Oddities and Obsessions

Celebrity Stalker

postcard-chicago Have you ever met a famous person and felt let down? I have.

Years ago, I was obsessed with an actor in a series of television commercials. Obsessed. I stopped what I was doing to watch his overly aired ad. I was in love. He not only had charisma, but attitude. Not hot like Johnny Depp or anything, but he possessed that je ne sais quoi.

I just HAD to meet him. There had been a lot of publicity about him and I knew one thing — he lived in Chicago. Well, I just happened to be in that very city. So, I made a few phone calls. I was an actor in commercials, he was an actor in commercials. I knew people. Those people knew his people. Someone pulled some strings.

A man from a huge ad agency would be picking me up at my hotel. My actor lived outside the city. A 45-minute drive. Some really nice person I didn’t even know was willing to make the introduction.

I’m beyond excited. I got all geared up, couldn’t sleep the night before. I never cared much about how I looked, yet I dressed my best. Put on a little makeup. I was ready early, waiting for the car in front of the hotel, over-the-top excited. It would be magic when I met my crush live and in person. We would run into each other’s arms and he would insist on living with me for rest of his life. I’m talking non-stop to this random ad agency dude the whole ride out about my deep infatuation. He’s humoring me, pretending to be in rapt attention.

Mail-Order BBQ

Confession: I love food that comes in the mail.

I, also love having something in the freezer just in case we decide on a whim to have eight people for dinner tomorrow night. Or tonight for that matter, but this only works if you decide this early enough in the day to defrost whatever it is you have in the freezer just in case you’re entertaining on a whim.

A few weeks ago, I was sent samples from Edwards & Sons Virginia Traditions BBQ. It was summer and I was really excited to get them, especially since the samples included an entire pork roast butt (completely suitable for a dinner party of eight or more).

I don’t write about things that are sent to me unless I love them. Those “crabcakes” from Baltimore come to mind, the ones that sort of resembled a baseball. We tried everything – we even put them in a tomato sauce and put them on top of spaghetti – no luck. A crabcake should not resemble a meatball!

Coffee Fix

My husband and I managed to miss the whole coffee craze. Up until a few years ago I had never had a full cup – try to restrain your horror – and he would have one only when desperate for caffeine. If it was past 10 in the morning he'd move right past a morning cup and reach for a Mountain Dew instead. All that changed one fateful trip to New England where we were introduced to Dunkin' Donuts. Sure, we knew they made good donuts, but apparently their pastry treats were not the reason for the lines cascading out the door. It was for their coffee, which we didn't hold high hopes for.

For all you DD fanatics, we weren't stupid, we just live in Southern California and we aren't privileged enough to have a single store in our region. Back then if we wanted to "Run on Dunkin" we had to drive 7 hours to Arizona. Coming from a region dominated by Starbucks, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Seattle's Best, we had pretty low expectations of a "donut shop" coffee. Wow, were we wrong. From the first burning sip – coffee is hot – to the last we just couldn't believe how delicious it was. Or understand how they kept it hot for sooooo long. We had found our java heroin and there was no going back.

Truffle Madness

To say that truffles are an acquired taste for me would be an understatement; I can’t ever think of a moment when these heady gems crossed our family table growing up. Truffles and Tex Mex don’t normally hang out together, you know. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I had my first taste of the powerful fungus, and if you’ll allow me to be dramatic for just one second, it literally knocked me off my feet.

Much has been said about the beauty and rarity of truffles, so I’ll go ahead and leave the praise and culinary history to the professionals. By now you probably already know they are fungi and that they are harvested by dogs and pigs in Italy, France and the Pacific Northwest of the United States. You probably already know that they can fill a room with their aroma, but did you know that I know a Fed Ex driver who curses and swears each time he makes a white truffle delivery? Hey, I could think of worse smells for the inside of a delivery truck, can’t you?

Pear Madness

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I go overboard.

Being born with an impassioned gene isn’t really all that bad, though. It allows me to focus on things so acutely and really dive into subjects that might otherwise not have interested me. It allowed me to learn how to rollerskate in the 70s, leaving all the other kids biting my dust (or maybe it was my purple satin shorts, which for a 7-year old boy is probably the fast track to neighborhood ridicule, but so what, I ask?) It’s kept me interested in my job for this long, helped me wrangle and eat my own snails, and allowed me to learn how to play a handful of musical instruments.

It’s also the reason I have found myself up to my eyeballs in pears.

Now, a pear isn’t something you always have around like an onion or a lemon. They’re a truly seasonal fruit and best enjoyed when mother nature tells us they’re ready. And because of this I don’t really think of pears throughout the year. It’s not like I find myself grilling in the middle of July and then suddenly scream out “OH MY GOD THIS RIB SOOOOOOOO NEEDS A PEAR RIGHT NOW!” If anything I’ll scream out because my cocktail is empty. But that’s a whole ‘nuther blog. But my point is this: when I taste that first early fall pear I know I’m on a collision course with that powerful strange facet of my personality.

Oddities and Obsessions