Brandon Eats

Total Take-Out

Here's a link to the promised review of take-out dinners in today's Style Weekly.  And guess what?  I did one last year too.  I guess, if you can't stand the heat, just go to 8 1/2. Or Relish.  Or actually, I think dinner's going to come from Mékong tonight.

Richmond Days: or, Whining the Hours Away

I can't do it, I just can't get inspired these days.  I mope around pining for my days in Spain and all I can think about is how much I'd rather be there than here.  Eating home-cured jamon and chorizo, recoiling from a tub of skinned rabbits (!), crushing wild chamomile between my fingers, and eating lunch at 2:00 pm (with wine), snacks at 6:00 pm (with wine), and dinner at 10:00 pm (with wine). 

I spend my days now thinking about where I can go next for take-out so I don't have to bother to cook, and how I can afford my beloved Albariño now that it no longer costs $5.00 but $14.00 a bottle--AND ponder how I too can become an Albariño importer.  I long for days that seem to be filled with endlessly attenuated hours, hours with no TV, no radio or Internet, no phones or any real news at all.  For my non-Spanish brain, it was wonderful to have all the chatter that ceaselessly surrounds us reduced to  static, signification-free and essentially meaningless.  I was illiterate and dumb, and I had to work out the meaning in the world from just the rudiments that prop up language.  It was the perfect vacation for an English major.

But I'm not there, I'm HERE.  And it's hot and when I open my windows to let the cool night air flow in, it's trash pick-up day again and the trash guys not only seem to back down the street to maximize the beep-beep-beep feature of their fancy garbage trucks but also to shout even louder to each other in order to to be heard, given the hearing problems they all seem afflicted with, and THEN the newspaper slams against my door because I complained about it being stolen when they dropped it on the sidewalk. And I don't even have to get up for another hour. So I suffer.

But I've still got to eat, right?  See Style Weekly for my review of take-out places this Wednesday, and if I can bring myself to cook, I'll post away this week and try to dispel the gloom of my tragically ordinary life.