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Steak 'n' Shake

Flow My Tears, The 12-Ounce Can Said

I know it’s generally a lame joke pertinent to pregnant women, but everyone now and then gets food cravings. The thing is, many of mine are recurrent; worse, some of them are totally perverse and shameful. This is fine for kids; kids are supposed to act in perverse ways (though not shameful–that’s for the parents). For a while when I was about three, for instance, I craved nothing more than raw butter. My parents would find me in the kitchen gnawing happily on a stick of butter, and then of course they would hurl me into the dark basement as punishment, which was fantastic for me, because that’s where they stored the potatoes, my other weird, awful craving: raw potatoes. I’m not kidding (except about the basement-punishment, of course); I loved me some raw potatoes. Fortunately, none of these had any lasting power, of course, and I grew out of them in due course. Also fortunately, I also grew out of most of my unfortunate dietary obsessions, such as, for example, my preteen penchant for peanut butter and marshmallow cream sandwiches. (For years I ate these noxious things, until one day I hit upon the brilliant idea of peanut butter and chocolate chip sandwiches. Further proof that children are horrible, freakish little goblins who should be bound in shrink-wrap and kept immobile until the age of eighteen.)

There is one thing I didn’t quite grow out of, at least not totally; almost but not quite, and it fills me with horror to even confess this, but: Spaghetti-Os. I don’t know what to say about this, except that there is evidently some tiny, unkillable node somewhere in my brain that every now and then raises itself from its torpor and barfs up some synaptic whatsis that generates a bunch of electrochemical holy-fuck all over the goddamn place until finally my brain gets it and throws up its cerebrospinal hands and yells, “Jesus, fuck and Liberace, we have to buy Spaghetti-Os again.” I don’t know why, and it’s horrible. Maybe some reptilian olfactory voodoo that’s sitting in my cortex gets all sentimental over this shit, but it drives me crazy; every now and then (maybe every year or two), I get this violent, deep urge to eat some Spaghetti-Os, and I battle with it, knowing that I’m doomed, I’m going to cave in, but maybe this time . . .

No, fuck it, of course I’m not going to win, and I have to go buy Spaghetti-Os. I do this even knowing what a cruel, vicious letdown the experience is going to be in the end; it doesn’t matter. It’s nearly publishable fucking proof of determinism, quite a feat in today’s world of quantum sleight of hand, but there you go: Spaghetti-Os are particles more fundamental than quarks. Fuck you, Murray Gell-Mann.

So inevitably I find myself, a grown man, trudging desolately to the supermarket to buy my stinking can of Spaghetti-Os. You have no idea how embarrassing this is for me, and I don’t make it any easier on myself either, because I’m so psychically shattered by the whole debacle, I don’t even possess the wherewithal to conceal or even mitigate my terrible purchase. I could hide the can inobtrusively amongst a bunch of other groceries, or perhaps kidnap an errant child off the street and force him at knifepoint to pretend to be my offspring, and isn’t it cute how the little scamp loves his Spaghetti-Os? (Smile for the nice checkout lady, or it’s curtains for you and Mr. Boo-Bear.) No, not me: dazed with sad horror over my state and filled with foreboding at my upcoming culinary Waterloo, I generally just shuffle over to the ghoulishly merry wall o’ canned goods, select one solitary can of Spaghetti-Os (with Meatballs! It’s IMPORTANT!), and wander unsteadily to the checkout line and plunk my sad, lonely freight down onto the conveyor belt. What a picture: a beaten, flutter-eyed guy, obviously single and given to gloomy bouts of cheerless masturbation, purchasing his one measly can of Spaghetti-Os, probably bought with the last couple bucks left from his long day of giving plasma down at the blood bank. At least, that’s how I feel. Then I scuttle home with my awful booty, and the real fun begins.

Of course, it’s all free-fall from here on out. I break out the can opener and skreek off the top of the can, and that smell fills the room; I am instantly at war with myself. My kidhood nostalgia (what a great smell!) wages a pitched battle with my adult rational mind (what an unholy reek! please don’t eat anything that smells like that!), but events that have been set in motion are now unstoppable, no matter their violence to reason and judgment. I dump the radioactive wobbly cylinder of jack-o-lantern colored sludge into a pan, where it slumps morosely. A mushy orb of near-meat detaches itself from the mass and makes a break for it, only to bump sadly up against the side of the pan, where it stares up at me helplessly, beaten and afraid. “I’m sorry too,” I whisper, and turn the heat up. Presently, the mass has settled into a dire puddle of sauce and broken pasta rings and meat-lumps, and it bubbles wanly.

I dump it into a bowl and eat it. That’s all, I just eat it, like an automaton, blank-eyed and efficient. It tastes, I hardly have to point out, like it came from some joyless, gray kitchen manned by Strindbergian vampire chefs who evilly suck all the nutrients and decent flavor out of their dishes and then serve them to their doomed, emaciated guests. It’s over. I feel vague relief, coupled with a sense of disappointment that yet again, I’ve lost another battle. The eerie taste-not-a-taste coats my mouth, and will for days. But the important thing is, it’s over.

For now. Reset the clock.

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Steak 'n' Shake

I Throw A Bunch of Crap in a Pot and Consequently Suffer Mental Imbalances

I made a pot roast last night, and boy was it edible! It was consumable from front to back. It had an adequate crust and a passable texture, because, if I may say so, I cooked it competently, and if anyone tells you different, you stab them right in the groin and scream, “I’m no fool, motherfucker! Skot has competence coming right out of his ass!” Then, you know, plea bargain, I guess, because hey, you stabbed someone, dummy. Man, what’s wrong with you?

Anyway, the pot roast was fine, but as usual, I overcooked the fucking thing. I have some odd culinary blind spot that relates only to pot roasts; I’m thinking of seeing a specialist. Perhaps Dr. Phil. “Dr. Phil,” I’ll say, “I always overcook my fucking pot roasts. What the hell?” And he’ll bare his great blockish teeth at me, and the studio lights will glint icily off his pate, and he’ll give me some warmed-over bootstrapping bowl of bullshit about self-empowerment and relate a humorous, folksy anecdote involving a small-town car mechanic and a rooster, and the audience will roar at the dumb boob who can’t muster up the fucking gumption to lay off the heat on his damn pot roasts, for God’s sake. And I’ll just be sitting there going, “Rooster? Who is this pervert?” But no, they’ll cut to commercial, and the director will crabscuttle over to me and plead with me not to say “fucking” so much on national television.

So that’s no help.

Well, the next step is obvious. I need Peggy Noonan. Why didn’t I think of this before? So, yeah! I’ll stroll up to her on the street, where she’s out stuffing beggars into Hefty bags, and I’ll breezily say, “So, Peggy, I cooked the fucking shit out of another pot roast last night. It looked like a goddamn meteorite. Christ!” I’ll kind of shriek that last bit, so she knows I’m serious about this. She’ll fix me with a wise, sad look, and let the mumbling Hefty bag slither to the ground. “When we cook, we nourish. You nourish yourself, and so you nourish society; you float up and out into the neighborhood in this way; a mournful waltz heard through rippling muslin. Take up your pot roast, and in so doing, you take up society’s pot roast. Skot, take up all of our pot roasts, take them up and sing.” She’ll lay a gentle hand on my shoulder, and say farewell. “I must go,” she’ll coo, “there are so many beggars.” I’ll stand there, touched and mesmerized.

“Tomorrow,” I’ll whisper, tears of confusion sparkling on my cheeks, “I’m cooking chicken.”

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Steak 'n' Shake

I Wish You Could Experience My Exotic Meat

Tonight the fiancee (<–uh huh) and I are going to friends’ to sample some “exotic meat”–that is, something that isn’t beef, pork or chicken, basically. Our friends live near a store that somehow sells this stuff. So we’re going to end up tucking into some damn punchline-meat, whether it be Emu, Elk or . . . I don’t know. Emily Watson? Anything’s possible.

Now of course I know that meat is basically meat, so why discriminate? But I do. I have a powerful urge, for example, to flee any room purporting to be serving turtle meat, and I can’t say that I’ve got any kind of serious jones for rattlesnake, either. I know it’s silly, but there you are.

(A brief aside to vegetarians, vegans, and PETA members: I really do respect your point of view. I just don’t share it. Don’t piss in my ear about it, okay? Thanks.)

And then there’s stuff on there that I don’t really think of as exotic at all. Lamb? Please. Rabbit? Eh . . . maybe. Venison? Well, I grew up in Idaho eating this stuff. Hey, kangaroo! That’s pretty exotic. Some people might feel queasy about eating these cute little hoppers, but they just haven’t seen the trailers for Kangaroo Jack yet. I predict a big run on this soon.

You know, that’s how they could really market this stuff. Celebrity tie-ins!

Dennis Franz’ American Buffalo: Cook and Eat This Fucking Meat, You Fuck!

Jerry Bruckheimer’s Kangaroo Jack: Buy Some Meat And Receive 1 Free “Get Out of Theater” Pass

Kevin Spacey’s Albino Alligator: It Bites!

Danny Bonaduce’s Partridge Family: Please, Please Just Buy Some

I think this could work.

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Steak 'n' Shake

There is an Eldritch Presence in My Refrigerator

My fiancee (if I were cooler than shit, I’d [a] know which e to put the accent on and [b] know how to put the accent on whichever e, but I don’t, and I don’t, and fuck it anyway) and I received a box o’ Christmas swag today via UPS, who courteously only ran it over twice with their van rather than the customary nine or ten times. I guess the holidays have them rushing. Amongst the wrapped gifts was a nice holiday basket full of luxurious, yummy shit that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere outside of holiday baskets.

You know what I’m talking about: Vaclav Havel’s Pepper-Smoked Aged Hard Salami! Snooty-Ass Farms’ Crumblier-Than-Thou Cheese! Umlaut Brand Honey-Dill Mustard! You don’t find this stuff at the AM/PM. In fact, you don’t usually find them in this dimension. It’s only the time period between Thanksgiving and Christmas that the pan-spatial rift opens between our normal spacetime and the mysterious, inaccessible otherworld known as “Vermont.”

Here there be Boutickue Farmes.

Anyway, it looks like good, uppity stuff; stuff that you’ll enjoy the hell out of right until you’re exactly 3/4 done with it, and then for ill-explained reasons, you’ll shove it into the back of the fridge to grow furry along with the poorly-thought-out batch of homemade barbecue sauce. Go ahead, take a look: you’ve got some cornichons back there from last year. See? There they are. You like cornichons, but there they are, looking wan and neglected. Pity the cornichons, sure, we all do, but you just can’t eat them, can you? Nobody knows why.

But in this year’s basket was something new. It’s so strange I don’t even know where to begin. I feel like a physicist who has discovered a brand new particle, except in his case, nobody is going to want to taste his particle or dip something into a jar of his particles. This stuff is . . . it’s a . . . it’s . . . oh, well, it’s from Vermont.

The label says, menacingly enough, “Sweet Heat Pretzel Dip.” First of all, this sounds like the header to an infrequently visited porn page. And second, pretzel dip? Nobody dips pretzels, and I’m certain of this, because I just said so. Nobody dips pretzels.

But moving on to the ingredients, the terrible mystery deepens. I like to read these ingredients out loud, as if from some Culinary Necronomicon, and pretend I am summoning Elder Kitchen Gods: RED RASPBERRY VINEGAR! SUGAR! MUSTARD FLOUR! (what? no time! keep reading!) CLOVER HONEY! MUSTARD SEEDS! SALT! APRICOTS! AND GINGER!

This is what I’m supposed to dip pretzels in? Why? Why would I do this? What possible aberrance of nature or character could impel me into such inexplicable behavior? Nothing makes sense any more; the world spins crazily on a tilted axis, and all I can do is totter along as best I can, clutching a bag of unsullied pretzels to my chest. It is my charge, and I must keep it safe. I must keep myself safe. I must keep us all safe.

And in moments of clarity, I can still see the jar. It sits on the counter, unopened, inviolate, an entity horrible in its Vermont-y perfection. This jar . . . this jar has a Cthonic power that cannot be released, and even yet, cannot be denied, it can only be . . . stilled. In. That. Jar.

I will do what I can. I know my task. I will take you up, Sweet Heat Pretzel Dip. I will take you up and place you in the back of the fridge.

Rest. Rest may we all.