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23 december 00
----- Some little voice inhabiting a vacuous part of my skull told me to make potato latkes today, exercising for the first time my deceased gramma's recipe, finally provided to me by my mother, who just now deemed me old enough to have it. So I headed to Ralphs Market and got five pounds of potatos, a couple of onions, flour, eggs, the works... After wasting time in front of the tv, I was ready to begin the spiritual process of latke creation. Then I realized I had forgotten the oil. Fucking great. Hanukkah is a holiday founded upon oil, lots of oil, and I forgot the oil. Back at Ralphs Market, the salvation army dude was wondering why I'm back so soon while I'm wondering why he's not dressed up as Santa Claus. Ten minutes later I was back home with a generically labelled medium sized vat of vegetable oil. Using a marginally adequate hand-grater, I shredded the five pounds of potatoes and five of my knuckles. When I got to grating the onions it was quite a mess, and my eyes started hurting along with my hands (if ya think cutting onions makes ya cry, try grating them) ... sniffling, I gave up and threw them in them roommate's osterizer (tm) milkshake maker, hoping the thing would act like a makeshift cuisinart food processor or something. I set the milkshake machine to high, flicked the switch, and nothing happened, aside from a loud whirring noise as the blades spun independently of the onion chunks. I tried sticking a knife in to make the onions touch the blades. Now there's one less knife in my roommate's collection. Finally, I had the bright idea to pour some of the liquid in from the grated potatoes. Potato juice did the trick, and soon I had a liquid onion sludge to add to my mess of shredded potato sluice. Three eggs and a few spoons of flour later, I added some salt and pepper and stirred the cauldron. It felt like I was mixing cement. I located the only frying pan in the apartment and lamented the fact that my old place in Venice had a much cooler (and larger) kitchen than this. I set the electric stove to high and filled the pan with oil. A few minutes later, I dropped the first of many spoonfuls of batter into the hot oil, watched and waited. The first four pancakes (pictured above) fell apart as I attempted to turn them. Undismayed, I fished out the stringy remains and ate them. Rather tasty. I tried using smaller spoonfuls the next time around. This led to my first batch of something approximating pancakes. In other words, I managed four solid masses of deep-fried potato something, hardly round, more trapezoidal or octagonal, but I was proud of myself nonetheless. The oil must have been getting hotter, because each successive batch came out looking more rounded and nicer and more like gramma's. I smiled because I was starting to get the hang of it, even in the midst of the hot oil sizzling and splattering in my face, hair, and over my glasses. Nothing like hundreds of pinpricks of scalding sensatiion. The zits I'm gonna have tomorrow... On the third to last batch I had a really good system going: stir, spoon, fry, drain, cool. Then the smoke alarm went off upstairs. Visions of large red trucks lumbering up PCH filled with asbestos coated firefighters assuming this was the next Big Malibu Fire and quite disappointed to find that the emergency was nothing more than a poor lonely jewish kid who was over his head in an old family recipe ... I stood on a chair and ripped the nine volt battery out of the smoke detector just as the neighbors started to get curious. Twenty minutes later I was done. No more batter, lots of splatter, a very dirty stove and a rather greasy feeling yours truly. The final product, a roasting pan filled with pounds of pancakes, potato latkes for hanukkah, all in the name of tradition, or spirit, I guess. And here I am, home on a saturday night, and it never occurred to me that there was no-one around to eat these things. And that's just too bad, because they sure are tasty. After cleaning up the kitchen (an arduous task), I took the trash out. Walking past the apartment of a few cute Pepperdine girls, I heard one of them say "Something _really_ smells good out there." Couldn't help but smirk at that one. 23 de cember 1999: blame it on the moon : Break-up, yes, I said break-up. I'm still very numb about this. Not much to say yet, if at all.23 december 1998: : didn't write 23 december 1997: california time : An otherwise boring day was brightened by my lunch with Lunesse, my first real life meeting with another online journaler. [ swim back | email me | swim ahead ] |
