking it. I get a little nervous about leaving raw meat out for like five hours, just sitting at room temperature. Like the Pillsbury Doughboy says: Nothing Says Lovin’ Like Trichinosis.

Something tells me that this awesome robot space crockpot from the future would probably cost five hundo and would no longer be the low-power wonder it is now, but I would still use the dog piss out of it.

As long as someone gave it to me for a gift. There’s no way I’m spending that much money on something that doesn’t start with X and end with Box.

-Denny

Fan-fuckin’-tastic

Lemon Garlic Fava Beans with Crimini Mushrooms.  Eat it.  Here’s the link so it’s so easy you could keel over from, well, ease.

http://www.theppk.com/2011/04/lemon-garlic-fava-beans-mushrooms/

This is seriously some of the most delicious shit we’ve eaten all week.  Everything was really meaty, without any meat at all, and one helping was super filling.  We used a quinoa rice blend instead of straight wild rice.  I also don’t recommend a Foreman grill for tempeh, but that’s what we have to work with after forgetting, shame of shames, our grill in Durango.  I had a friend recommend Isa Chandra’s recipes, so when I stumbled onto the Post Punk Kitchen site, and noticed her name on the recipes, figured it was worth a shot.  And so glad we did, despite having to go to two grocery stores for the ingredients simply because tempeh is apparently a specialty item.

I went to a grocery store I knew had tempeh, and figured, hey, they have weird shit, so they likely have everything I need, right?  Nope.  Got my tempeh, but could I find crimini mushrooms?  No.  I couldn’t even find regular old white button mushrooms, so back over to King Soopers I went.

Denver, your grocery stores suck.   I grew up here, and my parents took care of the cooking, so I never noticed growing up, but criminy.  Rinky-dink Durango can kick your ass any day over quality and availability of ingredients, unless you’re Korean.  Then you’re screwed, like my favorite derby villain, Kim Jen ‘Illin, who has to coerce some poor soul into carrying ox tail in a cooler for her down to Durango whenever they visit Denver and can hit up the Asian supermarkets.  I thought it was outrageous once when I had to visit 3 grocery stores in Durango for lemongrass, but really, Denver?  I need to go to a specialty store for tempeh?   I hate to say it, but when my pocketbook can afford it, Whole Foods is the way to go, period.  Bulk items, good produce, and those pesky non-meat things that are usually buried in the egg section of King Soopers, laying flat, and near expiration.

I particularly enjoyed that when I did manage to find some vegetarian sausage for the biscuits and gravy last weekend, it had egg whites in it.  All of it.  The store had one brand of vegetarian meats, which uses egg whites, hence negating my entire trip to the store to get sausage our vegan friend could eat the next morning.  Thanks, King Soopers.  Thanks.

This particular friend and I agree on this point of grocery store failure here in the Denver area.  She’s from Michigan.  MICHIGAN, people, and her grocery stores were still better there.  Denver is supposed to be a diverse city, right?  I call to end the segregation of foods!  Bring in the vegan sausage, the strange cuts of meat for the Koreans, the kaffir lime leaves! Let’s make our grocery stores a better place, one food at a time.

-M

Total madness, right? Yeah, yeah. Not super surprising.

However, that’s not the end of the story. There is an aspect of not spending money all over town that I wasn’t fully expecting: I watch my bank account like a hawk. Or like Bravestarr who, as we all know, has the eyes of the hawk and the ears of the wolf.

Think about that for a second. Not only am I watching for crazy shit to happen, I am also listening for crazy shit to happen. In my bank account. You have to really strain your ears, but you can hear money being withdrawn: swift and nearly silent, like a ninja using a port-a-potty at a K.I.S.S. reunion concert.

Anyway, the point of my little walk down memory lane into crappy 80′s cartoons is this: I have never, ever, paid attention to my bank account before. I simply checked my balance occasionally, hoped like hell that all of that money was actually available, and then headed over to that kitschy little breakfast diner that serves omelets made from bald eagle eggs to wait in line for two hours. I didn’t really have to worry about money until the internet was around. I couldn’t have imagined actually having to balance a checkbook. I don’t know know how people lived before online banking.

I think the problem stemmed from one of two things: either there was way too much activity going on in my bank account to even consider keeping up with all those transactions, or I was too scared to deal with the repercussions of how much money I was spending. That’s all I can come up with to explain my lack of attention to detail: laziness or fear.

And why not? It’s scary as shit to think about blowing a grand on going out to eat. Think about all the things I could
be doing with that money! I could start getting out of debt! I could finally max out my 401(k)! I could donate more to charity or save up and plan a trip to New Zealand!

No, nonono. There is waaay too much uncertainty in those things. Uncertainty is scary. You know what’s not scary?

Starbucks isn’t scary.

I can get exactly what I want, and I know it will be delicious and warm and there will be track lighting everywhere. I can go to any location I want, and it will always be exactly the same, and that is comforting.

I have been avoiding making my financial situation better because I am afraid of change. The idea of saving up cash to pay for a large-ticket item scares me. Americans don’t blow their cash on new beds, I tell myself. That’s what credit is for. I have a fancy degree in business administration, so know to call this principle leverage. I am leveraging my credit so I can use my cash for other things.

What other things, though?

Water retention and bone-crushing debt. Thanks, Qdoba!

Small ticket items, that’s what. I end up spending the same amount of money (double, if you actually consider debt as money spent) on hazelnut americanos and shitty sandwiches at Panera Bread that are so loaded with sodium and fat that I could safely walk through the Gobi desert.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this post, so I’ll just end it by saying this: I need to learn to live like my grandparents did. Mom and dad, I love you, but your generation kinda fucked everything up. Why waste cash on big ticket items when you could just tell someone you’d pay them back, and they would just give it to you?  Debt is so cheap, you’d be stupid not to use it, right?

Well, from here on out, if using debt like it’s my own personal electronics budget is smart, I think I’d like to be the stupidest man in America for awhile.

-Denny

It may not be squash, but it'll be a show stopper when it happens.

Denny is possibly the most patient husband on the face of the planet.  Aside from being a derby widow, he’s put up with years of crazy habits, such as lifting his arm up and re-setting it on my side when trying to sleep due to my skin being “pulled” the wrong direction if he just slides an arm around me, and trying new foods all the time.  When new friends come over and see our cookbooks, they almost always ask if we’re vegetarian.  No, Megan just has an addiction to cookbooks and variety.  Growing up a meat-eater, non-animal based meals are a fascinating foray for me.  Vegan solutions boggle my mind.

Take cashew cream, for instance.  If you want a serious, dense cream without dairy, this is your prize winner.  You soak cashews overnight to soften them up and then blend them with some water until smooth.  Cashews have no taste of their own, but just deliver fatty, creamy goodness.  I used it to replace milk in mashed potatoes, and then the next morning, to replace water in gravy.  I have yet to try it in my coffee, but I have no doubt it will be delicious.

Another favorite?  Raw Chili Rellenos with mole sauce.  We made this during our marathon training on a regular basis.  Raw green chiles, which can be warmed in a dehydrator, and then cleaned out, stuffed with homemade cashew cheese, and slathered in a homemade mole sauce.  I can’t believe I missed chile season this year.

There have been disasters, for sure.  I thought tonight when I added hemp oil instead of flax oil to the soba noodles that we were done for on that one.  Hemp has such a strong, plant-y flavor.  The smell of it made me again flashback to my previous “Denny will never let me do this again” feeling.  It ended up fine, but I’ll be getting myself flax oil the next time we make it to avoid that overpowering feeling of dead.  At some point I expect to find this in my oven, or some variation.

Until then, onwards!

-Meg

This hasn’t happened yet.

I still am exhausted when I get off work, and the last thing I want to do is think about what to make for dinner. I just want to go somewhere, point at a menu, and be done with it. The one high point I have been able to pull from this whole ordeal so far is definitely my bank account: I have over $300 more than I would normally have had at this point in my pay cycle.

However, the fact that I’m not really finding things easier (except on the nights that Meg cooks) got me thinking about the nature of what I specifically don’t like about cooking.

Is it the planning? Not really. If I wanted to think about what would taste good, I could do that. Honestly, what I’ve been doing lately to decide meals has been downright barbaric by comparison: I literally open the cookbook and point. So that I can take care of. Since I don’t really care what I eat, anything should work for me, and it does. I talk a lot of shit about eating things outside my wheelhouse, but most of that is hyperbole: I will eat vegan food, or vegetarian food, or gluten-free food, or a rotten animal carcass like my mom would (and probably has, knowing the constitution of that woman). So it’s not really the planning.

It’s not the eating. I like food. Really, I do! I can appreciate tasty food. I like complex flavors, varied textures, and food that is visually pleasing. I am willing to experiment, too. If we come over to your house to eat dinner, I promise you that I will eat everything on my plate, or at least give it the ‘ol college try.

I've cut pizza with a pair of scissors, but I never thought to patent that shit. Damn. I could've made two hundred dollars!

Cooking, then? No. I like cooking. I think it’s fun running around the kitchen, flames and shit flaring up everywhere, trying to time things correctly so that everything comes together in a competent, if not necessarily impressive, meal. I like seeing other people enjoy my cooking, and I love the way that good food can anchor people to a table for hours, eating and drinking and laughing together. So if I like all these aspects of cooking, what don’t I like? What’s the problem?

It’s the preparation.

I cannot stand chopping up ingredients, measuring rice wine vinegar, peeling potatoes, and whisking eggs. I’m not good at measuring things by eye or feel, which seems to be one of the main ways to save time during this process. I just hate getting things into a state where they are ready to be cooked. I hate washing dishes by hand, since our house doesn’t have a dishwasher. As I write this blog post, sitting on a bus full of dead-eyed nine-to-fivers, the only thing I can think about is how much I hate peeling garlic. My eye just twitched. That’s how much I despise getting garlic out of that tiny fucking skin.

So what am I supposed to do?

I can buy a garlic peeler.

I can pick up a nice set of knives for chopping vegetables quickly. Hell, I could even buy a slap chop, as much as that idea of a slap chop inside my house sickens me. I can buy a ceramic-coated dutch oven, to help cleanup happen that much faster. I can pick up an immersion blender at a garage sale to whisk my eggs for me.

I could even buy a dishwasher. Go fuck yourself, rubber gloves.

I think my plan is pretty ironclad, but I still have questions. Clearly, some gadgets are going to be more important than others. A set of nice kitchen knives? Absolutely. A slap chop? Probably not. Should I invest in a Vita-Mix, so I can powder my dried bull penises more effectively? Or should I keep using my marginally decent blender that sometimes gets stuck while blending ice for smoothies?

This is where you come in, folks. I asked for your help once, and I will ask again. What are indispensable kitchen gadgets? Can’t live without your onion saver? Is the Kitchenaid mixer a lifesaver? Am I being an idiot? Let me know!

-Denny