The Real World Is A Fabrication

I do believe the hunger that the average American feels for the memoir, the essay, narrative non-fiction, reality television, and the news in general, is a manifestation of a growing alienation between what we are given as reality, and the rather less dramatic realities that we all live. This same hunger is reflected in the primacy of reality television, the rhetorical wars fought by differing plebes about the veracity of Fox News versus CNN, the fact that a comedian coined what is probably the most important neologism in recent memory (truthiness). We live increasingly hermetic lives, despite the ease in connectivity and communication. We are surround by a cocoon of electronic noise, information highways, social network sites. On the surface these communication tools, television, the internet, are there to increase the easiness of our lives, to bring people closer together, but in the end these things only enable frivolity. As our lives become more interconnected, our lives become more mundane and we are told that the mundane life is not a life well-lived. They sell us the things that they tell us are bad for us.

We are shown advertisements for television shows like Pawn Stars, Keeping up with the Kardashians, Hell's Kitchen, and told this is reality. We are to believe that the dolled-up, exaggerated poses, looks, and situations of these shows are things that really happen. I cannot vouch for the scriptedness of these shows, but to be quite frank, they look engineered in a fashion that, depending on how you squint at it, might actually render them fiction.

Because who, in their everyday life gets dressed up in thousand dollar suits, screams at their mother, hocks an antique whalemonger map, and abuses underlings?

Today you probably woke up, made some coffee, took a shower, walked a pet, went to work, did INCREDIBLY boring things for 7-10 hours, ate shitty fast food for lunch, went home, wondered what was wrong with you because you don't match some overly engineered idea of beauty or success, watched TV or read a book.

And that is awesome. Because, even if there are a couple of deep-down soul sucking parts to that, you did the things that we are all good at, and we managed to not make a fool of ourselves on TV, unlike this person:



Sure, we didn't get to be loaded with money and in eating some kind of overtly pretentious food at some overpriced restaurant that is obviously a tax write-off with a kitchen used to launder cocaine funds. So go get a bowl of stew and read a book. TV rots the brain.

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup 50/50 olive/canola oil
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 tablespoon coarse ground pepper
--->whisk in a bowl, add:
2.5 pounds stewing beef
--->slop it around until the beef is well covered, cover, place in fridge for an hour. Do something else. Come back.

Now, construct one of the most useful, but arbitrarily annoying things in all of cooking, a Bouquet Garni. I make mine like this:

2 bay leaves
10 springs thyme
2 stalks (or whatever they call them) sage
2 stems rosemary
2 celery tops (the parts with the leaves)
--->tie it all together with some baking twine, set aside.

Remove beef from marinade. Heat up a couple of teaspoons of oil in the soup pot. Put the beef in, brown it all over.

3 carrots (quartered and then cut into inch-long bits
1 cup peas
1 vidalia onion (rough chopped)
5 cloves garlic (trust me)

Make some beef stock, or use some store bought, whatever. One isn't any better than the other.

When the meat is browned, at the stock, the vegetables, and the Bouquet Garni. Bring to a boil and then cut it back to a REAL SLOW simmer, cover, cook for two hours.

Since this is a stock based stew, and there is no wine or beer or cream in it, and I didn't have you dredge the meat in flour, you'll have to roux it up. You won't need a lot of roux.

Remove the Bouquet Garni.

2 tablespoons butter
--->melt in the microwave
2 tablespoons AP flour
-->whisk into melted butter, make it lumpless. Add to stew, give it a good stir or two and then cover again.

When it thickens up, salt and pepper to taste and remove from the (LOW) HEAT.

And be glad you don't live in the real world.