mangalitsa

dreaming of pork part 2

I think I remain on the Heritage foods listserv just to torment myself.

Last year around holiday time, Trung and I braved the mega-hipster crowd to get heritage pork from the Pork Prom over at Blue Bottle in Jack London (that's hipster to the third power!). We were in self-snaking lines for an hour. But, we ate Mangalitsa. That's right, the hungarian curly pork I salivated over.

my fave is still Red Wattle. Nyum nyum.

i ♥ pork

if it wasn't abundantly clear, i love pork.

and i was finally able to manifest my dream yesterday. heritagefoodsusa.com is having a 20% special on quarter hogs, and i had a 15% off new subscriber coupon (ok so i actually had to use our family email to re-subscribe to get the coupon but you get the idea.)

going in with two other households (Hun & Lily-Tommy), we bought a quarter hog of red wattle--the rarest and most endangered and most succulent porcine breed that we have to eat in order to save from extinction. eat the pig, save the world. google it, but don't cute overload yourself into vegetarianism. red wattle makes niman ranch look like trichinosis. only eating unicorns could be better than this. ok, or maybe an acorn-fed ossabaw.

having limited freezer space, the only way Lily & Tommy could go in for their portion (~12 lbs) was for Lily to start slangin' pork on the side. word got out on the street that we had exclusive, high-quality product, and to make a long story short, now there's folks who want in on the next shipment. it's the urban hustle to survive. over vacation, i'm going to work on setting up a community sponsored agriculture co-op for organic heritage pork. something else to add to my eclectic resume. so you see, your honor, i started with good intentions and that is how i became a dealer. to paraphrase Nancy Botwin "I'm a pork dealer , there, I said it, I'm a f*cking pork dealer"

as for Hun, weo i think he sleeps with his pork under his pillow. he misses Sylvia. she misses the pork. though i'm sure the pork in cambodia is quite tasty.

separately, T & i also got some trotters to make soups. vinamese people believe that pig's feet soups increase milk production in breastfeeding mothers. you ever hear of a sow who doesn't have enough milk for her piglets? so this is my personal lactivism in action.

the pork was delivered FRESH in a cooler on ice. T. is still confused by the physics of that. on sunday, that hog was in pasture; on monday, it fulfilled its' life's purpose; and by wednesday, it was in our bellies. as animal-likers, we won't dwell on the former two aspects. the movie BABE is also being banned from our house and will be added to the n2 contraband list.

it was mostly packaged individually by cuts; the smaller ones in smaller portions, the roasts in huge chunks. i won't get into the listing of cuts. we really should have take a photo last night at the carnage.

so since this is the best pork i have ever had up to now, i figure i will chronicle our eating of it.

last night, using a recipe that i got from Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork: A guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World's Favorite Meat (henceforth referred to as the pork bible) that T got me for my birthday one year, i made Pearl Balls--a pearl-ly rice-encrusted meatball. a lovely dim sum-like dish flavored with shallots, minced ginger, sesame oil, bragg's amino acids (essentially a healthy soy sauce), brown sugar and fresh ground malaysian black pepper with your basic soy sauce, rice vinegar, & hot sauce condiment. we ate this with a vegan butternut squash soup grown by T's mom's neighbor; i modified an america's test kitchen recipe for this and hand-milled the squash for a rustic texture (i learned about this from too much Food Network channel while on maternity leave from Ina Garten) and a brown and sweet brown rice mixture inspired by my venture into kimbap-making for work. T. made pea sprouts.

the flavor of the pork was umami and distinct without being gamey or cloying. not that slight baconish porky like niman ranch porkchops (which are also mighty fine) but another kind of pork flavor that was tantalizingly delicious. can't wait to try the next one.

may the pork be with you.

dreaming of pork

what is it that Americans and approx 20% of the world have against pork?

T & i and others of our ilk been bemoaning the lack of high-quality, relatively inexpensive organic pork. at least with chicken we can go to a halal store and get humanely treated, non-drugged chicken for comparable prices to a regular grocery store. but no one does "halal" pork and it's considered an insult to even inquire. when we were in Viet Nam, the subtle flavor of the pork, just couldn't compare with anything we could get here at a typical grocery stores. and even when we go to that organic grocery store, all they have is pork chops. while delicious, you can't find the cuts--from the rooter to the tooter--used in vinamese cooking. what happens to all those organic pig trotters that could be the base for practically every vinamese noodle soup? (fyi non-vinamese people, pho is the only aberration. all vinamese noodle soups are made from pork bones even that wierdly named Bun Bo Hue|Hue-style beef noodles.)

T. dream-crushed my idea of raising our own vinamese pot-bellied pigs since he astutely surmised i would name the pigs, teach them tricks, and then recoil at butchering them. (rather, he has dream-crushed my idea of raising them to eat them; he hasn't dream-crushed my idea to raise them as pets cause the miniature donkeys would be lonely out back and what better company than pigs? smarter than dogs and can be potty-trained to boot.)

our friend Giang re-sparked my enthusiasm for acquiring a deep freezer. Giang & co. bought an organic 4H pig from the County Fair and it was delivered butchered into cuts, though unfortunately, american cuts. so no feet, head, ears or bones. darn!

i happened to find a source for organic, heritage pigs and practically every cut. heritage pigs are the breed of famed, succulent black pigs ghat are high in omega-3 fatty acids, that were all but bred out of existence by the commercial dry, anorexic pink pigs of factory farming.

better yet, you can get a whole pig (!) including shipping for about $300. and of course if you are a first time user you can 15% off. so for about $250 you can get a year's worth of pork! (or one fine pig roast. not that we ever finished installing the kalua pit in the backyard... there's always next year or la caja china.) pretty good price considering that non-organic, commercially produced heo quay|whole roast pig costs $150.

http://www.heritagefoodsusa.com/
*Ok and it cracks me up that part of their mission is the genetic preservation of endangered rare breeds, so their mantra is "If we want to save them, we must eat them! ." I can just see some chinese company breeding siberian tigers and sunbears to eat with exclusive Louise XIV VSOP cognac with that very mission in mind.

the politics of milk

when i was a keiki, my ohana wen go to da Havai'i-kine State Fair. there we met LaniMoo. talk about your sacred cows. i can remember her standing outside the billowing white tent where the cows were being kept. an ambassador to her species adorned with her melia lei & haku lei, victorian blouson & muumuu, and her celestial name, LaniMoo was brown-skinned, two-breasted, two-legged, native & regal like the nubile Havai'i-kine ladies in the parades. only she was not really a holy cow, she was a haole cow. and dis heifer had a lockdown on immaculate conception. (they just re-launched a new mascot, her son by "surprise virgin birth" Kawika. given how they fertilize cows, weo the less said about that the better, though mike rowe has a lot of funny things to say.)

basically, milkcows were an invader species brought by the haole plantation owners in 1793 when they colonized the island of Havai'i. since everyone in the world are naturally lactose-intolerant in adulthood except for northern europeans, and hawaii-kine being no exception, i imagine profits were pretty limited. in the mid-50s introduced Lani Moo the bovine mascot so named by a haole kid. then in the mid-1970s they got smart, they started corporate-sponsoring the local youth soccer league and producing the propaganda about cowmilk's benefits. my dad being no stranger to propaganda (and no coincidence, like most brownskins, a lover of soccer) was militant about it. we all had to drink cowmilk. lots of it. my siblings being kids by then and over their (breast)milk drinking days by a decade maybe didnt catch on or get the brunt of this militancy. me being the baby, i was cowmilkboarded. and i came to have cowmilk all the time. gallons. and ice cream. and cheese oh i came to love cheese. i've been colonized by cowmilk.

i didn't stop drinking cowmilk until college sometime after my ex moved out. and then on a foster freeze & berkeley marina date with T. in 1999, i had the gut-wrenching realization that i am indeed lactose-intolerant, a "problem" i share with 95% of adult humanity, that i promptly & temporarily solved with lactase supplements. though there's not fixing anything with ice cream, lactase or no. nowadays its a moot problem since i've stopped consuming so much cowdairy products. and last year in an effort to treat my allergies & chemical sensitivities, i went on a strict dairy- & gluten-free diet. and indeed, my allergies & sensitivity cleared up. so i got lazy. then when i was in that last couple of months of pregnancy, i wanted ice cream and went on a bender. so i had haagen daz on a stick once a day. gotta love costco for bulk purchases.

and now i'm the dairymaid for our daughter. she is six months now and still exclusively breastfed. all 18lbs and 12.4oz of her. pure mother's love buttermilk.

breastfeeding. so not controversial. even our HMO sez mothers should breastfeed at least until 6 months. and i plan on breastfeeding to two years at least.

weo, we went to our 6 months check up yesterday. when our osteopathic-cum-medical pediatrician found out VL was still being exclusively breastfed, he said i should start giving her iron supplemented food right away because breastmilk has low iron after 6 months and no, i couldn't just take more iron supplements as the mommy. well, i took him at face value and was doing my own educational reading about starting solids, and i read in the evidence-based book Baby Matters and on kellymom.com that because cow's milk in formula commonly inhibits the development of intestinal villi ("leaky gut" syndrome) and as a result causes gastro-intestinal bleeding and malabsorption, because of that, formula & babyfood had to have extra iron to compensate for the loss of blood & iron. whereas breastmilk has lactoferrin an easier-to-digest form of iron and one that boosts baby's ability to resist bacteria like E. Coli. and breastfed babies at 6mos+ that are not given iron-fortified foods have a higher iron level in their blood than breastfed babies who are given iron-fortified food. the iron they use to fortify baby foods actually leaches the lactoferrin iron in breastmilk! so the standard for how much iron is "needed" is still based on babies who take formula and are therefore iron-deficient, and then applied to breastfed babies which in turns makes breastfed babies, iron-deficient! out-dated research based on formula companies' & dairy industry's profit-motivated "science". ridiculous.

we very quickly realized VL couldn't tolerate cowmilk. not because we gave her any, but because i consumed it. those last trimester haagen daz ice cream bars were still in the freezer after all... i'm piecing things together here, the puzzle of my digestive system. in thinking back to my dairy-full childhood and the cowmilk formula supplementation i was given the times i was hospitalized as an infant, which eventually overtook & ended the breastfeeding aft 6 months, i remember all the unexplained sometimes bloody gastro-intestinal problems & poor digestion i had as a kid and even now as an adult. i was always having to poo in a cup. and there was never a solution or explanation. a while back, when i was recounting my allergies and chemical sensitivities to my brother, he said it was prolly all the milk i drank as a kid. maybe there's something to that. maybe the cowmilk colonization that has degraded my digestion.

and cowmilk, cowmilk is so innocuous seeming. but as i teased my larger-than-your-average-vinamese-midwestern friend Linh, cowmilk is for cows; drink cowmilk, become a cow. and like a bad joke, her son was allergic to cowsmilk. and it seems there is something to that, even though there is a billion dollar dairy industry which tries to tell you otherwise; cowmilk is implicated in a over a dozen diseases. human milk is the perfect human baby food. it contains all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that a baby human needs to grow into a human adult. cows' milk contains all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that a baby bovine needs to grow into an adult bovine. wait, not just rancher-added rGBT growth hormones, we're talking grow-a-baby-hormones-intrinsic-in-lactation kinda of hormones. setting aside industrial propaganda-driven medicine, societal norms and dominant culture, on an intuitive level, what makes us think it's okay for a human baby or child to consume all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that cows' milk contains? app

with synchronistic irony enough, i came across this 1912 digitized book; Honolulu was the site for a major USDA experiment in standardizing and regulating dairy production because of high level of infant mortality resulting from milk consumption:
infant mortality and the connection to cows' milk (1912).

we must know that there is something species-specific about mother's milk because we don't consume the milk of any carnivores for example (in addition to it being very hard to milk a tiger). And indeed, we do know there are differences among mammalian milk:

A comparison of mammalian milk from a 1912 USDA Honolulu experimental research on reducing the infant mortality resulting from cows' milk.



differences between human and cow milk

the term breastfeeding itself is a "sacred cow", reserved only for humans, but truly all mammals breastfeed. isn't it wrong that we humans, we living in a Euro-American cultural context try to breastfeed a bovine? and i guess other people are questioning why we as a society would rather feed a baby another species of milk than milk from another mother.
common sense in 1912

i recollect that when VL was in the womb she would kick and stretch out her legs so hard, that you could see the bump on the top of my abdomen. we were amazed. when she was born her legs were stretched out straight unlike any newborn the midwife had ever seen and she even had to rate VL's leg reflex apgar a little lower for it. a few days later, when our chiropractor Dr. Aaron did a homevisit (his partner Dr. Eileen came for a couple of hours during labor), he noted that VL was having digestive issues and the tension in her back and legs was her way of trying to resolve it. he did an adjustment and her legs instantly relaxed. we thought oh maybe its her newborn immature digestive system, but i immediately harked back to her straight leg propensity in utero and then, like many things, the thought passed. when i had a postpartum ice cream bar, she cried and cried all night. it's not colic. like Linh' son, my baby is allergic to cowmilk protein. and we're still trying to figure out if by extension, she is allergic to beef protein which by some cosmic coincidence i had stopped eating in '03 due to boils and other things, and had only resumed eating last year. even now, some days her digestion (and mine own) is really off. and it seems that i will have to go back on a strict allergen-free diet--no beef, no pork, no dairy, no soy, no corn. we'll see about the wheat.

so despite the pediatrician's recommendation, i will wait until VL is developmentally ready to eat solids (not quite there yet) and i will not feed her processed, dehydrated, reconstitute simulacra of food fortified with artificially derived chemicals aka baby cereal.


more 1912 common sense about the connection of nutrition to health

i'm getting so tired of having to be our own educator & advocate when it comes to our family's health. i wish the western allopathic modality of medicine as its practiced in the US which pays lip service to "breast is best" and which has become the modern standard worldwide, i wish that it was evidence-based, instead of this janky presumptive "truthiness" paid for by the blood money from profiteering industries. and yes, babies die from this. i mean i know that is my job as her mother to make the best choices for her and do the educational prep that requires, and at the same time, with everything we have to do, it would be nice to have an ally in her medical care...

postscript... i just read the last few chapters of Baby Matters including "the Dangers of Cow's Milk" and "Allergy Matters". three things i learned: 1) "early exposure [under the age of 1] to cow's milk protein a risk factor for childhood diabetes, but 3 or more glasses of milk per day during childhood leads to a quadrupled risk of diabetes" [the author goes on to cite other scientific studies which show correlations between cowmilk and a full spectrum of diseases common in developed countries like cancer]. 2) Colic, ear infections, eczema, cradle cap, among others "normal phases" for American babies all have a direct correlation with food allergies. 3) if the mother has allergies, she is likely to pass on that immunological response to her child though not the specific trigger (mom could be allergic to onions and baby may be allergic to cows milk) and should avoid all potentially allergenic foods in the third trimester. no one ever told me that!

i'm lookin over my life, my health, VL's birth and being, and my postpartum recovery (i had hives! and mastitis!) and understanding it and the human immune system in a whole new way. i'm a little stunned at the breadth & depth of it actually.

the connection with food is so fundamental, ingrained, cultural and giving up something (like flan) feels like a sacrifice and yet, the eating of it has caused me a lifetime of gastro-intestinal damage & hemorrhage and i've been unknowingly embarking on the same path for my daughter. i gotta decolonize my mind, decolonize my diet, decolonize my colon.

some get a kick from cocaine...

i'm sure that if I took even one sniff
that would bore me terrific'ly too
yet I get a kick out of you.
-Cole Porter

i ate a croissant bun. it was a bad idea.

first because i cant tolerate wheat so much; its about on par with lactose-intolerance. and this is my third day of indulging in wheat pastries so there is a build up factor. (sorry T. we can leave the windows open tonight).

and second, because it was loaded with nutmeg.

nutmeg. a seemingly innocuous cupboard spice from exotic southeast asia & the pacific islands. one of the key products of the spice trade and in the motivation to discover a new route to India.
nutmeg has hallucinogenic properties. malcolm X used to smoke it back in the days when he was a lumpen nicknamed "Detroit Red" doin' time and lacked access to the real stuff. nutmeg is considered a uterine stimulant; in large enough quantity, an abortifacient/emmenagogue along with cinnamon and other seemingly harmless spices and is to be avoided in large doses during a pregnancy.

perhaps its the application of liquid heat that releases the essential oil, but even small quantities of nutmeg sprinkled on my latte have been know to get me a little.... stimulated above & beyond the caffeine. so i generally avoid the liberal use of nutmeg by itself.

i ate most of the bun before the realization & aftereffects set in. in addition to feeling a little light-headed, a little high, and cottonmouth/very parched, the baby is simultaneously kicking & punching me really hard right now, a little harder than his/her usual. i've just had a quart of water to try & flush it out. and now, all's quiet on the western front... though my head is still buzzin'.

just goes to show, food is medicinal. in modern day life, we are so divorced from the natural world and that understanding... its pathetic that it takes pharmeceutical corporate testing to re-discover that for us.

salt fiend

it's my kryptonite.

for those of you who met my brother in 200X you already know that i used to drink soy sauce. more accurately, Maggi. the saltier french version. used to swig it straight from the bottle.

rất là ngon!

i've been waiting, patiently (more because i don't have a choice than desire), for food to be delicious during this pregnancy. it's been okay. but, there's always a but; it's too béo|fatty-oily, too bland, too repetitive, too not fresh, too unexciting, always something missing. i thought, maybe i'm just missing home cooking (i can't say mom's cooking, because dad does most of the cooking) because even vinamese food leaves me unenthusiastic whether homemade or restaurant (too much MSG!). so i came home with loads of requests.

last night at dinner, i was a wee disappointed with my dad's hủ tiếu. i added chanh|lemon and thought maybe if i added nước mấm, that might fix it (to my dad's horror; i realized when i was finishing for second dinner how salty it was as a result.) so i resignedly thought maybe food was just going to be blah for the rest of the pregnancy. so sad.

then, mama took the leftovers and made the secret sauce dad forgot to make last night (probably because i was HUNGRY! and he wanted to feed me right away). and there, it was for breakfast--hủ tiếu Bà Năm Sà Đẹc. now if you've been fortunate enough to venture out of phở territory (but please don't do it at a phở restaurant. phở is their specialty, don't wander to the other 25 items on the menu. it won't be good and won't do your tastebuds or the dish justice) most likely in San Jo unless you've been to a friend's mom's house, you may be acquainted with hủ tiếu|pork & seafood noodle soup. i lack words to describe the difference now; prolly the foodbuzz kickin in. look here for more verbiage later XXXX. (um, mom just cursed me and my ancestors|tiên sư mày because i'm back in here typing instead of eating. but i'm full already and am saving the rest for later. i do small meals. if i eat too much, i get indigestion and i look like i'm 7 months pregnant because my stomach & intestines are all topside.)

hủ tiếu Bà Năm Sà Đẹc is a specialty dish created by Bà Năm|Mrs. Five (chinese numbering influence here) of the town Sà Đẹc in the Mê-Kông Đelta. yes, it was so damn good, the dish is hereafter named after her. it's still pork & seafood. it's still glass noodles *except* it's served dry with the secret sauce and the pork broth on the side. the secret sauce is what makes the dish. i had heretofore thought that the sauce was a form of riêu (crab or shrimp roe blended with spices and used to make bún riêu). but it's not. it's dried shrimp--the dense flavorful meaty vinamese kind. accept no substitutes--soaked, strained, pan fried (no oil) to re-dry, finely minced with shallots, garlic & tomato paste. it's better than ketchup, and that's saying alot. this was exactly what was missing last night! dollops of the Bà Năm Sà Đẹc sauce, a little chanh. my tastebuds rejoice! even though 2 times in a row is my max for any dish, i may have to eat more for second breakfast.

ah, and some freshly homemade sửa đậu nành lá dứa|soybean juice flavored with pandan. life is good.

in the words of my friend Tuyền, rất là ngon!

preggie snacks

though i don't snack so much as have a small meal (hence second breakfast and second lunch, i do on occasion snack. patics when there is no fridge/kitchen/restaurant in sight). ergo, the best pregnancy snacks ever:

• seaweed--contains iron, folic acid and loads of minerals similar in composition to the human body and it flushes out lead & mercury! i love the toasted korean kind with sesame oil & salt. my favorite brand "Well-being" is sprinkled with black sesame. and y'know, the darker the berry, the more nutritious the juice. the toasting kills some nutrients, but it's still tasty.
  
• bananas with almond butter and maybe some honey drizzled over--some protein, carbs & fiber to get me through the night. that elvis knew a thing about it. and this month he is sposedly 30 years dead.
  
• broiled bananas--it's like fried bananas without the fried, add some coconut sorbet and mmm! who needs to make a run to the Thai restaurant. or some grated dark chocolate spinkled over. yumyum!
  
• macadamia nuts--protein & iron to tide you over in between the second breakfast and the first lunch. i'm over walnuts right now. i first trimestered them into untastiness. no macadamia i will never tire of. i used to pick macadamia from the bush on the side of the house on Piikoi crack'em open with rocks and eat 'em raw. i so missed the flavor that my mom once pulled over and asked a random neighbor if she could pick their macadamias for me. yup, i love being the baby of the family.
  
• mangoes--preferably green with nước mấm đường|fish sauce & sugar OR muối ớt|salt & fresh chile. if they're ripe, then eaten godzilla-style: with skin on, slice mangoes parallel to seed. leave skin on and cut the flesh into cubes without breaking the skin (like an avocado). the victorious sibling gets to eat the best part, the seed. take the cubed slice in the skin and flip it inside out and eat them like godzilla eating all the buildings in downtown Tokyo. reminds me of my childhood on Piikoi Street picking all the green mangoes to my parents perpetual dismay since they preferred it ripe.
• almond butter & raspberry preserves on rudy's organic multi-grain spelt bread--i'm on this wheat & dairy-free diet for my allergies (it's been great! no allergies this spring). and this brand and kind of spelt bread is the only thing that doesnt taste like sawdust or uber-healthy brick bread. peanuts actually being ground legumes absorb soil toxins like a sponge, so almonds are better for you in addition to being good for you. this is my there's nothing in the fridge i want to eat and yet i'm hungry option. i haven't gotten tired of it yet thankfully.
  
• coconut juice--what's there to say? it's like a sports drink only au naturel choc full of calcium & iron and minerals. keep an eye on this as the next new natural health trend.
  
• tamarind--this was our favorite movie snack. forget popcorn. crack open the thin shell, peel the fibers and it's mouthwateringly tart and only slightly sweet. only chile could make this better. this is why i love mexican candy.
  
• dandelion tea/infusion--this pretty weed has loads of calcium folic acid & iron (more than spinach!) and it helps to flush your liver (dee pehl eez in dee rirver). infusion is more concentrated than tea. it's easy to do and its a damn sight cheaper to buy in bulk than to buy pre-bagged tea.
  
• raspberry leaf tea/infusion--tones your uterus and iron galore! hmm, shall we say pussy galore?
  

paletas deliciosas

LA Times just did a food piece on paletas (mexican fresh fruit popsicles. are they quiescently frozen?). now, when i was a young'un coasting about in San D, Tijuana and Cuernavaca, tamarindo was my favorite so i never did try the other flavors so much.

paleta de mango con chile sounds really really good right now. as does piña con chamoy. mmm chamoy. even thought they have lead i them, i miss mexican candy. pulpa rago de chamoy, chaca chaca, lucas, vero elotes, pulpitas, pulparindo, pelucas, pelon... funnily enough, it's similar flavors as VN food--sour, sweet & spicy all at the same time.

hot damn!

it's the world's hottest chile pepper, the Bhut Jolokia aka the Ghost Pepper. so hot you can see your ancestors. damn, that's hot!

how hot is it? weo, the previous Guiness world record holder Habaneros clocked in at 500,000 scovilles. the Bhut Jolokia is over 1,000,000 scovilles!

tastebuds burnin' for a taste? you can get that ugly bad boy at the Chile Pepper Institute, of course!

food stamps

Congresswoman Barbara Lee (California 9th District) is living off of $21 a week.

Did Congress suddenly decided to rollback on their self-determined wealthy wages of $165k/yr starting salary plus lifetime pension?

nope. she is taking a House Hunger Caucus' "Food Stamp Challenge" because the program is up for re-authorization this summer. $21/week is the national weekly average benefit for a family on food stamps. it's not the first time that Congresswoman Lee has subsisted off foodstamps. so she's keepin' it real.

my family was on food stamps play money after my parents split and we moved from waikiki to san D, trading ma'ona pua truck, sho pao & li hing mui for public assistance, while my mom worked at the Cannon towel factory, and up until my mom got her GED, some english language skills, & a clerical job where she's been underpaid for the last 25+ years. this challenge reminds me of all the crappy processed poverty food (velveeta, powdered milk, uncle ben's, instant macaroni & cheese, spaghetti, margarine, jelly, genero-genero) that was my introduction to mainland american cuisine back in the day before there were vinamese groceries in 'Dago. and creating unhealthy childhood nutrition patterns that i'm still trying to unravel in my adult years.

now see, this integrity and Congresswoman Lee referencing the Tonkin Gulf resolution in her sole (and vindicated) opposition vote against the Authorized Use of Military Force resolution (2001)
is why i actually go to the polls after a five year boycott of the Nation-State's dog & pony show

PORKAGE PROCLAMATION

i have lately been informed by Hun (fantacist inventor of such infamy and verbiage that could only be reasonably deemed HUN-isms such as "Wouldn't the world be better off if Stevie Wonder were dead?" and therefore deserving of only a one name moniker like Bono or Cher or Madonna or Pele or Homer. or at the very least, A Blog Of His Own. though not a woolf, doesn't a six foot over angsty krean otter yearn for as much?) that today is National Pork Day.

i have only this and more to say--GENIOSITY!

y'know today, this very afternoon, i did NOT know about this auspicious event and YET, unknowingly, in perfect cosmic harmony, i made a BACON sandwich on generic whole wheat with Grey Poupon. in the words of that 80s infomercial, one eyebrow cocked quizzically and shatneresque, "Co-incidence. OR. Super-Natural? YOU. Decide."

WHEREAS Pork is acknowledged for its contribution to Agricultural Ecology, enabling the building of the Egyptian Pyramids along with the invention of beer, elevating the science of Gastronomy, and verily inspiring Humanity itself,

WHEREAS Pork is delicious to eat with Green Eggs, on a box, or with a fox,

WHEREAS Pork is the Other White Meat,

FORTHWITH, We the People Proclaim that Today is a Good Day to eat Pork and furthermore shall it be declared that ever after Pork shall be eaten on this Day.

APPROVED on this day the First of March, Day of the Porcine, in the Year of Our Pork Two Thousand and Seven.

Sowheeeeeeeee.

Th-th-that's all Folks.

big brother

once upon a time, bro and i had lunch--rather, like the gourmand foodie he has become after decades of waiting tables in high end establishments, (heo, they got megastars in the michelin guide for service) he ate raw oysters with a clean melon finish while i stole complimentary matchboxes and dipped sourdough in extra-spicy tabasco--has just informed me that financial institutions don't care what your signature looks (gasp) and they will do NOTHING about janky simulacra signatures other than cut the payouts and charge you interest, unless you complain about the matter pugnaciously--i was nano-indignant--therefore with the desultory insolence of the disenfranchised, he periodically changes his signature. without telling anyone. scandalous!

his newest signature which could pass for nk spy hangul chicken scratch, when held up to the refracted light from a chain restaurant window in a freeway-side suburb and glimpsed in reverse reads, "FUCK YOU".

in the words of the Shark Tale shrimpy shrimp with five shrimp legs (do these appendages have a scientific classification?) crossed earnestly over shrimpy heart while the other five shrimp legs held palm-errr, first joint up in the scout's pledge with a shrimpy castrato sotto voce, proclaim "Truuue Story".

do you think i have a shot of getting a segment produced for "This American Life"?