FOOD FRIDAY: Down on the pat

Indignity Vol. 4, No. 186

JOE MACLEOD, Tom Scocca

25 Oct 2024 — 5 min read

A lovely poppyseed-encrusted bagel with four tiny single-blop containers of whipped butter

ANDY ROONEY FOODIE 2.0 DEP'T.

TODAY I WOULD like to complain about these little containers of butter or whipped butter or whatever ends up in front of you in a diner or deli or what have you. Look at this photo right here, of a lovely little moment I had this morning.

Lovely poppyseed bagel and a cuppa coffee

What makes this photo an especially nice memory for me is that it is from a rare Second Breakfast that I enjoyed today. I had a regular breakfast at 8:30 a.m., and then I needed to drive my wife to an appointment downtown, and then wait to take her back to the house, so I got Second Breakfast while I waited. This is what Life is all about.

So I ordered a poppy bagel double toasted with butter, and the waiter brings me this wonderfully toasted bagel, but I gotta butter it myself. Now that I know this is the Standard procedure at this particular place, I'm gonna tell them to do the butter for me, because the worst thing on earth is when you are at a diner and you get toast or a bagel or an English muffin and they give you these little butters. It's a race against time! I don't know about you, but I like hot butter on my breakfast toast, plus, I like the food item I put the butter on to also be hot. Warm, at least.

I can't tell you how many times at a diner I have ended up with not-melted butter on my self-buttered whole wheat or rye toast, which has possibly already grown cold during the process of peeling open the slippery film on the top of the stupid little butters in their plastic containers and then digging each one out with the tip of the butter knife, or even just unwrapping them from multi-folded foil, and don't even get me started on if the little tiny fucking butter is cold and as hard a brick made out of butter, it's a travesty, you tear a hole in your toast and then you have not-hot toast with lumps of cold butter.

I know a lotta people want to control their butter or whatever, but I need some sort of Process instituted in this nation to ensure some sort of fair warning system for these places that insist on making you butter your own bread, beyond the telltale grimy plastic basket fulla butter and bad jelly flavors (Apple, are you kidding me?) and brown corn syrup to put on pancakes and waffles instead of maple syrup. Thank you.

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WEATHER REVIEWS

New York City, October 234, 2024

★★★★ Now the honeylocusts were visibly thinning. Heaps of leaves were tangled around parked cars' wipers, filling the gap between hood and windshield. The direct light outside was sharp and strong but it had lost the angles for getting into the apartment. The temperature was turning slowly enough to pass through a day or two corduroys on the way back down from shorts to jeans. The new blacktop on Amsterdam Avenue was blinding white toward downtown and the solar heat brought out lingering roadwork vapors. Another cloudless sunset went by, with a half-visible flush of pink in the east and a plane flying by high overhead bright as Venus.

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.

HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.

Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.

WE ARE DELIGHTED to again present instructions in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from 'Please, M'm, The Butcher!': A Complete Guide To Catering For The Housewife Of Moderate Means, With Menus Of All Meals For A Year, Numerous Recipes, And Fifty-Two Additional Menus Of Dinners Without Meat, by Beatrice Guarracino, published in 1903, and now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

Hot Sardine Sandwiches

4 Sardines.
1 teaspoonful Anchovy Paste.
Lemon Juice.
Cayenne.
Fried Parsley.
Butter.
Bread.

Bone and skin the Sardines, pound them with the Anchovy Paste, some Butter, Cayenne and Lemon Juice. Cut some thin slices of Bread and Butter, spread them with the mixture and cut into triangular sandwiches, fry in Butter, and serve very hot, garnished with Fried Parsley.

If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.

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MARKETING DEP'T.

We are down to the last 14 copies of the second printing of 19 Folktales, still available for gift-giving and personal perusal! The nights are getting chilly and longer, but the stories are each concise enough to read before your bedtime tea cools off.

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