Refrigerator Tapas

The theme of tonight's meal was "things in my freezer I had almost forgotten about."

You wouldn't think that one could lose anything in my freezer. It's literally the size of a shoebox, a plastic shoebox that has been fitted with a little hinged door and nailed to the top of my dorm-style refrigerator.

But over time, that little box becomes encrusted with ice. It's gotten to the point where I must shove freezer-bound groceries through a hole the size of a mail slot.

So I thought that the items closest to the front of the freezer--frozen broccoli and garlic cubes--were all I had. But when I opened the fridge tonight, the broccoli fell out and I saw that it had been hiding a veritable dinner bonanza.

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Refrigerator Tapas #1:
Freezer Finds

Ingredients:
Vegetable Dumplings
Morningstar Farms* Veggie Nuggets with spinach-artichoke filling.
Soy sauce and rice vinegar
Barbeque sauce.

1. In a medium frying pan, sauté the dumplings in oil.
2. Pre-heat oven to 375f.
3. Get tired of waiting for oven to preheat, and eat a still-frozen nugget. (Not bad!)
4. Mix three tablespoons of soy sauce and one teaspoon of rice vinegar in a small dipping bowl. Taste the sauce; drink rather more than is strictly necessary.
6. Once the dumplings are brown, pluck them one at a time from the frying pan, dip them in the soy sauce and eat them.
7. Bake the few uneaten frozen nuggets for 17 minutes.
8. Take them out and find that they are pretty bland.
9. Put the nuggets on a plate with barbeque sauce, balance it on your belly and eat the nuggets while watching a Daily Show rerun.

*Isn't it weird that Morningstar Farms, the makers of many meat-substitute products, uses a euphemism for Satan as their company name? That has always bothered me.

Campaign-trail tales

In what context might you find yourself urinating on a suburban lawn? Why would you earmark several hours in the morning and evening to wave at rush-hour traffic? When would you spend an entire day camped out in front of a library, harassing passersby?

If you answered "while getting out the vote" then you must be an election pro, like me. I've worked on dozens of campaigns, and in the final few weeks all of them require volunteers to act like street people. This is equally true for dog-catcher races as it is for presidential campaigns. In fact, some of my most vagrant-y moments came while working for a certain Democratic presidential nominee a few years ago.

Myself and 700 other people were airlifted to South Florida, where we were tagged with hospital bracelets (stating our name, hotel and flight home) and armed with "remember to vote" door hangers. For a week, we'd get up at dawn and pile into vans, and some lady would drop us off two-at-a-time in random neighborhoods. It would be our job for the rest of the day to walk around, knock on doors, and talk to whoever was home.

That was pretty much no one, this particular trip, so my walking partner and I would write helpful notes on the door hangers ("Remember to vote Tuesday!") and be on our way. When necessary, we used bushes as bathrooms.

On a different campaign, in West Virginia, I recall many more people being home. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how many of them lived to see election day, as many dragged oxygen tanks on the long trip to their front door. I felt guilty making West Virginia residents travel all that way, gasping and choking, just for my cheerful reminder and door tag. But campaign workers had convinced me that bothering old people is the only way to win elections, so I kept it up--even after coming upon a house with several semi-conscious adults facing a television that was playing just static and snow. Sunburned and disoriented, I attempted to catch their attention and remind them to vote. One of the men made a snorting noise. I think he may have been laughing at me.

Word to the wise

Those of you who went to school outside of Florida may have learned math, english, etc. But you probably missed out on one important lesson: When wading in the ocean, you can avoid getting lanced by a stingray by shuffling your feet. (If they know you are coming, they get out of your way.)

However, I recently found out that another Florida-wildlife-survival tip that was part of the 6th grade curricula is, in fact, not good advice. We were told that we could outrun an alligator by taking a zig-zag path. (Gators are fast, but they have a wide turning radius.) Now I learn that while gators do lack agility, you still have a better chance of beating them by sprinting in a straight line, or--even better--scrambling up a tree.

So there you have it, my entire elementary school education. Oh wait, I did also learn several songs in sign language--real tear-jerkers among the seasonally-themed sweater crowd: "The Greatest Love of All", "I'm Proud to Be an American," and "Somewhere Out There." My fifth grade class signed these songs at the Florida State Fair to a crowd of two or three carnival workers. I can still sign them, and the Pledge of Allegiance, but don't ask me about long division.

Why I still use a PC

You know how your grandma* cannot handle it when something changes on her computer? For instance, if you accidentally delete a shortcut from her desktop she won't be able to check her email for months. Well, I have met grandma, and she is me.

Last week, I finally let my office's computer people "upgrade" me to MS Office 2003. I had been an Office 2000 holdout for more than two years, because I did not like how the newer version of Word tracks changes in documents. In the old Word, which I remember fondly, you could just hover your cursor above changes, and a friendly yellow balloon would materialize and tell you what comments people had made about your story. ("Is this about anything?") In the new version of Word, comments appear in the margin encapsulated in red balloons, which are too small to read.

So when the computer guy came to install Office 2003, I braced for the onslaught of the angry red balloons, but I was not ready for a much more vexing change: The relocation of my email preview pane. Previously I could read emails in a little window below my inbox, but now it is to the left of it. What's worse, I can't see my calendar, inbox and task list simultaneously anymore. I don't think I ever used the latter two functions, but I spent much of the day mourning their disappearance.

Now don't leave comments telling me how I can fix these problems. I don't want to hear it. Just be a good grandson and come over and make it look like it did before.

(*For the record, both my grandmas are flexible and adept computer users. And I'm not just saying that because they read this blog.)

A new reason to hate airports

Express doesn’t mean, ‘quick’ anymore. Consider Outlook Express. The email program is no faster than Outlook regular. But it does have more viruses and fewer features.

Then there’s Pizza Hut Express. You get your pizza at a Pizza Hut Express in much the same timeframe as you would at a normal restaurant. But instead of serving large, custom-made pies, Pizza Hut Express offers tiny pizzas, which have been sitting under warming lamps for upwards of an hour. That’s because someone has attempted to shoehorn a restaurant into some sad airport corner, between Hudson News and one of those inexplicable Palm stores. (Who, on a layover, impulse-buys a PDA?)

I understand that space is at a premium, but I still think napkins are a resturant requirement. I’m looking at you, BWI Quiznos Express. Yesterday, the Quiznos counter lady did not hand me a napkin with my sandwich, and when I asked for one, she suggested that I fetch some paper towels from the bathroom.

I’m no marketing expert, but it seems to me that beloved chains should not allow such bastard brothers sully their good names. The now-defunct Dupont Circle Quiznos long ago seduced me with their hearty mushroom melts, smothered with guacamole. Why break my heart now with a veggie sub on burned bread that is missing both the mushrooms and guacamole?

I’m afraid this trend will continue, especially at airports where people approach food in a manner similar to castaways on a desert island. We aren’t sure when, if ever, we’ll get out of there, or when we’ll eat again, so we gladly consume bugs, sand, McDonalds, etc.