Actually...

...last night's drunk chef-fery RULED, even if I were sober. I switched over from my usual beer or whiskey to gin and tonics last night, since my favorite local place doesn't have well whiskey, and well drinks during happy hour (until 9!!) are $3. I think I'm going to stick with G&Ts for a while, since I was drunk, yet had plenty of mental clarity when I got home - enough to whip up this awesome deliciousness. It's a two-parter, though if you're lazy (and rich) there's a shortcut. I give you: Fried Polenta!

This is why there are so many casualties in Iraq. If you would only listen to me...

First, you're going to make this with dinner one night, and you're pretty much guaranteed lots of leftovers.

Regular Polenta

Oven-safe saucepan or cassoulet...failing that, reg. saucepan and casserole dish

1 cup course cornmeal
*Goya sells a big ol' bag for like 69 cents. I didn't have enough left over, and filled in the blanks with fine cornmeal. It just requires you to add it more slowly, and you'll probably get some lumps, but it will still come out great. However, course is still strongly recommended.
1 quart water
olive oil, a glug's worth
3 tablespoons butter
five tons parmesan cheese - for real, add like a 1/4 cup. It's great. Pref. fresh.
a bay leaf, only if you have one
salt and fresh cracked pepper

Preheat oven to 350.

Add salt to the water and put in pan on high heat. Boil the water, add that glug of olive oil and optional bay leaf. Slowly stir in cornmeal to avoid getting lumpy. Cover and put it in the oven. Stir every 10 minutes. Do this for 45 minutes. When finished, stir in butter, cheese and pepper. Sooo deliiiiiisshh

Act 2: Fried Polenta
amounts depend on how much is leftover

The much less rewarding and delicious shortcut for the lazy/rich is to by the pre-made polenta from the health food store, which comes in a tube, like you'd find the Jimmy Dean ground sausage in. Slice it up and fry it, you loser.

Leftover refrigerated polenta
egg, beaten (one should almost definitely do you regardless)
butter (yum) or olive oil (yawn), enough for frying

Gently remove the polenta from whatever container it was in, and try to keep it that shape. Cut into thick strips, or nuggets if that's the best you can manage. Dip in egg, cover in flour. Heat the oil in a pan, and fry until lightly browned. Remove to towel, and inhale while listening to silly disco music.

Public Service Announcement from the US Commission for the Protection of Drunk Americans

"Oh, Hi! Hello there. I'm Josh Baseball. And I'm here to warn you against some bad ideas after having some drinks. Now, I only drink Kool-Aid, but since my mother has a couple - bottles, that is! - a night, and a couple extra when I'm bad, I know that you need to use good judgment.

Stealing is wrong, except for bases!! And being drunk doesn't make it okay! So remember, even though you don't really want that bottle of malt vinegar, don't throw it in your purse. Especially if it's your favorite purse. Because that's what dummies do!"



"Have a super day, and remember, hit it out of the park with me, and don't do bad drunk decisions!"

FonDON'T

This is a man stuck in a vat of chocolate. Also a "fondon't".

Fondon't

Take all your easter candy out of the freezer, except for the Curious George chocolate monkey, because you're drunk and forgot it's there. Melt it in a pan, or if you're fancy, the Lil' Dipper sauce warmer that came with your Crock Pot, which is also insane because you plug it in, which you can do in bed. Dip in chunks of a gross apple you got at the gym and some whole wheat sandwich bread. Force your partner to remove dishes to the kitchen when finished. Promptly fall asleep before he returns.

Drunk Classix™: COLLEGE

So, my first apartment during college and my first experiences cooking regularly for myself also coincided with my first years being of legal drinking age. I had not yet really learned when to say when. Consequently, I would stumble home from McCormick's aka McDrunk's at 2am and according to evidence found later, upon my arrival at home it was time to stuff my face. Hence, I bring you the drunk omelet, something I now find even the thought of completely disgusting.

I was a vegetarian then, and am one now, but in between I became vegan, and although I now eat delicious cheese again, eggs in any straight-up, non-hidden-baked-into-some-sweet-treat-format are as gross to me again as they were when I was a wee lass. In fact I'm not sure I ever really was very cool with them, maybe I could only eat them while drunk.

I can't tell you now exactly how I made lo those many drunken omelets, because I don't really remember. I do know they involved eggs, milk, cheeses for sure (triple animal-prod threat!), then possibly some peppers. I also liked to throw some salsa in there for the purpose of Mexcellence.

Consume in .05 seconds while watching Sanford and Son or similar, then probably scrounge around for additional snackage and settle on gnawing on the block of cheese. Repeat every time drunk until several years after graduation.

Toast (with plastic!)

My kitchen is less than 20 square feet. Cooking is kept to a minimum. While intoxicated, impaired judgment, and a heightened sense of paranoia/germophobia fueled by visible roach bait stations at local eateries, fuel my foolish decision. Let's cook! I give you Toast (with plastic!).

Forgoing buying any actual heat-resistant utensils or a toaster for my new apartment (4 months old) I set out to toast bread in a frying pan.

1. Grab a slice of bread from the fridge, and a plate (You gotta find storage where you can in the 10002!)
2. Close the fridge door. If you are in an extraordinarily small space like myself, you would have closed the refrigerator door on your calf. Tight space is not easily navigable when judgment is impaired.
3. While shimmying out of door path, grab that Soy Garden you left in there to put on the toast! (Any spread to your liking will do.)
4. Place the tub of Soy Garden over the area of the stove that remains a constant 115 degrees as a result of curiously hot pilot lights.
5. Grab the frying pan from the oven. (Once again, as noted in step one, find storage where you can. On the upside, the pan is already pretty hot from those dynamo pilot lights!)
6. Turn the burner on and step away from the stove! You're a little drunk. Safety first!
7. Plop a slice or two of bread in the pan.
8. Wake neighbors by wrestling your step stool out of the bedroom closet and dragging/dropping it all the way to the kitchen. Why? Well, to remove the batteries from the blaring smoke detector that is beyond your reach of course! Your toast should now be enveloped in a black cloud of smoke.

(If things get ugly, stop, drop, and roll to the nearest exit.)

- Here comes the tricky part, put your sober pants on! -

9. In lieu of a spatula, or any heat-resistant utensils, carefully pierce the surface of the burning toast with a plastic fork.
10. At this point, you can remove the lid from your spread of choice to see if the pilot light and peripheral heat have sufficiently melted the surface into a pool of scrumptiousness.
11. Look at your bread! Whilst taken with your spread, you have prodded too far with the fork and there is some, as promised, residual fork plastic in your bread.
12. Quickly turn (The bread, not yourself. You'll set your hair on fire, you scamp!)
13. Pour some spread on there about now. It's gooey. Yummers.
14. Remove the delightful mess from the pan promptly (Use the handle of the fork as the actual prongs are now missing. A chopstick will work well too, if used in conjunction with a pan tilt. Take head, however. This could be dangerous after a few too many, so try to keep your hands away from the hot stuff at all times, if at all possible.)
15. If you're me. You would now sprinkle your toast and plate with large crystal sea salt.
16. Crack open a Diet Coke and take a swig of Pedialyte (This is my preferred oral electrolyte maintenance solution to avoid all symptoms tomorrow of heavy drinking done tonight.)
17. Viola! Toast (with plastic!)

New Jersey Bread

Preparation: Decent dose of weed applied via vaporizer
one blunt butterknife

Ingredients:

Peanut Butter, natural- 1 1/2 tbsp
Whole-Wheat Bread - 1 slice

Apply peanut butter to bread with butterknife, nearly destroying it with each stroke. Curse the fact that you had to go to Whole Foods and buy natural peanut butter for like $50 when you could have had Skippy, Food of the Gods, for $2 from the bodega across the street. Then laugh to yourself about an old game show you saw. Then cut the bread like you thought you had when you were a kid, which is to say nothing like you had when you were a kid:



...vaguely looking like the state of New Jersey.



Serve with your boyfriend's roommate's Doritos and another two hits from the vaporizer. Serves two.