I’m not super adventuresome when it comes to food, but I’ll try most foods once. Unless they contain mushrooms (allergic) or peanuts (hate with the passion of a thousand suns).

As mentioned in a previous post, I went to a birthday party. A friend held her birthday gathering at Quinn’s Pub. Take a moment and look at the menu.

I fell in love with the idea of the Wild Boar Sloppy Joe. I didn’t care how it tasted, I knew that’s what I was going to order then I got there. Upon arriving I nearly left due to the aforementioned snow. However, I decided to tough it out. I was glad I did.

We settled into our table and ordered appetizers–Pate and Escargot. The pate was good. Quite good. Very good. I’d never had escargot before, so I wanted to try it.

The thought of eating snails turns many people’s stomachs. However, there are some people who really, really like snails. I wanted to know. I had to know.

I popped one in my mouth.

The clouds parted, the angels started to sing, and the most beautiful flavor filled my mouth. It was butter, garlic and bacon in a perfectly balanced three-part harmony that lifted my very being toward eternal bliss.

Then I started to chew.

The clouds turned stormy, the singing turned to screaming, and I realized that I had something that was part semi-solidified rubber and part gelatinized mucus in my mouth. I quickly grabbed my water and washed it down. Fortunately, since it was still largely whole, went down easily.

I am torn about the experience. Escargot, at least as prepared by Quinn’s, has the most amazingly flavor (in the good sense) and surpasses anything else I have ever eaten. Yet, it is also the most disgusting thing I’ve had in my mouth. Ever.

I guess, in the end, I have to recommend the Wild Boar Sloppy Joe. It was very good, and didn’t remind me of slime.

We cursed and yowled at the snow demons. We cried to the rain spirits for their intercession. They answered in abundance. Roads that were once closed due to snow are now closed due to flooding. Escape from the city to the East and South is not possible.

Yeah. I am.

I should preface this by saying–perhaps obviously–that I am a huge nerd. My parents are not nerds. My partner is also a nerd. When it comes to Christmas gifts (or Birthday gifts), they have no idea what she and I would like.

Except that they know we like food.

We got close to 10 pounds of meat for Christmas. In the package there was pork garlic sausage, smoked pork chops, rib eye, and some tender loin from Owens Meats in Cle Elum, Washington (they don’t have a website). We ate the pork chops last night. They were pretty good. I cooked them a little too long, but thus is life. The pork drippings went into the mashed potatoes.

What I really want to talk abut is the pork garlic sausage. Properly it is Grampa’s Garlic (if you ever happen to get to Owens’ and see it in their case).

On one of many camping trips as a child, we were headed through Cle Elum going to . . . someplace. Probably the Teanaway River, but I don’t remember. For reasons also unremembered, we stopped at this somewhat dingy looking place. Dingy on the outside. However, the entire town of Cle Elum looked dingy, so that wasn’t necessarily a strike against it.

My parents picked up a few things, including some of this sausage for breakfast the next morning. We cooked it up, and I remember Mom remarking on how little fat was coming out of the sausage. The smell that filled our small travel trailer was unlike any other breakfast smell we’d had.

There is a smell and taste that the typical American breakfast sausage has. It’s a bit peppery. It smells fatty. It is even a bit smoky. These aren’t bad things. I’m just trying to build a vocabulary. Jimmy Dean sausage is the archetype of those qualities.

Grampa’s didn’t follow that arc. In fact, the smell was so clean, that we were afraid it wouldn’t have much flavor.

We were wrong. The archetype can be over-powering. This was not. It was pork and garlic in harmony, and the garlic was the supporting note. Since we didn’t go through Cle Elum very often, we’d only get the sausage a couple times a year. It became a special treat.

I’ve loved it for many years. I’ve even tried grinding my own sausage to capture that essence. I was very excited to see two pounds of this sausage in the Christmas gift. I couldn’t wait to cook some up, so my partner could try it.

“Too garlicky,” she said. My heart broke. My soul wept.

Then I remembered that she has the palate of a pallet. So I just sat and watched her cover the sausage in ketchup.

Gah. I missed yesterday’s blog post. I’ve got a calendar that’s helping me keep up with my buffer of comics, but I don’t have something for my blog.

My comic is a long arc. The humor isn’t topical. I can work ahead as much as I like. However, I feel that my blog post should encompass my current feelings, thoughts, and thoughtful feelings. Also: what I’ve eaten recently.

I attend a book group that discusses classics. January’s book we read John Wesley Powell’s The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons. This book is part anthropological survey, part geological exploration, and part adventure yarn. Powell and his expedition where the first people to navigate the entire course of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

Yes, there have been people in the area for hundreds of years prior to Powell. Yes, they had explored the canyon pretty well. So how can we be sure they didn’t do it first? Well, the locals weren’t stupid enough to try. They could see that it would be a foolhardy venture.

Powell knew enough to see that there was a blank spot on the map and that, by God, blank spots on maps are not to be tolerated. I’m not trying to denigrate Powell’s bravery. He lost an arm in the Civil War. He was a fit man, as he frequently climbed rocks to gather samples. He knew how to mount a field expedition. He knew nothing abouts boats, boating, and rivers. Or botany.

Between the rapids and eating random things in the desert, he was down three men by the end of the expedition. The amazing thing is that those three men walk away from the expedition of the own free will. The expedition didn’t kill them. (Although they were killed by either some Indians or some Mormons, but that is a tale in and of itself.)

We had a rousing conversation about the beauty of the canyon, and the idiocy of the Powell expedition. There seems to be a certain class of human (males of European decent) that seem to think running off into the middle of nowhere and nearly getting themselves killed.

I also drank a Starbucks salted caramel signature hot chocolate.

The side effect of going to Ikea is that the table in the studio is now relatively clear. Clear enough that we can game at home. Not that I don’t like going to Ernies, but I wasn’t feeling that well. You see, I’d been forced to attend the annual all company meeting, and further forced to listen to our executive committee talk about the dire state of the economy and it’s impact on the business. The meeting was long and boring. Long boring meetings make me crabby. I wouldn’t say I’m unique. I’m just sayin’.

Last year was the company’s most profitable year. Ever. Oddly, the last major down-turn in the company was during the tech boom of the 90s. If the company that I work for cycles opposite of the general economy, then I’m good for years. If that’s the case, then the company deals in inferior goods In the economic sense of the term–the defect rate of our product is the lowest in the industry.

When I walked through the door, I immediately had two girls whining at me demanding food. She must not have been in a good mood either as she began to demand cookie dough as soon as we walked in the door. The one without thumbs wanted something really, really stinky.

Lately, we’ve been keeping a stock of homemade cookie dough on hand. We altered the recipe to eliminate the eggs and baking powder since we knew that we’d never bake the dough. I made pizza–date night you know–but forgot to drug her.

She beat me at Memoir ‘44. I must have forgot to drug her pizza. It was OK though. We were hopped up on cookie dough. Maybe it was the sugar rush, but somehow we’d entered a magical land of children’s breakfast cereal. We were no longer playing a historically based boardgame. No. We were enjoying an bowl of Allied O’s. Each bowl was a blow against the dreaded Axis. Ever spoonful was filled with an explosive combination of sweetened oat ohs and meritorious marshmallow in four brave colors–silver stars, purple hearts, green berets*, and Big Red Ones**.

At some point, we crashed from our sugar high, but I think it was some point after making the free world safe for surprises in children’s breakfasts. I’m just hoping the surprise wasn’t a desperate call for fire support or landmines.

*Yes. I know. The Green Berets weren’t formed until 1952, but we were a little out of our heads.

**The unit symbol for the US Army’s First Infantry Division.

Friday night, I had three pieces of beef. The Kansas, corn-fed, 28 day dry-aged, USDA Prime, filet mignon was the worst piece of meat on the plate.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a great piece of beef. In any other situation, it would have been a top-notch. It was a very good steak. It was shoe leather compared to the other two pieces of meat.

She and I went to the Metropolitan Grill in downtown Seattle for our 11th aniversary. We ordered their three steak combo. It had the aforementioned Kansas steak. It also had an American Wagyu steak and a true Japanese Kobe steak.

A good steak melts in your mouth. The Kansas steak did. With both the American Wagyu the Kobe, my mouth became the meat. Or something. They were tender beyond belief, and yet had a bit of tooth to them. They had flavor beyond that of mortal steaks. It was a little like they had been covered in garlic butter, but they hadn’t been covered in garlic butter.

Then we had a chocolate lava cake for desert.

We didn’t need to go home and have sex.

I really haven’t talked much about the importance of breakfast food. Now, I’m not talking about the importance of a meal that may be called breakfast. I am talking about the foods associated with that meal.

There is one such food that is, head and shoulders, above all other breakfast foods (waffles). I wish to make clear that the food I am going to talk about is a clear second to the first food (waffles) – the Dutch baby.

Dutch babies are soooo awesome. For those unlucky souls who have never eaten a Dutch baby, imagine a cross between a pancake and a soufflé with a tad of crepe thrown in. When you are served one in a restaurant, it is dusted with powdered sugar and festooned with a lemon wedge. Your better establishments will also offer a selection of syrups and fruit toppings.

I had a “hankerin’” for one this last week, and I figured the odds of getting to a “breakfast place” to acquire one was low (“going out” = “cheeseburgers”). Fortunately, the universe has provided Google, and within minutes I had a number of recipes at hand.

I figured out what the common ingredients were (cast iron), and was able to make such a delight in my own home.

Sadly, I cannot repeat the feat as I am now out of syrup.