Lucy.............you got some catchin' up to do!!

Blame it on hormones, planetary alignments............whatever. I've been in a slump for awhile.

So I collected the assorted and sundry bits of envelope and cocktail napkin scattered about the car, house and grounds, (honest, I have chosen entry topics by opening the windows on both sides of the car and snagging a stray bit of paper out of the swirling air) and set about chronicling the past month.

It's not as though I've had nothing to write about. In addition to collecting material for 3 or 4 new Cooking with Gutz entries, I've celebrated two birthdays.........my daughter's 22nd and my grand-daughter's 1st........both with pictures and everything, and acquired a new grand-niece. I haven't gotten pictures of the new baby yet, but I will soon enough.

So I'll start with the bullshit detritus, going from the general to the specific, as it were, (in an effort to re-boot the literary neurons and get the juices flowing)give each entry it's time in the sun to be adored and marveled at, and move on.

Much of my creative ennui I can lay at the feet of baseball. The local watering holes have been a treasure trove of inspiration for amusing anecdote, for the most part. Particularly Tom Cats and Marges.

The afternoon crowd in Tom Cat's is literate, reasonably educated and articulate.......or loud and opinionated, depending on how you look at it.......and is tolerant and mature in the dissection of even the touchiest of bar-room topics; politics and religion, within reasonable parameters, of course.

However, it is approaching the end of the season of baseball. A time when even a sports discourse becomes passionate and tinged with a raw edge of violence reflecting the desperate hopes of die-hard fans.

It is a time when Cub fans begin to consult the oracles that reside within the entrails of farm animals, can be overheard mumbling Celtic sounding incantations over tangled balls of assorted charms, amulets, and fetishes, and start feverishly praying to a bizarre mix of strange gods with foreign sounding three syllable names.

About two weeks ago, after a failed attempt to get a rise out of the assemblage (all doing their best "day of the dead" impression on one or the other of the 7 giant TV's all tuned to the same game)...........I mean, geeze, I tried "white bread medriocrity and the unbearable lightness of being", and "why organized labor can't make any headway in the south".............I decided to break out the big guns.

Yes people, there is one bar-room topic that no man can resist, about which every man is an expert, and about which no real man can fail to weigh in with his experience and wisdom.................

yes, folks, I'm talking about hot-sauce!!!

For reasons which I have enumerated before, and which I will now reiterate, Tom Cat's gets a pretty fair share of my bachelor food and beverage dollar. They have fat, beanless, soft-shelled $.99 tacos on Tuesday, an all you can eat tortellini and sausage special on Wednesday, and $.20 cent wings on Thursday...........thats right, twenty cents.........all washed down with one dollar glasses of ice cold Foster's on tap.

In addition to all this culinary magnificance, the bartenders are all personable cutie pies that are talented enough at the art of tending bar to make you believe that flirtatious middle aged men are the planets rarest and most precious resource.

(on a related side note: sweet, lithe, lovable Laurie is back for a while.......in place of darlin' Lisa, who is sadly and markedly absent due to health problems......sigh, you win some, you lose some..........)

OK, where I was???.............Oh yeah, hot wings.

Now, there are other places in town to get wings, but not for 20 cents........and face it, deep fried wings rolled in hot sauce is not haute cuisine.
What difference there is, lies in the degree to which the wings may properly lay claim to the "hot" in hot wing.

I like hot and spicy foods, and I like wings. I have been trying to sell Tom Cat's on the idea of having at least two levels of heat for some time. In addition to which, I have been trying to talk them into stocking a variety of hot sauces........from mild to insane. It makes sense, eat hotter food, drink more beer. Good hot sauces are probably the only condiment that will pay their own way in increased consumption in beverage.

I geared up for the hard sell..............

I went to the internet, acquired a catalog from "Mo' hotta, Mo'betta", and ordered a bottle of Melinda's XXXXtra Habenero Hot sauce, and a bottle of pure dried ground Habenero peppers from Figueroa Brothers.
I also took a trip to the mall and picked up a bottle of Dave's Insanity Sauce and a bottle of Da' Bomb....beyond Insanity..........both of which latter are probably better as an ingredient than as a table sauce, but are good for a laugh or two, as I will illustrate.

The owner of Tom Cat's isn't in very often, so I bided my time, and demonstrated the sauces and tried them on the various foods in varying amounts. To demonstrate the Daves Insanity sauce, for example, I would dip a toothpick about an inch into the bottle, wipe it off and tell my volunteer to hold the tooth pick in his mouth for a while. Depending on the level of tolerance for hot sauce, it only took a few seconds for the subject to know that he had something hot in his mouth that left a "lingering" warmth for up to 15 minutes or so..............and this is only the residue from a wiped off toothpick. No-one could say that I didn't give fair warning. Three small drops on a Taco is enough to make you want to take a smoke break after each taco and double your beverage consumption. The cook and I worked out a ratio of 1/2 teaspoon of "Da' Bomb" (that's teaspoon......not tablespoon) per cup of wing sauce to produce a product that makes Hooter's Three Mile Island seem like spicy V-8 by comparison.

As it happened, Dan (the owner) came in on Taco nite........and I was ready for him. I demonstrated and pitched my sauces as I had planned and gave him the catalogs and web sites. From an investment standpoint, I thought I came across in a logical and sensible fashion. He seemed willing to consider my ideas for stocking the sauces and adding a real hot wing to the menu.

About that time, a young man and his Dad came in the bar. They each ordered a beer, and the kid started talking about how much he liked hot sauce...........so I properly demonstrated the Insanity sauce to him........all the while, Dan is kind of watching and listening.
The kid ordered a couple of tacos and asked for the Dave's and proceeded to pour it on his taco like it was catsup..........I never said a word.
He took a bite of that hellish taco and before he could swallow it started to hiccup...........I knew he was in trouble. Another bite and he was out of his chair, red in the face, sweat pouring off him, wiping his head...........pounding his beer, breathing funny................and ,God bless his macho little heart,though he was in a dire and mortal pain, trying to finish that taco with some semblance of dignity and drinking beer like it was life itself. He never made the third bite..........he scooped off the rest of that sauce (or tried to, it was really too late) and ordered another beer.
Before he finished that one taco, he had polished off 4 beers..............I had made my point and Dan was right there to see it with his own eyes. I could have kissed the kid.............it couldn't have worked out better than if I'd paid him to follow me in there and do that. He ordered a bottle of beer to go and poured it in a big styrofoam cup...........I'm betting he wished he'd bought a 6 pack before he'd gotten a half mile.

It was just too fucking hilarious...........and for a brief moment in time, baseball took to the benches.

Since that time, we have sampled the various sauces and powders on the wings, the pasta, and their great new home-made pizzas.

Help me hope that my search for a proper hot wing is over at long last, that Laurie finds her true calling and happiness at Tom Cat's and that Lisa comes back soon...........oh yeah, and my poor unwitting demonstrator finally got enough beer and didn't get blisters anywhere.

It's bed time for this bozo.............more tomorrow.

Thus endeth the entry..........