:: Quiche of the Day ::

:: 01.31.2004 ::

There are many kinds of food, but the food I like best is sandwiches.
A sandwich is just about the closest thing our species has come to combining all the uncontrollable delights, but subtle and shocking, of a complete meal into something you can hold in your hands. Basically, if a full course meal is like a souped up (ha ha!) computer with all the frills, a sandwich is like a Game Boy Advance. Simple, yet satisfying, shocking, yet practical.
Until recently, I had a particular sandwich philosophy: the more you put on a sandwich, the better it must be. I thought that combining as many meats, cheeses, vegetables and sauces possible into one entity would make that entity (the sandwich) so full of flavors contrasting and combining, that it would be the Ultimate in Eating Experiences!
Recently, however, I’ve found that a great sandwich is made not just by what you put in it, but what you don’t put in it. For example, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is great and a peanut butter and banana sandwich is also great, but a peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwich is only OK. It turns out that sandwich-making is a true art, one that I, in my rush to create as much taste overload as possible, have desecrated and marred with ignorance and gluttony!
But no more! I have discovered that the old classic sandwiches have much to offer today’s mouth, and hereby repent of my old ways! The best sandwiches, I now realize are the ones that are simple, clever ones. And so I present to you:

Four Awesome Sandwiches You Wouldn’t Think Would be as Awesome as They Are!

1. BLT - This was one revelations of 2003. I used to make BLTs with turkey and cheese, which in fact negates most of the scrumptious taste that appears like magic when the B, the L and the T are isolated. A little bit of mayonnaise doesn’t hurt, though. And the thicker the bacon is, the better.

2. Toasted PBJ - I always liked this most classic of combinations, but recently I’ve found that if becomes a completely new sensation on crisp, warm bread. It’s almost gourmet, seriously.

3. Monte Cristo - I’ve had these sandwiches lots of different ways, but I think the common link between them is this: they’re served warm on French toast with melted cheese plus ham and turkey in the middle. Basically conventional (but still good), unless they serve it with strawberry sauce (sometimes jelly) on top. Then it’s simply revolutionary. After having the combination of salty and sweet tastes between and on top of my favorite breakfast food, I never wanted to use ketchup as a sauce again. Jelly on everything! Especially sandwiches!

4. Peanut Butter and Banana - My mom made these for me when she’d pack me lunches for school. Somehow she always sliced the bananas so they were just thick enough. More than just gooey, it’s good!

:: Aaron Humphrey 1:08 AM ::
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:: 01.30.2004 ::

Meditation on the anticlimax of growing up:
Two dinners and a quote, to be read simultaneously.

The other night I went to a Bible study put on by members of a church I sometimes go to. The house was spacious but homey, with cutesy faux-folkart touches everywhere - a sign one of the cupboards said “Never Enough Thyme.” Before the actual Bible study started we all sat around the kitchen and had dinner (homemade soup). After I finished the meal I stood next to the sink eating a sugar cookie and tallied up the people: there were five married couples, three babies and including myself, three college students. Now I understood why the conversation topics had leaned mostly towards furniture, sleeping through the night, and dogs.

Asked on a message board about his age and relationship with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird (who turned 50 this week), Stan Sakai, author of the comic book series Usagi Yojimbo (who turned fifty last May), said, “I don't see Peter often, mostly because we live on opposing coasts. However, we have one of those friendships that whenever we do see each other, it's like no time at all had elapsed since the last time. The only reminders of time passing are our thinning hair and growing kids”

Ate dinner at the cafeteria last night and finished off my meal of Creole-style fish and watermelon with a fortune cookie. As I unwrapped it from the cellophane I turned the hard, lightweight cookie over in my hands and remembered that this tradition didn’t start in the Orient, but in San Francisco. Still, I hoped for wisdom. I cracked the cookie open and before I even pulled out the little strip of paper I could tell that it was advertising, complete with an Internet address. On the reverse side was the typical run of mystical numbers and the fortune: “Family is worth more than finances.” Was this supposed to be a surprise?
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:02 PM ::
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:: 01.18.2004 ::

So I turned 21 a week and a half ago. My grandma told me “When you turn 21, they say you’re truly independent . . . but I got married when I was 20, so I guess I didn’t get to be independent for a long time!” I’ve no plans for a wedding any time soon, so I’ll be able to enjoy that independence our forefathers fought so hard for. More and more of my peers are getting married or at least living like they’re married, and in context of what my grandma said, it seems a little disrespectful to G. Washington and company for them to throw away their independence so quickly. I mean, we didn’t fight the Red Coats for nothing! At least hold out for a year and enjoy what those fireworks are FOR!
Oh, and I sort of mean that, too.
Of course, when most people think “21” they either think of poker chips or alcohol, or possibly both. My experience with alcohol is very limited, but I can now legally drink it, and in the spirit of that freedom, I’d like to come openly confess each incident in my life where I’ve consumed it legally or (gasp!) illegally.

(* Spring 86 - 87, Wauwatosa, WI: One sip of beer. This one is possibly just a false memory. I’ve got a vauge notion that on a family picnic on a nice, grassy hill my dad gave me a tinny, tiny bit of beer. I don’t think it actually happened, as my parents are rather responsible, and my dad, doing his medical residency at the time, would have known that alcohol is bad for little kids. Probably what happened was I was curious about the beer can, reached for it and got yelled at by my mom.)

*Easter 2003, Dallas, OR: A sip, maybe two of Champaign. This time I’m sure my parents actually did give me alcohol, but it was at a fancy Easter dinner, I was 20 years old instead of four, and it came in a fancy glass. The glass and the thrill of scandal were the best part - the Champaign tasted like sparkling cider, in that it was strong and bubbly, but it was also really bitter, and had no yummy apple taste. Basically it was just carbonated, sophisticated, grossness.

*May 2003, Salem, OR: half a shot of Irish cream. I was out with my Great, Great Aunt Rosanna, helping her with shopping and errands. Our last stop was a liquor store where she purchased the largest bottle of Irish cream they had. She explained that she only has it at night to help her sleep, but my mom tells me they regularly have to go to the liquor store for more. She asked me if I had ever had Irish cream, and I told her I had to drive home, but she insisted that I have just a bit to see if I liked the taste. She’s over ninety years old, and very particular, so I poured a tiny bit into a shot glass and drank it in a gulp. It didn’t taste too bad, but it definitely had a kick to it that made my throat feel like it was burning. I coughed a bit, much to Aunt Rosanna’s disappointment, and told my mom as soon as I got home.

*August 2003, Spearfish, SD: a sip of wine. It was my girlfriend Erin’s 21st birthday and we were out with our friends Laura from Colombia and Felicia from Romania at a nice restaurant with live piano and watermelon garnishes. Although Erin hadn’t planned on drinking, Laura and Feli, despite both looking like they’re 14, were in fact older than us, and ordered her a glass of Chardonnay for her birthday. Erin politely drank the whole glass, except for the one sip that I took out of scientific curiosity. I described it later that day as half a dozen unpleasant sensations all rolled together in one drink.

*September 2003, Orange, CA: one White Russian. One of the first parties of the school year, and probably only the second I’d been to where alcohol was flowing so freely. It happened to be my friend Joey’s 21st birthday once the clock struck midnight, and although he, like me, is a professed non-drinker, he decided to have one ceremonial drink and I agreed to join him. I’d seen people in movies drink White Russians, so I figured they were cool or something. I drank my shot all at once, and honestly I can’t tell you what it tasted like. All I remember is afterward becoming immediately paranoid - were my knees weaker, was the room spinning just a little more than normal? How much self-control did I still possess? Taking that shot was a split-second decision and rash enough in itself, and I didn’t want to do anything else I wasn’t sure I really wanted to do. Now that a full serving of alcohol was in my system would I start blabbering uncontrollably to strangers, or tap dancing on the floor? Would I watch myself from somewhere behind my eyes in hazy disbelief and vague terror, but powerless to stop?
None of these things happened, but I got freaked out enough thinking about the consequences to swear off booze immediately.

*January 2004, Orange, CA: one shot of Bailey’s. Erin was visiting me for Christmas break, so we got to spend my 21st birthday together. She made me an awesome home-made picture frame, and bought a tiny, and therefore cute, bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream, half as a joke. That night after a fancy (and free!) dinner at a fish house we split the bottle - there was enough for each of us to have one shot. We’d brought some vanilla ice cream back from the cafeteria at lunch and used that to wash down the liquor, and I don’t know what we would have done with out it - everyone says Irish Cream is the best tasting liquor there is, and they might be right if it had no alcohol in it. A straight shot of that stuff feels like it has as much business going down your throat as gasoline and vinegar. We only had one shot glass, so we took turns, and each of us probably spent ten minutes chocking down our one shot, sip-by-sip, cleansing ourselves with ice cream as often as possible.
It was fun in the same way that not knowing how to ice skate and going ice skating with someone you care about who also doesn’t know how to ice skate is fun. Except that neither of us bruised our knees and we learned for certain that booze wasn’t for us.
*A few days later, Orange County, CA: a whole group of us were out at a wacky restaurant celebrating me and my friend Ed’s belated 21st birthdays. Ed got a Mai Thai and I had a sip of that. Fruity, but still gross.

So in conclusion I have learned that as a beverage, alcohol is far from enjoyable. Give me calm, clear water, smooth, wholesome milk or tangy, refreshing fruit punch instead of booze any day. As a drug it’s nothing I want to experience, as I’d much rather be fully aware and in control of myself and my actions, and I’d rather have fun for who I am and who my friends are, than what chemicals are coursing through my blood stream. As a cultural experience it’s as unpleasant and self-depreciating as losing terribly at one of those arcade games where you have to dance, and I think I’d like to keep it that way. While I might take a few more sips of alcohol in my lifetime, it’s nothing I want to get good at.
:: Aaron Humphrey 8:24 PM ::
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:: 01.14.2004 ::

I'm really hungry and about to go to bed. But at least I'm updating the web page!
My new screenplay's got vampires in it. But it's not really ABOUT vampires . . .
:: Aaron Humphrey 1:25 AM ::
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:: 01.12.2004 ::

Oh man, I have so much to tell you guys I don’t even know where to start!

Christmas break was excellent. It was the first quality time I’d gotten to spend with my family since the spring, which was nice in ways that I had forgotten about. The season had been dubbed by some “A Christmas of Convenience,” which sounds like a term they would have used in the great depression. I don’t know how bad economics are right now, as I’m sort of sheltered here at school, but I do know that I was overjoyed to be getting new socks, underwear and pants, which I needed pretty badly. I also didn’t have a whole lot of cash to spend on presents, so most of mine ended up being homemade: mix CDs for my brother and sister and framed original poetry for my parents. I received quite a few one-of-a-kind gifts, too: for Christmas Erin made me a scarf and Elizabeth made me a notebook with collage covers, and then for my birthday Nate made a collage of his own and burned CDs for me, Elizabeth framed some pictures for me and Erin hand-framed a picture from this summer.
You could see handmade gifts as an act of economic desperation or just plain stinginess (hardly anything was bought to make the ones I got and gave this season), but when I look at my presents I can only see them as an act of love. What can I say? Maybe I’m a sap, but I’m comforted to be surrounded by things made by those who care about me. But then again I’m also comforted by the pants and underwear I received this Christmas, which weren’t made by loving hands, but are in fact pretty useful.
The day after Christmas we went to a family reunion at a retreat center in the mountains where I learned that practically every member of my extended family had read or was reading The DaVinci Code. It’s unusual for me to grow tired of ranting righteously about something (I spent five years of my life berating others for pronouncing or spelling my last name with an S), but somehow I’ve just gotten tired of proclaiming that The DaVinci Code is a banal, poorly written book which is only notable for its commercialized synthesis of other people’s ideas. So I’m not really going to say it again. But seriously, it is. What are you guys thinking?
Before the first night of the reunion was over I was on my way to the Portland airport for a redeye flight to the Midwest for the 20th > Urbana student missions conference, where I found out what 20,000 students really means. It means lugging my bags halfway across an enormous college campus, because somehow out of all the people swirling around me none of them has told me exactly where to go. It means sleeping on a cot smaller than myself in a room with the most cinematic snorer I have ever heard and sharing a cafeteria with 500 people who all want to eat at the same time. And then realizing that there have to be 40 more cafeterias that size on campus in order to feed everyone. It means having to learn an ever-changing bus route in a manner of days in order to get anywhere. It also means it’s incredibly difficult to find anyone, even if you have a designated meeting spot and the person you’re trying to meet is your girlfriend (we were able to connect on the morning of the second day, but it felt like a lot longer).
In spite of all that the conference was incredible. I’ll probably write more about it later, but I’d never before imagined that while listening to a Native Canadian preach the gospel in a room packed with more people than I could count I would cry my first tears of relief. On New Years Eve, Erin and I jet-setted back to Oregon. She’d never been to the West Coast before, and I think I may have been more excited to see it than she was - the great thing about coming home to Oregon is that everything feels green and fresh, like just-washed leaves lettuce ready to be added to a delicious sandwich (wow, I didn’t think I was hungry before I wrote that). People who live there complain of the wetness and the weather, but coming home always makes me feel clean and renewed.
Except when everything is covered in snow. Which doesn’t happen, because it hardly snows in Oregon - except for this year. Erin was excited - she was hoping for snow at Urbana, and ever brought a snowman sweater to proclaim it, but the closest it got there was one day of rain. And I was pretty thrilled at the novelty of the whole thing, but it did hamper our travel plans considerably. On the bright side, there was hardly anyone at the beach when we went, and there was plenty of time to look through photo albums and refine out Connect Four skills (Erin beat me constantly at that game - possibly revenge for the photo albums).
And the snow was not just a nuisance either, as we made snow angels, drank hot chocolate and hummed those Christmasy songs about snow, etc.

I’m going to write more soon.

:: Aaron Humphrey 1:25 AM ::
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