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Nov 15 2004

More Kitchen Fun

Reuben insisted that if this is to be written about, I must be the one to write it. Because he doesn't write stuff like this. Um... k. So.

On Friday we decided to be tremendous geeks, and attempt to make a foodproduct whose existence we became aware of by watching Babylon 5. In one of the episodes, chief of security Garibaldi (I hate myself) makes something called Bagna Cauda, which is sort of like Italian fondue. It involves garlic and butter and anchovies and olive oil and garlic and butter and anchovies, seriously a whole can of anchovies. And a food proecessor.

So we went to the grocery store and bought all the ingredients, including the food processor. And started to make the Bagna, which, should one eat it more than once or twice a year, would almost certainly induce a heart attack. I decided to protect my heart during this process with Pinot Noir.

Oh, about grocery store kitchen appliances: they suck ass. I dumped all the necessary ingredients into the wee li'l food processor, and turned it on the "high" setting. It did nothing except, as Reuben informedme, produce a really big spark. So I flipped it back to the off position. Tried the "low" position. Nothing. But! if I pushed really! hard! on the "Pulse" button, it would process food. So I stood there and mashed down the "pulse" button and worried whether or not I smelled electrical-badness smell, until paranoia got the better of me and we declared it "processed enough" which it wasn't really, but I didn't want to burn the house down. Once that part was done, the rest was easy, as one merely has to cook the buttergarlicfishpaste in a pot for a few minutes, then transfer it to a keepy-warmy thing, in our case, an electric skillet.

And, even though it was chunkier than it should have been, it was really, supremely, sublimely yummy (if you like garlic). We ate it with hunks of sourdough bread and pieces of delightfully pre-cooked butterball chicken, which comes in a microwaveable, reusable container. A successful experiment in cookery, yay. And just think how much better it might be if I had a food processor that actually, like, worked. I would *not* make this all the time, because that would cause me to die, but if I had a terminal illness or soemthing I might eat it every day... or, um, every week, more realistically, I don't think even I could eat it every day.