BuggBlog

I'm a martini superdelegate!

Yes, it's only Monday morning, but you're already thinking about what you want to do tonight, right? God knows I usually am. But in this case I have something pretty cool lined up -- I'm a judge for tonight's "Best Martini in D.C. Contest" at Beacon Bar & Grill (17th St. and Rhode Island Ave., NW), alongside luminaries such as our own D.C. Council Member David Catania. I hope he doesn't threaten to drink me under the table, or else I'll have to pwn his ass.

Just joking David! I promise I'll let you win!

So, when you get off work from downtown, sneak out early from the Human Rights Campaign office, skip your trip to the gym or drive in from the 'burbs, come out to Beacon and help us choose the best -- your vote is guaranteed to count more here than in the Democratic primary.

UPDATE: I suppose it helps to mention what time, just in case you don't click through the link -- it's from 6 to 8 p.m. See y'all there.

Be careful what you put in your mouth

I have watched my dinner die.

To grow up in farm country is to have a better understanding of the connection between the meat on your plate and the animal you see grazing in the field outside the dining room window. While my parents weren't farmers, my grandparents and aunts and uncles were, and our rural Kentucky home was surround by fields: an uncle's field across the road, my grandfather's pasture along the creek, a second cousin's rows of corn out back. We all had gardens, from which we all traded fresh vegetables -- and, yes, home-grown tomatoes are superior to the generic ones you find stocked in your grocery's produce section.

I never saw a cow slaughtered -- though I did have a small hand once in helping convert a bull to a steer by slicing off his testicles -- but I understood the cow-to-hamburger process. Chickens, though, were a food source I understood even better. Granny had a chicken coop behind the house, where I would sometimes go with her in the mornings to collect the big brown eggs from the nests. And I watched from the kitchen window as Granny took a hatchet to a chicken's neck and the headless bird briefly ran around the yard in a bloody slapstick routine.

It really is the kind of chore where you want to be sure the dogs are put up before you start.

For Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, this up-close experience of the food chain should make me -- potentially, at least -- a better, more careful eater.

A little bit of Buggery for you

If you've been around here for a while, you probably already know that I buy more books than I'll probably ever be able to read. They're just so pretty and shiny and they feel so good when you pick them up and they smell really nice. They also, you know, contain some information you can absorb if you open them up. This week's Buggery column at Metro Weekly tries to explain my passion for the printed page and, as a bonus, make up a new word,"arboranity." I have a  feeling it won't be the new word of 2008.

I've also got a new Gears up on the 2008 Mini Cooper S. In short, there's a lot to love about the Mini, and the new enhancements, mostly stylistic, don't do anything to change that. The new Mini Clubman -- a larger version of the car that should address some of the Cooper's problems with storage area and back seat passengers (it doesn't have any and it doesn't hold any) -- is out soon and I'm awaiting my chance at the wheel. Given the interest in the car, though, I don't expect to get a crack at it until mid-summer at the earliest.

Because I've been sort of slacking on the one hand and obsessing about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the other, I totally forgot to highlight a couple other recent pieces. First, I have a quick overview of my video game obsession, Rock Band -- although I'm not playing it around the clock at the moment, as I'm in the midst of working my way through Lost Odyssey and leveling up some characters in World of Warcraft -- more on those later. Second, I had my first Food article for Domestic Partner, with suggestions for putting together an easy but impressive Valentine's Day dinner.

I do like to keep my interests broad.

That's enough about you. What about me?

Even despite my New Year's (not exactly a resolution, but more a limited commitment) pledge to update the Buggblog on a more regular basis, things have been pretty light around here as of late. The simplest excuse is one that makes sense for a newly self-employed, libertarianish kind of guy like myself: Work that generates money takes precedence over work that generates diddly-squat.

Unless I need to do some serious procrastinating, in which case all bets are off.

I've also been dealing with a few trips the dentist, culminating this week in a two-word procedure -- first word describes a vegetable that grows underground, second word is often preceded by "Suez" or "Panama" -- that was kind of horrifying while it was going on, but wasn't nearly as bad afterward as I'd feared. The fact that I find my new dentist really cute didn't actually help much while I was struggling to control my gag reflex with a Michelin-sized rubber bite block in my mouth. I wish I could say the whole ordeal was over, but other procedures loom on the horizon.

Kiddies, take my word for it: Don't smoke. I stopped years ago, and the person who was working on some of my teeth asked me, "Do you smoke?" If I could just go back and slap some sense into my teenage self -- but then I'd probably offer my older self a Marlboro Light and a Bud and fire up some Zeppelin and I'd totally forget what I came there for in the first place.

Work has been shaping up interestingly for 2008. I have my first wedding client as part of Ascribe Catering, which is awesome and nerve-wracking and exciting. It's a gay wedding/ceremony/reception on a boat taking a three-hour tour -- I'll pause here while you sing the song to yourself -- so I'll say it'll be an interesting challenge. I've got some non-Ascribe irons in some fires as well that I won't know about until later, but if they come through it'll be cool. If not, well, I'll find some other fire to be sticking my iron in.

Obviously, I've been posting some stuff as more primary elections roll by, and I'm pretty psyched by the way things are turning out at this point. I'll save some of my thoughts for later, but in general, I'm very hopeful that Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. While I appreciate facts like John McCain's opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment, I pretty much don't trust anything come off the "Straight Talk Express." Funny how once you pass 65 or so, being ill-tempered, cranky and crotchety stops being a character flaw and starts being charming.

Enough for now. I've got some lunch that needs eatin'.

It's so nice, you can eat it twice

The FDA has decided eating cloned foods is a-okay. No word if they considered whether, in the future, one repeatedly cloned cow would eventually become aware of the existential crisis of being eaten again and again and again and again and again. Not that it'll stop me from eating them.

Interesting compare and contrast: the Post article on cloning approval with Stephen Pinker's much discussed New York Times piece on the components of human morality. Certainly seems like the innate concern for "purity" is driving the no-clone people. Well, that and the trade protectionists.

Where, oh where, is my gingerbread man?

Having undergone a career change from an editor-in-chief to a caterer/editor/automotive-writer/jack-of-all-trades, my daily list of to do's has also changed. For the past few days I've been on a search for a gingerbread man cookie cutter so I can make some Sweet Transvestite cookies. Hey, it's that time of year.

You'd think a classic gingerbread man cookie cutter would be one of the easiest things to find in Northern Virginia's vast array of gourmet cooking outlets, department stores and craft centers. You'd be wrong. I found angels out the wazoo, plus Texas, dinosaurs, a rhinoceros and a ballet dancer. But no gingerbread man with his happy little head and stunted little legs, despite trips to every store within driving distance. I found one on the Web -- in order to get it delivered to my house by the time I needed it, it would cost $45 for shipping a $3 piece of shaped tin.

Crap, for $20 more in gas I could drive to my sister's house in Kentucky and borrow hers.

Last night, however, Cookie Monster smiled upon me during a repeat trip to Sur la Table where, under a pile of holiday knick-knacks, a gingerbread man lurked. Filled with joy, I can now move forward in determining just how high his fishnet stockings should be.

Hold your horses!

Yes, yes, yes, I promised on Monday to have pictures from the wedding up shortly, and here it is Saturday and I haven't gotten anything together. In my defense, I just got all the photos yesterday. Our fabulous photographer, Ward Morrison, shot 998 photos of the set-up, ceremony, luncheon and reception, which I've now whittled down to about 300 possibilities for posting. It's going to be a long weekend. Anyway, just as proof, here's how Cavin and I looked shortly before the ceremony started:

And here's the cake:

Don't worry, photos of me looking like an idiot will follow later.

On the bleeding edge

So I'm at the mall this afternoon finally getting around to buying a pair of shoes to go with the suit I bought for my wedding this weekend and I'm feeling all stressed and jittery and anxious and totally behind on everything I need to get done before the big day. So, what do I decide to do to alleviate all this tension?

Buy a knife, of course.

Not just any knife. A Shun Classic 7-inch hollow-ground Santoku. That is one sweet knife. It promises to make slicing and dicing a speedier and more efficient process in my kitchen. Plus, the whole folded steel thing looks hot, in an "every appliance I own is over-priced stainless steel," gay kind of way.

So I get home and immediately take the knife out of its fashionably Japanese box and proceed to admire the knife's heft in my hand. I take a little swipe at one of the tomatoes I have sitting on the counter -- a task that, I'm ashamed to admit, often required a bit of extra effort from my old chef's knife -- and a perfect, near-invisible slit opens in the fruit. Wow, that's some sharp. Then I'm feeling the texture of the hollow spaces along the blade that reduce friction when slicing through veggies and such, and thinking, I wonder how sharp this thing actually...

Oh, my.

Yeah, it's that fucking sharp. I didn't even really feel it bite into my thumb until a few seconds after, like when the villain in a samurai film doesn't realize he's been decapitated until his head's sliding off his body. So I called Cavin to let him know that after he was finished picking up the thank-you mints for the reception he might want to stop by CVS and pick up some Band-Aids and, perhaps, a tourniquet.

Naturally, Cavin wasn't thrilled to find that in the midst of all this wedding planning I'd splurged on a fancy new knife. Still, I made him stand and watch as I diced half an onion with my old knife, and the other half with the new Shun Classic 7-inch hollow-ground Santoku, which cut through the layers like the proverbial hot knife through butter. Cavin was unimpressed, even as I showed him how finely I could dice the onion. As he grumbled, I went to wipe off some residual onion bits from the side of the blade and...

Oh, my.

Well, at least Cavin got a good laugh out of it, and I put a few more of the Band-Aids to use. I think I've learned my cautionary lesson and, if I'm lucky, I'll still have a ring finger come Saturday.

Keep your laws off my belly!

Between the banning of trans fat in New York and the banning of in-bar smoking in D.C., I'd pretty much forgotten about Chicago's idiotic ban on foie gras. Apparently, five months after the law went into effect, restaurants are flouting the law with exceptional vigor.

Foie gras was banned in Chicago because of what animal rights activists say is the inhumane way geese and ducks are force-fed to plump up their livers. The penalty: a fine of at least $250. Mayor Richard Daley has called it the "silliest" ordinance the City Council has ever passed. And many restaurants have acted accordingly.

At one business, the owner has treated his warning letter as if it were from a celebrity praising a great meal. "I did frame the letter and put it up on the sales counter," said Doug Sohn, owner of Hot Doug's, a gourmet sausage store.

Naturally, supporters of the law have to maintain the fiction that it's supported by customers -- although the restaurants get next-to-no complaints and the health department has put the ordinance at the very bottom of the priority list -- which leads to this little moment of hilarity:

Activists, though, say the ban is working.

"Our supporters are going into restaurants and we're told that they are not selling foie gras," said Gene Baur, president of Farm Sanctuary, a national farm animal protection organization.

Imagine that!

Obviously, as far as I'm concerned, if people want to shove Big Macs down their well-greased gullets all day long, that's their right. Same goes for veal and, of course, foie gras. And if some people don't like that, well, go paint of some placards and write some chants and get to the business of changing some minds. Instead, some Chicago politicians followed the increasingly popular "we know what's best for you" line of reasoning, and arrogantly took control of people's gastronomic rights. Which is another moment of mirth in the story, when the sponsor of the legislation, Alderman Joe ("Pot") Moore decides to call the kettles black:

Moore said he realizes the Health Department has more pressing issues. But he is dismayed to see restaurants flouting the ordinance.

"It evinces a certain degree of arrogance on the parts of these establishments," he told the Chicago Tribune.

Arrogance begets arrogance, in this case. I just hope the restaurants keep up the fight, until Moore has to pry the liver from their cold, dead fingers.

Happiness is a warm bechemel sauce

While continuously whisking my first-ever bechemel sauce over medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes this weekend, I realized that I'm often at my happiest in the kitchen. This is, of course, because I'm not required to do it -- it's a hobby, not a vocation, so I'm free to enjoy and experiment and generally do what I please just because I want to. Many, many people talk about their jobs in terms of this sort of happiness -- that the discovery of true joy comes when finding the job that allows you to feel happy and free because the work is such an integral part of you that it can't bring anything but happiness and contentment.

I'm not one of those people. I love my job -- what's not to love about being the editor of a gay magazine and getting to write about interesting people, manage a growing publication, review cars, read voluminous amounts, and so forth -- but it's hard. I get a certain satisfaction out of writing that I can't get anywhere else, a feeling of deep satiation that I really only know when I've written something I know to be good. That's content. Cooking is happy.