Rare and fatal bleeding, or “how to order a juicy steak”

When I met my wife- the original- she could cook a steak in a frying pan without adding butter or cooking oil. She simply lit the burner and watched the blue flames heat the skillet until the steak was nicely browned on both sides….the consistency of a shoe insert.

In my own endearing way, I expressed great pleasure with her inedible creations by shoving pieces under the table for her cat, while wiping my mouth with a paper napkin. It took me months before even revealing that I actually knew the secret to making an edible steak. Of course, this would come at a price- the price was that she would have to relinquish the job of chef if I was to share this wonderful revelation. 

I do not recall her making me any more steaks…ever…

When she got pregnant with our first, she had a craving for steak. This is not necessarily a good thing for a struggling new husband, who worked like a dog for The Man….I mean, who labored for hours doing menial work that older men would not do. But, life was a bit more fair in those days when it came to getting a meal at a restaurant, especially one with a buffet.

One buffet was all the rage- all you can eat steak, with salad bar, for $4.99 a piece. These were not ordinary steaks, these were juicy ribeyes, sirloins, New York Strips, all cooked to perfection and brought to your table. The servers would explain in detail what each preparation method would entail…by showing us sample glossy photos of steaks with different strips of red, or no red at all, which must be adhered to, in order to get one’s steak.

The now familiar scale of rare, medium rare, medium, and so on was shown the customer, as if the customer were going to take a written test on the material after the meal. One could not, at that time, order a “lightly rare,” or “extremely well-done” steak. You could not “have it your way.” You could not order “a 4 inch wide red streak” in your steak or any other deviations from the photo list.

Now, some of those restaurants are closed…gone forever…and their salad bar heavens have gone the way of the Cabbage Patch Doll or the one-stringed ukulele from Odd Lots. Now, we have choices, so many choices. So many choices that one can create choices and claim they have always been choices. Like the choice to mate with furniture…or live life as a life-size Raggedy Ann Doll. So, it should not come as a surprise that food choice has entered a new frontier, where “rare” and “medium” are rarely mentioned, and new ideas of steak-readiness have invented a whole new series of phrases.

For, just like the newly discovered symptoms that appear from taking a newly advertised drug on TV, the newly prepared steak comes in a wide range of philosophically friendly cooking choices, from “lightly killed,” to “murdered in wine sauce.”

The pharmaceutical world, which rules the life of average American adults, has slipped into the food preparatory culture and brought us more than nine steak grades, from “Raw” to “Fatal.” The raw steak is organically pure with only Himalayan Pink Salt rubbed into the surface structure of the meat, while the “Fatal” is blackened on all sides, including the ends, to seal in the “taste of black death.” “Fatal” can be cooked with “Rare and Fatal Bleeding,” which is an episode that may or may not occur, if the steak is slashed at just the right angle. The purpose is to create “in cold blood” on a plate, an artistic arrangement of the finest charred yet rare steak to ever be created, mixing both ends of the flaming spectrum. 

To say it will not be your father’s steak world is an understatement; refining the steak preparation philosophy to include such choices should create a niche of steak culture the world has never seen.

 

 

 

if you’re breathing and you know it, clap your hands

I thought I’d died and woke up in a nursing home; I’ve never seen so many senior citizens waiting in line to eat…

By the time we were seated on the far side of the restaurant, I counted four children and two pushing fifty. The rest of the restaurant was filled with the sound of cackles and squeaks.

But I didn’t have time to rest my bones long before a man in his late 50s began broadcasting to the entire restaurant, while focused on the poor little man sitting across from him.

I GOT THOSE PAPERS. THE PAPERS YOU NEED TO SIGN.

The older man, wearing a nostril tube insert device, breathing hard and smiling vacuously at the air, said nothing. The younger man, beyond his middle years, fidgeted uncomfortably.

THE PAPERS.

A waitress the size of a large stuffed Pooh Bear waddled over to the edge of the table and deposited several dishes. 

HERE YOU ARE. YOU ENJOY.

Does everyone have to yell? What is it with the waitress? She’s not even old…

I took another bite of my Farmhouse Chicken sandwich, trying to chew the crusty bread.

Ahead of me near the far wall, a mountain mamma sat with her three children and what appeared to be “grandpa.” She looked vaguely familiar, possibly an old colleague, but decidedly larger, if she was. As I was trying to determine this familiarity, she lost a cascade of bread crumbs down her blouse, so I quickly turned away…just in time to see Miss Rotunda, the neighboring waitress, return to the old man and his son.

ARE YOU HAVING DESSERT?

LADY, WE HAVEN’T FINISHED.

People four rows away could hear.

I dumped a large pile of unwanted bread waste on to my plate. The Ciabatta bun was as dry as a glued sawdust ball.

ANY DESSERT?

Miss Rotunda stood within inches of my shirt collar. She had all the warmth of a Gulag night. I could smell the bouquet of grease and dog odor eminating from her clothing.

The fidgetty man demanded something, drawing her away. I looked around. I heard bits and pieces of conversation- an atonal dissonance of slow voices.

I decided then and there- I refuse to become old. Old like the women who cackled about banal gossip. Old like the man who took a long trip down memory lane and forgot to finish his lunch. Not like the man who called the waitress “gal,” and mentioned the word “colored.” (and what century did you revert back to?). Not like the throng of old timers who do the same thing at the same time every day, with nothing new to talk about…their minds so out of touch with reality in the present here and now that they fumble for words for nearly everything.

No one should have to funble for words. One man who rarely did, Dylan Thomas, wrote a poem called “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” Many know this famous poem and the timely theme. But while Thomas argues to “not go gentle into that good night” as you approach the end of life, I would argue to “not go zombie-like into old age.”

Instead of meeting every Sunday after church at Bob Evans, get out and do something. Walk. Talk. Tell stories. Learn something new everyday- not just a new word or something, but something substantial, something worth remembering. Wake up! Wake up to the world around you! You are alive, breathing, and needed. Life is not for passing the moments away like a series of endless seasons of a ubiquitous soap opera on hulu, prime, or the tube, it is for living abundantly.

Amarillo Tuesday

In a new twist to substantially increase Post-Thanksgiving Celebration Shopping Events, a group of the 30 largest US retailers have announced the kick-off of “Amarillo Tuesday.” The event, which will coordinate retailer savings with participation in Mexican restaurant promotions, will go national at 4:30PM EST Tuesday.

Richard Los Lobos, a spokesman for the group “The Society for the Promotion of Mexican-American Cuisine” stated that many chain and local restaurants will participate.

“Every retailer displaying an Amarillo Tag Sale Event (or a picture of a Large Yellow Tortilla Chip) will offer a paired dining experience with a locally-owned or chain restaurant selling Mexican food. Shoppers will need only follow posted rules in each store,” Los Lobos said.

When asked if he thought there might be confusion with the retailer’s rules, Los Lobos stated, “We don’t anticipate that. After all, these are Americans, and by and large, they’re a pretty smart group- most of the time.”

But not everyone is so confident. Dale Weinbrenner, a spokesman for The Walnut Grove Retail Association in Walnut Grove, believes US shoppers will be utterly confused.

“In my neck of the woods nobody knows what the (heck) Ammarilla is. If they go shopping, huntin’ for it, who is gonna know where to put it so you can find it? It ain’t like going to ask for a Big Mac or somethin’,” Weinbrenner admitted.

Weinbrenner isn’t alone. A number of retailers in neighboring cities have dropped out of the event, claiming it is racist.

“This here is America. If ya can’t put it in English, ya ought to be deported,” Allie Huck, owner of Nascar Collectibles, argues. “It ain’t right to have these Mexicans comin’ up here and makin’ us eat their food.”

Huck believes retailers should extend the special shopping deals to Saturday, the day after Black Friday, and offer “American” products that day at a 10% discount to all legal citizens. She would call it the “White Trash Weekend Sale.”

“Just bring your birth certificate in, and we’ll give you a 10% discount on anything in the store- even the Richard Petty Collectible Dog Dishes.” Huck announced. “I’ll be doin’ that every Saturday after Thanksgiving for any God-gifted American.”

And she is not alone. Down the road from her, Bob Barnes, manager of the “Get and Gas.” states he will offer a 15% discount to all shoppers wearing a Duck Dynasty Shirt. “It’s American, that’s it,” he stated, when asked why he was joining Huck next year in the White Trash Weekend Spectacular. “Gotta make money some way.”

Barnes, along with Huck and their supporters are already planning an advertising blitz for the event, slated for “Thanksgiving Saturday” next year in the USA. They have enlisted ZZ Top to do a “White Trash Weekend” advertising campaign in 27 cities and towns across the South and Midwest.

“I’m sure we’ll take down that Tuesday thing,” Barnes said, when asked about the new marketing campaigns. “We can’t afford any more changes to the gene pool.”

But while the Amarillio Tuesday event offers a chance for extending cultural awareness, Barnes and Huck, want no part of it. Theirs is an America lost in a relative time warp, perpetuated by shallow television shows and misconceptions about the cultural makeup of the country.  Unfortunately, they are not alone.

They mirror the divisions among an increasingly weary public, one that a recent poll highlighted as being “untrusting” of not just neighbors, but everyone not like them. This is a dangerous time for the USA; if this trend continues, the very social fabric of the nation is at stake. It is as if the once great economic and military power is collapsing in on itself, in fear and mistrust. In this climate, corruption has increased, and class division has substantially widened.

My purpose in writing this “hypothetical news article” is to point out the condition of the country, reflecting on it through the very American “Black Friday/Post Thanksgiving Sales” phenomenon. I welcome your comments, but only if  you have read the entire piece, and understand the biting humor.

On the edge of the parking lot

She propped a leg on the curb and took some serious puffs on a dwindling cigarette, communicating stress. An older man, dressed in suspenders, a heavy blue-plaid flannel shirt, and pants belonging to a long-forgotten era, brought his pipe and importance to the edge of the curb. She flung her head one way, exhaling, her pony tail swishing, as the old man pointed left at an invisible idea. And then, he was gone. But unlike Joshua marching around Jericho, the old man puffed his pipe and waddled his way around the back side of the restaurant.

As i climbed into my seat and turned the ignition, I wrestled with what had happened in the parking lot. I watched the stressed girl walk back to her job inside the restaurant, while I passed a woman drinking coffee, walking on the curb edge like a little girl playing, and the old man heading toward the golden arches.

And I thought about them, three wandering souls, all looking stressed in one way or another, all exhibiting images of the lost, without a word of speech. I did not see a cigarette abuser, a pipe addict, or an old demented woman, I saw three people in need of comfort, compassion, and a better way in life.

Still, there are many today who would judge them, in the name of tolerance and liberal-thinking; they would be the first to attack a fellow human being. To malign them,  to scatter lies about them, to subjugate them…to bury them in a pit of darkness…that would make these dark fiends happy, to see their fellow men and women suffer so. These are the ones with consciences seared, closed minds to the things of God; the ones running head-first into destruction, seeking others to drag down with them. They speak lies until they believe it is truth, and speak lies against the truth. Their way is the only way, there is no tolerance for anyone else.

Pity them, pray for them, that their eyes be opened, that they repent before eternal darkness covers them. As Christ came for the three wandering souls in the parking lot, he surely came for even those so deep in the pit that hatred and destruction is all they know. God’s perfect plan is that all be delivered from that pit. It is the job of those who have a flashlight to spread the light around so those in darkness can first see they are in darkness and need to get out of it.

If you know the truth (and the truth sets you free), then pray for these unfortunates… and have mercy on those you see…wandering around the parking lot…