Blógünder Schlock

I skipped out on Penguicon this year (it’s my favorite out-of-state convention), and it’s probably a good thing. All of Tuesday night was spent making trips to the bathroom to shout at the porcelain, and while this sort of thing usually kills a day or two, I was still running a fever and losing precious sleep Friday night, and stumbling around all achey like a zombie on a no-brains diet on Saturday.

Penguiconners, I missed you this weekend, and for this you should be thankful. Whatever I’ve got, you don’t want.

I colored two pages of Bonus Story before falling ill, and then, in spite of the illin’ an’ chillin’, I actually managed to bang out a week of comics on Friday and Saturday. They’ll probably need touch-ups when Smart Howard checks back in for work Monday, but most of the heavy lifting is done.

I know, I know… the buffer is supposed to give me time off for sickness, but with book deadlines crushing me, and conventions coming in May (Hello, Leprecon!) I really don’t want to lose a week just because the new entrees from Panda Express thought so much of themselves they demanded I taste them twice.

When I called my friend Bob Defendi to let him know I couldn’t join his game Wednesday night, I told him I probably wouldn’t be eating at Panda for a looong time to come. “The taste of chinese food on the way back up is one of those memories that just won’t let go,” I said. Bob told me that would be a great first line for a book. It made me laugh, but laughing still hurt a lot.

Sorry for the huge quantities of “Too Much Information.” I’m sure you’ll agree (to complete the song lyric in the title of this post,) “these are the things we can do without.”

Saturday afternoon my buddy R.J. and I went out to eat for his birthday. I mentioned that I’d seen a sushi place hanging their shingle on south State street, and he agreed to try it out.

It was also an All You Can Eat sushi place.

We bellied up to the bar and got started. The nigiri sushi (wee slabs o’ fish over rolls of rice) were delicious, and quite fresh, but the restaurant had our complete and undivided attention when we tucked into the “Godzilla” roll.

I’ll make this short, because I don’t have the vocabulary to properly describe what was going on in my mouth. See, I look for good sushi whenever the opportunity presents itself. I’ve bellied up to sushi bars in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Boston, Maryland, Austin, and Honolulu. You can take me at my word when I tell you that the Godzilla roll was easily the tastiest sushi I’ve ever had.

R.J. agreed.

Suffice it to say that if you like sushi and live in Utah Valley, you need to go to Sushi Ya, at 1545 South State St in Orem (east side of State, a little past the light 1600 S if you’re coming uphill from Provo). For $18.95 per person you’ll get some fantastic sushi — especially if you make sure to order the Rocky Mountain Roll and the Godzilla Roll. Both are house creations, and are party-in-your-mouth delicious.

There are a couple of house rules you should be aware of. This is not a buffet, where high prices cover the waste and gluttony of patrons who want to somehow “beat the system.” You order your sushi one or two servings at a time. You have to eat the rice, too (sushi MEANS “rice”), and if you’re wasting food there may be a surcharge. That said, neither R.J. nor I liked the yapi, a vegetarian hand-roll (fresh, crisp, and not what I wanted). Karl, our sushi chef, said that it was okay if we didn’t finish it. That happens sometimes, and they understand (note: I ended up finishing it anyway, because the taste kind of grew on me.)

Karl was awesome, by the way. Conversational, eager to please, and deftly expert. Sadly, he’s headed back up to the home store now that he’s gotten everybody trained.

That reminds me… there is a Sushi Ya under the same management in Twin Falls, and that’s where Karl works. I don’t know the address (this might be the place), but I’ve met the guy who’ll be serving you, so I’m pretty confident in the food.

Naturally I have an ulterior motive here. I can’t afford to keep Sushi Ya in Orem open all by myself. They flung their doors wide just one short week ago, and richly deserve your patronage, if only so that when I can afford to treat myself to another evening of sushi I have a great place to do it. And if you DO stop in, go ahead and mention this review.

Today was the Elders’ Quorum annual “Guns & Pizza” event. This year, because of budget restructuring, we only had about $40 to work with for pizza, which does not buy pies sufficient to feed 20 guys.

No problem. I volunteered to make double-decker dutch-over pizzas for all. The ingredients hit our budget for $35, and this morning I loaded up five dutch ovens with the help of Cort, Will, and Brian.

I wish we’d taken pictures. We made straight pepperoni, BBQ chicken, ham & pineapple, supreme, and pizzagna pizzas, and it turns out that five dutch ovens is exactly how many will fit in TurboSchlock’s trunk.

The pies were assembled between 8:30 and 9:30, but we didn’t start cooking them until about 11:30. That means they had time to rise. Sure enough, three of them rose enough that during cooking they brushed the tops of the ovens — which I had thoughtfully brushed with olive oil against just such a possibility.

We had a good crowd show up, and they managed to eat 80% of the pizza (mostly by overeating - each of these pies will feed eight). I was quite pleased with everything except the pizzagna. SOMEBODY (we’ll name no names) forgot to add basil, even after talking about how important spices would be on this most experimental of pies. It turned out kind of bland. Maybe somebody should have added a little salt, too.

Oh, and the guns — Mostly we shot skeet. I was exhausted after eating, so I headed home before they headed up to the pistol and rifle range. I hit maybe half of what I shot at, which stinks, but at least I nailed the very first skeet I drew a bead on. After close to two years of no practice, that felt really good.

I’m happy to no longer be a “world traveler.” I spent far too much time away from my family, and all I got out of it was a few hundred thousand sky miles (”Hey! Look! You can travel some MORE now!”) and the ability to name-drop cities in casual conversation.

I traveled a lot in the continental US, and got to spend time in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, France, England, and South Africa. And one side-effect of all this was the discovery that I like eating new things.

Anywhere I traveled I made a point of asking the concierge at my hotel for the names of a few restaurants that did good “local cuisine.” In Nice and Barcelona that meant something. (In Nice that meant food poisoning, but that’s another story). In South Africa I got to try some traditional tribal food, as well as a sampling of what I like to call “we-have-all-these-different-animals-here-let’s-see-what they-taste-like” cuisine at a place called “The Carnivore.” Somewhere I have a list of all the different animals I’ve eaten. The largest is elephant (think “cheap, gamey, tough stew-meat”). The smallest is mupawni worm (think “crayola crayon filled with fish oil”). Or maybe chocolate-covered ant (think “chocolate! Wait… something’s crunchy.”)

In places like Kansas City and Chicago I got directed to restaurants that did really good steak or really good Pizza. A quarter of the smallest deep-dish pie Pizzaria Due makes filled me up. (My buddy and I ended up giving half the pie to a homeless man on our walk back to the hotel. It probably fed him for three days.) I had fantastic seafood in Maine, with shrimp so big that the analyst we were treating to dinner thought they were chicken breasts. I had scrod in Nova Scotia (”ummm… this is just batter-fried white fish, right?”) and cheescake in New York (”is it still on my hips 7 years later? Yes”).

Through it all, though, “American Food” has been hard to pin down. Chinese food, Thai food, Mexican food, and Italian food are easy — you can find restaurants claiming to serve those all over the western world. Whether or not this is ACCURATE is irrelevant. There are elements of those menus that are consistent across every (for instance) chinese restaurant you’ll set foot in (except in Manchester, where “chinese food” means using soy sauce instead of malt vinegar on your fish and chips.)

Well, today I found it, (more…)

As I was driving to pick up some art supplies, I passed the Burger King on the intersection of State and Center in Orem. The sign upon which they usually advertise specials like “NOW HIRING MAINTENANCE,” or “SWING MANAGERS WANTED” was even MORE tempting than usual:

YOU COULD WIN A PRIZE

I don’t know about you, but if your food is so questionable that you’re going to offer me a chance at a prize for eating it, you’re in the wrong business. Take it to “Fear Factor” or maybe “Survivor: The Suburbs.” (more…)

It would appear that alchoholic beverages are linked to several kinds of cancers (link). Doctor Paolo Boffetta of the International Agency for Research on Cancer announced the results of studies showing the link, and said “Given the linear dose-response relation between alcohol intake and risk of cancer, control of heavy drinking remains the main target for cancer control.”

That’s pretty damning if you’re a whiskey. “Linear dose-response relation” is science talk for “the bigger the dose, the bigger the response,” and since the response in this case is cancer, a zero-dose would be safest.

But Boffetta and his team aren’t advocating teetotaling, because a LITTLE bit of alchohol offers some protection against cardiovascular disease. And here’s where I think they blow it with the numbers game:

(more…)

Ordinarily when a blog gets blogged, the blogged blog is the only blog to mention the blogging, and may blog back. When Fleen blogged Chupaqueso.com, however, the blogging blog was also a blog of topical interest in the blogged blog’s blogger’s OTHER blog (even if that relationship requires the blogged blog’s blogger to blog a fourth blog in his other blog in order to establish the connection). The end result here is that the blogging blog and the blogged blog both get blogged by the blogged blog’s blogger in his other blog.

Thank you, and good morning.

A month ago I promised you all that we’d find a permanent home for my notes about the chupaqueso, that delicious, nutritious, low-carb, high-tech package of pan-fried dairy goodness. Well, the doors are now open at Chupaqueso.com. You can find the original recipe there, as well as all of my recent blogging about cheese.

Some of you have emailed me to ask “what was that one place you told us about that makes the farmer-whatsit cheeses?” Well, that information is there too, as is a list of Cheeses I Have In My House Right Now.

Jay Maynard is taking care of the hosting on this, and he and I will be splitting the ad revenue. Jay and I have run two hands-on chupaqueso workshops together, and he tells me he’ll be putting up a tutorial, complete with photographs. I may have invented the chupaqueso, but Jay perfected it. (more…)

We’ve gotten some pretty good snow in Utah Valley this week. This hasn’t stopped me from grilling on my back deck, though. I’ve been doing the low-carb* thing since Thanksgiving, and there’s really only one RIGHT way to cook big, tender chunks of animal flesh — over flame. I feel like I’m throwing a winter-defiance party every day at lunchtime. The grill heats up, the snow melts off of it and boils away to steam, and then I (quickly) slip out the kitchen door onto the deck, slap my PETA-unfriendly slabs of dead animal over the flames, and then wait inside with a timer while watching the thermometer on the grill through the window.

Yesterday the grill ran out of gas. No problem… I bought a replacement tank a day earlier, anticipating the problem. Unfortunately, yesterday it was also about 10 degrees Farenheit on the back deck, and the grill was icy. I got the tank installed, but it wouldn’t flow — probably because of gunk in the hose, a problem I’ve had before, and which is solved by disconnecting the hose, putting your mouth on it, and blowing really hard with the valves open.

Putting your mouth on a brass fitting in 10-degree-weather is a great way to end up leaving your lips attached to the grill, so I quickly arrived at the decision to bring the grill inside for a tune-up. Oh, the irony. Just Sunday the Ward sent out a newsletter with instructions from the local Fire Department on “how not to have a house fire” printed on the back. I’m pretty sure that “don’t you be fiddling with a gas grill inside your house, you idiot” was on the list SOMEWHERE.

Still, I got away with it. The grill works like a champ, and the tank that’s on it should last at least until March. I had a steak for lunch yesterday, and then (vegetarians should now avert their eyes and skip to the next paragraph) grilled up a chicken breast wrapped in three slices of thick, Hormel Black Label bacon. I chopped that up, added half an avocado and some ranch dressing, and tupperware’d it for dinner at the Temple. It was so good cold that I’m sure I’ll be trussing chicken with bacon in grillings to come.

The biggest problem with the snow and the cold is that Turbo Schlock, my 2003 cyber-green New Beetle, does not LOOK like a fit-for-cold-weather car. Forget the fact that it heats up quickly, or that the heated seats make even the coldest mornings toasty — the happy green color and the silly Beetle shape just look SAD when covered in snow and frozen street-slush. Tuesday evening the Bishop looked at my car as the two of us emerged from the evening’s bout with the Ward finances, and said “if you look closely enough, I think you can see it SHIVERING.”

Winter hasn’t even officially begun yet, and already I’m campaigning to defy it. Hopefully my grilling on the back deck, and driving a bright-green Beetle (with, I might add, the sun roof open… I worked out at the gym yesterday, and the 27-degree air felt kind of refreshing on the drive home) won’t tip some cosmic balance and bring down a three-day blizzard. But if it does, I’ll just sweep the grill off, and take out my frustrations on chunks of some tasty animals I never met, and who never did anything to me, but they’re dead and I’m hungry.

*Note: I realize that there are those among my readers who hear the phrase “low-carb” and immediately desire to offer me nutritional advice. I have a new rule: Don’t email me unless you want to say nice, supporting things about my lifestyle choices. I’ve been low-carbing since before it was a fad, and I know my body and my diet much better than you do. What’s that you say? You’ve got a Master’s Degree in Nutritional Science? I tell you what… I’ll keep eating bacon-wrapped chicken breasts and you can eat your degree. Just don’t make me feed it to you.