What makes me tick, and what ticks me off?

For those who know nothing about me, you kind of need a background into what makes me tick. Those that do know me can fill in the gaps with the stuff that has scarred me but today we will just focus on tick... tick... tick hmmmm, add an "h" and you have the nickname my father used as I was a teenager. I was not dense, I was just bored. You see I am one of those, I guess for lack of a better term, a savant. I'm not mentally challenged I just find it hard to challenge myself mentally. Yes I could argue the finer points of Einstein's theory of general relativity, string theory the Fibonacci method and how it applies to TOOL songs, wormhole theories, why I have been making chess, mah-jongg and scrabble opponents cry since I was 7, and my own theories into the mass of super black holes or my theory of life on other planets... but none of that makes me happy. I find happiness in the things that most people view as either obsessive or silly.

While I have no problem turning aluminum, servos, hydraulics and Japanese steel into a walking machine of mechanized death... yes like a Military version of Voltron, I would much rather spend my morning up to my elbows in grease rebuilding and refitting a 350 small block to crank out 500hp sans nitrous... to whip a Chevy Purebred 69' Camaro, ass out and in circles, around the sobbing masses of Honda civic tuners. Then I would come home after bathing the street in tears from said import tuners and settle into bed with my pencils and paper drawing some sick tattoo flash for my buddies at the ink shoppe around my way. Next I would fire up Photoshop or Blender 3D depending on the mood I am in and work on some piece that I probably promised someone weeks ago, or I would fire up my PS2 and put in a stress relieving game like Grand Theft Auto or Hitman. Killing in games gets such a bad rap when in reality most people use the over the top violence to vent frustration safely like I do. This is a good thing when you consider that I have both extensive Martial Arts and Military training in self defense... and effective offense. In short killing gangsters in San Andreas prevents me from killing people who piss me off.

Anyway eventually I would make some additions to one of my many literary works in progress on my laptop and lastly after all that is said and done at some point I would break out my trove of composition notebooks stocked to the rafters with recipes from my favorite chefs and family members and I would decide on something from two or 3 different styles of cooking that would normally not share the same plate in any restaurant I know of yet they compliment each other well enough that they could. Ideas begin to fly in my head and after passing on Pesto, Paella and Dahl I settle on this combination, Pan Fried Japanese Spicy Sesame Vegetable Udon, Puerto Rican Style Pernil con Mojito and Handmade Italian Cannoli for desert. Oh I didn't mention? I love to cook and I do it well. Not tooting my own horn, but I know I cook well because I have learned from the best and I apply the form and structure of science and the creativity and flair of my artistic side into my cooking method, which has it's drawbacks as well. For instance, when I am cooking a meal that I have decided to do from scratch, I am not frightened by the time it takes to make things perfect and if perfection in taste, texture and presentation means I have to start prep for a 7:00pm meal, at 1:00pm then the effort is worth reward. Of course there are days when time just does not allow for such intricate detail, but I am not above sacrificing time set aside for things I enjoy in favor of making something everyone will enjoy.

I am fortunate to of had the type of upbringing not typical to the area I grew up in. Let’s go back a little to elaborate. I am a child of mixed ethnicity born raised and living in the ghetto. My father came here in his early teens with his entire family from Sicily chasing the American dream, a dream dead in post WWII Italy. My mother who is Black, was born and raised in the Boogie Down Bronx in a traditional family where she and her sisters were all groomed to be housewives, which was acceptable at the time given that nobody had any money... however my mother being the focused and stubborn woman she is broke that mold and put herself through school to became a teacher. Dad and his brothers landed in the Bronx and opened a Pizzeria, one day she came in for a slice and eventually left with a husband. My father is a very talented chef and went from flipping pizzas to teaching the art of cooking, which is where I tagged along when he went out of country to seminars, meets chefs etc. This is where I picked up a good deal of my skill, the other was from my mother who is an outstanding cook who happened to make life long friends with other equally skilled cooks and her repertoire ranges from Jamaican and Latin American to Indian and African cooking. I have sampled many, many, many different things in my life, while my neighbors were content to call Mac and powdered cheese, fine cuisine. When you take into consideration the fact that my father's family are avid hunters and fishermen, I get to cook with some interesting cuts and types of meat. Not many people from around my way will have a hankering from time to time for escargot, tripe, rabbit or caribou... but me and my brother sure do, lol.

Now I may knock mac and cheese out the box, but some of these guilty pleasures are tasty and I have tried and enjoyed some. When time is short they come in handy, however my pickiness shows through even here because I tend to only shop for brands that have gone through the least amount of preservation and chemically enhanced. For instance we all know about Kraft and Velveeta but have any of you heard of Annie’s Homegrown All Natural Mac and Cheese? In my opinion it's the best on the market, if you can find it. [link]

Now the question you may all be asking, and by all I mean all 3 of you on the internet interested, lol... what all this has to do with anything. Well there is a point to me bringing up the fact that I have a discerning palate, yet sometimes I will dabble in some of the prefab processed stuff on the market, and that point is...

Bacon Bits.

Or maybe it's Bac-o-bits I can't remember and I can't be assed out to get up and check but my mom loves to add them to salads occasionally. Usually she adds things like mandarin oranges, ginger or pancetta depending on what she feels like, but today it was bacon bits. Now I have had them before and I remembered that I did not like them because they tasted nothing like bacon, in fact I think that this is what a bacon flavored dog treat tastes like. Anyway as I sat down to eat I was too hungry on this day to care about what the hell was in the salad, and I devoured it. Salad was the first course and dinner was Italian style sausage and peppers on toasted garlic Panini. I had glass of red wine with dinner and some peach cobbler for dessert. As far as I was concerned all was right with the world, until about 2:00 am when I noticed something odd. You see dinner took place in all it’s glory sometime around 6:30 pm, but as I returned from a middle of the night trip from the bathroom to take a leak I was overcome with the need to burp, and I did so after an about face to the bathroom so I could save the sleeping beauty on my futon from the wafting odors of dinner and dessert. I also figured I would go with a swift brush and gargle as I try to do each night especially since nothing is worse than greeting your baby with a kiss in the morning that smells of cat shit… and they say chivalry is dead. As I let loose I was overcome with something I was not prepared for… horror. The horror of the fact that with everything I ate for dinner and the after dinner smoke of a Djarum Black, the only thing I could taste was, yep you guessed it. Bacon Bits, and I don’t mean a hint of bacon bit, I mean a huge aftershock of soy based artificial bacon condiment filled my mouth. There is nothing worse that tasting something you despise again when you least expect it. So I settled down grabbed the weapons of fluoride and mass hygiene and went to work like I spent the day taste testing garlic and onions for money, and I was satisfied with the taste of vanilla on my breath and I climbed back into bed. Once again everything was ok in the world.

Then 5:00 am came and I was jostled out of my sleep by a kiss on my forehead, a slight muffled ruckus, a few swears in Mandarin and the sound of the front door closing, ah… baby girl was on her way to work, and she was running late. I smiled and rolled over to go back to sleep, but first things first… another little burp to go along with my morning ritual of scratching and making sure I woke up with everything I went to sleep with… it’s a guy habit, and then it happened… bacon bits again. Now I was more than horrified I felt dirty, and not like gym sweat dirty, I mean like swimming in a sewer dirty. I mean how the fuck can I still be tasting bacon bits? This is disgusting! What do I do now? Swallow shampoo? Eat gun powder? Why this happened is not as important in the scheme of things as how it happened. This is supposed to be food right? I have eaten rattlesnake, deer, moose, snails, tripe, ox tails, pig feet, pig snout, pig ears, pig tails, lamb shank, lamb ribs, lamb eyes, turtle, frog, chicken feet, chocolate covered ants, deep fried cricket and meal worn hush puppies, eel, raw clams, raw oysters, cow tongue, horse meat, caribou, black bear, elk, white tail deer, goat, ostrich, kangaroo, alligator tail, camel and even a deep fried twinkie… and all of which I would gladly ask for seconds, because all of them were prepared excellently. Some may sound less than palatable and others sound like they would leave an after taste, none of them did however, but some did have an acquired taste to them. This all aside none of them have ever left me wanting to swallow bleach like these damned bacon bits did. This leaves me to one possible conclusion.

Bacon bits are fucking evil.

Please tell me I am not alone on this. I say we make a list of foods that have unnatural staying power on the taste buds. I can already name one other, Buffalo Wing flavored potato chips. I ate these once, with my hands of course, and for 3 days after constant washing I could still smell the flavoring on my fingertips and worse… if I licked them they still tasted like Buffalo Wings. More than that they not only replicated the taste and scent of the Buffalo Wing sauce, they replicated the scent and taste of actual chicken. Join the revolution with me people!

~3B Has Spoken