Sometimes your day starts on an "interesting" note, and just goes on from there. And, if you are Jewish, your day started only one or two hours ago, at sundown, so there is still a long way to go. Tzeit fir motzei shabbes oneg.
For one thing, your day today probably started with hot food.
Not lukewarm and full of slow-cooked beans.
Cholent has soul, but it palls.
Not even going to mention the vegan reconstructionist lesbian liberation Jewish wymyn's collective and their gluten-free wheatgrass tofu version of cholent; there are just some limitations that make the chumrah obsession of Hareidi circles seem amateurish.
This blogger, as you may shper, seldom indulges in cholent; I've made it several times, though not for shabbes, and I even brought it to an office party once because I have a sense of humour.
Cholent, and possibly also the anarcho-femynyst animal-rights equivalent without meat or peanuts, can be improved considerably by having a big bottle of hotsauce on the tish.
Some people, however, do not want you to have that luxury.
They would rather make you suffer. Considerably.
And they'll do anything to effect that.
The city of Irwindale.
SRIRACHA FACTORY DECLARED A PUBLIC NUISANCE
A California city has declared a factory which produces a popular Asian-style hot pepper sauce a public nuisance, after area residents complained of the odour.
The city of Irwindale on Wednesday night gave Sriracha sauce maker Huy Fong Foods 90 days to curb the odours.
The declaration allows city officials to order changes should such odours remain after the deadline.
[Source: BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-26975852.]
When Huy Fong Foods Incorporated moved their factory to Irwindale last year, local bosses must have smelled a pot of gold. Since then, they have been involved in an unending campaign of harassment that resembles nothing so much as a clumsy shakedown attempt, trying to force the company to invest an enormous amount of money in an air purifier.
Back in 1980, David Tran started producing a condiment consisting of fresh hot peppers ground-up with vinegar, garlic, salt, and sugar. In those days, if you liked spicy foods, living in California was being an exile from everything that made life worthwhile, because you just couldn't get anything decent to eat. I remember dining at Alice Water's famous restaurant, wondering if that's all there was and craving a bit of spice.
I plotted to sneak my own chilipaste in, but feared that Berkeley's food-Nazis would cry foul.
Both sambal and mayonnaise were considered heathen back then.
One of those condiments still is.
David Tran altered the paradigm. By the mid-eighties, instead of spending ten bucks on a several-year old jar of imported paste patronizingly sold in the "ethnic" section of a supermarket, you could find sambal oelek, sambal badjak, Vietnamese Chili Garlic Sauce, and squeeze bottles of the only sane squirtable sauce to use instead of ketchup in your local Chinese stores, and even humble burger joints would have Sriracha in their condiment bar.
Life had improved immensely, and civilization seemed possible.
Not at all likely, given that there were still Texans and Midianites in the world, but possible.
Sure, I like Tabasco. But it's best for fried eggs and hash browns. And the traditional coffee shop breakfast of eggs and pork sausage with a big mound of rice and various fried crud is not an everyday indulgence.
Ever since I was in the single digits, sambals had added colour and depth to my life. Coming back to the U.S. and discovering that good food made one a freak was a shock.
All the ingredients that I wanted were not at the Solano Avenue Safeway or the Berkeley Co-op.
Ketoembar. Djintan. Bidji Sawi. Trassi. Petis. Sereh. Lengkoewas. Daoen Toelsi. Daoen Ketoembar. Ketjap Manis. Tjabeh. Temoe Koentji.
And most of all, sambal sambal sambal sambal sambal!
Eventually one discovers that coriander, cumin, mustard seed, shrimp paste, fish sauce, lemon gras, galangal, basil leaf, cilantro, sweet soy sauce, chilies, and krachai ARE available, if one only knows where to look, but where the hell is the chili paste? A man has just gotta have some sambal!
Civilized life without chilipaste is impossible.
A lack of sambal inspires madness and war.
Sambal is the glue that holds it together.
DAVID TRAN IS A NATIONAL TREASURE,
IRWINDALE ISN'T.
Huy Fong no longer makes sambal badjak -- wich is no great loss, because if you fry an entire jar of sambal oelek with one or two large minced onions, garlic, and a tablespoonful of shrimp paste, till it is dark brown and the oil comes out you have pretty much the same thing -- but their current range of products contains all the ingredients necessary to survive in the vast interior of this continent.
"Flexing muscle and thumbing Huy Fong in the eye"
Irwindale, population 1400 inbred souls, cares not one whit that without Sriracha hot sauce, heads would roll, pitchforked mobs may riot, and the Jacquerie will burn the castle down, in many places across the civilized world. The quill and gall-ink wielding litigationists of Irwindale merely seek to shake the company down and make them pay for the temerity of re-locating to Irwindale and bringing the twentieth century with them.
It's time for the bigwigs and shakers in San Francisco to step in and move heaven and earth to get Huy Fong to relocate to the Bay Area. Facilities, necessary permits, and a subsidy for employee housing expenses. We are more cosmopolitan than Irwindale, and Willie Brown knows that. If Willie Brown and his heavy weight political henchwoman Rose Pak can make it happen, we'll vote for their candidates next election no questions asked.
We shan't even write-in the name of Leland Yee.
We promise. Scout's honour.
The Bay Area needs Huy Fong; we are a culinary mecca.
The entire damn' world needs Huy Fong.
Cholent needs Huy Fong.
It's a mitzvah.
AFTERWORD
The interesting note mentioned earlier that started my day was reading on the BBC website that doctors have incubated vaginas in a lab. It's a brave new world out there. I never would have imagined that such a thing would ever be possible.
"The vaginas were carefully grown in a bioreactor until they were suitable "
Anyhow, that reminded me of the BBC article about Irwindale.
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1 comment:
I object to the deliberately misleading heading to this post: "Irwindale is mostly nuts". What you meant to say was "Irwindale is the Asshole of the World". I just had to pay $2.99 for a bottle of sriracha which normally costs $2.69.
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