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Make Super Bowl Party Foods In The Dark. In Your Basement. Slowly.
January 30, 2011 | 
Author by Jonathan Butterchurn Perry
(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming eBook which might have a title something like The DB Presents: Tacos in the Night Exchanging Cheeses (probably not that at all). Maybe closer to The DB Presents: Cooking at Gunpoint (ok, I kind of like that.). Also, Behold! Here’s an awesome animated video I made for the subject at hand.)
You’ve seen it happen before: at the Super Bowl party some regular schlub makes a really great chunky salsa and all the lovely fresh-faced Betties keep fawning and asking in strange English accents, “Who made this delicious salsa? It’s Brilliant! I really do love it so!”, and some observant freak impersonating James Cagney says, “Why, old George made it in his cellah using his Civil War buttah churn while singing to those old classic yodeling records.”, to which a random hot chick says, “Wow! That’s specific. Well, I’ll just have to get his recipe! Oh, and …Brilliant!”, whereupon Civil War butter churning re-enactor and budding yodeler, George, emerges from the mist, ignores the annoying British overuse of the word ’brilliant’, and produces his sacred and secret salsa recipe to great female adulation. Phone numbers are exchanged and private butter churning yodeling lessons a-go-go are scheduled for the 147th anniversary of the battle of Antietam and a hot time on the old town tonight is set in motion all because George spent some quality time learning to make a tasty, but easy, chunky salsa (‘Tasty, but Easy’ is also what we call George‘s sister. Also ‘Chunky‘.). Why he used a butter churn to make salsa, I do not know, but it hardly matters. Brother, that could be you giving private butter churning salsa lessons to an eager young lass in a dirndl and making her yodel! Yodelay-HE-HOO!
I was going somewhere with this…oh, yeah! I don’t have the saucy salsa recipe at this particular moment (that‘s in a secret prison in Spain awaiting extradition), but I do have a delicious Guacamole recipe you can totally rip off and pass off as your own. You’re welcome! You think you’re lucky now with the guac, but I also have a crazy awesome cheese ball recipe that not only tastes, but looks, fantastic! (I’ll withhold that now for a bit, but you can totally find it my upcoming eBook. Wink 
Wink Nudge Nudge). I know, you’re counting your lucky stars, green clovers and purple horseshoes and don’t know whether to thank me with butterfly kisses or to transfer $10 million to my offshore bank account quickly now before your bank notices, but just knowing I’ve helped some sad single wretch such as yourself with a series of mild chemical imbalances is all the thanks I need (really, though, get on with the account transfer or there‘s a bullet with the name Vincent on it).
So, without further ado, let the dip-making begin!
Gringo Guacamole a la Sherry
(This serves 2 people. Learn multiplication.)
1 avocado
½ tsp lemon juice
Mayo (approximately equal to the amount of avocado. Add to taste…)
½ tsp soy sauce (adjust to taste)
Garlic powder (a little)
Chopped Onion (some)
Salt (taste for amount)
I know, you saw Sherry in the title of the recipe and became disturbingly excited thinking there was cooking and/or drinking Sherry included in the list of ingredients, but that’s just not the case. Sicko. Sherry just happens to be my mom’s name (some observant person might remember that my last name is Perry, thus believing my mom’s name to be Sherry Perry, and it is. Way to go. You cracked the code. Yeah, laugh it up, buddy.).
When I got this recipe from my mom, it was odd because some of the ingredient amounts were pretty vague, like ‘a dash of this’ or ‘a heaping spoonful of that’, and everything usually ended in ‘add to taste’, so that was useful (note the sarcasm). It’s like being thrown into the deep end of the pool, but the pool is filled with Jello…that you made! And you made it slightly wrong! I kept asking “Really? Really?” after each unnatural measurement was given. Was I being taunted by an unkind mother who was really mocking my feeble attempt to make a completely unnecessary food? No, motherly mockery is reserved for other things, like my attempts at songwriting. It seems this tendency to not use proper measurements is a kooky device cooks use sometimes. Apparently, they get so used to making a recipe that they can kind of ‘eye it’, knowing just how much to put in by sight and by taste. Also, they may be lazy or cocky. Every so often these daredevil cooks decide to pay attention to how much of an item is used and write it down, so that next time they won’t have to guess or keep tasting (hint hint).
Anyway, the recipe is fairly straight forward, once you get the hang of all the adjusting to taste. For those unfamiliar with the evils of avocados, know this: The avocado has a hard outer peel and an even harder pit in the middle. Do NOT eat these! Also, when selecting your weird green fruit thing at the farmers market it’s important to get to 2nd base with it first. Squeeze it gently and if it gives a little, it’s about ripe. Also, the skin should be a little darker, kind of a purplish-blackish-greenish mix. Like a Martian’s bruise. Buy a couple so you can feed more than 2 people.
Once you’ve gotten your avocado(s) home and rinsed and peeled and pitted it(them), mash up that green fruit, then mix in the other ingredients with an eye to tasting it a bunch to get it right. Go forth and serve your special guac with corn chips at a Super Bowl party at someone else’s house and be awesome.
The Secret Word is Brilliant.
More Consumable Goodness
The Great Suburban Mushroom Hunt
Secret Ingredients and Family Recipes
9 Foods I Might As Well Move To The Bomb Shelter
Berry Smoothie & the Magic Blender
Easter Recipe: Mom’s Creamed Eggs and Croutons
Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor: Step #4. Learn To Cook
My Bachelor Weight Loss Secrets: Sticking It To The Terrorists
Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor: Steps 8 & 9. Proper Socialization/Throw Parties
Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor: Step #3. Shape Up, Fatty
Stuffed French Toast By Sam The Cooking Guy
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
Posted in 
POLL: Who’s Your Favorite Hottie Actress of the ’50s?
Clockwise from top left: Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Natalie Wood, Sophia Loren, Ava Gardner
Poll time: Who’s Your Favorite Hottie Actress of the ’50s?
If you’re retirement age, you might have adored these talented (and magically delicious) actresses the first time around during Hollywood’s Golden Age (circa 1950s). Some of us younger folk have since grown to appreciate the grooviness of women who could be our grandmothers. I think I mentioned before that I’m a bit of a Natalie Portman fan (see exhibit A & exhibit B), but there’s just something swell about the classic elegance of these fine Hollywood hotties. A few of these actresses hit their heydays before the ‘50s, some just after, but they all did great work in the ‘50s. There were other excellent actresses from the period, but these are the 6 I like best (I’ve left out Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe because they’re overly popular and just not my favs). Please vote for your favorite and tell us why in the comments, then check back for the results (you can see the results of the Favorite Fictional Bachelor Poll and still vote!). Feel free to research their film catalogs and get back to us.
The secret word is classic.
Related Blogginess
Celebrity Crushes: Is Elegance Elitist?
Sound of Music Death Match!! Liesl v Maria
A Moment of Silence For Natalie Portman’s Singleness
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor for free through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
Secret Ingredients and Family Recipes
not my recipe box (don't have one)
by Jonathan Boxlunch Perry
Recently, I visited my mom in Minnesota, and while there I took the opportunity to dig through her recipe boxes and copy my favorite recipes for yummy happy eating time. Fortunately, I had my camera, so I just photographed them. You didn’t think I was going to hand copy 25 recipes in one sitting, did you? I’m not a medieval monk. In fact, during my visit, she helped me cook some stuff, even though she’s been quite ill. Actually, I helped her. The food was delicious, I got fatter, we bonded, I practiced domesticity. There you go. This will help me circumvent having to call her for recipes. I’ll still call her, of course, being the doting son and mama‘s boy that I am. It’ll just be more for the weather report. And tips on removing stains. Stuff like that. Oh, and to check up on her.
So we grow up with these tasty dishes and hopefully learn to make them ourselves or mate with someone who can make reasonable facsimiles and hope there‘s no withheld secret ingredient to throw off a recipe. I mean, who would do that? Who does grandma think she is, passing off recipes without all the ingredients? Is there some posthumous cooking contest she’s trying to win? Her competition is either dead or senile in a home and isn’t allowed near the stove anyway for fear of a fiery death. Or did she think Kellogg-Kraft was going to rip off her 10-layer lasagna and cash in? And what if grandma goes to the great beyond before she shares her terrible secret (which is probably a teaspoon of cinnamon)? I’ll tell you what, you’ll be stuck eating inferior food the rest of your life and may be forced to abandon family tradition for Martha Stewart’s hoity-toity ringer recipe that requires obscure ingredients like Mongolian goat bouillon! or whatever. Well, that just won’t do. Also, I’m a non-goat-eating vegetarian. Only fake-goat bouillon for me, thank-you.
Texas Sheet Cake Recipe
I’ve helped my mom make many of these dishes over the years and can probably replicate them if forced at gunpoint, though quite slowly and not as expertly. One thing I noticed while searching the recipe boxes is that many of these recipes were ones she acquired from her friends over a period of 50+ years. They say things like “From the Kitchen of Linda” or Vicki or Arlene. There are also those special recipes from my grandmas and even an awesome one from my great-grandma Gottschall: Dutch Apple Cake. Yum! It’s nice to know you’re making something that your great-grandma made 80 years ago. Perhaps she got the recipe from her great-grandma, pushing the baked goods lineage back a few hundred years into Europe when sugar was first making a diabetic splash (you try not to suspect the recipe was copied from a 1930s issue of Better Homes and Gardens).
I always look forward to my mom, grandma and aunts cooking for me. They make great stuff and sometimes there are weird memories tied to the food, like that time mom made lentils and my brother Jay tricked her into giving him the birthright. Good times (see Genesis). But these moments are fading. It’s a good thing my brothers and I cook (well, mostly my brothers) or some of these recipes would just disappear forever and everyone would forget what Broccoli Jello Surprise tastes like (okay, that‘s not a family recipe). Actually, I’m sure many have disappeared from generation to generation, which is sad. Really, though, it’s survival of the fittest recipes. I only copied about 25 recipes, after all, not the full 200. (I never claimed to be an archivist. I‘ll get more later.). But of the recipes I have, all the ingredients seem to be intact, which is a relief. Everything tastes right. No glaring omissions from grandma. No wrong-tasting Special K Loaf. No secret ingredients withheld. Unless the secret ingredient is love (and that just seems like a therapy issue).
-Stay Tuned for a Bachelor Eating eBook!
the secret word is bouillon
Fooood Posts
9 Foods I Might As Well Move To The Bomb Shelter
Berry Smoothie & the Magic Blender
Easter Recipe: Mom’s Creamed Eggs and Croutons
Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor: Step #4. Learn To Cook
My Bachelor Weight Loss Secrets: Sticking It To The Terrorists
Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor: Steps 8 & 9. Proper Socialization/Throw Parties
Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor: Step #3. Shape Up, Fatty
Stuffed French Toast By Sam The Cooking Guy
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
A Moment of Silence For Natalie Portman’s Singleness
Natalie Portman in "The Black Swan"
by Jonathan Bryan Perry
Well dudes, by now you’ve heard the sad news that Natalie Portman is engaged & ‘with child’, as they say. This effectively takes her off the market (though certainly she’s in a different market from, you know, us). So, let’s have a moment of silence for Natalie Portman’s singleness. <pause for silence> Good. Thanks. Obviously, she’s not dead, but the love song I wrote for her, “Natalie Portman is Hot”, is now moot (yes, Myrtle & Blanche, I wrote love songs for other women. And I totally rhymed hot with Huguenot.). It doesn’t matter that I sang all 8 parts of the harmony way better than The Bee Gees or The King’s Singers ever could and I didn’t even have to undergo drastic countertenor/falsetto ‘enhancement’ surgeries. Mostly.
Anyway Natalie, I just want to take a minute to remember ‘us’ and the special times we spent together over the years: You acting all royal in Star Wars prequels. Me watching alone in the dark in my Han Solo duds (ok, a Wookiee costume). You listening to The Shins with Zach Braff in Garden State. Me jealously wanting to lend you some slightly better Indie-ish music I was listening to at the time. Me watching you rap awesomely on that SNL sketch. Me Googling photos of you. For my blog. Really.
more extreme make-up. Nat in Star Wars
Yes guys, Natalie Portman’s all gone. It was coming, though. We all saw it. After she went off to that fancy university with the rich boys, you know, to emphasize her smarts with her hots, there was a poignant stripper pole scene somewhere (This is off point. Or is it?). Now, of course, it ends with one of her co-stars. The collective mourning probably started back when she shaved her head in V for Vendetta (and for the super-lame ending of the movie. WTH?), but we at least knew her hair would grow back. Also, she does have a nice skull. Yes, there were signs. We’ll take some solace knowing she spent some ‘special’ time with Mila Kunis in The Black Swan. This will help. Truly.
Now, being engaged does not make one married, but when there’s a baby involved, you don’t mess with it, cuz, well, you know… So, with much sadness, I’ll man up and wish her all the happiness in the world. Maybe dress in a black Sith outfit for a few days before I start Googling pics of the secretarial pool from Mad Men. For my blog, of course.
Natalie, may the force be with you. Also, I think Jonathan is a great name for a baby.
The secret word is mourning
Related Blogginess
Intimidated by Smart Girls? (featuring Natalie Portman)
Take the pseudo-Cosmo quiz to find out your type ->
http://www.thedomesticatedbachelor.com/2009/02/27/which-is-your-type-a-pseudo-cosmo-quiz/
Celebrity Crushes: Is Elegance Elitist?
Celebrity Crushes: The Girl Next Door
Sound of Music DEATH MATCH!!! Liesl v Maria
Other Swellness
Every time you click an ad, an angel gets its wings. Also, I get like 12 cents.
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