Contemplating Quiche and Chicken Wings

First comes the panic-attacks. Then comes the soul-crushing existential angst. Finally, there comes acceptance in the form of auto-pilot numbness, where all one really has to do is execute tasks automatically. Comparative Politics paper? Check. Marking 60+ papers in two days? Check. Teaching? Check. Consultancy work? Will be done tomorrow. If not, it will get done the next day. Until then, I just have to keep plugging away, trying not to get too antsy because London and Lisbon are coming up in a month's time!

With London comes: theater, culture, food, friends, greasy Weatherspoons dinner specials, fish and chips, my girls, graduate school reminiscing, the sartorial splendor of clothes at the High Street, red phone booths, ambling drunkenly through SoHo, faux British accents, getting caught up to speed on British politics, the Marks and Spencer food hall, Hello magazine, the Tate Modern, Tas, decent Indian food, the BBC, exorbitant transit fare, and of course, CB.


With Lisbon comes: port wine, port wine, port wine, and port wine. I also turn a year older during my trip; after this birthday, I really will be well into my mid-to-late twenties, and will no longer be able to legitimately claim the girls on the Hills as my peers but will soon count - ugh - the Sex and the City lasses as my tv counterparts. Pretty soon, I will be watching repeats of the Golden Girls and thinking, "oh gee whiz, that Dorothy is one swell cat!" (PS. I realize that in ten year's time, I will be reading this blog entry and will be rolling my eyes at my twenty-something histrionics).

Anyhow, lest I get ahead of myself here, allow me to reassure my concerned readers that the last few entries, which I now admit were a bit despondent, were in no way an indication of me turning into a misanthrope. While I still hate Dr. Snootybottom and am struggling to finish my work, my despair, as mentioned, has turned into acceptance. To top it all off, I'm actually finding time to...eat! Because of the stresses of the last few weeks, I have to admit that I've lost some of my appetite, but now I've almost gained it back. I've had two excellent meals this week, which I will now write about.

1) Asparagus and ricotta cheese quiche
Quiche, to me, is the ultimate convenience food. I buy pre-made pie crusts at the grocery store, beat 5 eggs with milk, fry some veggies (broccoli, mushrooms, whatever), some left-over meat, place them all in the crust, and top everything off with whatever cheese I have in the fridge. My most successful quiche endeavor consisted of broccoli with feta and goat cheese. In any case, my roommate, the wonderful MS, saw that I was making quiche and asked me for the recipe. I told her the basics, and she said she would make quiche the next day. Mind you, MS is a great cook - she just has this innate knowledge of what spices work best, and can whip up a healthy, delicious meal in the amount of time it takes me to slice an onion (I don't dice and slice all that rapidly). Today, MS kicked my ass in the quiche department and made asparagus quiche using a slightly sweet gluten-free pie crust blended with oodles of ricotta cheese. The end result was fantastic - I was eating with one hand, holding the receiver on the other talking to CB, and trying to mute my moans as I listened to CB discuss - oh, I don't know - computers? After all, what guy wants to know that his girlfriend has a tendency to moan like Linda Lovelace when confronted with good food?

2) Beer and chicken wings courtesty of St. Louis Bar and Grill at the Annex -
My energy was dwindling on Tuesday evening because I had five hours sleep over the last two days. When TGMF invited me to take advantage of 5 dollar wing night at St. Louis Bar and Grill at the Annex, I was apprehensive. TGMF and I had stopped by the place one evening to check out their dinner menu and were confronted by an openly 'hetero-uber-male space,' with Plasma TVs broadcasting various sports games, frat boys with baseball caps cheering for their teams, and neon signs on the walls. Since I usually treat hetero-uber-males with sub-conscious derision - hey, these guys made fun of my bespectacled thirteen year old self in high school - TGMF and I predictably did what geeks have done since time immemorial. We smirked at all the hetero-uber-males chest thumping in the corner, made some disparaging observations, and left. We ended up going to a soulful Tibetan/Himalayan restaurant with appropriately earthy sitar music.

When I returned to St. Louis on Tuesday, the atmosphere was similarly raucous but because we were in a group of four, we felt less vulnerable. We ordered a pitcher of beer, and two baskets of chicken wings, asking for four flavors: cajun, hot spice, honey-garlic, and hot-and-honey. When we received the baskets, we were impressed that the wings came with thick chunks of fries, alongside ranch dipping sauce. The fries themselves were nicely salted, crispy, and hot - combined with the dipping sauce, they were phenomenal. However, the wings were the star of the show: they were relatively big pieces (not like the dinky pinkie-sized ones at some pubs) and were doused with the sauces, though not so much as to overwhelm the texture and crispiness of the chicken. I also like how they were served piping hot; this to me was an indication of freshly cooked chicken wings, not chicken wings that have been precooked and reheated. Beer, fries, and chicken wings? You can't go wrong, plus each basket with 18 pieces cost 9 dollars! I will definitely be braving the hetero-urban-male space again. Hey, maybe I can launch an overhaul; I'll bring all of my Steve Urkel like grad student friends and stage a takeover, transforming the place from being a bastion for frat boys to being a refuge for the physically-feeble-but-intellectually-gifted.

Suffice it to say that school becomes almost bearable when I know I have good food within easy access...