Breakfast on Allan Street ft. guest cook Graham Ferguson

Breakfast... pasta?

What are plates made of? I mean, if they aren’t china or plastic. Is it glass? Are they glass? Do I have glass plates? Or maybe they’re ceramic. What is ceramic? Is that what people call pottery when it’s really, really good?

Anyway. The plate, glass or ceramic, is quietly amusing.  It’s got these flowers I've never noticed until I had to write about them. It’s painted with what I imagine vibrant shades of green, yellow, purple and pink look like when they sleeping off a hangover.  I am assuming this is a regulation sized plate, but apart from Google, there really is no way of knowing.  It’s a plate. It seems to be able to carry the weight of a loaded bagel with a side salad and, therefore, is meeting its minimum requirements. This flatware refuses to go above and beyond, and I dig that. I hate finicky dishes. They’re so “Look at me! Look at me!”. I mean, this is an apartment, not some hipster-doofus pop-up restaurant where you are forced to eat soup out of a piece of artisan driftwood. Thank god.

But enough about hipsters. Look at that bagel.  That’s straight from the freezer, that is.  We don’t defrost them. We hate middlemen when it comes to cooking. We jam our bagels right into the toaster. Hard as rocks.  If you notice, there is a little bit of, like, cheese baked into the top.  That’s how you know it’s good.  When it has things in/on it. Seeds, red specs, green lines, in the words of Michael Scott “It’s allllllllllll goooooooood.” Graham made this meal. From what I can tell, he has used our Veganaise in lieu of mayonnaise, or as we like to call it in our household: vag-inaise (that’s a soft "g", like vag-isil). I love Vaginaise, hate Miracle Whip, and Graham respects that.  Points for Graham. And points for me too I suppose, for choosing a man so up with "the times".

Bacon was on sale. It’s definitely the bad kind. The kind that would make PETA members have a worldwide, collective aneurysm, but when something is 3.99$ ethics go right out the proverbial window, don’t they? To balance out the exploitation of pork, I have requested he use the vegetarian turkey meat for the top layer. It comforts the bacon. It says “It’s okay.” We also have some tomatoes in there, which I’m not wild about, but it’s more of a “Whatever” attitude than an “Ew, gross!” attitude.  Sometimes they hit the spot though, so that’s why you won't hear me cut them down completely. Ambivalence, I think they call that. Actually, no. I'm pretty sure it's indifference. Anyway, today I welcome them into my lunch menu.  It should be noted that these tomatoes aren’t a certain kind or anything. It’s not like we only eat Hot House or Cherry. We don’t care what the specifics are, as long as they are spherical-ish  and red-ish. A tomato, is a tomato, is a tomato, am I right?

Day 2: All done!

And then we have a leaf of kale, which Graham washes, but I never do.  I never wash any of my vegetables. Or fruit. Or hands. My immune system is incredibly jacked. Oh my god. Oh my god. I almost forgot about the pickles.  Here’s the straight dope. There are three things in our diets that are only done right when they are homemade: Bread, salsa, and pickles. These pickles are mom-made. They were also free, as most mom-made things are. A gift, from our friend Greg and his mother, actually.  Gordan Ramsey always says your main dish must have a star. These pickles are the star of my bagel club, and  entire refrigerator. I love pickles. I love pickles! And hot peppers, but’s that’s another story.

When I bite this sammy it is, as my brother in law would say, “way supes" (short for “super”) good. It tastes like you would imagine it should taste, but I do hate when I get a fatty bit of bacon. I hate the fat. It’s so fucking gross. Enter the dog, who usually gets whatever pieces I come across.  Dogs are great to have around while you eat. They make the bad parts go away. They “take care” of them. Dogs are the best.

I confess, I only eat half of everything because I get full very easily but it doesn’t mean I don’t thoroughly enjoy it.  My main concern is this pasta salad anyway. I lurrrrrve pasta salad. Homer and Bart once sang “You can’t make friends with salad!” as they formed a conga line in the Simpsons' living room, but I think they were wrong.  Graham could make loads of friends with this salad.   He did cheat though. He is only responsible for boiling the noods (short for “noodles”). He bought the salad pre-made at Superstore and then added the quintessential starch himself because as we always say, "What baby wants, baby gets".  What a guy.  The salad is amaze-balls, and the noods are actually health noods too. I got them in the organic section, so you know they’re gluten-free or something equally grabby.

You know what is elevating both the side and the main? Cracked pepper. I am obsessed with large amounts of pepper. And it has to be cracked.  Big flecks, that’s what I’m looking for.  Sometimes I go a little nuts, and have been known to ruin meals by being too heavy handed with the pepper-mill. Just ask Mary Mills, who used to watch me make bowls upon bowls of her homemade soup completely inedible because I didn’t know how to say “when”. 

Which reminds me of a story I would like to share. There once was a time, in Prince Edward Island, when myself and three sisters came together for dinner at an Irish Pub.  We ordered some grub,  went through the motions that go along with dining out, and eventually our food arrived.  I had the pasta.  As is customary, our server asked if we would like pepper on our meals. We said yes because we're no idiots, which was followed by her lifting from the ground a three-foot novelty peppermill. The thing was huge, awkward and watching her try to wield it around the table was sketch comedy gold. We exchanged knowing glances that said "What the hell is going on here?/We are witnessing something amazing..." and tried to swallow the hysterics building in our guts. Here's what I don't know for sure: this girl was new, was the victim of an ingenious joke, and somewhere out of view was a huddle of jackass co-workers laughing their asses off at the fool who actually fell for the clown-size peppermill prank.  I love it. Made me want a big-ass peppermill of my own.

Anyway. That’s enough about seasoning. And the salad. And the club, I suppose. Oh. To drink! To drink I had….hmmm, let me take a picture. That’s a crazy dirty mason jar that I poured my rooibos tea into. I intend to drink, like, 8 of these daily but unfortunately my first glass always lasts until bedtime.  Ugh. I need to shape up and take this water/tea intake mission more seriously. It’s just so boring drinking tea. I don’t even remember it’s kicking around half the time. Oh, tea. Why you gotta be so vanilla?

This is going back in the fridge until tomorrow...

That’s the end. The end of my first food critique. What a gas it’s been.  A roller coaster of emotion built on a foundation of mindless drivel. Oh my god. My stomach hurts. Nooooooo! This always happens! Which leads me to a very important scale of truth: How long does a meal sit with me before I am clambering down my hallway to the washroom?  In this particular case, there seems to be about a 30-minute window between the last bite and needing some serious privacy upon the porcelain throne. Is that what plates are made of? Porcelain?

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