I’m a teaching tool!
Get this crazy shit: I notice a bunch of hits coming from a university, because I pay attention to crap like that. I click on the link because I’m curious like a cat, and find out that a writing class at Unnamed University is being forced by their sadistic professor to read this blog and analyze its tone and voice and describe its potential audience. To what is higher education coming?
Here kids, I’ll write your papers for you real quick-like:
- TONE: Coarse.
- VOICE: Sailor-esque, both in written and oral forms. A little gravelly. Low-pitched.
- AUDIENCE: Thieves and whores. Also gluttons.
I have an intense hatred of sentences that end with prepositions, even if the grammar police say it’s now okay and even if I forget and do it on occasion. I also love a good semicolon, and lament their underuse in contemporary writing. I’m heavy on the commas.
I just called Brian over to ask whether or not I was crossing a line calling the students out like that and he says no, so blame him for this. And then he says, “I thought you were going to ask if that picture of a pepper looks like a vagina, which it does, and that IS wrong.”
See? Coarse. But the gluttons among you thought that was HILARIOUS.
My voice is also somewhat rambling, because as you can see, we’re several photos down and I’ve said nothing about what’s IN the photos, what I had for dinner, how I made it or how good it was. I could push the boundaries and just keep going like this, but I do have some standards. So: re-purposed peanut sauce.
Last Tuesday I made some ass-kicking spicy peanut noodles that I was unable to eat due to anxiety and my obsession over the hole in the ceiling. Which does meet our insurance deductible, by the way, but we have to fax them some bylaws and get an affidavit from the plumber and give blood samples or some shit before someone will come over and make it go away.* See? There I go again, not talking about food. Oh, also, we re-arranged the living room furniture over the weekend, and now the room looks HUGE. I know you’re all very excited.
So the spicy peanut sauce makes a lot more than can coat 2 diners’ worth of noodles, and it keeps for a little while. There’s nothing cheaper than leftovers, but I didn’t want to just use it the same way or as a dipping sauce. The peanut sauce must not remain unadulterated, or I feel like I haven’t really done anything.
*NOT an audience for this blog: insurance agents and claims adjusters.
I did wuss out on the choice of ingredients a little, pretty much using the same veg and replacing the noodles with salad-in-a-bag. For protein, we seared off a chicken breast, glazing it at the last minute with some of the same sweet chili sauce that went into the peanut sauce. I would have taken more pictures of the chicken but – this may come as a shock – I do have some limits to how boring a photo I will force myself to take and subsequently inflict upon you, my pilfering, skanky, gluttons of an audience. I have long contended that chicken breasts in a pan fall outside those limits.
For the dressing, I took a couple good glops of peanut sauce, thinned it out with equal parts mirin and rice wine vinegar and smoothed the flavor out with a touch of honey. Above, witness the salad naked, then cloaked.
You may be thinking, “This meal doesn’t sound so cheap to me,” but almost everything that went into it save the fresh veggies were pantry (mirin, rice wine vinegar, honey) or freezer (chicken breasts) staples, and they should be for you, too. I will allow a substitution of seitan for the chicken breasts, but I’m quite firm on anything else, especially if you ever want to cook anything vaguely Asian. Come to think of it, almost everything that went into the original peanut sauce was also a pantry staple for me. So see? In the long run, cheap.
When the chicken was done, I tossed the salad, some bell pepper, cucumber and some peanuts with the dressing, heaped the clothed salad into a bowl and topped it with some sliced chicken.
Here’s the best way I can describe this salad: it’s like the Spicy Asian Chicken Salad you might get at your TGI Fridays or your Applebees, but good. I mean, really; chuck some mandarin orange slices and some crispy fried noodles on this thing, and you might as well be sitting under some faux-mobilia at a Ruby Tuesday with a 32-ounce beer. Also breadsticks. At a chain restaurant, there would be breadsticks.
So this is the fresher, better, less preservative-laden version of that salad. The dressing retains all its spicy peanut-ness, but it’s tempered so it doesn’t overwhelm the veg, either in taste or texture. The glazed chicken (which I assure you was moister than it appears) had a slight sweetness from the glaze that further cut through the spice, and the vinegar reminded you that you were, in fact, eating a salad.
We ate until we were full and then we kept eating, so tasty was this dressing, and we didn’t have to feel guilty because it was a salad. Fucking A!
(NOTE: Kay at the Keyboard is still running her comment-for-donations drive for Haiti, so head on over, leave her a comment and force her to pay up.)
Original Spicy Peanut Sauce Recipe
To make the dressing, just whisk in equal parts mirin and vinegar until the dressing is the consistency of a Caesar dressing, followed by a tablespoon of honey.
Gluttonous, thieving whore checking in.
BTW, when I start teaching grammar to college students next semester I am using texts from last night, BUT when I teach TONE and VOICE and GENERAL AWESOMENESS (yes, I will be an English professor and YES I WILL use that term thankyouverymuch) I will be using you. And then making what you made for dinner.
Vagina, yup. Like Georgia O’Keefe of the food blogs.
I loves me some recycled leftovers….and adulterating is always the way to go or you are just eating the same old thing, right? This is my favorite kind of meal!
This entry is a prime example for “WHY THIS BLOG ROCKS”.
Frone hath spoken.
I’m making peanut sauce this weekend. And given I’m not a huge fan of salad greens on a real regular basis, I’m thinking chicken and veg and sauce over brown rice. Gots to have me some carbs in there.
Oh, best get in all your trips to your alternate universe before the insurance company closes the tear in the space-time continuum. And don’t get caught on the other side.
I come here exactly FOR the tone and I’m pretty sure I’m your target irreverant audience. I like to put spicy peanut sauce on slightly cooked broccoli slaw. It makes me feel like I’m being healthy.
Another gluttonous whore here. Oh, and cheap and lazy…can’t forget that. You’re right about the pepper; it’s an angry, man-hating vagina. (See how I used that semicolon there?) And you’re right, a preposition is a horrible word to end a sentence with.
Okay, that was bad. Slinking away now…
You are right. I did think the picture of the bell pepper was hilarious! Ha! And I wish my college professors had been creative enough to use a kick-ass blog like this as class fodder.
I originally came here for the food, but your sailor-talk keeps me coming back.
I might skew your target demographic a little OLD, but who the fuck cares?
I like it here and I’m not leaving.
Honestly? I think that pepper picture looks more like a cross-sectional drawing of a uterus, rather than a vagina. But whatever. Lady-bits, either way, for sure.
Hey!! Just who are you calling a thief and a whore?!
(What, no peanuts in the spicy peanut sauce?)
Nice to be a teaching tool, and not just a tool.
Errrmmm, excuse me. I just reread the post and do see that you murmured something about peanut sauce being a pantry staple. Sorry about that.
Man, I love this blog. I also love that the comments section is filled with humour and irreverence. Makes a nice change from pages of “That looks yummy!!!”.
You give me great hope that I too may survive law school with my wit intact. (No enforced reading of awesome blogs in sight).
So…yeah…thanks. It does look yummy, by the way.
snappy, your presence is duly noted.
caitlyn, see now that makes sense. if i’d found out the blog was being used to demonstrate GENERAL AWESOMENESS, i’d have been all, “okay, i get it.”
cynic, apt.
anna, correct! and this salad seriously rocked my salad world, no mean feat.
amy, maybe, if you’re lucky, your comment will make it into someone’s essay.
kay, rule of thumb, everyone should know how to make a good peanut sauce, so handy.
k8, there you go, students: my target audience is known as “k8.” also, peanut sauce on broccoli slaw sounds really good.
dee, that was bad, but i’ll let it do because we all know thieves have awful grammar.
allison, you had to think about it? maybe you haven’t been exposed to enough vaginas.
tanis, aw, thanks.
karen, theives, whores and gluttons are not bound by the meaningless dictates of age.
kat, yeah, i can see that. i don’t know which viewing i prefer.
elizabeth, peanut sauce itself isn’t a staple, but all the ingredients are.
original allison, true dat.
sally, and the blog loves you. it is possible to survive law school wit intact, provided you don’t go to class very often.
It seems like it would only be fair if this professor who’s using your site to teach with gave you some kind of royalties. Or maybe, say… took care of your ceiling problem for you.
Well, mystery prof? What do you say?
Ok, you have me pegged. Thieving, hungry, gluttonous, whore. I do sell catering equipment for a living. Thats pretty whorey. Ok, its high end equipment; so that makes me a high end whore, right? The food brought me here; but the writing tone, style, and vulgarity keeps me coming back. Oh, and the recipes are good too. I really feel that if students are being forced to read this blog there are worse blogs they could be forced to read.
Damn good thing there are so many thieving, gluttonous whores in the world! I too came here for the food, but stayed for the personality, the irreverence and just because you make me laugh hysterically! I think this blog should be required reading for all stodgy, stick-up-the-ass college professors.
Oh, by the way, I’m a peanut sauce virgin (my last remaining claim to virginity), but now I’m going to have to be deflowered.
I think I have all of the necessary ingredients, so I’ll me making this over the weekend.
I am one of those aforementioned students being forced to read this blog and, I must say, if I had stumbled upon this blog earlier it would be voluntary reading. And my professor requiring me to read this over things that go in really boring writing textbooks puts her in level awesome as far as I’m concerned. Now I have to stop doing my homework and go make something with a peanut sauce.
camille, i don’t know if i want my ceiling patched by an english professor. no offense, english professor.
platemate, it’s true there are worse things they could be being forced to read. like ‘red badge of courage.’ god, i hated that book.
tina, WHA? no peanut sauce yet? get right out of town. and then get yourself some damn peanut sauce.
becca, glad you like it here! agreed that your professor obviously got her phd from awesome university.