Last summer, New York City rooftops teemed with people sucking on
lemons and downing shots of vinegar. For about a month, in its
characteristic tendency towards cult like obsession, everyone was
talking about the magic berries that made all things acidic and sour
taste sweet, and about the ‘flavortripping’ parties where people
experimented with them. I, however, was in East Africa all summer on a
strict diet of rice and beans sans utensils, and I missed the craze.
Somehow, it seems like Angelinos never got the Magic Berry memo. I was thrilled to find that upon my West Coast relocation I was in the company of people who had not yet ‘flavortripped’. When I learned that a friend of mine had twenty berries chilling in his freezer just WAITING for a throng of curious flavortrippers, I begged to be included. Last Sunday it finally happened. With a tub of olives from the Whole Foods olive bar, I walked into a room of energized people and bowls of lemons, grapefruit, limes, tomatoes, carrots, bok choy, cheeses, jalapeños, radish, and asparagus. The liquids selection was even more obscure, with red and white wines, tequilas, vinegars, hot sauces, and beer.
Bear with me for a little (for me) life changing story...
Few spices can excite your taste buds as powerfully as cardamom. Have
you ever noticed how someone will take a bite of a cardamom-laced
dessert, declare instant love, yet not be able to identify the spice?
This past January, something hot and sexy began creeping its way through the chilly winter snows in Idyllwild, California. Locals were struck with the highly contagious Caseymania, which is like Beatlemania but without the screaming hysterical teenage girls. Well, not in Idyllwild, at least. But to inhabitants of this tiny mountain town, it was close to the same thing.
“He gets to tour, bound to make upwards of a hundred-fifty thou,” you hear an old-timer say with the cantankerous certainty of a gold prospector. Poor Casey never stood a chance. He had three big strikes against him in the TV-blurred minds of the American Idol voters (them being tweenage girls).
I am not a totalitarian, you probably aren't either, but there are
times when our leftist minds linger on a fleeting thought that fatally
undermines our morality. This thought is induced, as I'm sure you are
aware, by an errant sock.