Chupaqueso.com

Chalain and I joke about low-carb dieting all the time. See, we know it works for us, but both of us “fall off the wagon” from time to time.

I’m not sure of the origin of the “on the wagon” metaphor, but it’s very visual for us. See, when I stop low-carbing it’s usually because of stress, and I begin to crave comfort foods. That means chocolate, french toast, and big bowls of fried noodles. And from there things usually progress into a diet where I’m living off of “spaghetti toast” (toast with marinara sauce) and chocolate milk.

And Chalain and I describe it not as “falling off the wagon” but as “leaping from the wagon, stripping naked, and running off into the woods to play with the faerie folk.”

Low-carb dieting, for me anyway, is a discipline that helps me break my addiction to dancing naked with elfkin.

For the last three weeks I’ve been stressed, and I’ve made it further and further into the woods. The brownies and I had quite the mosh pit last week, and Saturday I realized that I was back up to needing two naps per day, and still not having any energy. So Sandra and I agreed it was time to get back on the wagon.

Firing up the low-carb diet is not easy, because I have two days of comfort food cravings. This can be offset with medication (mostly caffeine, ibuprofen, and chromium) and exercise, but the side-effect is 18 hours of being wiped out in weird ways. Chalain and I describe THAT not as “getting back on the wagon” but as “getting on the wagon by standing in front of it, letting it hit you, and then getting caught up in one of the wheels.”

So… today I’m back under the wagon. The theme-song? “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round.”

For me, the perfect skillet is determined by three things:

1) non-stick surface.
2) Nine-inch diameter.
3) A lid that fits.

This is because when I’m not low-carbing, my favorite breakfast in the world is two basted eggs with two pieces of toast, buttered, for dipping in the yolks. Other sides may accompany it — orange juice, grits, and bacon complete the “hearty” variation — but basted eggs and toast are the key elements.

With the impending Teflocalypse (Teflogeddon? Teflognarok? Find me a word that says “the end of the world if the world depends on Teflon”) I need to find a skillet that will work as well as any one of the four 9-inch teflon pans I’ve had over the last sesquidecade.

See, a basted egg BEGINS just like a fried egg — you take a yolk-intact egg and drop it gently into a hot pan, preferably with some butter already sizzling in there. (Note: in terms of timing, this is also the point at which the plunger on the toaster must be depressed). The egg is allowed to fry for a moment, and then the steam-basting begins.

You take the lid for the pan, put about 2 tbsp of water in the lid, and then dump the water in next to the egg. Now pop the lid on and wait for the toast to come up.

Yes, that’s how I time it. So very scientific, I know. It’s more of a performance art.

Anyway, when the toast is done, the egg is done (assuming you like your toast done the way I like mine done, and your toaster works like mine does, and you have the heat set right… so many variables, so many assumed values) and you put both of them on your plate.

If, that is, you can get the egg off the pan. See, with a good teflon pan, the boiling water will lift the egg from the surface, and the whole mess slides right out, no trouble. With stainless steel it just plain WON’T WORK.

The question — will it work with cast iron? I’m not about to go buy a 9″ cast iron skillet to TEST with, because I’m short the disposable income. I hope it works, though, because within five years both of my 9″ skillets are going to be due for replacement, and by then the Fourth Angel will be Brandishing His Spatula and Cleansing the Griddle of the World with Fire and With Olive Oil. Or something like that.

The Chocolate Chupaqueso had its origins at Linucon 2.0 in Austin, Texas. Jay Maynard and I were running the Chupaqueso panel in the Con Suite, and Steve Jackson was one of the notables present.

A little back-story: Steve Jackson is one of the biggest names in tabletop games. Steve Jackson Games continues to produce new stuff, and they handle the merchandising for Schlock Mercenary. I was down in Austin a day before the convention in order to meet with Steve, and that Thursday evening I got to play-test the new Illuminati expansion deck.

To make a long story short, during the course of game play I ended up creating a new card for the game — one that mirrored the “Microstuff” card, and paid homage to Open Source computing. It was a real thrill for me to watch Steve noodle around on the computer looking for cards he could remove from the deck to make room for mine.

Well, fast-forward two days to the chupaqueso panel… somebody (I don’t recall who) asked what would happen if we used Cheez-whiz as a filling. Jay and I both figured the answer was “neither of us will eat it,” but this gal ran out and grabbed a can of cheez-whiz from somewhere, and we made a Cheez-Whiz Chupaqueso. It was as nasty as I expected it to be.

But the door had been opened, and anywhere there’s an open door, folks like Steve Jackson won’t just walk through and look around — they’ll widen the door frame. Steve located a bag of chocolate chips, and suggested that we try a chocolate chupaqueso.

Now before you cry “foul,” bear in mind that chocolate fondue often has cheese for dipping. Chocolate and cheese have a long history together. They’re not quite as tight as wine and cheese, or cheese and crackers, but they’ve been flirting with one another for years, and I’m led to understand that there have been trysts enough to make both the crackers and the wine quite jealous.

So we made one. Cheddar shell, as usual, and then a handful of chocolate chips.

Reactions were varied. They varied between “this is sticky” and “make another one.” Oh, and there were a couple of 14-year-old girls in the con suite who really did NOT need more sugar, and who thought the chocolate chupaqueso was the best thing going. This is probably because their hyper-thin, hyperactive bodies reacted positively to the presence of actual protein molecules, and therefore subconsciously the girls preferred the chocolate chupaqueso to straight chocolate chips.

Anyway, I figured that since Steve was including “Open Gnoonix” in his Illuminati deck, it was only right that I include the Chocolate Chupaqueso in my blog. It’s probably a bigger honor to design a card for a Steve Jackson Game than to design a snack for this site, but look at it this way — you folks can try out Steve’s snack today (depending on what you already have in your kitchen) while if you want to try out my Illuminati card you have to wait until it ships.

I was enamored once. I had a crush. I thought, like most men with crushes, that She Was The One. I thought that come whatever, We Two would grow old together, aging gracefully, and sharing a love that endures.

She was the perfect cooking surface. Ah, my sweet Teflon. I brought home the bacon, and she was the pan I fried it up in. The hotcakes like which some things went always went best on Teflon’s smooth skin.

Her smooth skin… so amazing to the touch. It was as if it wasn’t even THERE it was so soft. And when Chupaqueso was but a twinkle in my eye, she was there, ready to bear it through the heat, the turning, the twisting… Teflon bore my child, and I thought we two were forever.

But it couldn’t last. I tried to treat her with care, I was as tender as a man can be, never abrasive, and never EVER using metal utensils. For a while it seemed like we WOULD see forever, but then her skin began to discolor, and my sweet Teflon started to grab things.

I did what I could. I worked around her rough edges, forgiving her the occasional stuck spot. But it only got worse. Her rough edges only got rougher, and Teflon’s smooth skin gave way to bare metal a bit at a time. And one day I realized the two of us were finished. I could no longer trust her to help me with meals, because she just wouldn’t let go of them. She had changed, and what she had become I could no longer abide atop my stove.

I thought about taking a younger bride into my kitchen, one whose Teflon skin was still supple, but the infatuation was gone. After all, I knew that no matter how kindly I treat her, any Teflon I bring home will eventually turn on me, ruining meals and making cleanup a nightmare. Oh, it might be years before that happened, but having seen the past I felt I could see the future, and it held only heartbreak, and stuff stuck to the pan.

Then I met her… Cast Iron. She seemed so ungainly at first. She wasn’t just rough around the edges — she was ALL rough edges, and bare metal ones at that. But she gave me this look, and she promised me that she could do everything teflon could, and that she really COULD do it forever… if only I’d spend a little time at the beginning of our relationship learning to use oil.

I was skeptical, but I got the oil, and my Cast Iron sweetheart and I worked on those rough edges. Two hours and three hundred degrees later I saw that her skin glistened, darkly daring me to TRY to stick something to it. So I did, and it didn’t, and we did it again and again and again. French toast, pancakes, omelettes, and of course fried cheese… she was untiring, and I had a big appetite.

I have a new love. She may look like she’s still a little rough around the edges, but OH! can she ever cook. She’s not as glamorous as Teflon, but she’s beautiful in her own way. And I can see already that she’ll grow more beautiful with time. The first time we made chupaquesos together, it was as if we’d been doing it for years. And the promise of Cast Iron is that we WILL be doing it for years. If I treat her well, breaking out the oil from time to time, and never throwing her in the dishwasher or leaving her outside in the rain, she’ll easily outlive me.

Okay, I’ll admit that it’s a little creepy thinking of my new love, my Cast Iron griddle, cooking with another man. But that’s decades away. When the time comes, I’ll just have to make sure that I find her a man who likes chupaquesos, and who knows how to use the oil.

(Cross-posted and back-dated from schlockmercenary.com)

At almost the precise moment my “Cheeeeese” blog entry aired, a Schlocker emailed me with what sounded like an anecdotal or urban-legend-esque tale. Supposedly there was this young woman who saw a block of queso blanco on a neighbor’s table, decided it was uncut cocaine, and hired a hit man to kill everyone in the house so she could steal the coke and resell it.

To her misfortune (and to the good fortune of everyone in the home) the hit man she hired was an undercover police officer. And the cops searched the house, having reasonable cause, and determined that the queso blanco was not, in fact, cocaine.

A little googling pulled up the original article. Here it is, from the Washington Post. The article aired on December 6th (here at Schlock Mercenary we’re less than 10 days behind the rest of the journalistic world) and at that time Jessica Sandy Booth remained in jail, with bond set at a cool million dollars, on four charges of attempted murder and four counts of soliciting murder.

All over a block of queso blanco. I think I’ll go fry some right now, and get my buzz on.

(EDIT: The Post article is gone… here’s another article instead.)