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The Man Who Didn’t Like Chicken

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That man is me. I used to eat chicken every once in a while, but once I got into a relationship with Martine, who loves chicken more than any other meat, I decided to concentrate on being a part-time vegetarian who occasionally eats seafood and pork, and sometimes even beef.

Just to show you how un-American I am in my food tastes, I absolutely hate coffee. I will not touch coffee or anything that is coffee-flavored, including ice cream and tiramisu.

My dislike of chicken started with my father, who also hated chicken. I remember the look of dismay on his face when he had to eat one of his sister-in-law’s home-cooked meals, which usually featured chicken or turkey. (By the way, I also don’t care for turkey or any other feathered creature for that matter.)

Otherwise, my tastes in food are fairly normal. I make sure that Martine gets to eat chicken at her favorite restaurants from time to time. Her all-time favorite is an Armenian rotisserie chicken place in Glendale called Sevan Chicken. While she tears into her favorite legs and thighs, I just have some hummus or moutabal with a pita. It isn’t fair if I just eat what I liked without letting her have the same privilege.

Fortunately, there are some things that both of us like.

Serendipity: “Nonparticipation in Humanity”

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An Incident at a Coffee Shop

San Francisco writer/publisher/bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti puts the whole Millennial/Generation Z digital revolution in its place:

AND a young stud at the next table typing on his laptop, both ears stopped with earphones…. I’m just five feet from the guy. Finally I say in a friendly voice, “You from around here? Haven’t seen you before in the neighborhood.” No answer. He continues typing, staring at the laptop. He heard nothing? Is this body alive? I’m alarmed. I call 911. After some time a cop car arrives and he’s arrested for “nonparticipation in humanity.’ They haul the corpse away.

 

The Tea Drinker

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I Am Addicted to Drinking Tea

I drink mine not from bone china, but from a Harris Ranch mug, which I bought to replace an earlier one broken while being washed. The nights in Los Angeles are getting cold (down to the forties in Fahrenheit and the single digits Celsius). What keeps me going is mostly Indian black tea. In the mornings, I brew a pot of mixed Darjeeling and Ceylon. For lunch today at the Moon House, I had about four or five cups of green tea, Tonight, as I read Cara Black’s Aimée Leduc mystery Murder in the Sentier,  I brewed myself a cup of Indian chai masala.

Coffee? What’s that? I’m told I’m probably the only person in the Continental United States who never touches the stuff. In fact, I am repelled by the taste and the smell of bitter beans, as I refer to them.

As I look forward to the coming new year, I will probably drink hundreds of cups of hot tea and, when it gets hot, hundreds of glasses of iced tea (the same blend as my morning pot).

I make no special claims for tea, other than that I love the smooth taste. Drinking it makes me feel calm, even just before going to bed.

My parents told me that, as a small child, I used to sip their coffee. What happened in my childhood years that made me turn so vehemently against the stuff? Did I have a bad cap of joe? Did I spill some on myself and burn myself? Apparently, even my mother and father didn’t know.

 

What Flows Through My Veins

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No, It’s Not Coffee … Ever!

With most Americans, I would wager that what flows in their veins is either coffee or Coca-Cola. With me, it’s tea—either hot or iced. And my tea is occasionally made with tea bags, but most of the time with tea leaves which I store in bulk. Although I also drink Chinese and Japanese green teas with my Chinese or Japanese food, my tea of choice for my own cooking is Indian black tea. Darjeeling is by far the best, but the better grades can be fiendishly expensive. So I usually blend it with Ceylon or Assam depending on the time of year.

When it gets cooler, as it is now, I like to mix the Darjeeling with a “wake-me-up” Assam like Baruti or Ghalami. I -purchase the tea in bulk either from an Indian or Persian grocery store. One pound of any loose black tea will last me the better part of a year.

I have a cheap Japanese metal pot with a removable insert so that I don’t need a strainer to remove the infused tea leaves from my cup. After making a couple of cups of hot tea for breakfast, I save the rest of the tea in the pot for iced tea, adding two or three ice cubes per glass. During the summer, I usually drink iced tea all the time, including for breakfast.

My iced tea is usually unsweetened. For hot tea, I like to add mesquite honey and a squeeze of fresh lime.

Sometimes I don’t even think of myself as an American because I’m not hooked on coffee and Coke. Although I will occasionally drink a Coke when the only alternative is iced tea adulterated with passion fruit, raspberries, or kumquats. Adulterated iced tea is an abomination and to be avoided at all costs.