Food Food

Today I bit into a piece of bread with mystery meat pate of Croatian provenance. (Pure nostalgia food that I brought home from a recent visit to Cleveland. I could find this pate in Chicago, but I don't tend to go looking for it. It always waits for me in my brother and sis-in-law's house in the most rock'n'roll city in Ohio.) While eating this delicacy, I was watching a video clip from the campiest Yugoslav horror comedy of the 1980s, Strangler vs. Strangler. Why that film was not recognized in Cannes or by the US Academy of Moving Pictures (or whatever the Oscar thing is called) I will never know. According to the IMDB, it did get some love at the Chicago International Film Festival, in that it was shown there in 1985. While watching the said clip, I managed to hurt my jaw, some joint up there on the upper right side where the jaw meets the skull.

That made me think about my poor choice to eat a big piece of white bread made out of genetically manipulated wheat, I'm sure, with the salty, non-nutritious nostalgia pate spread on it.

A few hours later, I was getting hungry again, but this time I felt the urge to eat some fish. Off to Pete's on my trusty old bike. Once there, I couldn't decide between salmon and tilapia fillets. Got both.

Once home, I proceeded to fry up that salmon (a half-pounder, enough for two servings, 4 bucks, can't beat that), later ate half of it with a side of grits mixed with goat cheese and topped with boiled (really briefly) arugula. But before all that, I cut of up one of tilapia fillets into little cubes and ordered it to marinate in my freshly squeezed lime juice. It obeyed, what else.

Jalapeno peppers fought back, as if they were not happy to join diced tomatoes, onions, and chopped cilantro along with lime-juice-treated tilapia for my ceviche. They, the jalapenos, kept biting, leaving their capsaicin in the pores of my skin. It's still here. But guess what. It feels kind of good. Just a good, warm, tingling sensation.

Baby, baby, close your eyes now...