I love eggs. I ate two eggs this morning for breakfast. My body does not love eggs. It actually despises them. It is mad at me for eating the eggs. It is giving me hell for eating the eggs. I should not have eaten the eggs. My body is winning in deciding whether or not I get to eat eggs. Even though I love them, it says I cannot have them or it will rebel and I believe it. So no eggs.
Bummer.
When a restaurant puts the stuff patrons will eat in a bowl instead of on a plate, they call the dish a “bowl” and then charge more for it than if it had been on a plate.
Oh, another thing restaurants do, especially in Portland, is to sell “small plates.” They call them tapas so they and their patrons can pretend they’re multicultural. The idea behind “small plates” is to have a whole gang of people sit around a table with “small plates” and then take samples from each plate. It’s like one big Norman Rockwell painting or a movie where everyone has these big dinner parties and life is lively and splashy.
The only problem (well, one of many) is that most people eat in pairs or small groups that are not lively and splashy. Then you have this small table covered with a multitude of plates and there is nowhere to put anything. More often than not the plates have very little food on them, and certainly not enough to “share.” Also, if you’re like me and don’t eat a lot of what others eat, sharing isn’t really that appealing.
Basically the idea, I think, is to sell these “small plates” based on the marketing (you are a group of hip, culturally aware citizens eating together at a fancy restaurant with swiggles all over your plates!), knowing they can charge four times what the same four dishes on one bigger plate would have cost. You look at the menu and think, “Oh, it’s only $8.95 for a dish,” not realizing that it’s $8.95 per side, and you’ll end up paying 36 bucks for a plate of food. And since the portion sizes are smaller than they would have been on a bigger plate (allowing for fancy swizzling of sauce, etc.), you actually end up paying more because of that too. Overall, it’s just a big scam.
There was a restaurant we used to frequent frequently. They have gradually replaced all their meals in this fashion. They claim it gives “more choice” because you can mix and match your side dishes. No. All it does is make the whole enterprise vastly more expensive and the table more cluttered. We don’t like this. We don’t eat there anymore. Good for us and our wallets, bad for them. Or maybe not. Maybe they have other patrons who like the clutter and the cost.
Somehow this went from an observation on “bowls” to a diatribe on small plates. Funny how that goes.
This is what I sent to Almond Dream:
My Almond Dream Mint Chocolate Chip non-dairy ice cream had ONE chocolate chip in it. One! The picture of the scoop on the front has a dozen chocolate chips in it. I don’t think you should call it mint chocolate chip unless you’re going to put chips in it. Or maybe the name is literal? Chocolate chip is not plural because there will only be ONE chip in the pint? If that’s the case, the photo should match, and show only one chip rather than 12.
Thank you.
Sometimes I think our minds just predict what they are going to want in the future and plan accordingly. My brain must have known two weeks ago when it made me buy those dark chocolate caramel balls that none too far in the future, I was going to be weaned off of caffeine, and then the time was going to change, and I would be sitting forlornly in my office wishing I could just go get a jug of coffee and bathe in it. It would know that I would not remember those dark chocolate caramel balls sitting in my drawer. It knew I would open the drawer for some other reason (like to get a cup of herbal, non-caffeinated tea to sort of pretend the warm beverage was caffeinated) and discover, lo and behold! A small baggy of drugs, er, dark chocolate caramel balls and I would just melt with pleasure.
Yes, brain. I thank you. You’ve done me right on this one.
Dear Mr. Deli Man at New Seasons: Â I know it’s late and the time changed, so it feels later in your body than it really is, but could you please be a little more attentive and properly put the chicken in the plastic bag rather than getting only its hindquarters in, thereby leaving the remaining chicken in the paper bag that isn’t designed to hold a greasy glob of cooked meat? Thank you.
Dear New Seasons: Â Thank you very much for installing toilet tissue holders that actually turn easily when one pulls tissue off them. I can’t tell you how much this thrills me. So many stores are stingy and obnoxious with their tissue. It’s a real drag to have to pull one square, have the roller catch so the square tears off, then the roller rolls backwards so that the edge that just tore is in the back, leaving you to then scratch and pull to get that edge to the front, only to repeat the process 10 times in order to get enough tissue to do your business. I don’t want to wipe with my fingertips; that’s nasty. New Seasons, your generous tissue holders make me grateful to you every time I’m forced to use them. Thank you.
Dear Carrot Buyer at New Seasons: Â Are you a new employee? Are you a particularly gargantuan human? I have to ask because the carrots you’ve chosen this week are enormous! I could have used one for a bat. Maybe you aren’t actually large, but a sports fanatic, and you would just LOVE it if someone used one of your ginormous carrots and a potato to start an impromptu game of baseball right there in the produce section. I could see it! Thank you though. I only needed to buy two of the things to make my soup, which is easier to carry without a bag than more carrots would have been. I don’t like getting bags in the produce section. They’re plastic and not good for the environment or wild animals, so I definitely prefer skipping the bag. The giant carrots made this more possible.
Dear New Seasons Stuffed Animal Pricer: Â I get it that stuffed animals at the grocery store are a pure profit item for you. Who buys stuffed animals at the grocery store anyway (people who forget to buy gifts for small children at a regular store and are up against a deadline possibly?). What I would like to know though, is why you have to charge so danged much for them. Maybe you know purchasers of stuffies at the grocery store are in a last minute kind of thing position, and you are therefore taking advantage of our having not planned better. I would like to suggest you don’t take advantage of us. We’re already feeling precarious, having waited until the last minute and all. Maybe you could lower the price just a teensy, weensy bit? Please? For me? Thank you.
Dear New Seasons:  I would like to suggest that if you run out of whole cooked chickens in your deli section that you allow those of us who wanted one to purchase a whole uncooked chicken for the same price. The reason I make this suggestion is that, surprisingly enough, chickens from New Seasons that are uncooked cost MORE than chickens that have been slow-roasted in that cool turning thingamajig that leaves the meat falling off the bone. The cooked ones are way easier for us buyers, which seems to me to make them a premium item. Raw chickens are way more work. Shouldn’t the higher premium chickens cost more? Or at least the same? But they don’t. And some of your delis are not hip to the cooked chicken demand. The location by my house is AWESOME. They rarely run out of cooked chickens. The one by my old house, not so awesome. They ran out all the time and never seemed stocked like the one by my house now. But either way, making the raw chickens the same price would be oh, so very helpful. Thank you.
Dear New Seasons:  I checked out the Green Zebra. It’s so dang small, you can’t pass another shopping cart when you’re pushing one. And pricey! I’ll keep going to you, so whew!, right?
Dear New Seasons:  I am a loyal customer. New Seasons is always my first choice for food from a grocery store. I have to confess though, that I’m going to be stepping out at another store in the future because they have local, organic fuji apples for half the price of yours. They also have organic, steel-cut oats for a dollar a pound less. On many items, you’re actually cheaper than a lot of the stores people think are cheaper, like Fred Meyer. Fred Meyer is a joke. So is Albertson’s, and Thriftway, and Safeway. I hate all these stores. They are over-priced and have way too much processed and non-organic crap. Plus, they’re REALLY expensive. Arborio Rice at these stores, same brand, same size, costs over $2.00 more a container than the same arborio rice at New Seasons. And they can’t even compare when it comes to produce and meat products. But New Seasons, Sheridan Fruit Company has you beat on a lot of things, and I’m just going to have to buy there more often. I’m sorry.
Dear New Seasons: Â You sell Gin Gins, my all-time favorite treat, for $3.99 for 3 ounces. This works out to be $15.96 per pound. I was able to locate Gin Gins on the internet in bulk: Â Eleven pounds for $62.00, and shipping is free! Don’t ask me why the sell lots of eleven pounds instead of some more round number like say, ten, but that’s how they sell them. That works out to be $5.64 per pound. Even when you had them on sale at 3 ounces for $2.50, they were still $10 per pound. The bulk price is better, so I bought eleven pounds of the things. I admit it. That bag should last a while. Sorry, New Seasons. stepping out on you for the Gin Gins too.
Dear New Seasons: Â Final letter of the night, I promise. I just wanted to say that I love going to your store. Everyone is always nice, even when they’re putting the chicken halfway in the plastic bag. All the workers seem not to mind being at work. The customers even seem happy. You help the local food scene. You buy meats that came from humanely raised critters. You’re a bit overpriced on some things (like fuji apples), but I can deal with that. Sometimes when I’m feeling down, I’ll go to a New Seasons just to get a pick me up. I like you, just the way you are. Too bad you’re not a man because I’d date you in a minute.
If any person I know is ever with me when I consider going into a McMenamin’s again, please stop me. Just don’t let me do it. It won’t take much prodding. The only reason I would be considering such torture would be because I was on the verge of passing out from hunger, but even then, encourage me to find some ants or flies to tide me over. It’s not worth it. Remind me that no matter which location I go to or what time of day, the service will be so abysmal that I will want to leave something vile for the server, like a gutted chicken filled with maggots, to let them know just how rotten their service was, and that I won’t be able to do it and will end up tipping 10% or something anyway and then feel grave resentment for having done so. Let me know that the server might just as likely see a gutted, maggot-filled chicken as evidence of my love because the server is quite likely a Satan worshipper. Not much else could explain their nastiness. Maybe it’s working at McMenamin’s, but I’ve never gotten the vibe that the servers suck because of their employer. They don’t seem harried and rushed because of some evil manager or cook hiding in the back flogging them on, pushing them to move faster and thus turn over the tables more quickly. Rather, servers seem proud of their odious attitudes, conspicuous indifference, and reprehensible lack of courtesy. It’s like a badge of honor there. We customers should be grateful they bothered to meander by and notice us. We should thank our lucky stars that grease-spotted menus were left on the tables, and that if we are extra, extra nice, we might get some food-like substances tossed our way. Don’t bother asking to have it prepared as we like it, that’s not the McMenamin’s way. And definitely, definitely, definitely do not go there if you are in any semblance of a hurry. Better yet, order and drink alcohol so you won’t notice just how disgusting the food really is, covered in grease and sauce and too much cheese and peppercorn. Maybe that’s their tactic to sell alcohol. They should call the place McMeanamin’s. I can’t think of a name that adequately describes their awful bar food, but it doesn’t matter because awful bar food isn’t what makes the place special. It’s their amaranthine capacity for treating customers like shit that is McMeanamin’s real badge of honor. Any location. Any day. Any time. Expect the worst service, then multiply it by 14, and you’re about there.
In any case, please. If I won’t listen, show me this post and remind me. I beg you.
I have two observation about eggs from my trip to Europe. Â A couple of days after my arrival in the Netherlands I was dispatched to the grocery store to fetch eggs. Â I could not find them. Â I searched and searched and returned empty-handed. Both Milla and Anne told me the eggs were by the cereal, so the next time I was in the grocery store I looked for the cereal. Â Lo and behold, there on the shelf next to the cereal sat the eggs. They were not in the refrigeration section, which is why I had not located them previously. I had gone around and around to all the refrigerated sections in the store. Â No wonder I hadn’t found them.
This was quite a revelation, these eggs on the grocery store shelf. I have known my mother to toss out entire cartons of eggs because they sat on the counter all day.  What a waste.  I will let her know, and everyone else who might care, that Europeans leave their eggs on the shelf in the grocery store.  There have been no major outbreaks of  Salmonella in the Netherlands (I checked, via the internets, so if the internets can be trusted, this is likely the case), which must mean that leaving eggs out of refrigeration for a while won’t hurt anyone.  I wonder how much money could be saved in the US on refrigeration if eggs were not kept cold.  Or maybe it’s that the US leaves them out longer than the eggs in Europe.  I will have to do some investigating and get back to that one.
I made another egg discovery in Europe. Â You can buy, off the shelf, actual eggs from chickens that are truly free-range. Â I’m not talking about the bullshit US version of free-range where they keep them locked up until they are 5 weeks old, then open a tiny door at the end of a long shed, knowing full well they will never leave that shed until the day they die. Â No. Â I’m talking true free-range from a field chickens who eat bugs and grass and scratch their little feetsies in the dirt. Â I get my eggs true free-range from a field chickens. Â I have to go to a neighbor’s house who has them brought in from a ranch and sells them to willing buyers. Â I pay $5 a dozen, which isn’t horrible considering true free-range eggs at the local farmers markets are usually $10 a dozen. Â The true free-range eggs in Europe were about $3 Euros a dozen, which was the same price as the non-true free-range eggs in Europe. Â Not bad. Imagine that, true free-range eggs sold in the grocery store on the shelf for a moderate price. Â And we’re told it can’t happen here. What a load of dooky (dookie?).
Finally, the absolute best egg discovery I made in Europe was in Spain. Â Every single huevo I ordered in Spain was perfection. They were fried, with the whites completely cooked but not burned, the yellows still runny, and salted. NO PEPPER!! Â Perfect. Â I could not have ordered an egg more to my liking if I tried. Â I have never, I repeat NEVER gotten an egg exactly as I like it at a restaurant in the US. Â It is seemingly impossible here. Â For some reason, either the whites not runny, or the whites not burned, or the yellows still runny, or the just salty part is a little too difficult for cooks here to manage. Â Cooks here also seem to find it nearly impossible, even when asked, to leave off the pepper, which drives me to distraction because I can’t stand pepper and I really can’t stand it on eggs. I don’t send the eggs back for having pepper unless the pepper is so heavy I can barely see the egg, so I’ve had to scarf down peppered eggs on many occasions even when I didn’t want to. Â Now I just rarely eat eggs out because it’s so hard for US cooks to figure them out to my liking. Â But not the Spanish cooks, and I didn’t even SPECIFY!! They just came to me exactly as I like them, every single time I ordered them. Â I loved it. Â Maybe I was a Spaniard in a past life and this is why I like eggs the way they make them there. Â I don’t know.
And another thing…the Spanish eggs, like the Netherland eggs, and like my true-free range eggs here, had the same bright orange, tasty yokes. Â I suspect these Spanish eggs were true free-range as well. Â Eggs that are not truly free-range, including the pretend free-range version in the US, simply do not have these healthy, tasty yokes. Â They are anemic and bleah, with no flavor at all. Â The Spanish eggs were utter perfection, through and through.
Standing in the grocery store aisle, I overheard another customer ask one of the customer service people in produce how to tell if a cantaloupe is ripe. I don’t know, said the clerk. I think you tap on it and if it sounds hollow it is ripe. He was not correct. Well, not completely incorrect, but the method he was offering is definitely not the best method for checking the ripeness of a cantaloupe. This is not the first time I have heard this question asked, and I rarely hear the correct answer.
I grew up on a small farm. Although it wasn’t huge, we grew many things. One of these many things was cantaloupe. In late summer early fall when the sun was still hot, I would run up my parent’s driveway after school, grab a couple of melons, take them into the house, and eat them warm, straight off the vine. There was nothing more sweet and delicious, the sunny orange flesh nearly melting in my mouth. My mother had learned to grow cantaloupes (also known as muskmelons) from another small time grower, who probably learned the same way. Via anecdote, the growth and ripening of the plants traveled to the side of our hill, south facing and perfect for cantaloupes.
The best way to tell if a cantaloupe is ripe is to smell the small circle at the base of the melon where the stem used to be. If it smells sweet and delicious, the melon is ripe and ready to go. The thing about cantaloupes is that once they are taken from the vine, they are only ripe a very short time before they break down and decompose. This means that a lot of time in the stores, none of the melons will have this smell. This is because none of them are ripe. They can’t pick them ripe because they would never make the journey to the store in time. If you find a melon with this sweet smell, eat it within a couple or three days, or it will be moldy before you know it. Although, as is often the case with fruits and vegetables, you can lengthen the time until they are too ripe by putting them into the refrigerator.
The other way to tell a cantaloupe is on its way to ripe is the color. Cantaloupes are covered with funny beige lines that look like sea coral. Underneath, if the melon isn’t ripe, it is a sagey, greenish color. Once it ripens, the entire melon turns beige to match the funny lines. A melon without the sweet smell but colored all over that cantaloupe beige color will be ripe very soon. These ones are your best bet if you aren’t planning to eat your melon right away.
What it is it about thumping that so many people find useful? When melons aren’t ripe, their flesh is denser. With honeydews and watermelons, whose rinds contain lots of water, it is easier to tell when thumping on them whether they are dense or not. Not so with cantaloupes. Their rinds are like burlap and not watery at all. Someone who has handled large numbers of them might be able to tell, but the method is not foolproof and often people end up with cantaloupes that need another few weeks to ripen. Use the smell test–it works every time.
That’s the scoop on cantaloupes. Enjoy!
I have stopped eating most sugar and for the most part, this works just fine. However, there are some nights (like this one), where I long to eat a giant slice of chocolate cake filled with warm, chocolate filling, or banana cream pie, or a brownie, or chocolate mousse, or vanilla cake with thick, white, creamy frosting, or something else with sugar in it.
Pointless ramble of the day:
I have a feeling I might turn into a giant avocado. I have been eating at least one a day for over a month now. They are the perfect snack–they fill me up and kill any carb craving I might have been experiencing, and they are so delicious. Plus they are such a lovely, green color inside; sometimes yellow when not quite ripe enough, all the way to a deep, unripe apple green. Milla and Isabel enjoy them as well. I wonder though, what will become of the three dozen or so avocado pits we have tossed into the shrubbery next to the house, if they will sprout and become mini avocado plants that won’t bloom because it is too cold here, or if they will just die away.
Thai Noon uses the little square cut carrots and peas mix from the frozen section of the grocery store.
‘Nuf said.
My friend locked her keys in a job site house in Multnomah Village. Her spares were at home in Happy Valley. Her husband did not have his mobile phone and was waiting for her in downtown Portland. To make another key would cost $300 because of the kind of car she has. She could not find anyone to help her so she called me. I drove from my house in NE Portland to her house in Happy Valley, then to Multnomah Village to bring her the spare key. In return, she took me to dinner at Koji in downtown Portland, on SW Broadway, between SW Salmon and SW Main.
I have eaten at Koji on NE Weidler. I liked the meal well enough, although I thought it was expensive. I ate it during moving when I had not had a regular hot meal for a few days. It was delicious. The meal in downtown Koji was delicious also. However the salmon was really tough. For the price of that meal, it should have been prepared better.
A long time ago I worked in a fish market. I cut up giant Halibuts that weighed three times as much as I did, using a mallet and a square knife. I filleted Salmon. I cut steaks from Red Snapper. I gutted trout. I also learned to cook fish, and the one thing I learned above all else when cooking fish is to cook it hot and cook it fast, otherwise it gets tough. You can’t cook fish like steak or poultry. Its meat isn’t as dense. If you leave it in the oven to bake like you would land meat, it will be tough.
The salmon at Koji was like this. It had been cooked too long. Either they cooked it earlier in the evening and left it under a heat lamp, or they cooked it too long before bringing it to me. It wasn’t very warm, so I suspect the former is true. In either case, there is no excuse. For the price of that meal and the way that restaurant bills itself, it should know how to prepare salmon.
The rest of the food doesn’t stand out one way or another to me. It was fine, I think. The miso soup was hearty, as miso soups go. My baby liked the rice I gave her.
Oh, one funny thing happened. The server came over and asked if I wanted anything for the baby. I told her she would just have milk. The server said “Oh, we don’t have milk.” “Well, I do!” I told her. It was funny. I will give Koji this, the servers were very attentive. It may have helped that we were the only customers in the place, but that doesn’t negate that they did a good job.
Unfortunately, I don’t recommend Koji. Because the same type of food can be found elsewhere in Portland, including downtown, and also because I have had salmon at other Japanese restaurants just up the street from the downtown Koji whose prices are not as high. The other Koji location on NE Weidler was better than the downtown location, but again, there is another Japanese restaurant only a few blocks away where the food is just as good and it costs less.
I love the Cameo Cafe (8111 NE Sandy Boulevard). It’s kitschy, small, and in a sort of odd location, but the food is delicious and the prices can’t be beat. They always use fresh ingredients. They are only open during the day until 3, so breakfast seems to be the main thing for them, but they also have a delicious lunch menu.
Their specialty is a bread called Strong Bread. I’m not sure why it’s called that. Next time I go in I will ask. It is covered in poppyseeds, and buttery yummy. It is hard to resist. If you’re on a bread-free diet, don’t go there or at least make sure they don’t bring this bread to your table or you’ll be off your diet.
They have a salmon salad covered in fresh veggies and spinach. The salmon is generous and always cooked to perfection. I haven’t been to many restaurants, especially one like this that looks like a truck stop diner, that cooks salmon so well (see the next review I’m planning to do on Koji, for a place that can’t cook salmon).
The decor is odd, but it is unique and fun–sort of garage sale meets diner. For instance, there is a carousel about a foot and a half tall, with lights on it, that sits in the corner, spinning away as you eat. There are photos of Miss Oregon all over the doors. There are fake plants in various locations. The chairs are these metal things with heart-shaped backs. There is a long dining counter and tables along the wall. There is outside seating on the patio and a chicken coop near the front entrance by the street with cute chickens inside.
The service has always been splendid when I’ve been there. All the servers chip in to help. The service is definitely a big reason I like going to this place. If they had terrible service, it wouldn’t be as fun. The place is too small for grousy servers.
I recommend Cameo Cafe. It’s got personality. It’s not the biggest place in the world, so it isn’t the place to go if you’ve got a big party, but fun for a few.
This blog needs something. It’s crapped out in the last year. Gone from a trickle to a drip. Part of it is that I don’t really feel like working out my own bs here anymore. I thought I did. I started doing that again a while back, but it felt weird. The other big reason is that I have an infant and work and having an infant is s full-time job in and of itself without the addition of a job outside the home. Plus, sad but true, I must not be such a full blown artist devoted to my writing because given the opportunity to sleep, I choose sleep, every time. Today I specifically set my alarm to get up earlier to write, so I suppose there might be hope for me yet, but it’s dicey. I have even toyed with the idea of shutting this blog down, but then where would everyone go to bitch about Pure Med Spa, Brite Smile, et al?
So in an effort to breathe new life into the thing, I’m going to use it to post my non-foody opinion about restaurants in Portland and nearby. I eat out way too much, why not use it for something more than a hit on my pocketbook? It can be creative inspiration. Then someday if I ever get enough reviews, I’ll make them into a pamphlet for no one to read. I plan to change the look of the blog too, when I can find the time, but for now, this is it.
First review:Â The Tin Shed, NE 14th and Alberta, in Portland.
The Tin Shed is my daughter’s favorite restaurant, namely because patrons can bring their dogs if they decide to sit on the outside porch. I give The Tin Shed high marks for service. Nearly every time I have gone there the service has been impeccable. I say nearly because once I went there and had a server who visited our table maybe once after taking the initial order, but that was an anomaly.
Last night I ate there with my two daughters (age 9 months and 11 years), my mom, my three-year-old niece, and my dog. The service was fantastic. I’m not sure if this is a regular feature of the restaurant, but it seems like I always get a primary server, and then everyone else really helps out. This was definitely the case last night. We never had to want for drink refills or anything. The server brought the children their food as soon as it was ready, which was great considering the three-year-old wanted to climb on the table and baby was starting to grab everything in sight.
Immediately upon being seated, the server brought our dog a bowl of water. She spilled it minutes later, but the service was still canine thoughtful.
Oregon had 100 degree weather for about five minutes, then as is often the case here, it got cold again (I think it is about 60 degrees out right now). We were seated out on the patio because of the dog (doggie customers must sit at patio seating), and the wind started to blow. We asked management to turn on the heater above our table. They did so, which led to patrons at other tables asking for their heaters to be turned on. The patio toasted up nicely. The server also pointed us to a closet filled with blankets we could use. Now that’s cool (or warm, as the case may be). We were all snuggled up at our table in blankets under a heater in July. Good, old climate change.
The food was delicious. I particularly like a dish called Baby Beluga. There isn’t any beluga in it. It’s rice, avocados, spinach, raisins, and a few other vegetables, with a yellow curry sauce. I get the sauce on the side because it has a pretty good spice kick and I’m a wimp, but on the side, I can tolerate it just fine in smaller amounts.
The children each ordered noodles with butter and Parmesan. The Parmesan was the real stuff, not that powdery, disgusting crap. The noodles were swirly, which the children loved. Good stuff. Mom had the stack sandwich. My daughter’s dad has gotten that before and both he and my mom give it rave reviews.
I only have one small complaint. Our table was next to the entrance, and up on a curb. I tripped on the curb sitting at the table, and my mom actually tripped and fell backwards about five feet into the planter behind her. If she had been holding my baby, both of them could really have been hurt. The host said there was supposed to be a planter there. I suggest they return it there pretty immediately, or they might have a lawsuit on their hands. It’s really quite dangerous.
Actually, I take it back. I have another complaint, although it did not apply last night. Any time I have eaten indoors, the music has been too loud. When music is so loud that conversation is difficult, it’s too loud. Restaurant lately seem to like to play music really loudly. I personally hate this. I find it extremely distracting. I never like it. If I wanted to go to a disco, I would go to a disco. I do not like to shout to my dinner companions, and if I’m eating alone, I like to read, and I don’t like reading in a disco. Perhaps I’m alone in this, but I can’t stand it, and it is one reason I have passed up The Tin Shed on occasion. Other than that and the unsafe curb table, I really like the place and recommend it.
I gave a hungry man an apple yesterday and I keep thinking about it. I don’t want to trivialize it, but I wanted to write about him. I keep seeing him at the other end of the subway car gnawing the apple as if his life depended on it. And maybe it did. I thought of him this morning in my insomniac hours. I thought about the homeless families I read about in the New York Times and I wanted to write and comment about what homelessness is, but that seems so boring and unlikely to change anything. People read me, but no one is going to read what I have to say about homelessness and change anything. I don’t know what would remove the image of that man from my brain. I don’t know that I should remove that image. I just keep thinking about it. So many times I have sat on the subway car and a person comes on and says, Excuse me, Ladies and Gentlemen, apologizes, and then proceeds with their spiel. So many times I have been slightly annoyed by the interruption, yet felt guilty at the same time. I simultaneously realize how close to precarious is my own financial situation, yet I acknowledge that we are nowhere near completely homeless and there are people in our lives who would ensure true homelessness is a most unlikely possibility. I know also how pitiful and useless would be the change in my pocket. And honestly, I am slightly resentful at being asked even though it isn’t fair to feel this way. So I do nothing. But there have been times when I have had food, times before moving to New York, when I would give food to people asking for it. This time I had an apple, he asked for food, why not? He told his sad story and I handed him my apple, then thought nothing more of it until I looked up minutes later to see him devouring that apple like he hadn’t eaten in days. It was ginormous and red and beautifully ripe, a sort of dream apple. It makes me weep to think of his hunger, swallowing the pieces so quickly he could not have had time to enjoy much of its fragrant sweetness. It makes me wonder what would happen if I ever gave into the urge I have had in the past to ask the person to sit down and talk to me. Sometimes I am afraid because the person seems to be mentally ill. I don’t want to be screamed at. Other times I just don’t do it. I’ve never done it. But the urge has been there over and over. I have wanted to stop my car (back when I had and drove a car) and ask the person holding the sign What happened? How did you get here? But I haven’t done it. I wonder if I ever will.
Turgid turkeys, strained into rickety
wooden coffins, exit four-by-four from
a ten-ton hearse. Into the turkey mill:
mutilation, holocaust.
Perspiring hormones, Tom Turkey stares with
one sad eye at a crumbling chimney tower
belching death in putrid smoke, blackening
holiday skies. Annihilating light.
Bodies, bones. None remain unfrozen. With
elaborate precision he’s taken apart;
neck, gizzards tied in a bag between his
ribs, head ground neatly into pink hot dog slabs.
Holiday skies are crowded with turkey souls,
ascending to heaven like deflated balloons.
Imagine Katrina hitting New Orleans not once, not twice, or even three times. Imagine just as one storm flits away, people are dying and starving, levies are bursting, the city is in utter chaos. Then it gets hit again, and again, and again. This is the situation facing Haiti today, and Haiti has even fewer resources and options than New Orleans did when it was hit by Katrina.
We are not hearing enough about Haiti, and what we are hearing only skims the surface of what needs to be discussed. Haiti has been bombarded by storms, several in just the last few weeks. The country has been so deforested in the last five decades that there are no root systems to hold the ground together. Water sits on the soil creating a muddy disaster area. There is no ground in which to grow crops, there are virtually no trees, there is no fuel to heat or cook with, the country is nearly under water, and its cities are cut off from the rest of the world. We need to help, not just the problem today, but the global problems the country faces.
Immediately, people are suffering. They need food, clothes, and shelter from the elements. Then we need to help them with their long term problems. The country needs to be properly reforested. There needs to be an alternative fuel plan so citizens do not have to continue using the remaining forests as a fuel source. Food security needs to be created and developed by addressing unfair trade practices and creating jobs.
For more information on this global problem, see this article in Wikipedia and another that gives some detail on the complexity of Haiti’s problems.
The Customer is Always Right. I used to see this sign in businesses. The theory behind it is a pleasant one, although I usually only saw it invoked as a means for bullies to treat customer service representatives like crap. But today, it seems the idea has gone completely out the window. It’s like stores don’t give a shit anymore if we don’t patronize their businesses; 800 people will be standing in line behind us if we don’t like the service that we get. It’s this way with stores, restaurants, customer call centers, you name it.
I don’t eat out much. For one thing, it’s expensive as hell. For another, I heard Portland has had an outbreak of Hepatitis A and that it is often spread by restaurants. Since I had to get a shot in the butt in 1990 for an e-coli outbreak, and the thought of eating someone else’s poo is just more than I can manage, I avoid restaurants.
But sometimes you’re across town and starving as hell and ready to run people over your blood sugar is so low and you’re willing to eat all the things you wouldn’t normally touch from a mile away because you’re that hungry. That was me today. I recognized intellectually that I felt like a wretch and I didn’t care because I needed food. So I went to Taco Hell. Yeah, I know it’s gross. But it’s cheap and they have this burrito with rice in it and I don’t get cheese so I went. The service was horrendous. The charming “customer service” representative who took my order informed me that the burrito I like “cannot be grilled.”
Huh? I told her when I’ve patronized the Taco Hell by my house they always grill it for me. Well, she sneered, that’s another franchise. Uh, okay. Small problem. When I’m hungry, I don’t care how big a bitch I am, at least when I’m that hungry. And I was that hungry. But I’m working hard on living in the moment and I did not want to be the bully customer who makes a worker feel like shit. I sat there in my car waiting to pull up to the window and thinking how irrelevant all this is and what a waste of my energy, but I was still getting angry. So I decided to be calm, but I still wanted to know why can’t they just grill my fucking burrito?
I pulled up and asked the kind lady how come they couldn’t grill my burrito. She said it is just a store policy. I said that isn’t an answer, it doesn’t tell me why the policy is in place. She said she didn’t know. Across the way a man who was probably a higher up manager because he wasn’t wearing the fancy Taco Hell outfit but instead had on a cheap shirt and tie came over and asked the problem. I started to say there wasn’t a problem, I just wanted to know why my burrito couldn’t be grilled. He said they are not allowed to grill them, company policy. I said that I get them grilled at the Taco Hell by my house. He said they aren’t supposed to. Then the girl helping said something to him and he turned to me and said it was a health issue.
Huh? I said how in the world is it a health issue? He said it’s like giving them a cup and asking them to fill it. It has my germs on it. I was VERY confused at this point. My lack of blood sugar addled brain couldn’t quite muster what was going on. I said how in the world can it be a health issue to grill a freaking burrito? It’s in the restaurant, you put on all the ingredients. I never touch it. He just walked away.
At this point, I didn’t give a shit if my burrito was grilled or not. I just wanted to eat. I sat and waited until the girl handed me the bag. I asked for my water and drove off. I pulled to the side of the parking lot to eat it and it was grilled. Weird.
The main thing I kept thinking about after all this was that had I threatened to take my business elsewhere, they would have said fine, go ahead. We don’t need your two dollars. Companies have gotten so big that the customer isn’t right anymore. Everyone puts up and shuts up about crappy customer service because there is nowhere else to go where it will be any better. This is another byproduct of our one-size-fits-all one dimensional corporate society. Hate waiting on the phone on hold for 20 minutes when you call the phone company? Fine, go somewhere else. And while you’re at it we’ll charge you $200 because you’re in a lopsided bullshit contract. Hate the piece of crap you bought at the Dollar Store? Too bad for you. No refunds. Who cares if the state law allows you to return a defective item to a store with no refunds. You planning to sue us over a dollar? Don’t want to wait in line at a store with no employees? Fine, leave.  Better yet, stand in line for 10 minutes, then leave. See if we care. Want your burrito grilled and we won’t do it? Go fuck yourself. We don’t pay our workers enough to care. We don’t hire enough workers so they’re all pissed off all the time. Go somewhere else. Again, see if we care.
I know this is a cynical bitchy rant. I shouldn’t complain without offering some solution. But I don’t know what the solution is. I go out of my way to avoid patronizing monster corporations, but sometimes it’s inevitable. Sometimes it’s just being so damn hungry I’ll eat a rat in the gutter or Taco Hell. Those are the times those places get my business. I never go to Walmart or McDonald’s ever, and I mean never. They could be the last businesses on earth and I wouldn’t go there. Maybe there isn’t a solution unless enough people say enough, and judging by the lines in SkankDonald’s and Taco Hell or the mass of cars in the SkankMart parking lot, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. In the meantime I guess I’ll rant on my blog.
What is it with servers in upscale restaurants telling patrons that everything is their’s? What is the soup today? Well, I have the red curry muttonchop pecan basil noodle with french onions. You do? Really? Did you get that mutton yourself or did you have someone do it for you? And tell me, is bread offered with the meal? Well, no. I do not offer bread. What is that? Do they want us to think that they are the ones in the back preparing the meal, like we’re having some kind of personal relationship with this person or something? We’re supposed to pretend that the kitchen doesn’t exist and assume it’s all created out of thin air by some supercillious server?
And what is up with the attitude? Are they trying to act like an ass as a means to intercept my acting like an ass? Do they think that if they treat me with a superiority complex then perhaps I won’t roll mine out? Get over yourself. You’re doing your job. I’m buying some food and perhaps enjoying some company. End of story. Stop with the attitude already.
Finally, the food. Why is chicken noodle soup a “chicken broth basted pasta with basil and onion”? Uh no. Chicken noodle soup. Call it what you want. Charge fourteen times what it’s worth if you want to, it’s still chicken noodle soup!
Status anxiety in restaurants is the most annoying kind. Customers go in and treat the wait staff like crap because they are servers. Servers treat the customers like crap because they want the customers to know how busy and important their restaurant is. Restaurants cater to customers who believe they are busy and important because of how much money they have or the job that they do. All of it is so damn annoying and obvious. It makes me want to scream.
One time, shortly after graduating from law school, I was eating at a restaurant with a law school friend. While we were there, a law school alum and acquaintance who had been hired by one of the big ten firms in town came over to say hello. He flipped his business card at us. It was so pretentious, I had to wonder what he wanted to prove. He literally flipped it, holding it in two fingers. My friend and I discovered after leaving the restaurant that the place had just that week been voted one of the “Top Eats” in town and was a place to “See and be seen.” Getting a table there was supposed to be a feat in and of itself. Oh, okay. Business card now makes sense. Unfortunately, we were not duly impressed, we were only confused and thought it was weird. How had we gotten a table? Was it because my friend had an Australian accent? Did we give off “lawyer vibe” in our jeans and sweaters and lawyers were customers the restaurant wanted? We had no idea. That’s how it is with us not on the radar types. We had gotten a table without even trying at a restaurant where getting a table was apparently a difficulty and we had zero clue. I want to stay off the radar. I want to go somewhere and eat food because it tastes good and the company I’m with is enjoyable. I don’t want to concern myself with how busy and important the restaurant is or how impressive I am.
I ate at a restaurant today that inspired this bit of restaurant philosophy. The server was friendly until she discovered we were not ordering large quantities of food, appetizers, an entree, a dessert, and wine. It felt to my friend and me like she made an assumption about us because her attitude towards us changed after we ordered small meals. She called everything hers and the food all had pretentious names. Our order wasn’t exactly as we had asked for and she appeared at our table as infrequently as she could get away with. As this occurred, I enjoyed the company of my friend and thought briefly about this experience. She doesn’t know how much money I have or who I am. What if I had an important job (as defined by American culture) and lots of money? What if I frequented restaurants on a regular basis? Whatever her reasons for treating us like we were beneath her and for giving us terrible service, I will not go back to that restaurant anytime soon and I did not tip more than ten percent.
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 