People Who Rocked My World When I Needed It

Behold the mighty meat from Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue.

I don't mean everybody. If I tried to give credit to everyone who's helped keep me on this Planet of the Dopes, I'd wind up forgetting a bunch of important ones. But when I was gripped in the jaws of melancholy this winter/spring, I had a couple of very nice things happen, and I'd like to give credit where credit is due. First off, Catherine Schaff-Stump of Writer Tamago and Viable Paradise XIII did a really nifty profile of me.

When she talks about my oscillation, I have to admit that I've wondered if people noticed when I did that... Basically, I can only focus on one thing at a time, and a lot of the time that one thing is inside my head. So I'm either hyper-grounded in reality or completely lost in the ozone, and the shift frequently happens in social situations. Ah, well. It could be worse.

To tell you the truth, I actually like green beans. I cooked these by putting salt into my big enamel skillet and dry-frying/steaming them -- the salt brings out the juices, which steam the beans. 's good, easy, and digestible.

And Brent Bowen, another Viable Paradise XIII veteran, sent his VP roomie good ol' Christopher Cornell and I a care package from the heartland. Real barbecue, my friends. I try my hand at smoking meat from time to time, but alas, skill and resources are limited. It's nice to get a notion of the standards of the field.

The ribs were the best. Tender rather than stringy, the fat perfectly melted into the meat, which clung to the bone before pulling off cleanly. The smoke ring was about three-eighths of an inch of ruby red goodness. Ahhh...

The burnt ends were dense and tasty nubbins that went particularly nicely with the sauce.

The beans really rocked -- I've done a similar style myself. Sort of smokey baked beans with shreds of beef.

And the corn casserole with ham and cheese? Chris described it as, "Macaroni and cheese, but with corn instead of macaroni." I've got to say that a) it tasted really, really weird to me and b) I wound up licking the pot clean.

So thank you, Brent and Catherine. Sorry to have been such a slug about this, but it's been all I can do not to go on a multi-state crime spree of a magnitude that would render the concept of punishment meaningless. Alas, simple human courtesies were beyond my feeble capacities.

So. Y'all can expect another post tomorrow. And I suspect you may be surprised...