Technology....or Why it's not good to laugh at your Mom

My mom is pretty smart.  She's mastered all sorts of things in life.  In her own words:

"I believe I've come very far in dealing with high tech - computers, cell phones, texting, iPad, Kindle"

Sometimes though, it's the little things.  I loaned her a food processor at Thanksgiving, and gave her a cursory lesson in how to use it.  I figured that was all she needed.  Like I said, she's pretty damn smart.  

This morning, I got a call from her, and she was frustrated with the fact that the food processor was not working.  It was all together, but when she hit the on button, nothing happened.  I tried for a few minutes to talk her through troubleshooting it, but to no avail.  I was about to give up when I remembered that she has an iPad, and she knows how to do FaceTime, and that would let me look at the thing and maybe figure out what was wrong.

Right away, I could see what the issue was.  The bowl was mounted on the base 180 degrees from where it should be, thus rendering the machine inoperable.  As soon as I saw it, I started to laugh.  It's an easy mistake to make, and thankfully, one that was easily fixed.  My mom was laughing too, at her inability to figure out a simple technology.  I was maybe laughing a little too hard.  Why?

Let's remember who taught her to use this food processor.  Let's also throw in the fact that I did not give her any user manual or documentation for this thing.  I train and teach for a living. This was all my fault.

I'm just happy that she was laughing with me.

BBQ is like sex

This thing was named, on a whim, Eating and Thinking.  So far, there's been no mention of food.  Thankfully, none of you have pointed this out to me, although some snarky comments would have been appropriate.

If you know me, you should be at least vaguely aware of the fact that I like BBQ.  If you don't know me, let me state for the record, I like to eat BBQ.  Now that that's out of the way, let's get to the eating.

The last few days, I've been in Murfreesboro and Nashville TN. I thought I was in for a treat, having already enjoyed some Memphis ribs a few weeks ago. This is where the title should start to make sense. The old saying is that pizza is like sex. Even when it's bad, it's still pretty good. That made a lot of sense in college, but having had really good pizza since then, we all know that it's not true.

I ate at three different BBQ places, and the only good things I can say is that it wasn't Taco Bell.Of the three, only one had meat that was worth mentioning, and that was on night three.  It was like I saved the best for last. Night two saw a blackberry cobbler that was really quite delicious, but it didn't make up for the bland meat and forgettable sides.

Maybe I should have had pizza instead.

Meet the Mets

Chris Christie told a story: My wife says to me "why did you make our son be a Mets fan? You coulda let him be a Yankees fan and he coulda been happy." I said "As a Mets fan, he's going to understand pain and disappointment. Other losses that he experiences in life, he'll keep in perspective."

Growing up, I was a Mets fan.  Not out of love for the team as much as out of respect for my Grandmother.  She was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and when they left for Chavez Ravine, it’s not like she was going to roll over and become a Yankees fan just because that’s what was left.  So when the Mets came along in 1962, she started to root for them, and her anti-Yankees resolve stiffened just a little more.  I think it was my 4th or 5th Halloween, she got me a Mets uniform.  Wool, with the stirrup socks and everything.  I looked like I should have been out on the mound with John Stearns trying to calm me down or pep me up a bit about the next batter. 

As I got older, I lost interest in the Mets.  Sure, I still root against the Yankees, but that’s a duty, not a passion.  I don’t live and die by the win/loss record of a team.  I don’t have the inflated hopes of “it’s a new season, and at least until the first game is over, my team is undefeated.”  I don’t suffer the depression of a last minute loss.  But I get it.  You think wearing your lucky shirt will help.  Rally caps, rituals, and rain dances all are equally ineffective. You want something so badly, yet you have no control over it.  When it’s all over, you either celebrate(and hopefully don’t burn your city down), or you drown your sorrows for a few days and utter the simultaneously depressing yet hopeful phrase “Wait until next year.”

All of that brings me back to the idea of how people deal with loss and disappointment.  Some people spend a lot of time worrying.  Worrying “what if?” or “how will I react?”  Why? You can’t know how you’re going to handle a situation until it presents itself.  Every situation is unique.  We don’t control how things happen, but we can control how we react when it does.  We can either freak out and let our emotions cloud our judgement, and do something we’ll regret, or we can remain calm and take a deep breath and figure out a calm, rational way to deal with what we’ve been presented with.  The more often you encounter pain and disappointment, the better you get at taking a deep breath and figuring out how to deal with it.  You figure out how to remain calm, maybe even stoic.  You start memorizing lines from Rudyard Kipling’s IF.  You realize that the shitstorm you’re dealing with right now isn’t really as big and bad as it seems.  You see it coming.  You know you’ll have to deal with it, but you don’t stress out about it because no matter how bad you think it might look while it’s out on the horizon, who knows what it’s going to look like by the time it rolls up on you. 

How many times have you watched a thunderstorm roll in, excited by the prospect of a drenching rain, only to have it dissipate before it reaches you? Sometimes, the storm rolls right over you, dropping not a single glob of water.  Some problems are like that.

But sometimes, you see the storm coming, you know you may have to deal with it, and sure enough, it drops right on top of you. 

But you’re able to put it into perspective.

You don’t know when you’re lucky. Or do you?

A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through the entertainment options on my flight, and they had a couple of episodes of Louie(for the record, Season 2, ep. 4).  For some unknown to me reason, I've never watched Louie before.  That needs to change, but that's beside the point. 

One of the episodes I watched featured Joan Rivers giving Louie advice on the comedy business.  The ups, the downs.  She said something that I think has broader appeal than just that show.  She said to him "know when you're lucky."  Think about that for just a moment.  We go through life too often worried about the day to day, the minutiae of modern life, and we lose sight of the big picture.  We don't realize what we have, when we have it.  We want more, more, more.  We think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, or that just because the bloom is off the rose, it's time to toss it out and get a new one.

Something that a number of friends did for the month of November was 30 days of Thanksgiving.  Every day, they posted something they were thankful for.  It ranged from the mundane to the insightful, but every one of them was a peak into someone who was taking a moment or two to be mindful of how fortunate they are.  I didn't participate, and now I wish I had.  I've been mulling over "know when you're lucky" for almost three weeks now, trying to decide what it means in my life, and how I can apply it in more than just these few paragraphs.  It's been a lot to mull over.

I'm thankful that I have the luxury of time.

Who, what, when, where, and why.

I don't have a lot to say right now, which is OK, because if a picture is worth a thousand words, this will likely be the longest piece of writing I've done in a long time. 

The day before Thanksgiving, my brother and I went golfing.  We played Winagamie Golf Course.  It's late in the season, and they were doing repairs on a number of holes, so they had re-tooled the course, which meant that neither of us knew where we were going most of the round.  You know what?  It didn't matter.  It was November 21st, we were in Wisconsin, and the weather was good enough for us to be out golfing. 

Why?  Because we could, and sometimes, that's all the reasoning you need. Hitting par on the 18th with a view like this behind you is just confirmation of that.

Thanksgiving

I'm not cooking this year.  Most everywhere I go, I get asked to help, or drafted into helping, in the kitchen.  However, in my mom's kitchen, I'm persona non-Grata.  That's OK.  She puts out a fantastic meal, and one that I remember from way back.

However, so that I can feel somewhat useful in someones kitchen, here is the way that I would make a turkey. 

Feel free to contribute recipes for sides. 

Enjoy.

Update:  I talked my brother into letting me use his kitchen.  Mustard vinaigrette Brussels sprouts are ready to go.

Diners, Drive-bys, and Duhs

Earlier this week, Guy Fieri's newest venture in Times Square was reviewed by the New York Times. My reaction was "scathing, but piss your pants funny."  Don't get me wrong.  I've watched countless hours of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  I sat through more than a couple episodes of Guy's Big Bite.
I've even, in my travels, sought out some of Guy's recommendations.  There were a few hits, but a lot of misses.

But Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar was lambasted in the Times.  Brouhaha ensued.  Charges of elitism on the part of the Times were lodged.  It took over the Twittersphere.

Then today, an opinion piece in AdAge was sent to me.  Read here.  Short version: Scripps needs to control the talent's off air endeavors in order to have a better chance at retaining their audience, and by extension, the advertisers who keep them in butter, salt, and bacon. 

It's interesting to see the fallout from the brouhaha over the review.  Let's be honest: The people going to Guy's restaurant in NYC are generally not the same people who read the Times, and they will very likely continue to seek out his restaurant, and all the places he visits on Diners Drive ins and Dives, because of him and his outsize personality. 

Why?

Think back to the 2004 election, it was all about "who would you want to have a beer with?" and George W. Bush came out on top in that contest(and the election).  It's all about the personality now, in the election or in TV programming.  People want to connect with a person, people want to be able to travel to Nashville or Tuscon or Tacoma and say "Guy ate here, so it should be good!"  Those are the same people who will, when in New York, seek out Guy's American Kitchen & Bar instead of Esca or Le Bernardin, or even Wo Hop.  Moreover, that's OK.  It's what makes the world go 'round.  If we all enjoyed the same menu all the time, life would be horribly boring. 

Think also of this:  just like MTV no longer shows music(as far as I can tell), Food Network is more and more getting away from recipe driven cooking shows.  It's all Triple D, $40/day, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, or competition shows like Chopped, Iron Chef, or Cupcake wars.  In fact, there's so little actual cooking on there anymore that a new channel, the Cooking Channel(also owned by Scripps), has stepped in to take its place. 

So I can see where the AdAge column makes sense, that Scripps needs to hold the reins a bit tighter, at the same time, I don't think that the average viewer will be all that dissuaded by this type of publicity(not ignoring the "any publicity is good publicity" argument), nor will they be dissuaded from seeking out Guy's American Kitchen & Bar when they are hungry in New York.