Holiday Post #2: 2 Foods

Hot Sauce
Lately, I've really gotten into trying different hot sauces. Of course, I've had Clancey's (for those of you non-locals, a local hot sauce company) for many years & it's fantastic. 5 or 6 years ago, it was even the subject of a Food Network show about local food companies. That episode, if I remember correctly, also discussed Tony Packo's in Toledo... home of Klinger's favorite hot dogs & pickles. My recent fascination started after putting Frank's Red Hot on some eggs @ The Golden Egg. Of course, it wasn't called the Golden Egg then; the place has changed owners countless times lately. Well, technically, I think it's just been passed back & forth between a couple cousins for tax purposes. The funny thing is that I'd had Frank's plenty of times in the past; I love it on falafels & Mexican food, but w/ breakfast it did something different to my food & I needed to put it on everything thereafter. For X-Mas last year, Jean got me a bottle of Moonlight BBQ (a local Owensboro dive from which he also scored me a pretty sweet brown trucker hat) hot sauce which is great in chili, but I haven't really put it on much else because it's a bit too BBQy for potatoes or lasagna. A couple months ago, I bought a bottle of D. J. Jardine's Texas Champagne. It's good on chili dogs, but w/o the other spices it's pretty bland & doesn't really stand alone very well. Then, the other day @ Plum Market, I tried The Tropical Pepper Company's XXtra Hot Sauce which I'm really likin'. Although it has the double X in the title, the heat doesn't overpower the flavor as is the case so often. This brings up a 2nd issue though: why do we use the same system to rate hot sauce that we use to rate porn? Maybe I've mentioned this before, but I don't think so. A single X is like soft-core Cinemax porn... tits & bush. XX may have penetration but in a pretty tame way. Hot sauce w/ an XXX is, I guess, the sauce equivalent of a 12 layer face glaze.... or, if it's really hot, Tub Girl in a bottle. I haven't tried any XXX hot sauces. Anyway, feel free to post your favorite hot sauces so I can give them a try.Egg Nog
Speaking of porn, egg nog has a certain consistency that, I imagine, some people find rather revolting. None-the-less, it tastes awesome. I just got a free bottle of Guernsey Egg Nog today from Plum Market & Solstice & I almost finished it already. When it comes to drinking nog, I'm like a turkey getting fed: if no one stops me, I'll just keep drinking & drinking & drinking. It's like I can't judge when enough is enough. Although, I admit it's pretty apparent a 1/2 hour later when I feel like shit. Drinking egg nog before Thanksgiving seems a bit decadent to me, but it's the holiday season after all, so it makes for a great holiday season post.

Groovin' all week with you, or Another piece of the puzzle falls into place

I have very few memories from my time as a wee lad in Walloon Lake, MI. We moved to Petoskey when I was 4 years old, & what I do remember is often filtered through what I've been told by my parents. I do remember watching Land of the Lost w/ Robbie Zinkle. I definitely remember my Batman beach towel that fit over my head like a cape. There were certainly a lot of bikers who hung out @ the far end of the beach leaving the pop-tops to their beers all over the place. I remember morel hunting & berry picking & the book about pirates I got from the library which was actually just a table set up in the fire station w/ a few books on it. I remember playing w/ my Weeble Wobble Cowboy Ranch set while Mable watched The Price is Right in the other room... & the moment when I saw that Weeble Wobble set under the X-mas tree a few months earlier. I also remember Ray Burdett sitting Ray Burdett style (backwards) on a chair in the kitchen drinking his 6 of Löwenbräu. (He is also the name-sake of "Uncle Ray's Dressing," a salad dressing my mom makes for spinach salad.) Of course there were also his niece & nephew from whose parents we rented our little house & w/ whom (18 years later) Stephanie, Elizabeth & I almost saw our very last Grateful Dead show). Pontoon boats & the path through the woods, behind the old high school are pretty foggy, but there was the party @ Jane & Russ's where I didn't know anyone but ate a shit-ton of orange push-ups, a party that has always remained pretty clear in my mind. And of course, the time my arm went out of socket @ the general store & I screamed bloody murder. The 2 television memories I have involve M.A.S.H. & Happy Days. M.A.S.H. my parents watched... Happy days I loved, which is why the dream I had last night about Ritchie & Potsie stood out & needed a post. In fact, I woke up in the middle of the night & said to myself, "That's bloggable."

The dream went like this:
As the 1st 6 or so seasons of the show revolved around Ritchie & Potsie trying to get laid, the fact that this made it into the dream isn't so strange, but the rest is. I was watching the show (but occasionally, I floated into the show & filled the role of a slimmer, more handsome Tom Bosley). On the episode, Ritchie & Potsie announced they would only date African American women & then started to talk all "gangsta," as Ritchie said things like, "What's for dinna, by-atch?" to Mrs. C. & Potsie came correct w/, "I'mma smoke dem punks @ Jefferson High, Nigga!" There were even times in the episode where Little Ronny Howard nearly broke character because he was well aware of the ridiculousness of the lines he was expected to recite. Furthermore, while watching the episode in my dream, I marveled @ the fact that Ralph Malph wasn't involved in this plot-line because his character was more often the type to do these sorts of things. It wouldn't have contradicted his character as much. It seems like Fonzie should have stepped in & told them they were being uncool, but that didn't happen either. I just don't know what to make of it, or how it relates to my childhood in Walloon.