It seemed like a good idea at the time.

My neighbor Kim Hoffart and I spread our beach towels out on the sunniest part of her family’s back lawn and did what many nine-year-olds from Southern California who wanted to emulate their older siblings in the 1970s did: lie out and work on our tans.

Fortified with plastic tumblers full of icy cold sun tea and seasonally-appropriate Donna Summer tunes playing from Kim’s Jimmy Walker Dynamite portable 8-track player, we got down to the serious business of sunning ourselves.

After ten minutes of trying to lie still and let the UV rays do their thing, boredom and hunger propelled us back into the air-conditioned house to make ourselves something to eat.

We were on our own in the kitchen. Mrs. Hoffart was out running errands, so we made what many white, suburban children with limited culinary skills who lived in a place once owned by Mexico would make: flour tortillas slathered with Best Foods mayonnaise. We rolled them into tubes and went back outside to resume our sunbathing.

Back on my beach towel, I found that eating while prone a challenge. I lifted my head as far from the ground as my neck would allow, and took a bite of tortilla. A sizable blob of mayonnaise dripped onto my chest. We neglected to bring paper napkins with us—and I was far too lazy go and get one—so I simply rubbed the eggy emulsion into my abdomen, and made what I believed to be a brilliant discovery.

“Hey, look!” I said to Kim, a bit to excited, “I’ve got a deep, dark, golden tan!”

There was no discussion. Not a single word was exchanged. We jumped to our feet, ran back into the house, and grabbed the Best Foods.

We slathered ourselves from head to toe in mayonnaise, returning to our towels in pursuit of what I was convinced would be the most fantastic tan in the history of tanning. With a greasy hand, I shaded my eyes to look at the jar resting on the lawn between us, closing them again before turning my face toward heaven, smiling at my own genius.

I don’t know how much time we’d been at it before we heard the glass door from the TV room slide open, but the yelling began almost immediately.

“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” Mrs. Hoffart asked her glistening daughter. Her Saskatchewanese accent was more noticeable when she got angry. She was already irritated to come home and find the tortillas and mayo-covered knife we left on her nice, clean kitchen counter, but when she noticed the jar of Best Foods open and baking in the sun she quickly assessed the situation and became apoplectic.

My eyes, blinded by the bright sun, recovered in time to see Mrs. Hoffart struggling to find words, which came soon enough and at great volume.

“AND YOU USED MY GOOD MAYONNAISE!”

Coming home to find her daughter and one of the neighbor kids covered stem to stern in hot, oily condiment was bad. That they were dressed in nothing but bathing suits and Salmonella enterica might have been worse, but the idea that we’d so thoughtlessly used her good mayonnaise was unforgivable.

She got the garden hose, screwed on the spray attachment, hosed us down, and sent me home through the back gate.

Good mayonnaise? I puzzled when I got home, trying not to slip on the stone in the front hall. Good mayonnaise? I continued to wonder as I stood under the shower, shampooing the rancid, oily unguent from my hair.

I didn’t see any other mayo in Mrs. Hoffart’s refrigerator. Why did she say “the good mayonnaise?”

I remembered seeing a half-eaten jar of Miracle Whip, but she couldn’t have meant that, could she?

Miracle Whip isn’t mayonnaise, I thought. Miracle Whip’s for sad people who don’t know what mayonnaise is supposed to taste like. Mrs. Hoffart grew her own tomatoes. Mrs. Hoffart baked her own bread. Mrs. Hoffart refused to allow margarine into her house. In the 1970s.

How could a woman so simultaneously old-fashioned and ahead of her time even acknowledge Miracle Whip’s existence?

No child in his right mind would spread that culinary abomination on a flour tortilla. Certainly, no child with any sense of self-worth would cover himself with an inferior brand of sandwich spread.

A young man of taste would never let anything but the best mayonnaise near his flatbreads, let alone his skin. Only the Best Foods would do.

Or Hellman’s*, if you lived east of the Rockies.

Good Mayonnaise

I’ve been pondering mayo since last week, when I found myself paying nine U.S. American dollars for a jar of it. No, not even a jar. Twenty-five expletive ounces in a plastic squeeze bottle.

Saddened, but mostly annoyed at the cost and the thought that the Unilever company thinks squeeze bottles are the best way to package condiments, I resolved to start making my own mayonnaise.

It’s much cheaper, I rationalized, and I can make it any damned way I want.

It’s also very, very easy. And customizable.

In the mood for traditional mayo? Great. Got a hankering for more highly flavored eggy goop? Add a little tarragon or garlic or basil. Add anything you want. Add Ovaltine, for all I care.

You are the master of your own emulsions.

Experiment with oils. Explore various acids. Try out different ways to emulsify. Want your mayo to have an aïoli-like texture/need a decent wrist workout? Whisk it by hand. Want it thick, creamy, and light in color? Whiz it up in a food processor or blender (either the standard or stick variety).

There is no one recipe that’s correct. Mine happens to be one I like a lot. It came about somewhat by accident because my blender stopped blending a little more than half way through a double batch. It actually tastes a bit like Best Foods, only better.

Makes: Enough to fill one Bonne Maman jam jar (about 13 ounces)

Ingredients:

• 2 whole eggs
• 4 teaspoons lemon juice (about 1 whole lemon)
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard or 1 teaspoon dried mustard
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt (You’ll likely want quite a bit more after tasting)
• 1 ⅓ cup of neutral oil (I used avocado oil, but canola and safflower work well)
• A few drops of rice wine vinegar to finish (optional)

Preparation:

1. Whisk/whiz eggs, lemon juice, mustard, and salt together until well combined.

2. Slowly drizzle in the oil until it the whole mess becomes so thick and gorgeous, you’ll want to rub in places you’ve never rubbed mayonnaise before. Hand whisking mayo results in a looser emulsification, more suitable for gently dabbing around the eyes to hide those fine lines and wrinkles.

3. Taste your mayonnaise. Needs more salt? Almost definitely. Want a little more zing? Add a tiny bit more mustard and a few drops of rice wine vinegar (or more lemon juice). Just keep adjusting until you’ve got it the way you want it.

4. Transfer into a glass container, like a (clean) jam jar. With a lid.

5. The mayonnaise should last about a week in the refrigerator, just itching to get intimate with your sandwiches, salads, and what have you.

6. Do not leave unattended on hot days when young children are present.

Here’s a handy link to tell you how to prepare mayo using various appliances.

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* I was far too young and West Coast to have known about Duke’s, so please don’t @ me.

I wasn’t in the mood for dessert, so I asked my father if I could order a glass of Madeira. I warned him it was a bit pricey, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was feeling on top of the world, staring down at the Transamerica Pyramid from the fifty-second floor of the Bank of America building.

“Hey, kid, it’s your night!” he said, too distracted by the San Francisco skyline to notice just how expensive it was.

We were celebrating my graduation from culinary school with what remained of our family: my mother, my sister, and my stepmom. My mother had waged a decades-long, one-sided war against Holly, my father’s second wife, only ending the hostilities on the morning of my brother’s death three years earlier. This was the first meal the two Mrs. Procopios shared. I was hopeful, but very on edge.

“You know I want you to be at my graduation, but if you can’t behave, don’t come. I don’t want another scene,” I told my mother a couple of weeks before the big day.

I said the same thing to both Holly and my father. I felt I had to, because all three of them had ruined my graduation experiences in the past. Even the one I didn’t attend.

I could see my family in the stands of Glover Stadium from my front row seat at my high school graduation. My mom, brother, and sister on one side; my father, stepmother, and grandfather on the other.

I sat next to my friend Tricia, fanning myself with a program to keep from sweating in my scarlet nylon cap and gown. As president of the senior class, I wanted to look as cool as possible for the speech I was about to deliver. I was feeling good. I’d survived high school and was more than ready to move onward and upward or any which way, so long as it got me out of Anaheim.

My speech would be short and sweet and hopefully funny, but not too funny, because I didn’t want to appear desperate for approval.

It’s no big deal, I reminded myself. It may have been the calmest I’d ever felt before speaking in public.

That was just before my mother stood up. Even from far away, I could see she was crying.

Shit. She’d caught sight of my stepmom and instantly lost it.

She moved across the aisle and through the exit. My brother and sister followed, trying to make sure she was okay.

Everyone saw it happen, including my stepmother, which caused her to start crying, because she knew my mother left because she was there. Holly also removed herself from the stadium, with my father and grandfather trailing behind her.

My whole family left my high school graduation, moments before my speech.

Tricia gently squeezed my biceps, leaned into me, and whispered, “Well, my family’s here for you.” It made me feel alright because, unlike mine, Tricia’s family knew how to have a good time.

I delivered my speech, the valedictorian did their thing, tassels were moved, and caps were flung skyward.

What looked like proud, happy people rushed the field to celebrate with their freshly-diplomaed love ones. Tricia’s family swarmed, pulling me into them without having to be asked.

Tricia’s family understood.

I didn’t have much of a say about where I went to college. I’d planned to go to UC Berkeley with Tricia, but my father refused to pay for anywhere other than his alma mater.

When I pushed back, he said, “No kid of mine is going to that goddamned hippie school,” and flat out refused to pay for it. But if I went to UCLA, he added, I’d be given a full ride. I grudgingly accepted the bribe, skipping my first day of school to appear on a gameshow, where I hoped to win enough to pay my own way through whichever school I wanted.

Sadly, I did not win the money.

Happily, I loved my days as a Bruin, thanks to some very lucky breaks, friend-wise and—especially—roommate-wise.

It took me five years to finish school, for reasons I should probably save for my memoirs. My friends had moved on to grad school by then, which meant I’d have to attend graduation alone, sitting on a metal folding chair on a clay tennis court with a few thousand strangers, sweating in a cheaply made blue-and-gold gown, enduring the heat of a June afternoon in Los Angeles, where no one would be handed their diploma.

It didn’t seem worth the bother, especially if it would be too much for my mother to deal with. I’d have to invite the whole family, including Holly. Everyone would be stressed out, and no one would have a good time. Except Dad. He was uncannily adept at tuning out anything unpleasant. All he wanted to do was watch his son graduate from what he considered the greatest school in the world, and everyone would just have to deal with it.

Except I chose not to deal with it.

I decided not to walk.

Dad felt wounded by the decision, as though I’d robbed him of his dream. I felt quite guilty about it, but not for too long.

Over the next several years, he’d bring up the subject of my non-attendance whenever I’d go home to visit.

“Hell, how do I know if you even graduated? It’s not like you’ve ever shown me your diploma. Which I paid for.”

The topic would usually come up after a couple games of canasta and the same number of blended scotches. My typical response was to raise my eyebrows up and down a couple of times, smile coyly, and say nothing. This continued until I was forty, when I wrapped up my university diploma and gave it to him as a Christmas present.

He never brought it up again.

I worried about my culinary school graduation. I wanted my family with me, because we’d had little to celebrate over the previous few years.

Are they going to ruin this one for me?, I wondered. Would they behave? Would they accept, for once, that this was my day and my achievement?

The California Culinary Academy was the only school I had a real choice in attending. It was my version of grad school. I had an Art History degree with an unofficial minor in French from UCLA. Now I was about to prove to the world I was a professionally trained cook who could whip up nougatine carousels and lifelike salt dough sea creatures. My plan was to marry well and host grand dinner parties, where lively discussions about Quattrocento portraiture and Cuban revolutionary iconography would happen as a matter of course as guests fought over the last slice of flammuse aux pommes before the cheese was served.

Third time’s the charm, I reassured myself. Besides, all three of my parents solemnly swore not to spoil my big day.

My father asked me where I’d like to have dinner to celebrate.

“Anywhere you want, kid,” he promised.

I was encouraged enough by this pledge to give him a number of options: one very expensive, one moderately expensive, and one that was wallet-friendly. I would have been delighted with any one of them.

After the ceremony, we spent a couple of hours relaxing at my apartment in The Castro, where my next-door neighbor Paul came over for a drink and to meet my family. My mother and sister knew Paul was my boyfriend. My father and stepmother did not.

But that’s another story for another time. And it’s good one.

We piled into my father’s car at the appointed hour and made our way to the mystery restaurant. Dad smiled and said that I was in for a surprise.

I knew by the direction we were taking that the inexpensive place was not on the evening’s menu. As we headed down Market Street and turned onto Franklin, I accepted the mid-priced venue was also not happening. Cresting Nob Hill, I realized all of my choices had been nixed.

When we pulled into the parking garage at 555 California Street, I understood precisely where we were going.

And I was not happy about it.

He was taking us to The Carnelian Room.

The Carnelian Room had been owned by my Uncle Hank’s company since its opening in 1969. It was a place Dad could go when he was in town to feel like a big shot. That was in the 1970s. Hank had been dead since the mid-80s, along with The Carnelian Room’s chic.

I can’t remember what I had for dinner. I just resigned myself to the experience, choosing to focus on the interaction between my mom and Holly. Happily, the two behaved so impeccably towards each other, they even visited the ladies’ room together, though my mother later confessed she found my stepmother “simple.”

I was thankful to my mom and stepmom, but I was angry with myself for excluding my boyfriend from the celebration (though he was relieved he didn’t have to go), and annoyed with Dad for doing what I felt he always did—exactly as he damn well pleased.

By the time the dessert course rolled around, I did what I always did when upset with my father in a restaurant setting—I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu.

He said it was okay, I reminded myself as I summoned the waiter.

When I pointed to the Blandy’s 1865 Solera Madeira, the waiter visibly stiffened and hurried away to summon the sommelier, who double checked my order, then disappeared to bring it up from “the cellar.” Our car was parked in the lot beneath the building, so I had difficulty imagining precisely where he was going.

He returned a few minutes later, wearing white cotton gloves and presenting a dusty bottle of wine for my inspection, which caught my father’s attention.

“What exactly did you order again?” he asked, looking confused and a little concerned.

“The 1865 Madeira,” I said, passing him the dessert menu. I could tell the instant he registered the price tag.

“Well, I said it was your night, kid, so have at it.”

With a pleasing amount of ceremony, the wine steward carefully poured a small amount into my glass for me to sample. It had a warmth to it of toasted nuts and dried fruit. Not quite raisins, not exactly dates, but somewhere in between. I imagined the wine gently warming its way to maturity on that quiet little island in the Atlantic the night Lincoln was shot.

I had just tasted the 19th century and it was marvelous.

I nodded for the sommelier to pour and asked him if he’d tried it. He brought back a glass and poured a small amount for himself. He swirled the brownish-red liquid and stuck his nose into it as he walked away the table.

“Mind if I have a taste?” my father asked. I slid the glass over to him. He sniffed it and took a thoughtful draught, which I’d never seen him do before with anything alcoholic.

“That’s a beautiful wine. Madeira, right?”

He smiled. I smiled back at him, only mildly sheepish.

My mother and stepmother had just proved they could peacefully coexist. My father had finally gotten to see his son graduate. He passed the Madeira back to me, and I took another sip.

Had I been too harsh with him? If I had been, he certainly didn’t let it show. He looked so happy. He was proud of me. It was an emotion he found difficult to articulate, but I knew. I could almost always read his face.

I slid the glass back over to him. I must have looked happy, too, because I was.

“Have some more, Pop. You paid for it.”

I always called him “Pop” when I wanted to make sure he knew that I loved him.

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This is the second part of a story I started telling months ago. In part one, I turned down an offer to appear on Jeopardy! after sabotaging my audition.

In this sixth installment of my memoir project, John Wayne’s Balls, we pick up shortly where we left off: Jeopardy! called a second time, and I reluctantly agreed to appear, skipping my first day of college in the process.

Click here to read part one.

John Wayne’s Balls is a Paid Members Only subdivision of Spatchcock.

A man in a Hawaiian print shirt leaned across the aisle towards me and hissed, “I hope you die, you stuck up piece of shit.”

My day wasn’t going well.

Just three hours into skipping my first day of college and already somebody wanted me dead.

I woke up late that morning, but managed to shower, dress, and shove a banana in my mouth before running out of my dorm and hopping into a Yellow Cab that would take me the eight miles east down Sunset Boulevard to Hollywood Center Studios.

There were thirteen of us in the Jeopardy! contestant pool that day. Five shows were taped over the next several hours, and we were required to bring the same number of outfits in and submit them to the wardrobe woman for approval. She frowned when she unzipped my garment bag.

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What fuels your creativity?

I'll give you a moment to think about it before moving on, but I want you to understand I'm curious to know what feeds your imagination in the literal sense, rather than the figurative. I'm interested in the meat and potatoes of the matter, if you like.

J.D. Salinger was a meat and potatoes man, preferring roast beef and mash as he worked before later abandoning them for the pleasures of Burger King.

F. Scott Fitzgerald like to eat canned meat and Uneeda Biscuits when he sat down to write. Franz Kafka guzzled milk, Mark Twain slurped down barrels of oysters, and Honoré de Balzac downed up to fifty Turkish coffees a day, one for every year he lived*.

Most writers have some sort of ingestible go-to that helps get them going or sustains them throughout an intense typing/scribbling session. Mine depends on the time of day.

If I write in the morning, I drink coffee with lots of milk and sugar because I have the pre-noon constitution of a six-year-old French garçon. If I write in the afternoon, I've got a tumbler of iced tea at my elbow. If I write at night, a small and very dry gin martini keeps me sufficiently lubricated because, as Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway is famously misquoted as saying: "Write drunk, edit sober."

Sondheim liked a shot of vodka before writing, so I still feel I'm in good company.

Hemingway did, however, have a few well-documented food and drink items he liked to have on hand as he sat at his typewriter banging out novels and revising short stories. Black coffee with a shot of grappa, martinis, and daiquiris (The Hemingway Special) were a few of his preferred workaday tipples. He liked eating oysters when in Paris, obscenely thick burgers in Havana, and peanut butter and onion sandwiches almost anywhere.

The man was crazy for onions—namely sweet Bermudas, which are very hard to come by these days. If Hemingway was out fishing, which was often, you could be certain he took along a few sandwiches, and those sandwiches invariably had onions in them.

In his posthumously published novel Islands in the Stream, protagonist Thomas Hudson was feeling peckish:

In another food-related exchange, he says to his fellow crew mate, Henry:

When the sandwich is presented to Thomas wrapped in a segment of paper towel, he rhapsodizes:

Make of that what you like, but the man liked onions in practically everything. Even his martinis were garnished with onions, which technically turned them into Gibsons.

Hemingway's love of Allium cepa came by way of his father, Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemingway, who showed his son how to forage for wild onions at Walloon Lake, Michigan, where he also taught Ernest to fish, likely associating the two things in the boy's mind.

Clarence thought onions to be the finest filling for sandwiches known to man. Ernest evidently agreed.

In addition to foraging and fishing, Ernest inherited his father's love of nature, hunting, and shotguns. Unfortunately, Dr. Hemingway also passed on a predisposition to severe depression and bipolar disorder.

And that, Dear Reader, is as far as we’re going to go in that direction today.

We're here to celebrate onions, peanut butter, white bread, and the man who loved putting them together.

And hopefully provide you with the courage to give the combination a try.

Because you absolutely should.

Live it up, I say. Hemingway certainly did.

Until he suddenly didn't.

There are numerous ways to make a peanut butter and onion sandwich. Some aficionados spread a little (real) butter on the bread. Others like a thin layer of mayonnaise (pictured above, though I can’t remember why). There are people who like their bread lightly toasted and those who don’t. Add what you like and I probably won’t tell you you’re wrong.

If one insists upon making the Mount Everest Special, however, one must remain steadfast in Hemingway’s orthodoxy: peanut butter, thinly sliced onion, and white bread.

Like many food writers before me, I thought I’d find this sandwich disgusting. Like many food writers before me, I did not. In fact, I discovered I quite like it.

The Mount Everest Special is remarkable for its thrift and ease of construction. It’s an exceptional sandwich for the writer struggling to make a living (see: author), who needs little in the way of cooking distraction and a lot in terms of protein to fuel the creative brain. It’s also a very inexpensive way to feed yourself, which is both timely and timeless as a concern.

It’s a coupling of lightly sweet and faintly sharp, of creaminess and crunch.

The Mount Everest Special isn’t for everyone, but who wants to be everyone?

It is, after all, for Commanders only.

So, should you find me with one of these sandwiches in my hand, I’ll have to insist you address me as Commander Mike.

P.S. I do actually want to know what food or beverage helps make you tick creatively, if any.

* Balzac’s immoderate coffee swilling more than likely contributed to his death from gangrene caused by severe congestive heart failure.

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My friend T has insisted for years that May is Coffee Cake Month. He flatly refuses to recognize April 7th as National Coffee Cake Day, which is his natural right as a Canadian. I see his point, since something as lovely as coffee cake deserves better than having to share a crowded stage with National Beer Day, International Beaver Day, and Girl, Me Too Day.

Instead, my friend thinks coffee cake deserves a full thirty-one days of celebration, unconcerned that it might not pair well with Lyme Disease Awareness and Vinegar months, which happen at the same time.

Of course, May also happens to be where T’s birthday lands, and it turns out his push for a full month of Kaffeekuchen hoopla is just his way of tricking people into giving him more cake.

I can’t blame him for trying, but I can’t refuse him either, even though I saw through his bluff nearly twenty years ago.

Now in the spring when a young man’s fancy turns to love, this middle-aged fellow finds himself reaching for the sour cream. The annual urge to bake a coffee cake has become instinct.

My friend has programmed me well.

Amarena Cherry and Almond Coffee Cake

I was going through my pantry the other day and discovered I possessed an embarrassing amount of slivered almonds and a second jar of Amarena cherries, which is something that never happens here at Spatchcock House. Feeling cherry rich and almond foolish, I thought it might be a good idea to use them in the coffee cake my body was demanding that I make.

And reader, it was a good idea.

Amarena cherries get along well with their natural friends, the almonds, but they also play nicely with swarthy warm spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom.

This cake is a liberal adaptation of a King Arthur Baking recipe.

Makes: one 9-inch coffee cake that is far too expensive to ship to Canada. Or Greece.

Ingredients:

For the Streusel:
• ¾ cup all-purpose flour
• ½ cup slivered almonds
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup almond paste
• ¼ teaspoon almond extract
• 5 tablespoons cold butter cut into small cubes

For the Cake:
• 8 tablespoons softened butter (1 stick)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 ⅔ cups all-purpose flour
• ⅔ cup sour cream
• 1 cup Amarena cherries drained and dried

Preparation:

1. Heat your oven to 350℉ and butter a 9” round springform pan. Cut a circle of parchment paper, place it in the bottom of the pan, and butter that, too.

2. Drain the cherries, making certain to save the syrup for later use because you are not a fool. Dry them gently with paper towels (They do not need to be 100% syrup-free). Cut ½ of the cherries in half (the most camera-ready ones, please), and chop the other ½ a bit more roughly. The pretty cherry halves will be used to decorate the top of the cake, while the chopped ones will be mixed with some of the streusel. Keep them separate and ready for future use.

3. For the streusel: Combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl. Crumble in the almond paste, add the almond extract, and work the cold butter in until the mixture is good and crumbly. This is extremely satisfying to do with clean hands. Now add the slivered almond and mix gently but well.

4. For the cake: If you’ve got a stand mixer, you’re in luck. Beat the butter and sugar along with the salt, almond extract, and baking powder until light and fluffy. You can really let it go for ages.

5. Add the eggs, one at a time, making sure the first one has fully incorporated into the butter mixture before adding the second.

6. Add ⅓ of the flour to the mixture, alternating with half the sour cream, then the next ⅓ bit of flour, second half of the sour cream, and last ⅓ of the flour. Make certain to mix well after each addition and please do not forget to periodically scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.

7. Put ½ of the cake batter into the pan and smooth it around until it’s more or less level and evenly distributed across the bottom.

8. In a small bowl, mix ½ the streusel with the chopped up cherries, then sprinkle the cherry-streusel evenly over the surface. Gently press in into the batter. Gently. It’s a fairly thick batter, so nothing (reasonable) you put in there is going to sink to the bottom.

9. Scrape the remaining batter over the streusel layer, smoothing out the top as evenly as beautifully as you can manage. Arrange the cherry halves (rounded side up, of course) around the surface of the batter, and sprinkle the remaining streusel over them. Note: You want the cherries to sort of peek through, so don’t overdo it. Or do. You’re the one likely eating this.

10. Bake in the center of your oven for 50 minutes to an hour. Check in on the cake at around minute 45 to assess its progress. It’s done when a knife or toothpick stabbed through its farinaceous little heart comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and let cook thoroughly on a wire rack. I try to ignore the thing until morning, leaving it out on the counter overnight. I can do that because I do not live with cats or people.

11. Dust with powdered sugar and serve to a friend who doesn’t think they get enough cake in their day-to-day life. Or simply freeze the half you didn’t binge eat over the sink when you remembered you no longer have any friends. Not after what you did, which was unforgivable.

    ---

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In the early 1970s, Madison Avenue wasn’t just a boys’ club, it was a little boys’ club. For reasons likely beyond my understanding, male children as young as three years old dominated American advertising.

John Gilchrist, better known as “Mikey” from Life Cereal, was one such three-year-old when he filmed his iconic commercial. It first aired in 1972 and ran more or less uninterrupted until 1986, tormenting little boys named Michael across the U.S. and Canada with the words “He likes it! Hey, Mikey!” for the duration of their childhood.

Reader, I was one of those Michaels, and I was saddened to learn the rumors of his death by Pop Rocks and Coca-Cola misadventure proved to be false.

Another heavy hitter was four-year-old Andy Lambros, who taught us how to spell the first and second name of his preferred luncheon meat with a song every Gen Xer who came within twenty feet of a television during their childhood can probably still sing.

Even more well known was pre-schooler Rodney Allen Rippy, who starred in a series of commercials for Jack in the Box, proclaiming their Jumbo Jack “too big too eat!” Rippy was so well known, he later played himself as the owner of Felix and Oscar’s apartment building in The Odd Couple, and almost cracked the Billboard Hot 100 with his not-quite hit song, “World of Love,” which charted at #112 in 1973.

In 1974, he presented the American Music Award for Best Pop Group (with Michael Jackson and Donny Osmond) before he was old enough to read the names of the winners and played the role of young Sheriff Bart in one of the greatest comedies of all time, Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles.

But the biggest little star of late Nixon-era Madison Avenue was Mason Reese, a child so unusually persuasive, he could sell a Dressel’s Frozen Cake to the Heat Miser, who was famously rumored to have diabetes.

With his red pageboy haircut, lopsided face, and heavy-lidded blue eyes, mothers and grandmothers professed their undying love for this strange looking child. Women would stop him on the streets of Manhattan and ask for strands of his hair so that their hairdressers could match his exact shade of russet. Mike Douglas—the biggest daytime television host of the day—invited Reese on his show twenty-five times, where he interviewed Leonard Nimoy, cried over Harry Chapin, and tap danced while belting “Singin’ in the Rain.”

Reese made the cover of TV Guide, rode a giant inflatable Cootie in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and starred in the failed ABC pilot Mason.

Post Raisin Bran, Dunkin’ Donuts Munchkins, Ivory Snow detergent, and Matchbox Fighting Furies were just a few of the many products he hawked, but it was the William Underwood Company that made him a star. In his first commercial for the organization, Reese introduces his television mother to Underwood Chicken Spread in an effort to allay boredom during the midday meal, receives a dramatic eye roll from his television sister (the real life sister of John Gilchrist of Life Cereal fame), and causes his television brother to dribble milk from his mouth when he mispronounces the word “smörgåsbord” as “borgåsmörd.”

More Underwood commercials followed, most notably for their Deviled Ham, which prompted grocery stores across the country to feature pyramids of cans wrapped in white paper printed with a little red devil brandishing a pitch fork.

I’m uncertain how well these deviled products sold across the Bible Belt and am wholly unwilling to do the necessary research to find out the answer.

One thing I am willing to do, however, is devil some ham. I found the packaging intriguing as a small boy, but feared what lurked inside.

But I’m made of stronger stuff these days and, with the price of everything rising lately, am attracted to the money saving benefits of a spicy ham salad.

Deviled Ham

Prior to making this recipe, I don’t think I’d deviled anything other than eggs. After, I feel like I could devil just about anything within reach and reason.

The lapsed Catholic in me is relieved to know that deviling has little or nothing to do with Lucifer or one of the other Great Dukes of Hell (which reminds me, Duke’s mayonnaise is perfect for this recipe). Rather, the word refers to making something hot with spices (aka pepper) and condiments (notably: mustard).

The Underwood company has been deviling ham since 1868, which makes their recipe as old as traffic lights, Little Women, and the 14th Amendment.

This is not their recipe. It is mine, which I offer as a mere guideline to creating your very own.

Makes: About 3 cups

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of ham, finely chopped (honey-glazed or smoked is good)
• ½ cup of finely diced onion
• ½ cup of finely diced celery
• 2 tbsps finely chopped parsley
• 1 tbsp finely diced peppers, hot or mild (I had Calabrian chiles on hand)
• 5 tbsp mayonnaise (more or less)
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp honey
• A few shakes of garlic powder
• A few shakes of Old Bay seasoning
• 1 tsp of cayenne pepper (or paprika for the timid)
• A few shakes of tabasco
• A few shakes of Worcestershire sauce
• Plenty of freshly ground black pepper. Or white. It hardly matters
• Anything else you feel like adding—you’re the one eating it, presumably

Preparation:

1. Finely dice the ham, onion, and celery, and add them to a large mixing bowl. Chopping by hand is preferred to the use of a food processor for textural reasons, but if you are someone who is unable to do sustained chopping, be mindful how you pulse your processor—you don’t want everything to turn into a paste.

2. Next, add diced peppers, parsley, and whatever else suits your fancy to the bowl.

3. Add mayonnaise, mustard, honey, and all your seasonings. Mix well until everything is coated in a spicy, delicious, mayo-ey goo.

4. It may be eaten immediately, but is best if covered and refrigerated overnight, so that the flavors have enough time to get to know each other.

5. Serve it on Ritz crackers, use it as a sandwich filling with some thinly sliced radish or lettuce or something else fresh and crunchy, or find some other, creative use for it. My daredevil readers might chose to use it as an edible face mask (Note: swimming goggles will keep unwanted spicy ham from irritating one’s delicate eyeballs). If you’ve discovered any other novel uses for deviled ham, please let me know in the comment section below.

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Before traveling to a foreign country, I tend to bone up on the history and customs of my destination rather than dive head first into the exotic unknown.

I enjoy learning about native table manners, what not to wear, and—more importantly—what not to say well ahead of my departure.

Knowing how to ask important questions like “What’s that smell?” in the local language is another way I like to prepare.

But no one can see the unforeseen or formulate questions they don’t know need asking.

I never imagined the phrase “Excuse me, madame, is it normal for objects and people to fall from the sky all the time, or is your city just bewitched?” would come in handy. After three days in Buenos Aires, it did.

It definitely wasn’t covered in my Lonely Planet guide. I double checked.

I found myself in Argentina because my friend Bill stood on a picnic table on an island in the middle of San Francisco Bay and shouted the question, “Who wants to go to the World Tango Festival next year?” It was the combination of strong beer, several hours standing in the mid-August heat, and the urge to escape my dreadful boyfriend for a few days that caused me to raise my hand.

I had only a passing interest in the tango, but I hadn’t been out of the country in twelve years, and I needed a bit of adventure.

By March, I found myself Down Argentine Way with six men, three of whom were total strangers.

It was a miracle of social chemistry that seven people with strong personalities managed to spend ten days together in South America without conflict. We devoted our first days to shopping, strolling, and spreading dulce de leche on every available edible surface.

In the evenings, we napped, smuggled cocktails into our hotel rooms, and explored the Buenos Aires nightlife. We immersed ourselves in the pleasures that only a city with the highest concentration of plastic surgeons and psychotherapists per capita in the world could afford. In addition, the dollar was strong, the policemen surprisingly beautiful, and the steaks were as big—and delicious—as my head. Everything about our stay seemed perfect except for one thing: the risk of being killed on the pavement while walking off one's morcilla.

On our way back to the hotel for a much-needed lie down after a rather louche lunch, we were startled out of our wine-induced torpor when something fell from the heavens onto the sidewalk directly in front of us. It was a diaper which, by the sound it made as it landed, had achieved its full potential. 

We were lucky it hadn't hit us. We were even luckier it was a dud, as far as shit bombs go. We sidestepped the unexploded threat with our lives intact and our summer whites muck-less.

The next day, after a similar noontime repast, I was returning to the hotel by a similar route when I heard something shatter behind me. A potted palm tree and its glazed ceramic container had collided violently with the ground a few feet to my aft. Terra cotta shrapnel few everywhere, but I was once again untouched.

The nap that followed was fitful; the first cocktail of the evening, medicinal.

Two near misses in two days was enough to unsettle even the coolest of boulevardiers, but when news broke the next evening that a popular soap opera star had leapt to his death from a penthouse balcony onto the pavement below, I sensed a rather worrisome trend.

After three days in Buenos Aires, we flew north to Iguazù Falls to soak in the scenery. I was glad to get away from the city and its high rise balconies for a while.

The seven of us checked into our hotel rooms, agreeing to rendezvous in the downstairs lobby, then scout the area for a suitable watering hole. As the first man down, I settled myself on a rattan couch, and immediately succumbed to a sneezing fit. A small packet of Kleenex dropped next to me from above. I opened it and pulled out a tissue, which helped stem the flow of the annoyingly in theme waterfall that was beginning to cascade from my nose.

At last, something useful.

My friend Gary appeared a few moments later, giving me a look that suggested he knew exactly what was on my mind. Or wasn’t.

“You thought those tissues just magically fell from the sky, didn’t you?” He seemed both amused and mildly annoyed.

He’d nailed it.

It’s often shocking when the unexpected occurs. Disturbing if it happens twice. By the third time, you really start to worry. After a week, it becomes the expected.

Surprising what one can get used to.

When we made it to the falls the next morning, I was convinced I’d stumbled upon the most beautiful place in the world. We spent the day hiking in a sultry paradise, counting toucans and swatting stingless bees away from our cans of Coca-Cola.

We saved the tallest, most dramatic of Iguazù’s waterfalls—La Garganta del Diablo—for last. An endless metal catwalk led us to the opening of the U-shaped chasm, where we were surrounded by mist and a surprising number of rainbows.

Standing at the edge of the falls, I white-knuckled the railing as one and a half million liters of water hurtled past us every second. My friend Patrick turned his head to me and yelled over torrent, "Doesn't it make you want to jump?"

“What?” I responded, terrible at reading lips.

“Makes you want to jump!”

“Yeah!” I shouted, “Totally!”

My body felt the urge to join the inexorable force of the water as it dragged my senses downward. My brain felt otherwise, fortunately, but I did wonder how many people made the plunge every year.

Was gravity just stronger in Argentina? Would I feel somehow lighter crossing the border into, say, Paraguay?

I thought about the diaper, the palm tree, and the soap opera star. For a moment, I thought I truly understood their desire to be pulled towards oblivion. But I soon gained a keen insight:

Diapers don’t have desires.

I pulled myself away from the falls, breaking their spell as soon as I turned my back to it. Only then did I have and even deeper thought:

I was just a mile or two away from the Brazilian border, which meant I could safely order a caipirinha.

Dulce de Leche Crème (and chocolate soufflé, I guess)

Sorry to disappoint the thirsty among you, but I’m not making caipirinhas today. I’m making dulce de leche whipped cream. I’ve also made chocolate soufflé, although a bit grudgingly.

The nice thing about a soufflé is that one expects it to fall at some point. If it doesn’t, one is pleasantly surprised. For this reason, I’ve chosen to make one to punctuate the story. Chocolate soufflés aren’t famously Argentine. I couldn’t possibly care less.

The real star here is the topping. On its own, dulce de leche is too stiff and sticky to effectively accompany such a delicate concoction of chocolate and hot air. Folding the dulce de leche into whipped cream solves this problem, with the added benefit of making it less cloying.

Of course, you could just skip making soufflé entirely. Dulce de leche crème is lovely served with berries. Or you could simply eat a bowl of it on its own when no one’s watching. Spread it on every available edible surface and pretend you’re in Buenos Aires. Whatever your decision, you have my full support.

For the dulce de leche crème:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of fresh heavy cream
•  1 jar of room temperature dulce de leche from a trusted manufacturer or Argentinian abuela. You are also very welcome to make it yourself. David Lebovitz has been known to make a dandy batch or two.

Preparation:

1. In a clean bowl, whip cream without mercy until stiff peaks form.

2. Spoon 5 tablespoons of dulce de leche into separate bowl.

3. Introduce some of the whipped cream to dulce de leche. Stir together until the mixture feels loose enough to fold into the rest of the whipped cream. You’ll know when it’s time.

4. Gently fold the slackened dulce de leche into the rest of the whipped cream.

5. Taste. Sweet enough for you? If not, add more dulce de leche. It’s that simple.

6. Serve on top of a chocolate soufflé, some sliced strawberries, or your Argentinian pool boy.

For the soufflé:

Ingredients:

• 1 each: computer, web browser, internet connection, and whatever else is needed to view an online recipe. I’ve chosen Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Soufflé, but you are very welcome to use a different one.

When soufflé baking has been achieved, remove from oven and dust with powdered sugar or cocoa powder. Yell something dramatic and serve immediately.

Place the dulce de leche crème in a silver champagne coupe—one of a set of six you bought at the San Telmo flea market because you’d been day drinking, even though what you secretly wanted were the vintage cocaine bottles whispering your name from the next stall, but the guy selling them was also selling vintage copies of Mein Kampf, which made you very uncomfortable.

Accompany with a silver spoon you stole from the Algonquin Hotel while pretending to be Robert Benchley having lunch, which also involved day drinking.

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In this cutthroat attention economy, drastic measures are needed for a humble food newsletter to distinguish itself from the eighty thousand others.

Over the years, I’ve written hundreds of essays, giving my readers a chance to really get to know what makes me tick.

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The following contains adult themes and language. Click here if you prefer something more wholesome, although I think you should stay because it’s a humdinger of a story.

This essay is part of an ongoing memoir project and is for my paid members only. Though their numbers are dwindling, those who remain deserve something special from time to time.

I should have gone home after dinner, but a woman I’d met barely two hours earlier insisted our little group accompany her to an adult store to help select a bridal shower gift for one of her girlfriends.

She seemed especially keen for me to go, which I found annoying. It wasn’t the first time a straight woman assumed that I, as a gay man, must love both shopping and dishwasher-safe marital aids.

She was wrong on both counts, but I agreed to go because I’d already disappointed her by confessing a lack of interest in Milton Berle’s penis when he unfurled it and presented it for my inspection earlier in the evening.

I couldn’t bear being thought of as unworldly twice in one evening by a woman I’d probably never see again.

The place wasn’t far—just a couple of blocks east on Melrose. In true LA fashion, we got in our separate cars and drove the seven or eight hundred feet to our destination, Drakes After Midnight.

I’d never seen the inside Drake’s, though I’d often driven by it. The neon bolt of lightning on the building’s edifice appeared to rend it in two, giving the impression it was a place that angered God. Grim yet playful, I felt it served as both an eye-catching design element and a divine warning.

A lot of things felt like a warning in the age of AIDS, but I entered anyway.

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Three years ago today, I assassinated my blog—stabbed in the back on the Ides of March with a knife I liberated from Jacques Pépin.

As Food for the Thoughtless lay dying on my freshly scrubbed kitchen tiles with that six inch Sabatier planted deep between its phantom shoulder blades, a newer, fresher newsletter was bein…

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A different version of this essay appeared on my euthanized blog several years ago. While the subject matter is the same, the essay is new.

It was fun to write, and G-d knows we all could use a bit of fun right about now.

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Inspiration can happen at the most inconvenient times. Whether you’re in the shower, at a pet funeral, or having an intimate lunch with Michael Cera, the creative muse might slap you in the face when the use of pen and paper or a smartphone is impractical, dangerous, or just downright rude.

Though I do still bathe myself from time t…

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If you’re hankering for a European meal this Valentine’s Day, but find the dishes of France and Italy a bit too sexy, you may want to give Swiss cuisine a try.

Switzerland is more than just precision watches, secret bank accounts, and Na…

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Far too much happened on the night in question to fit into one, tidy story. This first half is just the warm up. Please look for the (unintentionally) salacious second act your inbox later this month.

Access to memoir entries is restricted to paid members only. If you’re at all curious (and you absolutely should be), you might want to consider upgrading your membership.

September 26th(ish), 1992

The third most uncomfortable night of my life kicked off in what I imagined to be an Italian restaurant designed for vain, elderly diners.

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I’ve been shouldering so much rage lately, I fear I’m developing a hump, which is neither attractive nor productive.

I considered installing a punching bag in my bedroom to hel…

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What feels like a century ago, I was inspired to write about fending off certain types of vampire the traditional way—with garlic. The original source of this inspiration was a song from the Broadway musical [title of show], a delightfully self-referential work about the highs and lows of the creative process. A “musical about two guys writing a…

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2025 was tough for all of us. For me, it began with very little hope and a great many fears about what the year would bring. A small portion of that hope was that my fears might not exceed my expectations.

How overly optimistic of me.

It’s been a struggle to be entert…

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Children and Christmas were two of the many things my grandmother seemingly failed to understand. Every Christmas Eve of my boyhood was spent at her place, which was never decorated, save for an artificial tree set up in a corner of the family room. Real trees shed pine needles, and Grandmom would never ha…

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The more I come to resemble Santa Claus in my middle years, the less I seem to enjoy Christmas. Maybe it’s my need to go into hiding over the holidays, for fear of being handed wishful lists of books and toys from good little girls and good little boys.

Or it might have something…

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This post is for my paid subscribers, who I allow to peek inside my ongoing memoir project—a work currently in its first trimester.

In this essay, I reject the advances of a Jeopardy! contestant coordinator.

When Mike’s Hyundai pulled up to the house on Friday morning, I tossed my bag in back, slid into the front seat, and casually mentioned that Jeopardy! had called. He raised his uniquely expressive eyebrows, expecting to hear good news.

“They wanted me to do the show on Monday, but I told them I was busy,” I said, causing Mike’s eyebrows to quickly lose altitude. No words were needed to communicate how he felt about my announcement, but he gave me three anyway, just to make himself perfectly clear:

“You. Fucking. Idiot.”

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