Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta food. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta food. Mostrar todas las entradas

jueves, 3 de noviembre de 2016

He was a friend

   The problem with having people over was that Tom’s place was always a mess. He tried to keep it clean; to make it look like someone responsible lived there, but it was impossible for him to keep that façade up. He had to confront the fact that he was not the most organized person in the world and that he shouldn’t have said “Yes” when asked if he could have his friends over for their weekly gathering. They had that tradition since they started having their own places. It was an excuse for seeing each other more often because if it weren’t for that dinner, they wouldn’t know anything.

 Marina had almost always hosted the dinner. She had the most beautiful apartment of the group and her husband was very relaxed about them meeting up so often. Sometimes they only met every two weeks because she had something else to do or her husband needed his space so they just didn’t get together. If it wasn’t her house, they sometimes used Greg’s place but the problem with his house was the fact that it was too far away from anyone else’s and that he had a baby so they had to keep it silent and very short.

 So Tom had a lot to do before his friends came over. By his request, the dinner was changed fro mthe usual Friday to Saturday. He knew that if he needed time to plan the whole thing and it was going to be an important meeting because the New Year holidays had just ended and it hadn’t seen each other in weeks. They would normally call for a pizza or something like that but he really wanted to impress them as he had always been the loser of the group, the one that never did anything too impressive, the one that was still single and working a menial job.

 Yes, Tom wanted them to see another side of him, a side that he would hopefully actually have. As he started planning, he realized he was really as dull and simple as anyone would think. His job was really not interesting so they never spoke about that but he always got so tired from it that he had almost no time to actually read or hear about other things in the world. He didn’t have any real knowledge about the interesting things of life. He only knew about the boring corner he occupied in the world and that was it. So he really had to make an effort.

 The first thing was actually planning the dinner. Even in the New Year’s Eve dinner with his family, he had his old timey notepad and a pencil with which he would write ideas for things to eat. His brother insisted he should just order a pizza and garlic bread but they always did that and he wanted to impress them with something they couldn’t see coming. The garlic bread was a nice idea, so he wrote it down and his mother told him a good salad is always welcome so he wrote that down too. The idea was to have many simple things around.

 The days before the meeting, he decided to buy most of the things he needed for his dinner in order to do them first and see if he could do it all by himself or if it really was a better idea to just ask for a pizza. He used the oven and borrowed a bunch of kitchen equipment from his mother, as he didn’t have anything to do proper things at his place. He didn’t even have a blender, just a couple of pans, a cooking pot and the microwave. Tom had to borrow his father’s car too to be able to take all of that back to his place. They thought he was going crazy.

 The first thing he decided to do was the salad, which he thought was the simplest of the dishes he had wrote down. He decided to do one mixing vegetables and fruits. It was supposed to be something refreshing and filled with flavors. He did everything the recipe called for but at the end, he doubted the result was the same as in the recipe. Apparently, the fruits and veggies he had chosen weren’t in their best moment. Some of them were too “green” and others were too ripe. It wasn’t to be surprised, as he had never picked up so many things from the supermarket.

 He put the salad on the side and decided it would be nice if he kept it on the refrigerator. Then, Tom decided to make the garlic bread. It was a rather simple thing to do. His trial test was going to be with cheap bread he had found in the supermarket. Again, he had made the wrong choice, as the bread was much too hard, like a rock. It was almost impossible to cut it. But once he did, he smeared some garlic paste on it and put it in the oven. The thing was he forgot about it when doing another recipe, so the bread got burned and his second attempt another disaster.

 What he was doing in the meantime was mixing the ingredients to make nice thick waffles. He had found a website that advised against the mix they sold in a box and encouraged people to do the mix themselves. The whole kitchen got covered in flour and a couple of eggshells ended up in the mix. He let it harden a bit when he got the garlic bread out of the oven so when he mixed it again, it had a very rough texture, not very similar to the one in the pictures of the website. When he tried it in the pan, it just got stuck there and burned like the bread.

 And all of that happened in a single day, the Monday previous to his gathering with friends. He wasn’t ready at all and he was even more of a disaster than he had thought. Tom had never cooked anything for himself and had no idea about entertaining people. He was a shy person, the kind that would always be asked last about a subject, if asked at all. He knew they had put that burden on him because no one else could do it and that thought made him realized he didn’t want to be that person.

 So early Tuesday, he grabbed the phone and called every single was one of his so-called friends and told them that he had decided against organizing their little event. He didn’t explain why or anything like that. He thought it was best not to say anything that they could use against him, although he knew they were going to talk anyway. After making all the appropriate calls, he decided to go to bed and rest because he hadn’t been able to sleep properly just because of that stupid meeting being in his brain for weeks and weeks.

 A surprise came in Wednesday, after having been able to sleep for ten straight hours. A girl from college called Alicia had come to his door to visit, out of the blue. When he buzzed her in, he didn’t really realize what he had done. But then he did and he started picking up the trash from the floor but then stopped and realized that didn’t make any sense. If Alicia was there, it was because the others had told her about the cancelled reunion. She wanted to know more and he shouldn’t just fake that everything was perfect when it wasn’t.

At the end of the day, that mess in his house was what made him Tom. He was that mess and it was the most original version of his own self. Nothing more could be as perfect to describe him as that pile of things all around, ranging from papers and notebooks to all the ingredients that he hadn’t used and wasn’t going to use for anything, never again. He even had some clothes on the floor, mainly the ones he would pick up and put in bag to take to washing machines in the basement of the building. It was one of those places.

 When Alicia arrived, he greeted her on the door and didn’t ask her to come in. He just wanted to know what she was doing there. She said that a bunch of people, including her, were worried about him because he had cancelled out of the blue. She reminded him that he was always so worried about arriving on time to their other meetings and often gave money for more pizza, so it was weird that he would just cancel the gathering that he was in charge of. So Alicia was just there to receive an explanation and she really got one.


 Tom said he was tired of being the last person they always thought of, except when they needed money or some idiot to do shit for them. He told Alicia to told every other person in their so-called “friend group” that he wasn’t going to be the same idiot that he had been since college. Maybe he wasn’t brilliant or successful or anything, but he still deserved some respect. He closed the door on her face and decided it was a nice time to order a pizza, all for himself.

sábado, 10 de septiembre de 2016

Lemonade

   Every single person that knew me wondered why I had chosen such a name for my dog. I always told them I didn’t really choose the name. Instead, he had been the one to choose it. I remember very well. I had been walking for a long time and was really hungry but didn’t know my surroundings at all. I had been living in that city for almost a year but the part of town I was in was not very well known to me. To be honest, it wasn’t one of those popular tourist destinations. It was one of those places people go very randomly or that locals know but no one else. I considered myself more of a local back then.

 I was lost and hungry and started to wander the streets trying to look for anything in order to calm my stomach. I found a closed supermarket and a closed restaurant and then I realized I had become lost in the worst day possible for the place I was in: Sunday. Nothing opened on Sunday, nothing at all. Maybe a couple of little supermarkets down in the tourist area but in that neighborhood I had so stupidly stepped in, there was nothing at all on such a day.

 How did I forget that? I have no idea. But the truth was I grew more and more desperate as the minutes passed. To make things worse, the clouds in the sky were staring to move and the sun, shiny and big as it looked, started to shine strongly above me. The temperature rose steadily until I had to walk back to a park I had seen before in order to sit down on a park bench beneath a tree, where I could at least try to make a plan or think of something to do in that case.

 It was then when I met him. He just came up to me out of nowhere and I swear I never saw anyone around us in that moment. He was a very short dog, the kind that had a lot of fur and tiny legs and paws and also a very small head. His fur was a combination of orange and white and I could easily notice he hadn’t been bathed in quite a while. He just sidled up to me and sat on the floor, also avoiding the sunlight.

 At first, I didn’t much for him. He was just a dog in a park, nothing too uncommon up to that point. It was when I stood up and walked to were I thought I had seen a metro station when things got really interesting. I did find the station and, luckily, I had one last trip in my metro card. It would help me go back home and eat around there or something.

 It wasn’t until I was inside the train and sat down (not many people on Sunday), that I noticed the dog had followed me and sat just below the seats in front of me, as a way for me to notice him. I realized that from the first moment I saw him there, putting his small him on his paws, waiting for the train to arrive to its destination. 

 After thirty minutes, I was back where I knew where everything was and where I could trust I could find some nice food. I was so eager to eat that, again, I forgot about the dog. I climbed the stairs to the street as fast as I could and started looking around me as if I was hunting some rare type of animal.

 Sure enough, I found a place were they did a very attractive fried chicken with French fries. It was perfect for my hunger, as my belly growled more and more loudly. Even people around me in the train could hear it complain. It was very embarrassing and I didn’t acknowledge any of it, instead playing the “I have no idea what’s happening” card.  I sat on a table in front of the restaurant and asked for a lemonade to have with my beverage, as I was really thirsty too.

 As I waited for my chicken, I noticed that part of town was as dead as the rest of it. There were a couple of business open but the amount of people in them was very sad. People were apparently very tied to their traditions and refused to change them for nothing, even if it could benefit them somehow. I could never get used to that as those are not my traditions but I think it’s interesting how people are sometimes. They keep amazing me.

 The other creature that amazed me was that damn dog from the park. As I was wondering about people of that city, I noticed something was under the other chair by the table. As I looked down, I saw it lying down exactly as I had done in the train. Just then, the waiter came with my lemonade and my lunch/dinner. I was so hungry I forgot about the dog in two seconds, digging in mercilessly.

 When I was halfway through my meal, I realized the dog had crawled out of under the chair and had decided to sit down by me watching me eat. Clearly it was the sign that meant, “Feed me”. At first, I really thought I wouldn’t give him a single piece of chicken. Not only because I was very hungry but also because the dog’s insistence on following me was very bothering. Besides, there was also the fact that I had no idea who the owner of the animal was and if it was a good thing for me to give him some chicken.

 Finally, I decided to give him a little piece of chicken. I threw it just in front of him but, to my surprise, that damn dog didn’t seem to care for chicken. I did the same thing with half a French fry and nothing; he just didn’t seem to care about any of it. Then why was he following me and staring at me as I ate? What the hell was wrong with him?

 Suddenly, the creature did something I wasn’t expected and that confused me even further: it got up on its to back legs and put the other two on my thigh, looking at me with his small black eyes. I was absolutely confused. He was begging or apparently that was the case but I had already given him food and he didn’t care for that. So what did he want it?

 I decided to keep eating my meal. I would finish it and just go home. I had no time or desire to be guessing a dog’s needs or wishes. I had never really had a pet at home, except the rabbit that had died five days after my father had brought it for my sibling and me. Besides that, my relationship with animals had been very rare. Maybe when I visited my friends who had dogs or cats, that was really my only interaction with other species. Besides that, nothing.

 The dog did the thigh thing a couple times more but I didn’t even acknowledge it. I finished the chicken, which was delicious, and ate the last couple of fries with some mustard, which was my favorite. I called the waiter in order to ask for the check and I just exhaled in a very content manner as I had fulfilled my wish for the afternoon. Thankfully, the sun was beginning to be covered by clouds again so I did not have to worry about sweating all the way home.

 When I reached for my glass of lemonade to finish it, the dog went crazy. Not inly he touched my thigh again, he started jumping up and down as if he was doing some kind of show. I took a look around me and realized there was no one else watching besides me, no one to testify to how crazy that damn dog was.

 It took me a while to realize that the key to his response had been the lemonade. So, feeling curious, I poured some of it in small saucer that the waiter had left on the next table and just put it in front of the dog. Sure enough, the little creature drank the lemonade in a couple of seconds. I was so entertained by watching him drink such a thing, that I poured twice more, give him the last of my beverage.

After I paid, I thought the dog would stay there but, for some reason, he kept following me.  I had no idea why I did it but I let it happen. I didn’t try to scare him of or anything and when we got to my building, I let him pass inside.


 He has been living with me for a year now. His name is Lemonade. And I have to say he’s one funny dog. Not only because of how I met him but because he seems to know things I haven’t even realized yet. Somehow, he’s more human than you, me and all others.

jueves, 8 de septiembre de 2016

The desert and its creatures

   Alexa had always been very fascinated by the desert. She had studied all types of animals from it and had done her final thesis back in the university about all of them. So it was very natural, when she finished studying, that she joined a team of proper biologists in order to go to a remote desert region to discover new species. She was fascinated by the fact that a whole bunch of life forms could be discovered just like that, even in these times. She was, without a doubt, the most enthusiastic person to ever work in such a difficult environment.

 Not only was it hard for everyone because of the food and the general living conditions, but because looking for anything meant having to submit oneself to the very hot temperatures of the desert and the dangerous creatures than lived within. In her first week, Alexa was almost stung five times by different scorpions that appeared out of nowhere, every time exactly where her hand was.

 She had become quite aware of those little creatures and was now very capable to know where the animals would appear and also how much time she could stand under the sun before she started feeling really bad. Alexa was a strong woman, willing to resist whatever was necessary in order to achieve her goal of discovering something new in the name of science. She wanted to make history and there was no doubt she could seriously achieve her goal.

 The food was also a big problem in the camp, always tasting a lot like the sand of the desert but she knew never to complain. If she didn’t like something, she just didn’t eat it and tried to exchange with others for things that she had like energy bars. And every guy in her group liked her because she had been careful enough to bring so many energy bars it seemed she would never run out.

 They stayed in the same part of the desert for a long time, without having any success in the discovery front. They had classified many differences between scorpions of the same type but not much more than that. They had also taken numerous pictures and had studied the possible ways that snakes and other creatures could survive the hot temperatures. It was a big revelation to see an actual snake move around the hot desert sand.

 The trip was really fun but the first week went by too soon and they had permission to stay in the desert for three weeks. After all, it was a national park that was protected by a series of rules and regulations in order for people not to alter its stability in any way. The permission they had been granted was very hard to get and they really needed to take advantage of it.

 However the first week proved to be a deprived of any real discoveries. They were all really worried that maybe they wouldn’t be able to fin anything knew. They changed their camp’s location drastically, in order to be closer to an oasis, where some animals may thrive because of the “easier” conditions. However, they found nothing there either except more snakes and scorpions.

 The water, however, was crystal clear. They grabbed some into bottles in order to test it once they went back into their labs and regular work lives. It would be interested to see how many bacteria would be able to live in such a hostile environment and to know if the water was as pure as it seemed to be. Alexa even drank some directly from the pond because she was very thirsty and thought that even catching a disease from the water would be more fun that what she was doing daily, which was nothing.

She was very disappointed in her first trip. She thought that maybe it had not been the best idea to go to the desert in this first time. Maybe it could have been better to get to the forest or even in a boat to some corner of the ocean. She was trying to come up with different alternatives but the desert was the ecosystem that had always fascinated her, maybe because her parents had been born so close to an actual desert.

 Although not nomad or anything of the sort, her parents had the tradition to get fresh dates from the desert when it was the right season for those. They would roam the desert in order to pick them from the trees and Alexa would love it because she really loved the taste of the dates but also the feeling of adventure she had when she was around her parents.

 They weren’t’ scientist or anything like that. As matter of fact, she was the non-artistic person in her family. She had some skill while drawing but that was it. Alexa was a terrible singer, even in the shower, and couldn’t properly paint, write or anything like that. For some strange reason, she had been born without that very characteristic gene that most of her family had. However, she was very good with numbers, so she never felt too bad in school.

Another week ended the day they changed locations in the desert, once again. They were trying desperately to pick up anything. Their walks every day were getting longer and longer and people were getting desperate, even to the extent that everything they saw was a reason to cheer and get excited and then realize they had just seen a rock or a dead scorpion or something like that. By the beginning of the third week, no one was very happy about the results they had come up with.

 However, good things come to people that wait. In one of their long walks, a good friend of Alexa’s was the one who discovered some markings on rocks who had never been registered. By the way they were painted, it seemed the artist had lived a very long time ago, probably when the rock was really above the desert and not buried in it. Although they were mostly biologists, they were all very excited about such a discovery because it was something that could change the understanding of the place they were in.

 The most interesting part of the drawings was that it depicted humans and also other creatures hat seemed to represent the ecosystem of the desert. There was a drawing of a scorpion, another of some kind of bird and also snakes. All of those were pretty common. But then, there were drawing of several insect like creatures that had never been registered in that desert. So from that day, the biologists decide to help and clear the rock formation from sand in order to see if they could find something interesting to their field.

 And that’s exactly what happened. Four days before living, one of Alexa’s partners found the rotting body of a huge beetle the size of an adult’s hand. Several pictures were taken and the specimen was treated with a special solution in order to put it in a box and take it to the laboratory. The most interesting feature of that insect was the color: it was golden, just like the sun and the sand. Nature was very bright.

 Some other insects were discovered in the area and those were actually alive. There was a big thick worm it red antennae and some kind of really big green ant. They were all preserved carefully in boxes and jars for further study. In a few days, the would be back in their usually work attire, not shorts and shirtless like in the desert, typing in to computers and using several machines to understand what they were seeing.

 Alexa’s discovery came on the very last day and it happened to be a very dangerous one because it was a total accident. The creature was basically a scorpion but the difference was it was as big as a human baby. Its eyes were bright red and its body was very white, probably because it lived beneath the sand. Sadly, the creature had to be killed in order to take it back to the lab. But not only because of that but because it had almost stung Alexa with its tail.


 She took a picture of the creature and would later print it and put it in her workstation in the lab. She was very proud of her discovery but she couldn’t help wondering if what she had discovered was a natural creation or if it was some kind of mutation. She was really looking forward to solve that problem too.

martes, 6 de septiembre de 2016

Who Dunnit?

   There was a little bit of cold chicken in a bag and some old bread around the second big bin. The trick was to clean it all real good, being careful none of the filth of the rest of the thing inside the containers could harm the good things that were waiting for anyone to grab. Viv had been doing I for five years and now she knew how to look for the best in the best parts of town. Of course, she had to go at night, but not loo late or the guys of the garbage trucks would throw it all away.

 One day, she was even lucky enough to find half a pizza. And I was very good, made out of a lot of vegetables. The only bad thing was that it was cold but to that she was already used to and she didn’t care at all. In other places it was very hard to get any of that but that neighborhood, called Spring Heights, had the best meals for any person that happened to live on the streets. The problem was the security crews and the police who loved to fuck anyone who entered those communities.

 Every time Viv was caught there, she reminded the police that she wasn’t doing anything wrong and that no one could get harmed by her feeding herself with things no one even wanted anymore. It wasn’t like she grabbed clothes or real expensive things from he garbage. She could’ve but people in that area seemed to be very careful not to throw away things that were very valuable, except when it was about food. Then they didn’t care at all about the treasures that they gave away.

 One day she was even able to eat three sushi rolls. Viv was scared about that food because she knew it was raw fish and that, if old, she may have been in for some serious stomachache, but nothing happened and she realized how overrated that kind of food was.

 But her moment happened the day she found something very different in the garbage. She had managed to avoid the private security, again, and was checking on some boxes by a big house on the hill, when she was almost paralyzed with fear. When she took out a plastic bag filled with lots of crap, there was something in there she knew wasn’t very common to see in the trash: it was a human ear.

 It was the first time Viv ran to the police. At first, they didn’t want to talk to her because they knew her really well but after some serious consideration, they heard what she had to say. The consideration was basically when she three the bag with the ear on the chief of police’s desk and was almost tackled to the ground by two male officers. Her move had been very bold but effective, as the police sent several of their own to check the rest of the boxes she had been going through.

 They found the other ear and also a couple of fingers. When they rang the bell at the mansion the bins belonged to, they didn’t get any answer. The cops seriously had no interest in talking to anyone in that house but it was a formality that they had to proceed with. The house was better known as Montecarlo, the preferred mansion in the city of one of the richest men alive. Or maybe it was fairer to say he was barely alive, as he neared ninety years old. That and his unlimited power were the reasons cops didn’t really want to bother him.

 But in any case, no one answered the door. They tried multiple times for months and no one answered. Even when contacted through the main offices of the conglomerate the man was president of, no one would say a thing. It was very uncommon and mysterious but also predictable as no well known person would even think about being caught in a scandal such as that one that not only involved body parts found in the trash, but also a homeless woman and the police.

 The ears were sent to a laboratory for exams and the results were very interesting: apparently, they had been removed fairly recently, not even a month ago. The studies also said the owner of those ears was probably younger than forty years old but older than twenty-five years old, according to the cartilage and general shape of them. They also concluded that the ears had been sawed from the body they had been attached to, which indicated the police that they may have been dealing with the case in the wrong way.

 Those techniques to remove body parts were primarily used by men in the mob or in any other organizations that dedicated themselves to using violent methods. The cops went through every single mobster they had arrested recently in order to get a confession that they had done it but none of them seemed to understand what he was talking about. They were even so bold to say they hadn’t done that in a while.

 But how to believe a mobster when he was arrested for reckless driving and attempted murder of their own wife? Others had even had their closest enemies killed and had no problem at all talking about it. But they’d rather be damned than accept they had cut off those ears. They didn’t insisted on the subject but most of them were consistently positive they had nothing to do with it.

 That was not good news for the police that had been investigating for more than six months and nothing had come up: the mobsters said they weren’t the ones, the owner of the bins was a no show and even Viv had stopped helping them because she thought the police was only good for taking her away of all the street’s great prizes.

  Almost a year would pass until another body part was found in a garbage bin; very close to the ones that Viv ad been going threw. The foot was from a male body and it wasn’t especially big. The scientists at the police were able to confirm with a high degree of certainty that the foot and the ears came from the same person. The police couldn’t ignore this anymore, so they ordered a sweep of every trashcan in the hill. Groups of people would go through every single garbage container in order to look for the rest of the body.

 The cops were smart enough to get Viv to help them, as she was the one that knew perfectly about every single spot to throw food and possibly body parts. They started on the bottom of the hill and worked their way up. They didn’t find anything near the first houses but as time passed, other parts were discovered: a nose, a finger, and a toe. They kept appearing as the police worked their way up to the top of the hill, where the wealthiest people lived.

 Of course, the whole thing was an epic scandal and many rich people thought the police should stop targeting their neighborhood as if they were the ones to blame for whatever had happened. They insisted no one from the hill would even think about killing, simply because they were all so rich they didn’t need to do it. Their reasoning was easy to understand but simply not good enough.

 After several weeks of research, they had collected enough body parts to do a proper examination and attempt to reconstruct the whole person or at least what was his or hers most likely appearance. When Viv found a penis by a fence, they knew it was a male. All the parts were dry some that’s why blood testing was impossible and only reconstruction of the whole body was the only real solution to the problem.

 Searches on the garbage bins ended soon and the police dedicated themselves for a week to reconstructing the body, part by part. There were still some large parts missing but most small pieces were there. It was one of the female cops that dropped her coffee when she entered the room to deliver a letter to the chief of the scientific staff. She knew whom the body had belonged to.


 This time, they didn’t ask to be invited in. The doors of the mansion were toppled down and every corner of the premises searched. The head was found on a pike, in the living room, by the fireplace. Someone really hated the richest man in the city, to the point of killing him in his own house and dividing his body all over the hill. Who had done it?