hey cocker.

hey jack.

what can i get you?

pastrami, hoagie roll, provolone.

what kind of soup you want with that?

no soup today, but thank you.

hell with you! go to the back of the line. (then to the decrepitly old lawyer standing behind me) what can i get you young man?

this is how the lion-share of my transactions began at two...

i have a friend who moved recently. i wrote asking him how he was liking his new digs. he wrote: cafe du monde, liquid crack, porterhouse, ice cream and no wipers. i only wonder if he's ready for me to move in.

BELLA
do you want me to roast a marshmallow for you father?

TROY
uhm. no bell. i'm good.

(short pause)

MARTY
bella, your dad thinks it weird that his family is sitting around the stove in the middle of july roasting mini-marshmallows over one of the burners.

BELLA
why does he think it's weird?

MARTY
he just does. what he doesn't know though is my sister, your aunt cheri, once roasted marshmallows over an electric skillet so this is not nearly as odd as he may think it is.

---

i'm not completely sure if marty is trying to refute or support my position on this matter.

nor am i entirely certain how it is that i remain to be considered the odd one living in this home, especially after i repeatedly document tendencies such as this.

i work with a guy who is going to seattle for the weekend. i told him eating at this place is a must. he asked where it was. this is me letting him know.

statement of fact:
mcdonalds coke tastes better than anyone else's coke.

statement of fact:
the reason for this is the fat straw.

go ahead and sick the myth-busters on it. i'm right.

people do all kinds of kooky things to lose weight. my favorite, by far, never to beaten, is this one:

eating every meal in front of the mirror ... naked.

awesome in its simplicity, this plan rules. and, i figure if such a routine can help your dietary choices, imagine what it could do for other facets of your life. would you have ever guessed that as i'm typing these words to you i'm looking at myself, naked, in a mirror i hung over my desk. can you see a difference? i can.

a couple of very nice mormon fellas stopped by the house to chat the other day. after some polite conversation and realizing the purpose of their visit, i decided to save them some time. i asked if their organization was the one that disallowed caffeine. in a surprisingly unabashed manner, they said they were.

i took a moment to describe my daily regimen, in regards to caffeine, to their dropped jaws. i then explained, in a very succinct manner, that i'd sooner give up my rights of reproduction as well as the body parts responsible for that reproduction before i would forfeit a single swig of my luscious and legal narcotic. it was here that they bid me a good day and went on their white-shirted way.

a few things i don't get...

1. people who think eating lots of food is funny.
2. my compulsion to roll the sleeves of my workshirts up like charles ingles did in little house (past the elbow).

come march, walt and i will have been using our monthly menu for two full years. in chatting about it, we've agreed we're very happy about it's effect on our dinner lifestyle. but, we also fully thought that an all-star lineup would by now exist where we could fill the entire month with nothing but topnotch winners. a quick glance at the recipe index (the best of the best) only has a paltry 11 items in it, and they are not all suitable for monthly consumption.

i think it is our hurly burly approach of selecting recipes (browsing through a number of recipe books) that is deficient. i'd liken it to picking doctors at random out of the yellow pages. some will suck and some will suck more. so my request to you all is simple, and i hope we can agree i don't ask much from you all, please send me the recipe to your favorite meal. i don't care what it is. i mean we had oatmeal last night for our official meal, we're certainly flexible. and frankly, i can't believe i haven't done this sooner. i've forever asked people for the name of their all-time favorite book, logic would reason that the same would apply to foodstuffs.

and if you a person who is only motivated by free money, i'm paying a shiny nickel to the sender of each and every recipe we try.

marty's mother is a freezer. there isn't a culinary item ever eaten that hasn't passed through the walter's super freeze found at the bottom of their basement stairs. milk, christmas cookies, hell, i bet you'd even find nonfood items like light bulbs in that cellar deep-freeze. the two things i've heard my mother-in-law say more than anything else is "oh, sure you can freeze that" and "run down an...

a favorite food item of mine has long been a baked potato liberally doused in colby jack cheese, spring onions and sour cream. on very special occasions i may even spatter some bacon pieces on top to treat my aching palette.

saturday i was doing the dishes. i was possibly thinking about such a decadent spud while doing so. meanwhile an interview with a food photographer came on the radio. he was detailing the rigors of shooting different cuisines and how all of these artificial measures had to be taken to make the food look fresh out of the oven, frozen stiff or whatever the case may be. he revealed how to perfectly simulate an oven-fresh, piping hot potato, one simply had to take a totally water-condensed tampon, heated and shove it down into the fluffy white manna to simulate those hot spirals of steam one gets when first piercing the brown pod. works every time, he assured the interviewer.

yeah, well you know what else works every time? planting imagery in my head of my favorite food being immersed or otherwise wrapped around doctored feminine hygiene products. show some respect for the world around you! you bragging dolt!

a surprising number of people have requested some sort of explanation about the what i'm eating section of this site. i've always personally felt that it should be, well for lack of a better reason, self-explanatory. but, that part of the site does get pounded by the masses coming from google so for those types some explanation may be in order.

but you all know the drill so if you're looking to kill a few minutes on the job, feel free to read the newly added, what i'm eating explained.

sidenote: i just went through a server upgrade and think that i missed some mail over the last few days. so if i don't respond to something, please re-gig me.

it started with a comment i made to marty a few months ago:

"it's just weird that 90% of the people in this neighborhood are doing the exact same thing right now (making dinner) and most of them hate it."

it was next passed onto a neighbor by marty at a picnic:

"i mean how hard would it be to double your recipe and walk half of it down to your neighbors so they wouldn't have to cook for an evening."

and, it culminated with an authentic indian dinner being hand delivered to our door one week later.

if things go right, there should be more on this later. but in the meantime, crazy mad props go to Anu.

and i also need throw a shout out to neighbor anne who brought to our kitchen a farm fresh chicken dinner the week before.

while down deep i know people don't mostly suck, it's nice to experience an occassional reminder illustrating this.

and i promise to stop saying things like 'mad props' and 'shout out' anymore. my temporary excuse; i'm high on people.

i mentioned earlier that a new super mall opened in saint louis. while i don't usually commit cycles to mall happenings, this one had special import in that it brought an apple store to saint lou. another goodish effect of this opening is that all the other respectable malls got face lifts and new stores were introduced to the market to keep shoppers tantalized given the new player in town. our snob mall even got a tiffany's, which is great because i obviously do a lot of business at tiffany's.

our prior alpha mall got a, brace yourself, cheesecake factory. like the apple store, this is our first. so last friday night while out with elove and dr j we decided to give it a tryst. we swung by at 9pm figuring that most people would have eaten by then. i think most had but i got to make a new facial expression when the hostess looked at me and said it would be two, possibly two and a half hours for a table. so it appears you have to make a reservation and then go eat somewhere else and just about when you're ready to eat again, a table may, possibly, be available for you at the cheesecake factory.

two and a half hours?!?! it would take me two and a half hours to list the things i could achieve in two and a half hours. and it was 9pm! i don't even think they were open two and half hours from then. how pissed would you be if you sat around all that time and they would just call your name to say that the kitchen is closed and they were going home but if you put your name in they may, may possibly, be able to seat you by 4pm the following day. she didn't even laugh demonically or scoff or mock me when saying this. two and a half hours! two and a half hours my ass.

so bookpimp was moaning the other day about this.

for me this is is not a sign of the apocalypse but rather simply a long overdue measure. to me, eating the crust on bread is like eating the rind of an orange or the wrapper of a candy bar. just cuz it's there doesn't necessarily dictate that it's meant to be ingested.

now something i do hate is our society's neurosis about convenience because if truly analyzed it is not so much about time saving as it is about sheer laziness. from yogurt in a tube to peanut butter and jelly mixed in a squeeze bottle there just seems to be no end. and given this i'm wondering why the hell i'm still asked to apply my salt separately from my pepper.

the sad thing is you know some greedy-ass company somewhere has actually looked at this. can you in any way imagine dedicating your professional life to creating a vehicle that would allow the morton folks to combine the salt and pepper together. although challenges would exist because the very fine salt keeps moving to the bottom, damn it and then when you tip it to shake something out you get mostly pepper but when upside down that wily salt races to the top and when it gets there comes out more rapidly than the pepper. damn the constantly moving salt. i'd love to be that guy. after reporting that it looked like it just wasn't going to work because the salt is finer and heavier and my boss would fly into a rage. "dammit dearmitt, cannot is not an option. won't work is unacceptable. you WILL figure out how to make our Sepper product work. we cannot expect people to just continue to pass salt AND pepper shakers up and down the dinner table. it's un-american. and i won't have it. not on my watch by god and so help us and get back to work dearmitt you sniveling little nay-sayer!"

i'd quit that job quick and start working on my own dream-child; the odorless bowel movement in a tube for when you just don't have to go. and you know i'm all about co-branding this with the handi-wipe folks and while i'm at it i'll hit up those waterless hand-cleanser people and i'm sure someone could figure out how to package it all up in a convenient, pocket sized, recyclable aerodynamic piece of belt-wear.

per my web logs, my site is rapidly becoming recipe central. there's a whole ton of people out there looking for new stuff to eat. i like that. and seeing this made me remember that there were a few recent finds i needed to add to the what i'm eating recipe index, which i've now done.

if you like taco salad or that 7-layer taco dip at least one person brings to every outdoor event, you'll love the mexican casserole just added. it's crazy good and because it's a casserole can be served as an entire dinner which the 7-layer dip can't, in good conscious at least.

and, i'm most excited about the twice baked spinach potatoes find because i'm quite the loaded potato aficionado but mine are drenched with butter, laden with cheese and slathered in sour cream. the noted recipe has none of that but hits the table just as tasty as it's venomous counterpart.

let me know if you like them.

take 9 bran muffins sitting in a basket on the counter.

take 1 isabella playing on the counter.

take 2 newish parents occupied in other matters.

do you know what you get?

10 partially eaten bran muffins. don't ask me where the extra one came from. i was hoping you'd know.

i'm going to be away for a short bit. not the kind of 'away' that your uncle went on when you were eight. but not a whole lot different from that either. the brochure for the re-assignment clinic is vague about internet access so i'll have to feel the whole connected thing out, between procedures that is.

and oh yeah, i can assure you that this month's menu is a rare occurrance and we'll be back full-force come september.

we've all heard about them. the more scholarly may have even read about them. but a scant number of us have actually experienced the fabled and legendary no-wiper. but a few, a golden few of us have seen the light and been taught the ways of the consistent and regular sans-wiper, which is technically a una-wiper but the first one is obligatory, even if unnecessary.

as bookguy's padowan, he one day took me by the hand, sat me down and bestowed on me the secret to his quiet success. it is in Kellogg's original and all-bran cereal, the all-bran muffins specifically he said in a serious voice. why the muffins you may ask, as did i. bookguy explained the benefits of the muffins portability as well as the proper portioning. he went on to reveal how this minor change to his dietary routine has earned him hours of productive time and has freed him of the laborious task of righting his plumbing and/or providing lengthy explanations to the owners of borrowed plumbing.

so now you may go and also make your business a quick business. and as to whether or not i will be posting the recipe in the what i'm eating section of d.com, what do you think this is, a proctology service. i suggest reading the box as i did, but don't plan on doing it from where you may want to because you will not have time given this newfound philosophy which some liken to religion. you'll have to do your reading from the comfortable confines of ,say, your study or bedroom.

and, if you do not know what i'm talking about, you're beyond my abilities to heal. i can only take you so far. the rest of the journey is yours to make, this journey especially.

It is not recommended to walk into jakes crawfish, oregon's number one fish eatery, at 7pm and expect a table in less than an hour. When the hostess said that she could possibly seat me immediately if I didn't mind an outside table, I replied, "if you can put a stuffed salmon in front of me in the next twenty minutes I'd eat it off the floor." Convinced of my zeal I was promptly escorted to a sidewalk table.

For those dining along this row of exterior tables, especially those dining alone, they may elect to pass the time by watching the patrons of the gay bar tounge-kissing and massaging one another's buttocks across the street or taking in the opposing corner which sports a small collection of young, but fashionable, homeless begging money while drinking, the very in, sobe ales and smoking name brand cigarettes. And, If for any reason the humor seems lean in either of these venues, you can watch jake's grunged out valet guys ogling the high dollar patrons exiting their employer's establishment.

And all of this to brie and shrimp stuffed salmon and garlic mashed potatoes. Portland is my friend.

for those on the get troy committed consortium, allow me to proffer additional evidence. for those participating in the troy is the most anal man on the planet group, allow me conclude your effort. and, for those who like to occasionally dine with walt and i, allow me to remove the mystery of what will be slopped in front of you on any particular evening.

while we each have our own reasons, a few months ago marty and i moved to a monthly menuing system. on marty's part she has been trying to keep our food budget somewhere near the allotted amount. i have been petitioning to know what we are having that night so the ingredients are ready for use (meaning not frozen) and accounted for (meaning not at the store). and, collectively we recognize that it probably isn't ideal to have our family meals at 9:30pm given the little human we are now responsible for. given these factors we now sit down at the end of the month and create a menu for the coming month. rules follow:

1. we alternate who gets to pick the meal from day to day
2. sundays are new dish night
3. mondays are staple night
4. fridays and saturdays are left open
5. tuesday through thursday rotates between rice, meat, fish, pasta and a wild card dish
6. and lastly, should you wish to dine with us, you must tell us before sunday, shopping day, so we may get extra stuff for your gullet. note: steak night works on a strict first call first come basis and if marty doesn't like you, she requires you pay for your own cut so kiss up well.

given this lengthy introduction, i now welcome you to visit the recently completed What I'm Eating section of dearmitt.com.

additional note: only the recipes we deem keepers are committed to the recipe index for your own use and edification.

i was at a dinner party the other night and one of the dishes, a dessert, was called Better than Robert Redford Pie. I?m serious. And so was the dish.

It went very well with my Jucier than Jenna Jameson Casserole.

food is to thanksgiving as presents are to christmas. stay centered my friends.

i stopped drinking caffeine a few days ago ... again.

yesterday morning i wrote an email to my boss and a few peers disparaging the choices being made by a fellow development group. on this not flattering correspondence, i inadvertently included the manager of the department in question on the sending.

my phone started ringing within 30 seconds.

i'm back on the caffeine ... again.

Marty and I have been forced to move to a zero tolerance policy when it comes to food in bed. In that I eat bread, french fries and watermelon with a fork, one can surmise that I'm not the one munching Trisquits or M&M's immediately before my slumber without the aid of a plate or utensils. So, the rule truly goes that Marty may no longer snack in bed while flitting through a magazine or grading papers. Now many will think this is just some sleeping with the enemy kind of antic on my part, but I assure you it is not. This missive was born in the pre-dawn hours many seasons ago after I was rocketed from a deep sleep due to rolling over a Snyder's pretzel shard that about sheared off what makes Troy a boy. (and, for all of my 'friends' thinking of the psuedo witticisms you would place here if this were a conversation, allow me to refer you of the medium being used and remind you that I can't hear you. so there.)