On a poem I wrote a long time ago.

It's Sunday night.  It's quiet, I'm tired from doing nothing all day, and my head and heart are weary.  I want to talk, want to discuss the words of a wise woman, the value of talking out a problem with a friend.

But it's late, and I'm sure no one wants to read that crap as the weekend's coming to a close as much as I don't feel like writing it all out.  There are jobs to attend to, cars to drop off at the mechanic's, applications to follow up on.  Tonight is about curling up on the couch with a couple of episodes of a good sitcom and tucking into those last couple of hours before we all get back to whatever pains in the neck await us in the morning.

So I'll just leave you with some old words I found while surfing files from my ancient desktop.  And I'll talk to you tomorrow, internet.

rooftop

white light skyline

heartbeat river

wish my life had

been like this

nothing here but

quiet shivers

nothing missing

nothing missed

Recipe break. Chili.

That being said, this is how I generally make chili.

  Around 1.5 lbs. ground meat.  I like to use ground sirloin (the 90/10 stuff) because the texture's nice and crumbly.  Feel free to mix it up; my last batch included six strips of bacon that were going to go south in a couple of days.
  Some worcestershire sauce.  Some is a technical term.
  Some soy sauce.  See above.
  An onion, diced.  The size and variety of the onion should depend on whatever the balls you have lying around.
  Between 1 and 40 cloves of garlic, peeled, smashed and chopped.  I set the limit at 40 because unless you're using the two-bowl technique, madness begins to set in after peeling your 37th clove of garlic.
  Whatever other vegetation you have lying around, diced.  Bell peppers, chiles, whatever.  Knock yourself out.
  Beer.  Tomatoes have flavonoids that dissolve in water, fat, and alcohol, so don't skimp.
  One 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes.  Muir Glen makes a really nice fire-roasted variety, but I'll go San Marzano if I can find it.  Because San Marzano tomatoes are fucking delicious.
  A splorch of molasses.  Usually however much comes out before you can stop it from pouring.
  Chili powder.  Shocking, I know.  I generally use chipotle here, but anything from ancho to generic'll do.
  Oregano, cumin, and paprika.  Really, these are optional, but this herb and these spices in particular work really well in chili.  If you have it, go smoked on the paprika.  If you don't, throw out your regular paprika and get your ass to the store for some smoked.
  Whatever other spices you want.  I like to use coriander and cardamom because I don't use them in much else, and I kind of want to get rid of them.
  Cocoa powder.  Yeah, I said it.
  One 15.5 oz. can of beans, drained and rinsed.  Red kidney, cannelini, black, pinto, whatever floats your boat.

1. In a pot big enough to hold the chili (and really, if you can't eye that kind of thing up, just go with the first pot in your set that has handles on both sides), brown the meat.  A lot of recipes say work in batches to get some nice browning, but unless I'm really trying to impress someone, I've generally found it isn't worth the time.  If working with a wooden spoon is giving you agita, try using a potato masher.
2. Dump the meat into a bowl, released juices and fat and all.  Add worchestershire and soy sauces until it's tasty enough to eat with a spoon.  Not a fork.  A spoon.
3. Bring the pot back up to heat and sweat the onions, garlic, and spare vegetation.  Note that I said sweat, not burn.  Keep 'em moving.
4. The liquid released from the onions should have been enough to dig up any brown bits left behind from the meat (if any), but just in case, hit the pot with a little beer to deglaze.  If you don't know what deglaze means, bring it to a boil and scrape the bottom and sides with whatever utensil you're using until nothing's sticking anymore.  It's essentially the same thing.
5. Dump in the tomatoes.  Not literally, as it'll glomp out and splatter all over the place if you do it fast enough.  Trust me.  Bring it back up to a simmer.
6. Add the molasses, herbs, spices, whatever.  Gun to my head, I'd say 2 tbsp. chili powder and 1 tbsp. of the rest to start (I just dump the spices into my cupped hand to eyeball it), then add 1 tsp. each in rotation until you get the flavor you're looking for.  If you want more heat, throw in whatever you've got in the door of your fridge - Tabasco, Frank's Red Hot, and sriracha all work well.  If it gets too hot, hit it with a little more molasses to mellow it out.
7. By the time you're done with 6, everything should have simmered long enough to be soft and stick-blendable if you're into that sort of thing.  If you like your chili chunky (or you don't have a stick blender), skip this step.
8. Add the meat and beans back into the pot.  If there isn't enough gravy, add beer until there is.  Drink whatever's left.
9. Bring to a simmer and hold for however long you feel like it.  Truth is, all the flavors should meld enough to be tasty in about 20 minutes, but I just let it go until I have to go to bed so I can keep picking at it.

Note: like most (if not all) things that involve tomato, the chili will taste even better the next day.  I can't tell you the exact science of it, but it has to do with the acids and glutamates inherent in that magical fruit going to town on everyone at the party.

Enjoy, kids.  A demain.

On recipes.

I was prompted today to post a recipe.  Not too surprising of a prompt, of course; those of you that know me (and I'm going to assume that's all three of you that are here) know I cook a great deal.  But as I sat down to think about what my greatest dish and the story behind it was, I hit a rather familiar roadblock.  Barring baking, I don't generally follow recipes, much less write my own.

That's not to say that recipes don't have their purpose.  If I'm learning a new dish, I'll make it once to spec to understand what the author wanted it to taste like, then adapt it accordingly to my tastes.  But after a while, you start to realize that most recipes are just one or two techniques with variances on ingredients.  Once you learn how to make a proper pot roast, braising short ribs in coffee isn't much of a jump.  If you learned how to make a beschamel for your baked mac and cheese, then you know how to build a turkey gravy.

To understand these techniques, it's important to understand why you're doing what you're doing.  Are you searing that pork chop because that's how you seal in juices, or because the Maillard reaction generates complexity of flavor?  Is that water bath you're putting your cheesecake in to keep the top from cracking or for insulation?  When you learn these things, you learn to adapt.  You learn to thicken your chowders with leftover mashed potatoes when you don't have the flour to build a roux, because starch is starch.  You learn to use white vinegar in your guacamole when someone has a citrus allergy because acid is what keeps the avocados from oxidizing.

And I say this to you because it's important to know how to adapt.  When you know why the rules and instructions are in place, you understand what's important and what's not.  And you stop worrying when you miss your turn, because you can just take the next one and circle around.  You stop stressing out when you lose a washer because a bread clip will do just fine.  You waltz to Everybody Hurts because it's in 3/4.

Knowledge is power because knowledge keeps you from freaking the fuck out.  And not freaking the fuck out is the greatest power of all.

On a conversation with Lauren.

After working on my resume all day, I was going to talk about my trepidations on stepping back into the workforce.  But I've been pretty heavy so far, and it's late.  So instead I'm going to show you a little clip of my life.  I'll probably do this from time to time, because let's face it, my life can be pretty fun from time to time.

Today, it's a fairly typical conversation with Lauren.

L:  I'm going to be so sick
  this was an awful idea, still is, can't stop
  NOM NOM NOM
me:  Pizza?
L:  Yes.
  After a week of no dairy.
  or meat.
  I feel like death, and all I want to do is finish this last half-slice
me:  Do it.
  You've come this far.
L:  I'm totally calling you and whining later
me:  I'm totally not going to pick up and just text back a picture of me eating a steak and drinking a glass of milk.
L:  Fuck youuuuu.
me:  I feel like you say this to me a lot.
  And that it strengthens our friendship.

Cheers, guys.  Happy Friday; I'll catch up with you tomorrow.

On change.

So I was reading through a new friend's old blog posts last night.  Blogs from a decade ago, a voice from the past etched in the boundless clay of the internet.  It made me think of my own history, my own life in 2003.  Where I stood as the timer reset, putting to bed one terrible year and starting the clock on a new one.

I wasn't in good shape ten years ago.  My mother ended her year-long battle with pancreatic cancer.  I'd just been laid off from my dot com job; I was dating a girl who lived in Toronto while I rotted away in a tiny apartment in New York.  I smoked too much.  Drank too much.  I didn't know what to do or who I was.  I only knew that change was coming.

I didn't know that I'd start working later that month at a bar that would come to define not only my 20s, but those of my closest friends as well.  That the job would connect me with the finest scum and villany lower Manhattan could offer.  I didn't know that a year later I'd be applying to school again, fighting to fulfill one last promise to a dead woman.  That people that would prop me up in my darkest hours even existed, much less find their ways into my life.

So much of what I am was still on the horizon.  My passion for food and cooking, my haphazard mastery of a pool cue.  Loves lost and won and lost again.  Mistakes indelicately made, the gouts of flame that broke me down and forged me ever stronger.

And that isn't to say I haven't had my constants.  I still love fried chicken.  The cigarettes I'm trying to quit are the same ones I smoked out on the fire escape ten years ago.  The boy I grew up with became a man I still stand side by side with, and the friends I made on the fourth floor of a college dorm still gather every year to celebrate our lives and friendship.  But nothing's the same.  Love grows deeper; people grow into and out of things.

That's the trick, isn't it?  Nothing gold can stay.  We always wait for change to come, never knowing that it's happening all the time.  Every day that passes brings something new and puts something old away.  To stand still, hoping for constancy, for stability is a fallacy.  To hold on to anything, to pray it'll stay exactly as it was is foolish.

If you want to keep anything in your life, be prepared to shift with it, to duck and weave as it expands and contracts.  Because change is always coming.  And the choice to make it for better or for worse is yours.

On fixing a water heater.

So I fixed the TPR valve on my hot water heater today.  Some of you might not know what that is.  What it does, what happens when it breaks.  And that's fine.  I didn't know any of these things until recently, either.  And none of that is really the point.  The point is, I fixed the TPR valve on my hot water heater today.

I could go into detail about it, I suppose.  Talk about that knot in my stomach as I stepped downstairs two nights ago, looking for lighter fluid, only to hear the carpet squish beneath my feet.  The phone calls looking for the contractor who once owned my home looking for guidance.  I could detail the Google searches for "hot water heater diagram" and "TPR valve leaking" that enabled me to diagnose the problem and the herculean effort involved in twisting the valve on the inlet pipe shut.

I could talk about how I turned it into a joke at the New Year's Eve party, shrugged it off the next day when I found out the hardware store was closed.  About how I sat down and made a quick list of the materials I'd need to fix the problem, thanked my friend for donating his wrench to the cause.  I could tell you about the conversation I had with two guys at the hardware store who helped me pick out the right parts I'd need.

And I could tell you about wrenching the pipes apart, twisting off the faulty valve and cramming the new one in against the spurt of now-cold water, hands still gooey with teflon paste.  Grunting as I twisted the pipes back in place, feeling that wave of relief wash over me when I turned the intake back on and nothing spilled out onto the already-soaked carpet.  Slamming the baseplate back on after relighting the pilot, and walking upstairs to hear the gurgle of the hot water output coming to life when I turned on the sink.

But I won't.  Because there was a problem.  And I didn't rail against the Fates about it on social media (well, too much, anyway), call a plumber, and wait for someone to do it for me.  I looked for a solution, asked the right people for help, and fixed the damn thing without raising a stink.

Because that's what being an adult is all about.  It's about putting your self-pity and uncertainty down and doing things that need to be done.  It's about recognizing that the "I can't"s and the "I'm not able to"s don't give a shit when they're spitting water all over the floor.  It's about knowing that in the end, all complaining really does is annoy the people close enough to listen.

So maybe that's what I should do this year.  Stop talking about my problems and do something about them.  Start taking responsibility for the tangled mess of my life.  Start acting like an adult.

But enough about me.  What were your resolutions this year?

On this blog.

I should write more.

At least that's what people tell me.  See, there was a time where I wrote.  A lot.  And it made me happy, kept my mind agile and open, gave me something to do other than sit about and rot.  But life got in the way.  And for years, I stopped writing.  Ran myself through the wringer, tried and failed and gave up on a lot of things.  I sat about.  I rotted.

But it's a new year.  And there's a lot of stuff I need to get done if I want to shape myself up back into some semblance of a decent human being.  And one of those things is to write more, to force myself into a ritual where I can look back each day, each week, and hold myself accountable for every time I didn't get off my ass and take a step forward.

So who knows?  There isn't much of a chance many people will see this, and quite frankly, I'd like to keep it that way.  Because this isn't for you.

It's for me.