Caustically Optimistic

leave the tramp at home

Emily went on vacation without Elizabeth or I, again.  This is putting an incredible strain on our friendship and has caused considerable heartache for Elizabeth and I.  We are very sensitive people.  We’d plan a trip to Cooperstown and Hyde Park and go without Emily but that’s way outside our skill set.  Elizabeth and I are followers.  Emily is a leader.  Emily is a leader who has been vacationing with some tramp; she is cheating on us. 

It wouldn’t be so bad if Emily hadn’t gone to IKEA and the Temple of the Mormons.  I love going to IKEA and I love to point and make remarks in the direction of non-Lutherans.  Emily didn’t even know that the patron saint of IKEA is Vicki or that you should only touch things with tongs if you’re not Swedish.  I have no idea what she is thinking.  I’m also not saying I have something against the Mormons, only other Lutherans.  I still like to go look at non-Lutheran worship space and holy lands to ponder the wrongness of your different-ness.  I know, I know: you should be more PC and accepting!  I like to learn new things, experience the world, and see things that are different than mine.  

I don’t know how Emily had fun without us.  Who can forget the time that Elizabeth and I got drunk at the Samuel Adams Brewery and then proceeded to argue with the tour guide and the Adam’s Historical Home?  I don’t need to be drunk to have fun, but I do need to be drunk to have an excuse.  Also, who can forget all the times that we presented Winkler to someone and insisted that they hold him and pose for a photograph?  That Emily would vacation without Elizabeth and I so flagrantly is odious but it is inexcusable that she’d cast aside her koala as if it were nothing. 

We are taking this class on how to be members of our church and only once has my pastor said, “people who think this are really very stupid,” and I was appalled because he wasn’t talking about the ELCA or even another group of people but about people in our congregation who are wrong-headed about how coffee should be made.  I have learned a lot about being a Lutheran in this class when I expected to just meet people and go to dinner.  I feel bad for the new people in the class because I do not come with a warning label and no one in the class knows me well.  My mentors at University always said that my greatest asset and my worst liability was my honesty.  Oddly enough I felt the need to talk about vacationing with Emily and Elizabeth in class.  I guess normal people go lay on beaches while I am on field trips with the Double E. 

Still, summer beckons and even if I am currently exiled from teaching and thus robbed of my summer holiday I will need to take a token trip to celebrate the ungodly heat and regrettable humidity.  I’m thinking a pilgrimage to Minnesota to visit the land of my father’s ancestors – who are still living – would be nice and we are also thinking of recreating our senior trip by going to King’s Island while also seeing how long Nurse Erin and I can stay around each other and remain sober.  The key to success is a good vacation itinerary, a plan.  Tuesday will determine a great deal about what happens this summer.  Certainly, I’m going to connive a way for Elizabeth to come with me and perhaps we’ll forgive Emily and allow her to tag along. 

But, she’ll have to leave that tramp at home.  

Bachelor Pizza

Sunday is a “Stuff White People Like Dot Com” day for me.  I go to church, listen to NPR, go to brunch, and then do something in the afternoon that would be featured at Stuff White People Like.  One of the things that I listen to on NPR is Splendid Table which is probably named that because the website was free.  I imagine that goes into consideration for many people when naming things since Al Gore linked up the series of tubes we call the Internets.

For the uninitiated, Splendid Table is the radio show for people who love to eat.  You can read all about it other places but the radio host’s raspy voice inspires you to cook neat things and eat well.  Today was a peculiar Sunday because I went to church and left alone so I was listening to the host talk about cooking Mongolian rabbits while sitting in traffic eating Chicken McNuggets.

Another person who inspires me to cook is my friend Emily, author of the Singing Culinista.  One of her first entries was about making an Italian style pizza and I think you’ll enjoy reading it.  I decided to make pizza as well.  Before you read on, you should read her post and Valerie, make sure Tyler takes notes since it will be a while before I can teach him this in person.

 

Bachelor Pizza, a recipe for Tyler

Emily’s blog exists for Emily’s reasons and she explains that pretty well.  My blog exists to entertain people, mainly Valerie who is teaching partner from long ago, and to do a third task which is to educate her son, Tyler - crown prince of Coo-Coostan.  Ashley and I were anointed his aunt and uncle but since I am so far away I cannot teach him in person and must write.  This recipe is a recipe that Tyler should be able to cook – but my money is on the house burning down.  I say that as someone who loves you Tyler.  Please only do this if Kinley is there to supervise.  

Emily’s post begins with a martini and from the beginning we diverge.  I started mine with a good bottle of Samuel Adams.  I chose the Samuel Adams because there is history between Sam, Emily, and I – also Elizabeth.  We three used to vacation together before Elizabeth was married and I was stupid.  We’re hoping I un-stupid soon and can vacation again.  

 

The first thing that Emily did was make dough; I bought dough at the grocer.  At this point my partner in crime, Cindy, is probably having a fit.  Her pizza recipe involves a bottle of red wine and a telephone but the idea of the Pillsbury Doughboy kneading your Italian bread needs is a blasphemy that may drive her back to the rosary.  However, I don’t feel too bad considering the garbage her mother Nettie has feed me, sullying the good name of Italy. 

The next step in making a bachelor pizza is to spread some sauce onto the dough, unfortunately I couldn’t find any pizza sauce at the grocer and I didn't know if we  had any at home.  My father is trained as a chef and told met had he known I was going to do this would have made sauce or let me use a good can of it.  Instead of traditional sauce I used a jar or spaghetti sauce because it is tomato based but not ketchup.  I am not above using ketchup because I am a bachelor but I didn’t want Cindy to disown me.

Spreading the sauce around was a task to be done carefully because you want sauce over the whole thing but you don’t want it too think.  The other issue I had was that I intentionally picked a sauce with vegetables and garlic in it so I wanted to make sure there were chunks of vegetables all over the pan and not just in one location.  My father was pretty pissed that I used a jar that makes a decent back up when homemade sauce is time prohibitive. 

After that you need put on a good layer of mozzarella.  We had two varieties of mozzarella at home but since I was using dough from a can and spaghetti sauce I figured that some cheese in a bag would be just as well.  My parents – especially my father – have a bad habit of not using the American pronunciations of things AND using a fake accent when saying things like muzzarell.  I bought cheese because I didn’t want to have to ask where it was and then stab my father with a pen when I thought one of the Mario brothers had come in through the pipes. 

I’m not a huge fan of cheese so I spread it out in a thin, consistent layer.  I like mozzarella and it’s important to pizza but I’m not a fan of a pizza that’s mainly a piece of bread with melted cheese on top.  I’m also not a fan of a pizza so thick with toppings that you can’t appreciate the flavors of what you’ve put on it.  Getting the right amount of cheese on the pizza was very important to the success of the pizza. 

  Then I put pepperoni on.  Pepperoni pizza is one of my favorite kinds and I’ll confess an affinity for Pizza Hut’s because their pepperoni is crispy like bacon and not chewy.  My family has several different stories about why we converted from Judaism to Christianity but the version I made up in my head goes something along the lines of, “there is a lot of good Italian food that relies on pork products and/or mixing meats with dairy.”  Normally, I would have planned ahead and gone to the Italian deli for sausage or pepperoni but this was spur of the moment and I didn’t want to break up my bachelor theme by using good ingredients. 

Following along with the idea of this being a bachelor pizza I put a layer of pepperoni on the pizza covering it from one end to the other, not overlapping and un-stacked.  If I were making this pizza for friends or company I would have actually made some sausage, peppers, and onions in a frying pan, drained the grease, and used that as a topping.  That’s a bit cost prohibitive for me to make for myself, I can’t justify the expense or the time spent. 

The final step before putting the pizza in the oven is another layer of cheese.  I went light on the first layer of cheese so that I could put another layer of cheese on top without sacrificing the idea of crispy pepperoni.  Now, it is not going to end up as crispy as restaurant style pepperoni but if we went to the root of why that pepperoni is thin we’d probably discover that its sliced thin to save money and not to go for bacon-y goodness. 

Finally, you put it in the toaster oven.  We have been using a toaster oven because cooking is more energy efficient that way.  This would have been a disaster if my father hadn’t intervened because it was set to cook a frozen pizza – something that mystified us because Cindy’s mother hasn’t been there – and it would have cooked my pizza at a lower temperature but for a longer time. 

It was also fortuitous that my father was wandering back through the kitchen when my pizza was done because the timing suggested by the manufacturers didn’t include toaster oven directions meaning my pizza didn’t need to cook so long.  I was reading the labels on all the packages to ensure there were no corn-based products in the bachelor pizza.  My friend Casey cannot have anything corn or she’ll turn into a pillar of salt.  While that would keep the cows happy for a season or two it wouldn’t be that great for a friend. 

When your Dad uses his chef training (and his nose) to rescue your pizza you can be confident that it is ready.  Cut it into squares and serve with a cold beer, because that is how Lutherans do. It is also advisable to save your sister a piece or two – even though she’s protested this pizza being made – and clean the kitchen before your mother comes home.  This is a recipe that every man should know how to make in case there is some catastrophe like poor phone service which would prevent from calling out for pizza.  This is so easy even Tyler can do it, I did and so far no one has died. 

I know what you're thinking, Tyler.  "All pizza is bachelor pizza," which isn't false but this is pizza you would make with your own hands.  Speaking of your hands, I know where they've been and you should wash them before you do anything with food.  No one wants what you picked up at school or in all the other public places you go before you run into soap.  The beer is medicinal, it's a cure for craziness - a hereditary disease we get from our children.  

 

 

never touched a frying pan

The other night we went for Japanese food.  I am always torn between getting sushi or hibachi.  The people I am with usually get hibachi and it’s fun to watch the chef cook.  However, this time I was conniving and realized that I always have left over food and so does my father: I could get the sushi and have dad’s left over food the next day for lunch.  Our friend Linda was coming too and she would abstain from eating rice so I would not only have food for the next day, I’d eat like a king.  I was free to enjoy sushi and hibachi.

Whoa, getting the subject/verb agreement right in the sentence about Linda and the rice was a bear! 

Normally, Sushi for me is a team sport.  I started eating sushi with my father when we were another family from church who I feared was trying to impose their daughter on me.  The daughter has the bad habit of talking like a baby; apparently there are people turned on by that.  I always thought those people were called pedophiles but I could be wrong.  I rarely am.  Well, she mentioned that she thought sushi was, “icky” so I decided to eat sushi with my father in order to be repulsive.  It worked. 

I also discovered that I liked sushi.  We should have never doubted this.  I would revel in the absurdity of enjoying food that you pay extra to eat uncooked.  Other people I enjoy eating sushi with would be my friend Amber-san – who lost her sushi virginity (sushinity) with me (don’t worry Amber it was circumcised), Emily who does all things adventurous, and of course the teachers and Laura in Phoenix who always made it a competition.  I don't know what you do with your friends but apparently teachers and their friends imbibe.  I am amazed and appalled at how much sushi I am able to eat.

The waitress had trouble with English and I ordered enough sushi for two people.  One of the advantages of eating sushi with friends is getting a variety without paying an arm and a leg.  I didn't get the bill this time but next time I would insist upon it after seeing plate after plate of sushi.  It was good, but next time I may have to call for back up.  Amber-san, be ready! I can put away a lot of sushi but this was ridiculous.  

Of course, wasabi is an important part of eating sushi.  You mix the wasabi paste in soy sauce and then dip your sushi in it.  I have been tricked into, and tricked others into, doing shots of the mixture.  It’s cruel and funny.  Somehow while eating the sushi someone bumped into my air and caused wasabi to get into my nose.

It was the most pain I’ve been in, and I have been hit by a bus and struck by lightening (not at the same time).  Truly, I tell you: I am surprised I haven’t been hit by lightening more often and I don’t believe the person who told me I was struck by lightening but I am not going to let this get in the way of my story.  This was awful pain.  It was agonizing, excrutiating pain.  During the time it was in my nose I hit Linda, who was sitting next to me, writhed about, and offered prayers and supplications to the Lord because I believed Jesus would be coming to take me home.  I also had a thought bubble wherein DeAnn, the embodiment of my conscience, was saying, “Shame on you!  Hirsh!  Hirsh!”  DeAnn will be unhappy to learn that I orchestrated and planned my menu around eating other people’s leftovers.  You can’t eat today’s sushi tomorrow. 

The best part of this story is that my parents, so used to me being an idiot, didn’t even notice.  

Hymn of the Lutherans

This post is full of Lutheran humor, if you aren’t able to handle Lutheran humor – or if you’re not really Lutheran (ELCANS, I’m talking to you!) then please stop by again tomorrow.  The title, Hymn of the Lutherans references a hymn written for Emily's forth-coming book, Life Among the Lutherans.

On Sunday, I went to church.  My parents weren’t up when I left and must have gone to a different service (they skipped church) and the people I would usually sit by were also absent from church.  I spied my friend Linda sitting with her family so I went over to talk to her before church knowing that she’d invite me to sit with her.  Linda is sweet and good so you’d never expect that sitting by her in church would be eventful.  It was.  It opened my eyes to the whole church experience.  I have been sitting in the wrong part of the church for far too long. 

The first thing that I notice was when Pastor said, “good morning!”  He is always cheerful and we all say, “good morning,” in response the same cheery way.  Linda uttered it in the manner of someone caught before her coffee.  It reminded me of the one time our Pastor has ever lost his cool and that was when someone told a visitor they were in her seat.  Pastor came unglued the next Sunday.  It was fantastic; he will always be my favorite Pastor.  Lutherans are creatures of habit and we may have started the Reformation of Christendom but after that we’ve looked at change this way: we just want to have Christ and the right to be dumb. 

Linda’s “good morning” opened my eyes: there is a lot of crazy going on at church. 

I noticed our Elder who greets people.  I have never spoken to him personally and I am sure he’s a nice old man.  He looks like a bouncer.  Pastor tells us, “if anyone is visiting for the first time,” and we should be able to tell visitors by who is sitting in unassigned seats, “to please give Jim a hand signal and he’ll give them a welcome packet.”  Yes, I am tempted to give that hand signal but he knows I am not a visitor.  This Sunday it occurred to me that he’s probably on the look out for any lost ELCA who occasionally wander into our sanctuary.  We had to restrain Melissa when she came to visit because even though she’s become LCMS we weren’t confident that anyone had taught her the secret handshake.  We let all kinds of people in: Methodists, Democrats, the homeless, but not those ELCA ruffians.  I am about all the riffraff my church can handle, after me we’d pass the saturation point. 

Sometimes I have to miss church for work and this might have been the Sunday to miss.  It was the fifth Sunday and we do a, “Hymn Sing” where people shout out hymns and then we sign the first verse and move on.  There has to be a better method but to do things differently would be, ‘change’ and we don’t change.  However, Pastor reminded us that it was Lent and we omit the alleluias from our worship.  This prompted two ideas in our heads.  First, I sang the refrain from Emily’s Hymn of the Lutherans for Linda – and all the octogenarians in Belltone Hearing Range – It’s Lent and we’re Lutheran, we won’t sing, “Alleluia!”  We sing thee, “Hosanna!”  It means the same thing.  Linda and I considered looking for all the hymns that had an alleluia in the first verse and shouting out that hymn number but reconsidered when we remembered the watchful eye of Jim and the possibility of being stoned to death by hymnals.  The hymnals are new which would make it a great deal worse than being pelted by the antediluvian Red Hymnals. 

Our fellow parishioners have a bad habit of picking their favorite hymns.  The problem is that Pastor always calls on the old and they always pick songs that have been poorly translated from German and are impossible to sing in English.  It makes me miserable.  I was pleasantly surprised by their choices – they picked mainly Methodist hymns (meaning: written first in English) when they weren’t picking absurd hymns.  The first hymn they picked was Great is Thy Faithfulness which Leah Monster will play on her accordion and sing at my funeral, either that or Our God Our Hope in Ages Past.  The next hymn sung was, Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling, which has the second line of, who will go and work today? This is noteworthy because Linda introduced me to her sister as the person who doesn’t do anything around here to help.  This may or may not be true, but I still have a hangover from being a Lutheran teacher.  Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling is also the hymn I like to change the words to the most of any hymn in the Lutheran arsenal.  Poor Nathan can’t sing that hymn without thinking of my miserable heresies.  After this we sang the Navy Hymn. 

The next hymn would have given away any ELCA in our midst: Onward Christian Soldiers because far from being some GOP jam-fest this song gets my ELCA Grandmother out of her seat and marching in place while she sings.  It’s comical for everyone not related to or sitting with her. We rounded this out with, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.  A hymn I never mock.

After this we had Special Music, which was so special the man in front of us ripped out his hearing aids.  The choir sang four verses of a hymn and then we were supposed to sing the fifth with them.  For this verse we were conducted by the choir director – which was absurd because I don’t know what he’s doing with his hands and I was a band nerd.  If I don’t know I’m guessing he was just confusing everyone else as well – if they were paying attention.  I ignored the conducting because it’s enough for me to just sit, stand, and kneel when told to by the Pastor or the field worker. 

To ask me to sing in some sort of order is too much.  I will admit that I liked to randomly stand up during hymns when I was younger because LCMS people are like trained dogs – they’ll all stand up if someone is standing as well.  Linda did this when there was a part of a prayer that the Pastor (or the field worker) reads and we follow along with.  Linda was reading along so everyone around her started and it spread through the church.  Sure, it was an accident on the field worker’s part to tell us to but it was neat how we’re so afraid of not following along that we can gum up the service.

This was followed, more or less, by the reading of the Scriptures.  This part is always good because I don’t have to disagree with anyone’s interpretation and I can read along and not do a “running record” of reading errors.  Not so today.  Today someone read the scripture dramatically.  It was like watching a college speech tournament – yes, Renea, it was that bad.  Linda said, “you can always tell the newly Lutheran because we don’t get excited about anything, ever.” I'm sure the prophet was all "fire and brimstone" when he went at it with the Hebrews, we are not Hebrews.  We are Lutheran.  Don't get excited and NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS.

Thankfully, this was the point at which Pastor took control of the service from the field worker and gave his children’s sermon (I tuned in for that, they played follow-the-leader,  and talked about following Jesus when you hit a ‘fork in the road’), I was switching channels through the adult sermon (it’s a longer version of the children’s sermon), we prayed (without incident), confirmed some new members and had our benediction.  There was a social hour after church, which I know didn’t happen without incident but I had to deliver a hatchback and missed the social. 

I learned an important lesson though: sitting in the balcony means you’re missing a great deal and missing church at all is missing 

“Frozen Dead Guy Days”

Greetings, virtual friends!  This is Christopher’s friend, Emily, and I’m hijacking the blog today.  I hope you don’t mind.  Christopher and I have been friends for several years.  One of our favorite activities is to take field trips together to unique locales, important historical sites and interesting festivals.  Unfortunately, Christopher was unable to accompany me on this weekend’s excursion, but I thought it was so unique that I wanted to chronicle the events of the day and he relented to letting me post it on the blog.   

To preface, I live in the great state of Colorado; a state diverse in culture and scenery.  By culture, I mean to say that there are many varieties of white people.  In the small town of Nederland we encountered the endangered subtype of white people classified as “Dirty Mountain Hippies.”  As opposed to the species of white people found downstream in Boulder, the less elusive “Dirty Educated Trust-Fund Hippies,” these mountain hippies can be distinguished by the fact that they actually live in shanties, and drink Miller Lite.  The “Dirty Educated Trust-Fund Hippies” only drink micro-brews and drive expensive hybrid cars.  Both types can be found wearing dreadlocks and ugly ponchos. 

My friend Cindy and I ventured up to Nederland today to partake in the festival called (and I am not making this up) “Frozen Dead Guy Days.”  The celebration is a community festival that honors a man who is cryogenically frozen and kept in a Tuff Shed in the town.  Apparently, after Grandpa Bredo died in Norway in 1989, his family arranged to have him transported to the U.S. and cryogenically frozen.  They brought his body to the small mountain town of Nederland and kept him in a shed behind their house.  Eventually the town discovered that the body was being kept frozen on their property.  Because there was no ordinance against it at the time, the family has been allowed to keep their grandfather’s corpse frozen in the shed, aided by regular deliveries of dry ice.  The townspeople began celebrating “Frozen Dead Guy Days” in 2002 in honor of Grandpa Bredo.  It is a celebration of the macabre and the absurd, like Halloween in March. 

I had never been to Nederland before.  The drive up from Denver is quite beautiful.  Past Boulder, you drive up the mountains on a pretty typical two-lane highway with lots of curves and several boulders that loom over the road on cliffs that look like they could fall and smash your car at any minute.  But it was truly breathtaking, and we stopped to take our pictures by a frozen lake outside of town.  The town itself was packed as we arrived.  We found a place to park and then headed to town to line up with the hundreds of other people and waited for the parade to start.  Then it started to snow.  Really hard.  The parade began with the winner of the Grandpa Bredo look-alike contest walking up the street.  He was accompanied by this year’s Ice Queen who kept getting groped by onlookers.  Their triumphant march was immediately followed by a multitude of old hearses from the Denver Hearse Club driving up the street.  Did you know that Denver had a hearse club?  Me neither.  After watching the parade for ten minutes and seeing hearse after hearse, Cindy and I were covered in snow and very, very cold.  So we headed into the nearest pub for lunch.  Yet again, we got to watch some drunk guys try to grope the seating hostess.  Dirty Mountain Hippies. 

After lunch, we trekked downhill and followed the crowd of people to the next activity.  In order to get to where it was held, we had to cross a very skinny bridge and then literally walk across part of the frozen river.  We prayed that the ice would hold us, as we had just eaten a very big lunch.  Do you remember fording the river while playing “Oregon Trail” in grade school computer class?  It was a similar experience, minus the oxen and the cholera.  We arrived just in time to watch the Polar Bear Plunge.  If you aren’t familiar with this, it is an event wherein brain-damaged individuals think it’s a good idea to jump into a frozen river.  The best part is that after diving into the frozen mountain river, the people emerge with looks on their faces that seem say “Holy crap!  I didn’t realize this water was going to be so cold!  I think maybe my nipples fell off somewhere in there!”  Really?  They didn’t realize when they signed up for this that the water was going to be COLD?  The crowd cheers and laughs, as they are nice and warm and bundled up in their North Face jackets and sipping on their soy lattes, while the participants are struggling to keep the hypothermia from setting in.  Each participant was generally costumed or had some other theme for their dive.  There was a guy dressed like Superman, another guy in a suit who looked like he was getting baptized, some people who had painted the Norwegian flag on their stomachs, and there were even a few kids that took the plunge.  But the best moment had to be when these two skanky hippie girls in bikinis were about to go on and as they were doing a faux striptease while de-robing, someone from the crowd shouted: “This isn’t Rock of Love, girls!”  See, hippies can be funny, too! 

After the Polar Bear plunge concluded, we walked over to the obstacle course that had been set up for the next event, the Coffin Races!  The idea of the coffin races is that each team designs and builds a coffin to carry one of their teammates through a variety of obstacles, most of which are just big piles of snow.  Each team also comes up with a theme and again, most are costumed.  I am very tall, so I perched myself up on a rock and watched from behind a bush.  Even though I could see through the bush, it made taking pictures somewhat difficult.  In each heat two teams would race against each other.  There were two separate “Octo-mom” teams this year, but this one was my favorite:

The “babies” are carrying their crazy-pants mother through the obstacles that they encounter.  It’s really funny how art imitates life.   

Here’s where the teams have to perform a Chinese fire drill around the coffins.  This is team “Ground Control to Grandpa Bredo” competing against the “Corporate Zombies.” 

We wandered around town for a big after the activities had ended.  I had some really terrible hot chocolate and then we decided to drive back to Boulder.  Of course, we paid the obligatory visit to Pearl Street (where we got to walk by some Hippies doing street performance!  Oh joy!), we patronized the Dushanbe Teahouse.  It’s a really unique place, and the décor is amazing.  I had the Morrocan Mint tea and Cindy had some chai: 

At this point, I must mention that Cindy had been talking to me ALL DAY about taking me to a particular cupcake shop in Denver after we got back into town.  She promised that I would love it.  So we chose to just drink some tea and save ourselves for the cupcakes that were awaiting us back in Denver.  As we left, we were both excited for the cupcake ecstasy that would greet us upon our return to civilization.  Little did I know that in deciding to get cupcakes, Cindy and I would be forced to become ninjas in our attempts to elude our arch-nemesis who just happened to be at the SAME CUPCAKE BAKERY!!  What were the odds of that??  And so, we had to drive around the block several times while Cindy wore a disguise until She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had left the bakery.  But it was worth it, because the cupcakes were amazing.  I had a strawberry one and a chocolate one.  Unfortunately, they are not open on Sundays, or I would probably be there today.  On second thought, maybe it is fortunate after all.