DOES THIS TASTE FUNNY?
A Half-Baked Look at
Food and Foodies
Copyright © 2012 by Michael Dane
All rights reserved
To everyone who believed I could do this, and to everyone who helped me survive until I did.
AS-L, BH, BS, CC, CH, CO, CT, CW, DB, DC, DD, DF, DG, DJ, DM, DM, DM, DO, DR, DRT, EH, EJ, FE, FH, FM, GH, GWB, HM, IP, JB, JJ, JLS, JS, JT-S, JZL, KB, KK, KM, KS, LD, LK, LM, LW, ME, MF, MF, MO’L, MP, MS, MT, MW, OS, PE, RB, RD, SAS, SD, SR, SS, TO, VH, VR,
and especially, GEB
contents
Cooking Through the Crazy
Where’s My Other Whisk?
My First Recipe
Tempting the Fates
Measuring Up
Behind the Cooking
Ode to a Skillet
Kitchen Mistakes
I Dropped the Meatloaf
Sometimes I Cheat
That’s Not Really Cooking
The Girlfriend Draws the Line
I Baked A Pie!
The World According to Stan
In Which I Pester a Real Chef
As Seen On TV
Knowing What’s Good for You
My Dinner with Marjoram
That’s Not Really Food
I Know It When I See It
You Can Look It Up
But Could They Write A Recipe?
You Should Hear the Zucchini
A Culinary Soundtrack
All the Music You Can Eat
Fear, Loathing, and Porridge
Cooking With Testosterone
Hot Dogs and Haggis
I’m Sensing a Theme Here
A Word From Our Sponsor
A Splendid Conversation
Careful With That Blowfish!
Modern, Schmodern
Who Needs Recipes, Anyway?
The Pot Pie Pizza Process
What Do You Call That?
I Need A Catchphrase
Cooking is Believing
Oatmeal for Supper
Everything but the Cranberry
(Not) About the Author
Acknowledgements
Cooking Through the CrazyWhen I think about my mom’s cooking, the first thing that comes to mind is squash. I remember squash, because we grew it in the back yard. That meant that every meal I had at home for eighteen years had some squash-related element.
Banana squash, acorn squash, zucchini. Every single meal. I don’t even remember if I liked it, but I do know I haven’t eaten a lot of squash in the last thirty-four years.
My other evocative memory of food and childhood is of my mom making what’s known in Danish as ‘frikadeller,’ which sounds so much more exotic than ‘cheap ground beef and some onion in Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup.
I can still see myself standing by my mother’s side, stealing chunks of raw ground beef, adding some salt, and chowing down. It was a more innocent time, and E. coli was the farthest thing from my mind.
Like most Americans, I think the first thing I ever ‘cooked’ by myself was ramen noodles, in college. Strange concept, ramen noodles.
Not the noodles themselves, but the fact that the package contains the noodles and something called, in Orwellian style, a ‘flavor packet.’ I have since learned that some foods actually have flavors already built in, as opposed to requiring you to add ‘flavor.’
The first time I ever read about food (not including menus) was about fifteen years ago. It was a time when the President had been impeached, NASA had lost a spaceship, and the country was reeling from the divorce of Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee.
I worked at a bookstore in California, and I was randomly assigned the food section. Although ‘worked’ is a stretch, since once the books were shelved and their spines faced out, there wasn’t much to do, unless there was a customer.
It felt like I was getting paid eight bucks an hour to read! I don’t know if there were other things I was supposed to be doing, but I know I did a lot of reading.
The store was promoting Thomas Keller’s French Laundry Cookbook, and it didn’t look at all like what I thought cookbooks should look like.
From the austere white-on-white cover, to the ridiculously close-up pictures of ‘sculpted’ food, to chapter titles like “The Law of Diminishing Returns” and “The Importance of Hollandaise,” it was clear that this was not The Joy of Cooking.
I didn’t even know hollandaise sauce had importance! This book was like a portal into some weird, mystical world. I felt like a fourteen-year-old discovering Tolkien for the first time.
Who knew you could infuse something with white truffle oil? Who knew there was white truffle oil?
As sucked in as I was by this alternate universe, I didn’t suddenly become a foodie. In fact, for most of my adult life, ‘cooking’ involved a can and a can opener.
I was fascinated by the idea of cooking, but for years, I never made anything more sophisticated than an omelet. I defrosted a lot of things. I heated a lot of things. But cooking, with different ingredients and . . . more than one pan? Not a lot. I had to ask a friend how to hard-boil eggs.
Around the time I turned fifty, I taught myself how to cook. Now, a couple years later, I’m eating home cooking almost every night.
At first, I had no idea why I was suddenly makin’ with the mirepoix, and it was months before I figured it out. Since you asked, I’ll tell you—I started cooking to avoid going insane.
I had spent years kicking around the fringes of showbiz as a comedian, with just enough success during the standup boom to keep trying.
But years of trying to eke out a bohemian life had ground me down (eking isn’t easy), and I started to, in psychiatric parlance, lose it.
I was diagnosed with ‘generalized anxiety disorder.’ ‘Generalized.’ Yeah, thanks for narrowing it down for me, doc.
“Mister Dane, it would seem that you’re anxious about some things just—in general.” Well, the diagnosis might have been vague, but it was accurate.
While I was working through my breakdown, I was also trying to live as cheaply as possible, and I figured making my own food would save a few bucks. I dabbled a little.
Then I started noticing recipes online, and buying kitchen doodads at the thrift store. Soon, I was recording episodes of ‘Top Chef.’
My newfound love of the kitchen saved me some money, but more importantly, it gave me something to do with my hands, and something with which to occupy my (then) unhinged mind. I had stumbled upon the perfect activity to distract me from my demons.
It’s harder to worry about your long-term drama when you have a pot that’s boiling over right now. Cooking is so tangible, and so very ‘in the moment.’ Doing it allows me to get out of my head, plain and simple.
Now, if I’m stressed, I cook something. If I’m depressed, I cook something. If I’m angry, I cook things that involve a lot of chopping (you can release plenty of rage if you cut up enough carrots).
And, I figured, if I’m going to be fumbling around, making a mess of the kitchen anyway, I might as well write about it.
Unfortunately, if you add lack of experience to my inherent clumsiness and throw in the occasional panic attack, my resume didn’t exactly scream ‘food writer.’
I was truly starting from scratch, and all I had to guide me is a handful of old cookbooks. Well, some old cookbooks and the internet.
I like to think I put the guesswork back into cooking. Guessing, improvising, experimenting, and frequently making a hellish mess of my kitchen. In the past couple years, I’ve burnt, underco
oked, and over-seasoned a lot of food.
If you’re a food snob, this book probably isn’t for you, since I spend a lot of time mocking food snobs. Because they’re ridiculous.
No matter how elaborate the prep or the presentation, we’re ultimately just talking about food here. Which brings me to meatloaf muffins.
I spent several days dithering about a name for my website. I tried every variation and combination of words related to ‘food’ and ‘humor.’ I knew I was running out of ideas when I looked into the availability of ‘eatyourcomedy.com’ (available, by the way).
In a delirious moment, I almost called my site “rustyskillet.com,” and thought about creating a cartoon mascot named ‘Rusty Skillet,’ until I realized that sounds like the name of a buffet joint in a strip mall. Oh, and I also briefly considered ‘Food Pimpin.’
Then I remembered my first successful attempt at ‘real’ cooking–it was meatloaf muffins. Granted, it came about because I didn‘t have something I needed, but accident and necessity have always been a part of my cooking style. And burn ointment.
One day, I was at the market and I bought a pre-made, pre-packaged meatloaf. This was something even I could cook. Just take it out of the package, put it in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes and voila! Comfort food.
Unfortunately, when I got home, I realized I didn’t have one of those loaf-shaped bread baking thingies. All I had was a muffin pan (you’ll notice a lot of my cooking stories start with the phrase ‘all I had was’).
But then inspiration hit me. What if I simply took muffin-sized pieces of the meatloaf and put those in the muffin pan? I’m a kitchen savant! I should enroll in Le Cordon Bleu!
I knew I had discovered something special – I pictured Gordon Ramsey making my dish a challenge on Hell’s Kitchen:
“Come on, you donkeys! I don’t believe you’re doing this to me! These are crap! Where are my meatloaf muffins!”
Flush with the excitement of creation, I put the pan in the oven and waited for Meatloaf Muffins (which sounds like a bad guy from a Dick Tracy story).
I decided to google the phrase ‘meatloaf muffins,’ just to see if anyone else had stumbled upon my creation. My search revealed 89,700 hits for “meatloaf muffins.” I was crestfallen.
I had allowed myself to believe, for a few shining moments, that I had invented a new food item. Instead, I found Mexican Meatloaf Muffins, Italian Meatloaf Muffins, and I think there was actually a link to a page about how cliché meatloaf muffins are.
Reminds me of a time I was really stoned. I had a bag of pretzels in one hand and a bag of chocolates in the other, and I thought – they should make chocolate-covered pretzels! Turns out, they do, but that’s not the point. The point is, I wish I had some chocolate-covered pretzels right now.
C’est la cuisine. So I wasn’t the first person to ‘muffinize’ meatloaf. But I thought of it on my own, dammit, and for purely sentimental reasons, I paid ten bucks to buy a little piece of cyberspace that I call ‘meatloafmuffins.com.’
On a deeper level, though, meatloaf muffins may be the perfect food. I don’t want to get too technical, but I’ll try to explain why:
1) They taste like meatloaf
2) They’re shaped like muffins
What more could you possibly want from food? Besides, I’m living proof that meatloaf muffins can be good for your mental health.
Where’s My Other Whisk?
I recently had a thought I had never had before. I thought, “I wonder where my other whisk is.”
I’ve lived most of my adult life without so much as one whisk, but now that I’m teaching myself to cook, a lot of strange thoughts cross my mind. And since one of my whisks was in the sink, I needed the other one.
When I first started my cooking adventure, I didn’t have many tools, and some friends helped me out with donations. Mostly, I got a lot of utensils. I could have used a basic cookbook (since I didn’t really know how to cook), but at least I have a lot of plastic things with handles.
If you need something stirred, or scooped, I guess I’m your guy. Oh, and I have a tube thingie with edges that I think is used for…making things into the shape of a tube.
Ahh, so many utensils, so little time. See, in addition to my other challenges, I have a touch of OCD, so my problem wasn’t not knowing what these things all do so much as how to organize the drawer.
Seriously, the handles of my pans are all at the same angle in the cupboard. And my salad dressings are arranged alphabetically by country. French, Italian, Russian, Spanish . . .
I was also given a Crock Pot (capitalized, so you know this is actually ‘the original slow cooker’), and a George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine.
Someone gave me some sort of mystical electrical device that apparently conjures up omelets. Or empanadas. I’m not sure. I’ll just keep putting things into it until I figure out its purpose.
I was given a bunch of random spices. Now I may be new at this, but I know a little about spices. Your salt, your pepper. I’ve even been way out on the edge and used garlic salt! And lemon pepper!
But now I have coriander, and thyme. And sage. To be honest, I don’t even know what coriander is, let alone whether I want to add it to my food.
And the only experience I’ve had with sage was when I had a roommate who would light a big stick of it on fire and wave it around the apartment to cover the smell of weed before a visit from his parents.
Although I’m in my fifties, my digestive tract is pushing seventy, so I have to be a little more careful about what I eat (in fact, there’s a good chance that as you’re reading this, I’m in the bathroom).
For instance, I’m very skittish when I cook meat. If the recipe says 375 degrees for 45 minutes, I’ll go a little hotter for a little longer. My chicken might be a little dry, but I can guarantee it’s salmonella-free.
I’m lucky to have a couple of friends who I can call if I have stupid questions. Like, “If I’m out of eggs, can I use mayonnaise in a recipe since mayonnaise is made from eggs?” (The answer, surprisingly, is no.)
I’m learning so much about cooking. Just the other day I learned that, even though you see flour in a lot of recipes, simply adding it to something ‘as an experiment’ is not a good idea, since apparently, without yeast, flour just ends up being this weird, warm, powdery substance on top of the dish.
There is a downside to my new avocation. Until I started taking food more seriously, shopping was easy. The stuff nearest to the registers is better for you, right?
Now that I’m a little more connected to my food, I look at all the ingredients, and that can be very stressful. Take something as simple as bread.
I know multi-grain bread is a good thing. But how many grains exactly do I need? Is twelve too many? Five doesn’t seem like enough—what do those other seven grains have that I might want?
Maybe I’ll get a nine-grain. But wait—this other bread has flaxseed! Do I need that? Is that one of the nine? Shopping takes me hours.
But it’s worth it, because I know exactly what’s in the ingredients I use. Now I just need to learn how to combine those ingredients somehow into a meal. I think I have all the utensils I need.
My First Recipe
After reading a few cookbooks, I felt I was ready to post my first recipe online. Bear in mind, this one involved multiple steps, and at one point I was using three of my four burners at the same time, so I was already doing some pretty advanced stuff.
Since this was to be my first ‘published’ recipe, it needed a name, but on that score I was stumped. I decided against ‘Random Cheap Food in a Pyrex Dish,’ since that was a little too ‘on the nose.’
Eventually, I settled on something that’s catchy, with a nod to my bookstore past. I think the name I chose honors the spirit of my ingredients.
Remainder Casserole
This dish is perfect for a chilly autumn day, or for when you need to eat something but you’re out of pretty much everything because you�
�re too lazy to leave the house.
Ingredients
1 chunk of ground beef
1 little bit of olive oil
1 big-ass white onion you meant to use before
1 Band-Aid brand adhesive bandage
1 bag of flour
½ package Manischewitz wide egg noodles
some garlic powder
a little too much celery salt
a handful of bread crumbs
a few globs of Paul Newman’s Vodka Sauce
2 cigarettes
Instructions
First, disconnect smoke alarm. Cook noodles according to package directions. Remember that you have noodles cooking.
Next, chop some of the onion into really tiny pieces. Apply bandage to cut on finger.
Throw onions into a bowl with the ground beef and the vodka sauce. Add garlic powder and too much celery salt.
Add bread crumbs. Decide you didn’t need the bread crumbs. Too late. Mix by hand (ideally, the hand without the bandage).
To a big, hot skillet, add olive oil and ground beef mix. Sorta cook the beef, but not totally.
Light first cigarette. Your noodles are done now. You forgot about them, didn’t you? Take them off the burner.
Drain noodles in colander. Place in Pyrex© dish, carefully and evenly layering them. Layer beef on top of noodles.
Now use that spoon to mix up the two layers, because you’re worried the beef won’t get cooked enough unless it’s evenly distributed.
Scatter remaining bigger pieces of onion on top of dish.
Put away bag of flour, since you didn’t actually need flour.
Place dish in 350 degree oven for at least 45 minutes.
Several minutes later, try to guess when you put it in, since you didn’t check the time.
Decide you should put a foil tent over the dish, because you heard something once about using a foil tent.
Light second cigarette. Watch a couple of episodes of “The Daily Show.”
Realize it’s been almost an hour. Start to take dish out of oven. Immediately return dish to oven. Find potholders. THEN take dish out of oven.
Does This Taste Funny? A Half-Baked Look at Food and Foodies Page 1
