reverendtmac

That would be the homemade chorizo that I purchase every Saturday morning at the farmer's market. Come rain, shine, blizzard or blinding hangover, I haul my carcass out of bed before nine, 'cause they're gone by ten-thirty...and a week without chorizo is like a week without sunshine, golf, or an honest, affectionate smile.

I found an entry on Wikipedia with the history and a picture...the important part: "Several communities claim to be the origin of poutine, including Drummondville, Quebec and Victoriaville, Quebec. The most popular tale is the one of Fernand Lachance, from Warwick, Quebec, which claims that poutine was invented in 1957, when a client ordered fries and cheese curds in a bag. Lachance would have exclaimed 'ça va faire une maudite poutine' ("it will make a hell of a mess"), hence the name. The sauce was allegedly added later, to keep the fries warm for longer. In fact, linguists have found no occurrence of the word poutine with this meaning earlier than 1978." As for cheese curds, I guess cheddar or gouda's traditional. Places around here use mozzarella. And I shouldn't have read this with the hangover I'm nursing, 'cause now I'm going to get one

Big ups to the footlong meatball Subway atrocity; that's my go-to hangover feed, with way too many green peppers and some onions. As for poutine...well, there's a version of it that I've only ever seen in one place - the Irving Big Stop in Salisbury, New Brunswick - that involves a dinner plate covered in fries, cheese, gravy, hamburger, and onions. It's pretty much the only food I've ever eaten that I've felt guilty about... Todd - oh, and stopped for every time I'm through

It's only -6C here right now, but we're about to get whumped by a big ol' storm (watch the Colts/Pats game for a preview) - so I've got a nice lil' chicken roasting with a tray of onions, garlic, and potatoes coated in olive oil n' thyme underneath. Nigella Lawson's recipes for both... ...but this storm thing better be a joke, 'cause I'm out of beer and whisky and I can't even buy any on Sunday on this dirthole island

It'd be chicken, sausage and shrimp gumbo, fresh baked bread, and a two-four of Keith's. If there's a lot of folks, I'd probably put together five or ten pounds of moules marinieres (or my riff thereupon), too - or maybe the Thai mussles my buddy Newell always asks/bribes/forces me to make (from the Ray's Boathouse cookbook; they're outstanding). Good single-malt and a Romeo Y Julieta Primera #2 for pudding.

We've discussed this exact idea at school - but we decided upon "Skanks and Shanks"... (...which, now that it's written down, lends a certain female max-security pen air to the whole thing. Perfect.)

I hesitate to submit this - I'm sure it'll cause an ungodly world of shit at Christmas if I get too much iced vodka into me and blurt it out - but since my Mom's family is Ukranian R to the C, you know we've got a money perogy recipe...so here it is, kindly re-written from the original 40's looseleaf by my brother. (As a warning: he's been reading Bourdain.) Lundy Family Perogy Receipe Dough 1 egg 1 cup warm water 1 tsp salt flour as needed (~3 cups -- enough to make a stiff dough) 1 tsp cooking oil Fillings It warms my heart that the family perogy tome has three options for fillings. Of course, the only real option is the first one, and you'd be a fool and a communist to have the nerve and the money to introduce options two or three. But I'll include them for the sake of posterity. 1. mashed potato w/ dry curd cottage cheese The original. Don't forget to season the filling aggressively, and not to overfill. That's why grandma's always taste so fuckin' good. I figured that out over the summer when I watched her make them the last time. - variations - The actual card says you can use cheddar cheese or fried onions and bacon and through them in with the mashed potatoes. That said, you're a bright boy and can figure that out - and we both know that's just a bunch of bullshit anyway. 2. Cottage cheese and egg yolks 3. Well cooked, drained sauerkraut (my note: ...holy shit, there's other fillings? With my grandma and my ma, it's potatoes and dry curd cottage cheese and salt n' pepper. That's it.) Assembly Mix wet and dry dough ingredients together and work well until a ball of dough is formed. Kneed until smooth on floured board, then give the dough at least 15 minutes to relax before rolling. Now roll out the damn thing over and over again, turning and rolling until the amount of shrinkage disapates. Spread the dough out into a sheet about 1/8" thick. Cut out circular shapes about finger's length in diameter using a round cookie cutter, knife, or whatever you have handy. Fill them up (remembering not to get greedy like your lovely mother), wet one half of the outer rim with some water, and crimp the outer edges. Congratulations, you made your first perogi. As your Fordist line continues, you can leave them a floured board or cookie sheet, covered by a kitchen towel until you're ready to cook them. Cooking Similar to fresh pasta. Take a big pot and fill it with boiling water. Salt. Add perogies. They will sink. Gently stir to ensure they don't stick. When they rise to the surface of the water, they are finished, but you could let them sit for another minute or two with no harm done. This receipe calls for a touch of oil to be added to the cooking water to prevent sticking, and it wouldn't do any great harm. If you're having problems with sticking, you probably overloaded the pot. This is finished at this point, and are excellent with onion butter (Uh, minced onions fried in copious amounts of butter) or sour cream). But as anyone who knows anything knows, perogies are much better when they're pan-fried. Add some onion butter to a hot, non-stick skillet. Add cooked perogies and pan-fry until golden brown and crisp on both sides. Serve with more onion butter. Ukrainian heaven. -=- Todd, who pretty much has the coolest family ever

On every table I sat down at in New Orleans, it seemed like I had my choice of Louisiana, Crystal and Tabasco - and I quite quickly came to grab the Crystal every single time. It's the vinegar. Tabasco's just too much rocket fuel for every day eatin' to my taste buds. My roommate, OTOH, uses the habenero Tabasco with a fair amount of regularity...

My friends and I do Simpsons usually, too. "Preeeeetty weak, Milhouse..." Kelly's fave: "This tastes like someone personally spit in every fifth (food under consumption)", immediately followed by Newell or myself: "I like those odds!" Of course, that's in the classy joints. Otherwise, we'll take eunny's cue (classic, btw) - dive into the gutter and plow right on through the cement...

The blended drinks? I quote Allison, perhaps the most wonderful of the baristas at my old 'Bucks, as she took an immersion blender to a vat of what looked like King Kong's sperm bank donation: "Todd, promise me you'll never order one of these. Ever. Promise me." Never have...

Put me in the fan column. In my recent past life, I lived in Regina, Sasakatchewan; I worked as the general IT god for a building materials retailer. Like most IT jobs I've worked, if I wanted to get anything done, I'd have to get to my desk before everyone else did so I got a good hour or hour and a half of work done before the phone started ringing. Not a single one of the local coffee houses thought that 6:30AM was an appropriate time to be open, but the single, solitary Starbucks did. Product-wise, it's not great; hey, it's Starbucks. But their lack of turnover ensured that my quad grande Americano would be slipped in between other drinks and waiting for me by the time I reached the counter, and it was served with a grin. When you're going in to face 200 grumpy users every damn day without the budget to make them smile, you learn to take your blessings where you can find them. I'm now in a city that doesn't even have a Starbucks; yes, they still do exist. (We won't talk about whether Charlottetown's a city or not). The local coffee houses are shit; the espresso will have grounds in it, will be burnt, and is horrifically overpriced ($2.75 for a doubleshot - my quad americano was $3.10. Want a quad at the only place open before school? $5.50). But the alternative - Tim Horton's - is too dire to contemplate... I'm a fan 'cause it could be a hell of a lot worse.

McAuslan's St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout is my favorite Canadian beer by a country mile; only ever had it on tap a couple of times, at the Lunar Rogue in Fredericton. Have to stop in there now that I'm at least within driving distance. I pretty much lived on Unibroue and Big Rock when I was out west - Blanche de Chambley and Black Amber Ale, respectively. And of course, the backup's Keith's. Prince Edward Island surprises me with the variety of the big brews they bring in; I'm currently whittling at a case of Carlsberg, which I couldn't get in Saskatchewan. But I can't get my Big Rock, and I don't know if they carry Unibroue or not. Their single malt prices are so screamingly low that I can't resist buying that instead...

Handling things through the kitchen is the wintertime method I use, now that I'm older. I want my knives in my hands; I want to do a lot of chopping, a lot of meez. It's comforting to me because my hands are occupied with something that, if I stop paying attention, can make me bleed. It demands my attention, and that means I have to put whatever's eating at me on the back burner for a while. I make a lot of Cajun food when I'm feeling like that. (Summertime has always been "hit range balls until hands bleed while smoking a pack of Marly Reds", and apart from the smoking, I don't see that changing. Same potential for distraction, and usually there's less blood.)

I've been typing and erasing, typing and erasing, and I guess it all boils down to this: you're all exceptionally kind. And talented; I loved every piece that was entered. It's good to know that there are people all over the world who had their own version of that broiled redfish. Thanks very much...

The season's quickly ending here, so this might be the last time I get to have one of these perfect breakfasts during my round... Clockwise, from upper left - Aiming fluid (Macallan 12), consciousness enhancer (quad shot americano), my handicap card, the requisite cat turds, muscle lubricant (1-3, depending on day) - and in the middle, my pellet of choice, inscribed as always with a cheerfully profane message of encouragement for my playing partners...

As a cost-conscious student (can't hardly put 'starving', I've budgeted well for decent food!) - a bottle of Macallan 25. You could pair that with a friggin' Snickers and it'd be heaven...

Today was kinda cold and miserable, so I wanted something that'd be all greasy and warm and gut-stickish...so I hacked Bourdain's recipe for rillettes (cubed the wee pork shoulder I bought yesterday, but instead of just the nice quiet bouquet garni, I threw in tons of garlic, basil, hot sauce and piles of black pepper) - let that putter through the afternoon while I did homework. Then I forked it into shreds, dumped it on plastic bread and absolutely drowned it in homemade sauce (Frank's red hot, butter, bit of honey mustard, more red hot). Had two with a couple Oland Exports, and I'm now giving serious consideration to going to bed at 7:20. Gym in the morning, obviously

dammit - mods, could you dissapear this one? Thanks... Todd, loving his unreliable wireless network since September 2004

I love simple questions... Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, November 1, 2003. My three best friends, two of our caddies, and myself, obviously...and while I could tell you exactly what I ate or drank that night, I'm still searching for the words to describe how I felt.

My local Starbucks comps me my quad americano every couple of weeks or so; the bar my bro and I frequent pours us *really* stiff drinks (as in 2.5 ounce 'singles' of Talisker) and comps us anything non-alcoholic. But I think my favorite perk is at Starbucks again - if they notice me waiting in a long line, they sneak my quad in and have it waiting for me at the register by the time I get there. (This does me no damn good on a day I want an iced tea, but those days are few and far between anyway )

I've always assumed that life is a film noir for all five senses, and your job as the director is to get the best shots you can out of the material you're given. Well, I remember lots of quick shots about and around New Orleans; tight closeups of a seahorse half the size of your pinky's fingernail at the aquarium, side frames of a four year old looking up at a Rodin statue and saying "He's pretty, Mama - is that Jesus?", the tint of the blush of a stunning young lady after I caught her watching me playing pool at Coop's instead of paying attention to her rapid-fire hand-talking dinner companion, calling a 15 foot putt at City Park and dropping it, the subtle enveloping mouthfeel of the best mac and cheese on this here earth...but the truth? The shot I can't shake for love or money is in this dream I had. The last time I dreamt like that, I met the girl within the month. Sasha, my looper at Bandon Dunes, she of the doe eyes and the swivel hips and the sailor's mouth. The dreams I manage to remember take place in some film-noir sepia-toned version of Saint John's uptown area...crumbling brick buildings with peeling two-story ads painted on the side, hazy skies...Prince William Street shot for L.A. Confidential. The important part: I'm powerwalking in a hell of an obvious hurry to get somewhere to do god knows what, slicing through the crowd like an NFL-caliber draft pick at running back, and out of nowhere she grabs me - first with the eyes, then by both shoulders - and says "Remember me," before smirk-smiling and spinning back into the crowd. Three weeks later, she walks up to the first tee at Bandon Dunes, and I remembered. New Orleans is the kind of place that makes you dream and makes you remember...I'm convinced of that above all else. It's a culture that celebrates its poverty, the fact that they survive everything. Scars are not hidden. And then they shock you by being so unexpectedly cultured, showing appreciation for art, for music, and most of all, for food. Surface means nothing around here, which is good, 'cause if you judged the place on the surface, you'd never come back. My brother Justin and I are still laughing about the tourist literature...about how early they'd have to had come to Bourbon Street to take the pictures that don't show puke, piss, blood or beer - or how the pictures don't show the barricades and three trucks of cleanup personnel that had to scrub that particular part of it. Couldn't help noticing that most pictures don't show street level at all - a lot of sunsets through balcony railings, tight shots of horse-drawn carriages, plenty of restaurant interiors. The smells assault you, literally...it's hotter than a two-peckered owl, and the Quarter's garbage removal infrastructure isn't exactly the finest on the planet. Paris if everyone stopped giving a shit, is how Justin described it. Walk down Royale Street at nine in the morning and you'll see five, six, nine garbage cans in front of each tourist trap, every last one overflowing...a veritable cornucopia of filth. Cigar smoke hangs everywhere, some of it remnants of the previous night's debauchery, most of it fresh... ...and then you walk another block and by another joint and you're hit again, and just as solidly...but it's nothing but garlic and onion, red beans, the salty assault of fresh oysters. Warm bread, laced coffee. The tourist joints are just that - tourist joints, fully interchangeable with the shitholes that overcharge folks on vacation from Vancouver to Paris to Tokyo. Every store seems to be offering five t-shirts for 25 bucks, usually variations on the theme of Getting Slobberingly Drunk on Bourbon Street. Barbecue aprons seemed to be huge as well, and I'll admit, I was heavily tempted to buy this fire-engine red one that said "Don't make me poison your food". Actually, though, what I really remember was the air conditioning. I'm convinced you can draw a socio-economic parallel between how cold a place was down there and the level of cash it took to shop there comfortably. We walked into one mall after I saw a Starbucks sign (embarrassingly, the best coffee I had on the entire trip was from there) and...shit, it had to be 64 degrees in there. I mean, it felt like the walk-in at your local Italian joint. So I look at the stores - Gucci, Kenneth Cole, Saks Fifth Avenue, Brooks Brothers. Then I think back and remember that the places where normal people shop had normal people temperatures. But the thing that really kicked me in the ass was the places aspiring to be rich - the ones that were straining to appeal to the heavily moneyed tourist class and failing miserably. They'd have the a/c on full fucking tilt, and the nice person behind the counter would be shaking like it was a Saskatchewan winter, and the cash register just doesn't ring. Guess rich folks don't have much call for a shirt that says "Fuck You You Fucking Fuck - new orleans la" on it. Now, I don't have to tell you that the best places to eat in town aren't the tourist joints. This is basic. But to firmly illustrate the point: the tourist lit will tell you to get 'authentic' bengiets and a cafe au lait at Cafe Du Monde. That was, authentically, the worst cafe au lait I've ever tasted. Instant coffee with skim dumped in; chalky and horrifying. (The bengiets weren't half bad.) The tourist lit will tell you that Brennan's is one of the finest places to get a meal in the whole of New Orleans, and while it was alright - damn good at times, pitifully average at others - they're wrong. I had four meals while I was down that kicked all unholy hell out of that, and for 1/5th of the cost. Screw the trout amandine - give me the red beans n' rice omelette down at Mother's, or the broiled redfish with mac n' cheese at Jack Dempsey's. And then, we had the bars. My favorite bar on the planet is Tom's Little Havana in Halifax, just because it involves a comfortable barstool, quiet tunes and a good pour...the whopping total of none of which is available on Bourbon Street, or in any of the tourist dives. But, in one of those beautiful twists of fate, it was in one of those very same traps that Justin and I found our salvation. Her name's Allison, and she works the tire swing bar at (brace yourself) Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, just off the back of the French Market down on Decatur (pronounced DEE-cater - yeah, I know) Street. Since I always lived by the rules that They Who Buy The Booze Call The Shots, we're heading there so me everlovin' ma can get a margarita into her. Fuck knows why they'd pick a chain, when I'm sure there are decent margs to be purchased all over hell's creation down there, but...well, "they had to learn" was my mindset, and see above re: booze purchaser choosing point of dispensation. So I walked into that imitation Key West pastel-tinted hellhole, and had my ears assaulted by some fella most of the way into his second midlife crisis, sing-song babbling about...well, he didn't know what the holy hell he was singing about, I'm sure, so my chances of working it out were somewhere between slim and fuck all. I immediately headed upstairs, in the hopes that he'd be at least drowned out a bit by the floorboards. The elevator opened (couldn't find the stairs in the place to save my life), and I walked out into this...well, god. Maybe dad got a picture. It's a regular bar, right? Loads of hooch behind, plus the requisite blenders and taps, but instead of barstools, they've hung tires from the ceiling so they face hole-up...they've added a bit of padding under your quads and for your back, but it's the tire swing you had as a kid. Normally I'd have heel-spun and walked out - this is the dictionary definition of the Anti-Tom's - but I happened to glance up at the TV just in time to see some of ESPN's coverage of the 2004 World Series of Poker...and therefore, I'm going to blame Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and his mastery of pot-limit Omaha as the reason I sat down. Allison, she looked at me and expected...well, god knows. Margarita of some flavor, probably, they only make like a million different kinds there. I had dressed as non-tourist as I could, but the family hadn't. Anyway, I got an awful big grin when I ordered Maker's, double, neat. "Oh, GOD, I wish I could have one with you," she said, pouring me a triple at least. Just ordered a Jack and coke, and then my 'rents found their way up and ordered their alcoholic abortions. Mom and Dad had their one drink and headed back for the hotel...the kid and I figured we'd sit back and have another...and eventually, once the place quieted down a bit, Allison had time to talk. She'd been running back and forth to a birthday party in the room directly behind us, but they'd finally managed to pack all fifteen of themselves out the door. Found out she was a lot like everyone else I'd met; originally from somewhere else, but had lived there for five years now...and that when she drank, she didn't drink at Jimmy Buffett's. (Shocking, I know.) She gave us the name of the dive across the street - Coop's. Burn that into your brain, kids. Coop's on Decatur, directly across from Jimmy Buffett's. Justin and I went there the next night, and it was like we were home. The place was fire-violation crowded for dinner, and it took like five minutes to get a goddamn beer, but they were understaffed and overpacked and trying as hard as they could...and it had a jukebox with everything from Iggy Pop to Hank Senior to Guided By Voices to the Pogues and of course, the Man In Black himself, and it was full of locals relaxing in their work clothes (a who's who of the various spots deeper in the Quarter), had an off-kilter fifty-cent pool table in the back...saw the cook himself bussing tables and delivering food, full tattoo sleeves of spiderwebs and checkerboards...a shockingly impressive wine list, and buck-fiddy Dixie's... And Just and I fired some Wilco and some U2 and some Stones and some Cash on the jukebox and kicked the everloving snot out of each other at pool and smoked our new American brands of choice (his Pall Malls, my Nat Shermans) and nailed beers and caught the eye of the aforementioned sweet young thing on a first date going horribly, horribly wrong, by the way she kept looking over at us. I glanced up from the table when I should have been concentrating on a shot and caught her lip-synching along to When Love Comes To Town, and when our eyes met I grinned and I nodded...and I'm sure she blushed so hard she turned the roots of that lovely brown hair auburn. We closed the place and staggered out drunk and happy, maybe finally starting to understand what folks see in this town. Now we just had to figure out how to make Mom and Dad understand that. The best story of all - like all my best stories of all - started on the golf course. Saturday, before we left, was kind of a free day, nothing really planned...but you have to understand my father. He HAS to have a plan. Needs to be doing something at all times, has no concept of relaxation. Just and I handled this earlier in the week by laying down the ground rules; we'd meet them for one or two things a day, but otherwise we'd hang on our own. This helped us avoid the inevitable horseshit we didn't want to participate in (bus tours of the city is the standout there; Just and I went to the D-Day museum instead) but we got to hang out together at times, too (Brennan's, for example). So when Pops pressed us for a plan for Saturday, I said "We're going golfing at City Park." City Park is a four-course muni dead in the middle of New Orleans; fairly typical golf, discounting the heat index that hovered around 103 or so...but with that heat, you get on for $13. So Just and I rented some sticks and proceeded to play. Anyway, on the third tee, we were waiting, again, for the threesome ahead of us...and Walt walked up. Walt's a house framer, lives about 20 miles out of NO on the Baton Rouge side. My height, but the kind of frame built out of manual labor - probably got 20 on me, and all muscle, too. Got an interesting swing, lots of wrist, and an honest one, too - no delusions of how far he can hit the ball with the different clubs. Tends to go long. We talked a bit, and as the three ahead of us finally got out of range, I said "Hey, listen, you want to play with us?" Well, I don't know how often two skinny white kids have ever asked a big black guy to join up down there in the Dirty South, but you could tell that it wasn't often...and he said sure, and proceeded to beat Just and I, ball down. I'm convinced of it. Boy could hit. Couldn't putt worth a shit. And by the end of the round, we were gettin' on together really well, laughing a lot...and he says "Listen - where you boys been eatin'?" So we tell him, and get nods of approval for Mother's on Poytras and findin' Coop's...and he says that his brother in law is meetin' him here after the round, and they're gonna go for a bite to the best spot in New Orleans - y'all wanna come? I say sure - the folks are pickin' us up after the round, and I'm sure we'd all love to go. And we end up...on the other side of the Quarter. The bad side. Bulletholes in the buildings, long stares from the locals, stores advertising fast cash for car titles...and we pull up to an above-ground bunker. No outside windows, just a few beat-up concrete steps to a iron-clad door. And we walk in, and it takes our eyes a few seconds to adjust to the sudden dark... ...and all I see is this gargantuan tray of fried catfish come out of the kitchen, served up by a waitress who is honest to Christ named Flo and looks like Mimi from the Drew Carey show with only slightly better makeup... Walt and Eric, his brother in law...they did not lie. Jack Dempsey's. Best. Meal. Ever. I watched my brother knock down - no word of a lie - a steak, two lobsters, a bowl of gumbo and a bunch of fries. More impressively, I watched my mother knock down about a pound of broiled redfish, oysters and shrimp, a bowl of mac and cheese (which was...oh, god, I don't even know HOW I'm gonna knock that dish off, but I'm gonna learn, dammit) - and go back for cheesecake. My mother's 5'3" and about 105, folks. I myself did justice to a pound of broiled redfish, some of the aforementioned mac and cheese, a couple Dixies...it was so perfect and so fun, and one of the best memories I've got is the grin on Eric's face as he taught my brother how to properly lay the bricks to a lobster. He watched my brother attack that bastard mouth-first and laughed...just filled the room, low and booming, and he slapped him on the shoulder and said "You could eat at my place anytime." Put it on your list of places you gotta eat before you die; this summer or any other time. Unforgettable. Dad, unprompted, as we're driving back to the hotel: "Guess that's why you need to meet the locals, huh?" I just smiled, me. -=- That shot I was talking about? She's my height, maybe a little shorter, maybe a little taller; close, in other words. Brunette. Shoulder-length hair, kinda curly. Heart-shaped face, narrowing to a blunted point. High cheekbones. A total jock, that much is obvious...the kind of woman that runs for shits and giggles, not out of some sort of misplaced guilt for sneaking that last cookie. I had to guess, I'd say she probably outdrives me by ten yards. Dresses simply...white tank, jeans. No jewelry, no rings, no bullshit. We're walking through that same area of the dream-state Saint John, obviously at the end of our first date; no PDA's or handholding, but the body language read 'together' to anyone who cared to look...that same nervous electricity is in the air, too. Sparks. We're both immediately comfortable with saying nothing at all, just breathing, walking, being around each other. I'm stealin' glances like a girl in a dive watching a fella play pool, and I'm getting caught and don't care... We reach...her car, her apartment, I don't know which, but it's obvious that this is the stopping point...and instead of the long exhales and controlled nervousness, she stands in front of me, grins and says "We've both had way too much fuckin' garlic for this, but..." And she wraps her arms around my neck, closes her eyes, and drops this...this Hiroshima-class bomb on my lips. Then hits me with a backup kiss, just in case the first one didn't take, I guess. "Remember me," she said, trailing a hand across my cheek before turning and walking away, the barest hint of a black ink tattoo peeking out from a shoulder blade... That's New Orleans, kids...a right hand and a kidney shot to all five senses, a memory you can't remember to forget. That's what I end up talking about this summer - that's the story that needs to be told. That's what I ate this summer. Oh - and I'll tell you her name when I meet her... (sorry about the boxing, but it's the only way I could hold the tabs) Todd - why yes, that clang you heard IS a gauntlet being thrown down

The bro and I knocked together a bunch of different dishes this week...but the best was easily the big pot of red beans and rice. And then the red beans and rice omelette I had the next night with some nice dark rye toast

Toasted rye, leftover red beans and rice (fridge temperature - important so it'll hold together on the bread!) with a little fresh onion and chili pepper cut into it. Cheese is optional. I am not proud of this.

1. Flat ginger ale; if that stayed down, buttered white toast or soup. Kraft Dinner if I asked for it. 2. Hell, no. 3. Only the toast, oddly enough. Which usually involves me needing to go get a loaf of plastic bread because this is the only time I ever want it, saying the hell with it, and barricading myself on the couch with blankets, the remote and whatever whisky's in the house. 4. Chicken and sausage gumbo. Jack Daniels, if they can handle it. 5. Probably not...maybe my own?