Recipe time.

Take one butternut squash.

They’re ugly, I know. They look like the decapitated — and also featureless — head of Charlie Brown’s dog, Snoopy. Did I need to say that first part? “Charlie Brown’s dog?” You already know who Snoopy is, don’t you? You presumably haven’t been living under a lichen-encrusted rock somewhere. Have you?

Oh, fair warning: I’ve been drinking.

Talisker, if you care to know. As everybody calls it, “the “salted caramel of Scotches.”

(Nobody calls it that.)

Where were we?

Ah. Right.

Take one butternut squash.

Peel it. I used a peeler but you might want to use a pearl-handled straight razor or some other serial killer implement. Peeling a butternut squash is a serious dick-pain because the skin is tough and the curves are awkward — it’s like you’re trying to make love to some kind of goblin creature. (It’s nothing like that. Settle down.) Just peel the goddamn squash, already.

Chop it in half. Bisect Snoopy’s head.

Scoop out the Snoopy brains seeds and assorted tangled tentacle-bits.

Do what you like with those. Roast the seeds. Use the mangled innards as a vegetarian merkin.

Then –

Take your two halves of the squash-flesh (“Squashflesh” was my nickname in Sunday School), and then chop them into cubes that are roughly equivalent to one another. Perfection has little value here. Just get close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades and call it a day.

Oh, right, the oven.

Set your Food Furnace to a toasty 375 degrees.

You’ve chopped the squash, now it’s time to do the same to a medium-sized onion. Sweet onion if you can manage. You want to avoid any of the unpleasant varietals of onion. No butt onions, doom onions, Hitler onions, mucus onions — all of those are no-no onions. Leave those at the store where they belong. Only sweet onions may apply. Which is coincidentally what the hand-painted sign above my bed says! If you know what I mean! Right? Right? Yeah? Yeah!

*funky sex-jazz ensues*

The onion doesn’t need a lot of delicate attention. Just — you know, fucking chop that sonofabitch.

Both onion and squash will — nay, must! – go into a roasting pan.

I line mine with the magical substance known as “non-stick foil,” which is like a gift sent by the gods. Quite literally, in fact. Zeus staple-gunned a box of this stuff to the back of a dead mermaid and left it at my door. That Zeus! Him and all his silly back-slappers. He should get a sitcom, that guy. I propose we call it “That Zeus!” — it is, in fact, critical that the exclamation point remain intact so that in the show’s logo we may instead draw the exclamation point as a jagged lightning bolt. It’s how Zeus would want it.

Where was I?

Oh, right.

Take one butternut squash.

Wait, we’ve already done that part?

Right! Roasting pan. Throw your vegges into a roasting pan, splash with a liberal dollop of olive oil, shake it around and rub it down and get all the vegetables properly lubed, as if they are about to be shoved into a very tight orifice (they are not, however, so please re-affix your pants to your undertorso).

On top of the now-glistening veggies will go:

A sprinkling of salt.

A dash of cayenne pepper.

A dash of cracked black pepper.

A naughty coating of herbes de provence, which is an herb blend of — I don’t know, a bunch of herbs. Including some herb named “savory,” which I’m pretty sure people just made up.

Into the oven! One hour. Or till it just starts to caramelize. You don’t want it to go too far into that process — just enough to bring the sugary goodness out. Stand vigil.

When they’re done, get out a stock pot. Pop into the stockpot some oil, some chopped carrots, some chopped celery. I did two of each — two ribs of celery, two… what’s a unit that measures carrots? If celery gets “ribs,” what do carrots get? Noses, I guess. I mean, that’s what you use for snowmen. But they also look phallic? Just the same, “two dicks of carrot” just sounds gross.

So, two ribs of celery, two noses of carrot.

Oh! And some fresh chopped garlic.

Start to cook that. Soften it up a little bit.

Dump your oven-roasted squash-and-onion blend into the pot.

Toss in:

Two cups of chicken broth.

Two tablespoons of apple cider (edited to add: vinegar).

Set that all to simmer, cook for… you know, not long? I don’t care. Five, ten minutes. Don’t get nuts with it. Just enough time to have a bottle of wine, read a magazine, kill a dude.

Time to get out your Blender-of-Choice.

Mine is, as of very recently, a Vitamix 5200. Refurb. We’d resisted the Vitamix for a long time because, well, they’re not cheap. It’s hard to justify that kind of money for a fucking blender. Thing is, I’ve hated all the blenders I’ve owned outside my immersion stick, and also we have a baby and I wanted to make baby food and blah blah blah. Long story beheaded and delimbed and made short: we bought a Vitamix.

Worth it.

Let me say that again in italics:

Worth it.

Let me say that again in all caps:

WORTH IT.

That crazy bastard will blend up anything.

Sure, it’s so loud it sounds like someone is mowing the lawn inside my brain, but hey, fuck it. It blends. It blends anything. It blends fast. Efficiently. I could probably use it to split the atom if I needed to. And because it’s so fast and so insane, you can use it to make hot soup or freeze ice cream or, I dunno, grind the bones of your foes into flour for a little recipe I call “Enemy Bread.”

Not “Enema Bread.”

That’s… different.

Point is: choose your blender, and blend the soup.

Until it’s smooth and creamy. Like my supple thighs.

Now, back into the stockpot. Simmer. Pour in: 1/2 cup of heavy cream, or enough heavy cream so that your taste-buds do a happy dance, but not so much heavy cream that your arteries harden into little brittle sesame sticks. The soup at this point should be velvety and sweet and delicious.

I did two more things to the soup (calm down, my pants were on), but you don’t need to.

First, I cooked up some country ground sausage and put it into play. I like to chew my soup. If my soup’s too liquidy, I feel like an old person — I figure I’ve got plenty of years where I’ll be drinking my food through a bendy straw, so why start now?

Second, I “melted” (not really melted) some leeks. I did this in duck-fat and red wine vinegar. Chop your leeks into little o-rings, wash the dirt and grime out of there, put into a pan and sweat the leaks in the duck fat and a splash of vinegar for 8-10 minutes until tender.

I plopped the leeks right on top of the soup in the middle.

Floating there. A little leeky island.

Anyway. There you you go. Butternut squash soup. With sausage and melted leeks.

Your mouth can thank me later.

…that sounds like I’m asking for oral favors, but that’s not at all what I mean. I mean your lips can form the words “thank you” and then your vocal chords can express your gratitude.

And then you can buy me a pony.

That Zeus!

You are now going to make beef stew. With short ribs.

Don’t argue with me.

We don’t have time for your mewling pleas and jibbering jabbers. The Devil and his consort will be here soon. For dinner. And they expect to be fed, by golly. What are you going to tell him? Are you going to look jolly ol’ Lucifer in the eye and say, “Hey, sorry, Lucy old chap, I was too busy playing with the genitals god gave me and thus have declined to provide a meal for you and your lovely centaur trollop?”

Yes. That’s right. The Devil has a thing for centaur ladies.

Don’t judge.

So, let’s get on with the stew, then.

This is what I’m calling a Sinner’s Stew because it contains three of my vices:

a) Coffee

b) Beer

c) Whisky.

Here’s how we begin:

Get a pot. Or a dutch oven if you like to go that way but I just used a heavy stainless steel pot. Because that’s how I do. Into the pot you want to put your favorite fat product.

I used duck fat. Because duck fat is fucking phenomenal. You could also use bacon renderings. That, by the way, will be the name of my memoir: “Bacon Renderings: The Chizzy Wangdang Story.” Because at the time of the memoir’s publication, I will have renamed myself to “Chizzy Wangdang” in order to facilitate my rebirth as an icon of the literary scene: a true darling of artists and weirdos the world around.

Whatever.

Get six short ribs.

Bone-in. And not just because it’s funny to say “bone-in” and then lasciviously wink at the person to whom you’re speaking, but because bone-in meats tend to preserve and add flavor.

As a sidenote, short ribs are awesome because they’re basically BRICKS OF MEAT. Seriously. One day I want to build a house out of short ribs and then, before it goes south, have me and a couple buddies with flamethrowers burn the house down, which is to say, cook all of that delicious meat. Then I’ll invite the whole town over and we’ll all have a big meathouse meal. And then any of the children that show up will end up captured and thrown into my oven because HA HA SUCKERS I’M ACTUALLY THE WITCH FROM THE HANSEL AND GRETEL STORIES.

I should really cut it out with the caps lock. But it’s just so engaging!

Anyway.

Dust the short ribs with flour, salt, pepper, smoked sweet paprika, and garlic powder.

Brown the meat-bricks in the bubbling fatty goodness.

Once you’re done with that, make sure that you get rid of all but say, a tablespoon of the fat in the pot.

Make sure the meat is firmly sequestered in the bottom of the pot (“meat sequestered in the bottom?”) and now it’s time to start adding some liquids.

Add to the pot:

One cup of black coffee.

One bottle of your favorite beer. I used a Troeg’s amber ale.

Three cups of chicken — yes, chicken, shut up — broth.

Now. Stop for a moment. We need to talk about:

The bitterness problem.

Beer and coffee (no, we have not yet added our whisky) contribute bitterness. The beer more than the coffee. Both the alcohol content and hoppiness of the beer (by the way, beer needs a better word than “hoppy,” because that sounds like it has something to do with happy rabbits or is perhaps the name of the Easter Bunny or some shit) can turn your stew bitter. That’s a no-no.

I mean, unless you like that sort of thing?

Weirdo.

We must combat bitterness at multiple stages.

First thing to do, right now:

Boil it. Get a good rolling boil. Boil it for like, three straight minutes. Let the alkiehall cook the fuck off and dissipate into the atmosphere where the booze molecules drift to heaven and get the angels drunk.

Now, drop the temp back down and add some other bitterness-battlers:

Two TBs of Worcestershire sauce, which few seem to realize is actually just fish sauce.

One TB of sugar.

Two TBs each of cider vinegar and red wine vinegar.

And, finally, 1/4c of ketchup.

Toss in your spices while we’re sitting here: a palm full of salt, a dash of pepper, a second dash of cayenne pepper, a dash of smoked sweet paprika, a dash of hot Hungarian paprika, a double-doggy-dash of garlic powder, a Bay leaf (which you will rescue from the broth and not eat), a bundle of fresh thyme bound up and also rescued from the broth (or you could just use the powdered stuff, shut up), a pinch of sage, a pinch of tarragon, and there you go.

Stir. Make sure it boils again. Simmer now for two hours.

What to do during those two hours?

The world is your story-book, friend. Jump a motorcycle over the corpses of slain giants? Hang-glide into a dragon’s butthole? Slay the Dread Humbaba as he reclines and watches CSI: Mesopotamia?

Somewhere in there, though, you ought to chop some vegetables:

Three to five carrots, depending on size.

Three to five celery ribs, depending on size.

One pint of mushrooms.

One medium-sized sweet onion.

Obviously, you’re a human with free will, despite all efforts of mine to shackle your mind and soul and force you to act only at my whim and command, so that means you may choose to incorporate other items into the stew. Potatoes would not be remiss, obviously. Maybe cauliflower. Or peas. Or pee. Or the blood of the last existing dodo bird, wrung from its still-warm body after you brained it with a skillet.

That’s on you, Pikachu.

Here’s where it gets a little crazy and we once again try to battle back the beast of bitterness –

Get yourself ten prunes.

Or, if you don’t like that term, “dried plums.”

(Though they are, of course, the same thing.)

Choppity-chop.

You may be thinking, “Doesn’t this turn the broth into a diarrhea stew? I don’t need a stew that helps me move my bowels, thanks.” It does not. I don’t know if the colonic irritant in prunes is cooked off, but I do know that ten prunes in a giant pot of stew does not a turbid diarrhea soup make. If you’re really weird about it, try some other dry fruit: apricots, maybe?

(The fruit breaks down and almost disappears into the broth.)

Your house by now will be smelling delightful. You may have attracted a small herd of wandering raccoons or some curious and starving neighbors. Beat them back with a rake. Or, do like I do: pepper lawn with Bouncing Betty landmines. That sets a precedent and eventually all trespassers (many without legs!) learn not to come fumbling about your private property.

After your two hours are up, all the choppity-chopped veggies (and prunes!) go into the gurgling broth. Oh! Remove the meat first. Put it on a cutting board. Bring the newly-enveggienated stew to a boil and as you do so, it’s time to pop the bones out of that meat and start pulling apart the short ribby goodness. Chop it when necessary — some of the connective tissue may not yet be broken down. (If any of it seems truly stubborn, you can just remove the turgid tissue and toss that shiznit right in the trizzash — er, the trash. Just make sure to not lose any of the actual meaty deliciousness.)

Put meat back into the stew and, at the same time, rescue the thyme bundle and the Bay leaf.

Next step deserves all caps:

NOW IS THE TIME OF WHISKY.

Take a shot.

No, I mean — you take a shot.

(Actually, if you’re like me, you’ve probably already been drinking this whole time. Good for you. Also, if you’re like me, you’ve probably already soiled yourself. Not so good for you. Or for me. Just call the school nurse, they’re supposed to have some extra pants on hand for incontinent drunks like you and me.)

Now take another shot –

And pour this one into the stew.

The choice of whisky is yours but I followed the suggestions of one Mister Stephen “Snack Whore” Blackmoore and went straight for the beautiful bottle of Laphroaig Scotch on my shelf.

The Laphroaig contributes that peaty smoky goodness. Which you’ll also get from Lagavulin. Or, if you’re really living on the edge, a shot of Mezcal. (I’d think Mezcal would be better in chili, though. Hm.)

Once more, boil for two minutes.

Now simmer for a half-hour.

Somewhere in here taste the stew. You want to make sure the bitterness factor has gone well and truly away — but, if it hasn’t, you want to get ahead of that problem. A little more vinegar, sugar, maybe broth. Keep tasting and dicking around with it until that acrid tang has gone from the back of your tongue.

The Devil doesn’t like a bitter stew.

He’s sweet. Like candy.

So, there you go. That’s it. Half-hour later you’ve got a bubbling pot of meaty stewed goodness. Ladle into bowls. Feed to the Devil and his centaur prostitute. Rejoice, sinner.

It’s time for another NSFW recipe.

This time: sausage, apples and pasta in brown butter sauce.

It’s delicious.

I mean, it’ll fucking kill you. You’ll eat this and a great big cholesterol-laden ball will lodge in your heart and you’ll seize up but fuck it, you’ll gurgle and coo happily while perishing.

Ready?

OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND YOUR MIND.

Here, then, is what you’re going to do.

Soften a sweet onion. You do not soften an onion with kind words. You do not use Rohypnol. You dice that sumbitch and put it in a hot pan with oil and salt, then lower the heat, cook it down for five to eight minutes. Maybe splash a little water in there if you need further softening. Wilt the onions like a sad erection.

Then: get some ground country sausage. Crumble that shit up in a pan. Use your hands. Don’t be afraid of germs. Raw meat is good for you. (Disclaimer: raw meat probably isn’t good for you.)

Let it get to sizzling. Inhale the fat vapors. Experience a vision quest where you fight a pig-headed god for physical supremacy, and then you cut him open and bacon rains down upon you, crispy and wonderful.

Put a little salt and pepper on there. Sprinkle plenty.

As it browns, set a big ol’ pot of water to boiling for pasta.

Also: chop up two portabello caps.

Grate one carrot. Really fine-like. So much so that the carrot now looks like little piles of bright orange dirt.

Dice up two apples. Two good tart apples that holds up to cooking. Choose an apple with some balls. I like Jonathan apples. Though, Jonathan is not a name that sounds like it has balls, so instead I call these apples “Wolf-Fang Chainsaw” apples. That gets across the sentiment I’m looking for.

Once the sausage is browned, get your veggies into the mix. Stir, stir, stir. Do I need to tell you that? I maybe do. I see you over there. Wearing your pants on your head. Sucking on a dirty shoelace. Weirdo.

Final piece of this: toss in two tablespoons of cider vinegar. Acid is your friend.

Now, pasta into the water.

What kind of pasta? JESUS YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING FOR YOURSELF CAN YOU. Okay. Okay. I’m calm. I don’t care what kind of pasta you use as long as it’s the kind with some texture, some nooks and crannies and spiral-twirls so it can hold the sauce. You use straight spaghetti or something and I’m going to come over there and burn your eyes shut with a fistful of searing hot sweet onions. Don’t make me.

Cook the [INSERT PASTA CHOICE HERE] for as long as it demands, but cook it to al dente, right? You don’t want to go all the way with the pasta. You want to go up under the shirt and stop there.

Reason being, you’re going to want to cook the rest of it in the sauce.

“What sauce?” you ask.

To which I reply — well, I don’t reply. Instead I take a palm full of cracked black pepper and blow it into your face in order to punish you for your crass impatience. It burns. I know it does.

Go get a tissue. Blow your nose. I’ll wait.

Okay. Sauce.

Six to eight tablespoons of unsalted butter in a hot skillet.

Sprinkle salt over it.

Let it foam up and melt.

Lower heat to med-low, then let that cook while the pasta cooks. Maybe six minutes later, it should be looking brown and smelling nutty, and here you’re thinking, “Chuck’s going to make a poop joke now, right?” but I’m not. I’m really not. This sauce is too good for that. Too. Good. For. That.

Now, take 2 TBsp of creme fraiche — or sour cream, or heavy cream, whatever you have that’s creamy (put your pants back on) — and stir it into the brown butter. Mix it up. Toss in some sage and other herbs. I don’t care what herbs. Herbs de Provence are nice. But get a little rosemary and thyme at least.

Pasta goes into the sauce.

Let it cook in the sauce for another two or three minutes.

Plate the pasta.

Top with the sausage mixture.

Top that with a few crumbled walnuts.

Top that with a little song-and-dance.

Shove into your mouth.

Die happy.

I will now make love to your mouth.

Uhh.

Let’s try that again:

Let my meat make love to your mouth.

Hrm.

Okay, forget all that, what I’m trying to say is, I’m going to give you now three recipes, and these three recipes will comprise your dinner at some point this week. Trust me, you’ll do it. You’ll do it, and you’ll like it. You’ll like it so much, you will give me money. And a gift basket. A gift basket of hookers. Because that’s how good these recipes are. Are you ready to receive my culinary insight? My gastronomical penetrations?

My meat in your mouth?

Step One: Pulled Pork From Pork Butt

Contrary to its name, pork butt — or “Boston Butt” — is not actually the ass-end of the pig. It’s the shoulder. They called it that because they used to store and ship it in barrels called “butts.” Either that, or they thought it was funny. “HA HA HA you’re eating butt,” those randy old New Englanders would say. And then they’d say “pahk the cah in the gah-rage wicked smaht” and “go sox” before throwing tea into a harbor.

Anyway. You’re going to need a big round rumpy-pumpy of pork butt.

Select a pork butt that is around three or four pounds.

Take it. Coat it first with a lacquering of olive oil.

Then coat it with a liberal smattering of:

a) kosher salt

b) chili powder

If you’re so inclined, wrap it up in Saran Wrap. Which, for the record, I am incapable of using. Because seriously, fuck Saran Wrap. The way they package that stuff is for assholes. Foil? I love foil. The cutting teeth of the foil box work as designed. Pull foil, tear down, riiiiip, blammo. Piece of foil. But the cling wrap shit, the teeth are on the opposite side. So you have to tear upwards. And the boxes aren’t sturdy enough for this. They bend and warp and the teeth aren’t sharp enough and the wrap resists, it resists as if it has a mind of its own. By the time I’m done putting Saran Wrap over something so simple as a mixing bowl, I’ve pulled out half the supply of cling wrap and it’s all bunched up over the top and it’s lost any semblance of static cling. I might as well cover that mixing bowl with one of my son’s diapers.

Of course, my wife wields cling wrap like a ninja. She walks over — riiiiiiip — then places then cling film over the bowl like she received training in a Shaolin kitchen somewhere. Lesson: she’s either been training with Buddhist kung-fu cooks or I’m a total dipshit. I’m leaning toward the “kung-fu kitchen” theory.

What I’m saying is, give the pork butt time to absorb the salty chili-ey goodness.

Now go to your grill. Turn that bitch on, then prep for indirect heat. Make sure the grill hangs around 300 degrees. If you have the ability to utilize smoke, that’s your call — for this recipe, I did not. Oh, and if any charcoal purists come over here and try to tell me you can’t do this on a gas grill, I will have my Shaolin wife come karate chop you in your gonads. A good gas grill will serve you well. Like a hound. A hound made of propane and metal and melting fat who breathes fire and chars animal-flesh.

You could probably do this in the oven, by the way. Same deal — 300 degrees.

But seriously: the grill does this better. I’m not fucking around. Don’t think that I am.

Anyway.

Get your pork butt HA HA HA HA HA butt. Just shut up. Shut up and go get it. Take it. Put it on the grill — indirect! not over flame! — and then close that bad bitch up.

Come back in five hours.

Step Two: The Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

This is not a red pepper coulis, exactly, but fuck it, you can call it that and I won’t tell. I won’t sick the gourmand police on you. Foodies will not descend from helicopters to punch you in the mouth.

You’re going to need some things for this.

You’re going to need one sweet onion.

You’ll need one large or two smaller tomatoes.

Then you’re going to need a fuckload of sweet peppers. (A fuckload is equal to one pound.)

Red, yellow, orange, whatever. I like the little guys, but your mileage may vary.

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Chop coarsely. Curse while doing so. Call someone’s mother a “whore-biscuit” or “canker-nipples.” While disparaging someone’s mother, also be sure to remove the seeds from the tomato and the peppers because, ew. Who wants to eat a bunch of seeds? Squirrels, that’s who. And I assume you’re not a squirrel. If you are, and you’re all up in my blog chewing the wiring and depositing your foul little squirrel pellets in the programming, I will shoot you with my .410, which is my squirrel-killing gun. And it’s also my chicken-killing gun, just in case you’re one of those. Because chickens are dickheads.

Put all this stuff in a roasting pan over foil, get it good and lubed up with olive oil, and then liberally sprinkle with some salt and some Herbs de Provence. Yes, seriously. Hush up and do it, for Chrissakes.

Put in oven for one hour, or until you start to see the peppers darken around the edges.

While cooking, stand around, smelling that smell. Mmm. So good. Rub yourself. Just a little bit. Not to be gross or weird or anything. Gentle circles. Mmm. Yeah. So nice.

Ding. Hour’s up.

Veggies out of the oven, let ‘em cool, then pop ‘em in a mixing bowl.

Get your immersion blender, penetrate the sauce with your whirring doom-stick, and blend the shit out of those veggies. Metaphorically. The veggies should contain no actual shit. If it does, then you need to check yourself. You need to say, “What’s wrong with me? Why did I put feces in my food? Why did I sabotage myself again? I’m not a success. I’m my own worst enemy. This is why my wife left me.”

When you blend, you don’t need to blend it to a complete slurry. I like it with some pieces of pepper still floating around. Give it a little texture. Your call, though. You do what you like. It’s your sauce.

Now, add to this sauce two things:

a) 1/4 cup of creme fraiche (or sour cream if you’re, y’know, a hillbilly)

b) 1 TBsp of softened cream cheese.

Stir. No need to blend. Just stir. Not with your finger. Or your penis. Put that away. You should really see somebody about that. Always sticking your extremities into moist foods.

Cool in fridge until meat is meatified.

Step Three: Corn Done Two Ways

This is like a Choose Your Own Adventure game where every adventure ends in corn-a-licious delights rather than, say, getting eaten by Snarveling Moon Beasts or some nonsense like that.

Get four ears of corn.

Cook ‘em however makes you happy. Boil them for 8 minutes, grill them for 15 minutes, char them, whatever works for you. Just make a decision and cook the fucking corn already.

Then: de-corn the cob. Or un-cob the corn. I dunno. Cut the corn off the cob. Serrated knife FTW.

Option #1: CORN SALSA. Take the cut corn and put it in a mixing bowl and add in there: salt, pepper, one diced tomato, a de-seeded and chopped jalapeno, some melted butter, and the juice of one lime.

You could, quite seriously, add a splash of tequila in there. “Margarita Corn Salsa.” Awesome.

Option #2: CREAMED CORN. Chop up one small sweet onion or a handful of shallots and put ‘em in a skillet to soften them in butter — dice up a couple-few cloves of garlic in there, too. Throw the corn in there after about five or ten minutes (when onion is beyond translucent and nice and soft). Milk the cob, too. (Pork pulled from pig butt? Milk the cob? Meat in mouth? No wonder they call it food porn.) By milking the cob, I mean, scrape your knife down the cut cobs and get the rest of that “corn juice” out of there. Into this goes salt, pepper, and whatever herbs you have laying around. Oregano and parsley are nice here. But you could go with those Herbs de Provence, again, since you’re lazy and you already have them within reach of your greasy hands. Then mix in there two TBsps of creme fraiche again. Or sour cream. You pedestrian.

Sticking The Landing

Remove pork from grill. It will be crispy on the outside and unctuous on the inside. Pull it apart with your mind. Barring an unforeseen lack of psychic powers: tongs and fork.

Slap the pork on buns. (Butt? Buns? Goddamnit.)

Glob a dollop of that roasted red pepper sauce on there.

Put some Corn Your Own Adventure on the side.

EAT LIKE A FUCKING CHAMPION. Snarl and pound the table in delight.

Don’t forget to order me my gift basket.

“I usually write at night. I always keep my whiskey within reach.”

– Faulkner

*slides glass of whiskey over*

There. That one’s on the house.

Fact: writers drink.

Every writer drinks. Total boozemonkeys to the last. Sure, you say, “But I don’t drink,” except, you probably do. You go to sleep, fugue out, and your writer hindbrain takes over — it’s like flinging open the cage door and letting out an enraged, deranged orangutan. Just because you don’t consciously drink doesn’t mean your crazy orangutan soul isn’t up at 3AM, dousing himself in the mini-bottle of tequila you unknowingly hid in the Holy Bible. So, don’t tell me the story that you don’t drink. Next you’ll try to tell me you have a mannequin for sale that only comes alive at night, when I’m alone with her in a department store.

Man, I’d so bang that mannequin.

What were we talking about?

Right. Writers. Drinky-drinky. You drink. You don’t drink, then you might not be a real writer. Being a real writer isn’t about how much you write in a day or how many books you’ve published. It’s about how big your liver is. Your liver doesn’t look like a lumpy kickball, then you and me, we’re not on the same page.

I get two comments frequently here about this site. One, “You sure do use a lot of profanity.” Well, I’m sorry. Profanity is fun. Profanity is a circus of language where the clowns are all insane and the elephant just stepped on a trapeze artist and something somewhere is on fire. Two, “You sure do talk about drinking.” Well, I’m sorry about that, too. We writers drink, and we like to talk about drinking, and we like to talk about drinking while drinking. It’s just our thing. Deal with it. And drink this while you’re at it.

You want to know why? You want some deeper instruction on the booze-sponge that is the penmonkey?

*clink*

Here goes.

Wistful Poetic Romance

Hemingway’s daiquiri. Faulkner’s mint julep. Stephenie Meyer’s “no-no juice.”

Okay, I’m not really sure about that last one. Point is, writing and drinking have long been paired together, arms locked in a poetic tangle — we envision the writer by his typewriter, a glass of Scotch in one hand, an elephant gun in the other. The whisky lights a peat fire in his belly, sends smoke signals of bright and bitter brine to his head, fills the chambers of his mind with the fermented bullets of inspiration.

It’s absinthe and poetry, brandy and prose, a lovable drunkenness leading to the potency of fiction.

Of course, the reality hits home when it’s 10:30 in the morning and we’re sauced on boxed wine, idly wondering when we got vomit in our own hair (it’s been long enough that it crusted over, a crispy bile-caked cradle-cap). Later we’ll look back at the work we wrote during that time (“Is fluvasham a word? Is this a grocery list? Funions? Really?”) and recognize that the romance and inspiration we so dearly sought is as empty as the wine box we’re presently using as a foot-rest.

Because Other Writers Do It

You know how like, there’s a state-bird? “It’s Iowa! Our state-bird is the one-eyed caviling corn grackle!” Well, if the state of Writerdom had a state-bird, it would be the whiskey-sodden rum-warbler.

Try this experiment: go to a genre convention or writer’s conference, wait till… well, it’d be optimistic to say 5pm, but let’s go with that, and then ask around to try to suss out where the writers are. Seriously, don’t even bother. Because I know where they are. They’re like elephants and tigers and flamingos who have found the one fucking watering hole in 1000 miles of Kalahari hell. Hint: They’re at the bar, dipshit. Drinking. They might not have money for food, but by a good goddamn they certainly have money to wet their writerly whistles. Where did you think you would find them? The library? The health food store? Okay, sure, you might find them at a pet store holding turtle races or playing mind games with ferrets, but that’s just because they spent all their allotted booze money.

You want to hang out with writers, you go where writers drink. And if you don’t drink with ‘em, they will sense that you’re different. And like rats who smell an imposter, they will nibble you to bloody ribbons.

Because Holy Fucking Shit, The First Draft, That’s Why

That first draft can be a beast. I’m constantly in search of a good metaphor for what writing a first draft of anything long-form is like, but for now, let’s just go with “drowning in a sea of bees.”

So we get to feeling like, dang, I could really use a little something to take the edge off, you know? Something to dampen the misery of endless stings. We might try, I dunno, stretching, or a cup of tea, or a few bites of chocolate. And that’ll tide us over to the 20% mark, but somewhere along the way we need a life preserver to keep us afloat. We need a goddamn drink. (Well, frankly, we probably need an insidious mix of black tar heroin, methamphetamines, and ayahuasca — we can vacuum the roof, write a bestseller, space out with machine elves, then battle the gods of Xibalba over a game of severed-head-basketball. Thankfully, those things are difficult to procure. Unless you know an Inca.)

One gin and tonic might keep us afloat. Two gin and tonics eases the coming of the first draft, a kind of chemo-spiritual pelvic widener to help birth this story-baby. Seven gin and tonics and we end up soiling ourselves and drawing pictures of boobs on our computer monitors in permanent marker. Or we end up writing The Da Vinci Code. To-MAY-toe, to-MAH-toe.

Still, you drink, you feel 100 feet tall and bulletproof. Stephen King ain’t got nothing on you. I mean, except the fact he’s lucid and doesn’t suffer blackouts that require him to wear a diaper.

Celebrate Good Times, Come On

“I just finished the book! Time for some wine.”

“I just sold a story! Time for some wine.”

“I just got through a particularly rough chapter. Time for some wine!”

“I just got halfway through a sentence. Wine wine wine wine wine.” *drunken pirouettes*

Eventually we end up in a piano crate under an overpass with a three-legged incontinent terrier named “Steve,” and we tell passersby how we “just finished that novel,” and they’re all like, “Sure, whatever, homeless-person-who-smells-like-Maneshewitz-wine-run-through-the-urinary-tract-of-a-diabetic-raccoon.” And we wave our manuscript at them. And by manuscript, I mean “genitals.”

Aww, Sad-Face Need Boozytime

The opposite end of the spectrum arrives. Hey, rejection. Hey, book’s not selling. Hey, a bad review. Time to drown your sorrows in booze the way one might drown squirrels in a rusty washtub! Die, sorrows! Die!

It seems like a good idea until you remember the idea that alcohol can serve as a depressant. Then you end up on the lawn with your laptop, yelling at some rejection letter or negative review. “You don’t know me. You don’t know shit about shit about — urp — shit, buster. I wrote my fugging heart out of my butt for you and this is what I get? I’mma genie! Genial. Genius. That’s it. You shut up. Quit lookin’ at me, possum.”

The Bottle Muse And Her Lugubrious Liquor-Fed Lubrications

We get stoppered up, our word-fluids corked up and bricked off like the poor fucker in Cask of Amontillado and we suffer that most mythical of conditions, the bloated beast known as “Writer’s Block.” And so, to answer one myth we turn to another myth by seeking our Muse, and in seeking our Muse we figure, hey, screw it, why not throw a third axis of mythic deliciousness in for good measure? Thus we seek to conjure the Muse in the vapor of our own boozy ruminations, guzzling some manner of alcoholic spirit to stir the metaphorical (and thus entirely unreal) spirits that purportedly guide our writing lives and have power over our own mental blocks.

It rarely works as intended. Oh, it provides lubrication, all right. We end up inspired. We find ourselves inspired to eat a box of microwave taquitos and drunk-dial a passel of exes before kneeling down and praying before the Porcelain Temple of the Technicolor Hymn. It’s just, y’know, the one thing it didn’t help with was putting words on paper. But at least we get a good story out of it.

Because Holy Fucking Shit, The Final Draft, That’s Why

You hit a point where it’s like, I have these 80 billion copy-edits, I have to cut limbs off this baby before anybody will adopt it, and I have to do it all on deadline. Daddy needs some vodka.

The story goes that Hemingway said to write drink, but edit sober, but man does that feel counter-intuitive, right? Editing is like surgery. And you wouldn’t go into surgery without anesthetic, would you?

Once again, however, there exists that cruel line. A drink or two might make the process more palatable, but a baker’s dozen and, whoo boy. Before you know it you’re slurring made-up racial slurs at your own manuscript, and in a sudden sweeping rage you highlight 20,000 words right in the middle and — *click!* — delete it, and then just to be sure it’s dead, you salt the earth by erasing all your backup copies and shattering your external hard drive with a croquet mallet.

It’s The Only Way The Demons Will Stop Jabbering

I’ll just leave that one there without comment. Do with it as you will.

SHUT UP QUIT SPEAKING YOUR INFERNAL POETRY IN MY EAR TUBES GRAAAAAAFRGBLE THE STORIES ARE TRAPPED INSIDE MY HEAD LIKE A GOURD FILLED WITH SPIDERS

Uhhh. I mean, what? Nothing.

Sauce Up, Writer Folk

So, what do you drink, writer-types? What’s your favorite drink? Even better — favorite drinking story?

And yes, for the record, awooga, awooga, disclaimers: I am not an alcoholic, you should not be an alcoholic, and writing is not made better or more magical by drinking. This is just a funny post (with maybe a hint of truth to it) about how writers are so frequently drinkers. So put down that oak cask with the squiggly drinking straw shoved in its bunghole. And get back to work.

“Alcohol is like love,” he said. “The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.”

– Raymond Chandler

This year, winter came, and I packed on some extra poundage.

Enough where I felt like a bear who was hibernating in a dead whale, ensconced then not only in his wintery fat but also in an exoskeleton of pure blubber.

Now, as you may know, I am a writer (*spit-take* *ptoo* “No way!” you cry, your jaw unhinging from shock, your tongue lolling out, your eyes bugging). Writers lead lives that… well, to call them “sedentary” is a bit of an understatement. The other day, a tree sloth and his snail buddies came into my office and were all like, “You should really get up and do something. You’ve probably got diabetes.”

Thing is, I’ve actually been trying to purge the weight from forth my penmonkey frame. We had been going to the gym, but with a pregnant wife that became less of an option so we bailed on the gym membership and instead went for an elliptical and a Kinect. I was working out and burning scads of calories and I was tracking calories and eating far below my caloric range and still the pudge remained.

So, I said, fuck it, and decided to kick carbs to the curb. (Though, uh, not the exercise.)

Within a week, I lost five pounds. After a month, I’ve lost ten.

The body seems once more capable of losing weight, which is a good thing. And I’m not psycho about the carb thing — during the week, I say “no,” and on the weekends I say, “well, okay, maybe a little.”

Mostly, it’s working out. I mean, I’m a sucker for meat and veggies. Love me some nuts. (Shut up.) You don’t get the spreading warm comfort of pasta or bread, but of course whenever I’d eat those I’d end up mentally foggy, wandering down the driveway with one shoe on and underpants full of dead leaves. I’m no good on bread. Any writing I do after I eat a big bowl of pasta just ends up being a bunch of ellipses and onomatopoeia: “Guh… … bbuh… zing. Yarrr… whuh… wuzza… wooza… fnnnn… … … GNUUUUUUHGHRBLEFRBLERRRRrrrr. Then Neo became Tron Solo. The End.”

The other big issue is one of variety. Dinners aren’t so bad, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult coming up with creative breakfasts and lunches (OH JESUS CHRIST MORE EGGS).

And thus I pivot my hips and sashay over to you, my glittery bedazzled hive-mind.

Anybody out there eating low-carb?

Hell, even if you’re not, I could use some ideas for recipes. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, whatever. (For the record, I don’t eat much processed food, which means no faux-sugars. I like stevia well enough, but the aftertaste makes me think I’ve been licking a battery coated in pulverized aspirin.)

If you’d be so kind as to ease your body into the comments below and give me some tips, I’d appreciate it.

Big ups. Danke-danke. Grassy-ass.

Advice found online was very clear: “Uhh, stop cooking on that, moron. It could shatter further. It could explode. Might electrocute you. Or maybe it’ll break open and gremlins will spill out.”

I, of course, kept on cooking. Hey, fuck it, dinner wasn’t done yet.

The option exists to replace the glass-top, but it’s an older, cheaper range that came with the house and it doesn’t match the fridge (this apparently matters), and so it is time to replace the hot-box.

You may think I’m soliciting advice on ranges. I am not. I mean, if you care to share, fine, but it’s possible I will have ordered something by now. Further, while I appreciate the calls for “What you need is a gas range,” I have to buy an electric so, y’know, sorry? I apologize if my choice in range disturbs or disappoints. Anyway, what I need are:

GRILL RECIPES.

Now, to be clear, I can grill the expected grill-based products with the best of them. Steak, burgers, chops, what-have-you. I mean, shit, it’s not hard. “Put meat on hot thing until no longer raw.” Done!

No, what I’m saying is, I know that you can make all kinds of stuff on a grill that you wouldn’t normally think. Pizza. Desserts. Dishes fancier than, “CHAR FLESH UNTIL SATISFIED.”

So: what do you make on your grill that goes beyond the norm?

Share, if you please. Because I’m going to be cooking on the grill for the next week(s) to come. Any grill recipes, grill tricks, grill stunts, whatever you got, send it my way. For all to see.

And in advance: my thanks.

(If you need to know the grill I’ve got: Weber propane.)

Couple weeks back, I said to you crazy kids, “food me.” (That is not meant to sound salacious, in a R-rated movie on FX or AMC where they replaced all instances of the word ‘fuck’ with ‘food,’ as in, ‘Yippie-Kay-Ay, Motherfooder way.) I said, with my family growing by one here in the next few months, it’s going to be important to have a bunch of recipes nailed down to my preferences rather than be some kind of home cook gourmet dilettante prancing around the kitchen with a bottle of liquid nitrogen and a mortician’s rubber apron. Though, to be clear, I look fucking hot in a rubber apron.

I said, “Hey, I need to figure out this family’s culinary canon.” Just as everyone has family recipes — “This is Grammaw’s Barbecue Tree Grub Salsa! With picante horse scrotum!” — I too want to start getting down the so-called ultimate versions of certain recipes for here in Der Wendighaus before the heir to Der Wendighaus shows up and pitches a spanner into the gears.

You folks leapt to the fore.

You threw a major mega-awesome heapful of recipes into the pot.

You can find those magnificent recipes here.

But no, I’m not done.

I still need more. More. MOAR.

(Hey, sorry. I’m needy. Deal with it.)

Here’s the deal, then. I’ve nailed down a bunch of recipes now that I’m pretty comfortable with. I’ve got burgers down. I’m good with mac and cheese, papaya salad, prime rib, chili, sloppy Joes. I can make eggs that’ll jump up off the plate and kick your teeth in. I’ve got a canon forming.

But, as noted, I need more.

I’m looking to nail down recipes for the following (in no particular order):

• Meatloaf.
• Fried chicken.
• Beef stew.
• Mashed potatoes.
• Potato salad.
• Spaghetti sauce.
• Chicken and dumplings.
• Chocolate chip cookies.
• Chicken noodle soup.
• Brownies.
• Pierogies.
• Korma (chicken, lamb, whatever).
• Thai curry (red, yellow, green, whatever).

I’m not necessarily asking for recipes. Should you have a recipe for one or several of these that you care to share, suh-weet. Feel free to drop into comments, point me to a link, or even write it to me via email. But what I’m also looking for is just… any little tidbits of information you have about these dishes that you feel is critical. An ingredient, maybe — “I thicken my mashed potatoes with an eyedropper full of milk from a witch’s nipple.” A technique, perhaps. “I bake my brownies in a used jockstrap to give them that humid, swampy stink of a football player’s salty nether-quarters. Can you say Umami?”

See, you gotta understand, I’m not trying to make my mother’s recipes. I’m not trying to make your recipes. I’m trying to make my recipes. I grab from here, I steal from there, and I experiment until I get the recipe I want. Then, I laser-engrave it into my brain. With an actual laser. It hurts a lot. I think I damaged my cerebral cortex. Whenever the dishwasher kicks on, I pee myself and do a little dance. Damn lasers.

Oh! If you want that burger recipe, it’s taken mostly from the Weber grill app. It’s pretty easy:

Pound and a half of 80/20 ground beef. Mix in a li’l dollop of ketchup, mustard, Worchestershire sauce, Frank’s hot sauce. Mix in a dash of salt, pepper, oregano, chili powder, thyme. Form into patties. Divot with a spoon. Cook on the grill for four minutes per side, toward the very end, pile on top a little cairn of grated Gouda cheese, let melt with the grill closed. Made the juiciest, most flavorful burger I’ve ever made.

It is the bee’s tits, that burger.

Anyway.

If you add anything into the culinary canon of the Wendighaus cookbook, whether it’s a recipe, an ingredient, a tip, a trick, a marriage proposal, a hate-filled rant, or a doodle of a pair of boobies, I’ll take it and offer a quivering Jell-O mold of gratitude.

It’s like this: I’m slowly developing what I consider to be “my” versions of certain recipes. These are recipes that, by and large, I’m happy with. Last couple of weeks I’ve nailed down recipes for chili and Sloppy Joes — these are not ultimate recipes in an objective sense, but they’re recipes that I’d make again following the same recipe I put forth.

I never used to operate this way: I generally made it up every time using some clumsy pastiche of recipes I already knew, and while that was certainly exciting, it left room for much variation. One day it was, “Gosh, this chicken is delicious!” Three weeks later it was, “This chicken mysteriously tastes like candle wax dripped on the perineum of a professional wrestler.”

With a child on the way, I’m going to have less time to, as it were, fuck around at meal-time.

It is therefore time to establish some kind of culinary canon here at Der Wendighaus.

Every house eventually develops one, I think. Or, at least, families do. You always hear, “Oh, you need to try my Grandmother’s gnocchi,” or, “My mother’s ham salad recipe will tear off your nipples and choke you with them it’s so goddamn good.” Hell, some people will get in fights about it. “My family’s spaghetti recipe is the best!” “No, mine is!” “Get your axe, for now we go to war.”

My Mom-Mom had a host of recipes that live in infamy: pierogies, bleenies, koshe. My mother had and has her own: apricot-glazed chicken, turkey tetrazini, slow-cooked coffee-marinated beef. Hell, my Dad made this elk-meat chili using itty-bitty Thai hot peppers that would melt your molars, but it was awesome.

Anyway, I think I’m orbiting around the point.

I’m opening this to the hive-mind:

What recipes are recipes you think everybody should know? Like, on a generic level, “Oh, everybody should know a meatloaf recipe.” Or lasagna, or fried chicken.

Second follow-up question — if you say, “Everybody should totally know a kick-ass pancake recipe,” then I further beseech you, what is your pancake recipe? Do you have one? (And by “pancake,” I really mean, “whatever recipe you consider crucial.” I’m not asking you specifically for a pancake recipe.)

What meals are canon at your house?

And, how do you make ‘em?

Once more, I crowdsource to you because you people are smarter — and, let’s be honest, much prettier — than I am. Hop into the comments if you’re feeling kind, and jam your wisdom into my craw.

In case you missed it, once upon a time I wrote an article titled, “In Twitter We Trust.” The article, found at The Escapist, basically posits the notion that our circle of trust — which comprises and completes that mystical thing we call “word-of-mouth” — is broadened greatly by use of social media. Further, it puts forth the idea that social media can, in a hive-mindy way, become what I call “Human Google.”

Ask the Twitter hive-mind a question, get an answer.

Try it. It’s good clean fun.

You can ask the hive-mind anything, really. How’s that new movie? How do I spackle a hole in drywall? Pants, or no pants? Why does my right nipple excrete a fluid that could be described as both “buttery” and “Satanic?” Ask a question, get an answer. A perfect system.

The great thing about Human Google is that it offers us something that search engines generally don’t — and maybe can’t: meaningful filter. Google doesn’t know me. It wants to. It thinks that some alchemical combination of data “cookies” defines me, but it doesn’t. What defines me is, in part, my relationships to others. So, when I say to Google, “Hey, Google, what are the essential ingredients for chili?” it returns to me 180,000+ results. And even on the first page, it has my question wrong in spaces — it thinks I’m talking about chili powder, or Thai chilis, or Rozonda Thomas from the defunct R&B girl group, TLC. (Okay, it didn’t really think I was talking about her until the fourth or fifth page.)

On the other hand, when I turn to Twitter and I say, “Hello, excellent humans of Twitter, please bequeath unto me the essential ingredients to chili,” I get a flood of great answers.

What did I learn?

Well, I learned that chili recipes are as individual as the people who make it. I mean, snowflakes don’t have shit on the uniqueness of chili. We’re not talking subtle regional variants. We’re talking straight up different animals. This goes well-beyond the Texas Versus Cincinnati cage match. This goes far past the muddy trenches of beans versus no beans. Ingredients given included, but were not limited to: ground beef, stew beef, steak, short rib, pork, bison, Italian sausage, chicken, chorizo, tomato sauce, tomato paste, pinto beans, kidney beans, chili beans, white beans, black beans, beer, Coca-Cola, Scotch, coffee, Jalapenos, Chipotles, Anaheims, Thai hots, bell peppers, sweet peppers, habaneros, Sriracha, Tabasco sauce, cinnamon, cumin, cilantro, onion, carrots, celery, giardiniera, garlic, lime juice, fish sauce, cocoa, melted chocolate, butternut squash, peanut butter, molasses, human souls, and dictators.

I now believe that there may be no more diverse a dish than a bowl of goddamn chili.

Anyway, this is what I put in my chili yesterday: ground round, ground pork, two sweet bell peppers, one yellow onion, two Jalapeno peppers, one can each of kidney beans, pinto beans, white beans, a small can of tomato paste, a medium can of diced tomatoes, a large can of tomato puree, one cup of dark black coffee, a 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, two TBs of Worcestershire sauce, two TBs of brown sugar, two bay leaves, a bunch of diced garlic (cooked with the meat), sweet smoky paprika, cumin, chili powder, cocoa chili powder, cayenne, ground pepper, a squirt of Sriracha. Simmer for six hours. At the end of it, top of fresh grated Havarti cheese (all I had on hand, but worked really well) and fresh lime juice.

Let me tell you — and this came from Justin Achilli and others, this suggestion — the lime juice is the fucking kicker, the corker, the game winner. I mean, it totally elevated the flavor profile of this chili. I will never again make chili without that final spurt of lime juice at the finish line.

Great stuff. And crowdsourced in part by the power of Human Google. Computers don’t need to give us the answers. Computers can instead facilitate us giving one another the answers.

That, and really weird porn.