Superbowls Are Played on Reasonably Temperatured September Sundays

My father never allowed me to have a gaming system while I was growing up, meaning that I grew up with a Commodore 64 in the house, an inferior product when it comes to video games with joysticks that broke down often, and the reason I was allowed to use the Commodore 64 was simply this, with a NES or Sega, you put a cartridge into the console and press it on, but with the 64, in order to load your game, you had to type: load"*",8,1 <return> into the prompt before the drive would kick into motion and whirl its magnets and smoke over the face of a floppy disk. I did spent some major hours on the 64, and once kept a notebook of statistics while I played an entire season of a computer game called 'Hardball', a baseball game with a total of two teams, and that year those two teams played each other a total of 162 times. I hate to say it, but all of the math involved with figuring ERAs and batting averages was a victory for my father.

So when last fall, when roommate Jimmy brought home an original NES, I felt like I was somehow striking a victory for my inner, bitter child. I played NES with Rory Hunt when I was growing up, but only when he felt like playing and, because he owned the NES, he was generally pretty bored with it. Now, I was in charge of when I got to play the damn thing, and when one of the roommate's friends brought of a cartridge of Super Techmo Bowl, I knew that there were going to be weekends that I couldn't get back again.

After playing a few warm up games, I started a season determined to give the Minnesota Vikings their first Superbowl victory. I made it to the big game where I was to play against the Cincinnati Bengals. One afternoon, roommate Jimmy came out of his room. I was in the kitchen. "How is your season going?" Jimmy asked.

"I'm in the Superbowl," I said.
"Really? When are you going to play it? Can you wait until I can watch?"
Bashfully, I kicked at the floor and said, "Um, I was going to, um, wait until Sunday to play it..."
"Really? Can I watch? We should make a party out of it!"

And with this brilliant suggestion, I set to making a whole-stinking-bunch of vegan spinach and artichoke dip along with a bread bowl to put it in to be ready on Superbowl Sunday in early September!

The Bowl

Filled to the brim. Stick a chip in it son, that shit is done!

You know when you order a milkshake, and they bring out the metal cup of extra milkshake along with your milkshake? This is the metal cup.

If there's a rule of Superbowl food, this is it, nothing is fresh. Here's what I put into it: 

4 bricks of spinach (thawed)

2 jars of marinated artichoke hearts

about 1/4 cup of vegannaise

several cloves of garlic

lemon juice

1 container of Tofutti cream cheese

Salt 

Pepper

Cooked at 400 until bubbling and brown at the edges. Then I topped it with Daiya Mozzerella style cheese, broiled it until browned.

Was it delicious? I think the greatest compliment the chef could have asked for in this case was waking up in the middle of the night, looking for it in the fridge and not finding it; finding out the next day that Roommate Jimmy had taken it into his room with him for drunken shame food. This is basically the equivalent of a 28/30 on the Zagat rating system.

For anyone concerned about the game, I played a half and was up 7-0. I received the kickoff in the second half and started a methodical, precise and deadly drive, when all of the sudden  the NES froze and the game had to be started over. This new game, the Cincinnati Bengals walloped me and my promise to bring the city of Minnesota its first Superbowl victory. Such was the conclusion of the three-half Superbowl.

But with this a football dynasty had begun! Angrier and more determined, the Vikings went back to the Superbowl the very next year and won.

Defense wins digital ball games.

And the repeat came at the end of a perfect season. I'll point out that my perfect season was a much bigger accomplishment than that of the 72 dolphins, as their season was much shorter.

And the first ever Superbowl 3peat 

We Mayo May Not, This Is the Question

Roommate Jimmy and I once sat in the kitchen for what felt like an hour, him whisking an egg yolk into oil with a fork and myself trying to blend the same ingredients it with a blender. In the end, neither of us could coax out of these ingredients some mayonnaise, which I expected to expand from the canola oil like a magician's smoke. My good man Jimmy wasn't to be defeated though, and he used the oil and yolk mixture to make tuna salad anyway.

I've tried a few different homemade recipes for vegan mayonnaise before, and been disappointed with every one, so I stopped trying several years ago. But I went to buy some vegannaise, which is nearly delicious enough to eat out of the jar with a spoon, and here in the Midwest I found it to be nearly double the cost that it was in Seattle. So I went back on the hunt.

I didn't have to search long. I made the following recipe twice, once with the called for canola oil, another time with extra virgin olive oil. Both turned out creamy and tangy, though the extra virgin olive oil version tasted, um... well, very strong of extra virgin olive oil. So my recommendation for anyone who wants to try this recipe is, feel free to experiment with various oils and proteins (almond milk instead of soy milk seems like an obvious thing to try for people like my mother who can't have any soy) but if you are to make this out of an olive oil, make it out of an old whorey olive oil instead of an extra virgin.

Vegan Mayonnaise:
1/2 C soymilk
1 c + 2tbs canola oil
1/4 tsp agave
3/4 tsp kosher salt (I used French fleur de sel)
1/2 tbs lemon juice
the zest from 1/8 lemon
1/8 tsp dry mustard

Put all ingredients into a blender and blend until creamy and emulsified, which is roughly 10 seconds.

This is where I found it, which looks like an lovely little place: http://veganepicurean.blogspot.com/2009/05/homemade-veganaise.html

Dangit, what a happy guy.

Spiral Diner's Famous Vegan Brownies

Taste testers agree: these brownies are the shit.


Double Chocolate Fudge Brownies


1/3 c softened shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1/4 t salt
1 T BP
1/3 cup good quality cocoa
1 t vanilla
1/3 c non dairy milk
3/4 c chocolate chips
3/4 c nuts, chopped


Cream shortening and sugar. In a separate bowl combine dry ingredients. Add to shortening along with wet ingredients. Add chips and nuts. Dough will be very thick. Bake at 300 in a 9x9 pan for 30 minutes. 

Christmas in July

I'm moving to France. They don't eat stuffing there. Or pumpkin pie (though they do eat a lot of savory pumpkin things. yum!). So in preparing myself mentally for this lack of holiday food, I realized the amazing opportunity I had. Stephen often likes direction/inspiration for Sunday dinners, and hell, I love themed parties. So glad we did it. I might make it a year and a half before I get my next helping of holiday food. I won't make it the same amount of time before re-watching Ernest's "Your World As I See It", which is how the night ended, dinner guests crowded around the tv. 


Le Menu


Stephen's Delicious Field-Roast Style Ham
Cornbread Stuffing
Pepper Gravy
Mac and Cheese Casserole
Pumpkin Pie

I dressed in my red sequin show choir dress, circa 2002, to honor...err be more festive. However, halfway through dinner I had to change. There was no room for food! 

Cornbread Stuffing

1 recipe vegan cornbread (Veganomicon)

4 cups veg broth

seasoning from a box of rice

prepared box of rice or packet of instant rice, heated

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 acorn squash or sweet potato, roasted in the oven til tender

1/2 c chopped pecans

1 apple, cubed

2 stalks celery

1 onion, chopped

Mix together the cooked cornbread and the rest of the dry ingredients. Add salt and pepper. Mush with your hands or a wooden spoon to combine. Pour into 9x13 pan and pour veg broth over, making sure all is moist (more water or broth may be needed). Cover with foil and bake at 350 for several hours. 

Pepper Gravy

Margarine

Flour (could use Bob's Red Mill for GF)

Veggie Broth

salt and pepper

oregano

Over low heat, make a roux with the margarine and flour and add broth. Season at the end. People love gravy; make a lot!

Baked Mac and Cheese

(to fill a 9x13 pan, serves 8)

2 boxes GF pasta, prepared

2 packages Daiya Cheddar Cheese

1 red bell pepper, chopped

White Gravy*

Layer (twice) cooked pasta, then bell pepper, cheddar cheese and finally gravy. Cook, covered with foil until cheese is melted and gooey. Uncover and bake another 15 minutes. 350F

*White Gravy

Follow directions for pepper gravy but use white flour, non-dairy milk (look for very low sugar content), and margarine. Season with salt and pepper. 

Pumpkin Pie with Coconut Whip

recipe courtesy of Vegan Pie in the Sky, prepared according to instructions, though doubling (will have some filling left over. I made mini pies with it)

Sarah's thrifty find and 
a group decorating effort

More About Pasties

PJ, dear friend, your enthusiasm is simply incredible. And your dough folding abilities match.

Scientific Discovery Week

Several years ago, while I was reading the novel "Caramelo" by Sandra Cisneros, during a part of the novel where the main character is waxing about the differences between corn and flour tortillas, I developed a hypothesis that I could tell whether or not I would like someone based on the type of tortillas they preferred. Corn tortilla meant that I would enjoy and value their friendship, flour I wouldn't. But the first time I tried out this hypothesis, it was with two dear friends of mine, one Jeromy Maupin, one of my oldest and dearest and the other James Adams, a handsome lad who I've lost to bustling San Francisco, last I heard. Neither of them preferred corn, and in fact James claimed that corn made his nauseated, which I maintain that he was probably being dramatic. None the less, I actually wondered for a moment, so sure had I built up myself on my theory, that I wondered for a moment, if only a moment, whether or not I actually liked these dear, wonderful friends. I still feel terrible that I would have called into question. Back to the large tortilla collider in order to work on new theories.

That said, Rita showed up this week, after weeks of begging, to our Sunday dinner.

And she brought corn tortillas. I knew this kid was a good apple. She was working on a vegetarian option for a travelling pop-up restaurant that she participates in called MoFun. And Laura and I got to be the test subjects.

I realize that the photo is blurry, but all you need to know about this is that it was a schmorgisboard of delicious for veggi-tacos. When I remember to, at a later date, in the comments field I will post some details of Rita's feast because there were too many things in here that I had never heard of, which was exciting for me, but well, I should have written all of those things down. They say that not remembering things is a symptom if disinterest, but I will posit another hypothesis here, that forgetfulness is often a symptom of being so satiated. 

I made vegan-lemongrass infused-fried chicken. 

Layers of tofu skin are... well... layered with a seasoning brushed on in between, much like a croissant. Then folded. Then steamed. Here above, the lemongrass has been cut and separated in order to do the infusing, but also the lemongrass does the second duty of preventing the yuba packages from sticking to the steamer.

And here is one of the steamed yuba packages accompanied by sliced pieces, dusted with flour, awaiting the goopy mess of the batter.

This is Laura.

I like Laura, and I like Pie.

Pasties

We had some confusion about pasties. The long A pronunciation is one edible treat, and the short A is another. For some silly reason, I assumed people would understand that if I mentioned making pasties, I would be referring to the half-moon shaped pocket pies from England. I mean, I know this is the renaissance of DIY, but does anyone actually fashion homemade sex treats? Evidently its plausible to believe I do. So maybe I will... next week.

"Eat me already!"

Vegan Crust, c/o Cutie Pies

2 c flour
2 T sugar
1 t salt
2/3 c shortening
2 T soymilk
5 T ice water
5 T cold vodka

Makes one double crust. Blend dry ingredients; add shortening a chunk at a time using either two forks, a pastry blender or a mixer. Drizzle the soymilk in a bit at a time, then the water and vodka. Make sure all the dough comes together and is sticky, though not dripping wet. Its helpful to chill before use, but not imperative.

ready to bake

Curry Veggie Filling, c/o Cutie Pies

6-8 red potatoes, diced
2 T olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1/2 c raisins
1/2 c peanuts
1/3 c frozen peas and carrots
1 1/2 t salt
1 scant t ginger
1 T plus 2 t curry powder
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cumin
1/4 t allspice

*Curry sauce or coconut milk, if desired, is good for saucier filling. Mix (to taste)with ingredients before filling in crust.

Roast potatoes, tossed with oil and some salt, in the oven at 375 til soft. Combine the rest of the ingredients and stir to mix the spices evenly.  Place a small pile in the center of the dough and fold over. Roll up the curved side to make a generous handle of crust. Pierce with a fork several times to vent and brush with soymilk. Bake 30-40 minutes.

Sarah and PJ working hard

"Not Just Yet"*

It wouldn't be a dinner party without a nice dessert. At least, not at my house.  Although I originally agreed to sous-chef these Sunday night suppers, the role didn't really fit me. I bake. And I like to treat people to something they won't often make for themselves.


So, as Stephen loves pie, and he goes ALL THE FREAK OUT in making great dinners, it seemed like a reasonable idea to put it on the menu. Plus with the abundance of delicious summer fruit, how could I resist? Pie is trendy these days, but its also one of those desserts I've put on the back burner for far too long, relegating the duty to my mom's expert hands every holiday season. No more, I said. Three good reasons are enough for me. 

Below you will find the latest pie, Cherry Peach Crumble Pie (vegan). It tastes like cobbler, but its prettier. This is an adapted recipe from Vegan Pie in the Sky.
   

Baked single pastry crust, fit into a 9 inch pie plate, edges crimped

Filling:

3 lbs fresh peaches, chopped
2-3 cups fresh cherries, pitted and chopped
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons tapioca flour (= 1 tablespoon cornstarch)
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon salt
dash of vanilla or almond extract


Topping:

2 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
4 tablespoons white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup non-hydrogenated margarine, melted (or canola oil)



Preheat oven to 375. Roll and bake the pie crust, making sure to prick the bottom with a fork. 

Make the filling by combining all the ingredients the night before, or the day of (if made ahead of time, drain a bit of the juice before using). Fill the baked pie crust with the fruit. In a food processor or mixer, combine the topping ingredients (or use a pastry blender, or several forks). Crumble the topping on top of the fruit and bake at 375 until the filling bubbles up on the sides and has the shiny glean of jelly (at least 30 minutes, probably closer to 45). 

*My grandpa said if you are offered dessert at a dinner and answer "not just yet", there might not be any left when the plate comes around again. Better take advantage when you can. My favorite version of carpe diem.

A Step By Step, If Not Somewhat Imprecise, Method For Making Yuba Fish

Even when yuba (tofu skin) sheets are just resting in a bowl, they look like flesh, and when you buy them dried and soak them, sitting there in the slightly yellowed water, they look like they could be a display at the Mutter Museum. But this is the start of making a yuba fish. After soaking the dried sheets overnight, I've drained most of the water out of them.

Here the yuba sheets have been chopped into small flakes. How small? As small as I could get them with out being frustrated by how slippery the little devils are. My food processor was too small to do any thing with them as whole sheets, but I imagine that if I were to chop, then process, I could get a few busts in to make them smaller if I thought that smaller flakes was important enough. Put aside several whole sheets of yuba for the fish skin later.

Another option, as seen above, if you're soy intolerant, or avoiding soy for any number of reasons, is to make the yuba fish using mushrooms, purchased insanely cheaply from the local Korean market. Here we have oyster mushrooms and a black, crunchy-chewy thing that I've only heard called fungus. These I put through the food processor, several quick pulses and then put them into the bowl to season them. The seasonings are the same for the yuba sheets as they are for the mushroom alternative. They are:

6 Tbs cornstarch

3 Tbs mushroom bullion

1 1/2 Tbs sesame oil

1 Tbs of diced lemongrass might be nice, or ginger 

These are all mixed in a bowl together with the diced mushrooms or diced yuba sheets.

Here you can see a full sheet of yuba with one of two of the sheets of nori laid out on it. The nori is put together lengthwise, and the moisture from the yuba makes the nori malleable -- ready for rolling. With a brush, spread a mixture of one part water and one part cornstarch over the sheets of nori. Take two cups of the stuffing (the diced, seasoned mixture) and put in the center, then spread it out. 

The stuffing is rolled into the skin into log-like... well, um rolls. Above , you can see one of the logs cut into halves to fit into my rice cooker / steamer, where it is steamed for twenty minutes. The filling plumps up a bit, the outer layer of yuba becomes transluscent, and the end result resembles a real fish.

Here you can slice off pieces horizontally and fry them in oil until the surface is browned and the skin bubbles a bit. Add sauce and serve on a plate, or what I did for the week after Sunday dinner is wrap it in a tortilla with peanut sauce, kehl, red leaf lettuce and chard for a quick lunch or dinner.

This sauce was made throwing many of the fruits that were in my CSA. The fish can be a strong flavor, so I tried using sweet, tangy flavors to balance it out. In this skillet: 2 peaches, 1 red bell pepper, lime juice, lemongrass, water, 2 tablespoons of cornstarch. To finish, simmer until the fruit softens and then put through a food processor. Another options is making a gravy of onions, garlic, lime juice and some veggie broth thickened with a bit of flour and some cornstarch, or if you prefer just cornstarch. 

I can't promise pictures of Mount Rainier

These collard greens are what started the meal:

I don't know if there's an incorrect way to fix collards, and greens in general. In my home, they traditionally have gone into a cast iron skillet and prepared as suggested by an old edition of The Joy of Cooking, a copy of the book that I searched bookstores for over a year to find, in San Francisco and Seattle, but the fact of the matter is that everybody else who values their Joy of Cooking has an old edition too, and they also had to search bookstores for a year or more to find it -- knowing that the new, revised edition doesn't have a lot of the general information that makes it invaluable, so they hold onto it, and probably we have to wait for someone's sweet grandmother to pass before one shows up in the bookstore so that receiving one is a bit bittersweet, which is maybe why the collards recipe in there is so good. I alter the recipe from that original one in the book to what I have in the fridge at the time: often there's horseradish from my mother's neighbor's yard in there, put through a food processor and then soaked in brine and apple cider vinegar, but some other ingredients that often get into the skillet are onions, garlic, apples; they're all chopped up and then put into the cast iron with some olive oil until the sugars begin to brown, then I toss in the collards, which have been chopped into ribbons, and the lid put on until they cook down. The Joy of Cooking, if I remember correctly, suggests a dollop of sour cream served with it, which wouldn't be terrible at all, though I've never tried it in spite of the wonderful sour cream impostors that are made and sold in the supermarket.

But in the interest of trying, not a raw, but maybe a less cooked version of collards, I used these greens to make into wraps. There are raw suggestions collard wraps, but none of the wraps that I saw videos of hugged the stuffing as much as I wanted them to. I cut the blades from their midrib, if I'm using those terms correctly, and then blanched the leaves -- twenty seconds in boiling water, and then into a colander to cool while I mixed a bowl of the stuffing together: carrot greens, quinoa, beats, and I placed this mix next to mushrooms that I bought at the Korean market and sauteed in oil and lime juice, and some carrots that I cut lengthwise.

A peanut sauce I made from peanut butter, Veganaise, the water that had soaked some mushrooms, apple cider vinegar, dill, salt, pepper... there may have been a splash of soy sauce in there somewhere. I get to putting things into that glass jar to shake up, and I can't remember anything. The problem is that I'm not paying attention while I do it, brain 2,500 miles away deep in the blue of a lake moving like the electricity from a wave. Then I come back and my arms are slightly tired and the sauce jarringly mixed.

Anyway, who cares about a recipe. Surely, this is what made fast food eateries successful: the ability to make a million of the same thing, exactly the same -- but I was told once that dishwear and furniture with defects, places where a hand slipped or glassware that would make the glass-blowing master of Murano ashamed, I was told that these items had become sought after because they showed off that a human had made them, a human had touched them during the creation. And I realize that I'm poo-pooing recipes after I mentioned that I looked long and hard for a copy of The Joy of Cooking, but after I found that copy of the book, I may have followed the recipe once, just one time to learn how to cook the greens, then the book never opened to that page ever again, yet I've never had a bad bunch of greens from that skillet. And I'll admit that I've opened to the same page a few times in order to learn and relearn proportions for making pie, but... well, no but... I use that page every time I bake a pie. Though the fruit I'll often pair with other, nontraditional ingredients such as blueberries and ginger; that pie turned out wonderfully, and I have ideas about apple, basil and some cheesy-impostor-something.

The best part of eating dinner: the people whom you eat with.

Almost as good as the company: Resplendent Laura's the rhubarb pie. 

A distant third is the view of Mount Rainier, mother of the city of Seattle, from the back porch.

(pictured here is Exquisite Sarah looking at Mount Rainier)

Vegan - Gluten Free Pizza Pie Crust

 There's something very flattering about finding out that someone is gluten free, but only after having baked her a loaf of bread and learning that she ate every bit of the bread. There's something very flattering and very troubling, because at the same time she ate every bit of that loaf of bread, her belly rolled that night like an Alaskan fishing ship, and someone who has had stomach roll for months at a time, I know it would take a special kind of crumb and a lot of flavor in that crust, as well a lot of love in my heart to eat something that I knew would double me over.

Laura's not completely gluten free, when I make something that has gluten in it, I'll give her a piece of that at the same time I'll fill the rest of her plate with an attempted gluten-less rendition of what I've made. I do this with dishes with soy too, as when I made my vegan-gluten free fish(y like substance), I made some of the fish with an oyster and portabello mushroom based center for her, though I still used yuba sheets, with the nori sheets, to wrap around the mushroom center.

These Sunday dinner nights that have now gone on for a couple of months started off with a pizza, full of gluten – as I basically have, in the past, taken an olive oil bread recipe and let it ferment overnight, then rolled it out and stacked it so deep with ingredients that it was hard to find a spatula that wouldn't bend under the weight of a slice. (I like to try to find a fruit that I caramelize to put on my pizza. This started with a birthday party where I made several pizzas, in which I had figs from a CSA that were just on this side from going bad, I quartered them and put them in a pan with olive oil, brown sugar and some balsamic vinegar and fried the shit out of them until the structure of the figs started to break down, the sugar caramelized. The result, with some vegan cheese by a company called Dayia -which is becoming the only vegan cheese that is easy to find, was a delicious combination of salty, savory and sweet.) Though Laura has had my pizza several times, she requested that we finally try to make a gluten free version of the five story high pie.

The week leading up to the GF pizza night (by the way, people who have a sensitivity to gluten don't care for the term “glutard” to describe their affliction) I looked online to find a GF crust, and, not finding a recipe that didn't include eggs, decided to splice some recipes together and experiment with some old egg substitutes to find one that worked. Here's what I found with the recipe that I ended up using, it didn't matter what I used to substitute for the eggs, except for in the recipe where I used old, blackened bananas as an egg substitute. I'd never had a GF pizza before, but I ate at least every night leading up to Sunday night dinner, each one slightly different from the last one. We made four pizzas that night, using two different crusts, the only difference being what I used for the egg substitute. The crusts were spongy, yet crispy – couldn't tell that they were GF. The recipe, with annotations, is here:

Vegan – gluten free pizza crust

The oven should be preheated to 400 degrees

-1 cup of tapioca four

-¼ cup each brown rice flour and spelt flour

-1 ½ baking pouder

-1 tsp xanthan gum – this stuff is crazy expensive, though I'm sure that if you've done any sort of GF baking you've bought some of this. I bought some quite a while ago, and it lasts a long time. I've often wondered what would happen if I didn't use it in a recipe, the portion used is so little how much could it do? But I also have been too frightened every time I come to the mixing bowl to neglect putting it in.

-1 tsp salt – out of a paranoia of hypothyroidism from a lack of iodine in my diet after using nothing but sea salt in my diet, I've started using only iodized salt in my foods. Let your own hypocondriaism decide your salt choice.

-1/8 cup olive oil, plus more for the pan

-¼ tsp apple cider vinegar

Your choice – either ¼ cup silken tofu / or 1 Tbs flax seed mixed with 3 Tbs of warm water. Either way this is a wet ingredient and should be added when the wet ingredients are added to the dry.

-1 ½ tsp brown sugar

-maybe about 1tsp of yeast

Place these items in glass with 1 cup of warm water for proofing.

Mix together the flours and salt, xanthan gum and any other dry ingredients that are up on that list.

Add the liquids and mix. The mix will now be a sticky goo.

On a well oiled pizza pie pan, slop the goo into the center, pat down, and with oiled fingers spread the batter towards the edges. Do this slowly and carefully, dipping fingers into oil to replenish the oil. Then smooth out the edges.

Par bake the crust for 15 mins.

Remove the crust and either let cool on a rack for later or load it up with all the toppings you want.

 

Isaac Babel and Slash

And recently I've come to look forward most to my Sunday dinners. I plan for it all week long, thinking about what I haven't made in a long time, and what I've always wanted to be able to make. This last Saturday, my roommate Jimmy found me draining liquids from reconstituted yuba, chopping the sheets into fine bits, seasoning them, and them wrapping those diced bits with seaweed and another full sheet of yuba. What are you making, he asked me, and I told him fish, like Jesus. And I explained to him that it's like Jesus because where once there wasn't fish, there is now because the fish that I was making wasn't fish, really, but a vegan gluten free dish inspired by the flavors of fish, so once there was no fish(y flavored thing) and now there's enough of a fish(y flavored thing) to feed a table full of people. Jimmy didn't quite think that this quite fit the parable, or at least it wasn't presented as a parable of Jesus and the fish (for one thing he told me that it's not a parable, but a story, and I was thinking that maybe it was a parable to illustrate how maybe it was after all a parable to show that while we start out with only so much of ourselves, love and caring isn't confined by how much we are but how much we give out, and we can give out enough to feed many, many people, but then you have the difference in our religious background, I suppose)

Over dinner we talked briefly about Isaac Babel because Laura had his “Red Calvary” on hold waiting to be picked up, and I told her that there was no need to pick it up because I have the complete works of Isaac Babel that she can read instead, and someone asked who Isaac Babel was and I told her that he was a Russian-Jewish author, instrumental in the development of the short story, who died either in the gulag or was executed by the firing squad, I didn't remember which. It wasn't until later when I got home that I remembered that both were true – it's said that he was sent to the gulag, but the truth is he was probably executed, but definitely tortured before he confessed to be an enemy of the state, who was rounded up with Stalin's cleansings, and what's notable about his death is that when they came to arrest him, when they knocked down his door and led him out of his house, away from his family, he said to the heavens, “I just needed more time.” More time! Isaac Babel who translated grandfather Sholem Aleichem's works from the Yiddish to Russian in order to “Feed his soul.” Who said, “No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.” Whose unwritten works are alongside the unwritten works of souls like beautiful Bruno Schulz and the tragedian John Kennedy Toole in a library with walls made from ideas and dreams, walls that are built higher every time you have an idea or emotion that you can't express. Who are all working away right now, a lamps on their desks, faces burried in their work; who are only inturrupted once a day when a woman with sweet round arms and auburn hair, embroidery on her shirt, comes into their study to deliver them a cup of warm tea and kiss them on the forehead before she tells them that they are doing such good work and then recedes out the door again.

After the fish dinner was done and the plates cleared, put away, and after a bowl of almond-milk based ice cream over top of a brownie with some maple syrup, Laura and I were in the living room and Sarah waved a reiki wand over Jimmy's stomach and I talked about an interview that aired that morning with Slash, formerly of the rock group Guns N' Roses. I started the day indifferent to the guitarist, but the interview made me annoyed as Slash answered the interviewer's questions, seeming like a cliché of a rockstar. Deeper and deeper we went into this caricature, interrupted occasionally with clips from Use Your Illusion volumes one and two. They cut to the last clip that they were going to play, and it was the only one during the interview that wasn't from Slash's Guns N' Roses days. It's a song about some guy doing something during the end of the world, which again makes me wonder about how uninspired this guy is, and the interviewer asked Slash about what he would want to do during the lead-up to the end of the world, and this question for me is a slam dunk because it's so easy, and my first reaction is to be annoyed now not only at the guitarist but also at the interviewer for lobbing such a boring question like that; because any man worth his salt would answer that he would want to spend those hours leading to the end of the world, that time before the four stallions descend from the sky, the moments leading into a solar flare wrapping its arms around this earth and hugging it to a cinder, in an embrace with the woman he loves, having just made love and her head on his shoulder as they both lay with their eyes halfway closed, but Slash's answer wasn't this at all but instead he wants to play a raucous, rocking concert in front of millions of people, one of those concerts at a stadium with horrible acoustics, where everything, no matter how close your seats, is far away. This is where my turn on Slash became complete. Because my answer to this end of the world question is absolutely the correct one. The priorities of someone just wanting to be a spectacle at the end is only slightly less worse that the priorities of those people who are attending a concert to watch the spectacle, or the people at the front gates of the end of the world concert scalping tickets.

It was later in the evening again that I was thinking about Isaac Babel. Remembering his death at the hands of a nervous state – one afraid of having theirs icy hearts pierced by his periods. I noticed my own hypocrisy. For Isaac Babel, the end of the world came when two Soviet guards rapped on his door and invited themselves in. His end of the world came when the secret police placed him in the car. When he signed the confessions, his blood from the torture staining the paper. In this end of the world, he rescinded his confession and begged for one thing, that he be allowed to finish his work. Like a musician asking for one more concert.