Success

Confessions, The Deep, Whatnot Comments (8)

A couple weeks ago, I experienced what could be considered a breakthrough in the lab. I’d found the solution to a persistent problem that had, to that point, kept me from answering larger and deeper questions. This led to the proving or disproving a few established hypotheses and scientific progress was suddenly marching gloriously forward. My boss was extremely happy. Rather than hop up and down gleefully banging my hands together like some cymbal-clanging robot monkey, I simply acknowledged my good fortune and moved forward. This is what I do. My boss sat me down the next day and asked me about it. Did I realize what I’d just accomplished? Did I understand how far I’d come? Did I appreciate the significance? He was genuinely concerned about my seeming lack of enthusiasm in the face of success. Why, he asked.

There is only so much that I’m willing to tell anyone in answer to such a loaded question. Here’s what he got: I used to base my entire self-worth on who I was during a long-ish career in the military. My ambition was centered around impressing others more than myself and as result of or maybe because of this, I never really enjoyed any award, decoration, or promotion. They were always seen as the necessary next steps to an imaginary pinnacle of success based on some nebulous definition of the word. I was the golden boy right up until I wasn’t anymore, when none of the previous accomplishments meant much of anything. I now regret having never celebrated anything, but nothing that I ever did was even half as satisfying or rewarding as what I’m doing now. Success for me now lies simply in that satisfaction and the reward is having a ‘next step’ worth taking.

He nodded in the sage way that sages nod and then made his point: Success in science is a rare thing and subsequently should never be taken lightly. It needs to be the little light that one keeps in a jar and looks at when things inevitably stall and others see you as ineffectual or, worse, irrelevant. He spent many years on the outside looking in due to what others viewed as inconsequential research. His work has since been deemed eminently worthy, prescient in many ways, but he stressed the importance of always having something to hold onto. Success for him became like knots in a rope, not only easing the climb, but also helping him to hang on when the climbing stopped. Success breeds hope and hope is enough to keep going. And often, not quitting is success in and of itself.

The part of the story that I’m generally unwilling to relate revolves around the year 2004. A lifetime of trying to be all things to all people came to an abrupt end and I immediately lost track of who I was or was supposed to be. The loss of one’s identity, both literally and figuratively, is nothing short of devastating and for a much longer time than is comfortable to remember, I spent the lion’s share of every day and night talking myself out of suicide. I lack the vocabulary necessary to do justice to how badly I wanted to end things. I’m alive almost exclusively because of an unwillingness to burden others with the emotional baggage of my self-inflicted exit, but certainly not due to any overt sense of self-preservation. The previous sentence is packed to the gills with subtle answers to all kinds of psychological questions, but the greatest answer that I took away from the experience was to the question of how anyone could possibly do such a thing. It’s because it’s easy; preferable to the alternative. It is in almost every way the less painful option.

Depression boils every moment down to the starkest of choices: Live or die. It’s like being submerged in darkness while the little light that denotes the onward progression of life outside shines so brightly that living is painful to even consider. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that choosing to live hurts. Life hurts. There’s nothing profound or groundbreaking there. When you get to the point where existence comes down to flipping a coin, it becomes fairly important to load the coin with something that makes the pain worthwhile. What I didn’t tell the head of the lab and probably never will, is that success for me begins and ends with wanting to wake up every morning and this has everything to do with being involved with something worthwhile.

Prior to this, I had never had anyone sit me down and demand that I acknowledge an achievement, though there had been sparks of this in the past. There was a non-commissioned officer at VMI who had taken great interest in helping an enlisted kid come there and succeed. He was the first person to salute me the day that I was commissioned and let me cry on his shoulder as he told me that I had exceeded his expectations, emotional because it was the first time in my life I’d heard such a thing; a commander thanking me and ordering me to take time off after returning from the desert in 2003; my graduate advisor a couple years ago telling me that she had seen students with more ability quit programs similar to that which I had just completed. These things should be fond memories instead of milestones. Success for me has always required someone else demanding that I acknowledge it.

In the subtle ways that all of our lives cross paths without our knowing, one man being unwilling to throw in the towel on his research a long time ago set the stage for his subsequent decision to allow an older graduate student with no background in biochemistry to give biomedical research a try. And now in a strange way we’re both finding vindication in previous refusals to give up. Something more profound has stuck with me in his appeal for self-recognition in this case and I can’t shake it no matter how hard I try. It’s as if this was always the thing that loaded the coin so that it fell and continues to fall on ‘Live’. Every day is a success.

Sir @ August 23, 2010

No Surprises

Whatnot Comments (8)

One of the things that makes me so endearing to dogs and the insane is the fact that I not only get the NY Times delivered to my home, but in a fit of quirky OCD, I feel the need to read pretty much everything in every paper. The front section (section A for the uninitiated) is generally full of so much bad news that by the time you get to the obituaries toward the back of that section, it’s like some sort of relief to read about people succumbing to the relative innocence of old age or a stroke. This past Saturday, however, relief came a few pages early in the form of a story about the capital of my home state of Ohio and its feeble attempt at acquiring a snappy slogan. The first option, ‘Discover Columbus’ was bad enough, but I nearly choked on my waffle when I saw that the other was ‘Surprise, It’s Columbus’. No exclamation point. No implied irony. No shame of any kind. They actually threw that out there for other people to see and read. And the picture accompanying the article included a ship that the city boasts as being the most accurate replica of the Santa Maria in existence.

Holy shit, Columbus.

Having grown up in the northwest part of the state, I can assure those of you who have been deprived of the charm of Ohio’s landscape that with one possible exception, there are precious few locations in the state that ’surprise’ you. That exception might be the way Cincinnati leaps into view as you round a bend going north on I-75 on the south side of the Ohio River, but that feeling might just be the result of one’s zeal to get out of Kentucky. In my little hamlet, it was possible to see the steeples of the surrounding churches that dominated each of the county’s towns, providing the moral sun around which people’s lives revolved. Climb into the hay loft of some barns and it was possible to see most of the individual ’suns’ that constituted the solar system of my part of the state. The landscape hides nothing; there are no secrets where I grew up.

So, aside from the inherent ridiculousness of a slogan declaring, ‘Boo! We’re the state capital!’, there’s also the topographical impossibility of such a thing. Driving from nearly every direction, you can pretty much see the city from miles away. Actually, the only part of the state whose populations might be able to get away with such things are in the southeast where hills begin to roll, possibly as a gift from West Virgina who felt sorry for its flat neighbor and agreed to lend us some topology. There are plenty of lovely little places hidden within the southeastern hills that might surprise a wary traveler, but even then, ‘Surprise, it’s Athens’ would probably be vetoed by the faculty of Ohio University purely on principle and, ‘Surprise, it’s Washington Court House’ is just too clunky to even consider.

Ohio needs its capital city to try a little harder than this a for slogan. The recent heartbreak for a state already with fate’s boot firmly on its neck (including the dark night of the soul initiated by the fiery demise of our polystyrene Lord and Savior) was the departure of Lebron James from Cleveland, which, seriously….Miami or a few more years in Cleveland? Duh, anyone? After eight years of carrying a franchise, a guy’s shoulder’s are going to be tired. And I have nothing against Cleveland, either. I’m a huge Browns fan because I’m loyal and full of self hate, but we’re talking about a decision between being near a large, warm body of water and another whose primary accomplishment is that it’s been over a quarter century since the last time it was ON FIRE. And the winters. When was the last time south beach experienced lake-effect snow or frigid soul-crushing wind?

So, in an effort to give back to a state that I’ve always loved to appreciate from somewhere else, I was considering submitting ‘Congratulations, It’s Not Toledo’ or ‘Columbus: Michigan Sucks’ as possible replacements. Or maybe the direct approach of, ‘Buckeyes Are Poisonous Nuts’.

P.S. Also in this paper was a quote that described Diego Maradona, the flamboyant and recently-ousted coach of Argentina’s national soccer team, as ‘a stone in the shoe of power’, because he refused to simply fold and agree to do whatever he was told. I love that imagery: A stone in the shoe of power; a fly in the ointment of oppression; a battle ax in the hands of a guy named Lou. All forces to be reckoned with.

Sir @ August 2, 2010

Decompression

Whatnot Comments (3)

I normally avoid shopping malls with a zeal unmatched by your garden variety zealot. Malls reek of debt and fashion, two things that leave me feeling annoyed and itchy. Nevertheless, I recently found myself with some time to kill and decided to murder it by heading to a place that I’ve mentioned previously as being the most opulent mall I’d ever seen by virtue of its having a valet service. I’m not sure how this happens, but as soon as you enter a mall with concierge desks, you immediately feel special in ways that you didn’t before walking through the front door. It’s a place where all of the ice cream tastes like Haagen Dazs (because it’s the only option) and there are displays featuring shoes that cost more than my mortgage payment; shoes that require the woman wearing them to sport a high degree of self-hate accompanying an even higher pain threshold. With the onset of the warm fuzzy that comes with being surrounded by beauty and ease came a resolution to do two things upon my becoming terrifyingly rich:

1. Dress in a 3-piece suit and mosey into a Crate & Barrel where, with a rolled up magazine in hand (probably Private Jet Weekly, Yacht Monthly, or Cavier Aficionado), I begin to slowly walk along the displays of glassware, casually knocking random pieces from the shelves while a store clerk keeps track of the damage. When asked why I’m doing this, I reply, ‘Because it’s my pleasure’, and continue onward.

2. After building myself an enormous kitchen with a house surrounding it, I will walk into a Williams & Sonoma, hand the nearest employee a note containing my address, and say, ‘Wrap up one of everything and send it here’, then walk out.

That’s about the extent of my wealthy ‘To Do’ list.*

In an effort to decompress following my and the dogs’ cross-country drive of death (I did most of the driving), I planned for my last stop to be at the alma mater in Lexington, VA. I’ve spent most of the past couple of days sitting in large, comfy chairs and typing gibberish like this. In the mornings, the dogs and I walk the woods that snake behind VMI and Washington & Lee, trails that I used to run nearly every day for three years, then to a coffee shop for ~4 hours of reading and caffeination. The stay has once again been everything I’d hoped it would be and never ceases to disappoint; my vacation from the ‘vacation’, as it were.

Now is likely the quietest the post and the town will be until this time next year and by virtue of this fact, I’ve been the lone alumnus staying in the building set aside for our use. The barracks are empty and the academic buildings are mostly dormant. The only activity that can be seen involves maintenance crews preparing everything for both the hustle and the bustle that will arrive shortly in the form of cadets, old and new. In about a week, a cadre of older cadets will show up to undergo their immersion into the world of becoming trainers/tormentors. Theirs is the job of preparing the new crop of fools ambitious youth for their journey into pain a transformative experience. The new kids will arrive for the charmingly termed Hell Week in the middle of August and the fun will begin anew.

Because the place is more or less deserted, I’ve felt comfortable unleashing the dogs onto the parade ground to run and tackle each other with reckless abandon. It’s a huge hunk of real estate and we’re all pretty spent after a couple of circuits, largely due to the heat and humidity that seems to both hover over and radiate upward from the ground. Virginia’s weather in August sits pretty high on the list of ‘Things That Oppress’. The humidity seems to spike and combine with the heat in ways reminiscent of Florida, but without the crazy people and retirees. The first payment for the price of admission to the relative luxury of the building in which I’m currently sitting required a lot of sweat. Every moment spent walking on the parade ground served as a reminder of how little I envy the poor bastards highly principled young men and women that will, three weeks hence, be wondering what the hell they’ve gotten themselves into. Endless hours marching back and forth learning what it means to do things as part of a group, sharing a common experience of discomfort, how much an M14 rifle weighs, understanding the difference between ‘right’ and ‘left’ in ways never before appreciated. Until I spent some quality time in the Middle East, I had never been as miserable as I was during the third week of August in 1994. And yet, if I could go back and do it all again, knowing what I know now, reliving the formation of friendships and bonds that remain the closest I’ve ever known or will ever know, wouldn’t I gladly throw myself back into the crucible?

God, no. I want to kick my own ass for even typing such a question out loud, rhetorical or not. Still, I would eagerly stand in front of a gaggle of very tired and miserable people, all of whom will look awful and feel worse, and tell them that it’s worth it. Only about half of them will finish, it’s true, but for those that do, the finish line will be all the sweeter. Then I’ll point at the alumni building and whisper, ‘The chairs. They’re awesome.’

* I might also hire a large man with digestive issues to take a dump on Glenn Beck’s driveway/porch/car every morning.

Sir @ July 29, 2010

Consigliere

Dogs, The Elders, Whatnot Comments (7)

In the tenth circle of hell that is Branson, Missouri, there exists any number of things that attack the senses and flush good taste down the toilet. Imagine a place that caters to retirement-aged folks with a taste for sparkly shirts festooned with eagles carrying American flags and musical shows sporting people pretending to be Elvis, Little Richard, and Brittany Spears. Now add heat and horrible traffic. Today on my way to Starbucks for an afternoon of hot internet action, I noticed that a new restaurant called The Rowdy Beaver had sprouted up from the concrete. There are few other places outside of Las Vegas where I can imagine the chamber of commerce saying, ‘Sure’, to such a name, although I’m fairly certain that the definitions of ‘rowdy’ and ‘beaver’ differ pretty significantly based on location.

Only the love of my grandmother could bring me back to this place. She and my grandfather moved here when it was still an idyllic little slice of mountainous heaven and watched from a distance as the place turned into the butt of endless jokes. For years now, it’s the been the first leg of my biannual ROAD TRIP OF FAMILIAL PENANCE, though time with grandma is anything but penance. This stop generally serves to soften the blow of those to follow. I called my grandmother a little over a week ago to discuss the current state of the weather and my traveling through it to see her. She reported that in an act of irony too delicious to imagine, the hand of God appeared to be trying to destroy large stretches of the bible belt, so I should probably put off the visit for a week or so. Sound advice. Then, me being me, my next thought was, ‘Of course, now something horrible will probably happen to her this week.’

Last Saturday night, I was sitting along the 3rd-base line watching the Durham Bulls lose to Charlotte when my phone rang with my mother’s report that grandma was in the hospital having had what the doctors were saying was a mild heart attack, pneumonia, sugar diabetes, gout, lazy eye, etc. ‘Of course she is’, I said. Then being forever skeptical of mom’s ability to keep bias at bay, I served up a battery of questions to clarify the butter that constitutes most of her doomsday proclamations. The doctors were using words like ‘possibility’ and ‘might’ve’ a lot, which means that nothing was written in stone except that grandma was demanding to be set free from the hospital, refusing to take the booklet of prescriptions that doctors throw at the elderly to cover their own asses, and was generally being herself. Having heard this, I morphed into the voice of reason, gave mom the ‘Shit happens’ speech, reminded her that 89-year olds sometimes have health issues, and that all would be well one way or the other. Then I hung up and finished my bratwurst.

I threw the dogs in the car Monday morning, drove 16 hours, and had grandma tell me the whole story in person. Imagine, if you will, a scale created to weigh the seriousness of the stories put forth by my mother and grandmother regarding what happened, re: Hospital Visit. My mother’s story, represented by ‘GAH!!!’, would be perfectly balanced by my grandmother’s ‘pfft’. In order to get the real story, I accompanied grandma to her ’second opinion’ doctor yesterday where I got to see and hear about what the blood work at the hospital showed, what the cardiologist actually saw, and what all of the ‘possibilities’ meant. I’ll openly admit right here what a huge bonus it is to understand what all of the biochemical hogwash means when a doctor starts throwing around medical blah blah. There’s a certain degree of ego-stroke action that happens when you ask a very specific question that makes the doctor look at you momentarily with that puppy-dog-head-tilt kind of thing before answering.

The bottom lines: Grandma had a mild heart attack. The blood work showed elevated levels of stuff that pointed to a number of possible causes/results. The doctors’ knee-jerk reactions were to prescribe drugs to cover all of the possibilities, which, had my grandmother taken all of them, quite possibly could’ve given her another heart attack. And their diagnosis of ’sugar diabetes’ was just fucking stupid. The extent of the second-opinion recommendation for drug swallowing was to take a baby aspirin once of day for the rest of her life. Grandma’s right in being skeptical of prescription drugs, which probably explains why she’s been the picture of health all her life. Still, I had to talk her into agreeing to take the baby aspirin. This weekend I get to explain to the rest of the immediate family exactly what happened. I’m not fond of playing the role of Dad to both the maternal members of my family.

End of story. No moral.

In other news, grandma lives on what was supposed to be a golf course, but ended up becoming hay fields surrounded by woods. After they mow for the hay in the summer, the fairways can be walked unencumbered by the feeling of having to slash your way through the Amazon. Here I can let the dogs run free and wild like the furry little animals that they are during our walks. From time to time, they’ll see a deer or a fox or some other wildlife bounding along and will give chase in blurs of speed that one might not expect from collies. It’s impressive. Last night, they both tore off into the woods in hot pursuit of a couple deer. Eli returned after a few minutes, but Sophie didn’t. I walked Eli back to the house, then returned to walk up and down the woodline for about an hour calling her name until finally giving up. I walked back to the house to find that she’d returned ~45 minutes earlier, leaving me to fret and sweat and curse and wallow in guilt oblivion. The gene for this appears to exist in all female mammals.

Bitch.

Sir @ July 22, 2010

Novelty

Research, Science, Whatnot Comments (7)

If you must know, I’ve been shut away in my basement working on a book titled Sodomy and the Lash: An Unauthorized History of the British Navy. It’s an epic story full of lies. And sodomy. I think there’s a market for it.

Actually, part of May and all of June were spent forcing my head to form sentences brimming with scientific whatnot in an effort to justify my evolution from ‘common graduate student slime’ (vulgaris discipulus virus) to ‘PhD candidate’ (posterus scientia grandus poobah). A day spent with your head in your hands trying to figure out the best way to format a single paragraph is enough to make anyone not want to use words and punctuation to form sentences any more than absolutely necessary. This actually makes a convenient excuse for extended absences from frivolous wordsmithery (ahem). At the end of the second year in my particular graduate program, a 20-page single-spaced monstrosity in the form of an NIH grant outlining one’s proposed research for the next ~3 years is required. It needs to be well-written, well-researched, novel in some way (i.e. presenting the field with something new and beneficial), and able to be defended in front of people generally unwelcoming of scientific half-assery. Novelty is the trick. Much of it requires faith that you can actually come up with something worthy, but more important, that you can explain it’s worth in such a way that will cause science pukes to rub their chins and nod with appreciation. The epiphany for my proposal arrived in Wenatchee, of all places.

It could’ve been the rarified air of that little slice of the Pacific Northwest or perhaps that my host’s house was built atop an indian burial ground. It may have even been a byproduct of having recently snorted in lungfulls of Canadian air while fouling my liver with booze and poutine. Whatever the reason, it was there with my brain officially and purposefully in neutral that I found myself reading a few papers from a couple scientific journals on a whim, which led me to look at one or two other things a little more closely, when BOOM WENT THE DYNAMITE and I realized that I’d stumbled onto my ‘novel’, as it were. Or maybe ’short story’ is a more accurate description. In any case, I presented the outline of the idea to my committee a few days later and they gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up. I owed my success to Canadian beer and possible indian poltergeists and will be sure to acknowledge them accordingly in future published work.

Thus was the deliciousness of the irony of tripping over something profound while not really looking. I think it nicely illustrates how the process works, in that there really is no process. There’s something else, though, that sort of caught my mind’s eye along the way. Throw scientific research into a pot and boil it long enough and what’s left will be fiction. An effective research proposal is a narrative effort wherein the writer tells a story based on established knowledge. The goal is to convince people that your fiction is supported well-enough by non-fiction such that your idea may itself, after a great deal of effort, eventually qualify as being worthy of non-fiction status. Such a qualification requires that your story be verifiable, mathematically, biologically, biochemically, etc. And therein lies the primary difference between science and religion, at least in the eyes of the more dogmatically inclined on either side. Verification of religious faith requires death, which has been proven to be an effective inhibitor of one’s ability to continue making science happen. This logic annoys the more hardcore science types, who in some ways are just as annoying as creationists, the yin to their atheistic yang, if you will. In the event that there is an afterlife and assuming that neither fire nor brimstone is involved, I feel certain that upon arrival, members of both factions will still find reasons to be disappointed.

< / digression >

And so it came to pass last week that I was able to successfully defend my novelty in front of serious people who then bestowed upon me the pleasure of their company for the next few years. The time will be spent trying to turn fiction into non-fiction in the slow and tedious way that’s required of such an effort. The payoff could be pretty profound. There may be a way to tweak something just enough to make something else very bad stop happening. It doesn’t require a major tweak, either. At first it seemed too simple, then too obvious, then later after heaping on some evidence, it acquired a clarity that was a little astonishing. Wondering how such a thing could’ve been missed by others, I can only surmise that I’m still naïve enough to the current vocation that I’m not blinded by expectations of what I should and shouldn’t see. I know just enough to be dangerous and and haven’t been soiled by academia’s occasional insistence on coloring within the lines.

And I’m fully aware of the long and distinguished history of minor tweaks promising profound results only to be dashed upon the fickle rocks of human biology. What works in a lab may not work in Steve. And yet, novelty is welcome because it has potential. There currently are no therapies for the diseases to which my short story is related, so the status quo is unacceptable. Not only could this work, it might work very well. This realization led to chins being rubbed vigorously. People smiling. Hands being shaken. Three cheers for the imagination.

Sir @ July 14, 2010

Chicken Tikka Masala

Food Porn, Whatnot Comments (6)

How can something that looks like diarrhea taste and smell so divine? I’m sure that I’m neither the first nor the last person to question Indian food thusly. Indian food is amazing for many reasons (camouflage notwithstanding), not least of which is the fact that it singlehandedly makes eating in Britain both more interesting and less soul crushing. The ubiquitous ‘curry’ over there is almost always good, no matter where you get it. My indoctrination to the world of tikka masala (reportedly the most popular dish in Britain according to the Borg-like hive-mind that is Wikipedia) was actually take-out from a Tesco. I got it home, glopped some onto the rice, and KERPOW MOTHERFUCKER, I was gobsmacked with a taste explosion. I went and found a few recipes and practiced until I finally found The Way.

So, what is it about this stuff that so captivates? Danger. Mystery. Pain. Would you like to hear a story? Let me tell you a story.

I was in England. It was lunch time. Four of us went to this Indian restaurant in the nearby town. Great place. Small. One of our group was a cajun dude who sort of fit the stereotype of cajun dudes, but without the outrageous accent and the giant gut. So, I guess he didn’t really fit the stereotype, but whatever, it’s my story and I’m too tired to edit. Anyhow, this dude has a chip on his shoulder about hot food. He likes to brag about what he can endure in the heat/pain department where the mouth/stomach/ass highways intersect. It’s his first time at this place and he asks the waiter for the hottest thing on the menu. The waiter looks worried. He gets the manager, who comes out and verifies the age and cockiness of the customer. The food arrives. We watch. The waiter watches. The staff watches. He takes bite after bite, then stops, puts his face in his hands, and sits quietly for awhile. Then comes the sweating. He takes another bite. Shakes his head. Puts face back in hands. Sweats. Repeat. He can’t talk, but mutters something about ‘it’ hurting. For the next two days, he engages in Operation WEEPING PORCELAIN in every bathroom that he visits. FAIL.

The moral: Indian food doesn’t care who you are. It can deliver pain and you will pay for postage and handling. Respect it.

As far as preparation goes, there are hard roads and easy roads to the world of curry. The hard roads involve a lot of spice finding and crushing and mixing and boiling things for days and praying to cows. The easy roads involve just buying a spice called garam masala and using Greek yogurt for the marinate. No bovine worship necessary. Tikka masala is the tame curry and a remarkably unoriginal name for a dish (translation: Chunks in sauce), but gosh, is it good. And a little orange. Or reddish. Whatever.

Marinate
1 c. Greek yogurt (this is the more solid (though economically insolvent) stuff that sits next to the rows and rows of goopy yogurt)
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp red pepper
2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1.5 lbs boneless chicken breasts

Cut the chicken into chunks (tikka!). Mix up the rest of the ingredients in a big bowl. Fold the chicken into the goo, combine well, cover with saran wrap, and throw the monstrosity into the fridge, leaving it overnight (or at least for a few hours).

Sauce (masala!)
1 tbsp unsalted butter
2 cloves garlic
2 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp garam masala
8 oz tomato sauce
1 c whipping cream

Saute the garlic in the butter, stir in the spices, then add the tomato sauce and simmer for ~15 minutes. Stir in the cream and allow the sauce to thicken, stirring frequently. Stir stir stir. Remember to stir the stuff as you’re stirring it. TIP: If you want a little more ‘kick’ in your tikka, so to speak, increase the cumin quotient everywhere and use cayenne pepper for the red pepper.

Dump the chicken in a pan and cook it up real good like. Because it’s covered in goo, the cooking will take a bit longer and it might be a bit difficult to tell when it’s completely cooked, so here’s the trick: When all the moisture in the pan is gone and nothing remains but the dull sizzle of cooked chicken, you’re done. It sounds obvious, but….well, there was this one time….yeah. Just trust me on this.

Dump the fully-cooked and salmonella-free chicken into the sauce (MASALA!) and let it all simmer for a little bit. Cook up some rice. Spoon some of your creation (TIKKA! MASALA!) onto the rice and snort in a lungful of non-poop smelling exotic cuisine. ‘Look!’, you can cry to anyone or no one at all. ‘I’m international!’

And so you are.

Sir @ June 10, 2010