20 May Monday

Monday is my work from home sorta day, I reply to emails, review dates and meetings and plans for the week, do chores, make sure money gets shuffled around to where it’s supposed to go, and the other thrilling minutiae of self-sufficiency. When days are slow and it’s dishes and vacuuming and laundry, I’ll put on a “stupid” movie channel as my grandfather would’ve called it, and let it play away. My favorite at the moment is COMET, featuring sci-fi, thrillers and horror, many of the B variety. And tonight’s prime-time flick is a new one to me. The Roger Corman(RIP) produced, Harvey Korman starring (in two roles), 1986 masterpiece, Munchies. It is a riff, a take, a what do you call it? Rip off of Gremlins, except it’s much funnier and deliberately goofy. It gets bad reviews everywhere, and they are undeserved, this is a funny movie and a terrific picture, in a trashy, silly rip-off, low-brow sort of way. The puppets are hilariously cheap looking, the budget constraints painfully obvious.

Now, why am I sharing this movie news on my little food nibble bloggy woggy? I don’t honestly know, it was the only big thing that happened in my life today. Didn’t Don Delillo write that there used to be a thing called taste? Andy Warhol changed all that. Now there is camp, there is kitsch. It became ok to love things done in poor taste, things so bad they are good. I didn’t put quotes around it because it’s not an exact quote. I’m not even sure that it is Delillo, but I’m pretty sure. I don’t have time to go hunting around for it. Also, please don’t get hung up on the Andy Warhol part, it doesn’t matter for my purposes that we identify the person that did this, it is important to acknowledge that it has happened. This wider acceptance of stuff that we all know isn’t good (movies and tv lend themselves well to this acceptance) is a new and fun thing. It brings people with bad taste together without shame. This is true also in the world of food and drink.

I speak not of nostalgia. Neither speak I of reconstructed or deconstructed versions of dishes. Or real fancy versions of typically pedestrian victuals, I’m talking about genuine trash foods. Like, I had a friend that made a dish every Christmas that was intended to look like his kittycat had made lots of poopies in a pan of that mini gravel crap that gets all over the house of anyone that has a cat. I think it’s like little fudge clumps in crumbled-up oreos or something horrible like that. That’s an extreme example. Another example is serving carnival food at dinner parties.

High spring fog moves in over our peninsula. Anyway, here comes another one. I’m talking about really fancy $$$ gala dinner parties for private donors, special friends of private donors dinner parties, and private friend diners of donor dinners. A cotton candy machine. Donuts and waffles fried on demand. Hush puppies. Corn dogs. Yes, yes, the ole corn dog, she was barking up my pant leg the other day, but I shook her. A friend’s birthday request for deep fried goodies went awry when I fell asleep, a putrid and peaceless sleep indeed. I awoke twenty minutes before guests arrived having prepared exactly nothing. I’m glad I didn’t turn the oil on before I snoozed. I guess I don’t really care right now. I was happy. Guests were happy. Hot dogs (Hebrew National) on grilled bleach-white buns, simmered onions, hot sauerkraut, and mustard. Magnificence on a bun.

I’m sorry I called it trash food, it isn’t. Cotton Candy is trash food, my buddy’s kitty litter snack is trash. Is it? Does that make it bad? This Harvey Korman movie is bad, but I’d recommend it to anyone. In fact, I am recommending it to everyone. I hope they see this. Munchies, the little monsters that eat and prank and maybe even kill their way through Southern California desert towns.

Night descends on the quiet city. Let’s contemplate potato salad together. I remember the first time I ate potato salad. It was made by my grandmother or perhaps someone else, but it was definitely someone, and it was cold and quite mayonnaise-y, with thick chunks of celery in it. I remember a friend making a large bowl of her “special” potato salad for a picnic in high school. I don’t remember what was special about it except that it didn’t smell great, it doubled as an ash tray when no other was at hand, her constantly shedding cat loved hopping on and off the kitchen counter, and I always gave it a miss. Potato salads show up everywhere- a dish that seems to cross class lines, which doesn’t happen that often. Here’s what I did with mine:

With large, solid hands (mine), I peeled and plunged cubed Russets into water where they simmered in foamy, starchy, scum water until texture achieval. I poured off all the water and immediately showered the freshly texturally achieved morsels in a plague rain of apple cider vinegar and salt. Celery, yes. Onion, yes. Scallion, to be sure. Yella mustard, is the pope Catholic? Garlic, does a bear shit in the woods? Black Pepper, who’s buried in Grant’s tomb? Hard-boiled egg all chopped up. Paprika, sure. Parsley. Put it in the fridge, get it nice and chilly. I didn’t do this the other evening. We enjoyed the salad at room temperature. Which wasn’t as good.

A streusel and cherry pie cheesecake straight from the freezer, no baking required did the trick with dessert. All is right and well and good.