SPAGHETTI DREAMS

When I woke up it was from a dream in which, while I was only wearing a bathrobe, and holding a tupperware of spaghetti, my apartment mate was rushing me to the Hibernia Bank regarding an account with not very much money in it. Certainly not enough to justify such haste on a bright sunny day. No, I do not habitually eat leftover noodles while wearing a bathrobe.
Nor do I have a small (or any) account at Hibernia Bank.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It was very vivid.

Which, more or less, explains why the pharmacist always asks whether I require counseling when picking up refills of a certain medication. One of the side effects is depression, and another one is nightmares, according to the cautionary literature. I am not a depressive man, and rather than any nightmares, I have intense dreams occasionally now.

I was worried that I would spill the spaghetti. Can I just point out here, for the record, that it should not have been spaghetti, as I am much more likely to have used rice-stick noodles, and there are many more things you can put on top of pasta than just spaghetti sauce? Almost any combination of tasty savoury cooked ingredients and sauce-like wet condimental additions.
Many Americans in the deep-south or Midwest, where cooking is at a standstill, use canned meat and ketchup.

Sautéed hot sausages, chopped yau choi, Sriracha, ginger, curry paste, shrimp sauce, and a splash of stock. Much more likely.

Also, my only communication with my apartment mate during bathrobic hours would involve coffee, and "have you used the bathroom?". Because if she has, I'm going in. Send a rescue party if I'm not back in a month.



If ANY spaghetti was involved, it would be something she was having for breakfast. Small adult female morning persons of Chinese ancestry are hearty eaters early in the day, whereas torpid Dutch American pipe-smoking bachelors tend toward gravitas, coffee, and a visit to the front steps, in silence, for calm enjoyment of the dawn cigarillo. I have seen her fry up pork chops before it's even light out, while I am only capable of muttering about spoons and boiling water.

My ancestors probably ate dried fish and porridge for breakfast. My dad satisfied himself with coffee, buttered toast, marmalade and a boiled egg, my mom had to have two cups of coffee before she made an appearance.
I think Tobias (my brother) would grab a cup on the fly. During my teenage years I developed a coffee habit in the early hours, and would smoke a pipe during a quiet bicycle ride in the streets near the Hofnar or Willem II cigar factories in Valkenswaard or the second hand bookstores in Eindhoven.

There was "coffee" in the student lounge at school.
Some of the worst brown muck you ever drank.
Yeah, no spaghetti. No pork chops either.



You smell that? Do you smell that?... pork chops, boy. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of pork chops in the morning. You know, one time we had the deepfryer going, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked in. Piles of cutlets and chops and thick slabs of porkbelly. And drizzles of soy. The smell, you know that rich treify smell, the whole town. Smelled like... victory. Someday summer's gonna end .....

In the deep-south they have grits with their spaghetti.
In Hong Kong and Chinatown, it's pork chops.
Whatever, I'll pass. Just coffee.


I'm on my second cup.




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