Once You Go Brand Name Pepper Flakes, You’ll Never...?

You’ll never ... go to an Irish wake? Drink a chocolate milkshake? Nothing quite rolls off the tongue on this one, but still. Come on. We’ve all been there. 

You sit down with a piping hot slice of pizza. You reach for the red pepper flakes, sprinkle them on liberally, take a bite, and BAM. Something’s off. WAY off. It’s the GENERIC red pepper flakes, and you can tell the difference.

That’s why brand name pepper flakes are the only kind of red pepper flakes you can ever consume again. Flatiron, McCormick, whatever. The point is that your pepper flakes shouldn’t be some supermarket off-brand like Frosted Ohs or Froot Hoops. Your delicate palate should not have to endure such a grievous affront.

It’s kind of like salt. You wouldn’t just put any old salt on your food. There’s Pink Himalayan Salt. There’s Black Sea Salt. There’s Tahitian Sea Salt. Hell, there’s probably a Mariana Trench Salt or a Norwegian Fjord Salt for all I know. Point is, you’re not just gonna pick up any old salt shaker and unload. Even that little brat Morton with her yellow raincoat and umbrella is better than THAT. 

Do me a favor. Next time you order pizza take those little red pepper flake packets that sometimes come with it, open them up, and dump them right into your eyeballs as a reminder that you are not so much as to LOOK at a generic red pepper flake again.

Seriously if more people would just put on their big girl/boy/they panties and cross the Rubicon to brand name pepper flakes, we’d probably have cured cancer and solved climate change by now. 

I want you to go home (or if you’re already home stay there) and think long and hard about this because brand name red pepper flakes will change your fucking LIFE.

Capisce?

Does Everyone Eat Like Vultures? Or Is That Just My Family?

I’ve often wondered about this, but of course I know it’s not just my family, because I’ve seen it elsewhere. At the risk of stereotyping, it’s pretty much every Jewish family I know.

Our approach to food is lurkingly ravenous, like we haven’t seen a meal in a week and know for a fact that we won’t see the next one for another week more; even though there’s a refrigerator full of food that’s being constantly monitored and inventoried by my mother: 

“We need more cheddar cheese.” “We’re out of cookies.” “I’ll start a list.” Let’s go to Fred Meyer!”

Seriously my parents beg me to take them to Fred Meyer the way I used to beg my parents to take me to Toys ‘R Us. Except instead of an E-Z Bake Oven™️, it’s Tilamook Mountain Huckleberry ice cream and a pair of Carharts.

Like where does this come from? Is it the epi-genetic trauma borne of thousands of years of wandering in a desert, eating nothing but matzah and camel jerky? Maybe hummus if we were lucky? Is it some hold-over from the lower east side tenements where we lived off pickles and kept karp in a bathtub? Is it the competition for resources inherent in urban living?

Whatever the cause, the effect is the same: when a spread of food emerges, we descend on it like vultures, circling around and periodically dive-bombing a tray of brownies or a chicken carcass. There are quite a lot of people who don’t behave this way around food. I’ve seen it mostly west of the Mississippi: people at weddings and parties and such lining up in a calm and orderly fashion for buffets. And in my head I’m just like, why aren’t they throwing elbows and taking more of a locust approach? Or at least a vulture?

No, they come for those little mini-quiches with the laidback vibe of the undesperate; like they know there will always be more mini-quiches where those came from WHEN ANYONE WITH ANY COMMON SENSE AT ALL KNOWS THAT THE ONLY HORS D’OEVRE THAT FLIES FASTER THAN THE MINI-QUICHE IS THE PIGS-IN-BLANKETS AND IF YOU DON’T GET ON THAT SHIT STAT THERE’LL BE NOTHING LEFT BUT GRAPES AND CELERY STICKS! 

LIKE, DURR!

The Ribs Pass

I happen to be writing this at Pork & Pickle in the Anchorage Airport after my little foray into plaintiffing in a civil rights case brought by the ACLU. But despite Pork & Pickle being a ribs joint that sounds like a sex toy shop in Vegas, this idea actually came to me last night when a friend and I decided that the real landmark of this week will not be judicial precedent, but rather the fleshing out of the Ribs Pass.

The Ribs Pass is the permissive abdication of manners you get when you eat ribs. I love ribs and I’m not proud of it. Meat is a vice and it’s killing the planet and probably my colon. But IDGAF because I love a bacon cheeseburger, and I especially love a giant rack of ribs that I can eat like a caveman/woman/person. And since we’re all gonna die somehow, it’s like smoke ‘em if you got ‘em with ribs.

When you’re eating ribs, all bets are off. No one expects you to be polite or clean. You’re SUPPOSED to look like a lion after the kill, covered in gooey bloody looking sauce and people just kind of leave you alone and look the other way. Or look on in envy and respect. Like ohhhhh, she’s got RIBS. We’ll just leave her to that. And you are somehow allowed to gnaw on the actual ribcage of an animal at a table in front of other humans like that’s normal civilized behavior versus a feline monster on the Serengeti. 

I think I just need to take the Ribs Pass approach to this whole next phase of my life. I’m trying very hard not to pay attention to any of the press or mean, booooooring comments around my Civil Rights Warriorship. I’m just sort of approaching democracy like it’s a giant rack of ribs, and hoping people give me a pass and leave me to it. But I’d be remiss not to thank everyone for all of their love and support (and of course any interesting paying legal work) they wanna send my way! I promise to devour it politely yet voraciously.

The Oyster Evangelist

I took a break from a semi social-media hiatus to tweet about the Oyster Evangelist earlier, but I feel like this topic deserves a longer treatment, which I now have the time and inclination to give it.

There’s something about oysters (as a cuisine) that inspires intense feelings of love or disgust. And many (if not most) people who love oysters—Oyster Evangelists I call them—are deeply invested in converting repulsed defectors like me. I was thinking about this while in Seattle, where oysters are pushed aggressively on everyone; almost as aggressively as the Seahawks, but with less garish colors and noise.

Like people who love oysters really, REALLY love oysters. But that’s not good enough, you see. Oyster Evangelists are committed to making YOU love oysters too, and when you refuse, to low-key shame you for being unsophisticated enough to be revolted by oysters, and then to rinse and repeat this process of oyster proselytizing at every opportunity. 

It’s like a First World foodie version of Green Eggs and Ham: Would you could you with a lemon? I would not could not with a lemon. Would you could you baked or fried? I would not could not baked or fried. Would you could you with Tobasco? I would not could not with Tobasco. In Seattle? Not in Seattle. In Japan? Not in Japan. 

And so on.

Eating something that (arguably/at least to me) kind of looks, feels, tastes, and smells like part of the female anatomy served in its own exoskeleton when that is not my personal flavor/mouth feel preference is just ... a bit much? I don’t care if it’s fanned out on a bed of ice and came from a special rock or if Jacques Cousteau himself plucked it off that special rock. I don’t want to eat a slimy sea booger swimming in its own salty fish juice, m’kay? 

The only oyster cult I’m joining is Blue Oyster Cult, and let’s be honest they’re not even that great of a band.

Inspiring! This Woman Brought a Tuna Salad Sandwich from Subway to a Brown Bag Lunch

In a controversial move that her co-workers are heralding as “brave” and “ballsy,” local accounting assistant Annie James, 32, has taken the bold step of bringing a six-inch tuna salad sandwich from Subway to a working brown bag lunch on Quick Books best practices.

Although arguably delicious, the smell emanating from this particular sandwich is indistinguishable from the crotch area of a pair of polyester bike shorts that have been sitting on the floor of your closet for a week.

“I just thought it was like, really fearless of her to bring wet tuna fish into an enclosed space with six other people like, sitting RIGHT there,” said Annie’s co-worker, Leslie Maldonado. “But you have to hand it to Annie. She’s on her own journey and living her truth. You gotta respect that.”

Not everyone agrees.

“I mean, who does that?” Erin Foust, one of the presenters at the brown-bag, asked rhetorically. “Like, everyone knows you ONLY bring turkey sandwiches or grilled chicken salads or coffee to brown bag lunches. No one wants to smell tuna while they’re trying to focus on a spreadsheet.”

Annie, however, remained undeterred and steadfast about the super gross sandwich.

“It’s not like I microwaved it,” she said, defending her unorthodox choice. “But even if I had, I need 8 grams of lean protein before noon or I flat-line, and nothing worth having comes easy.”

At press time, there was a poster hanging in Annie’s cubicle that read, “The devil whispered in my ear, ‘you’re not strong enough to withstand the storm. Today I whispered in the devil's ear, “Wanna bet? Smell my breath, bitch.'”

The REAL Recipe for the Alaska Cocktail

1 oz two-stroke motor oil 

1.5 oz Rainier

2 oz Snus juice

1 spray WD40

2 sprays foam insulation 

1 oz seawater 

1 sprig Fireweed

Mix ingredients in a 5 gallon orange bucket from Home Depot with duct tape on the handle. Place bucket in the bed of a Ford F-150. Drive down dirt road at 30mph until well-mixed.

Garnish with a spruce tip and serve over ice chipped off your metal-grated front steps with a pick-axe.

My Teen Spinach is Acting Up Again

I’m at my absolute wit’s end with my teen spinach you guys. 

When my spinach was “baby,” it was so sweet and tender. Now that it’s had an “additional week of maturity,” though, things have changed. I’m just not sure what to make of my spinach’s adolescence or how to get through these tough few weeks until it wilts and liquefies in my refrigerator crisper.

Any suggestions from fellow spinach parents on how to navigate the next 14 days would be most welcome. I’ve read all the self-help books and I’m in the teen spinach chat forums, but nothing seems to be helping. 

My spinach just seems really emotional and withdrawn. It never comes out of its plastic clam shell unless I really pry the top off. And frankly, I’m just not sure what it’s up to in there. Two nights ago, in the middle of the night, I was getting a swig of orange juice and I’m pretty sure I found pot in the corner of my spinach’s box. Also I maybe heard it having sex with arugula. And three days ago, it went to a house party at the Romaines with some micro greens and kale and came home reeking of Caesar.

It never talks to me anymore. I mean, it never did, but now it’s like, really remote, you know? The only time it ever seems to express itself is when it demands Craisins, Feta, and a nice balsamic vinaigrette and I’m just like GET A JOB YOU’RE SEVEN WEEKS OLD. Am I being too harsh on it? I don’t know! Its grades have been suffering and I’m worried it’s never going to get into a good salad if it keeps this up.

Shit. At this rate, my teen spinach is going to end up living in my compost for the rest of its life.

The Aggression of this Chocolate Bar Will Not Stand!

I like to think of myself as a low maintenance, easy going sort of a person. Someone who just needs a crust of bread, a glass of water, and a pallet on the floor to be happy.

But when it comes to chocolate, I simply will not abide “70% cacao blended with Yorkshire caramel and delicate flakes of Anglesey Sea salt.” I mean, who does Green & Black’s ethical chocolatiers think I am? Some sort of SAVAGE?! An ANIMAL who was born atop a hay bale in a dilapidated BARN?!

Absolutely not. To quote the Dude, this aggression will not stand.

First of all, I have a bright line rule when it comes to cacao percentage.I do not eat chocolate that is not at least 72.45% cacao or more. I’ve tracked this carefully, and my free radicals become trapped in my epithelial cells if I ingest a single square of chocolate that is less than 72.44% cacao.

Second, I refuse to consume caramel from Yorkshire. Everyone knows that as far as British caramel is concerned, Birmingham and MAYBE Manchester (in a pinch) is acceptable. But I’d eat a desicated turd straight off a lamb’s asshole before I’d let caramel from YORKSHIRE—of all places—pass my lips!

Third and finally, I simply cannot countenance sea salt from the Anglesey Sea. I haven’t even HEARD of this sea, much less would I trust “delicacate flakes” of salt from its questionable waters.

No. 

When I ingest salt, of course it must come from the sea and nowhere else like a shaker or—God forbid—a mine. Only the following seas embody the correct Ph balance of acids and bases such that the salt derived from them will not interfere with my karmic alignment of chakras: the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, and the Mediterranean. That’s it. Full stop. Anyone worth their salt knows this. Not to mention that when you flake salt—delicately or otherwise—you denature its healing properties. Salt must always be chipped into perfect hexagons. Never flaked.

For fuck’s sake, G&B. I might as well eat a fucking Cookies and Cream Hershey’s bar.  

A Dire Warning: You Must Never Brunch Without These 5 Mimosas

Brunch is a dangerous game. A VERY dangerous game. It is also a verb. And before you brunch, there are certain rules to which you must strictly adhere. 

From the moment we're born, we learn how to navigate our world safely and responsibly. Don't eat marbles. Don't talk to strangers. Look both ways before you cross the street. Don't have unprotected sex with random bartenders in Miami. Never feed a Gremlin after midnight. Don't maintain a secret collection of desiccated boogers, scabs, and fingernail clippings under your bed. Don't sniff your underwear in public. Don't use a Cabbage Patch Kid shoe as an ashtray or a wooden clothespin as a roach clip.

And so on.

But perhaps nothing is more crucial than the one two three four five types of mimosas that you should never--NEVER--brunch without. If you thought that there was only one mimosa and that it was $11 Proseco and Tropicana from concentrate you are deeply mistaken my friend. 

There is something called a "creamsicle" mimosa, a "tequila sunrise" mimosa, and a "sangria" mimosa, among others. It's all very complicated and it's too much to get into here. I can't explain calculus to a silverback gorilla, for fuck's sake! Just go throw your own shit at a wall and come back to me when you add brunch as the fourth meal of the day and as a verb to your working vocabulary.

For now, suffice it to say: you don't know what you don't know.

Brunch is a human need, you understand. Like water. Like shelter. Like Netflix n' Chill. A simple lean-to packed with mud and leaves, a fresh source of running water, and free WiFi with a goat cheese and micro-greens quiche and bottomless mimosas or bloody marys for $27. 

This is all you need.

You venture into Brooklyn or Portland on a Sunday morning between 10:00 and 2:00 at your own peril if you're unprepared to brunch without this critical know-how.

Going to brunch without a baseline understanding of all the possible Mimosas you could order is like climbing Mount Everest from base camp in a blizzard with no Sherpas or extra oxygen. It's like getting into the cockpit of an airplane never having flown a plane before and trying to circumnavigate the Bermuda Triangle in a category five hurricane. It's like trying to perform pediatric neurosurgery on a moving rickshaw with nothing but chopsticks.

So please. 

Don't try me with "it's just a mimosa" or "it's just brunch." There are five--count them FIVE--mimosas you should never, NEVER brunch without. It's best that you learn this now, before it's too late.

Let’s Ban the Words “Spaghetti Feed” from the Lexicon, M’Kay?

This will be hard for some folks to believe, but there are several things I never heard, saw, or tasted until I was an adult, simply because I personally never encountered these things in New York City. 

First of all I never heard anyone say the words "some folks." I never heard anyone say "on accident" (as opposed to "by accident"). I never heard anyone say "acrosst" instead of "across." I never ate a green bean casserole or had a sip of egg nog.

Did I go to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and drink frozen Margaritas in a West Village gay bar every other weekend of high school? Yes. Did I regularly see sewer rats the size of a cocker spaniel? Yes. Did I hear people shout curses at each other in 17 different languages from window to window? 

Absolutely.

And I ate plenty of spaghetti, which I definitely called "spaghetti." Not pasta, as everyone calls it now. Or most people, anyway. 

What I didn't ever do was "feed" on spaghetti, and I'm grateful for that because the word "feed"--verb or noun--does not belong within 100 miles of the word "spaghetti."

"Spaghetti Feed" belongs with "Moist Slacks" or "Pantyhose" or "Pocketbook" or "Dungarees" on the list of words that need to vanish from the English language to make room for “dotard” again.

The words “Spaghetti Feed” bring to mind a dozen zombie pigs at a trough just sticking their snouts in a huge pile of limp wet noodles covered with watery tomato sauce and mixed in with hunks of soggy garlic bread with that Kraft Parmesan cheese dust and rooting around and snuffling and oinking until it’s all gone.

Yes, this is how I eat spaghetti every time I eat it. But does there need to be a disgusting term for it to remind me of that fact?

No. No, there does not.

A Chicken Vigil Might be a Sign that Vigils Have Jumped the Shark

I don't want to be the kind of person who types the sentence "vigils have jumped the shark." I don't even want to be the kind of person who thinks that. 

Because what kind of person makes fun of vigils? A small, petty, mean little person. 

That's who. 

Vigils are serious business. Even the word suggests a solemn stoicism, a religious watchfulness. A vigilance, if you will. I don't want to be the kind of person that makes fun of vigils, and yet I am; and in the spirit of "owning my truth," which seems to be a very popular 2017 pastime, I'm just going to accept this as a character flaw.

I can't tell if this flaw is either magnified or minimized by the fact that the vigil I'll be making fun of tonight is a vigil for chickens who died in a fire in Utah. 

This isn't big enough news for me to confirm on Snopes. I did my due diligence there, and all I found was debunked rumors of rat meat being served as chicken wings. 

No, the AP is a legitimate news organization, so the fact that animal rights groups are standing vigil for 100,000 fried chickens is not the FAKE NEWS it would at first appear to be.

As it so happens, I wrote last week about chicken sashimi and my overall feeling about chicken. I think chickens are absolutely disgusting (but delicious!) when they're dead, and just plain old disgusting when they're alive. 

And at the risk of sounding like a sociopath, I wouldn't feel compelled to "honor the lives" of 100,000 chickens. Am I happy they died a fiery death, clucking and frightened in their likely inhumane conditions? Of course not. Like I said, I'm not a sociopath. I only maybe sound like one.

No. 

I just wouldn't go out of my way to stand vigil in order to honor the life of a chicken. Or 100. Or even 1,000 or even 100,000 chickens. Not unless it was a combination vigil-BBQ, which would be in this instance at once efficient, reverent, and tasty.

Like we could have the vigil and be sad for a second about all there is to be sad about with respect to chickens: 

Our broken food system; our corporate overlords; the terrible conditions under which they've made us keep chickens; the eggs that must be advertised as cage-free, lest we call to mind the squalid coop where this egg was disgorged from a chicken's cloaca and thus be put off our quiche; our very humanity receding into the gaping, insatiable maw of the agro-industrial complex.

All of it. 

We could stand there with furrowed brows and silent, pursed lips and think about all of this with our heads bowed respectfully. 

And then--and really I'm just spit-balling here--we could fetch the 100,000 dead chickens from inside the ruins of their smoldering prison and finish them on a grill, and put them on a sturdy paper plate with BBQ sauce, some potato salad (vinegar-based, no mayo please), and a side of some sort of red cabbage-based Asian slaw.

That sounds reasonable, doesn't it?

The Level of Nope on Chicken Sashimi is Difficult to Quantify

"Chicken sashimi." Now there's two words I never thought I'd say in the same sentence. Unless of course that sentence was "Chicken and sashimi are two words that do not belong in the same sentence."

First let me say that I love chicken, but I'll fully admit that chicken is gross.

The animal itself is filthy, stupid, and eats its own shit. And that's under the best of circumstances--the Whole Foods/PETA best-practices circumstances. Under the worst, it's so full of hormones your kids will go through puberty before dessert arrives.

But chicken fat runs in my veins. It was the bread and butter of my people! Literally. Peasant Russian Jews and all their descendants used to put schmaltz on bread. That's Yiddish for rendered chicken fat whipped up into a Kosher butter substitute.

My great-grandmother, who spoke only Yiddish, bought a live chicken every week at a market in the Bronx where she watched the butcher cut its neck and bleed it out. Then she'd take it home, pluck its feathers, and turn every last bit of it into kreplach, which is a kind of dumpling. 

What peasant culture doesn't have a scary-looking dumpling?

All this to say, I can't escape my love of chicken. I love it in Caesar salads, I love it as Buffalo wings. I love it in General Tso's, I I love it in tacos and fajitas. I'm basically to chicken what Forrest Gump was to shrimp. It's like Green Eggs & Ham, all the ways and places in which I would eat chicken.

But one way in which I would NOT eat chicken is raw.

Raw chicken is like KRYPTONITE to Jewish mothers. If so much as one drop of raw chicken juice falls in a Jewish mother's kitchen, the whole place goes on lockdown like it was the CDC during Ebola.

So I really don't need Food & Wine magazine to tell me whether chicken sashimi is safe or unsafe. A hundred generations of overbearing, kerchief-wearing bubbies would rather handle battery acid than raw chicken, and really that's all I need to know. 

This whole thing sounds like something two macho foodies came up with on a dare and tried to pass of as a trendy fusion delicacy while they secretly laugh at everyone who orders it for $100 a plate.

FOH chicken sashimi.

Today I Say to You Unequivocally that Beets are Fucked Up

Shhhhhhhh . . . Go to sleep. I don't want to hear it. 

Beets are a super food like kale and quinoa; beets are a delicious root vegetable; beets are super trendy; beets make all natural Easter Egg dye; blah blah blah blah. Beets shmeets! (And, while we're at it, radishes schmadishes and turnips shmurnips)!

Now I will freely admit that beets have come a long way since my childhood, when I couldn't so much as look at a beet without gagging. Now I can eat them in small quantities on salad camouflaged amid many other things, just like their equally vile cousins, turnips and radishes, which at least have the benefit of good texture.

Not beets though. 

Beets are what my ancestors ate in the shtetl of Eastern Europe when they were lucky to have two stones to rub together for soup broth. I picture my great grandmother--who spoke only Yiddish, raised karp in a tenement bathtub, and wrung a live chicken's neck with her bare hands only to spend all day grinding it up into filling for kreplach (dumplings)--eating beets like it was her job.

I am sure there is an epigenetic aversion to beets in my DNA somewhere. Like there was so much fucking borscht in my Ashkenazi Jewish lineage, that along with fear of the BRCA-2 breast cancer gene and Tay-Sachs disease, there is a marked beet-o-phobia. (You don't even know what Tay-Sachs is, do you? Well then you're not Jewish and you don't need to eat beets)! 

Beets also play to the natural Jewish tendency toward hypochondria. Like I can't tell you how many times in the past ten years I have eaten beets (because again beets are everywhere) and the next day conclude that I am FULLY dying of colon cancer. 

And for what? Why did I need to have my super chill New Yorker cartoon and Donald Trump Twitter feed sesh interrupted with a rush of adrenaline and a flashing before my eyes of the health insurance hurdles and anxiety to come as I work to determine the source of profuse rectal bleeding?

The answer is I don't. 

I don't need beets, and beets don't need me, and the only thing the world needs less than beets is BEET CHIPS, "naked," or otherwise. 

Beet chips are the surest sign of the apocalypse since Ivanka Trump tried to find the answers to the world's problems in a pair of salt and pepper shakers at the G-20 summit in Hamburg.

Fuck off, beets!

Trump is the Alaska Avocado of Presidents

If you live in Alaska, you already know. Donald Trump is the Alaska avocado of presidents. For those who've never bought, eaten, or tried to buy or eat an avocado in Alaska, let me explain the many parallels.

An avocado is healthy and beneficial--in theory. And so too is a competent, qualified, U.S. president. 

Lincoln, Kennedy, FDR---although the American citizens who were served these statesman on their civic Cobb salads are long gone, history proved these men made fresh leadership guacamole, and the shoppers who chose them chose wisely from a farmer's market in Hawaii.

Not so with Trump. Trump was always a GMO, Alaska avocado from the very bottom of the produce section at Carrs, and deep down, everyone knew it. 

He was never meant to be here. He was out of his element. He was engineered in a controlled environment and transported to a climate that rendered him totally unsuited to the formidable task before him. He didn't belong in guac, or on toast or a smoothie. Sure he was white enough for avocado toast and smoothies, but he was always destined to go straight to rot.

Voters knew this when they chose him. And the plurality of voters knew to leave him right on the nasty ass pile for some other sucker to take home. They picked him up, turned him over, and were instantly repelled. They knew they'd be better off changing their recipe plans to something that didn't call for avocado. But they lost to the people who insisted on eating a tasteless, underripe, and now plain rotten avocado for lunch.

Sadly, unlike the people who are smart enough to walk away from an Alaska avocado, ALL of us are forced to suffer the poisonous consequences of eating the Trump presidency, whether we meant to or not.

And as all of us Alaska avocado eaters know all too well, it's not very tasty.

Again With the Spruce Tips?

That’s the question I silently ask myself whenever I see “spruce tips” on a product or menu in Alaska, and in my head, I ask it in a New York accent, like Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

There’s spruce tip beer, spruce tip jelly, spruce tips in chocolate, spruce tip ice cream, spruce tip pesto, spruce tip tea, spruce tip smoothies, spruce tip soda, spruce tip syrup, spruce tip mayo, candied spruce tips, FUCKING SPRUCE TIPS in EVERYTHING. It’s all very confusing, really. As a fellow New Yorker living in Alaska said to me, we've reached peak spruce tip.

Here’s what you need to understand about my frame of reference for spruce tips: I grew up in New York City in the 80's and 90's. Neither spruce trees (nor their tips) grew there then, and they don’t grow there now.

Moreover, this was when New York City in August smelled like hot garbage. It was long before urban green spaces, rooftop gardens, and artisanal slow food pop-up kale smoothie stands in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Here’s what was in Crown Heights: riots. Here’s what was on a rooftop: rusty nails. The only greens to be found on the rooftop of an apartment building in New York City at that time was a dime bag of desiccated dirt weed procured in a sketchy hand-to-hand transaction in Tompkins Square Park, cut with off-brand dried oregano from Key Food, and blazed up in a tinfoil bowl. 

That was it.

Now you can’t swing a dead sewer rat in the five boroughs without hitting a patch of chives and the aggressively self-righteous hipster who is tending to it with the help of a Kickstarter campaign.

The other question I think of every time I see “spruce tip” on a menu is “c’mon just the tip?” Along with “but I’ll get really sick and my balls will fall off,” and “I know you’re not really a dog, it’s just a style,” "just the tip" was sort of a go-to sexual negotiation tactic employed by desperate and pleading adolescent boys of yore.

Yeah yeah yeah. I know spruce tips are better for you than bad sex, but in the end, it all comes back to this: Trees belong in the ground, not in human food. I don’t need to eat or drink a fucking tree.

BYEEEEEEE!!

I Wish I Could be as Excited About Anything as Ryan Seacrest Pretends to be About Everything

Do you guys listen to Ryan Seacrest? I do. Not on purpose, exactly, but more by default. Okay fine. I'll level with you: I secretly love T-Swiz and Katie Perry and this is one of the few things on which my 9 year-old daughter and I can agree. That and tacos. We both love those, and I think it's because that's all I ate when I was pregnant with Paige.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

Have you heard of the Chicken Chalupa Crunch Wrap (TM) from Taco Bell? If you answered yes to the Ryan Seacrest question, then your answer to this second question is probably "yes" too. You probably have heard of the Chicken Chalupa Crunch Wrap. 

At least I think that's what it's called. I'm too lazy to look it up. I've been doing some heavy parental lifting lately, and took the day off from work today because our house is a faaaaahhhhhckkkin shit hole. I spent a long morning doing laundry and spacing out in Costco, wandering around aimlessly looking for noodles. It ended up taking twice as long as it should have, because I kept getting distracted by a sudden compulsion to buy a three-pack of beach towels and 35 toothbrush heads instead of the shit I came in to buy.

So just go with me here.

Basically this thing--this Chicken Chalupa Crunch Wrap, let's call it--was some sort of limited time special at Taco Bell where the TACO SHELL WAS ACTUALLY MADE OUT OF FRIED CHICKEN. In other words, it was a genetically modified chicken ass-lips-n-feet grease pouch filled with whatever they fill burritos and tacos with at Taco Bell. When I say I love tacos, I don't mean Taco Bell. In desperation I will do Taco Bell, but the idea of a taco shell made OUT OF CHICKEN Is just . . . 

Hell to the No.

And I am pretty sure it's a big negatory for Ryan too, which is why I am so in awe of him. 

One look at this man and you know he lives on kale smoothies and wheat grass cleanses. There is no fucking way Ryan Seacrest has ever--or would ever--eat a Chicken Chalupa Crunch Wrap from Taco Bell. Yet he makes it sound like it's THE BEST THING IN THE WORLD AND HE EATS IT ALL DAY EVERY DAY.

He gets on the radio right after he plays some Lorde and is all like, "Okay you guys. I don't know if you've tried this yet." And we listeners are like, "yes, please go on!" And Ryan is all like, "Get this. It's ONLY available for a limited time at Taco Bell. It's crunchy. It's delicious. It's crispy. It's the CHICKEN CHALUPA CRUNCH WRAP and wait wait. Get this . . . the SHELL IS ACTUALLY MADE OUT OF FRIED CHICKEN."

And suddenly you're like, "I want one." You stop thinking about the fact that it is completely against nature for chicken to be ground up and fashioned into a fried chicken tortilla shape, and the vile conditions in which that chicken lived such that he or she became a pretend tortilla. Like it's not enough that this chicken had to be turned into meat for Taco Bell. It is being forced to suffer the posthumous indignity of playing the part of BREAD.

I wish I could be as excited about literally ANYTHING in my life as Ryan Seacrest is about everything. The only thing that would make me sound, act, or really be as excited as Ryan Seacrest pretends to be about a Chicken Chalupa Crunch Wrap is news that Donald Trump is finally getting impeached (although today's special prosecutor news put a big ass smile on my face).

That's it. 

Apart from the demise of Cult 45, there is literally nothing in the world that makes me even half as excited as Ryan Seacrest seems to be about a Chicken Chalupa Crunch Wrap and everything else he talks about on AT-40.

Amazing.

This Syrup Jug is Keeping it Real

You gotta respect this Hershey's "Syrup Jug" for keeping it real. 

For once, I'm proud to say that neither I nor anyone in my family actually consumed this and digested it. It was just a box from Costco that turned up behind our house, as April in a melting Juneau begins to unearth the cardboard, plastic, and glass detritus buried Robert Frost-style by a long and snowy winter.

What I like most about this Syrup Jug is that it's not jumping on the faux-organic band wagon. It's a giant plastic jug of brown, fake chocolate-flavored(?), mass produced, high-fructose corn syrup, and it's not pretending to be anything else. 

In a time when entire stores in Brooklyn are dedicated to artisanal mayonnaise, it's a harsh self-own to admit that you'll never be more than a "Syrup Jug." And yet here's Hershey's, boldly doing exactly that.

It's not even obvious what kind of "syrup" is it. Chocolate? Strawberry? Petroleum? This could be a gas can, for all we know. For all we know, you could put this in the tank of your '93 Civic and drive it across the country like it ain't no thang. 

All we know--and indeed all we need to know--is that it's a "jug" of "syrup."

If it's one thing I admire, it's a product's (or a person's, for that matter) ability to just own what it is with no reservations. 

You can waste time asking yourself who could possibly want or use a "Syrup Jug"--actually boxes and boxes of MANY "Syrup Jugs"--this size. As far as I'm concerned, that's between the acquisitions team (?) at Costco, the Hershey's corporation, and dying-of-sugar-induced-health-complications-America.

Well played, Hershey's "Syrup Jug." Well played.

Baby Carrot Confessional

You guys, I have a confession. I had no idea that "baby cut" carrots and "baby carrots" were two different things. But they are, and apparently this is a misconception that's sufficiently common to merit a Wikipedia entry. 

It's true.

I didn't realize that the shiny little peeled carrots I buy in a bag in the organic section of Fred Meyer and feed to my kids with the smug satisfaction of a mom watching her kids eat vegetables don't come out of the ground like that. 

I mean, on a subconscious level, I had to realize this was the case. I'm no green thumb, to be SURE, but I've never seen any plant in the shape of a smooth orange cylinder with no skin that really looks more like it tumbled at a high rate of speed through a special machine in a factory to acquire its shape, which of course it did. God knows what happens to the scraps.

And learning about "real" baby carrots didn't make me feel any more sanguine. Who would have the heartlessness to yank an immature carrot in the prime of its life from the ground? For what? A stir fry?! This is some form of carrot abortion and the anti-Planned Parenthood peeps should divert their attention away from mammograms to this. 

Baby carrots are like the vegetable version of lamb or veal (both of which, bee-tee-dubs, I ALSO did not realize were baby cows and sheep, until I fed some at the children's zoo exhibit at the Bronx Zoo in second grade). I'm from NYC. Whaddya gonna do?

Anyway.

I will never look at a baby carrot OR a "baby cut" carrot the same way again, and now I know that the white stuff is a preservative to hide the baby cut carrot's insidious origins, and not just part of the "natural aging process" like I had told myself for so long. 

Then again, it took me until high school to realize Humpty Dumpty was an egg. Prior to sophomore year, I thought he was just an ovoid white ceramic sculpture that sat on a wall and broke.

Please don't tell me he's not an egg after all. It will blow my mind all over again.

5 War and Dessert Pairings

Screenshot: New York Magazine

1. Creme brûlée while nuking North Korea: A rich creme brûlée is delectable while you're dropping atom bombs over Kim Jong Un's head. Right about the time your spoon cracks into the hard candy shell stuff on top, the oppressed citizens of North Korea's secretive dictatorship will be feeling the first effects of the mushroom cloud. What a treat!

2. Lemon meringue pie while conducting surface-to-air missile strikes in Yemen: Light and tangy-sweet, the fluffy peaks of a big slice of lemon meringue pie taste scrumptious while blasting surface-to-air missiles over the Haraz mountains. Unbelievably tasty!

3. Organic vanilla bean ice cream while sending ground troops into Somalia: A sweet, creamy scoop of organic vanilla bean ice cream garnished with a sprig of mint tastes terrific as you give the order to send 500 ground troops marching into Somalia. Right as you spoon the last little bit out of the bottom of the bowl is when you learn the number of civilian casualties in the war-torn country's latest civil war. Yum!

4. Raspberry cheesecake before a raid on an air base in Jordan: There's nothing better than a creamy, sweet hunk of cheesecake with a graham cracker crust gobbled down right after you authorize a surprise midnight raid on a Jordanian airforce base. Positively gorgeous!

5. Flourless Mocha torte while conducting drone strike in Pakistan: You know what goes great with drone strikes in Pakistan? A rich, flourless mocha torte. Add a dollop of whipped cream and a crunchy dark chocolate-covered espresso bean, and you've got the perfect compliment to a shock-and-awe style drone attack on insurgent strongholds along the Pakistani border. Delectable!

Revive Five Alive!

Every 40 years or so, each generation forces the generation before it to suffer through the former's euphoric nostalgia trips of the popular culture of their youths.

When I was a kid, it was 50s doo-wop and the Doors. Now it's Madonna, Pearl Jam, the Beastie Boys, and retro Star Wars toys. That's why I'm doing my generational duty and announcing my campaign to Revive Five Alive, or #RFA. 

World War II might have brought us the Greatest Generation, but WE have Cookie Crisp Cereal, the Smurfs, and Five Alive.

Five Alive was a "citrus beverage" that fell off the U.S. map sometime circa 1987. It was a staple of every 70s and 80s kitchen, right next to the Tab and the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter," the taste of which, by the way, made the fact that it wasn't butter highly credible.

In retrospect, "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" was the dawn of the post-truth, post-fact, fake news era. Everyone could easily believe it wasn't butter, and yet they insisted we couldn't, and everyone pretended we couldn't. It was a mass gaslighting by the partially hydrogenated soybean oil lobby, and now it's too late. We now have the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" President.

But back to Five Alive. 

This shit was tasty! It was like a cross between lemonade, Sunny D, and Fresca. It was blatantly melted-down candy, and the only thing better and more highly prized was grape Kool-Aid and red Hawaiian Punch. Somehow my parents drew the line at Hawaiian Punch and Kool-Aid, but let me drink Five Alive and Juicy Juice, which makes no sense. 

Anyway, as long as we are #MAGA to a golden era when no one was forced to pretend not to be racists, ableists, and misogynists, let's bring back the fruit-flavored drinks while we're at it. 

#RFA