Why Americas Food Wins II: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

On a rainy night when the lightning flashes and the time is ripe, also being that the correct ingredients are available... Between Paul Bocuse and me there really isn't much a difference, because its not that hard to make a grilled cheese sandwich. But no matter what you do to it or how you make, it somehow manages to survive the battle of novice kitchen abilities and taste- hmmm, whats that word again?- WICKED GOOD BUB!

The grilled cheese sandwich has been buttered on both sides and thrown together with some sliced cheese by just about every American kid between the ages of 5 and 18. I've had great ones! Melted cheese dripping over the half  inch cliff face of its crusted mid-section and a crisp golden brown screaming "oh baby babe!" from each outer side of the bread. Iv also seen them with black burnt stove rack lines on the bread, and spaces in between white as the morning with that cheap artificial cheese inside in maybe what could be a liquid state that I GUESS you could qualify for "melting". But you know what? Never had too much of a problem wolfing through those either. Like I said, hard to go wrong with GCS, point taken?

But lets keep things relevant to me here if we can, I mean I don't think I've ever even qualified with the fates to have what could have even been construed to be less then a perfect grilled cheese. And I don't mean to brag but sometimes my grilled cheese's don't even belong in this imperfect world once they slip out of the wonderful steam-smokey fry pan and onto my snack plate. So sometimes I go all out when these perfect ones are made. Sometimes you need to take the big guns to your sandwich making skills and throw some meat on there, like Bologna, chicken, or beef strips. Sometimes you want to throw on some egg salad, some tuna-sandwich mix. Sometimes you want to bring something out of the pan and ask yourself, "In the name of the big WhimWham! What hath I done!?"

Go get knee deep in your cheese folks. Go show yourself that there is at least ONE thing you can do kitchen savvy. You can make a grilled cheese. It may suck. But even Bordain would be wiping its last buttery crumbs off from around his mouth before he told you that. Go ahead and eat it with some tomato soup for dip. Go ahead and touch roots for pete's sake! It's amazing because we can all make it, and it still taste rockin'! And its yet ANOTHER reason... why America's food wins.

The Days Of Pine.

The misty rain seeped through the hills, seeking children who are seeking thrills.
And the thrills they seek, are the memories you keep.

The Days Of Pine.
The Days Of Pine.

Follow the path off through the trees, warriors with sharp sticks and dirty tee's.
And the things they be, are the things you cannot see.

The Days Of Pine.
The Days Of Pine.

Well you don't know what livin' is till you've lived in the land, of darker woods, of radder tales, of the bravery of men. If I could quest to the clock of life and turn it back and then, maybe I- oh maybe I could learn to live again.

Line upon line, we all will find...
The Days Of Pine.
Those Days Of Pine.

The misty grove deep in the wood, taught you the things that none other could.
...In Otter Creek you'll find...

Those Days Of Pine.
The Days Of Pine.
The Days Of Pine.
The Days Of Pine.

The Days Of Pine.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3aKSPaA1Pk&feature=related

The Fires Of Enstrangment.

Where oh where to begin? Well it's getting hot now. Winter seems like a dream compared to the lucid sweat box I come home to after work. I'd rather bury my head in the open cavity of a pig carcass then sit around and melt on my livingroom couch. At least the cat would have something to lick up throughout the afternoon, if most of me dosnt drip down through the floorboard cracks. It's 7 pm and bright as Hells Hollywood outside. I spent at least an hour in the shower trying to freeze myself back to life...

Do you remember when you were young and sunday evenings seemed like "I Am Legend"? Or at least they did to me. The day was busy enough. Church in the morning, long social afternoons going to dinner parties, dinners at friends of the family, games with my sibilings. But once the dusk had really setteled in, The Twilight Zone began. A heavy, boring dim seemed to fall on all my loved ones as my parents pulled out big church books or went to take a "nap". My older brothers and sisters would scatter off to their rooms and lock themselves into their dens. Anyone my age or younger was still trying to stay active, but by the most horrible means possible. Puzzles on the livingroom rug, coloring books on the couch... generic church cartoons. So I had to choose two very hard things. To stay in the one room of the house with any sings of life and light, but bare the grueling choice of pastimes available... or face the wild and dangerous world of anywhere else. The house was dead and dark. Long shadows were the only sign of light left as the sun dripped down behind the tree line (which, in Otter Creek Maine, was REAL fast). The outside was even more so. Eerily too quite, and windy dark. Of course I chose the rest of the house and the world beyond, a love for adventure had been instilled in me from an early age through watching my brothers play computer games.... duh. The hallways became dark foreboding passages, and the rooms caverns lost to time. The outside held the greatest excitment. It seemd you didnt need to be more then a dozen yards from the front door to feel like you had gone MUCH to far from the house. It felt like even in suburbia there were lions, goblins, and all sorts of legendary evil lurking even as close as the driveway. Those were the times when I felt like my house, my neighborhood, my family, my LIFE had fallen into obscurity. And now sitting here in the bleached heat of my apartment, I feel like I did then when I was 6. Sitting around and staring into the lonely, dead, still water world around me. This difference is the heat. The similarity? My entire being at the moment seems to have desenced into obscurity. This time though, my father wont wake up from his nap at 10 in the evening and offer to make cookies or biscuits. My mother isn't going to finally get up and read a book to me and my brother. I'll just sit here and find cool parts of my bedroom wall to smash my bare body against (my desperado method for trying to cool down without getting into the shower again or waste the cool in my refrigerator). Maybe the people I hear talking to me are simply part of the trip your sure to get from sitting in a sweat box all afternoon. Maybe their the beginnings of my middle aged, white, American, male psychopathic symptoms? Maybe its just the TV?... maybe.

Well I'll sweep up a piece of kitchen tile real nice, try to see if I can broil some bacon on it. Feed it to the cat, and keep her tongue out of my innards when I drip down to a puddle on the sofa cushion.