I had a little daydream today. I was a father and my daughter and I were grocery shopping. She was sitting in the cart and, when we stopped before a shelf, I'd sing to her a parody of the old children's song "Jenny Jenkins". The lyrics as they are go like this:
Oh my dear, oh my dear
Will you wear yellow, Jenny Jenkins?
No, I won't wear yellow
For I'd never get a fellow
I'll buy me a foldy-roldy,
tildy-toldy
Seek-a-double, use-a-cozza roll to find me
Roll, Jenny Jenkins, roll
Firstly, as is obvious, their father would be a nutcase. So it follows that any woman who would procreate with me would also be off-kilter. Our children would get all the genes in the pool that cause goofiness. Secondly, I'd be reading to them the nanosecond they popped out of the womb. Seriously, I can just see it: my 1 week-old progeny is trying to sleep in a crib and there I'll be, sitting next to it reading some Shakespeare-for-kids book in a hushed tone. It'd probably be best if I stayed away from Macbeth, though. Don't wanna end up like poor Banquo. But it would be just like the Fates to make me a victim of patricide.
The gumbo is nearly gone so I'm making chicken souvlaki tomorrow. And a different version than I normally make - this one calls for youghurt in the marijinade. (Greek readers should feel free to be critical here.)
Ya know, when I worked in a kitchen, we cooks tended to pervert the names of things. For instance, Chicken Cacciatore became Chicken Statutory. Fajitas were Frigid Ritas. Beef Stroghanoff was "Beef Stroke Me Off". Any juices left in a pan after cooking meat was referred to as "jizz". Then cooking oil became jizz as well. "Breasts", as in chicken breasts, were always "titties" or "breastesses". I'd be prepping a roast for the oven and slap it. Kias would then start whoopin' and making lascivious noises. Loins - well, that one's obvious. Hot dogs were called "tubesteaks".
The first day I learned how to cook - no, the first day all I did was wash the steam jackets - it was the second day. I was going to make hashed browns when the lead cook comes up to me and says, "Lay down some greeeeeze there boy!". He then proceeded to pour enough canola oil on the griddle to give a rhinoceros heart failure.
There were many times when we'd have to employ measures to resuce spoiled food. One time, we had a case of chicken quarters that had just gone bad. You know, they had that layer of foul-smelling slime on them. So I soaked them in water laced with lots of white vinegar. This became known as giving the "ol' vinegar douche" with douche sometimes pronouced as "dooshay".
One summer, we did a pseudo-catering gig in which we fed a few hundred teenagers who were in town for a basketball camp. (I worked for a private dormitory they opened a very small and very not-up-to-code kitchen in another property the company owned.) We were serving tacos on this occasion and ran out of ground beef. So I called back to the main kitchen so they'd ship more to us. The voice on the other end was The Pollack and he announced that there was no more ground beef in the house but that taco "meat" would be forthcoming. I waited nervously as I had no idea what he could be sending. It was like being in a western knowing you had to be out in street at high noon for a showdown. Finally the truck arrived and with it, hotel pans of taco stuff. Cautiously, I peeled back the foil on one. An odd, yet somehow familiar smell wafted around me. The usual chili powder/cumin scents were there but so was...sage. I dug around into the stuff and found what appeared to be a small bit of breakfast sausage. Then hot dog particulate matter precipitated from the mix. The Pollack had thrown any and all leftover meat products into the buffalo chopper, added seasoning, and christened the stuff taco meat. Hot dogs, brats, breakfast sausage, ostrich meat - he had cleared out the coolers. I ate vegetarian tacos for lunch...
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