Sometimes I write songs. They can roughly be broken down into the following categories. Annotated for your convenience, and also because I am procrastinating more important things!
(Clicking on the song title should allow you to stream or download the track.)
Steampunk
Tesla :: Inspired by this comic and this video (the latter being decidedly not worksafe due to language)
Time Traveler's Waltz :: The steampunk answer to "Bicycle Built for Two."
Mechanical Man :: Your typical 19th century cyborg tragedy.
Same Place :: A protest song against the practice of digging up cadavers for use in scientific study, which I imagine would only be worse in a universe with greater amounts of experimentation and innovation.
Math, Science and Assorted Geekery
Occam's Razor :: In which I bastardize William of Ockham's principle for the sake of tidy metaphor.
Shroedinger's Cat :: When your relationship feels like a thought experiment, it is time to take stock.
Supersymmetry :: A torch song about the birth of the universe and its subsequent evolution.
Rule 34 :: The one about internet porn.
Silliness
Bicycle Cop :: Life is hard for bicycle cops. It's hard and nobody understands.
Patrice McShane :: The woman, the legend(s).
In My Town :: Post apocalyptic cowboy song, co-written by my dad.
Creepy Ones :: Every example of sketchy behavior listed in this song happened to either me or a close friend. Creepy people of the world, you are on notice!
Snakes for Rats :: I think this song has the highest body count of anything I've written.
The Ones that are Actually Kind of Heartfelt
It's Not Like
The Kettle Song :: Friends, hardship, and tea
Going Insane :: I'm probably going to rewrite this a little at some point in the future.
Certainty :: An extended metaphor about losing one's sense of confidence.
Next Best
Song for Mom :: Fair warning: you need to know my mom in order for this one to make any goddamn sense.
I think that's everything. If you can think of something I've left out, let me know!
Note: The quality of the recordings varies a bit, and at some point I am hoping to record everything using halfway decent equipment and the help of someone who knows how to mix sound, and then put out something roughly album-ish. If you'd like to be kept in the loop about that, drop me an e-mail at jessicamarybest at gmail.com.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Architects, Chapter One
For reasons passing understanding, it was only 1:27. There had to be something about fluorescent light that made time go slower, Danny decided. Had he thought to study any kind of science, maybe he could've drafted a theory explaining why that was. The Daniel Carlson Theory of Temporal Dilation in Shitty Customer Service Jobs. SubHut had been completely dead for at least forty minutes. He stared at the floor, trying to decide whether he could get away with sweeping it again. True, he had just finished sweeping it--the broom was still in his hands--but there was a lot of floor, and maybe it had somehow gotten dirty on the other end by now. He wasn't so sure what it said about him that he was contemplating sweeping the floor for sheer entertainment value. If he had to guess: nothing good.
Behind him, Wendy was fiddling with the radio stations again. Tim the manager was out, and she had taken the opportunity to switch from the earsplitting whiny pop which Tim swore attracted to customers to what seemed to be a recording of chirps and caws.
He stared out at the shop--the orange and green booths wiped clean, the framed SubHut ads unsmudged, the giant churning soda machine with its straws and cups and lids arranged at the side in military precision.
Behind the counter, the tomato slices, cheese, cold cuts, and lettuce shreds lay perfectly restocked in their neat little tubs. Sometimes, after a long shift, when he closed his eyes, he could see those pale green, slightly wilted shreds swarming behind his eyelids. There was a time when he would've kind of enjoyed the thought of being haunted by something--in an abstract way, that brooding, secretive quality appealed to him--but had he been given the choice, he would not have picked pieces of lettuce.
For want of anything else to do, Danny reached into the vat of mayo and swirled the spatula around, pretending to himself that this somehow accomplished something, that it was vital to keep one's mayonnaise well-stirred.
From the radio, a warbling shriek drifted over. "Wendy, what are we listening to?" he asked.
She ducked her head. "Some birdcall nature show," she muttered. "It's the only other thing that comes in clear."
A gull made some sort of bleating noise, and Danny shrugged.
"Better than Justin Beiber," he said lightly.
Wendy gave him a small smile. "Think we can refill the pickles?" she asked.
Danny spread his hands. "Why the hell not?"
Tim sometimes gave him shit about Wendy when she wasn't in, alternating between reminding him about SubHut's no-dating-coworkers policy and making some pretty gross innuendo. The whole policy thing almost made him wish he and Wendy actually were an item, just because it would've been nice to thumb their noses at such a stupid goddamn rule. SubHut paid $7 an hour and didn't give you a free sandwich unless you worked more than eight hours. The idea that this somehow entitled management to control your personal life, like some kind of sandwich-centric fiefdom, was completely absurd.
On the other hand, this was Wendy MacDonald, who rarely spoke above a whisper and whose eyebrows were so pale that she managed to look constantly surprised, as though life was one giant curve ball. She had a round face, a love of socks with pictures of ducks on them, and a tendency to cry when customers got too mean. Sometimes when they interacted, he felt less like a work friend and more like someone who had accidentally adopted a puppy.
This wasn't fair to her, he knew; she was clearly bright and she hardly followed him around all the time, and also she was a fully-functional human being, but despite all of that, Wendy had a quality about her that seemed to scream, "I am young and vulnerable, please take me under your wing!" "Little sister" was probably more accurate than puppy, he realized, but he was an only child so it was a harder comparison to judge.
As far as he could tell, she was still in high school, and was it weird that they had the same job? Maybe it was, but he felt like what should've bothered him more was that she was roughly as good at it as he was. Which didn't really make sense because what did a degree have to do with slapping some mustard and a slice of congealing roast beef on bread? For crying out loud, he'd majored in folklore; it wasn't like that left you with a lot of solid life skills.
The bucket of pickles had been left on a high shelf for some reason. They worked with a lot of pot heads. Maybe that was reason enough.
"I can get it down," he offered.
She almost snorted. "Danny, I am taller than you."
"Slipped my mind."
Wendy dragged the chair across the tiles. They were kind of greasy, Danny noticed. Maybe he should've mopped. For some reason, though, mopping for fun seemed to be crossing a line. He made a hand print on the stainless steel counter and then wiped it off.
"How long has Tim been gone, d'you think?" he asked.
He could hear her voice straining slightly as she reached for the pickle bucket. "I don't know. Maybe--an hour? I wasn't looking at the clock."
"The bank's not that far away," Danny mused.
"Maybe he decided to run some--" Behind him, Wendy gasped, and there was the sound of splashing pickle juice. He turned around, and she was holding the rim of the bucket precariously, wide-eyed and covered in brine. She seemed to be shaking. At first he thought it was because the pickle juice was really cold, but then he remembered that the stuff had to be pretty much room temperature up on the shelf.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," said Wendy. "Yeah." She gingerly climbed off the chair and set the bucket on the counter.
"What happened, dude?" he asked, pulling down a wad of brown, scratchy paper towels. She dabbed at her face. The clothes were kind of a lost cause.
"There was, uh, something on the shelf," she said at last. "Something moving."
"Like a rat?" He made a face. SubHut had experienced some trouble with cockroaches in the past, but somehow this was an extra step up, vermin-wise.
"Maybe," said Wendy. "I don't know. I think I'm going to sit down for a moment." She folded down to the floor, breathing deeply.
"Was it big?"
"Pretty big," she said. "Pretty big. Oh crap!" Her eyes widened. "We're not supposed to sit down while we're working." She fought her way to her feet, leaning heavily against the counter. It must have been a pretty gross-looking rat, Danny figured.
"I'm calling the exterminator," he announced. "This is bullshit. Do you know where the Yellow Pages are?"
She took a deep, shaky breath. "Managers' office. It's locked."
“I don’t suppose you know how to jimmy a lock?” Danny asked.
One corner of Wendy’s mouth turned up. “I don’t know how to jimmy anything. You know who would know––”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “But he was scheduled to come in at eleven. I think we need to come to terms with the very real possibility that we’ll have to do without Jack’s special brand of ridiculous today.”
“Shame,” said Wendy, so neutrally that he couldn’t tell if she was mocking Jack, Danny, herself, or if she was genuinely disappointed. Brine dripped onto the floor in steady trickles.
“You want to change clothes? I’ll watch the counter in case of a sudden, mad early afternoon rush.”
She looked down at her SubHut shirt and khakis and made a small, frustrated noise. “All the extra employee shirts are in the office,” she said.
“Yeah, but didn’t you bring stuff to change into at the end of your shift?” It didn’t take too long at SubHut to get sick of smelling like ham all the time, and cloth soaked it up lingering aromas even better than hair. Although the pickle juice had nicely solved that problem, at least.
“I did.” She chewed her lip. “But it’s jeans and a sweater.”
Danny raised his eyebrows in the universal shorthand for ‘...and?’
“It’s not uniform.”
“Uniform? Dude,” he said. “You’re not a Marine. This is a sandwich shop! Not even a very good one. If anyone tries to tell you that you can’t make their Number 8 no mustard while wearing long sleeves, point me to them, and I’ll––I’ll spit on their cheese and, and make change using all Canadian coins.”
Wendy hovered uncertainly. “Tim’ll be mad, though.”
“Tim,” he said, “is a thirty-year-old guy with nothing to show for his life other than the managership of a single crappy sandwich place. I kinda think he’ll be mad no matter what.”
She frowned, glancing down again at her pickled clothes.
“At the very least, you could change pants,” he pointed out. “People on the other side of the counter only see you from the waist up. You could be wearing hammerpants, or like, one of those giant Civil War hoop skirts and nobody would be the wiser.”
“Except Tim.”
“Tim’s been gone over an hour,” said Danny. “I’m throwing a coup. I claim this shop for the Pacific Isles. Freedom, liberty, equality! Go put on dry pants.”
Wendy gave him a solute––or maybe it was a mock solute; you never could tell with Wendy––grabbed her clothes from her tattered backpack and headed for the bathroom.
He stared around the room for a moment. Despite the glaring lights and bright colors, it was somehow a little spooky without her. From the radio, an owl hooted. He was just about to start stacking tomato slices when his eyes found the bucket and he realized he could restock the pickles. There was exactly one pickle missing from the little metal tin at the side of the counter. He plopped it in with the tongs and glanced back up at the shelf. He could faintly hear the tiny patter of feet up there. Danny wasn’t really afraid of rats, per se, but that didn’t mean he wanted to come face to face with one while balancing precariously on a chair. He didn’t trust himself to have Wendy’s reflexes, nor, if he was honest with himself, her aversion to screaming. Not being a fan of rats was not the same thing as a phobia, he insisted inside his head.
He put the bucket of pickles back under the counter, lid snapped tight, where it belonged. He felt a momentary buzz of satisfaction knowing that he had protected food from infestation. Then he realized that if the rats could get on the shelf, they probably also had access to the pickle bucket. Did rats eat pickles? Then again, didn’t rats eat everything, wasn’t that kind of the whole point of rats? Danny frowned. Had he put a rat pickle in among all the regular ones? He was checking the pickles for telltale hairs when the bell at the door dinged and in walked Jack, eating an apple.
“Morning, Daniel,” said Jack. He paused in the doorway, nose wrinkling. “Ugh, what music are you listening to?”
“Free form jazz,” said Danny drily. A goose honked. “Very free form.”
“Uh, it’s bird sounds?” said Wendy, poking her head out of the bathroom. She was dressed in her street clothes and she had clearly wrung out her braid a few times, but her hair still looked pretty gross. “Most of the stations don’t seem to be working today. Feel free to switch it if you find something you like better.”
Jack threw his apple core in the garbage and turned to the radio, looking at it thoughtfully. He was wearing three or four stupid hipster scarves over his SubHut T-shirt, like his neck and only his neck was in horrible danger of getting cold. Jack was about the same age as Danny, which was to say, early twenties. Unlike Danny, he seemed totally untroubled by the possibility of working in places like SubHut for the rest of his life. This was possibly because Jack didn’t seem to overly care about anything. He was attractive, in a somewhat otherworldly, creepy way––sharp cheekbones, dark hair, bright blue eyes that didn’t blink quite enough––but he never seemed to notice when female customers (and very occasionally male ones) flirted with him.
He would’ve been intolerable, except that whenever a particularly obnoxious patron left Wendy in tears, Jack would wait until the jerk had left and then say something so perfectly funny and mean that she would laugh instead. It was like he was trying to be a good person, but his only setting was “asshole.”
Jack fiddled with the radio, filling the room with a staticky ocean.
“You’re so late you’re practically early again,” said Danny. “What gives, man?”
Jack shrugged. “Something came up,” he said.
“Something ‘came up’ for two and a half hours?”
“It’s a great big world out there,” said Jack, turning one of the knobs on the radio as high up as it could go.
“How are you not fired yet?” asked Danny, half to himself.
“Because Tim cares not one whit.”
“You kinda left us in the lurch, dude.”
Jack looked around the room coolly. “Looks like you managed just fine without me.”
“That’s because the lunch rush was two hours ago!”
“People all eat at the same time,” said Jack. “That’s so weird.” Danny gave him a blank look. Sometimes it was hard to know what to say to Jack.
“I might have a CD in my backpack,” Wendy offered. “Um, it’s classical, but––”
“Ugh,” said Jack again. “I’d rather have owl sounds.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Is there even music you like?”
“Of course there is,” said Jack, a strange smile flitting across his face. “But you’ve probably never heard of it.”
Wendy made a coughing sound. She shot Danny an amused look, and he mouthed ‘hipster douchebag.’ Jack poked the radio with one finger.
“Did you see Idol last night?” asked Danny after a moment.
Jack frowned distantly. “What? No. What's Idol?”
"Oh, is that another television program?" said Jack. He glared at the largest radio dial. "I don't actually own a TV."
Wendy raised her eyebrows in a way that probably meant ‘You don’t watch it either, Danny. Now you’re just being a troll.’ Danny shrugged to say, ‘Point, but we work in an empty sandwich store. What more do you want from me?’
Behind him, Wendy was fiddling with the radio stations again. Tim the manager was out, and she had taken the opportunity to switch from the earsplitting whiny pop which Tim swore attracted to customers to what seemed to be a recording of chirps and caws.
He stared out at the shop--the orange and green booths wiped clean, the framed SubHut ads unsmudged, the giant churning soda machine with its straws and cups and lids arranged at the side in military precision.
Behind the counter, the tomato slices, cheese, cold cuts, and lettuce shreds lay perfectly restocked in their neat little tubs. Sometimes, after a long shift, when he closed his eyes, he could see those pale green, slightly wilted shreds swarming behind his eyelids. There was a time when he would've kind of enjoyed the thought of being haunted by something--in an abstract way, that brooding, secretive quality appealed to him--but had he been given the choice, he would not have picked pieces of lettuce.
For want of anything else to do, Danny reached into the vat of mayo and swirled the spatula around, pretending to himself that this somehow accomplished something, that it was vital to keep one's mayonnaise well-stirred.
From the radio, a warbling shriek drifted over. "Wendy, what are we listening to?" he asked.
She ducked her head. "Some birdcall nature show," she muttered. "It's the only other thing that comes in clear."
A gull made some sort of bleating noise, and Danny shrugged.
"Better than Justin Beiber," he said lightly.
Wendy gave him a small smile. "Think we can refill the pickles?" she asked.
Danny spread his hands. "Why the hell not?"
Tim sometimes gave him shit about Wendy when she wasn't in, alternating between reminding him about SubHut's no-dating-coworkers policy and making some pretty gross innuendo. The whole policy thing almost made him wish he and Wendy actually were an item, just because it would've been nice to thumb their noses at such a stupid goddamn rule. SubHut paid $7 an hour and didn't give you a free sandwich unless you worked more than eight hours. The idea that this somehow entitled management to control your personal life, like some kind of sandwich-centric fiefdom, was completely absurd.
On the other hand, this was Wendy MacDonald, who rarely spoke above a whisper and whose eyebrows were so pale that she managed to look constantly surprised, as though life was one giant curve ball. She had a round face, a love of socks with pictures of ducks on them, and a tendency to cry when customers got too mean. Sometimes when they interacted, he felt less like a work friend and more like someone who had accidentally adopted a puppy.
This wasn't fair to her, he knew; she was clearly bright and she hardly followed him around all the time, and also she was a fully-functional human being, but despite all of that, Wendy had a quality about her that seemed to scream, "I am young and vulnerable, please take me under your wing!" "Little sister" was probably more accurate than puppy, he realized, but he was an only child so it was a harder comparison to judge.
As far as he could tell, she was still in high school, and was it weird that they had the same job? Maybe it was, but he felt like what should've bothered him more was that she was roughly as good at it as he was. Which didn't really make sense because what did a degree have to do with slapping some mustard and a slice of congealing roast beef on bread? For crying out loud, he'd majored in folklore; it wasn't like that left you with a lot of solid life skills.
The bucket of pickles had been left on a high shelf for some reason. They worked with a lot of pot heads. Maybe that was reason enough.
"I can get it down," he offered.
She almost snorted. "Danny, I am taller than you."
"Slipped my mind."
Wendy dragged the chair across the tiles. They were kind of greasy, Danny noticed. Maybe he should've mopped. For some reason, though, mopping for fun seemed to be crossing a line. He made a hand print on the stainless steel counter and then wiped it off.
"How long has Tim been gone, d'you think?" he asked.
He could hear her voice straining slightly as she reached for the pickle bucket. "I don't know. Maybe--an hour? I wasn't looking at the clock."
"The bank's not that far away," Danny mused.
"Maybe he decided to run some--" Behind him, Wendy gasped, and there was the sound of splashing pickle juice. He turned around, and she was holding the rim of the bucket precariously, wide-eyed and covered in brine. She seemed to be shaking. At first he thought it was because the pickle juice was really cold, but then he remembered that the stuff had to be pretty much room temperature up on the shelf.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," said Wendy. "Yeah." She gingerly climbed off the chair and set the bucket on the counter.
"What happened, dude?" he asked, pulling down a wad of brown, scratchy paper towels. She dabbed at her face. The clothes were kind of a lost cause.
"There was, uh, something on the shelf," she said at last. "Something moving."
"Like a rat?" He made a face. SubHut had experienced some trouble with cockroaches in the past, but somehow this was an extra step up, vermin-wise.
"Maybe," said Wendy. "I don't know. I think I'm going to sit down for a moment." She folded down to the floor, breathing deeply.
"Was it big?"
"Pretty big," she said. "Pretty big. Oh crap!" Her eyes widened. "We're not supposed to sit down while we're working." She fought her way to her feet, leaning heavily against the counter. It must have been a pretty gross-looking rat, Danny figured.
"I'm calling the exterminator," he announced. "This is bullshit. Do you know where the Yellow Pages are?"
She took a deep, shaky breath. "Managers' office. It's locked."
“I don’t suppose you know how to jimmy a lock?” Danny asked.
One corner of Wendy’s mouth turned up. “I don’t know how to jimmy anything. You know who would know––”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “But he was scheduled to come in at eleven. I think we need to come to terms with the very real possibility that we’ll have to do without Jack’s special brand of ridiculous today.”
“Shame,” said Wendy, so neutrally that he couldn’t tell if she was mocking Jack, Danny, herself, or if she was genuinely disappointed. Brine dripped onto the floor in steady trickles.
“You want to change clothes? I’ll watch the counter in case of a sudden, mad early afternoon rush.”
She looked down at her SubHut shirt and khakis and made a small, frustrated noise. “All the extra employee shirts are in the office,” she said.
“Yeah, but didn’t you bring stuff to change into at the end of your shift?” It didn’t take too long at SubHut to get sick of smelling like ham all the time, and cloth soaked it up lingering aromas even better than hair. Although the pickle juice had nicely solved that problem, at least.
“I did.” She chewed her lip. “But it’s jeans and a sweater.”
Danny raised his eyebrows in the universal shorthand for ‘...and?’
“It’s not uniform.”
“Uniform? Dude,” he said. “You’re not a Marine. This is a sandwich shop! Not even a very good one. If anyone tries to tell you that you can’t make their Number 8 no mustard while wearing long sleeves, point me to them, and I’ll––I’ll spit on their cheese and, and make change using all Canadian coins.”
Wendy hovered uncertainly. “Tim’ll be mad, though.”
“Tim,” he said, “is a thirty-year-old guy with nothing to show for his life other than the managership of a single crappy sandwich place. I kinda think he’ll be mad no matter what.”
She frowned, glancing down again at her pickled clothes.
“At the very least, you could change pants,” he pointed out. “People on the other side of the counter only see you from the waist up. You could be wearing hammerpants, or like, one of those giant Civil War hoop skirts and nobody would be the wiser.”
“Except Tim.”
“Tim’s been gone over an hour,” said Danny. “I’m throwing a coup. I claim this shop for the Pacific Isles. Freedom, liberty, equality! Go put on dry pants.”
Wendy gave him a solute––or maybe it was a mock solute; you never could tell with Wendy––grabbed her clothes from her tattered backpack and headed for the bathroom.
He stared around the room for a moment. Despite the glaring lights and bright colors, it was somehow a little spooky without her. From the radio, an owl hooted. He was just about to start stacking tomato slices when his eyes found the bucket and he realized he could restock the pickles. There was exactly one pickle missing from the little metal tin at the side of the counter. He plopped it in with the tongs and glanced back up at the shelf. He could faintly hear the tiny patter of feet up there. Danny wasn’t really afraid of rats, per se, but that didn’t mean he wanted to come face to face with one while balancing precariously on a chair. He didn’t trust himself to have Wendy’s reflexes, nor, if he was honest with himself, her aversion to screaming. Not being a fan of rats was not the same thing as a phobia, he insisted inside his head.
He put the bucket of pickles back under the counter, lid snapped tight, where it belonged. He felt a momentary buzz of satisfaction knowing that he had protected food from infestation. Then he realized that if the rats could get on the shelf, they probably also had access to the pickle bucket. Did rats eat pickles? Then again, didn’t rats eat everything, wasn’t that kind of the whole point of rats? Danny frowned. Had he put a rat pickle in among all the regular ones? He was checking the pickles for telltale hairs when the bell at the door dinged and in walked Jack, eating an apple.
“Morning, Daniel,” said Jack. He paused in the doorway, nose wrinkling. “Ugh, what music are you listening to?”
“Free form jazz,” said Danny drily. A goose honked. “Very free form.”
“Uh, it’s bird sounds?” said Wendy, poking her head out of the bathroom. She was dressed in her street clothes and she had clearly wrung out her braid a few times, but her hair still looked pretty gross. “Most of the stations don’t seem to be working today. Feel free to switch it if you find something you like better.”
Jack threw his apple core in the garbage and turned to the radio, looking at it thoughtfully. He was wearing three or four stupid hipster scarves over his SubHut T-shirt, like his neck and only his neck was in horrible danger of getting cold. Jack was about the same age as Danny, which was to say, early twenties. Unlike Danny, he seemed totally untroubled by the possibility of working in places like SubHut for the rest of his life. This was possibly because Jack didn’t seem to overly care about anything. He was attractive, in a somewhat otherworldly, creepy way––sharp cheekbones, dark hair, bright blue eyes that didn’t blink quite enough––but he never seemed to notice when female customers (and very occasionally male ones) flirted with him.
He would’ve been intolerable, except that whenever a particularly obnoxious patron left Wendy in tears, Jack would wait until the jerk had left and then say something so perfectly funny and mean that she would laugh instead. It was like he was trying to be a good person, but his only setting was “asshole.”
Jack fiddled with the radio, filling the room with a staticky ocean.
“You’re so late you’re practically early again,” said Danny. “What gives, man?”
Jack shrugged. “Something came up,” he said.
“Something ‘came up’ for two and a half hours?”
“It’s a great big world out there,” said Jack, turning one of the knobs on the radio as high up as it could go.
“How are you not fired yet?” asked Danny, half to himself.
“Because Tim cares not one whit.”
“You kinda left us in the lurch, dude.”
Jack looked around the room coolly. “Looks like you managed just fine without me.”
“That’s because the lunch rush was two hours ago!”
“People all eat at the same time,” said Jack. “That’s so weird.” Danny gave him a blank look. Sometimes it was hard to know what to say to Jack.
“I might have a CD in my backpack,” Wendy offered. “Um, it’s classical, but––”
“Ugh,” said Jack again. “I’d rather have owl sounds.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Is there even music you like?”
“Of course there is,” said Jack, a strange smile flitting across his face. “But you’ve probably never heard of it.”
Wendy made a coughing sound. She shot Danny an amused look, and he mouthed ‘hipster douchebag.’ Jack poked the radio with one finger.
“Did you see Idol last night?” asked Danny after a moment.
Jack frowned distantly. “What? No. What's Idol?”
"Um, American Idol? It's a––"
"Oh, is that another television program?" said Jack. He glared at the largest radio dial. "I don't actually own a TV."
Wendy raised her eyebrows in a way that probably meant ‘You don’t watch it either, Danny. Now you’re just being a troll.’ Danny shrugged to say, ‘Point, but we work in an empty sandwich store. What more do you want from me?’
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Co-op Enchiladas (Guffchiladas?)
Ahahahaha, so this one time, I had a blog that I used to write in? Oops. Anyway, a few housemates asked for this recipe, and facebook has character limits on notes, so this seemed like the most logical posting place. And so, without further ado, a (very bastardized version of a) time-honored dish in the Best household: Spinach Enchiladas.
1. Heat the oven to 350.
2. For the sauce:
Drain and puree a large can of diced tomatoes. (As always, the caveat: if you can find canned crushed tomatoes--the good, pulpy stuff, not the weirdly concentrated paste GFS hawks, use that instead. Way faster, better texture. Available at any grocery store. Somehow not available in bulk.)
Chop and sauté a goodly amount of garlic in like a tablespoon of oil. I don't really know how much garlic. A lot, let's say. If your garlic is old, you should probably remove the little sproutling inside each clove, THEN chop it up. Add dried basil (I mean, or fresh if you've got it, but let's be realistic, this is a co-op) and some onion powder and let it all sizzle a bit, then stir this into the tomatoes.
3. For the filling:
Peel and cut up some sweet potatoes. Steam them until very soft.
As they're steaming, pour about a tablespoon of oil into a pan. Add crushed red pepper, salt, pepper, and chipotle chile powder. Turn on the heat, and stir it around for a bit. Add (rinsed and drained) canned black beans, stir until it's evenly mixed and the beans look softer.
When a fork sinks right through the sweet potato chunks with no resistance, remove them from the steam and mash them. In another pot, melt some Earth Balance. Add cinnamon and cumin, and then the mashed potatoes. Stir this around--it will be very thick. Add enough soy milk for the mixture to be creamy. (It shouldn't take more than a bit.) Stir until well-mixed.
Wash some spinach, and shake out as much water as you can. Add the beans and the spinach to the pot with the sweet potato mixture. Add some chopped green onions. (If you don't have chopped green onions, then chop a small amount of raw regular-type onion into tiny pieces. Close enough for government work!) Stir until well-combined.
4. Assembly:
Kind of what you'd expect. Pour some sauce on the bottom of your baking dish and spread it around as best you can. Spoon a decent amount of filling onto each tortilla, wrap the whole thing tightly and crowd them into the baking dish. Spread the rest of the sauce on top of them, making sure that no part of the tortillas are dry--especially not the edges. You may need to do two layers to fit them all; this shouldn't be a problem, as long as your dish is deep enough.
5. Baking:
About 25 minutes, or until the tortillas are kind of golden under the sauce.
(For the non-vegan version, omit all the business with the sweet potatoes. Do the beans as written here, then add the spinach, the green onions, and a bunch of shredded cheddar. Knead it around with your hands til well-mixed, and proceed with the recipe. If you really wanted to get crazy, I suppose you could make a version with sweet potatoes AND cheese. I have never done this! I can't promise it would work, but it might be worth a try.)
NOTES: Cooking for 29 people on a student co-op budget is an exercise in adaptation and substitution. Back home, when my mom made this recipe for the four of us, it was pretty different. Some suggestions if you have either more money, or fewer mouths to feed:
-Use finely finely chopped fresh jalapeno instead of red pepper flakes.
-When you're sauteing the garlic for the sauce, add a bunch of chopped up onion, and cook the whole thing until the onion is translucent.
-In the cheese version of the recipe, add fresh chopped cilantro and sliced black olives to the filling.
-You can also consider throwing some chopped up raw bell peppers on top? Not sure if I've ever done it, but my brother says they add a nice crunch.
-When they're done baking, you can also slice avocados very thinly and use them as a topping or garnish. Or both. Man, I love avocados.
1. Heat the oven to 350.
2. For the sauce:
Drain and puree a large can of diced tomatoes. (As always, the caveat: if you can find canned crushed tomatoes--the good, pulpy stuff, not the weirdly concentrated paste GFS hawks, use that instead. Way faster, better texture. Available at any grocery store. Somehow not available in bulk.)
Chop and sauté a goodly amount of garlic in like a tablespoon of oil. I don't really know how much garlic. A lot, let's say. If your garlic is old, you should probably remove the little sproutling inside each clove, THEN chop it up. Add dried basil (I mean, or fresh if you've got it, but let's be realistic, this is a co-op) and some onion powder and let it all sizzle a bit, then stir this into the tomatoes.
3. For the filling:
Peel and cut up some sweet potatoes. Steam them until very soft.
As they're steaming, pour about a tablespoon of oil into a pan. Add crushed red pepper, salt, pepper, and chipotle chile powder. Turn on the heat, and stir it around for a bit. Add (rinsed and drained) canned black beans, stir until it's evenly mixed and the beans look softer.
When a fork sinks right through the sweet potato chunks with no resistance, remove them from the steam and mash them. In another pot, melt some Earth Balance. Add cinnamon and cumin, and then the mashed potatoes. Stir this around--it will be very thick. Add enough soy milk for the mixture to be creamy. (It shouldn't take more than a bit.) Stir until well-mixed.
Wash some spinach, and shake out as much water as you can. Add the beans and the spinach to the pot with the sweet potato mixture. Add some chopped green onions. (If you don't have chopped green onions, then chop a small amount of raw regular-type onion into tiny pieces. Close enough for government work!) Stir until well-combined.
4. Assembly:
Kind of what you'd expect. Pour some sauce on the bottom of your baking dish and spread it around as best you can. Spoon a decent amount of filling onto each tortilla, wrap the whole thing tightly and crowd them into the baking dish. Spread the rest of the sauce on top of them, making sure that no part of the tortillas are dry--especially not the edges. You may need to do two layers to fit them all; this shouldn't be a problem, as long as your dish is deep enough.
5. Baking:
About 25 minutes, or until the tortillas are kind of golden under the sauce.
(For the non-vegan version, omit all the business with the sweet potatoes. Do the beans as written here, then add the spinach, the green onions, and a bunch of shredded cheddar. Knead it around with your hands til well-mixed, and proceed with the recipe. If you really wanted to get crazy, I suppose you could make a version with sweet potatoes AND cheese. I have never done this! I can't promise it would work, but it might be worth a try.)
NOTES: Cooking for 29 people on a student co-op budget is an exercise in adaptation and substitution. Back home, when my mom made this recipe for the four of us, it was pretty different. Some suggestions if you have either more money, or fewer mouths to feed:
-Use finely finely chopped fresh jalapeno instead of red pepper flakes.
-When you're sauteing the garlic for the sauce, add a bunch of chopped up onion, and cook the whole thing until the onion is translucent.
-In the cheese version of the recipe, add fresh chopped cilantro and sliced black olives to the filling.
-You can also consider throwing some chopped up raw bell peppers on top? Not sure if I've ever done it, but my brother says they add a nice crunch.
-When they're done baking, you can also slice avocados very thinly and use them as a topping or garnish. Or both. Man, I love avocados.
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