Bon, Si Bon

(Writing the title before the post is a hard habit to break. I guess it comes from habitually filling out forms; the title box is at the top of the page and begs to be filled before the larger text box.)

Ponder ponder ponder.

Driving this morning, I was waiting for the light to change so I could turn left onto the highway. From the backseat piped Trombone,

“Go go go go go!”
“No, I can’t go,” I explained, “I have to wait for the cars to stop before I can go.”
“Watch out!” was his reply, “Watch out, watch out, watch out.”

He’s got this sing-song tone going, like a little old lady criticizing your skirt length. “Watch ouu-uuut.”

I am very tired. I am waiting for my pizza to cook. Speaking of recipes, I have a new annoyance. While I’ve not come across any as horrifying as Sarah’s daycare lady’s spaghetti recipe, I have, in the past weeks, noted that recipes lately, not unlike The Kids Today, are not what they used to be.

From Chatelaine (possibly the most useless magazine in existence anyway but I was on the ferry and I thought it wouldn’t kill me)

Spicy tomato pasta with melted brie.

Ingredients:

1/2 of a 500 g package of pasta (was 250 g too hard? What?)
1 jar tomato sauce
black pepper
1 lb brie

I bet you can guess what comes next.

There was also a recipe for garlic mashed potatoes, which are a delicious food but – a box of potatoes with garlic powder mixed in? Is not a recipe!

An INGREDIENT is something I can’t make myself, like chocolate. A RECIPE is a combination of proportioned ingredients that creates some delicious foodstuff. I don’t care if you make pasta with spaghetti, canned sauce and a hunk of cheese on top and give it to your sweetie for valentine’s day. I have eaten stranger, less home-cooked things for less heart-shaped occasions. Hell, I have eaten a toaster-oven-tray coated in cheese and called it dinner.

But your combining of convenient packaged foods is not a recipe and you shouldn’t advertise it on your front cover. Chatelaine. Watch ouuuuuuut.

Garrr!

I also read The Walrus magazine on the ferry. It was all right. Not as precious as I’d expected. And no recipes, thank jeebus.

This week I listened to the song “Sweet City Woman” by The Stampeders a total of, I think, about 18, possibly 35 times. 5 of those times was just today, at work. There is just something about this song. The Stampeders singing this song are the best thing to come out of Alberta. Ever.

How do these lines even exist without evaporating into thin air? They are so perfect! They are like china in my hand!

…and she sings in the evening
old familiar tunes
and she feeds me love and tenderness
and macaroons

How, you ask? With banjo!

Here, watch this while you read the rest. (or open it in a new tab
if you prefer)

I’m not going to link to the site because it’s kind of spammy but I was greatly amused by the following pronouncement, below the recipe – yes, a real recipe! – for the drink called “Sweet City Woman.”

[site name removed] is proud to present you the SWEET CITY WOMAN cocktail recipe. Our main goal is to spread bartending and drinking culture to the masses. Our huge cocktail database has been assambled with enormous effort during the Cocktail Test phase. Hundreds of cocktail glasses had been consumed. ..Let’s promote the art of cocktail making, and bring the drinking culture to another dimension. Please Drink Carefully and Never Drink and Drive! Only one glass can sometime be fatal!

Oh, what’s in a Sweet City Woman?

Vodka
Amaretto
Sprite
Lemon-lime drink
Cherry juice.

Any special instructions? For the assambly?

“Serve in an unknown glass.”

I guess consuming the glass is optional.

Go, mix one. Tell me how it tastes. I am picturing a warm summer afternoon on a porch with The Stampeders on repeat and a blender full of Sweet City Women. OK and now I am picturing diabetic comas for everyone. Damn these hyper-aware times we live in. The Stampeders wouldn’t care, would they? They’d just drink on and play their banjos while their guests dropped around them.

And I still need a post title.