Ham Gravy

In the dark frigid recesses of my freezer is a jar;  a mason jar, sealed, it's content obscured my the thin film of frost on it's sides.  In it, is a frozen fatty globulous globe of gluten grease and salt.

Pork, as you know, has been plentiful 'round the G&T compound.  Ham has been in copious supply.  Ham.  Cured ham.  Fresh ham.  Slices of breakfast ham, ready for fried eggs, orange juice and coffee.

And Ham, when subjected to heat, renders its fats to juice, which, when thickened with rue,  transubstantiates into the holiest of holies of hillbilly cuisine.  Ham Gravy.

Now, yes, beef gravy is dark, thick and full of wonder.  Chicken gravy, well, tastes like chicken.  salty, creamy chicken, but chick nonetheless.

Ham gravy, however, is altogether another thing.  In it is the smoke from the cure, the fatty filth of the pig, and a mysterious well of salt, seemingly springing from Elysium itself...

Ham gravy, while a Epicurean marvel, should not be squandered upon potatoes.  No.  It should be applied to one thing, and one thing alone.  Biscuits.

Biscuits were born for ham gravy.  If it, however, spills off of your fluffy muffin and lands upon the scrambled egg beside it, no worry, that combo satisfies as well.

And so, each time I spy in to the freezer for the gin, or the ice or the bacon, and i see the jar of gravy in stasis, I pause and consider, "is it too late for biscuits...?"

  
Honolulu HAMmer


1 1/2 oz Vodka
1/2 oz. Amaretto
1 splash Grenadine
1 Splash Pineapple Juice


Shake over ice, serve straight up.

Episode Two

The Vegan Black Metal chef is back for the next recipe...

Symbols

Have you ever pledged allegiance to a flag?  Like, you know, a rectangle of colorful fabric... ?

I have, and I never really thought much about it.  But if and when you do actually think about it, and the words you use to make the pledge, it's really quite perplexing.

I mean, it's a piece of cloth on a stick.

Now, sure, the Pledge contains all manner of modifying conjunctions (i.e "and the Republic for which it stands") that do give it some modicum of meaning, but still, a flag??  Sure folks will tell you that people have died for the flag, but no, no one has ever willing given up their lives for a piece of cloth.  The Republic?  Absolutely.  Their homes and families? Yes.  Freedom?  You bet.

But not the flag.

People love them some symbols though, and no one more than Americans.

I mean we REALLY dig our symbols.  And they are everywhere.

Symbols are simple to process, easy to understand.  They take the place of more than just words, however, inspiring instant emotion response for those in the know.  They are used to communicate, motivate and manipulate.  Business, politics, athletics and religion; the near sum of modern American life, draw deeply, all, from the symbolic well.

Symbolic thinking, though, carries beyond the borders of commerce and transaction; beyond the mass marketing marks of trade.  Symbolism has rooted itself into the very fabric of our world views.  It feeds our bumper-sticker philosophy and helps us pick our socio-political teams.

On one side we have:

And on the other side, we have:

Of course, sometimes we co-opt each others symbols in the process:

You get the point...

The problem is that we have come to place too much emphasis on the symbolic.  To be sure, symbolism has its place.  It's just that, when the symbolic takes the place of the substantive, we fall prey to our baser instincts and spin our collective wheels in the mud of vanity.

Symbolic stories make for better ratings.  They are spicier, guaranteed to shock and awe at least SOMEONE!  And that is what the media feeds us, and it is what we lap up like mindless zoo animals.

I mean, right now, there are budgetary negotiations, international wars, trade imbalances, constitutional infringements, and debt.  The debt, in fact, is so dire that the credit rating for the entire US government is in risk of being down graded.

But that's hard to think about.  It involves words and critical thought.  So, what do we care about?  What is the end-time sign of the apocalypse du jour?

It's this:

Who cares?  I mean really.  People I'll never meet had sex with people I'll never know.  How is that news?  How does it change anything at all?

OK, this one may have misappropriated presidential campaign funds.  I get that one.

But really???

Sex?

Drugs?

Rock 'n Roll??

It just doesn't matter...

The Patriot
1/3 oz Blue Curacao
1/3 oz White Creme de Cacao
1/3 oz Grenadine
Layer in a shot glass and serve