Menu Anger

Incomprehension of common labels, and an ad-hoc recipe.

I am a couple months sober - and I mean as sober as any period of my life since college. Alcohol I erased first, on Jan 18; following four glasses of wine in a club, where a near-collision on a dance floor had me nearly punching a once-close companion. Years of absence spurred such an emotional response, I needed all my conscious energy to hold back. I decided I should cherish my conscious energy more.

All the same, February began cold, and I signed up for a room on land to escape the icebergs greeting me back home on the sailboat each night. One can only go so many days screaming themselves to sleep before they seek more refuge.

And so I resided for a couple weeks in a small group home, among people I liked to see each day, and had informed of my aim to sober up. Being college pupils, they had cannabis and mushrooms around in unguarded surplus. I needed a couple weeks to bask in the security of laze, and haze, and land. And then I sharply disagreed with their norms of noisemaking, during odd hours of the clock.

Besides, the smoke did my car-handling skills no good, during a period where I had been unable to pay the price for a real insurance plan. I held my final joint for a couple days, gradually regressing the herb towards the filter, before looking around my boat's cabin - home once again - and deciding I really need to clean.

The final kick had been the gummies, ending on 02-23. A mix of 500mg Amanita Muscaria mushroom and 5mg ∆9-THC, purchased in a West Virginia mountain pass, in a cool place labeled a Hot Spot. These had me in an amplified mood of creative expression, raising my ambitions during the hours of day before crushing them into the cushions around dusk; this so-called 'ego death' phase is the portion I'd been seeking - a chemically-induced loss of all motivation is an ideal condition for sharpening your impulses.

Whereas many people reaching this phase decide to make art on the page, sinking deeply into a subconscious visual cycle, I encouraged my depression-racked body to rise, and properly shower and care before sleep came.

And so, I reached March shaking groggy chemicals from my senses, relishing in the ceremony of coffee and embracing the calm and secure mood of the many local diners; those ones who shared a similar 24/7 schedule to the one I'd become used to, and wherein I had clearly been the most abnormal customer of the month in each case, the one typing essays on their laptop, leaving a battery bank behind to charge, and then returning in 3 hours after a car nap to go to a nearby social group by sunrise.

More than any other local business model, I became enamored to bookshops. DC has a real collection, mixing coffee and baked goods, occasional cocktails or wine, reliably engaging dialogue and endless chances for research. and in the case of Kramer's in Dupont Circle a real splendid backroom diner, upon whose dark marble bar laid crisp piles of promising menus which I am here to complain of today.

I had high hopes that Kramer's could be a refuge today, because I had been exceptionally pleased by a social gathering that occurred here in December 2023, where some lady musicians discussed their processeses, and had eagerly expanded their phrasing of inclusion enough to expel any rigid notion of binary gender from their enrollment guidelines.

And so, I had a nice evening here long ago, discussing music, and because my new nomadic map leads me by their place on occasion, I used today's chance to open their door and explore the manga. I realized the cocktail bar is really an ancillary feature compared to the breakfast dining area, and as my exercise regimen has me endlessly undernourished in comparison to my pace of caloric burn, I quickly chose the Eggs in Purgatory off of the menu.

two eggs poached in spicy tomato sauce, burrata, basil oil, herbs, crusty sourdough (v)

You see, I had a rough night again, and this roughness is a normal piece of my daily experience. I am no longer housed in the city I am making a career in, and so I need to dig up berth and bread in any place I can.

Compounding my normal compulsion for acquiring the precursors of a sound psychological baseline, which commonly see me illegally parked and relying on unsanctioned naps in common spaces, I am additionally preoccupied this week by the re-appearance of an abuser - my dad - who has come to lend a hand and uphold the normalized, abnormal, deeply painful and harmful relationship that has endured amidst us for 30 years.

Maybe I'll share more on such a theme someday; I have done too much yelling and crying in this Kramer's diner room to spend many more hours here; the lunch rush has appeared, and I began the day knocking to learn when the doors unlocked. The employees are as gracious as can be, and my main argument has much more to do with the absent chef's unimagined reliance on dairy as a flavoring and texturing agent, and the impermanently-assigned graphic designer, whose imagination produced a pair of compellingly sharp menus that are happy to mislead someone's eyes into ordering a dish disaagreeable to their body's needs.

I dug into the pan of eggs and sauce, and had to pause - where I presumed to be consuming an egg, a rubbery goo squished amid my teeth; I glanced back at the menu and learned that burrata is a name for cheese.

There is no need to explain how good the food is at Kramers, the employees are incredibly skilled, gracious, and eager to help. My repulsion from dairy is a unique one and a challenge for accomodation. Also, as someone who arose in an odd bed and am in hiding from an inhumane creep of an ascendant, I came in on an empty stomach, physically expended, and holding back tears, and now I found myself unable to hold back the putty of cow excrement lodged upon my tongue.

I had no energy to look up burrata prior to ordering, and I could not endure the energy loss sure to come from expelling the burrata in gaseous fumes during the traffic jams of the midafternoon beltway, so I spat up like a happy baby into my napkin. The next bite had more, and I spat up again, landing a full bite of bread-and-cheese onto my hand, thereupon to be separated so the bread could be reconsumed, hence playing the role of both mother and baby bird, in the same meal.

This is far from the impression I had when I originally came across Kramer's, seasons ago, for drinks and smokes and percussion and lyrics and horns. And, to a beleagured barkeep and the subsequent manager, I explained my delerious energy by exclaiming, "I liked this place more as an alcoholic!"

This could be a condition caused by gentrification, perhaps - it is a surprisingly common adaptation of businesses in urban cores. In such a booming space as Kramer's, where the leaders of the free delusional dreamers come to guard their slumber, the alcohol is a potent aide.

For someone who has been building real, durable and reproducible programs, beyond the norms and demands of corporate and shareholder direction, all I had needed on a menu had been bread, and some veggie sausage, and a mercifully endless series of refills on coffee, the one drug remaining as a daily dependency.

So, after a long play, acts broken into eating, bussing my dishes, reparking my car, coding on my laptop and then my phone, exploring both clean-solo and communal-segregated-keymarked bathroom stalls, I ended up composing a page on the dangers of misleading and one-sided, omniverous menus. My main problem had been (v) as different from (vg); these markings are a challenge to read, from place to place, and encode hardly anything in the grand scheme of herbacious gastronomy.

Much more promising to obey the lead of nutrition labels, each of which end in a crucial line, along the lines of:

Contains: milk, egg, peanut, alligator

Such a simple formulaic approach, laid out so a hapless and anxious consumer can quickly realize the chance that something on their plate may kill them quicker than a kushtuka.

And so, I happened to learn that veggie sausage, on bread, dipped in coffee - is a surprisingly close approximation to french dip, a recipe I had been missing from my palate since es-chew-ing mammalian meat. As someone who is compelled to describe and earn clearer boundaries around my body, and become more liable for the consequences of my actions, a focus on quirky recipes is leading me to clean up my act, and also to happily keep clear the air around me.