February 8th, 2010

Consider the Sauce

Let me just start by saying that fast food is gross. It’s greasy and bad for you. And I never eat it. I wouldn’t dream of setting foot in a McDonald’s or an Arby’s or even a Chick-Fil-A, ever…. I rarely even eat meat.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way: I eat at Chick-Fil-A all the time. I love it. I especially love their trademark condiment/slice of heaven, “Polynesian Sauce.” Every single thing they serve there can be slathered with Polynesian Sauce and it will only taste better — the fries, the wraps, the salads, the paper liner on the tray.

And they know they’ve got a good thing going on there. You know they know. They must. What I’d like to know is: why are they stingy, old misers when it comes to giving it out?

While the ketchup, the mustard, and the mayonnaise are widely available, next to the napkins and the straws, you have to ask your cashier for Polynesian Sauce. They keep it in some mysterious nook under the counter, as if it’s produced by specially-trained artisans who are crouching behind the deep fat fryers carefully combining rare ingredients before lovingly placing their creation into those little packets and hermetically-sealing them one-by-one, and who knows how much longer these masters will be around, practicing their craft? And therefore this sauce must be hidden from the world and then rationed out shrewdly. Yes, when a customer asks for “some Polynesian sauce” — with a look on his face not unlike the look a jonesing crack addict gives his dealer — we must hand him but one packet!

That’s right! If you’re lucky they hand you two, but that’s still ludicrous! Crack dealer, Chick-Fil-A cashier, we both know the deal with Polynesian Sauce: 1) it is delicious and 2) my order entitles me to an unlimited quantity of it, free of charge. I ordered the number one and I would like to proceed to my table and drizzle everything with a drippy, gooey, 1/2″ thick layer of tangy gel that will saturate the bun of my sandwich so thoroughly that I will barely be able to pick it up without it sliding out of my hands which, incidentally, I will need 50 napkins to keep clean during the course of the meal.

I suppose I am only complaining because I will no longer just straight-up ask for more sauce.

This is because, as that description I just gave probably conveys, when someone is a fanatic about a particular type of sauce and they get a hold of a large amount of it, it turns their dining process into a borderline-disgusting spectacle. I can’t be that guy anymore. I mean, I most certainly still am that guy, but I don’t want the Chick-Fil-A person to know.

Also, the process of getting more P-sauce just never seemed to go smoothly. After I’d receive my meal and make an initial request for sauce, harried cashiers would often toss a packet on the counter in front of me, and then immediately scamper off to tend to the fries or whatever, meaning I’d have to flag down another employee to get some more. Then there are some Chick-Fil-As (usually the ones in or around college campuses, where the clientele will come in droves, devouring any food item they can get their hands on and making a huge mess in the process) that just refuse to give out more than one packet of sauce. Or, there were times when the person behind the register would ask me how many additional packets I wanted and I would say “three” and they would look at me, utterly shocked, and announce “Three!?!” so loud that everyone around could hear. The very last time I simply requested more sauce I had an inexplicable feeling that there was going to be a full-blown “incident.” Perhaps something like:

Cashier: “More Polynesian Sauce? Sure. How many packets? Three!?! Um…alright. [Under her breath:] What is he gonna do with that much sauce? [Talking to me again:] Oh, I don’t have that many up here. Hold on, I’ll have to ask my manager to get some from the back.” [Yelling over to her manager, who is busy at another register:] “Alice! Hey Alice! I need more Polynesian Sauce up here. I got a customer who wants four packets. It’s wiped my supply out.”

Manager: “Four!?! Who in the world uses four packets of sauce?”

Cashier (shrugging): “It’s what this guy wants.”

Manager: “Sigh. Well, sit tight a minute, I’ll have to go get the key to the sauce room from my office. [To the crowd behind me in line:] Sorry everyone, we’re going to have to cease transactions at both registers until we get this guy’s sauce needs straightened out.”

Crowd (somehow transformed into an angry mob with pitchforks and torches): “Kill the sauce-hog!”

So I’m done with it.

It’s enough to make me just quit cold-turkey (cold-chicken?) and stay away from that restaurant and its confounding condiment etiquette forever. There are reasons not to do that though. For one, even though she doesn’t like Polynesian Sauce, my wife’s affection for the food at Chick-Fil-A dwarfs my own. Also, seeing as how I am rarely at Chick-Fil-A without Steph, I’ve devised a way to get a little extra Poly-Juice, on the sneak. What I do is I frantically beg Steph to ask for sauce too. She doesn’t seem to understand why she has to do this, but she’ll usually humor me.

“Wait,” you are thinking “you just said Steph didn’t like Polynesian Sauce.”

My dear reader, Steph’s sauce is not for her at all, but also for me! I am certain to get at least two packets! See what I did there!?!

Just please don’t let them know what I am up to. These people clearly have some really weird hang-ups about this sauce.

Tags: Food, Ideas - 6 Comments »

February 24th, 2009

Outlanddish

I was talking to Kate last night on IM about our upcoming visit and, at one point, the fact that Steph and I are trying not to return home completely broke came up. “If you’re worried about money, we can eat most of our meals at my place. London isn’t known for its amazing food,” she said.

Yeah: Bangers ’n’ mash? Steak and kidney pie? Blood pudding? I have to say, traditional British cuisine weirds me out a little bit.

Of course this made me think of some of the unusual stuff I have eaten in my lifetime. Here’s my top ten list:

10. Grits
And right now all you southerners are smirking at the screen, ’cause, c’mon everyone has had grits. Hold on there, Jethro. North of our Mason-Dixon line, no one has had grits. Some of you northerners are aware of grits, I’m sure, but can you describe them? What do they taste like? What are they are comprised of? During my early years in Michigan, I’d sometimes hear about “grits” and envision all kinds of different objects in a bowl. All I was ever told was they were sort of like oatmeal. Which led me to just imagine oatmeal…but perhaps purple in hue. Although the name “grits” meant this entree must be gritty. Was it a pile of very small rocks? Did Uncle Randy and Aunt Myrl eat rocks? Or maybe it was a type of meat? I saw all kinds of strange animals down south. Maybe it was something related to the guinea hen?  We soon moved to North Carolina and grits-consumption ensued. I recall not caring for them the first, oh, 200 times they were force-fed to me, but eventually I had a good batch and something clicked. My advice to any yankee planning to try them at some point in their lives: add lots of butter, lots of salt, lots of pepper, and — these last two things are not as widely used as “additives,” but if you can get your hands on them I’d recommend it, as grits are fairly bland — cheese and chives or a similar herb on top.

9. Steamed Oysters
These are not strange or exotic exactly, but I’m counting them as unusual because I don’t know many people who’ve tried them. I love steamed oysters. The only time I’ve eaten them was at an oyster roast two years ago. I watched skeptically as the oysters were dug out of a barrel with a garden shovel, placed on a scrap plate of steel heated above a fire on the ground, and covered with a wet burlap sack. After maybe two minutes, they were scooped up with the same shovel and spread out on the newspaper-covered sheet of plywood we were all standing around. What happens next is you pry the shell open with a knife, slurp up the slimy matter inside, and toss the shell in a trashcan. Didn’t really seem like my deal, until I learned that hot sauce is often applied to the slimy matter before you ingest it. I have something of a spicy-ness dependency, to the point where I would inhale a rotting hunk of buffalo carcass, if it were doused with Texas Pete or Sriracha. So I got started on the bivalves and, when I reached the point where I was considering placing my tongue on the scorching steel plate to cool it off, I sucked in a few oysters sans sauce. They were really quite good. I don’t know that I’d ever order oysters in a restaurant, but, in this context, I happily downed 80 of them. Oh, and you drink beer the entire time at an oyster roast. So, yeah, I love steamed oysters.

8. Eastern North Carolina Barbecue/Deer Jerky
This is a tie between two meats that I think everyone would love if they would just try. Going back to my north-to-south transition, I remember the first “pig pickin” (an event at which Eastern North Carolina barbecue is prepared and consumed) I attended. Everyone was saying we were going to eat “barbecue” which I found odd, as “barbecue” was clearly a verb. You used a grill to barbecue hot dogs and hamburgers. Then again, these people went around during the winter claiming they were wearing long wooden sleds on their heads, so I just let it go. Then I got to the front of the serving line and saw this huge swine splayed open on the rack, it’s head and feet still attached. Eeeeeeewwwwwwwwww. I have no idea how many toys or chore-free days my parents had to promise me to get me to try the pulled pork concoction, but, once it did, I found I had met the one true food-love of my life. To this day, I enjoy watching people who aren’t familiar with this niche cuisine get acclimated at a pig pickin. (And the reason the word “eastern” keeps appearing capitalized and in italics, for those of you who don’t know, is there is a on-going struggle between eastern North Carolina and the rest of the world — including western North Carolina — regarding which type of sauce is best on the hog. It’s not a matter of national security or anything…it is far more important and I will die a thousand deaths before any tomato- or mustard-based swill touches my pork! Ahem….) Deer jerky on the other hand is bizarre in name only. It is virtually identical in taste to beef jerky. And who can’t get down with some beef jerky? Even though, yes, they must be slaughtered before we can eat them, deer are allowed a natural, free existence beforehand. Also, most people who hunt deer are responsible outdoorsman who love the environment just as much as your average vegan, tree-hugger patchouliite. I just don’t get the aversion to eating deer, and I like throwing my Bambi DVD on and crying my eyes out on a rainy Saturday afternoon as much as the next dude. Wait, what now?

7. Chicken Livers
This is the thing I liked second-to-least on this list. Strange flavor and even stranger texture. And before you liver-lovers take the time, during the Matlock commercial break, to leave me comments telling me the livers I had probably weren’t done up correctly, you should know that these were wrapped in bacon. I think we can all agree that once a food item is enveloped with strips of bacon, there is no way said food item can be improved upon. Mathematically impossible. Case closed.

6. Peanut Butter, Banana, & Mayonnaise Sandwiches
My mom used to make these for us all the time when we were kids. Despite the unlikely pairing of ingredients, I find them delicious.

5. Moonshine
Do you enjoy a persistent burning sensation in your esophagus? Headaches? Getting completely hammered off of a thimble-sized amount of liquid? If so, low-grade moonshine is for you! This is the thing I liked least on this list.

4. Tomato Soup Cake
This one always takes some explaining. Apparently this spice cake recipe made its way into the Witchger family’s life via my great-grandparent’s straight-off-the-boat German housekeeper. The batter actually calls for two cans of tomato soup. Someday I’d like to witness someone trying this confection, without their having seeing what went into it or knowing what it is was called. Based on their reaction, perhaps I would understand if it’s any good. This cake is hands-down my dad’s favorite. He grew up with it. I grew up with it. I’ve sampled hundreds of them. And I still can’t make the call on its quality. Sometimes they seem scrumptious; sometimes they seem almost inedible. My mom claims they’re very hard to make consistently. Of course, this doesn’t really matter, because once this dessert’s name is out of the bag, nine out of 10 people won’t touch it. When I was old enough to start having friends over for my birthday, I was still asking for tomato soup cakes, primarily, I suppose, because it was the only cake I knew the name of. And so I’d tell everyone we were about to have “tomato soup cake,” not realizing it would likely be a deal-breaker for a group of second- or third-graders. A lot of double-portions of ice cream were doled out at my birthday parties.

3. Chocolate-Covered Crickets/Ants
I had a few of these at the “Bugfest” that the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science holds annually. The chocolate completely overpowers any taste the bugs might have. Additionally, they are roasted before they’re covered in chocolate and this crunchy texture in the middle of the chocolate is quite pleasant. No big deal.

2. Cheese & Coffee
This is my wife’s family’s food-related anomaly, dating back further than any of her relatives can remember. To make it, you drop a few chunks of cheddar cheese into a piping hot cup of coffee, then you spoon the resulting sludge out onto a couple of biscuits. It’s a unique flavor, but I like it. Interestingly the only time Steph’s mom or grandma will make coffee is to have this for breakfast. No one in either of their families is a coffee-drinker. They end up pouring their mugs out at the close of the meal. One might think you’d want to do this regardless of your feelings towards coffee, but Steph’s grandma told me that, after he’d taken all the cheese he was going to eat out of it, her father used to sip on his mug until the coffee was gone. This seems like true hard-scrabble farmer behavior. I’m currently working up to it.

1. Chocolate Gravy
This probably sounds much worse than it is. It is, in fact, the opposite of worse. It is better. Than anything. Ever. My family in Alabama are the only people I know of who make this breakfast dish. It’s really hard to describe, but I’d place its consistency somewhere between chocolate milk and chocolate syrup. I think there’s a mixture of milk chocolate and baker’s chocolate in it, so it’s not as sweet as you’d think. You cover a plate full of buttered biscuits with it and eat the whole thing with a fork. Then you run ten miles at a full sprint to offset the chances of having a heart attack later in the day. Fortunately, thanks to amount of sugar you’ve just eaten, you have plenty of energy.

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November 6th, 2008

My Fellow Americans…

it’s a few days after the big event now and I know what’s on everyone’s mind: “How was the beer you made?”

Pretty darn good, friends.

Because Jerry and I served it at the absolute earliest point when it was ok to do so, it was on the bitter side. We had to stop in at the homebrew store the morning of the party to have Jerry’s keg looked at, and one of the employees tried it and told us that in a few weeks it would “mellow out.” (I’m not sure what a guy who can sip on a sizable glass of bitter beer at 10 in the morning without so much as flinching’s definition of “mellow” is, but I find this encouraging.) The flavors of the spices and roasted pumpkin (that we steeped rather than actually added) were pretty subdued, which does seem like a sophisticated and desirable result, but you’re also dealing with a guy who uses a garden trowel to add nutmeg to his hot cider. The way I see it, we basically have a Pale Ale on our hands. Pale Ale is a type of beer people either love or they hate. I’m on team “love”; whether it “mellows” or not, you won’t hear me complaining.

The five gallons in the keg disappeared during the party, meaning at least some folks came back for seconds and thirds.

But now, let’s move on to the foreign exchange students that showed up at the party.

Last week, our friend May, who is in grad school, mentioned to a classmate from Japan that she was attending our Halloween party over the coming weekend. That classmate took this as an invitation to the party and later in the week shared with our friend that she had bought her first ever Halloween costume (as they do not have Halloween in Japan) and was very excited to be attending her first Halloween party. In addition, she asked if she could bring a friend who was also here from Japan and two friends who were here from China, as they now had costumes and had never been to Halloween parties either…. There’s no way I could have set that record straight and uninvited these people? Could you?

May called Steph to fill us in on the situation and make sure it was ok and, sure enough, well ahead of May, dressed in the exact costumes that foreign TV and advertising probably shows everyone in the US wearing on Halloween, they arrived.

And the pumpkin, the princess, Dracula, and the killer from Scream were ready to do this Halloween thing right. After entering our house and shakily making introductions to a few of us, they seemed to loosen up and their cameras came out and the questions started flying. (Incidentally, can you formulate, without flipping over to Wikipedia, a rational answer as to why we celebrate Halloween? One of the guys asked me this question and I believe my response went something like “Would you care for another beer? I made it, you know.”)

Steph assembled some impromptu treat bags for the four of them, with candy and various Halloween party favors. They found this extremely exciting. I think they were also fascinated that we had all just chosen whatever we wanted as costumes — that some outfits were scary and some were funny and some were just plain irreverent. There was no aesthetic or theme holding everything together, which, when you think about it, is a little strange. This is not to say they weren’t over the moon everytime they saw someone dressed up as something they recognized. I think the biggest response was elicited by Thurston’s Mario costume or that of our friend Megan who, with no prior knowledge of our of Asian guests, came dressed as a panda.

I don’t think they would have had the time they did if so many of the people we know weren’t so damned inclusive. Steph and I both are both highly sensitive to situations where someone could feel left out — probably because, at numerous points in past, that someone was us — and we both tend to go out of our way to try and make “outsiders” feel welcome. I knew we couldn’t attend to our foreign guests and play hosts at the same time, and I felt torn about what to focus on for a brief moment, before I realized the exchange students were already engaged in lively conversations and photo shoots and candy-eating sessions.

If you ever decide to go out on a limb and attend an event that is completely ingrained in an unfamiliar culture, pray it’s with a group like our friends.

Tags: DIY, Food, Friends, House - No Comments »