A Foodie Fairytale

Dilly Dan was a pickle man, selling his gherkins and garlics on the corner of 1st avenue and 12th street. His cart was in the shape of a dill and he wore a uniform of all green, down to his socks and shoes. Dan lived for pickles. He ate them at every meal, canned them, sold them and slept on a green pillow.

All was green and briny in Dan’s world until the day a new food cart opened for business across the street.

Funnel Fran was a funnel cake girl, a fourth generation food cart vendor. Her great grandfather Penny Candy Stan the Cheap Candy Man opened a cart on 4th avenue in 1932 selling licorice, bubble gum and ribbon candy. Fran’s grandfather Corndog Bob operated his cart throughout Central Park. He passed the cart onto his son, Fran’s dad, who transformed into Apple Pie Peter whose pies were known all over the five boroughs.

Funnel Fran opened her cart across the street from Dilly Dan on a warm July morning. It only took until the afternoon for Funnel Fran to be out of ingredients. The local people were crazy for her cakes. Meanwhile, Dan had only sold one pickle, a Texas Dill to a small child who took a bite and dropped it down the storm drain.

That evening Dilly Dan concocted a plan to get his business back from Funnel Fran. Dilly Dan was a big fan of plans as well as cheese in a can, spray tans and ’64 Chevy oil pans. When Dan made his way to 1st avenue the next morning he was sans cans, tans or pans. In his mind he carried only his plan. And in his arms he carried a 5 gallon drum of pickle brine.

He found Fran hard at work inside her cart. She had four plastic containers each filled with her famous funnel cake batter. Dan needed to distract his rival so he set her cart on fire. While Fran sprayed the flames with an extinguisher, Dan snuck into the cart to pour his pickle brine into the funnel cake batter. Dan stirred the juice into the batter until you couldn’t tell it was there.

Dilly Dan snuck away to watch from the shadows as Fran’s business was ruined when she sold funnel cakes that tasted like pickles. However, to Dan’s astonishment, people loved them. Fran couldn’t make them fast enough. The line at her cart stretched across the road, blocking traffic. Drivers abandoned their cars to purchase a Funnel Fran funnel cake.

Dan got in line himself and purchased one of Fran’s confections. As he ate it he fell into a state of bliss he didn’t know existed. The combination of the sweetness of the sugar, the thickness of the dough and the tartness of the pickle juice made for a flavor that outshone pork rinds, fried Oreos and pheasant broiled in a white wine reduction and covered in mango hollandaise sauce.

Dan looked at Fran with her frizzy blond hair, crooked smile and giant, mannish hands and realized he was falling in love. As he ate his funnel cake he envisioned the two of them working side by side in their carts selling pickles, cakes, pickle flavored cakes, cake flavored pickles, and assorted souvenir hats, shirts, bumper stickers, iPad cases, nasal inhalers, lunch meats, lemon reamers, cutlery, hair clips, antiperspirant, window decals, combustion engines, flower vases, front end loaders, breakfast cereal, balloons, alpacas, finely crafted furniture, ceramic mugs, notebooks, pocket watches and sunglasses. Lots of sunglasses.

Dilly Dan wandered the streets until the end of the day. When Fran finally put out her closed sign, Dan approached the exhausted confectioner. He introduced himself as Dilly Dan the pickle man. Fran smiled shyly.

“I’ve seen you with your cart,” she said.

Dan smiled back and told her how much he loved her funnel cake. Fran thanked him but explained she didn’t even know how they got that flavor.

“I’d love to sell more,” she said, “but I don’t know how I did it.”

“I can help you with that,” Dan told Fran. “You could say it was my recipe.”

Dan explained how that morning he had been angry with Fran for taking his business. Using animated hand motions he described his love of plans, cans and tans and how he executed his plan at 8 a.m. by setting her cart on fire then sneaking in and pouring pickle juice in the batter. Dan continued his story and was at the point of the souvenir combustion engines when Fran punched him in the face. Repeatedly.

Dilly Dan was a pickle man until he lost all his teeth and his eyes swelled shut and that cut on the bridge of his nose wouldn’t stop bleeding and his ear drum perforated and his brain swelled inside his skull . . .

Beefchickporken

I’m coming to you live from my workplace cafeteria where I was intending to heat up my lunch of a container I found at the back of my refrigerator containing what I believe to be meat of some kind. However, the room is full today. There is a 3 deep line at both microwaves. On the left someone is cooking a pheasant they hit with their Toyota Tundra on the way in this morning complete with a remoulade made from toilet water and bodily fluids. And on the right a hazmat team is cleaning up an explosion of the office cook’s homemade chicken corn and yellow cake uranium soup.

Next to the microwaves Tall Dave and Short Dave are making a fresh pot of coffee. It’s a blend Dave bought on a trip to an African country that has since changed its name six times. Dave refers to it as “Dave’s Midnight Special”. The rest of the office calls it “That Shitty Coffee that Gives Everyone Diarrhea”. Dave drank some of Dave’s coffee and loved it so now Dave and Dave are close friends. When Dave drinks a cup it makes Dave happy which makes Dave feel good that he could be such joy into Dave’s life. Aaaaaaaand . . . there’s the smell. Wow.

There is also a clean-up going on in fridge number 3. Apparently Marta left a piece of her grandmother’s tree bark pie in a plastic container since last Arbor Day. The container has melted, merging with the wire metal rack of the fridge into emerging limbs. The pie inside decomposed until the cellular structure evolved into a sentient being. Three stout men are trying to remove it from the fridge but the beast is holding on, demanding to speak to a representative from the American consulate.

The hazmat team has finished and the pheasant smells like rotting plague-flesh. A fight has broken out for use of the microwaves now between a testing team who wants to heat up slices of watermelon and pepper jack cheese pizza and an ex-marine with an MRE from the Spanish-American war.

It doesn’t look like I’ll be eating anytime soon and I was really looking forward to my block of beefchickporken.

Bodily Functions

I’ve been eating healthier the past few months, a lot more fruit and vegetables. My body has noticed and is none too happy. When I woke up a few days ago I found this note duct taped to my forehead:

Dear Traitor,

What the hell? We, your body parts, have noticed some changes recently that we were not consulted on. The pancreas has outlined our complaints which we will discuss one at a time.

What happened to the pizza? Pizza, of all flavors and varieties from Roma’s Pizzeria to generic store $.99 cardboard-and-ketchup, has been a staple of our diet for decades. Now it can go 7 or even up to 10 days without a single slice. This is unacceptable. We demand that pizza be brought back as a 3-time-a-week food pyramid building block of our diet. The cheese alone was holding the body together like a sturdy mortar. Now there’s too much room in the veins. The blood is sloshing all over the place. It’s a complete mess.

Where are the chocolate chip cookies? Oh sure, sometimes on the weekend when you reward yourself we get to delight in the sugary goodness of the most amazing food ever invented. But what about the rest of the week? We used to feel the jittery high of cookies several times a week. Sometimes every day! We need that feeling back man! The heart is constantly sending search parties out for any milligram of sugar. When he doesn’t get it, he gets angry and abusive to the other organs. How many times do the lungs have to be slapped? How often does the liver have to be told it’s worthless and should just pack a bag to move to Montana? When does it stop?

Two words: Coke and Pepsi Look, we understand that drinking Coke and Pepsi is the equivalent of slurping battery acid through a crazy straw but you made that choice for years. Day after day we absorbed the chemical cocktail known as cola and did we complain? Ok, the kidneys sent a stone through every few years for a while which could be viewed as a complaint. Sure, the heart sometimes thought it was the drummer of a thrash metal band. But for the most part we went along. Now you cut down your consumption to just a day on the weekend? What are we supposed to do? We need the stuff man! Where’s out shit, our stash, fix, medicine, juice, liquid happiness, black gold, Atlanta buzz water, Grandpappy’s magic elixir, that which is not for mortal man, heaven in a plastic bottle, the red can of freedom, the river that makes you shiver, high fructose nirvana!

These are our top 3 concerns, but there are others. Green beans? Green beans? That’s what we’re eating for lunch now? And celery? It’s 90% water and has no flavor. Why bother? Drink a glass of water and eat a cookie. And what is with the walking? Twice a day; 4, sometimes 5 miles total? You have a perfectly good car you could drive to any destination. You had better take our complaints seriously or we’re outta here. We haven’t determined the logistics of leaving yet, but we will.

Sincerely,

Your Body