death warmed over

3/17/08

st. patrick's day. there are about a million drunken white people (and a few assorted minorities) who woke up really early this morning to celebrate the myth of a man chasing snakes out of ireland by drinking green beer and eating various sections of over-cooked cows. de-lightful.

maybe i'm just bitter because i'm sick today. maybe it's the fever talking, the chills getting the better of me. or perhaps i'm just being unfair. but i doubt it. i've always hated st. patrick's day. in fact, i was pregnant during the festivities last year and swore to my yet-unborn son that should i have to celebrate his birth on this wretched day, it would have to be skipped altogether and he would never know the joy of a bumper-bowling birthday party.

enough about st. patty. let's get down to business. last week, i did a lot of table events and a couple presentations. one of the presentations was an utter disaster, as i didn't get home until 9:00 it night with a screaming child. on top of my delayed return to the roost, another red cross employee was present, and she pretty much covered all the material as it was an entirely spanish-speaking audience. sigh. it would have been nice to know that i would be utterly useless in this instance.

thursday was the public allies open house at the uwm school of continuing education. i think one of the other allies hit the nail on the head in terms of the success of the event: "it seemed like everyone was just standing around kissing each other's [you-know-whats]." i don't know that it was informative for anyone, but it probably "looked" really nice.

the most interesting thing i did last week was attending the restaurant expo with FAST (first aid service team) as the mouth for the chapter. it was neat, i spent most of the day watching people try and save choking chester, our dummy friend, by giving abdominal thrusts (also known as the heimlich maneuver) until he spit out a marble. it was harder than it looked. luckily, i was there to take care of things...

in addition to my incredible display of heroics, i sampled a gourmet meal i would have otherwise run shamelessly away from. jerry warned me it would be offered, and not wanting to miss an opportunity, i allowed myself to be led away to the table. here is a play-by-play account of the experience:

i was terrified. the other volunteer and i were sat at a table of high school culinary students who were also deathly afraid of anything that did not directly resemble a pot roast. as we waited for the meal to begin, i fielded the questions that have become standard by now: how long has your hair been like that? is it real, can i touch it? do you wash it? what's your tattoo? how did you get a job?

finally, the first course arrived. junior chefs threw the food at us as if they sensed our utter inability to really appreciate their artistic endeavors. this was the thing that drove me to palatial magnificence: putting my vegetarian armour aside, i took at least a mouthful of every meaty dare they brought.

our appetizers were all seafood. salmon roulade, clam gratin on the half shell, and crab and artichoke cakes were plated in a rich white sauce. i took frightened bites and was pleased to find the salmon did not in any way resemble the fishy fish taste of lenten french fries. the gratin was crunchy and interesting, and the crab cakes were unspectacular.

the salad was exciting, but again decadently carnivorous. it was mixed greens with rabbit two ways and blood-orange sauce. the two ways happened to be a rabbit-sage sausage and a rabbit loin. again, i braved the challenge, but couldn't bring myself to enjoy any of it. the sauce was bitter, and the salad was destroyed entirely by weird over-cooked egg croutons. the high-schoolers hated it even more than i did, as many were from a small town and had their own pet bunnies.

we were served something more traditional for the main course. the chef dropped pork loin (2 loins in one day, who'd have guessed...) and braised root vegetables off. this was more to the liking of the table, myself included. though i abhor pork, i was very excited to eat the blue potatoes and yams. it was really great, and drowning in a butter sauce quite like one might expect from a hard-working grandmother.

the crown jewel of the whole experience though, was the desert. how long i waited! how deserving we all were! having experimenting long enough with fleshy iron-chef-style concoctions, we were elated when cheesecakes laced with berries and fresh sauce accompanied by freshly caramelized almond cookies dipped in heavenly dark chocolate (food of the gods!) arrived before our bulging eyes. this was the only thing that disappeared entirely from all plates.

after my incredible gastrointestinal feat, i sat on my laurels, terribly excited to say i'd done a fine job in spite of my primitive fear of all things once conscious.