Category: Dear Crabby

Dear Crabby,

What up with all the crazy colors on your recipes now, dog?

Colorblind

Dear Colorblind,

1. Sorry, you are probably S.O.L. on this one, because I like my color scheme.  Sorry.

2. Here's my rant.  I have long, long believed that the recipe is a technology in desperate need of an upgrade.  You Cook's Illustrated types will have no fucking idea what I am talking about.  Fair enough, please go and organize your jars of heirloom beans in alpha order while I talk this out.

The rest of yous might be able to appreciate this.   I am impatient when it comes to recipes.  I want to understand a recipe at a glance.  I don't want to miss an important detail like the length of time I should saute a scallop before it turns into a rubber eraser.  So why are those important details so often lost in the middle of dry, wordy, finger-wagging sentences?

The way I see it, recipes should be as easy to immediately grasp as guitar tablature.  There's a huge difference between this:

Place your index finger on the fourth string from the top at the second fret; place your middle finger on the fifth string from the top at the third fret; and place your pinky finger on the bottom string at the second fret; but refrain from hitting the top two strings.

and this:
A paragraph is an imperfect form for a list of tasks that have varying difficulty and length.  We move from task to task. 

Also, why are the ingredient amounts listed separately from the instructions?  Some people measure every ingredient out onto individual bowls in a dish-dirtying mass of mise en place.  I am not one of those people.  I want to grab the cumin once, throw the right amount into the pot at the right time, then put the cumin back into the pantry. 

Why is it that temperatures and times are given the same text weight as nonsense like "bring to a" and "stirring occasionally"? 

The digitally trained eye no longer reads.  It scans.  It looks for keywords.

Recipes can be poetry, and they can be prose, but rarely are those kinds of recipes utilitarian for me.  I cannot bear to use my pinky knuckle to scroll down the page of a particularly chatty recipe when my fingers are full of pork juice.

At their core, recipes are just collections of data and should be treated as such.  I have a gazillion ideas about how to organize recipe into data that can be scanned and sorted by the cook who doesn't want to stand around reading the details of a recipe before digging in and making it.

If you're a developer who wants to work with me on my grander ideas, get in touch.  In the meantime, I'll be experimenting with recipe presentation in the coming posts using text, font styles, color.

For now, here's the color decoder to my upcoming recipes:

blue: ingredients
red: timing
green: action

These changes have already given me much satisfaction.  Stay tuned for more, and let me know if they work for you.

Dear Hollywood types who made Made of Honor, which I am ashamed to admit I have been watching on Netflix streaming:

1. Any guy driving through Times Square in a convertible looks like an idiot and a complete douchebag -- who would ever want to cross town like that to get to the Met?
2. Nobody would let you stroll through the sculpture room at the Met with two cups of coffee.
3.  Nobody at the Met would ever let a non-employee roll in to a painting restoration with two cups of coffee.
4. If it's 3am in Scotland, it's not daylight out in New York. 
   
5. That Figaro place is in L.A. You are not allowed to pass that off as New York.  And I don't even know where that antiques mall is supposed to be.

And I haven't even finished the first half hour.  I don't think I can keep going.

Please do not use this city to up the cool factor of your movie if you're just going to paint a totally fake portrait of it.

I <3 NY,
Ganda

Dear men* on trains/planes/buses,

Why do you think it is okay to invade my half of the bus/train/plane seat with your spread-eagle?  Does your teeny weenie need a wittle wiggle room?

Stay on your side or I will start humming George Michael songs and passive-aggressively pushing you back with my foot.

Keep out!
Ganda

*Don't look at me like that!  It's always you dudes!

Dear Japanese inventors,

If you can make a soy sauce ramen that gradually turns into pork broth ramen*, can you please make tofu that turns into a pork chop?  Which will then give me more brain power and bigger boobs?  Just kidding about that last bit, though you're probably already working on it.

Thanks,
Crabby

via TokyoMango via my friend Kim via my magical Google reader

photo by atomicity on flickr, CC licensed

To the pyromaniac choads in my 'hood,

Happy Independence Day!  Look, I know this is the one time of year you get to pop a chubby coaxing a scream out of a flaming stick.  But do you have to light up the fireworks every night for the two weeks leading up to July 4?  Isn't one night of keeping grandma up with your deafening, gunshot-like noises enough for you?  Let me remind you that it is ILLEGAL to set off any fireworks in New York without a permit.

You know what else is illegal?  Putting a night-vision scope on a rhino tranquilizer rifle and sniping people who insist on interrupting their sleeping neighbors.

I'm just sayin',
Crabby

I'm so glad that Dunkin' Donuts decided to pull the ads showing that jihad lover Rachael Ray.  But why stop the boycott there?  There are so many unpatriotic, treasonous coffees on the market right now.  Here's a list of java you should avoid unless you want the CIA to know you love terrorists too.










1. Timothy's -- You know those disposable brew-per-cup coffees you like to down before meetings at work?  Those little shots of ground coffee are made by a Canadian company, and you know what Canadians are -- NOT American. Just like terrorists are NOT American.  Therefore Canadians = Terrorists.  Remember, we need to protect our borders from people who put gravy and cheese curds on Freedom fries.



2.  Peet's -- Peet's got its start in Berkeley, CA, aka the Hellmouth.  That's where stoners send their drug-retarded offspring to become Godless Sufjan Stevens-enthusiasts and  The Nation-reading fornicators.  I hope I get to stand by St. Peter when he informs them that there is no affirmative action in heaven.



3. Chock full o' Nuts -- Okay, maybe not terrorist, but obvs gay.










--

...And the one coffee that will let the terrorists know that they can't take away our freedom, democracy, or faith:

Wear your flag pin and only buy your iced coffee from Starbucks.  "Star" like fifty stars in the flag and "bucks" like free market means TERRORISTS KEEP OUT.

God bless America.

Some of us are back in our hometowns, unwrapping gifts, sipping eggnog by a crackling fireplace, quibbling lovingly with family members, escaping the house at night to get drunk with high school buddies, brining turkeys and baking Christmas cookies as Josh Groban's dickless lilt puts Grandma to sleep, fa la la la la and a bottle of rum.

And some of us are battling the stomach flu alone in Sunset Park, drinking watered down ginger ale, trying to keep bowls of thin rice congee down, crying our eyes out watching our Netflixed Love Actually* on repeat, and flipping channels in a vain attempt to get away from that relentless, toothy holiday pox Rachael Ray as she shills crackers/donuts/stoups.

So since some of us are totally in the holiday spirit this year, we thought we'd put together a list of the top five loneliest places to eat in NYC. We've excluded the ramen bars and pizza joints -- those places were designed for singletons just like you, so you always feel as if you're dining in solidarity.

No, no, the following places make you feel worse than you did when you walked in. They serve to remind you, with every practical bite, that you have no one to go home and have dinner with. That in your life, dinner is not a social event, but a functional refueling. If you find yourself in any of these places, take a look around you. You could:
A.) find another loser like yourself and no longer be lonely, or
B.) join me for dinner and give me grief for putting the blog on hold.

And don't be too hard on yourself -- top ramen over the sink in your underwear is still worse. So is straight up alcoholism.

The Top Five Loneliest Places to Eat in NYC

In descending order:

5. Any Taco Bell, but especially a Taco Bell Express. The seats bolted to the floor, the harsh overheads, the dubious, dubious meat, the sweaty, runny beans, the browning lettuce -- what did you do to make you hate yourself this much?

4. Katz's. You're drunk and you want to eat something before you get on the train so you don't ralph in the tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. But you get your pastrami sandwich, ask for fries, and the guy yells at you to go to the other station. And you sit down at the service only tables and get yelled at by the waiter to move to one of the gazillion other empty tables. And then (because you're drunk), you lose your ticket and you get yelled at by the burly bouncer type at the door who demands an extortive fine. All of which serve to remind you that you are alone, you are pathetic, and you'll never be a REAL New Yorker.

3. Anywhere that serves any kind of tube meat or has "dogs" in the name. Seriously, think about what you look like.

2. Woorijip. You are a lonely fuck if you are eating steam table rice cakes with disposable chopsticks from a foam tray at Woorijip. And if you have forgotten what a sad, lonely fuck you are, just look at the sad, lonely fucks around you, looking minty green under the harsh fluorescents, sitting on their low stools along the bar in the front of the dining room, yelling about their therapy sessions into their cell phones as they stuff their traps with cold, tacky jap chae.

1. The subway. Nasty. What, you're too hungry to wait the 30 minutes it's gonna take you to get home? Or you want to make sure you eat a little something before you start drinking tonight? Those platforms are depositories for all manner of bodily fluids and excretions. Which, of course, you know and generally block out for sanity's sake. But while you're eating? You know better. And if you forget, the smells are easy reminders that drunkards know no discrimination when it comes to finding a place to take a piss (or toss their cookies). The subway car seems marginally better than the platform, but that seat was probably just vacated by a homeless guy who finished jerking off the stop before you got on. And for god's sake, put a glove on before you touch that pole.

Bonus: The other day I was in Shanghai Mong trying their ja jang myun/ramen combo. There's this little circular room where a little lip of a bar juts out from the wall, and about ten single diners can enjoy their meals with their backs to the center of the circle. The great thing is that at about every other seat, there's a mirror at face height that says, "You Are a Princess". I like to imagine all of these gruff Korean businessmen going in for a sweat-inducing bowl of spicy seafood noodle soup and having to stare back at their own visages framed in these curlicued "You Are a Princess" mirrors. Ha ha ha...ha...ahem...this is how I get my kicks these days.

*Is there a better Xmas rom-com? I don't think so. What a dehydrator.

Reader Dave writes:
where's the greasiest pizza located at?.thanks

Greasiest pizza? That is an odd question better suited for the Slice man and his readers. Perhaps Adam will deign to respond.

You know that saying, "Sex is like pizza. Even when it's bad it's good"?

I say, "Pizza is like sex. When it's good, it's good. When it's bad, it's bad." And when it's greasy, it's probably bad, but I guess it could be good, depending on what frame of mind you're in. Not that I would know.

Dear guy on the subway/street drinking Muscle Milk,

Every time I see that Muscle Milk box, I think the logo is a dookie. That extra large carton looks big in your fist, which, in turn, makes you seem kind of Webster-ish. I know you're trying to bulk up, tough guy, but that dookie-decorated, banana-flavored milk carton doesn't just make you look like a pussy, it makes you look like a gullible pussy. Even that kid with the PSP and braces sucking on a strawberry Yoohoo through a straw thinks he could beat you up.

Love hurts,
Crabby

1. Bad website music -- Hello, I am trying to secretly surf the web while I am at work and your bad website music is totally blowing my cover. Okay, I get it, you're multi-culti, you're brown (but not too brown), you're exotic, your place is swingin', baby. It's bad enough I have to listen to whatever pap you decide to throw down on your turf. Turn off the assault on my computer speakers. You're drowning my Mariah out and that's not okay.

2. Small plates -- To hell with you and your so-called tapas! I am so tired of spending exorbitant amounts of money only to go home hungry because I am supposed to share my little serving of finger food with everyone at the table. I want to eat a meal and not have to grab a slice five minutes later. I want my protein entree to come with both a vegetable AND a carb-filled starch. Yes, I mean included in the price.

3. Waiters who ask if I want the bread -- Yes I want the bread and yes I want two pieces and don't make me feel guilty for asking for it. All those fools who have vilified the west's greatest starch contribution will cry when they realize that the decade they spent avoiding carbs didn't help them avoid their fat fate. What, people have been eating bread for centuries and NOW all of a sudden it's making them fat?

4. How would you like that cooked? -- I am of the opinion that there is only one way to cook a steak (rare) and one way to cook salmon (cooked through, no raw center). But when I'm at a restaurant, I want to know how the chef likes it. If s/he thinks it's better another way, I want to try it the chef's way. So, steak I understand -- there is a long tradition of asking for steak to be cooked your way. But duck breast? Fish? Pork chop? Dazzle me with your way, chef.

5. Disposable chopsticks in sit-down Asian restaurants -- Deforestation is real, and there's no reason to be throwing out wooden chopsticks every day when you have to wash the plates and silverware anyway. I keep a normal pair at work and refuse the chopsticks whenever I remember to.