What’s Eating Bob?

I know a lot of my friends thought this blog was going to only be about me cooking because I do enjoy making food, especially for friends and family. But I really wanted it to be more about simple food encounters and perhaps the occasional weird thought I might have and feel compelled to speak out load about. Sometimes I hope, my posts will be about me eating fantastic food. Hopefully in a very expensive restaurant where someone else is paying. But if you have read any of my previous posts you know that I usually eat very simple food. And I never said that the blog was going to be about everything that Bob eats, just a few selected items that I feel like sharing.

But what about What’s Eating Bob? I suppose I could rant and rave about some stupid political candidate or position, but that’s not really me.

I’ll tell you what. I think the best thing to do is to ask questions and let someone smarter than myself (not hard to find) explain some of the strange stuff I see in the world around me.

How come the Jewish People, the Christians and the People of the Muslim faith cannot seem to come to some sort of God ordained peace among themselves when they all have such strong roots in the Jewish Bible? The book that was always refered to as the Old Testament when I was a young man.

This is a book that I have read and truly love. It is certainly one of the fundamental artifacts of the history of the world and a piece of art without peer. But even though it is a major building block of all three major faiths of the western world they cannot agree on a common understanding of it. In fact, many people of all three faiths insist that not only is their interpretation of it right but everyone else should agree with the way they see it?

Everyone picks and chooses what they want from it and ignores what they do not want to see. That is fine with me but please don’t tell me that everyone should agree with your way of seeing it. It is hard not to think that the book has caused more trouble then it’s worth.

Here’s a really simple idea.

How about every chance you get you try to sit down and eat a meal with another family. Preferably a family that believes in a different faith then you do. One who eats foods that you have either never eaten or seldom eat. Better yet, how about you invite your neighbor who you never speak to, to join you for a very casual meal of whatever you happen to have on hand.

I believe that all families all over world share some very basic values.

All cultures want their children to be safe and to have a positive future.

All people want to breathe clean air and eat safe food.

All people enjoy some sort of art or music.

Sit down and break bread with that strange family across the street. Learn your neighbor’s name and he will never be that “guy or girl” who seems so different than yourself. You just might find out that even though a person is different than yourself, they really are not all that strange. They probably like at least some of the things your family likes.

Every faith and society has extremists. These people are in the minority by the very definition of being extremist. The average person who is raising a family and trying to save money, if they can, wants their children to be safe and they want their food and air to be clean. Just start with the simple stuff.

If you love your neighbor as you do yourself that’s a beginning.

If you see that your neighbor is not really so different from yourself, it’s not too much of a leap to fulfill that admonition from the book that is revered by all three western faiths.

I guess it’s just too simple. Ok, then answer me this, why does God not make things simple for us when most of us are so unbelievably ignorant?

You tell me.

Sometimes it eats at me.

I had driven by the place about twenty times and always told myself that I was going to stop one day and check out the food. There were a bunch of picnic tables and what appeared to be a couple of bench seats from automobiles. They could well have been out of some old pickup trucks or maybe even some old bus. The place looked a little on the run down side and maybe even a little bit dangerous but if you’re advertising barbecue you can usually get by with out worrying about small details like curb appeal. The place sat right on the street of a busy neighborhood in a large metropolitan city and the sign was barely visible at all but it said Barbecue. The OK Corral. OK. Today was the day I finally stopped.

After parking the car I walked up to the entrance and found a rather large black man sitting on one of the pickup bench seats. I’m not too shy so I just asked him right out. “Is the food any good in this place?”

“You’re damn right it is. I don’t know if he’s open yet or not” and then he hollered in to someone and the next thing I knew I was entering what was probably the least ostentatious restaurant I have ever stepped foot in. There were a few round short tables and some small stools that surrounded them. Not one thing matched in the whole place and I soon discovered a small sign that hung next to the way too visible kitchen that had a short list of foods available. The choices were limited to dinners. Chicken, links, ribs and catfish or you could get the a sample dinner that included some of everything but the catfish. That was it.

The first word that came to my mind after looking the place over was unsanitary. As I said earlier, I could see way too much of the kitchen. A short man emerged from the kitchen and I placed my order for the sample dinner. Three ribs, a piece of chicken and a link. Next to the “menu” was a sign announcing that because of the high cost of greens, when they were available they were going to cost extra. This proclamation was signed by Otis and I soon discovered that he was the man I met out front and he was the owner. He came in after my order was taken and told the waiter/cook/maitre’d that I had asked if the food was good and he wanted him to fix me up “real good” so that I could see just how damn good the food was. Most of the sentences he used contained various and surprisingly poignant profanities. He seemed to have a large faith in the fare he offered and absolutely no concern whatsoever what perspective customers might think about his language. He was a very open man.

After several stops at the microwave that sat on a card table just outside the kitchen area I was presented with a styrofoam box containing my order and asked if I was taking it with me or eating there. I decided to soak up the atmosphere of the place and said I would be eating there so he went back to the kitchen and brought me a fork. He also offered me some juice and since I had not seen anything resembling a wine list or even the chance of a bottled beer, I took him up on his offer. He brought me a lukewarm beverage in a blue plastic cup and after tasting it I decided that it was koolaid or something made with powder and water. I was glad I got it after I tasted the sauce that was covering everything in my styrofoam box.

There was a small section of hushpuppies that had been microwaved and/or fried to death and another small section of some sort of rice and bean mix that the waiter/cook himself commented “needed some liquid or something”.

While I was eating another diner came in and ordered the same dinner I was enjoying and I asked him if he had ever eaten at the OK Corral before.

“No, but I’ve walked by it a lot and always wondered”.

We both would wonder no more.

In the large section of the styrofoam dinner box was a collection of chicken and ribs and a link sausage of some sort that I did not recognize. Everything was completely covered in a spicy tomato based sauce that I will not soon forget. I believe it may have been a combination of KC Masterpiece Sauce, ketchup and hot sauce, but I could not tell for certain. I sure was glad to have the lukewarm koolaid to help wash it down. The link itself was a bit spicy as well and I only managed to get half of it down. I also left a large portion of the rubbery hush puppies.

There are many kinds of barbecue in this great nation we live in and I always enjoy a chance to taste what some people think is special fare. Otis had described it as southern. My experience has been that the futher one travels from the south, the easier it is to pass off what you serve as southern. Now that my curiosity is satisfied, I do not have to wonder about the OK Corral and I can continue my hunt for the barbecue of my dreams.

The earliest memory I have of cooking was in the kitchen with my mother. It’s hard to say exactly how old I was but it must have been about the time I was in fifth or sixth grade, maybe younger. We made a cake. I say we because I am sure that my Mom was close at hand in case I needed questions answered.

It was a cake mix and I don’t remember exactly what kind but it must have called for eggs to be added to the mix because when it was made and being eaten by the whole family there were a number of shells discovered in the cake itself. It was all accepted in good humor and I don’t believe any of the cake was thrown away but it was obvious that I needed to learn how to handle eggs.

For my next cooking lesson Mom took me aside and taught me how to make one of my Dad’s favorite sandwiches. It was a fried egg with a couple of strips of bacon and mustard on the bread.

Dad told me once that his father used to take these sandwiches with him for lunch when he worked for the state highway department. He carried them in his lunch box and sometimes when he came home there would be a half a sandwich or more he had not eaten. My father said he loved to eat those leftovers.

When I was a young man just out of high school I worked in a spring factory and used to make these sandwiches for myself to take to work. If you toasted the bread and stuck the sandwich in a plastic bag or wrapped it in wax paper the heat of all of the ingredients would cause steam to condense on the inside of the bag and make the sandwich just a little bit soggy. For some reason, I always loved that effect on the sandwich itself.

My Mom pulled out her small Revere Ware frying pan, with the copper bottom, and had me place two small strips of bacon in it after she turned on the electric burner.  After the bacon was fried on both sides and set aside, we used the grease in the pan to cook an egg that I had to carefully break into the pan. Many times while learning to fry eggs I cracked the shell of the egg and while dropping it into the pan had the yolk break. I didn’t really mind all that much and still ate the results of course, but it was always a matter of pride trying not to break the yolk. If it was cooked properly it would be just a little bit soft in the sandwich. Not too much, just a little bit soft. And later when it was eaten for my lunch break, cold, it really did not matter all that much whether it was broken or not.

In the next few weeks after making this first fried egg, I learned to be a little bit careful when cracking the egg and I also had to learn that by increasing the heat of the burner I could not really make the egg cook faster without the finished product suffering in quality. I had assumed that by cooking on high I would be able to hurry along the egg frying step and thus sit down to eat sooner. Of course the eggs started to look and taste a little bit crispy on the edges. It was a good lesson in patience that I wish I could say I used for the rest of my life. Education is a lifelong experience.

It was a big deal to me after I mastered the art of frying an egg to be able to make this sandwich for myself whenever I felt like it. Prior to this, a bologna sandwich with butter or ketchup was about as complicated a meal as I could construct. Now I was really cooking.

This morning I made a fried egg sandwich much like what I used to make but with one small change. I used whole grain high fiber bread. I really enjoyed it and now I’m wondering…should I attempt to make a cake mix and see if I can get it finished without the egg shells?