Random Esquire

1.  Remember how I got my parents new phones and an unlimited text plan?  My father has been trying to teach my mother how to send text messages.  By “trying to teach”, I mean “forcing her to learn”.

Today, he forwarded a message to me and said, “This is mom’s first text message to me.”

It said: “You drive me craze.”

English is her second language.  I sort of think it’s the best text message ever.

2.  A friend of mine recently lost her father.  This is the same close friend whose cousins drove their father’s ashes around in a Nieman-Marcus bag in the trunk of their car.  Needless to say, the family has a wild side and a very good sense of humor.  Her father was also quite the character.

I had flowers sent for his service and was understandably upset when a friend told me that they had not arrived.  I called the florist, left a message and a half hour later, got a call back.  The flowers had been delivered to the wrong funeral.

See, the thing is - I had them write a message on the card.   And this means… that someone else’s funeral had flowers at them with a card that said:

“WHAT A PISTOL.”

All I could think was that I hope it wasn’t a gunshot victim.

3.  My dinner last night – fondly nicknamed my Lady Date by Dysfunction Junction – was awesome.  The restaurant is always so gracious and awesome. Kitchen / Back of House tour ended the evening.  Evening started, however, with a gift which shall heretofore be known as LADY DATE PENELOPE.

It’s a heart picture frame in which they’d placed a picture of Penelope Cruz.  I shall be taking her to different locations and taking picture of her like she’s the Travelocity Garden Gnome.

I used a mandolin this weekend to slice something.  You know what I ended up slicing?  The tip of my thumb.  Not clean off or anything. Instead, I had a trashcan lid of flesh hanging off the end of my thumb.  I put band-aids on it.  And then I decided my thumb was lonely and I managed to slice open the tip of my middle finger. Worse than my thumb.  Again, I left a hanging chad.  Again, multiple band-aids.  Then, at some point, after it had stopped bleeding,  I decided to peek under the flap on my middle finger.  That was a mistake.  More band-aids.

I had to put clean sheets on my bed.  So I took the sheets out of the dryer and made the bed.  And my band-aid mysteriously disappeared during that process.  Didn’t find it.  More band-aids on finger.  This time made sure they couldn’t come off.

The next day – today – I realized that the band-aids had been on my middle finger for more than 24 hours.  Wet, dry, whatever.  I decided to peel them off.

No bleeding. That’s good.

And then…

I noticed a smell.

I brought my finger up to my nose and took a hesitant sniff.

holy.

crap.

Well, now, look, here’s the thing.  If you smell something bad, what’s the first thing you do?  You have someone else smell it, right?  Except, no one else was around.

Except Little Filthy.

Okay, now, lemme just explain what you’re about to see.  I had been relaying the unsavory nature of my rotting finger on twitter.  The result was many suggestions that I had gangrene.  However, I can tell it’s just wet-fleshy-open-wound-band-aid smell.  But none the less, I thought it would be funny to take a picture of the dog smelling my rotting finger.

No.  I have no idea why these things occur to me.  I can not explain it.  I realize it is ridiculous.

So I grabbed my camera phone, pointed it at my finger and then called Little Filthy.

He jumped up on the couch, leaned in and I snapped the picture.

And then I yelled out loud.

See, I intended for him to *smell* it.

But this is what happened right when I snapped the shutter.

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I come from a family in which everyone cooks.  While my mother prepares the dinner on Thanksgiving, on Christmas, everyone brings along additional food.  The result is that we have roughly 5 times the amount of food actually consumed.

This year, I was tasked with dessert.  I am more of a savory type (har har) but I gave it a whirl.  Result?  Banana bread pudding, chocolate sauce, fresh berries, dulce de leche ice cream, and a caramelized banana.  Picture below.

I hope you had a great dinner!

Torchin’ a banana.

1.  Yesterday, on my way home from work, I was in a train car with a positively stunning woman.  She was blonde, wearing a skirt and heels and had great legs.  She had very blue eyes.  She looked about 45 or so.  Perhaps closer to 50.  Partly what made her look so stunning was that she was so elegant looking.  We got off at the same stop.  I live near a dance studio and I was unsurprised to see her walk into the front door.  Ahhh, a dancer.  Well, that explains the legs.  Anyway, I remembered the incident because in my head, I thought to myself, “Ah, now she is a woman.”

2.  Yes, everybody, peanut butter goes bad.  Besos had managed to find a jar of peanut butter from the back of some cupboard that had gone untouched since my break-up with Boss.  How do I know this?  Because Boss likes creamy peanut butter and I like chunky.  Besos had found some old jar of creamy peanut butter.

Only spoiled kids get creamy peanut butter.  Down to earth kids get chunky.  We have to make that shit creamy.  In our mouths.

3.  Kennedy came into my office yesterday and I tossed him one of the apples I had brought in with me.  We sat there with our feet on my desk and ate apples.  And talked about apples.  And we both decided that honey crisp apples are great.  Any mushy apples suck it.  And we wondered who was eating mushy apples?  And then I remembered this entry in which I told this story:

“Speaking of Boss, the other day, we were in the grocery store buying apples. Actually, we were buying many different things because we have bulk buying issues. However, at this point, we were in front of the apples. There were quite a few varieties to choose from. She said she likes softer apples. I said I like crisp apples. She said she doesn’t like it when a big piece breaks off when she takes a bite. I said I love it! And we stood there and stared at each other as if we’d never met. No one thinks to ask these important questions until it’s too late and you fall in love and then you’re stuck buying two different kinds of apples for eternity.”

4.  You know, in retrospect, I’d have chosen a different nickname for Besos on my blog.  Perhaps a name that was more than one letter away from the nickname of my Ex.  I’m pretty sure that one day I will screw up and and swap Besos for Boss or Boss for Besos and then I will have at least one woman angry with me.

And I’m pretty sure that woman will be a Latina sporting some Mexitude.

And if you’ve got any goddamn sense at all… you know… you know never to screw with a Mexitude-fueled Latina.

Of course, the problem is that I have so little sense at all.

1.  On Friday, Besos met me at my office.  She wanted to see where I work.  Why?  I don’t know.  I don’t like to see where I work on a daily basis so I can’t explain these things.

2.  On the walk to the train, we contemplated eating downtown before deciding to cook at my place.  I stopped into a bread/cheese/wine store to get a baguette.  Then, about a half block later, we decided to eat at a restaurant we passed.  This meant I had a 2 1/2 foot baguette perched next to my chair as we ate.  And that I was carrying it along with us on the street afterwards.  I realized that it would not be much good to us tomorrow and I really couldn’t be bothered to continue carrying it so I told Besos I was going to give it away.  And less than a half block later, we walked by a woman holding a sign that said, “I’m just hungry.”  So I handed her the baguette.

She looked at me like I was crazy.

I said to Besos, “I gave away the bread.”  She said, “Aw, you gave bread to the hungry lady who is really just hungry for crack.”

3.  I printed and framed about 20 photos this weekend.  Almost all of them 18 x 12.  A few much larger than that.  About 12 are for other people.  A few black and white series of my parents with my sister’s kids. Will surprise them.  I also finally framed the poster below (though mine is 2008/2009).  I managed to sweet talk the poster away (for free!) from a certain member of the opposite sex who was plastering them up throughout Venice when I was in Italy last spring.  WOOT!

Besos and I were graciously invited to a cocktail/dinner party on Saturday by a friend of mine.  It was very interesting – a large tent set up in the host’s back yard with candles everywhere, a large marble table with a fire in the center, heaters around and strings of lights everywhere.  And the servers?  There was talk that they were all models.  I’m unsure if that was serious but they could have been, certainly.  Did I mention that there was a film crew capturing the dinner?  I’ll be interested to see if we ended up in the short film they were creating.  We were interviewed and I suspect will be in it.  I did not bring all of my camera gear so these were taken by my phone.

The host had guests from Spain in town and decided to have a large dinner party to bring  a large group of people together over food.  Along with catching up with a friend (which was awesome), we met some really great new people and sampled food from a young chef from Chicago.  He served three spit roasted suckling pigs along with some very seasonal sides.  A really great fall dinner.

Below, the young chef describes the meal he has prepared for the guests.

Here’s my eye.

Here’s a piece of Toffifay candy.

Now you know.  Toffifay is made out of eyeballs.

Little Filthy has tried corn.  And peanut butter.  Today, he tried watermelon.

A sniff.

Give it to me, please.

Looks promising.

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I have previous written about why I enjoy cooking – especially why I enjoy cooking for others.  This past weekend, I decided to exercise that muscle and it began by going on the hunt for some good ingredients – an adventure to which I invited my mother and father as they love to get into the city and hadn’t experienced the meat packing district before.

We began early on Saturday morning by making our way to a local fish monger in town.  There, we picked up some fresh red snapper, oysters and sea scallops.  Then on to the butcher where we froze, walking up and down the rows, picking out some fresh bacon, bratwurst, and various other fresh meats.  Into the cooler everything went.

Then off to the Green City Market for fresh vegetables.  And fresh, hot apple cider donuts, eaten as we wandered.  Then back to the loft where we made quick salads, boiled some fresh fingerling potatoes, steamed green beans and pan fried the red snapper.  While all that was being prepared and cooking, I shucked oysters for the first time in my life.  Quite a meal.

This brought me to the next day when I realized that I had never made sea scallops before.  Out came the All-Clad, sea scallops, salt, pepper, oil and butter. 

And you know what?  Not gonna lie.  I’m sort of sick of seafood. Gah.

1.  It’s been a nice weekend.  Besos and I had a very nice dinner of French food with another couple on Saturday night.  And we woke up this morning to a beautiful day in Chicago.  Within moments of waking, we decided to walk to a nearby breakfast restaurant and eat outside.   Here’s Little Filthy under the table hoping his sad faces will convince another diner to give him something to eat.

2.  I sent Besos a text message tonight to let her know that CMC wanted to know what color lipstick she is wearing in her pictures here and here.   Then I asked her what I should write about tonight.  Here is how that conversation went:

RE:  What should I write about today?
Besos:  I don’t know. What has happened?
RE:  I molested you.
Besos:  Yeah, yeah, but that’s not news, especially in QT’s blog!!!!!!!!! Don’t think I did not notice!

Oops.  Okay, so, I may have said something in the comments here.

RE:  I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Besos:  Poking my colita!
Besos:  I am over chocolate.
Besos:  Ok, so brand is Estee Lauder, the color is 732 Darling Diva.  Heh, that’s the name.
RE:  No more coffee for you at breakfast.  How about I just blog this conversation? Okay? Okay!
Besos:  Hey! What part?
RE:  You know.  Molest, colita, lipstick, chocolate, and coffee.  Just the standard stuff.

*pause*

RE:  You love me.

Besos:  Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you’re not rotten.

3.  I suspect that Little Filthy may have licked my sandwich tonight.

A friend, upon hearing this news, said, “Five second rule!”

Which really makes you have to wonder how liberally people apply this rule.

And the answer to your question is yes.  Yes, I did.