Brandon Eats

The Tomatoes are Missing

Don't you miss them? I know I do. I spent a harrowing afternoon last week talking to the health department and researching salmonella in a compulsive, obsessive state that made me imagine I could see tiny, evil bacteria laughing at me on everything I touched.

Fortunately, these fits of neurosis don't last too long. In fact, they generally subside when the hunger kicks in and the crackers (I have yet to figure out how they could be contaminated and regard them as always safe) either run out or I can't stand them any more. This usually coincides with dinnertime.

I hope Virginia tomatoes will be cleared in time for harvest on July 1st (why wait to ban a whole crop when you can speculate about its hazards now?).  Until then, I will warily eat marinara made from canned tomatoes (the Muir Glen people assured me that their tomatoes--essentially cooked in the canning process--are perfectly safe) and will continue to shun the pink slices they call tomatoes in restaurants, not because I'm afraid of them (they're from Florida and Loving's Produce told me they're also perfectly safe), but because they taste like crap.

Instead, I will feast upon equally dangerous seafood I hope to sterilize by drinking lots of frozen, fruity drinks while I'm on vacation. Which means, dear readers, I will again leave you temporarily in the lurch while I fail to update my blog. I don't do it because I hate you friends, I do it because I'm lazy. And because I won't have an internet connection (I pray) for the next week. But I do promise to be back soon. Really.

Savor

Savor might save us all this summer. Read all about in today's Style Weekly.

The Sneezing Weasel

It's the most god awful cold/bronchitis/sinusitis/otitis ever to sucker punch me during a week in late May (or April or March), and it's too hot to eat soup. Will I live? It's debatable. I am feeling well enough to watch videos on YouTube, so I must be getting better?

Spoon and the B-52's: the Same Band?

I've been dragging my feet about a proposed post about Spoon, because I just haven't been able to come up with a good cocktail for them.  I tinkered around with some grapefruit vodka, pineapple juice, and Cointreau, but it just wasn't quite right.  I wanted something sweet but a little astringent, something well-crafted but seemingly effortless. Then I had some people over for dinner and they drank up all the vodka.  I haven't bought any more because sometimes cocktail experimentation seems like an inherently bad idea (even though oddly, at other times, it seems like a flash of brilliance).

So Spoon's alcoholic tribute has foundered. When I went to see them at the NorVa, my biggest fear was that I'd be the oldest person there. I wasn't. Not by a long shot (thank god). This was reinforced later when I went to see the B-52s, where I was, on average, a good ten years younger than most of the audience and musicians onstage. Now, these people were seriously old (again, thank god).  I'd forgotten that in my youth, New Wave-y worship of the B-52's was practiced by the cool, older crowd I knew. I'd also forgotten until I heard "Planet Claire" live that I had a very annoying older boyfriend who'd spent a summer in Athens, GA, and endlessly tried to impress me with his sophistication, spiky hair, and tales of underground insiderness. But didn't we all? Sometimes it really is better to just forget.

Here's a link to a more recent performance.

Kind of bittersweet, you know?  I really wanted to be at a live B-52's show in the eighties (early eighties), but instead I didn't make until last month--a couple of decades late. Fortunately, the band played a truly amazing version of "Love Shack" (who knew I liked that song?) that almost made up for the crippling nostalgia I was experiencing. Later, I realized it would have helped me, when the regret and long-suppressed pettiness surfaced, to have quickly applied a cocktail I drank a lot of in those days: the Kamikaze.

Oh! The Kamikaze! Precursor of today's crazy-tini's, it was a tart drink made to be swallowed in a gulp and then swallowed again. Once I drank so many, I had to cruise home slowly through the alleys, gently bumping into super cans along the way. Today though, it actually makes a lovely sipping drink, either fancied up in a martini glass or on the rocks. It's not as lethal as we all thought--or I should say, no more lethal than a Cosmo--if we refrain from drinking it in traditional, serial fashion. And we're not going to do that anymore, now are we?

The 21st Century Kamikaze

2 oz. vodka
1 oz. Cointreau or triple sec (hey, blue Curaçao looks GREAT in this and very New Wave too)
1-2 tablespoons (1/2 to 1 ounce) freshly squeezed lime juice

Shake with ice and either strain into a martini glass, pony glass, big shot glass, or serve it the responsible way, over ice, to be sipped slowly. Maybe where you can mutter to yourself about kids today. Serves one.

(It sounds an awful like my Spoon cocktail, but I won't tell if you don't.)

Zed

Thinking about trying Zed again? Read my review in today's Style Weekly (hint: you'll like it).

My Grocery List

Several people have asked me the specifics as far as prices at the grocery stores I wrote about on RVANews.  Above you'll see what I coyly call my "notes" but what is really my grocery list. Good luck with it. I hope it makes all of the anal retentive amongst you happy (although I have a feeling it will drive you crazier than ever).