But The Chef Told Me To
I’m not normally this spontaneous. Well, except for that blazing yellow nail polish I borrowed from my friend Alice. As soon as she showed it to me I had to cover my nails in its shocking beauty.
On a slightly brisk, yet sunny lunch hour, while eating a chicken ceasar wrap from Au Bon Pain (my fav ceasar wrap!), I caught up on the WaPo food section and read David Hagedorn’s advice for a Valentine meal. I’ve dined with David. He’s funny as shit. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t pisted off by this sentence, disclaimer or not:
Call me sexist if you will, but there are plenty of guys out there who somehow don’t think a meal is complete, let alone special, unless there’s meat in it somewhere.
Anyway, I got over that and finished reading his article plus the accompanying recipes. And there it was. A direct product recommendation from a former restaurant chef.
Now, did I really need a Progressive International Multi-Slicer. No. But could I find use for its french fry slicer function? Yes.
Right after work I went to the local True Value (as directed in the article) and picked up the $12.99 expert-endorsed equipment.
My first usage did not, however, include submerging a spud in oil. I sliced a sweet potato using the “thin” setting and made this totally imperfect concoction with a roux and then a beaten egg, baked in the oven for too long. I’ll have to figure that one out before I completely report back.
But the device – I’m torn. Sure, I could never cut a potato in uniformly thin slices. But it was also a pain in my ass to push the hard vegetable through a slicer. And that weird hard guard thing. It sucked. It’s a piece of plastic with points sticking out the bottom to hold the to-be-sliced item in place instead of using one’s hand. With almost every stroke I readjusted the guard/holder thing. Annoying, but manageable.
Maybe I should have made french fries.
How was his statement offensive to women? …to vegetarians, maybe, but it wasn’t sexist – it hardly made sense.
Anyway, speaking of being offensive, there’s no “t” in pissed.
@Tim I think that statement is especially offensive to vegetarian men and it promotes gender normativity, which cements sex-based stereotypes and represses freedom of food expression.
it’s generalizing how men eat, reinforcing the paradigm that meat eating is macho.
according to the ES style guide, pisted does in fact have a “t”
The phrase “there are plenty of guys out there who somehow don’t think a meal is complete, let alone special, unless there’s meat in it somewhere” is indeed true (as evidenced by say, certain people having to cook second, meaty dinners for their bfs).
But to be fair, there are also plenty of women who feel the same way. David should have said…”there are plenty of guys (and gals) out there who somehow don’t think a meal is complete, let alone special, unless there’s meat in it somewhere.” A fondness for dining on flesh is not a gender-designated condition. As I’m sure our currently starving commenter Yvo will attest.