Just chicken-fry everything already

More #PandemicPantryCooking: This is the main thing I made in the kitchen this week: The ultimate chicken-fried steak.

And it truly was.

 

I'm sorry, but maybe it's a Texas thing, and every now and again I need a serving of chicken-fried steak so that I am not completely bummed about by life, politics, work, work, and more work. Honestly, I think Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico may have America's best food. (Is it wrong to select a place to retire based on what you can get to eat?) 

 

OK, California, too, I'll give you that (for fish tacos and every Asian cuisine imaginable), but the other states are more affordable. And under certain circumstances I will give North and South Carolina credit, but you can get grits in Texas and good seafood in Louisiana, so those states can just serve as your occasional culinary sidepiece.

 

Pandemic pantry shortcuts: 

 

I didn't pat dry anything, as the recipe recommended, but probably should have as it might have made the batter and breading stick a little better. Although it did just fine.

I didn't have Tabasco sauce (because Canada) but did have Cholula hot sauce (because Canada?), which added a nice kick and really made the dish. 

 

I did not make my own gravy (although I can), instead using my last packet of San Antonio Pioneer Flour Mills cream gravy mix, which I bought when I visited a while back. (I will accept charity. Just so you know, the mail still works reasonably well between the U.S. and Canada.)

 

I splurged and used some very nice, thin Angus beef steaks, about 1/4- to 1/3-inch thick.

 

Heart healthy? Please see yourself out. But it was damn fine eatin' at Rancho Santo Montag this week, y'all. 

 

And some weeks, that's all that matters.

 

***

 

Image credit (oh, Blogger, why did you change your format?): The mothership for packaged cream gravy - San Antonio's Pioneer Flour Mills. By Leaflet. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported. Source: Wikimedia Commons. 

Death has grown tired of chess

 

Dinner is served with a generous side of anxiety

Gỏi cuốn or summer rolls by Yuchinkay. CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Via Wikimedia Commons.

"You'll have to tell me how this works. I haven't eaten in a restaurant since March." 

 

Neither had I. 

Today Cairo and I went to a favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Hung on Spadina Avenue at St. Andrew Street in Chinatown, for a late lunch/early dinner. Come to think of it, this is the first place we dined together in Toronto when we started dating more than seven years ago this summer.

Since shelter-in-place became the norm here in mid-March, I've done takeout from a Japanese restaurant and a Persian restaurant near where I live, but that, Tim Horton's, and Mary Brown's Fried Chicken, is about as adventurous as I've gotten in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In defense of both of us, patio dining just reopened in Toronto in late June, but indoor dining only started up again in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on July 31.

 

First things first: 

• We had to wear masks, except when eating. Even when I went to the washroom, even when we paid the bill, we wore masks.
• We also had to provide our names and telephone numbers in case contact tracing was needed. (We now also have an app in Ontario to help with this as well.)
• All the silverware (in this case, chopsticks, soup spoons, napkins, etc.) came in individual plastic bags, which we opened ourselves.
• Tables were far apart and some were marked with a bright red 'X' so that no one was seated too close to others.

 But that didn't really matter because we were maybe two out of four or five diners in the restaurant. We were easily outnumbered by the staff and the owners.

 

Heretofore, this has been a very busy Vietnamese resto, in the heart of Toronto's main Chinatown. (There are a couple of others.) Maybe we went at an unpopular time or maybe it was just a nice summer day and everybody was at the beach or the cottage, but overall, Chinatown was more lowkey than you would expect on a Saturday afternoon in August.

 

The food was great, as always, maybe even better in some ways than usual but that could in part be down to the fact that we hadn't eaten there in so long. We even peeked into some shops along Spadina, which seemed to be doing a fairly brisk business, despite the pandemic.

 

But I keep thinking about that restaurants, all the restaurants, and how any of them have survived this lockdown. You really have to wonder how most of them, any of them, have held on for this long.

 

So maybe this will make me get out and about a little more, at least once a week, at least for takeout, to put some money back in the economy, other than a steady stream of Amazon and iTunes purchases. I confess that even as a die-hard introvert, I feel somewhat stir crazy at this point, ready for company, some activity, new sights and sounds, and definitely something other than my own cooking when I can be bothered to cook at all.  I can only imagine how the extroverts among us are doing. 

 

Stage 3 of reopening, where we are currently in the GTA, still feels a little raw, a little chancy, a little brutal even. There seem to be more homeless people on the street, in my own neighborhood and in Chinatown. We're not even close to normal, but perhaps today was one small step toward normalcy. Hopefully so. 

 

And then this evening we watched the news and learned that the province is back up to having more than one hundred new COVID-19 cases reported per day, a number not seen since early summer. Our infection rate is small stuff compared to what's going on in the States and other parts of the world, but that and the fact that the U.S.-Canada border is closed to travel for the foreseeable future are signs that the pandemic isn't done messing with us just yet.

 

I, the profaner

 

I discovered this song earlier today, the whole album in fact, 11 episodios sinfónicos, by the late Gustavo Cerati, a famed Argentine musician, songwriter, and lead singer of rock en español legends, Soda Stereo.

Cerati died too young, just a few years ago, due to ongoing complications from a stroke. This album and concert were recorded in Buenos Aires in the early 2000s when he would seem to have been at a creative peak, at least if this song provides sufficient evidence. (However, the Great Gazoo called and he wants his coat back, Gustavo.) I once had a boyfriend from Mexico who waxed eloquent about Soda Stereo, but I never really got them or got into them, at least back then. But now, I'm sorry I didn't. Maybe hearing this record would have made me appreciate the band. Maybe this record would have prompted me to travel to Argentina much earlier in life than I did, only a mere two years ago.

But I've done so twice now, and I will do so again, espero que sí, once the COVID-19 pandemic ends. I've even toyed with the idea of working remotely from Buenos Aires, which now seems completely possible. I'm not quite convinced my employer would agree, but if this pandemic is really anticipated to last for two years, as recently predicted, then what the hell? Why not? I loathe this job, and if you've been reading so far, you know Canada and I have a marriage of convenience--or inconvenience, given its unsatisfying retail scene and its small screen view of everything. Back home, the U.S. seems crazier and deadlier than usual. So if Argentina would let me in, if I had access to good healthcare, if I had access to a strong, reliable internet connection, would it matter if I did my job from a place I would much rather be, improving my Spanish, a lifelong goal, and exploring spectacular landscapes, steak dinners, and Malbecs along the way?

De veras, after all this meshugas, it's hard to imagine going back to the office, let alone to whatever was passing for normal at the beginning of 2020. If I can work from home for six months in Toronto, I could do the same in Buenos Aires, or Salta, or Jujuy, or Mendoza, or Puerto Madryn, or Trelew, or Córdoba, or Ushuaia, or Rosario, or San Antonio de los Cobres ... well, maybe not San Antonio de los Cobres, a unique and beautiful place but one where the altitude is high, the air is thin, and the roasted llama is a little too free-flowing for a sensitive stomach like mine. (And yet I ate it, loved it, and would go back for more if given the opportunity.) 

But, otherwise, hell yeah, I could do this and still hit up the llama blue plate special in San Antonio every few months or so. So buen apetito and buen viaje, bitches! I'm outta here first chance and a ticket on Aerolíneas Argentinas I get.

Pandemic dreamin' on such a summer's day

Dream #1

Short version: I invited some people to stay at my place during lockdown, and they brought along a heretofore unknown chimpanzee.

Hilarity did not ensue.

In fact, I found myself saying stuff like,

"Of course I adore your monkey and I want him to be comfortable here but I just don't feel this is the best environment for him"

and ...

"No, I am not being uptight about this; it's just that I need to get some work done, and that's difficult to do with Bonzo swinging around the apartment all the time"

and ...

"I'm sorry, I assumed his name was Bonzo. No offense intended."

Dream #2

More Toronto freeway dreams. There has been more than one, but I can't recall the others at the moment. This time I was trying to dodge road crews, potholes, and bicycles (!) on the Gardiner Expressway.

In this dream, I had to periodically pull to the side of the roadway at some sort of weigh station or sentry booth. Then I had tell someone (the freeway gods?) a joke or funny story. Each time I tried to do so, however, someone just before me had told the same joke or had told a better joke, so I had to keep moving on. Author's note: I blame hashtag games of Twitter.

The big existential crisis of the dream was when I decided to stay on the Gardiner to get to my destination, somewhere northwest of the city, instead of taking a crosstown route to the 401 MacDonald-Cartier Freeway.

Author's note: Sadly, there is no crosstown route like this in Toronto. Quiet Flows the Don Valley Parkway does not count.

I don't know why, other than it being "the road not taken," but this decision caused me a great deal of anxiety. So much so that the anxiety woke me up.

Oh, and somewhere in the midst of this, I had to drive in reverse for several miles so that I could look through the contents of hundreds of Amazon boxes that had been spilled in the roadway.

At this point in the pandemic, my dreams are little more than thinly veiled yearnings for purpose, attention, guidance, road trips, and shopping.

Dream #3

Author's note: The US-Canada border has been closed to non-essential travel since late March; this is expected to continue until at least late August. Oddly, you can still fly to the US from Toronto's Pearson International Airport. (The commuter airport, Billy Bishop/Toronto Islands, appears to be completely shut down, save for the occasional traffic or weather helicopter.) But upon return from your travels, you are supposed to self-quarantine for 14 days until you're sure you're not sick with the 'rona.

I'm in the waiting area of a small commuter airport flying to a work-related conference in the USA. I'm really looking forward to the trip.

I'm carrying with me a small suitcase and my Mac desktop computer (27" monitor) under one arm (as one does, surely). No case for the Mac, just tucked under my arm and dragging it along to use while I'm at the conference. I suddenly realize I've brought it to the airport but forgotten the power cord, the speakers, the keyboard, the mouse, etc. However, I figure I'll sort it out and buy those when I get to my destination.

Suddenly my Mom and sister join me. They're going with me to the conference where we're going to meet my brother and his wife. We go to board at Gate 2, but the numbers are not sequential, 5, 7, 3, 1, 4, 6, 2, so it takes us a while to find the gate.

Instead of using a "jet bridge" to access the plane, we have to take a tram, which will carry us to the plane at midfield. Suddenly, one of my work colleagues shows up for the flight as well.

"I didn't know you were coming to this conference!"

"Yes, I am, but I don't have a place to stay."

Suddenly, I realize that my Mom and sister don't have hotel rooms either. "We'll figure it out when we get there," I say.

Finally, we are on the tram, and I open my suitcase, which is more like a briefcase or satchel. I look at my Mom in a panic. "I've forgotten my passport! I don't have my permanent residence card! I can't get on this flight. I can't get into the US without my passport and can't get back into Canada without my permanent residence card."

I stopped short of standing up, the shot panning out, and yelling, "I'm a man without a country!" but, give that the border is closed and there's no end in sight to all this meshugas, that is the subtext in my thinking these days.

I realized I would not "figure this out later," but I woke up before I had to take any action, such as bolting from the tram or, upon arrival in the US, proclaiming my ignorance when I got to Customs and Immigration. Surely I, an American citizen, does not need a passport to enter my own country when a Canadian driver's license should suffice as ID, I would say in my best Karen/Kyle imitation.

I'm an anxious traveler at the best of times--fine once on the plane, fine when I get to my destination, but getting ready to leave for the airport or leave the airport for the hotel, or home-train-hotel, or home-bus-hotel, or home-car-hotel, or everything in reverse, presents me with a host of unknowns that, frankly, puts me on the edge of a psychic abyss.

So forget two weeks of quarantine: The first trip anywhere after this pandemic is going to require my immediate hospitalization upon arrival for nervous exhaustion.

Smiles of a Bummer Night

Easy for you to smirk, you didn't spend your evening dragging
dead weight out of a movie theater. Persconferentie van de Zweedse
filmregiseur Ingmar Bergman in het Amstel Hotel te
Amsterdam. 10 oktober 1966, by Joost Evers/Anefo.
Courtesy of Nationaal Archief via Wikimedia Commons.
CC BY-SA 3.0.

Now reading: "(Swedish Angst) An Ingmar Bergman Movie for Every Quarantine Mood" by Rachel Handler, Vulture.com, 15 July 2020.

 

Despite the author's claims, personally, I'm not sure I'd recommend you watch these films under the current circumstances. Nonetheless, it's an interesting read, and I do rather like Persona, Wild Strawberries, and Fanny & Alexander. I'd like to watch The Silence again (at least I think I've seen it before) and a version of Smiles of a Summer Night in which all the saucy dialog hasn't been neglected by the subtitles. 

 

And I will always remember Cries & Whispers ... but for all the wrong reasons.

 

Once upon a time, when I used to live in Washington, D.C., I would volunteer at the Smithsonian Institution's many cultural events, especially film series. Back in the day, it was one way to see some interesting arthouse movies. This was early days when VCRs and home viewing were still fairly new. This was also early days when I had zero dollars in my bank account, so every little freebie helped, no matter how constraining.

 

So I volunteered at an Ingmar Bergman film festival where I got to watch (most of) various films--The Silence (again, at least I think), Smiles of a Summer Night (saucy dialog-less), Persona, Fanny & Alexander, and, most famously, Cries & Whispers.

 

It's not an easy watch--but then again, I really wouldn't know for sure. Why? Well, I actually never got to view the entire movie. You see, there is a scene (which I will refrain from describing in all its gory details and thereby end up "spoiling the surprise" for you) that caused not one, not two, but *three* people to faint mid-movie. 

 

As a result, I spent most of the time in the theater lobby contacting security, who called the paramedics, who brought firefighters to the theater along with them, one of whom kept opening the movie theater door and saying things like, "Why in the hell is this movie making all these people faint!?"

 

So, really, I wouldn't recommend this particular Bergman movie at this time or any time. In retrospect, the scene in question just seems gratuitously disgusting, but, hey, it's Bergman. Oh that touch of Sweden with an ice pick in your chest and all that. 

 

Besides, why view a movie that I doubt would now seem as perverse as it was that evening some 35 years ago? You don't need fiction. You don't need celluloid. The reality of watching the American president talk about dishwashers when the COVID-19 death count is 138,000 and rising is perverse enough for a lifetime.

The Barefoot and Pregnant Contessa

Definitely not mine: Steak with shitaki mushrooms by Jon Sullivan.
Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Has anyone started a let's-see-what's-in-the-pantry-and-the-freezer pandemic home cooking show? A program for those of us who are too wary or too lazy to hoof it down to the grocery store but instead want to use up what we've already purchased or can easily find at the corner store mere steps from our front door?

 

If not, I may be your guy.

 

Tonight, I made chicken meat loaf. (Ground chicken is fairly easy to find here in Canada.) No marjoram? No problem! I'll just use up this old bottle of herbs de Provence that's been hanging around since Moses was pulled out of the bullrushes. Seasoned bread crumbs? Well, how about if I just use some slices of this stale sourdough bread I bought at the corner store last week? Ketchup? Do I have enough? Do I have too much? Just use the whole damn bottle! It's friends with Moses and will feel lonely if left behind.

 

Steak night! Because I just discovered this ancient frozen steak in the freezer! And look! I managed to buy a bottle of chimichurri sauce at some point. Let's try that as a marinade to cover up the frozen steak's sad, sorry life. ¡Che! You've now got un poquito de la Argentina en su plato.

 

Eggs? Salsa? Dinner! Or maybe breakfast or lunch! Heat the salsa, red or green, in a skillet and sort of poach three or four eggs in the salsa. Just add some leftover tortillas and a can of refried beans. You, my friend, are now the Barefoot-and-Pregnant Contessa!

 

And always remember: What doesn't kill you can probably be reheated for tomorrow's lunch. Or dinner. Or the following day's breakfast.

 

Bon appetit!

Springtime for shut-ins

Me, strolling the streets of Toronto in a new shirt after 2+ months of lockdown, now with a full beard and some extra "avoirdupois."

Except I wore a mask and gloves.

The hills are alive with the sound of Americans gasping for air

Because I hope he gets COVID-19 of course.

Pandemic Playlist #6: So Far Away

Another twofer in its own way--Carole King on piano and voice with James Taylor on guitar, "So Far Away."

Pandemic Playlist #5: Keep your distance

It's a twofer - the original Richard Thompson version is below (and much moodier); the Patty Loveless version is above and, oddly, slightly chipper in its own way. Sorry not sorry, I am required by my heritage to give a shout-out to the Kentucky native.

Pandemic Playlist #4: Message in a Bottle

Less obvious, so I'll definitely allow it.

"Message in a Bottle" was the song that made me fall in love (briefly) with The Police. They weren't quite mainstream in the US just yet, still somewhat of a hidden gem, at least at my university way back in 1979.

And then a year or so later, they released "Don't Stand So Close to Me," and everybody knew who they were. And then after that, they released "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da," and everybody seemed to take that as a legit piece of music. And and that point, I knew they were dead to me.

Pandemic Playlist #3: Don't Stand So Close to Me

A bit obvious, but I'll allow it.

Pandemic Playlist #2: Don't Touch Me

"Don't Touch Me," a classic country hit by Titusville, Pennsylvania's own Jeannie Seely.

The straitjacket and the highway

A person wearing a posey straitjacket from the rear with a chain
attached around the body and attaching to the feet by Mark NL.
Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

I am usually fairly jokey in this blog and in social media. Not always, of course. And not because I am shallow (well, not entirely, although I have my kiddie pool moments). And also not because I don't care about the Serious Things in Life.

Quite the opposite, in fact. But leaning into humor helps me keep the negative thoughts at a distance, at least for a while. Hopefully it does the same for you, although I am sure at times I am quite annoying. (Sometimes I annoy myself, oddly enough.)

I think for the most part I've managed the 7-1/2 weeks of stay-at-home existence fairly well. Nonetheless, of late, themes of constraint and liberation keep creeping into my dreams. 

For example, a couple of mornings ago, I dreamed that I was in a straitjacket, desperately trying to wriggle my way out. In the same dream, I also thought I was being held in place by two people and was flailing to escape their clutches. I woke up tangled in my bed sheets, so that may explain the scenarios to some degree.

Conversely, earlier this morning, I dreamed that Cairo and I were driving around somewhere outside of Toronto, with no aim in particular. We just wanted to escape the confines of home, enjoy the spring air, and get away from everything for a little while. We came to a portion of the road and were presented with two choices: Option 1, take an older two-lane road or Option 2, take a new, modern, multi-laned highway with lots of bridges and overpasses.

Cairo was driving and decided to take the new highway. We soon realized, however, that the new road was literally under construction as we kept encountering work crews who were incredulous that we were driving on the new road. They started chasing after us, on foot and in trucks, and then the police started chasing after us as well.

I started to get panicky, feeling that we should stop and explain ourselves to the authorities. (I can be such a color-within-the-lines little puke at times.) That or we should find an exit as soon as possible. But Cairo remained calm and kept driving. And this explains our personalities to some degree and likely why after seven years of relationship we work together so well.

Every time we crested a bridge or a hill, I expected we would be faced with a very sudden end of the road: Construction barrels that we would have to crash into to stop or barriers that we would have to smash through only to be hurled over a ledge and into oblivion.

But I woke up before that happened. Instead, we just kept going with no end of the road in sight.

Which is in some ways a good thing--we will survive! But simultaneously a bad thing because we don't know yet where, when, or how this pandemic lockdown will end. And that is mind-boggling, frightening, and even somewhat liberating all at the same time.

Our regularly scheduled comedy programming will resume momentarily. You're welcome.

Pandemic Playlist #1: Ain't Nothin' Goin' on but the Rent

Thank you, Miss Gwen Guthrie, for this ever-appropriate pop classic.