Beef, Books, and Bodywash

I loaded up the fam and headed to Lafayette to meet Mike, my college roommate from my sophomore year, at the Texas Roadhouse near the Tippecanoe Mall. This time I used both my gift card and my digital camera. After dinner, we headed across the parking lot to Richard Nixon’s Sporting Goods where I ended up beating Raul Matthew in air hockey by a score of 20 – 15. Actually, it was Florida State beating Purdue according to my son, and this was sad given that this was taking place on Purdue’s “home field.”

We then headed to Barnes and Noble where I once again looked for something to spend my $50 gift card on. I took another look through the music area and didn’t find anything that I felt compelled to purchase. Had this just been a matter of spending $50, I could have found any number of CDs or DVDs to get. But given that this $50 was a gift for my graduation, I felt restricted, as if the purchase needed to mark the occasion somehow. It’s interesting how we can create mental boxes that hem us in. Maybe I’m just speaking for myself. I almost got a box set of Mozart’s symphonies, but decided against it when they all seemed to sound alike when I listened to the first few seconds of each clip on one of the preview listening stations. I’m sure it also didn’t help that I was trying to listen as a 7 year old was persistent in asking when we would finally be going back to the kids section. So we left there and headed to the cooking area. I knew what I was looking for, but I couldn’t find it. But after asking for help at the information kiosk, I struck gold. They had one copy of Perfect Chef by the Culinary Institute of America, and it’s now mine, all mine. I don’t know if this is “the definitive cooking guide,” but it sure looks like it. Great pictures. Great explanations. Great cultural overviews. Great about everything. I’ve been wanting this book ever since I first saw it a couple of years ago at the Williams-Sonoma store at the Keystone by the Crossing mall in north Indy.

We then went to Meijer on the way out of town where I purchased some ingredients (sherry, garlic, and an onion) to make a Cuban-Creole chicken dish for dinner tomorrow night. I also looked for annatto seed, which is combined with olive oil to create annatto oil—a foundational sauce in many Cuban dishes, but not as widely used as the sofrito sauce which serves the same purpose. I don’t have the first clue about Cuban cooking, but I’m kind of interested in it given that I lived in Hialeah, Florida during the late 70s. I don’t ever recall eating much of the local flavors during my time down there, but I’m drawn to the thought of using fresh and tropical ingredients to broaden my culinary experience. The fresh part may be a challenge given the limited produce sections in the Kokomo area, but I’ll see how it goes.

One other thing about Meijer--over the 14.5 years of my married life I have often found myself camped out for prolonged periods of time in specific areas of a store. When life comes to a standstill during times like these, I've found ways to keep myself from falling asleep by engaging my powers of observation. Tonight, it was the body wash aisle--an entire aisle of nothing but sleek-looking plastic bottles of body wash. It's obvious, I guess, that there are two basic types of body wash. About 3/4 were for women and 1/4 for men. Many of them were in the androgynous category, but given the fruity scents and frilly scripts, I'm just putting them in the female category. In this genre of gels there are a wide range of scents going from the relaxing scents of lavender to the indulgent scents of honey and cream to the invigorating scents of citrus blends. Most of these smelled good, but the cucumber melon--why take the risk? As for the guys, there was a variety of words to describe what was in the bottle--artic blast, glacier cool, ice mountain, etc.,--but there was only a single male scent in the bottles despite the variety of names used for marketing. Oh, and a few of the male bottles had broken caps, whereas none of the female brands had been dropped. It made me wonder if any male ex-cons had anxiety attacks after fumbling on the soap aisle.

On the way to Meijer, we passed the Lafayette Journal and Courier building east of Lafayette on 500th street, and it was really cool because the entire side of the building facing the road was nothing but a giant glass wall revealing a two-story newspaper printing machine. It was like the Krispy Kreme of the publishing industry—a glorification of the gears of production. It takes that which has in the past been kept out of view and shines a spotlight on it. That got me thinking—I wonder if more businesses will do this. It’s kind of cool. Just then we passed the next building—the Arnett Clinic Surgery Center. Despite this cutting-edge idea, I don’t think I’m ready for the glorification of surgery quite yet.