You can make a sandwich out of anything!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I haven’t been so good on the whole cooking front lately. As I was driving home this evening I was trying to formulate some sort of meal plan so I could avoid the drive-thru, restaurant or the singles-section at Safeway.

As I mentally combed through my edibles, the best thing I could come up with was a meatloaf and cheese sandwich. Which should have got me pondering about my lack of will to live, but mostly it made me think about a conversation that happened the other day.

We were out for Father’s Day dinner, the topic of sandwiches came up. My brother declared that you can make a sandwich out of anything. My, very pregnant, sister-in-law asked if a sandwich could be made out of spaghetti (that was my dish of the evening and apparently the most far-fetched idea she could come up with).

I said yes, having witnessed it at work, by Gorm, on a number of occasions. My brother, incredulously, added that of course you could, in fact, who hasn’t had a spaghetti sandwich. She silently gave him a look that either said “I haven’t and I can’t believe you have” or “I’ll kill you in your sleep tonight”.

Which got us talking about the best and worst non-traditional sandwiches ever made.

My Uncle John, being one of the youngest in a family of 11 brothers and sisters, with numerous nephews and nieces milling about trying to get a free meal, came up with a horrifying sandwich that would deter all those looking for a bite. After a few years of eating it, he came to like how it tasted and still enjoyed how he didn’t have to share the sandwich with anyone.

Sometimes he’d mix it up and incorporate cheese-whiz into the atrocity.

On the same side of the family, our cousin, Chris, had a strange affinity to cheese. Don’t get me wrong – cheese is great, but watching him devour his favourite sandwich was nauseating to say the least.

His stomach-turning sandwich consisted solely of the thickest slabs of cheddar cheese possible, drenched in an ungodly amount of yellow mustard, sandwiched between, well, two pieces of bread and microwaved to liquefy the cheese. Sometimes, he ditched the bread altogether and just set up shop on the couch with the Costco size brick of cheese and mustard bottle (sans microwave, because that would be gross).

Which brings us to the sandwich that my brother created that I completely erased from my memory banks. And not due to sheer disgust; it was actually a really great sandwich.

The Burrito Sandwich: take two pieces of bread, butter and salt & pepper both sides. Cut burrito in half so it fits on the bread. Put hot burrito between the bread and enjoy!

My sister-in-law was horrified, I reminisced about how good it was, while my brother tried repeatedly to convince her it was a tasty treat. The following conversation ensued:

Work Shenanigans

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have some new office-mates. They both happen to be of Asian descent. They also both happen to be jerks.

Not really.

But since they’re Asian they are more likely to eat weird shit on a day-to-day basis. I’m white and the stuff I eat is pretty… … vanilla. Definitely on a world scale, but even on a Canadian scale.

So, naturally, they’ve made it their mission to “expand my horizons”. It’s a game they love and a game I’m disliking more and more. 

The first time it happened was a couple weeks ago when Geiger brought in “Taiwan’s most popular snack food”, which was some fish/shrimp cracker-y things. I’ve had things like that previously and they’re pretty okay, so I had one.

What I didn’t realize was that this particular brand of snack food contained a dehydrated fish inside each packet.

What I also didn’t realize was that when Geiger found the fish that she would think it would be good idea to make me eat it. I also didn’t realize that The Ninja would agree. It took some prodding, in the form of both of them chanting my name, but eventually I ate the fish.

It was small so I thought it wouldn’t be bad, but it was concentrated. As I crunched through the dehydrated carcass of this little fish, my mouth was perfused with a very strong fish flavour. It was basically like eating 4 cans of tuna in one bite.

The next time was a few days later when a co-worker brought in candies from Thailand, one of which was durian flavoured. I was asked if I liked durian, I said that I had never tried it, but I’d smelled it, so that was enough for me.

That wasn’t enough for them. The Ninja went and got me a candy and then they started demanding I eat it.

Eventually I caved and put the candy in my mouth. And then promptly spit it out because it was horrible! They laughed and said that it wasn’t in my mouth long enough for it to count. They threatened to get me another one.

The conversation moved to “what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten”; Geiger won that contest by saying that she once ate pig fallopian tube. She said it wasn’t bad, it was just a skinny tube that was chewy, kind of like an elastic band.

A little while later, The Ninja said “Hey, Heather….” and when I turned around he was presenting me with an elastic band served on a napkin. He tried the chant that had worked previously.

The few days later, I heard The Ninja say “Hey Heather… you want one?” My heart filled with dread and when I turned around he was offering me a cookie… I was surprised.

I’m not sure if his predominant reaction was amused or offended.

After repeated pleas that I did not want “Make That White Girl Eat Weird Shit” to be the new game, The Ninja came up with a new game: “Make That White Girl Say Things in Cantonese Without Telling Her What The Words Mean Until She Uses Them In Really Inappropriate Ways”.

Lucky for me, I tend to use English words in really inappropriate ways so it’s never too long before I find out what they’re teaching me to say.

Don’t fear the Reaper

You might remember my series of posts about Windows 7 ruining my life. If not, that’s okay, you don’t have to read them. Just know that there were a lot of them because I was angry and bitter (which is a bad combination when you have a blog).

The gist of the issue was that I was unable to record music in real time on a brand new laptop because of latency problem associated with Windows 7. I returned the laptop and several months later, returned to the store and purchased it again, content with the fact that I would keep my suffocatingly slow desktop for my music projects.

In that time, because I was never really content, I tried different interfaces and work-arounds but nothing seemed to work. One day, I had my friend Brian over and we ended up messing about on my desktop for recording. We ended up installing a better program called Reaper and then it promptly lost all recording capabilities.

We quickly uninstalled the “better” program and restored everything to it’s previous functioning state.

A few weeks later, I brought my laptop over to Brian’s house in order to figure out the recording issue once and for all. He suggested installing Reaper. Even though this would have been immediately rejected had he suggested it at my house a couple weeks earlier, I accepted his suggestion because the worst that could happen was that I still wouldn’t be able to record music on my laptop.

After a quick installation and a quick plug in of a microphone, we did a test.

I was recording in real time. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. I was astounded that it could be so easy when it had caused so much strife over the years. Seriously years. It’s been nearly 3 years.

So, what changed? In order to try and make a certain interface work, I had installed a generic audio driver, ASIO4all. As the name suggests it’s supposed to be compatible with everything.

Reaper is a more advanced recording program than the program I was previously using, Audacity, and has the ability to select different drivers for the program to function. Instead of selecting the audio driver in my computer (the one that causes the blasted latency issue I loathe), I selected ASIO. And it fixed all my problems.

Well, all my problems relating to recording on my laptop anyway…