My brother Bill was in town this weekend for an accounting symposium at BYU. I know, I know, it sounds like a thrill a minute. He was here to present a research proposal, and the neat thing is that when he explained it to me I both understood it and found it reasonably interesting. Mostly this is because it has implications beyond just accounting, though. I’m sure if it had been something esoteric regarding tax code I would have been bored out of my skull.
For most of the weekend he was busy, but we got to spend Sunday together. We had lunch (quesadillas with freshly grilled green chiles!), did the Church thing, and then enjoyed a big ol’ pot of jambalaya with sausage, chicken and shrimp.
NOTE: My freezer has no more shrimp in it, I’m sad to say. My diet is moving increasingly into the “inexpensive staples” area, but I’m good with that. After all, I’m working from home as a cartoonist, and the food I eat gets eaten with my family all around me. It’s not what you eat — it’s who you eat it with.
After dinner Bill and I played shoot’em cars. I’ve mentioned this before in the Open Letter. It’s Rush 2049 for the N64 in “Battle Mode.” Our favorite track is #6, and I’m pretty much king of the game in my family and extended family. It doesn’t matter who wins, though. We whoop and holler and shoot and asplode and everyone is SAD when someone racks up 10 kills to end the melee.
Bill’s on his way back to Cornell now. In another couple of years he’ll have a PhD in accounting and be “Doctor Billy” (well, Doctor Tayler, but you know the family won’t stand for THAT). We’ll all make jokes about the aches and pains and boils and lesions we want him to look at, and then he’ll make sure the IRS audits us all.
I should have let him win the video game. 😉
I s’pose I have to get good at Rush 2049 for the N64 before I visit you, eh. Our family likes Bill, because we were raised by an accountant.
“My diet is moving increasingly into the “inexpensive staples” area, but I’m good with that.”
Given the low price of peanut butter and Wonder bread, at least we have no reason to think that you might starve. 🙂
But it’s pretty cool what kind of fun and/or fancy dishes can be made from inexpensive staples. It takes time in the preparation, and a minor investment in spices … luckily a $3 bottle will get you through weeks and maybe months of daily from-scratch cooking.
(I Learned this from experience earlier this year when, in a fit of nostalgia, I purchased a big bag of Vidalia onions to treat my husband to deep-fried Vidalia onion rings like I’d had as a child … and came home to his announcement: “I’ve decided I’m too fat. The diet started today. Nothing fried, and low-fat only.” What do you do with 10 pounds of Vidalia onions you are forbidden to fry or put into now-forbidden burgers and meatloafs? Memorize the relevent pages in the recipe book, and *experiment*)
It certainly is possible to get economic meals with low-cost staples. However, as you point out, the more interesting culinary forays in that regard require time. For people who lack both money *and* time, peanut butter and bread (and a suitable jelly or jam) is a way out. 🙂