I have become comfortably dumb
No. I’m not smoking a turkey for Thanksgiving. I love smoked turkey, though. I never get tired of it, much like pork butt. And bacon. And Cheetos. I wonder if they could make barbecue pork butt & bacon flavored Cheetos? Note to self: call Frito Lay. Anyway, no, no smoked turkey for Thanksgiving. Because while comfort food is comforting, comfort food that has been screwed with is terrifying.
Take green bean casserole. It’s a classic. It’s made with a cheap can of soup, cheap green beans and canned onions. It’s perfect – so let’s screw with it. I thought about that last night. I’ll get fresh green beans, make my own mushroom cream sauce, batter and fry some onions, maybe toss in something to spark it up a little bit, like bacon and Cheetos.
No. I’m not going to do it.
You get worked-up for comfort food. Your taste buds and your mind get twitchy over the thought of it. Take meatloaf, for instance. Meatloaf – there’s meatloaf coming. Radar O’Reilly called it his favorite loaf. Your taste buds and your brain say, “We’re going to get meatloaf. Everything is going to be OK. Nothing bad can happen – we’re having meatloaf.� Note to self: make a meatloaf this weekend.
Now, with all of your senses all a-titter over the impending meatloaf, a fat slice is plopped in front of you, with potatoes and peas. All the evils of the world are about to be blotted out by this dish. But the loaf…there’s something not right with it. There’s something weird. This…this isn’t meatloaf. Oh, it’s loaf-like, but this isn’t meatloaf.
Hell is opened. Someone decided to make meatloaf better. He/she screwed with it. There’s a layer of grape jelly in the middle. Or a carp. Or something fancy and French. There’s a layer of dirt from the Lot et Garonne in south west France. What was a comfort food does a 180 and suddenly everything isn’t going to be OK – bad things can happen. Evil abounds.
When you screw with a comfort food, you don’t just remove the comfort, you make it scary. Add a new twist to a comfort food and you might as well be eating a plate of radioactive headcheese. Not that I have a problem with headcheese. Or radioactivity. I digress.
I’m not smoking a turkey because we roast a turkey. What makes it a “special� holiday meal is that it isn’t barbecued. It's comfort food. Don’t screw with the comfort food. Ok, we fry one, too, but everthing fried is comfort food. Note to self: beer batter a plate of radioactive headcheese and deep fry it.
Comments
Comfort food. Put some milk in a pan and heat. As it heats sprinkle in white flour. Keep sprinkling and stirring until it is thick as a plank. Spread it out on a nice big plate. Butter, sugar and cinnamon. No Ralph, it's not just like paste.
Oh, and don't let your meatloaf.
Posted by: Doc | November 23, 2005 7:55 PM