The wonder of gourmet cooking and fine dining has left me. I knew this the moment I was sitting in a five-star Italian restaurant and realized I wanted a hot dog and fries. Not gourmet hot dogs imported from Greece mind you, but the wieners you find on sale at Food Lion and the frozen crinkle cut fries from Oreida. I wanted the kind you used to get at a corner drug store:
Hot Dog Recipe
One hot dog bun
One cheapo hot dog, cooked
Ketchup and mustard
Onions, chopped
Eat while reading the latest spin-off of The DaVinci Code
We have dozens of cookbooks in our kitchen---James Beard, Graham Kerr, First Baptist Church Cookbook of Favorite Recipes----all leftovers from the early 90’s when men grew bored with space exploration and elephant hunting and realized you could dominate another man by using graters, recipes and Kitchenaid mixers.
In those days men compiled stock portfolios, smoked imported cigars and they became cultured and were ultimately drawn to pastels. Everyone began writing a book or interpreting art so in the natural course of things they discovered bouillabaisse and saffron.
I had a Peterbilt food processor and carried a Smith & Wesson nine millimeter diesel driven nutmeg grater in a kangaroo leather holster (you had to have a concealed permit for it). I spent hours in the kitchen throwing together marmalades and andoullie sausage vinaigrettes infused with 5W-30 motor oil all tossed using ratchet wrenches ----Voila! --- women swooned. Most men could not boil an egg and there I was, Master of Julienne Cuts, pouring cabernet sauvignons and blathering about poached quail eggs while careful to leave the toilet seat the way I found it. A man that could poach and understood bathroom etiquette! Women slipped me their phone numbers on napkins.
In those days I shopped only at Williams-Sonoma and kept 37 types of paprika and stored a small amount of specially produced bay leaves from Uganda in my gun safe. I was intense and would brook no insinuations about the virginity of my olive oils---I’d back it up with a fistfight or a shotgun. I once scoffed at a man’s untidy arugula salad (his parmigiano shavings were too thick) and he broke into tears and came at me with a melon baller. Now we’re best buds and ride motorcycles together.
And then there was the time in Laredo I spied a young cowboy wrapped up in white linen, wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay. He’d accused a man of using thyme in a spaghetti sauce, but he was wrong. Dead wrong. Alas poor Yorick, I knew him.
Then one day it ended. I served 10 dinner guests Chilean sea bass with a chocolate risotto and they claimed they’d never eaten anything so wonderful in all their lives and wept, they were delirious with joy. I realized I’d reached the pinnacle of cooking. I no longer needed to make the best crème d’spam or peanut butter gazpacho. I dropped my plutonium whisks and left the building. That part of my life was over. I don’t talk about it anymore.
Now at Thanksgiving I serve processed turkey with mash potatoes, yams and cranberries that all comes in a waxed box that you microwave. Dessert is Twinkies right out of the package—chased with cold Red Bull.
Our Lord said that He came that our joy might be full. He meant we should enjoy life and He did not obsess about soufflés.
It’s not about food, it’s about life. So get out there Honey Bunch, enjoy the sunshine and buy a friend a hot dog.
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