When my devices didn’t reliably display websites’ actual content, my accounts apparently engaged in activity not of my doing, my phone didn’t reliably complete calls as dialed, a buncha my files disappeared, and other crazy shit happened in Boston in 2015, one of the funniest things was how a website that looked like mine but wasn’t had recipes alongside sex toy reviews. What’s more embarrassing: that, or the fact that at the time, I hadn’t ever touched a sex toy? Unless you count Barbies, which have many uses… (Clearly my embarrassment threshold has grown three sizes since then.)
But I used to love writing recipes, including some that were published years ago as Reviews of New Food for McSweeney’s—Coconut Borscht, Chocolate Love Vegan Cupcakes, Shepherds-Who-Want-You-To-Be-Healthy Pie, Herbal Supplements, and Hot Chai Malk. Which reminds me of how, at one time before the current era of bliss—and before the immediately preceding era, in which I only stopped working to apply calories to body to avoid problems—I also enjoyed cooking. A lot.
In fact, as a little girl I enjoyed it so much that I tried various cooking-centered businesses, like selling brownies (or giving them away) to the neighbors (age 8?) and Christmas pralines to local businesses (age 20). That was when I wasn’t selling (or giving away) art cards and paintings. It should have told me something that my early cooking and art-centered business ventures generally involved losing money and/or giving the best stuff away. But I like what I like.
And as this new recipe at McSweeney’s today suggests, I like roast chicken. Also Germany. Germany is nice. I would like to become German as soon as possible, but the citizenship road is about 7 years long and I’ve only been here about 2.5 years. So like any good American, I’m brainstorming how to achieve my dreams through careful planning, hard work, and unfair shortcuts.
What if I get a quick online degree in nuclear physics? What if I marry a Dutchman who speaks really good German? What if my great-grandmother was a starving Jewish girl sent by her Romanian parents from Iași to live with relatives in illustrious Stanisławów, Austria-Poland-Ukraine, but luckily she GTFO before they killed all the Jews in all the places and none of my relatives on that side had any citizenship to restore to me now anyway because they were all, as I may have mentioned, Jews? GIVE ME CITIZENSHIP AND I WILL BAKE YOU BROWNIES.
Wait, is quid pro quo for citizenship illegal? Look, all I’m saying is, Make Vera European Again.
