Hummus...Interrupted

Have you ever sat down, with an amazing meal in front of you and said to yourself, “I’m definitely taking some of this home with me.” You purposefully quarter off a portion to save for later, so you can prolong this phenom of a meal into one more sitting.

There are also days that are so perfect, you make them end a little early to preserve the magic. Before the hotter-than-normal spring day turns a little too cold for your skirt and shades, you head home. You’ll find your way home earlier to remember the way the sun felt on your forehead, the breeze felt on your smile.

The meal you loved, savored from first bite to last, you save a few pieces of to eat later, maybe tomorrow. Whatever you ordered, from Prime Rib to Pad Thai, you know if you finish it and hang in like a trooper, you’re biting off more than you can chew. So, somewhere in between yummy in our tummy and loosening your pants, you stop. You’d like to stick around and dance until last call, but you know that leaving a little early, before you’re tired, will make your memory just a little sweeter.

And keep in mind that, just as your memories become more sugar and less hangover, the flavors in your to-go box will grow more complex and refined, a little more of the basil, blending perfectly with the curry, coconut and cumin of yesterday. What a great idea, having your to-go and eating it too?

A diet is supposed to help rid you of excess weight, baggage and make you feel better because you look better and have more self-control than the person next to you. What happens when you’re experiencing an excess of people? You’re overwhelmed by their problems—added calories. This friend is like a piece of chocolate cake; you feel good helping them, providing comfort, only to have a tummy ache afterwards. You choose to take a break. You have no choice but to purge yourself of the extra friend-calories you’re ingesting.

Even when you’re not hungry, you find yourself eating their emotions, insecurities, dramatic days and nights. They’re layered, with only the icing of your own problems in between. Soon, you’re feeling obese in their emotions and don’t see yourself in the mirror, but instead a magnified view of yourself. I see a person with a complexion that only stress or creamy chocolate can cause. Tired all day from my midnight snacks of concern and worry. Finally, before putting one more bite of sadness and pain in my mouth, I say “stop.” “I’m tired, I’m stressed, I’m worried, too.”

But nothing changes. In fact, once I took that piece of despair cake out of my mouth and put it back on the plate, another serving of whipped uncertainty was placed neatly on top. What now? How do you look someone’s pain in the face and put it down like a piece of unwanted cake?

The problem of adulthood is that everything can’t be remedied with sugar anymore. A German Chocolate friendship ends up leaving you lethargic and sad, when the sweet is gone and only a low blood sugar is left behind.

Did it really turn out?

The perfect quiche. How do you describe this amazing flaky crust, smooth filling, with the perfect variety of vegetables? That is, the perfect variety without having too many flavors colliding and grappling for your tastebuds’ attentions. You may do everything right. You may have each ingredient prepared perfectly. You may have spinach barely wilted, scallions freshly cut, cleaned and fresh from the farm—all of this should make the perfect quiche. I’m convinced you can taste the difference between free range eggs and styrofoam crate, beak burned eggs from the Pick N’ Save.

You may work your whole life taking each, careful step to ensure that your ingredients are fresh. You try to be perfectly ripe, but not yet turned and certainly without too many preservatives, but what happens when you don’t turn out exactly as planned? If the presentation isn’t exact, is the end result still a masterpiece?

I made a quiche the other day that tasted great. I adored each bite, each flavor, each moment. But the crust was all wrong. The crust, a vegetable one, with carrots, broccoli and parsnips playing in my mind, tasted amazing. Not as doughy as my last crust, I was sure I had it right this time. Just as planned was the only way. I thought it would be amazing, perfect, magic. Maybe a little too much pressure for one crust, but I expected the best.

I was certain I had the bull by the horns, or maybe the egg by the shell. With bravado, I added the vegetables and filling and then remembered the key. The forgotten step: the boundary. The thin layer of cheese that separates the permeating vegetables from the crust, keeping the crust strong, crisp and intact. Funny how you put things into place and they come out a little soggy. Almost like that perfect hair day. I think it rained, but splashing around was fun. Of course the mushrooms soaked through and made my beautiful crust a pile of goo. I hope the parsnips at least tripped a little bit, but I doubt it.

The thing was, my quiche was amazing. It may not have turned out like a cookbook (or storybook) quiche, but it turned out. It had the perfect blend of flavors that only a crust battling to hang on can have. Perfection or not, while my quiche may not have belonged on the Food Network, it was mine. It was mine and it was good.

As an independent, working girl, I have to do certain things to get by. Anywhere from staying home on a Friday night to muddling through the rigors of a passionately emotionless job. Making sense out of the compromise is hard, but I have plenty of time to do so with fabulous Friday facemasks and red wine to grease my thinking cap. How much compromise is too much? Where and when do I stop being me, lose a piece of my heart and become a broken branch in the organizational flow chart?

As a vegetarian, I am frequently limited in my ability to prepare food for the carnivorous appetites of those around me. I balance my inability to digest meat with my desire to see the pleasure of a meal well-cooked on people’s faces. Is fish enough?
I can’t go as far as ground round, but what about boiling turkey for the ever-requested chipotle turkey chili? Can I even still season this former specialty? The answer is yes. I can take a step outside of my comfort zone and into the unknown area of vegetarian cooking meat items while plugging nose and holding breath.

Are the two even similar? Being motivated to gain experience and pay bills versus being motivated to please the palates of those around me are different, yes, but the slippery slope of preparing meat to, Mother Earth forbid, eating it. I don’t have any problem drawing that line. Seasoning be damned! If the tastebuds of my guests suffer, that is a risk I am willing to take.

But where do you draw the line between unethical employers, poorly run organizations, undefinable goals and personal comfort? When am I going from cooking meat for management to joining in one unending, unethical prime rib dinner? Maybe its time to move on to another kitchen.

So, as a child, there was always a meal that we could have as a last resort. We could always count on a tasty hard-boiled egg salad sandwich if menu creativity and cookbook surfing failed. I was never really in the mood for it, but when my mom finally took the toasted Wonderbread out of the toaster oven, we were ready to dig in.

As the independent girl; unable to commit, unable to decide and unable to compromise, I was sitting away and thinking to myself, “well as a last resort, I could always end up with...” Growing up with a backup menu prepared me perfectly for this life. Just as a child I had a last resort meal, I’ve also always had a back-burner guy. Sometimes, I was even excited for the backup. A few times, I may have even planned ahead to indulge. I could never follow through, I don’t like mayonnaise that much. But knowing it was there always made my menu choice not seem so bad.

Even when I ended up accidentally consuming fish sauce or worse, going out with a government attorney, I always had that backup. I always knew I had a tasty dinner and a guy that made me laugh on the back burner, waiting to be brought up front.

So what happens when your back-burner guy jumps to the front of someone else’s stove? What happens when my egg salad sandwich becomes someone else’s quiche? The problem with a girl who is entirely too willing to pop someone from front and center to the back burner, is that sometimes flavors don’t gel together back there. When left unattended, your back burner meal can turn and you end up being separate, as separate as white and yolk.

Something I see more and more as I move away from keg parties filled with belching college guys, half naked girls (should or shouldn’t they be wearing that tight dress?) and football playing in the background and I begin to attend keg parties filled with belching guys, belching babies, pregnant women and everything in between, I realize that I may be the only thing that has remained constant among all of these slightly similar objects.

I am the single girl. I am the girl who is written about frequently. I may have even become a cliche, a fabulous one, but a cliche nonetheless. I am a dying breed. I am like the peel n’ eat shrimp on the food table. Everyone sees me, knows I am a delicacy, and wants to make sure that I am not a leftover at the end of the party.

They see a friend talking to me (is he single, or does he have an overbearing girlfriend? No matter, pass her around) and try to make sure he gets more. “Don’t let that one get away, eh?” they say, trying to make sure that neither I nor the peel n’ eat shrimp go to waste. Is that keg, then, my cocktail sauce? Something that accentuates my taste and adds a little horseradish bite? I have plenty of bite on my own, thank you. I need no attached man or woman to hoc me around to single friends. In fact, quite often, the peel n’ eat shrimp are claimed on their own merits.

What does it really mean, the luck of the Irish? As yourself that question after you’ve spent days in Las Vegas, searching for the ever-creamy, meal of an Irish dark beer. What it means is long after you’ve abandoned the strip for the one Irish bar you can find, you may just find yourself a winner.

Now, I’m not knocking making eyes at a keyboard player over a bottle of Beck’s Dark. I’m not knocking the faux-flirting with a guy who probably has a long-standing relationship with the too-choreographed guitar player and his decidedly gay vibe. And after a few, I even convinced myself that our waitress’ breasts were real. Thankfully, no amount of alcohol, short of absynth, could make me believe the woman practicing her pole twirling shimmy in the Bellagio showroom, had been a natural recipient of the uneven orbs on her chest.

I’m not even discounting Newcastle Brown Ale’s syrupy ability to pass hours as you wait for a traffic-ridden dinner date at a casino bar. Newcastle Brown Ale helped me choke down a horrendous bean burrito and some awkward conversations with a fifty-something bartender rotating between fatherly caretaker and lecherous propositioner. Dark beer, unlike any other mixture of barley and hops, can make an unbearable exchange just a little better.

Whether the a biting hop-y flavor distracting your mind and tastebuds away from yet another swing dancer in the hotel lounge’s advances or a complex, nutty flavor making you remember great summers of the past and helping you get through the inane conversation of your present. Dark beer gives the East Coast-Midwestern transplant an opportunity to stand out, on the peripheral.

But with each failed attempt to find Guinness, I grew less and less optimistic. What does Las Vegas have against the creamiest of darks? Save your meals for the buffets, they say! Too many vitamins in there, you won’t find Centrum in this city either! Ha! With each empty dark, my outlook grew darker. Dark enough, you might ask, to be considered Guinness? Perhaps.

Finally, after swearing off the strip, I climbed over a sea of over- and under-weight gamblers with sad eyes and bad toupees to find the promised land—an Irish pub! Surely, they would have some Guinness here! Relax, they did. Guinness that flowed free, provided you gambled as you drank. I put in my five dollar bill and plunked away at my video poker screen. As I prepared to say goodbye to my last seventy-five cents, I hit the big time! Royal Flush! Wooohooo! Big money, no whammies! Only when I finally had that smooth, euphoric Guinness in hand could I turn $5 into $188. The moral of the story is that the reason the house always wins is because they keep the luck of the Irish out of your hands.