Hockey Puck

My apartment is filled with smoke right now. Oh, not to worry, it’s not at asphyxiation level. At least I hope not, as I replaced my smoke detector with a cobra. And no, I didn’t stable a snake to the ceiling. I simply removed the contents of the smoke detector and then enlarged the space behind it so the cobra could fit comfortably.

My upstairs neighbors were a touch surprised, but they didn’t complain much, possibly because I had a live cobra.

Anyway, my apartment is filled with smoke due to the fact that I put a perfectly good piece of steak in a pan and more or less set it on fire. It was metaphorical fire, as there were no actual flames, but the steak was pretty much a hockey puck when I was done.

And why did I do this? Simple, I was trying to cook.

I’ll give you a moment to clean the spit off your monitor.

I’m not exactly sure why I decided to cook. I may have been slightly hallucinating when I went to the supermarket last weekend (all the cobra bites), but somehow I ended up with a tray of steaks and a big bag of dog food. I don’t know, maybe they were on sale.

So I decided to eat them. The steaks, not the dog food. Though, dog food is edible. Don’t ask how I know that.

Anyway, tonight I decided to heat up a pan and throw a steak in it. I probably shouldn’t have wandered away to watch cartoons, as eventually I noticed there was more smoke than usual. This led to the discovery of the hockey puck and the opening of several windows.

Seeing that I’d mostly failed to cook the steak, I decided to do some research before attempting to cook again. It was either that or eat the dog food. Seeing as how I don’t own any cookbooks and my mother changed her number without telling me (again), I went to the web for answers.

Apparently, this whole ‘cooking’ thing is much more involved than I originally suspected.

I was pretty intrigued by the website I found. It told me to ‘warm the pan’ and ‘let the meat rest’ and ‘decide on a safety word.’ That last one clued me in that I had actually gone to some sort of cooking fetish site, but I don’t mind saying cooking had started to look really interesting.

Anyhow, I did (eventually) find a real cooking site and discovered several things, including that setting your stove to ‘high’ and using gasoline as a marinade is a bad idea. So hopefully my next try will be closer to edible.

I just need to decide on a safety word first.

Cheers,
-Jason

Combat Chef

Whilst enjoying a slice of birthday cake at work, the discussion turned towards celebrity chefs and the various things they do and eat. It then occurred to me that TV chefs were a lot like nature show hosts, in that they go places, show you things, and then eat them. Well, obviously nature show hosts don’t eat the animals they show you, as that would be far too interesting. It was then that I had yet another fantastic idea for a TV show: Combat Chef.

What are the four most popular types of show on television? Nature shows, food shows, survival shows, and military shows. What if you could combine all four?

NOTE: I have no idea if those are actually the most popular shows. They probably aren’t. However, for the purposes of this blog, let’s pretend.

Combat Chef would go a little something like this:

The host takes us to an exotic location smack dab in the middle of nowhere - Nature show.

The host explains the environment and the local flora and fauna, specifically, which bits are the tastiest – Survival show.

Having done so, the host then hunts down a critter with a spear or similar instrument and fights it to the death. In all fairness, if the critter wins, it gets to eat the host - Military show.

The host then shows you how to prepare the now deceased critter and then eats it (or vice-versa if the critter wins) – Food show.

Combat Chef has something for everyone. There’d be gorgeous vistas, cuddly creatures, horrific violence, and then, a quick lesson on how to prepare a delicious Hollandaise sauce while in the middle of the Sahara desert.

It would combine the thrill of Deadliest Catch, with the kitchen expertise of Rachel Ray, the wilderness skills of Survivorman, and the psychotic killing of any Rambo movie. I cannot see how any network could pass this up.

Granted, they’ve passed on all my other shows, including Clownivore, where clowns are fed to a variety of dangerous animals, but Combat Chef is different: it’s educational.

Cheers,
-Jason