The items usually stick around for a few days, sometimes up to a week or two.  At first, if an item was particularly large, I would let it sit there and annoy me for a few days, and then I would file a large item garbage pickup request with the city.  However, I quickly learned that this was an exercise in futility because no sooner would the item be picked up when something else would appear.  To wit:  the first large Mysterious Object to appear was a bedframe.  It sat there innocuously for a few days, and then soon the neighbours started dumping other crap on it:  bags of garbage, a broken mirror, even some literal crap!  Yes, friends, honest to god crap, in the form of a bag of used cat litter, upended on the bedframe.  And so I reported it for pickup, and it was taken away, only to be promptly replaced with a crappy particle board desk, which, eventually, was replaced by a crappy particle board desk that  looked like someone had backed a car into it.

So I have stopped attempting to solve the problem of the Mysterious Objects, which, since the bedframe, have included such treasures as an extremely large cat tree, a pair of sparkly pink hi-tops, a Barbie dreamhouse, a dresser, a dead tree in a pot, and, weirdly, a dozen croissants and a loaf of garlic bread.  But I have decided that this phenomenon needs documentation, and so, voila, I have created The Detritus of Postmodernity (because who do we want to invoke at a time like this?  Frederic Jameson, that’s who), a twitter account through which I will be documenting each item as it appears.  I tried my best to reconstruct the chronology of things that have appeared over the past few months, and, starting with today’s item, a weird, outdoor fireplace/cheminea type thingy made out of paving stones (which is now the official mascot of the Detritus of Postmodernity) I will be photographing all items for posterity.

Et voila!  Finally a productive use for the information superhighway!

2.  Here is a mathematical equation I can really get behind:

ONE package of coconut luau dessert mix

PLUS:

SIX tiny baking pans shaped like roasted chickens

EQUALS:

SIX tiny, gelatinous, coconut chickens.

We are learning some things about the 1950s as we do this project, yes, we most certainly are.  One of the main things I have learned is that a salad is something that has a fruit or vegetable in it somewhere, is usually served on a bed of lettuce, and usually has mayonnaise.  This salad is Banana Salad, which consists primarily of a fruit (banana), is served on a bed of lettuce (historically inaccurate arugula:  you can bet your 1950s housewife would have used iceberg), and has that lovely dollop of mayonnaise smack in the middle, which I further beautified using a sprig of sad, wilty dill that I found in the bottom of the vegetable crisper.  The use of exotic peanuts are really what sets this salad apart from the crowd, I’d say.  Would you like a banana salad of your very own?  Of course you would!  Here’s how you make one:

Banana Salad

3 bananas, well-ripened

1/4 cup orange juice

Chopped peanuts – or other nuts

Lettuce

Fruit salad dressing or Mayonnaise

Peel bananas, cut lengthwise in half and then crosswise in half.  To prevent them from discoloring, prepare salads just before serving and coat bananas at once with orange juice.  Roll in chopped nuts, pressing slightly to partially imbed them.  Arrange on lettuce and serve with preferred dressing.

One of my new favorite pastimes is to say to people “Hey, ever heard of banana salad?” and then read this recipe aloud to them and watch them try to put together, in their minds, an image of what it looks like.  It is sort of performance art that way.

Anyhow, shockingly, this salad was kind of delicious and we at all of it.  The orange juice made the bananas kind of tangy, and the mayonnaise paired very nicely with the peanuts.  Which is the strangest sentence I have ever written.  But as strange as it sounds, it worked.  I would actually consider making this again.  Actually.  Really.

Next up, Cream of Almond Soup.  Because that’s what one always serves after banana salad.

Cream of Almond Soup

(A Delicious Soup for Unusual Occasions)

1/4 cup of butter

1/2 cup of almonds, blanched

3 tbsps flur

2 cups milk

2 cups richly flavored chicken broth

4 thin slices lemon

Watercress

Heat butter in saucepan.  Add almonds, toss to coat.  Let almonds toast over very low heat, frequently tossing and stirring to brown evenly. When lightly browned remove from butter, let cool, then put through a food chopper.  Blend flour with butter left in pan.  Gradually add the milk and chicken broth.  Heat to boiling, stirring constantly.  if broth is unsalted, add salt to taste.  Add the ground almonds.  Serve piping hot with a thin slice of lemon and a spring of watercress floating on top.

(note – I used vegetable stock instead of chicken to make this vegetarian friendly)

So, while this recipe begs many questions (namely “Nut soup?”), the most interesting one might be “what is the nature of the unusual occasion at which one might serve almond soup?” and I can only conclude that the occasion must be that rare time when people show up, expect dinner, and all you have on hand is a bag of nuts and a quart of milk and some stock.  BUT ANYHOW, I know the question on your minds is clearly, what does nut soup taste like?  Well, it tastes quite nice, if completely bland (am I sensing a theme, Meta?) and once we added some black pepper, it was pretty delicious.  And yes, nutty.

So the real challenge this week was to come up with a three course meal from 1947 that was vegetarian friendly, because of visiting vegetarians.  This was a challenge because I’m fairly certain Meta Given had never heard of vegetarians before.  So, for the main course, we went with beans.  You will note that the recipe for Bean and Apple casserole does, in fact, call for salt pork.  Because I am not Laura Ingalls Wilder, I do not have a ready supply of salt pork, and since we were going veg anyhow, I topped the casserole with a vegetarian salt pork flavor equivalent that I invented, and that may or may not taste anything like actual salt pork,  consisting of several knobs of butter, some smoked salt, and a few liberal dashes of Maggi (Improves the Taste!) (It is also worth noting that when I looked Maggi up in Amazon just now, the “customers who bought this item also bought” list consisted of three different-sized bottles of Maggi, a box of potato dumpling mix, and I Spit On Your Grave.  I offer this fact without commentary, for your consideration).

Navy Bean and Apple Casserole

1lb. dried navy beans (2 cups)

6 cups cold water

1 tsp salt

3 large tart apples, peeled and sliced

1/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1/4 lb. salt pork, sliced

Wash beans and turn into a 3-quart saucepan.  Add the water and salt, heat to boiling, and simmer, gently, covered, about 2 hours.  Drain, saving cooking water.  Arrange beans and apple slices in alternate layers in a greased casserole, sprinkling sugar over each layer.  Pour in 2 cups of the cooking liquid and top with slices of salt pork.  Bake, covered, in a very slow oven (250 degrees) for about 2 1/2 hours, or until beans are light brown and thoroughly cooked.  If they become dry in cooking, add more cooking liquid or hot water.  There should be enough liquid on the beans to make a gravy-like sauce over them.

So, this was baked beans and apples, and it was very nice, if you like that sort of thing.  Sweet, but not too sweet, considering all the brown sugar.  If I were to make this according to my own specs, instead of Meta’s, I would probably liberally douse this in chili powder and go for some kind of spicy sweet thing, but, as we have learned, such taste sensations had not been invented in the America of 1947.  And weirdly, even though I actually pre-soaked the beans (which Meta does not call for), and boiled them forever, and baked them forever, they were still kind of underdone by the time we ate.  I actually imagine this might have worked really well if left in a crock pot all day.

And then, because one cannot live on beans from 1947 alone, we had vegan black and white cookies that the fabulous Ms. Jill brought for dessert!

Special thanks to Sam, Jill, Nikki, and Aaron, who gamely ate bananas with peanuts and mayonnaise on them and at least pretended to like it.

Sorry pictures are crap this time out – I was stuck using the ol’ telephonecamera.  Will do better next time!

Yeah, so, that’s a Cherpumple.  I’m going to make one!  Maybe later this week or sometime next week!  And obviously this process will be live-blogged, because I haven’t done any cardiac-inducing science experiments for the internet for a while.  So you have that to look forward to.  Awesome, right?  If I had my druthers it would be dessert following a main course of a giant boiled ostrich egg, sliced like a ham.  Sadly, though, I do not always have my druthers, nor do I have an ostrich egg because they were charging $40 for them at the ostrich farm.

Ok, other awesome:  saw a screening of the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts the other night and they were so great.  In my opinion, though, the Irish were ROBBED of that Oscar by the French, but what do I know?

It is pretty delicious.  It might be a little bit too sweet for my tastes, but what is super exciting is the way that it smells like vanilla.  This has got to be the most fragrant, aromatic pop (yes, POP, you crazy non-Canadians) I have ever had.

IN UNRELATED NEWS:  I am on the lookout for a really good pattern for a slightly high-waisted, a-line skirt, so if any of my ladyfriends who know their way around a sewing machine have a line on one, let me know.  I’m a fan of the A-Plus A-Line on burdastyle, but it doesn’t come in fat girl size and I don’t have the wherewithal to grade patterns up.

So, as you are no doubt aware, the fab VV and I hit up Galco’s Soda Pop Stop earlier this week. And, because, really, any instance of food and/or beverage consumption is really just an invitation to write a blog post, I am totally going to review some exotic soda pops! We bought nine different pops each, and I’ve been really good and have only been drinking one a day. So far, I’ve had the following:

Ok, well, VV and I tried these together and split them.  She got the Cel Ray (celery soda!), I got the Mr. Q. Cumber (um, cucumber soda!  Obviously).  Dear skeptics:  shut up right now because these vegetable flavoured sodas were amazing.  Both were not too sweet and not too vegetable-ish but really nice and refreshing.  The Cel Ray had a sort of V8-ish kind of aftertaste, and the Q. Cumber was really clean and light.  And yes, of course, we did mix them together in the interests of Soda Pop Science, and I’d actually say that the Cel Ray Q. Cumber Cocktail was probably the best of the three.  ALSO, IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH:  People in the know have informed me that you can get Cel Ray at Canter’s.  Why didn’t anybody tell me you could get Cel Ray at Canter’s?  I am so totally having celery soda with my next matzo ball.

The A.J. Stephens Raspberry Lime Rickey was potentially one of the most delicious things I have ever consumed.  I can’t even tell you.  It was just so good.  It was good because the raspberry flavor wasn’t that horrible fake-tasting raspberry, you know?  And also the color is clearly amazing.

Of course I drink my Manhattan Special out of a martini glass.  Was there ever any question, really?  Anyhow, this was wonderful.  As a pretentious coffee snob I feel qualified to make that assessment.  I would seriously consider replacing my usual afternoon coffee with this, if it wasn’t full of sugar.

Fentiman’s Mandarin and Seville Orange Jigger!  I have no idea what a jigger is.  Shockingly, wikipedia is being completely unhelpful in this regard and has provided a useless list of definitions of “jigger” that includes nothing that resembles soda pop, and one or two things that are kind of offensive.  But whatever.  This was good shit.  It was slightly medicinal tasting at first, but that kind of went away.  I really liked the bubbles in this, weirdly enough – they were really tiny and soft.  And apparently Fentiman’s is not soda pop – apparently it is a Botanically Brewed Beverage, which makes it fancier.  I also got a Curiosity Cola, which I think I’m going to try tomorrow.

Oh, yum.  Yum yum yum yum.  The Nesbitt’s Peach tasted like fake peach, like a peach Jolly Rancher, but not bad fake peach, you know?  Like really, really good fake peach.  And also, it is hot pink.  No complaints here.

Stay tuned for reviews of:   Fentiman’s Curiosity Cola!  Vignette Pinot Noir Soda!  Manhattan Special Vanilla Cream!  Cheerwine!  I will try to post them daily instead of in a big batch, but, you know, best laid plans and stuff.

1.  Science has labcoats;

2.  Science has tesla coils;

3.  Science has data compiled into fancy charts.

I don’t have a labcoat, but I watch lots of movies with people in labcoats.  And I don’t have a tesla coil, but I think about tesla coils A LOT (example of thoughts I frequently have about tesla coils:  “Why is there a pointless tesla coil at the Griffith Park Observatory?  Why ISN’T THERE a pointless tesla coil in my living room?  And why am I the only person who seems to be excited about that band with the musical tesla coils?”)  But I have made some charts.  Pie charts.  Somebody told me pie charts were really sciencey.

(Also:  One of my ladyfriends suggested I tell everyone who wrote to me to come and meet me at the Westwood Chipotle at the same time, and then just see what would happen.  I didn’t actually do it because I am sadly not the twee lead character of a vaguely hipstery romantic comedy, and thus do not have the bizarre combinations of tweeness and chutzpah required to pull something like that off.  However, I am very glad I have people in my life to give me such sensible advice.)

So anyhow.  I got 47 response to the original burrito ad.  Here I have broken them down into how many I would actually consider replying to (8) and how many I would never reply to (39), in percentages, the language of science:

Sadly, of the response I would actually consider replying to, 5 were vetoed because the gentlemen in question either lived too far away or were too young (an important factor to consider, given that I live in perpetual fear of accidentally flirting with one of my students on the internet).

And then there were the ones I would never reply to in a million years.  I have broken these down by category, most of which are fairly self-explanatory (ie:  “enjoys symphonic death metal”), but a few merit some clarification.

Those who fall under the category of “clearly didn’t read the original” ad are responses that completely fail to acknowledge that I posted a really righteous craigslist ad about burritos, and instead are copy and pasted stock responses that these dudes use for every girl on the internet.  Common themes include “looking for that someone special” and “tired of playing games.”

Those who fall under the category of “actually has no interest in burritos and is merely being a smart-ass” are people who responded with things like “take beano before your date.”

“Spelling?” encompasses all spelling and grammar related offenses, including, but not limited to, use of internet-speak (ie: lol, ur), and inability to distinguish “their,” “there,” and “they’re.”

The comedians things is complicated.  It’s not like I have anything against aspiring stand ups, because I don’t.  It’s just that every person who replied and was like “I wanna do stand up!” also said numerous things to prove themselves to be fundamentally unfunny.  And also, aspiring stand ups are becoming a frequent trope in my boy-related life, which is, I don’t know, weird, maybe?  Or telling?

But anyhow, charts are cooler than words:

(Click to embiggen!)

And I promised highlights from the responses I got, so here are a few:

“I am in the business of dealing with models and it has shown me the downside to having women smiling in my face to get what they want which doesn’t always include me and who I am naturally as a person. I would like to have fun to the max with a woman who is pure and appreciates me for my company… and I would like to point out that I enjoyed the aspect of your posting that said sleepovers…I would enjoy a nightly getaway that nobody could take away from me so that my hard work during the day is not in vein. Please do feel free to respond back to me with your thoughts and interests via email. Thank you for your time and I look forward to your correspondence princess.”

(Please note that there was NOTHING in the original ad about sleepovers.  Also, I sort of what to write back and ask him what a “correspondance princess” is.  I assume it’s a lady in a tiara who writes lots of letters.)

“i guess i’m reverse evolved musically, and started with modern nu-metal, then mid-early eighties hardcore, then ska, reggae, rocksteady, and now days i listen to a lot of classic R&B, motown, jazz.”

(Reverse evolved musically?  Starting with nu-metal?  There are so many problems here that I don’t even know where to begin.  I mean, at least he ended up in the right spot (Motown, generally an excellent place to end up), but still.  What does this really even mean?  And I question his chronology!  Ska predates Motown, last time I checked.  Ok, I will stop being a musicologist now.)

“I’m half spaniard/half pilipino and black down there.”

(Does this make sense on any planet?  Perhaps it does in the Pilipines.)

“you don’t even want burritos.  you just wanna make-out with nerds.”

(OBVIOUSLY.)

“There are tears streaming down my face.  I have the whole image in my head.  Even if you aren’t interested, I’d love to be able to send you the script when I finish it, and eventually the short.  Do you know of a place I can shot with and elevator and 20 stories?”

(Ok, so this is largely nonsensical, but I think it means this dude wants to turn my craigslist ad into a short film.  So, I might actually write back to him to tell him that HE CAN’T unless I get to direct.)

“oh mee gee oh mee gee u basically sound like the female version of me!!! i f n love carne asade burritos with all my heart n soul ahahahah lmfaooooooooooooo no but really i do n chipotle is the shittttttt”

(Can someone explain to me the practice of repeating the last letters of words for emphasis?  Don’t its practitioners realize that it results in utter nonsense?  This girl I went to elementary school with does it all the time in her facebook status updates, but tends to do it on words that end in “e”, resulting in things like “I went for a bike rideeeeee!” and “drinking with the ladieeeeeeeeeeees” which I really wonder about.  Does she pronounce those extra letters when she says those things?)

“Making out after having a Mexican food is not that sexy…lol.Making out after having fruit is much better”

(Ok, fine.  Next time I will try “hey, baby, let’s go eat a fruit salad and then TOTALLY MAKE OUT.”)

And we can file this last one under “Most horrible thing I have ever read, makes me want to try to blow up the entire internet so that we can build a new one with no douchebags in it”:

“Hi there- I saw you on craigslist and thought I would say hi. and something about a big burrito that tears apart the tortilla sounds good every once in a while”

So yeah.

I gave both of the burrito coupons to a homeless man, and didn’t make out with anybody.