Coffee Talk

As I finish my homework at the dinning room table today, I am experiencing two separate things. The strange sensation that only comes from seven shots of anesthesia on the right side of my face, and the complete excitement that only comes from waiting for a UPS delivery. 

This morning I had a periodontal therapy known as root planing. This is a process of removing etiologic agents, dental plaque, via the use of a massive, rusty, dagger-sharp hook known as a scaler. The pointy dagger is jammed into your gumline until the Dentist hears the ping of metal hitting the jaw bone, then it is dragged it up the tooth to collect barnacles. The oral biofouling is slowly chipped away. To deaden the urge to scream, the Dentist shoots your mouth full of anesthesia using a long needle. My face is now sliding down into a Droopy the Dog pose.

 That is not why I’m excited today. 

I finally got around to buying the one cup phenomenon known as the Keurig coffee maker.  I have been checking these coffee makers out for quite a while now. The way they brew coffee, one cup at a time, being able to switch  to different styles of coffee, and darkness of roasts seemed to match me. It’s just like my past dating life. The only thing that stopped me was the tiny cups it brewed. I’m sorry, I’m a

growing boy, I need more than 8oz. of coffee in the morning. Well..... I guess the Massachusetts boys over at Keurig finally got the idea, or maybe the name “Keurig” meaning excellence in Dutch prompted them, either way, they made a maker that brews more, hotter, and stronger. 

So, here I sit. Waiting for the UPS delivery driver to ring the bell and hand me my new happiness machine. He shall be greeted by a drooling, under-caffeinated idiot.  

Death By Tupperware's 9x13 Cake Taker

“We have have rats in the cellar.” I announced.
“Uh... we don’t have a basement” was the response I received, as the other half calmly explained the construction of the house, not looking up to see my best Betty Davis face. 
“Okay, we have mice in the kitchen.... and I want acknowledgment for my campness..."

That was over two months ago. After a long contract with an exterminator, and me bleaching every surface time and time again, we still have rats in the cellar. Well, they’re actually cute tiny mices. They only come around when I’m doing homework at the dinning room table. After an hour of sitting quietly, they start to scamper around the kitchen. They don’t really DO anything, just scamper and leave droppings for me to bleach. Leave it to me to have the most boring mice, yet I’m not sure what mice are legally obligated to do. Their job pretty much is to just scamper around in your peripheral vision. Like twinks at a dance bar. 

This morning I sat down to write a paper for Sociology class when I distinctly saw a bit of brown fluff fly into the pantry. “Ah-Ha, you think you can out smart me!?” I said in my best Inspector Jacques Clouseau voice. As I opened the pantry door, there was my little friend, trying his best to look like a piece of fluff. Like twinks at a dance bar. I reached for the first thing I thought of when one wants to catch a mouse. My Tupperware 9x13 cake taker. In yellow. I slowly undid the cover and held the lid of my fabulous Tupperware product as I peered into the darkness that is the lower shelves of my pantry. A loud shake to the turkey roaster and the game was afoot. The tiny mouse ran out of the pantry and I slammed down the lid of of the cake taker. The furry beasty was trapped under the translucent lid. Trapped as my prisoner. 

“What the hell do I do now?” I asked the dog, who had just peeked his head around the corner to see what the hell what the noise was all about. The dog looked at me, then the cute fur ball in my Tupperware prison. “Beats me, they scare the hell out of me” was the look I got from the fierce Chinese fighting dog. Do I just kill it? In my Tupperware?  Well, they are air tight... No. By the time I concocted a plan I glanced down to find my plastic prison was empty. 

“Run little guy--run free, but tell your friends of what you saw here today. Tell them the story of your capture. Your torment. This kitchen is defended!”

The exterminators are scheduled for Friday. 

Breakfast Time

I rarely get to eat breakfast, even if it's one of my favorite things to do in life. I completely enjoyed myself this morning, before heading out for a stress filled day.

Tea for Steve

Over the dinner table my friend Michelle announced that she would attempt to give up Starbucks for a month. An amazing feat for a woman that announces her daily arrival at Starbucks on Facebook. A daily treat for her, and a great check-in for Facebook friends. When she announced this change for better health, the wheels in my head started to turn.

That hot pink Tupperware pitcher,
behind the "sports drinks" and soda...
is my tiny stash of iced tea. 

Could I really give up my four daily helpings of Diet Coke? 

The life giving elixir that brings sun shine to my day, yet also brought a little padding to my middle. We all have read the articles on how diet coke isn’t better than regular sodas. In fact it may be worse. Tricking your body to release even more chemicals to absorb the unnatural chemicals directly into your fat cells. 

My self-declared challenge was to cut out the cola, and switch to iced tea, the real stuff, un-sweetened. Although at some restaurants I'm finding that I do have to drink the strange powdered mystery tea. So far, so good. 

Thai Me Up

I have found myself addicted. Again.

I go through phases where I cannot get enough of one type of food. Last fall I stood in front of my favorite, and recently closed, Japanese fast-food restaurant and shook my fist and the locked front door. I had been eating lunch there almost every day for six months and without even consulting me, they closed the location. The betrayal of closing my favorite restaurant helped me spiral down into a cheese pizza tirade that lasted four months.

Although I still visit the cuisine of Japan regularly, I have gone to Thailand to find love. Peanut sauce and curry love. My fascination with the food of Thailand has grown to the point that I’m now the love slave of a nineteen year old Thai boy, named, Chad. I am at the point where I’ve visited his family’s tiny restaurant so many times that Chad now puts in my order as I walk through the door. As he places my over sized plate of chicken and veggie stir-fry, with extra peanut sauce and crispy garlic, he says, “Your favorite, Keith!” He calls me Keith, but that’s okay. Because I love him, he brings me spicy Thai peanut sauce.

Yesterday I found that I am cheating on Chad, as I have started to teach myself Thai cooking at home. After spending thirty bucks in the “Oriental Food” section of my local grocery store, I have all the ingredients to make a  เตะตูด Thai curry. Ya know, coming from a nerdy Mormon boy, I think I'm learning how to make a great stir-fry. This weekend there will definitely be a trip to Sakura Square and a shopping spree for more supplies. Please, don’t tell Chad. He’s sensitive.

Crunchatize Me Cap'n!

I have been craving huge amounts of cereal this week. I’m finding that it doesn’t matter what kind, just cereal. I have ventured to the grocery store several times trying to find the next brightly colored box to get my fix.

Yesterday I stood in the middle of the seemingly endless breakfast food isle. A parade of cereal cartoon mascots mocking me for the staring contest I foolishly instigated with Tony the Tiger. Keeping my gaze fixed on the buff tiger, I pulled out my phone. I dialed my ex boyfriend. I was about to ask him if he remembered that type of cereal I loved to eat back…. eight years ago? Because... that’s a normal thing to phone your ex boyfriend and inquire about.

I lost the staring contest with Tony as it hit me; I needed to listen to my body. It was trying to tell me that I was in serious need of something. I did know it wasn’t a carbohydrate craving. I know how those urges that make me want to be number two in a human centipede with the Krispy Kream conveyor belt feel like. This wasn’t a carb-hole, my body needed something more. Whole grains? Fiber?

After exploring dietary nutrition information, reading about the benefits of fiber, and re-reading my multi-vitamin bottles, it dawned on me. It wasn’t my body that was making me crave whole grains, it was my head. The happiest way to escape stress has always been for me to sit in my underwear, eat Cap’n Crunch, and watch Superman cartoons.With my work and school stress this week, my head was urging me to have some underwear clad cereal time.

After going for a run, finishing a paper on Shakespeare’s, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and finishing my monthly reports for work, it will be time to unplug and watch some serious amounts of Cartoon Network. Time for me to just relax in my Under Armour with the Cap’n.

Finally Steve

Today is finals day.



I have two papers due and several major tests to take. As you might guess I was up late studying last night.  I was up into the wee hours re-reading the implications of Martin Luther on the Scientific Revolution and his stance on intransitive verbs. Maybe the intransitive and transitive verbs are for my creative writing class. It’s all a blur.

Evil coffee maker, you want me to fail.
Don't you?

My focus on finals carried over to this morning when after starting the coffee and walking the dog, I was greeted by the entire pot of coffee flowing across the kitchen Pergo at me. I suspect that I did not put the coffee carafe in far enough letting the hot coffee flow in a title-wave towards my delicate constitution. This spurred my cleaning ritual to sanitize the entire kitchen. Seeing my mad cleaning spree the dog wanted to join in and helped by licking up a large amount of the coffee tidal pool. Completely buzzed on Hazelnut coffee, my Chinese Shar-pei is then ran around the house rearranging the furniture and asking me to take him for ice-cream. In his heavy Chinese accent.


My belly is now full of coffee, my kitchen is obscenely clean, the dog has fallen into a K-hole, and I’m ready to cram the founding of Britain’s constitutional monarchy into my small monkey brain. After I study that, I should really study up on subordinating conjunctions.

Tukey Sam-wich



Man I love Turkey sandwiches. It just might be better than actual Thanksgiving to me.



Pulling out the endless supply of brightly colored Tupperware filled with yumminess. Heaven.

TONIGHT WE BAKE

I have been severely under cookied this holiday season. Tonight. We bake. Dalton sent me this photo from his own baking happy time in Brooklyn….

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies, Half brownie half chocolate cookie and half powdered sugar.* So I immediately got the recipe and tonight I finally have time to bake them. Since I have the cognitive ability of an under-sized orangutan, I need any directions to be easy with a lot of pictures; this is why I only eat in restaurants with pictures on the menu. This recipe looks very easy to follow, even for me.

You can find it here.

On the other side of the culinary spectrum, I have planned the menu for the Christmas Midnight Breakfast. This is when Fuzzy gets home at midnight Xmas eve and we sit down for a huge breakfast before laying down for three hours before getting up to start the Christmas happy time. This year on the menu will be chicken fried steak with sausage gravy, ham steak, and scrambled eggs. With some sort of biscuit yumminess. All of this food will be snarfed down in three seconds even though I will of just have eaten at Frank and Kevin’s house hours before for Xmas eve dinner and just hours before eating again at Carl and Will’s house for Christmas day. This 48 hour time frame will NOT be recorded into my diet plan.

So, try the chocolate crinkle cookies. I'll let you know how mine turns out.

 
*Yes, three halves. I know.

CAKE OR DEATH?

I went to a great Memorial Day soiree yesterday. My addition was dessert, so I made a chocolate cake and a peach cake-ish thing. I forget how much I actually enjoy baking; don’t let that get around though. I’ve got a rep to maintain.


This garden party was half for Memorial Day and half a going away party for Dalton. In case you haven’t been playing along at home, Dalton is my Ex, turned super kawaii bestest friend. Tomorrow he’s heading back to Brooklyn to a De-lux apartment in the sky-ie-ie. To say I’m going to miss my best-friend as he heads back to the big apple is gross understatement. Lost might be a better word. But, this way I’ve got a free place to crash when I go to NY. So yeah….. cool.

What better way to send off a friend on a bon voyage then with a lot of chocolate cake. Cheers mate! Return to NY like a bunny rabbit being released back into nature. And to quote your idol, don’t fuck it up!

IRON CHEF STEVIEB

I have no idea when I started to enjoy cooking; it’s really been a recent development. I guess there comes a time in a guy’s life when he comes to a crossroads of chicken nuggets for eternity or making stuff that he actually likes. Last night it was Thai peanut sauce with stir-fry.

Dalton introduced me to Vietnamese and Thai food when we lived in Dallas, we would make a weekly trip to The Green Papaya restaurant on Oak Lawn. If you’re ever in Dallas, check it out. The spring rolls are the best I’ve ever had. This is where I started my love affair with Vietnamese/Thai and peanut sauce.

Aaaaaaaghh……spring rolls.
(To be said out loud like Homer Simpson)

I was a little embarrassed when I discovered how easy was it was to make this incredible sauce. Just peanut butter and a couple of other easy ingredients, and within twenty minutes I had a veggie stir-fry I was pretty frickin proud of, and the better half was able to scarf down. Now spring rolls….that may take a quantum leap for me, but it’s next on the Stevie food challenge.