Milkshakes!

Drinking milkshakes is a painful experience. This creamy concoction is wishfully served with a straw and yet, you’d have better luck baking a cake with a space heater. Anticipating your utter failure, the waiter will always bring you a spoon. And yet, I can never resist attempting to drink a shake the intended way: through a narrow, plastic tube. To actually succeed at this ordeal requires the resolve and endurance of a greasy politician contesting the presidential seat.

           

Now, once I’ve given up on these foolish pipe dreams, I pick up that spoon and scoop into the cold silk. While the worst milkshake amounts to nothing more than watered down ice cream and that pickled maraschino cherry slopped on top often holds less life than a cat floating in formaldehyde, the perfect shake is synecdoche for the perfect summer night spent taming the day’s sun burns with jokes among friends. It’s watching the freckles beginning to peel off a new love’s tender, maroon shoulders as your spoons clank together within the blooming glass cup that holds a sweetness between you. We trade smiles and spoon-fulls across the table, recounting tales of sun-basked triumphs. A milkshake is youth held frozen within velvety crystals. And the comfort it brings, the fragrant memories it conjures, is worth all the brain freezes. 

Comradery

            I did a terrible thing the other night. I threw all caution to the wind—well, to the hurricane—and resigned any notions of health, restraint, or decency that I may have once held. And, believe it or not, I learned something through the experience: Life is about rebellion. It’s about standing up and doing what’s wrong because it feels oh so right.

It’s about cheddar turkey sausages and peanut butter. No, not side by side, carefully kept segregated on a plate. Together. This is a food affair. This is a sultry desecration of the holy sanctity of food rite. And it was amazing.

I started off by throwing two Johnsonville cheddar turkey sausages onto the Foreman until those wieners wore black cloaks of charcoal. We’re talking seconds away from being ash, people. Carcinogens? What about them? I sliced those two magnificent meat scepters into wheels, seeping processed yellow cream like treacly sap from a sugar maple. A glob of honey peanut butter garnished my plate. Reluctant, I scooped the thick paste up with my first sausage wheel and brought the blasphemous concoction to my lips. The first bite flooded me with a single idea: companionship. These foods were meant to be together.  The salty-sweet butter enveloped that spicy morsel like a goose, keeping her egg warm. My chewing folded the cheese and meat into the peanut dough, bringing two lost friends closer than they’d ever been.

The contrast nourished some feeling of comradery, a vague remembrance of a time when heavily spiced and salted foods sustained the mob, when eating was a commodity and stuffing meat into your gullet rang through your body more vibrantly than the church bells ever could. In this place, I’m one amongst so many. I mean nothing alone. It’s the men and women sitting beside me that give me breadth.

I once cried, a tipsy slob, at the edge of my brother’s bed. The watches claimed 2:00 a.m. A girl I’d loved had just screamed words that once meant damnation into my ears. He held my hand as I writhed in my lonesome pity, dwelling on a night three years before when I had spent the dark away with her sitting at the edge of a river, watching the moonlight flow in place. My brother, normally stoic and unamused, cried with me.  

The Salt of Odin

My roommate and I live by a very simple food mantra: onion salt makes everything better. Everything. It’s magical flavor fairy dust, bringing salty bliss to every dish. And, as a college student, it’s a great way to spice up any cheap, poorly executed meal. Toss some on your popcorn, sprinkle it on a salad, pummel any bland plate in a hailstorm of onion salt. It will improve your life.

Stop what you’re doing. Forget all other plans you've set out for the day. They’re meaningless now. Go to your closest grocery provider, stumble impatiently into the spice isle, and pick up a shaker of onion salt. Throw the indicated amount of money at the cashier and sprint the hell out of there. Pat yourself on the back. You've done well. Take a minute to soak in the moment. From this point on, your life will be radically better, more significant. Now get back home and begin infusing yourself with the salt of Odin. You will continue this process until your muscles become jerky. Don’t settle for less.

Incorporating onion salt into your life is actually very easy. Just follow three simple steps. 1) Locate onion salt in the myriad of unorganized cabinets in your college apartment. If you’re like me, this is the most difficult step. 2) Fiercely slam the shaker against your counter top  Smash the sucker with all you've got. Don’t hold back. Onion salt has a pesky habit of aggregating into an unusable hunk. This tends to be infuriating. Step two reestablishes the salt’s powdery consistency and relieves the anger caused by this annoying penchant. 3) Open the shaker, invert, and salt your sustenance to taste.

 Several simple recipes can benefit from the addition of a little onion salt. It goes great on fried eggs or on sliced tomatoes with a little bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  One of my favorite recipes is cheese-less cheesy bread. Simply drizzle a little olive oil on some ciabatta bread and top it off with onion salt. The combo results in a distinctly cheesy flavor with much less saturated fat and cholesterol. Olive oil and onion salt also goes great on run-of-the-mill toast and provides a healthy alternative for butter or margarine. If you’re in the mood for a simple Mexican dish, grate Chihuahua melting cheese onto a yellow corn tortilla, fold, and pan fry in your favorite oil until the shell is crispy and golden-brown.  Top it off with onion salt and a little chili powder. Now feast on the perfect quesadilla.

You can use onion salt in place of table salt whenever possible. Get creative! Forget the irreparable damage to your arteries brought about by the dangerous spike in blood pressure that will occur if you actually take my advice. Live by the onion salt and you will achieve gustatory nirvana. 

Pairs Well: The Smiths and Chicken Salad

A few nights ago, I discovered The Smiths. Home from the bars, I stumbled into my fridge for a late night snack. My cravings fell upon a tub of store bought chicken salad. I set the mood with the multicolored Christmas lights strung around our living room and burrowed under my favorite fleece blanket on the couch. Not bothering with pesky dishes, which require washing, I dug my fork right into the store container.

Soon after, my roommate, Jared, joined the late-night pig out. He thumbed through his iPod, searching through his 20,000+ tracks for that one song that belonged to the moment. Suddenly, the room was filled with a sweet, melancholic melody. Morrissey’s voice danced with the dark romance of a cool night on the beach. I remember my summer, feet blanketed in the almost fridge Cancun sand, watching over the black desert of water, stained only by waves rippling through the moon’s light.  My brother and I stand quietly, contemplating the foreboding grandeur in front of us. Chills run down my neck. I look over at my brother. The moon shines just enough light on him for me to spot the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, catching the salty Ocean breeze.

           

“Oh my God, what is this?” I ask.

            “‘There is a Light that Never Goes Out,’” He responded.

As we let the music conduct our wondering minds, bursts of celery lashed their bitter juices over my tongue, complementing the sweet, fatty mayo (Celery is my favorite thing about chicken salad.) They send comforting waves across my thoughts, a reminder of my nights on the beach, where the water on my feet provided relief from the day’s lingering heat. Together, the chicken salad and the Smiths played out a sensual symphony. It was one of those rare moments in which you connect very intimately with art through a combination of mediums. Taste and sound meshed with the time of night and for four minutes and five seconds, we felt transcendent.

The Condiment Wars

“Skippy’s or Jif?”

“Jif,” I respond.

“Really? Everyone I knew growing up was all about Skippy’s.” Dana watches me spread Skippy’s and honey onto two slices of multigrain bread.

“And which one is more uppity?” I ask, my fingers now sticky with the butterscotch colored spread.

“Oh, Jif for sure,” Dana asserted.  For some reason, condiments bring up a particularly strong sense of brand loyalty in us. We swear by Heinz or Hutz. The Helman’s connoisseur cringes at the site of Kraft mayo in a friend’s fridge. Oh, but it doesn't stop there. We have stereotypes for those on the opposing team. Condiments have divided the nation, my friends. Forget political parties, in the United States, sure you may play for the red team or the blue team but there’s also French’s and Grey Poupon. We’re a nation drowning in brand name sauce. Who’s side do you play for? What’s your topping of choice?