Nice to Meat You

Vogue Meatball Sandwich:

Last night I was coming home doing around 70 on the 134 from Pasadena. A beautiful LA night, warm and breezy. To my left the Los Angeles skyline looking like an alien capital city, both a million miles away and impossibly close at the same time. To my right, a to-go box from the In-N-Out on Foothill Blvd, carrying my double-double with cheese and 400 fries. I had thought ahead while waiting to turn at the freeway on-ramp, and emptied every ketchup packet in an even layer over the fries, knowing I would be flying blind for the next 19 miles.

I rolled my window down about 30%, which is my desired amount for the 134 at night. Three great songs in a row came on, and I had a mini road trip love affair with my double-double, and 400 fries. I am one of 9 responsible drivers here in LA, which means I kept my eyes on the road, and kept my hand making the round trip from fries to mouth repeatedly over the course of the journey. Anyone passing me would have glanced over to see a wild-haired cruise controller, singing along manically, stopping only to take competitive eating style bites of In-N-Out, clearly fleeing a crime scene. But with a great soundtrack.

When I got home I had ketchup on my neck and pants, and a smile on my face. And while I wouldn’t have changed a thing, I was grateful for the economy sized bottle of Tums I knew was waiting for me in my bathroom cabinet.

For the record, I did not purchase Tums for my stomach, as I have heard people do. I am fortunate to pretty much never have stomach problems. I could digest a Tikki Hut. I bought them because I recently discovered how tasty Assorted Fruit Tums are, and sprung for an economy-sized bottle to round out my snack collection.

I actually should keep them in the kitchen, not the bathroom.

If there is a point to the In-N-Out neck ketchup story, it is this: I can’t help it. I simply adore meat. Meat ON BREAD is an unthinkably good combination, but Tartar or CharredCharred, I can’t get enough. I love vegetables! I love fruit! I love bread! The whole wheat kind, AND the stuff that tastes good! I love dessert!

But I swoon for meat.

Angelina Jolie once claimed the she would rendez-vous with a rotation of men in swanky hotel suites on a regular basis. Well, I have a collection of animal protein dishes scattered about the country that I have corresponded with from time to time.

There was a pork chop at Sepia in Chicago that I would have given it all up to run away with. But the cast-iron dish it was seared and served in was not ideal for spontaneous travel, as you can imagine.

And a cochon de lait pressed sandwich with cherry mustard at Luke in New Orleans that I spent a dark and rainy night with. Then we rode the streetcar down St. Charles. I made it home safely, but it met a tragic end somewhere around Audubon Park.

This Minetta Tavern burger and I never even actually spoke out loud that night in NYC. We just knew.

And one day, near the airport in metropolitan Burbank, I finally met THE ONE. And it goes by the name: INCREDI-BALL.

I believe that is a family name.

The Great Balls On Tires truck sat alone in the distance. Quietly, shy perhaps?

Instead of doing my taxes, I was doing this. It was wrong, this couldn’t possibly work. This would surely backfire. That pile of receipts wasn’t going to take this laying down, in date order or not.

My heart leapt, but I kept my cool. “My cool,” looks quite similar to an awkwardly paced run-walk, and usually is punctuated by my dropping something which rolls out of reach under something else.

Ground Kobe beef, applewood smoked bacon, arugula tasting like the evil spicy version of the color green, gruyere, a lovely subtle garlic aioli, on toasted brioche. In a three-bite size. Two of them. I find the three-bite size to be the best size for pretty much anything. One is over too quickly, two lacks closure, but three is the magic number.

My friendly host Clint, a damn cool guy. Maybe…TOO cool...   

He gave me not only the refined and perfected Incredi-Ball, but a Ballywood as well-a cooked to perfection garam masala chicken meatball with coconut madras curry, crispy fried onions, tomato AND cilantro chutney, over saffron basmati rice.

You know those long musical numbers in Indian movies, with all the lovely bright colors, and hand-dancing? If that were a dish, it would be this dish. Smells so good and spiced perfectly. I admire India so much for its alacrity to boldly spice food.

And because everybody votes.

Both were absolutely tax-ignoring worthy. Each ingredient so simple and well-executed, and working together to make a perfect bite. Which is important because, as I mentioned, you get a whole three bites. I loved each bite with a feverish impatience, and have not seen Chicago pork chop or Minetta burger since.

I did however devour this spaghetti and meatball dish that my adorable cousin made for me. It was too good to pass up, and I've never regretted it. And such a reasonable portion size.

But I did eventually do my taxes.

Uncle Fester Latte

A word on coffee.

Several. Several words on coffee. Several. I like the sound of that better, It has a ring to it, yes, a ring.. And yes I’ve had a bit already.

The brain and body need water and oxygen in order to work properly. (According to doctors-but they’re always really busy, so it would be wise to just run that by WebMD as well.) Yogis rely on breath. Apple will tell you that you can’t get through the day without the Lilliputian electronics that manage your life and play kicky shuffled tunes while doing it. (Thanks to you iPhone, now instead of checking my e-mail obsessively every hour, I check my e-mail obsessively every three minutes. Which makes the regularly appearing spam e-mail from that one place I had T-shirts printed up that ONE TIME a real let-down.)

All of these are partially true, but my sun rises and sets on something a little more stakeout-worthy than water or breath. Coffee.

Sadly but tastily, my life can be chronicled the coffee I have drunk. Drank? Drunken?

I’m furious, that should have been easier. For example, while in college in New Orleans my heat-beater and sweet-tooth accommodator was an iced caramel macchiato with extra caramel. Good for countering the crushing humidity as well as producing blue ribbon cavities, this was really the gateway drug that brought coffee into my life. As I wish all things entered my life: covered in caramel, and with my name written on it in Sharpie so there’s no confusion that it’s mine.

During the summer I interned in Washington, my heart grew three sizes for the Milky Way lattes served in the Senate cafeteria coffee bar underground. Once again, dessert in a cup. I would click down the cool marble underground passageways in my “Corridors of Power Kitten Heels,” and “Primary Colors Pencil Skirt,” my Senate ID swinging impressively from a loudly printed lanyard that threw the whole thing off, and featured a photo taken of exactly the middle of my face.

It is unknown whether my whole head actually couldn’t fit in the allotted box, or if I was having a bad hair day and an executive decision was made by the drunk-with-power photo cropper to simply leave it all out. But the whole thing really screwed up the sleek intern/covert agent look I was going for by graphically counter-identifying me as Uncle Fester.

My roommate in DC was a (gasp) vegetarian, who trended towards simple, natural, healthy things. Needless to say, it was not a great match. Nothing personal. Nice girl, liked sugar-free vanilla lattes. So I did the honorable thing and told her, “Me Too!,” while downing liquefied Milky Way bars with a coffee topper when I was at work. Some people drink red-eyes. Some people, like Sean Penn in that one movie that one time, drink black-eyes. I was going for wild-eyed.

Chicago was all about pretty much not freezing to death. You know those mountain climbers that lose digits “up on the slope,” and are rewarded for their ambition with a couple of empty finger tubes in their gloves? Ok, that can happen to you walking to lunch in Chicago. Coffee becomes less about social convention and sugar intake than about literally bringing your blood to room temp. It’s the boiling water down your wetsuit, the HotHands for your liver, spleen, and heart.

Enter the Seasonal Coffee. Pumpkin Spice Latte! Gingerbread Latte! Peppermint Mocha! I’m not just drinking coffee, I’m drinking a whole SEASON! This tastes like fall, and that one tastes like Christmas! A drinkable calendar to distract you from the fact that you are still absolutely freaking freezing.

These days it’s cappuccinos, and it’s both fantastic and miserable. They make me so happy, and I eat them with a spoon like ice cream sometimes. And occasionally you accidentally breathe on the cinnamon and get a face full of it, which gives you that nice chimney sweep look that’s really taking off these days. But who wants to get addicted to something so bow-tie fancy? Expensive? And something that you absolutely positively could not reproduce if you were to be thrown into a Castaway situation. HELP is so much easier to spell out on the beach  with sticks than CAPPUCCINO. Plus, you'll be dehydrated by then so you'll lose precious time second-guessing yourself as to whether it's two C's or two N's, as though it matters.

The day that I found out that the Sweets Truck was featuring an “Almond Joy Latte” as their special for the day-I will be honest with you, I was not feeling well. I was installed on the couch under blankets, the Netflixing in full swing. NOT feeling good. NOT looking good. And definitely NOT missing an Almond Joy latte, you guys. I willed myself into ambulatory status, and drove my Claire Danes Little Women death-scene self to that mothertrucker.

Ok, SO: espresso, almond syrup, chocolate syrup, warm milk. Take 1 of these and text me in the morning. Or Facebook me. No, wait-everyone sees that. Twitter. Nope, same problem. Foursquare check-in? Neg-I don’t know how to do that. And I don’t want to. Yeah, just text. Ok good, that’s settled.

Yep, had a bit more coffee while that picture was loading.

I flashed back to my “Intern Confidential: The Uncle Fester Files” days as I medicated myself. A molten drinkable candy bar, with a caffeine chaser. Literally tasted EXACTLY like an Almond Joy. So I needed a pumpkin white chocolate bar to wash that all down with. Unbelievable. Everything you love about pumpkin pie, with the creamy luxury of white chocolate to bring it all full circle. And with the lovely buttery pie crusty-crust we have come to expect from pp.

Needless to say, I felt much better. I’m not saying this combo healed me-I’m saying the sheer sugar gram count masked any and all symptoms and kept me up for days. 2 brilliant, manic, shooting star, I am a golden god, glassy-eyed days.

And when that ordeal was all over, I really needed a cup of coffee.

Rainy Day Puddin'

It was one of those days. June gloom in July, and nothing goes right because everything is too busy going wrong. While the rest of the country had taken to the streets to see if you actually could fry an egg on the sidewalk, Los Angeles had settled into a Wuthering Heights-esque grayness. Of course, now that I’ve said that I am obligated to go actually read Wuthering Heights to see if that is at all an accurate statement. So stay tuned on that one.


In LA, grayness very very rarely equals rain, as it does in some places. I went to college in New Orleans, and the summer after my freshman year I worked in a tiny theater box office on the Tulane University campus. Tulane is a very gothic campus, all gray stone and twisting trees, heavy with branches that make one improbable hairpin turn after another. Much of the city sits under a canopy of jungle green trees, but Tulane is an especially leafy wonderland.

There was one window in the box office, and every day between 1 and 3pm, the skies would open, and a near-Biblical unleashing would occur. Not rain, more like a 30 minute miles-wide waterfall. The window became a porthole, and it got so dark that the automatic lamps on campus would come on. It rained so hard it flooded, every day. The race was on to make sure you got lunch, and were back in the boat (office) before the rains came. And the world would stop, rain would fall, the phones would quiet, the waters would rise in the streets, and I would eat lunch blinking out my porthole into the pre-historicly dark and stormy world outside. It was my favorite time of day, in the favorite days of my favorite summer. But how destructive all that water turned out to be.

So even now, if there’s a passing suggestion of rain, I feel the clock ticking to get food, and get back to the boat before the rains come. And not just any food. Comfort food. Something really creamy, or really salty, or really crunchy, or gooey, or sweet. Really something. Something that makes you feel ok with the fact that so much is washing away. You’re not washing away. You’re just eating lunch.

And so today, in what passes for gloom in Los Angeles, I tracked down a luxury provision. I had seen this truck once before. It passed me on the 101. Had I been the passenger and not the driver, I would have attempted a mid-freeway refueling, taking what could be thrown from the window, and been all the happier for it. But thank god it didn’t go down like that. Airborne, high speed chicken wings and banana pudding are the LAST thing the 101 needs, believe me.

The Nana Queens truck. In one place. Parked, windows up. Non-rainy day, rainy day banana pudding. It’s hard to miss the Nana Queens truck, because it is the shade of pink that is truly impossible to ignore. A pink they should print caution tape on, because people might actually take some. Caution, that is. As in: CAUTION, this banana pudding is a spoon’s best case scenario. At spoon board meetings, this pudding is discussed.

Ah, the spoon. So often wasted on thin soups and frost-bitten ice cream straight from the container, while one stands lazily in the mist of the open freezer, because it’s only going to be one bite, maybe two. Hypothetical, obviously.

This pudding is the best thing to happen to spoons since chili. First of all, it gets a chance to stand up straight. It’s that thick. It’s not goopy, gloppy, or gooey. It’s SERIOUSLY thick. One opens the container to find that hallmark of all great banana puddings: the Nilla wafer. The product of a witty abbreviation of the word “vanilla,” this tasty edible button-not quite shortbread, not quite sugar cookie, is the town crier in this scenario. “Hear ye, Hear Ye! You are about to eat pudding!.” And it’s usually right.

I have never eaten Nilla wafers straight from the box. In fact, I have never eaten Nilla wafers in ANY OTHER capacity at all. And yet, they are so right with banana pudding. I should mention that when ordering from the Nana Queens truck, it is pronounced “puddin’.” And it starts the whole affair off with a lovely informality that sets the stage for the comfort food experience to come.

Because it was a rainy day in my head, I chose to take my puddin’ to the car, and eat it in the safety of the boat. This cream-cheesy, vanilla scented, spoon-challenging dessert hovers over a shelf of crusty goodness that incenses one to get that spoon all the way to the bottom, which I happily did of course. And the spoon full of rainy-day banana comfort? It fulfilled every possible requirement. It was really cold, really creamy, really thick, really banana-y. It was really something.

Though it never actually rained that day, I would have been just fine if it had. Sometimes a rainy day is a feeling and a taste, instead of a forecast. As long as you have a spoon.