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(Beer) Coma

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I’d mentioned this…elsewhere, but when we were at a bar in Massachusetts when we saw buckets of food going to other tables.  “Buckets?”, I thought “that’s my favorite form factor for food!”

 We ordered one out of sight and it turned out to be a bucket of New England clams steamed with chorizo, yum!  Although…seafood and beer, um, don’t really get along together.  (As I rediscovered later when a pound of sushi and a quart of Sam Adams dueled away in my stomach).

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Some noise about the Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan’s anti-SJW rant.  My favorite part was the SJW-leftie sympathizers ranting about how they were pulling his music, blah blah.  Well that’s a very tiny taste for them of what it’s like for conservatives every waking minute of their lives when all their music, TV shows, books, movies, video games, and whatever else you have are written by the SJW crimethought police.

I thought of it recently while reading Neal Stephenson’s critically acclaimed (of course!) sci-fi novel Seveneves.  His (way) previous novel Snow Crash was rather inventive and somewhat politically incorrect, but his latest efforts reeks of SJW appeasement.
Homersexuals?  Of course!
Unrealistically ethnically diverse cast?  Well he has to stay appealing to that vast tract of black sci-fi readers!
Climate change rants?
Anti-militaristic tones?
Multicultural cheerleading?  It’s all in there!

So tiresome, and it’s cut from the same cloth as the rest of the tired sci-fi crap that came out in 2015.  I can’t help but think back to the slate of Philip K. Dick books that I’ve read that, despite their often copious flaws, featured normal people in extraordinary situations (rather than weirdos on stupid adventures).  It says something about western culture when it takes a guy living in a communist country to write a homersexual free sci-fi novel where the bad guys are left wing death cultists (though I repeat myself).

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I’ve been looking for an excuse through the years to mention the Guns N’ Roses song Coma.  Clocking in at north of ten minutes, it’s a curse filled, angst driven, overly indulgent song on GNR’s already overly indulgent Use Your Illusion double album.  It’s not everybody’s sound that’s for sure (maybe only me and five other people like it), but it’s a sound which was very predominant and is now dead, gone to the age when sci-fi space ships weren’t full of fraggets (I’m ever amazed that GNR’s One in a Million is still on YouTube; any big time producer who pumped that tune out today would have to undergo years of self flagellation under the all-seeing eye of merciless thought police).  Some may view such passing as a good thing, though with no normal morals left to slay, the crime thought police have moved on to made up crap like gay marriage and judgement free molester zones (I repeat myself again).

And songs?  I went to a bar with Mrs. Sandmich and remarked that when we were dating (we’re talking dinosaurs here) the bars played the exact same songs, modern pop music being a wasteland of auditory abuse.

Anyway, while loading up on sushi (at a different bar and at a different time) a young couple was joined by the young lady’s friends.  The conversation got tedious, quick:
Girl one (to guy): “Oh what do you do?”
(note: obviously they’re white because only white people “do” stuff)
Guy: “Well-”
Guy’s girfriend: “He saves DOLPHINS!”
Girl two: “Oh wow neat”
Guys: “-Coast Guard and-”
Girls (same tone and as quickly as possible): “That’s/Pete down at/AWESOME!/car repair/Julie said that/I had to move/car repair/nails done/”etc. etc. for five minutes.

If I was the guy I would’ve gotten up and walked out, heck I didn’t even know them and I wanted to leave.  However Coma came to mind since as part of the angsty guy’s get-away-from-it-all frustration just such a vocal track was crammed in late to the song (between 7:10 and 7:40), scrub to listen and relive the enthralling experience! (For those who are not fans of the song, which will be all of you, it will be pain on top of pain!)

Bartender (afterwards): “Wow you really ate all of that!”

Although, for the single guys out there, apparently “saving dolphins” is a thing…
Girl: “And you said that saving dolphins is part of your job?”
Guy: “Oh yeah totally baby.”

Vile Foods

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It would seem that anyone who has known me for more than thirty seconds knows my least favorite food: canned peas.  Of course my hatred of this concoction goes far beyond I-don’t-care-for-it and into I’d-rather-eat-the-can-they-came-in territory.

Same look, taste, and smell as rabbit poo

Last year my mom gave me some excess protein powders that she had and one of them tasted like dirt and I still had a (slightly) easier time choking it down than canned peas (it goes without saying what one of the ingredients was).

This is low hanging fruit though because lots of people hate canned peas, maybe not quite as much as myself, but still.  Why do you think that ‘veg-all’ is a fan favorite for pantry cleaning canned food drives?  Because it has been contaminated with nasty little green orbs and now just tastes like a multi-colored can of peas.  Beyond that I’m not a picky eater (unfortunately) but some acquaintances do wonder if even have any other food hang-ups.  A few come to mind:

  • Canned lima beans come in second to canned peas, but they still sport much of that nasty taste because their delicate sugars have been nuked into some horrible amino acid stew by the heat of the canning process.
  • Dinner dishes that have fruit in them (especially raisins which always cook up like something that comes out of my cat).  I can get past pineapple somewhat for short periods of time, kind of like if your buddy is listening country music in the car for a fifteen minute drive.  But cherries on chicken?  Raspberry gravy?  Disgusting.
  • On a related note, I’ll include Indian curry dishes that have coconut milk in them (which would be most of them); nasty.  Tastes like someone was making you a piña colada and accidentally dropped a day-old, over-spiced chicken into the blender.
  • For fast food the McRib is pretty nasty, but I can choke one down before remembering how bad they are.  The McDonald’s fish sandwiches though?  That’s like some hate crime against us Catholics.
  • Any piece of chicken that has even the faintest feather still sticking out from the skin.  I can’t relate the number of times I’ve almost lost my cookies at a bar when I’ve been sober enough to notice this on chicken wings.  (I don’t know if that counts since it’s not even a taste/texture thing as my solution is to just not look).
  • Banana ‘flavored’ stuff, such as banana fry pies, taffy, etc.  Inevitably tastes like banana juice that’s been aged in a can of WD-40.
  • Those assorted ‘chocolates’ with any filling that isn’t brown colored or coconut.  You know the ones I’m talking about: those nasty, cheap chocolates full of some florescent pink or yellow colored goop.  Chocolate-fruit combos generally aren’t a big thing for me, but that stuff, well, everyone hates that stuff I guess.
  • This one might surprise: tea.  Yes I drink one glass every day for (real) health reasons, but I think it’s nasty.  It’s kind of like if you were given to chew tobacco but you decided to make juice out of your slobber.  I’ve conditioned myself to drink it, but if I didn’t have to I wouldn’t, ever again.
Then there are those things that many people hate that I don’t have an issue with:
  • Anything with too much vinegar in it.  Pickles, sauces, etc.  Hot sauce is a beverage, not a condiment.  (However, the dinner/fruit rule must be obeyed.  I once had a jar of Indian picked limes which was it’s own special sort of horror; I’d still have them over canned peas though).
  • Peanut butter and anything, or even better yet, just peanut butter.  (Note though that the fruit/dinner rule again comes into play here.  If someone goes all peanut happy on some Thai dish then it starts to taste like some peanut butter and shrimp sandwich).
  • Cottage cheese.  Like peanut butter, I can eat a tub of this fatty product fairly easily if I’m not careful.
  • Buttermilk.  A coworker was amazed that I drink the stuff as she always pitches it after she uses what she needs for a recipe.
  • Unflavored soy milk, which is a challenge to find at times.
  • Fruitcake, which I avoid like the plague because each tablespoon has enough calories to keep a man alive for a week and I can eat a whole one in one sitting just like that woman eating a block of cheese.
  • Past due goods.  What a crock, tasting is believing.
Not in either list are alcoholic products, such as Jägermeister.  If you think they taste bad, that means that you haven’t drank the proper quantity yet (but there are exceptions to even this rule).

The Pizza Dough FAQ

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Previously I figured that to make real pizza dough I needed to plan around making the dough and letting it rise.  I typically went about this by using a breadmaker, but it was tiresome to start the dough an hour and half (or so) before making the pizza for dinner.  It was more of chore than anything else and the results were usually less than stellar.  Kind of accidentally I came across this no-rise pizza dough recipe that I’ve now been using for years:

http://recipes.robbiehaf.com/T/272.htm

The trick is priming the yeast and just stirring it into the flour.  The resulting product actually tastes much better than the risen variety which has a knack for tasting too much like bread instead of pizza crust.  I’m lucky in that the hot water comes out of my tap at just the right temperature, but before I had discovered this I used a thermometer to figure out the proper microwave time needed to bring cold water up to the proper temperature.

The recipe works great but I have several caveats.  One big fault with this recipe is that it doesn’t give a weight for the amount of flour, so your results may be inconsistent when not performing the kneading step that I mention in the next paragraph.  I’ll also point out that I use this recipe on both a 16″ and 14″ pan (I’ve never done the 12″ that’s inferred in the recipe).  The 16″ comes out pretty thin and the 14″ a bit thicker (obviously), however…

Whenever I make the recipe the dough comes out wet so I knead flour* into the dough until it doesn’t stick to anything (continually flouring hands and work surface as the flour gets absorbed).  This usually adds another quarter cup or so of flour to the dough (this step is required for the 16″ pan).  After kneading I’ll put the dough in a bowl that has a little bit of olive oil in it and let it rest for about ten to fifteen minutes so that the dough is workable (otherwise it’s like trying to stretch a rubber band out over the pizza pan).  I should note though that Mrs. Sandmich and Sally like the recipe as printed, but the dough is really hard to work with, like a ball of half congealed Elmer’s glue.  If you can get it down into the pan (probably using oiled dough and hands), the crust will come out thinner and crispier, if…

I use a two phased approach where I put the pizza in the pan and put the pan on a hot stone that’s been preheating in the oven.  So after the pizza has been in the pan sitting on the stone for about six minutes or so (when the dough is done enough not to fall apart) I then transfer the pizza directly to the stone using a metal pizza peal (obviously with some oil in the pan to help it to keep from sticking).  I would suppose a good alternative might be to use one of those pans that has the holes in it, but I’ve never used those so I can’t speak to their effectiveness.  If you cook it in a regular pan with no pizza stone, the pizza will come out as if it was cooked on a giant slice of lightly toasted bread.  I got around this on occasion by putting the pan right on the bottom of the oven for the last minute or so, but your timing has to be impeccable: it worked great a few times, but I gave up on it after burning three pizzas in a row**.

Some other notes:

  • She says to use a “heavy spoon”, but I use a wooden spatula.
  • Reading over past missives, it looks like at one point in time I would put a tablespoon of olive oil into the water/yeast mix.  I’m not sure why I got away from this as it really helped the dough as I recall (made it easier to work with and added a level of internal fried crispiness to the crust).***
  • I make a crazy amount of pizzas (Sunday and/or Saturday is usually pizza day, but the crust is so easy to make that I’ve cranked it out for dinner during the week on the odd occasion) so I keep a big container of yeast instead of packets.  I measure it out to about two and half teaspoons of yeast instead of using the packets.
  • Your skills might be better than mine, but I’ve never been able to do the ‘wooden peal’ method where you make the pizza and then slide it right onto the stone.
  • When not using a stone (maybe using the ‘bottom of the oven’ method), I transfer the pizza to cardboard, otherwise moisture will build up under the crust and make it soggy.

Why this recipe is cool:

  • After a bit of practice this pizza can be cranked out faster than a pizza can be acquired from a local pizza shop, especially if you’re having it delivered.
  • It’s easy to change up the cheeses and toppings so the variety is much better than a pizza shop as well (ruben, chicken BBQ, and cheesesteak pizzas are constant favorites).
  • It can be cheaper (not by much mind you).

What might not be appealing:

  • If you want something besides pepperoni there’s going to be a bit of prep involved.  Vegetables, especially mushrooms, should be precooked.
  • The inevitable kitchen mess.
  • It can be more expensive (putting higher end cheese, sausage, and bacon on the pizza can lead to some sticker shock).
*I no longer do this.  I make the dough in my kitchen aid using a bread hook and work flour into the dough until it no longer sticks to the sides of the mixer.  If it already isn’t sticking I just let it run until the dry pieces are absorbed.  I can double the recipe pretty easy in my normal sized Kitchen Aid, three is possible at lower speeds but no more than that.  This method also has the advantage of not kneading the dough as the mixer is constantly tearing it apart so the dough doesn’t have to “rest” as long (if at all).

**Another strategy that I’ve used in the past is to put the dough in the pan, poke many holes in it with a fork and then pre-cook it before assembling the pizza, as even on the lower oven shelves with the thinnest pan the toppings will be done well before the crust gets crispy.  However I consider this a non-starter as the crust usually turns out lobsided and it still doesn’t get crispy as the moisture gets trapped between the dough and the pan and the crust winds up self-steaming for however long you leave it in there.

***I still don’t add oil to the mix, oh well.