Fluffy Mackerel Pudding

Posted by Chuck at 2/23/2008 2:18 PM
Categories: uncategorized
Lileks.com is the most interesting place on the internet. I found it around Christmas 2005.

A friend had sent me to this site, which was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. She uses some swear words, but it's funny when she does. It's really worth your time to look at all the Weight Watcher's recipe cards from the '70s to make you feel better about life today. The cards are funny on their own, but the author's comments are a hoot. Wendy McClure paid homage to James Lileks as her inspiration, so I clicked over to see what that was all about.

I've probably spent 20 or more hours at his site since then. The Institute of Official Cheer has a collection of ephemera and comments unlike anything I've ever seen. Interior Desecrations, The Gallery of Regrettable Food, and Mommy Knows Worst are worth a couple of hours alone, all three are books too (which I own, but they would make great gifts for just about anyone).  The American Motel makes me want to take a road trip, and his Cafe collection makes me want to burn down all the Chili's and Applebees I see.

My personal favorite is the Matchbook Museum. I really dig the way he either researches or invents the stories around each of these once ubiquitous pieces of American life, which have gone the way of the spittoon and the ashtray. It supports the theory that given enough time, everything becomes valuable. I love learning about history through primary sources of information, rather than processed history books.  Like I'd rather read a Sears catalogs from 1932 than read a book on the history of the Sears Roebuck company. Though I'd probably read both. I'm fascinated by old clip art, too.

I also like people who have weird collections of things. Without meaning to become a collector, I have started this year to gather an abnormal assortment of canned fish.



I don't know why. It started one day in January, when I decided that I wanted to figure out which sardine brand I liked the most. Then it started to expand to kipper snacks and smoked oysters.

One problem is that sardines in mustard sauce is not as easy to find out here, they tend to be simply packed in olive or soybean oil, which means the sardine has to stand on its own merits, not be overpowered by mustard. As I started to broaden my sardine experience, I realized that Bumble Bee is actually made with big, lousy sardines, often so big that only two fit in a can head to toe, or head to fin. Typically, the smaller the sardine, the better, that's why "two layer" cans tend to be a little more expensive. Crown Prince has one can that's really good except that they don't always have the tail fins cut off, so I have to trim them more. I like the ones that are lightly smoked. 

I have no idea what that all has to do with the topic I started writing about, but whatever. Somewhere there's a guy in the Hudson Valley who makes smoked eel. I want to try that so bad. .

 
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