Mackenzie's Rather Unorthodox Matzoh Ball Soup

Welcome friends, to the tail end of Mackenzie's Rather Unorthodox Matzoh Ball Soup + some beer. It's November these days and even though my buddy El Nino has been keeping it warm, I decided to make some matzoh ball soup to keep things toasty up in here.

Sorry, was that too far back into the 1990s? Are there people alive now who won't understand that reference? Perish the thought.

So my matzoh ball soup is Rather Unorthodox for a few reasons. First of all, I put pork in it.

Lovingly sourced from Natalie Dee's comic: http://www.marriedtothesea.com/

Then I put butter in it. So basically, it's sin on a spoon. Also, the pork was cooked in beer.  I almost put sauerkraut in it too but then I realized I was actually sort of tipsy and needed to quit while I was ahead.

Sauerkraut has such a bad rep. I realized recently (last Passover) that many of my friends do not understand the joys of pickled cabbage. Think about this critically for a moment, friends. I'll bet you like cabbage, right? And I'll bet you like pickles, yes? Then you will like sauerkraut. Get over the name. Move past the limp, blanched seaweed appearance. Suck it up and discover joy.

This love is real.


You know, on second thought, potatoes would have been great in this. I write this between massive gulps of delicious porky, rosemary-y, dumpling filled happiness. Another odd thing about this soup is that the rosemary is reminding me of Christmas.


I think I just invented Gentile-zoh Ball Soup.


Slurps & Burps,
Mackenzie

Luba's Advice Column!

Quick update friends! Luba is going to have a video advice column here on Drinks with Dinner!

It's not yet clear how often Luba will be able to contribute. As you might imagine, she has a lot of irons in the fire. But please feel free to write to her at Lubadelicious@gmail.com with any and all queries or comments! If you don't make it to a video feature, she will certainly write you back!

The Breakfast and the Furious

You may have heard that I like things that are acidic. And I do. However, it is a proven fact that if I drink orange juice my stomach convulses itself into an angry, jagged acid bag and I crumple to the floor with groans that Prince Hamlet would find enviable.  I think it is telling that if you google the phrase "death by orange juice" a picture of O.J. Simpson shows up.

So anyway, breakfast. I've never been good at breakfast. When I was in high school I had to catch a bus down the street that arrived at around 7:00 in the morning. So, I would set all three of my alarms for about 6:20. Inevitably though, I would snooze it like pro and then have to BOLT from bed at 6:51.

I would scurry to the bathroom and brush my teeth while simultaneously peeing, putting on my clothes, and trying to remember where my backpack was. It was cold and hazardous. I sustained many bruises thanks to artfully sharpened corners on our furniture. Also, I would trip over the cat who would zealously charge about me, eager for an early morning snack and a fun game of KILL YOUR OWNER.

This is a picture of my cat. His name is Caligula. He enjoys killing things, snuggling, and sleeping in coat hangers:

It took almost exactly 3 minutes and 20 seconds to run like a maniac to my bus stop down the street. With little variance, my morning journey from sleepy bed to graffiti-worn bus seat would elapse in the space of 10-12 minutes. Looking back it's funny to realize just how crazed I must have appeared to any early risers. Imagine for yourself (or maybe you were there) that self-satisfied aura of Suburbia at daybreak and then myself erratically careening through an otherwise quiet street, singing Nirvana songs at the top of my lungs to disperse whatever antlered creatures might be hanging around in the fog. 

You may not know this about deer but their natural habit is not in the forest. Instead, they exist exclusively in the ethereal world of mist and darkness. If you are ever walking down the road and suddenly experience low visibility, be assured that swarms of deer are just floating around you, waiting to poke their wet fuzzy faces from out behind a nearby tree to generate some kind of strained guttural warning at you and stomp their hooves at you as if to say, "I AM A DEER. I AM VERY LARGE AND STUPID AND MIGHT, AS A DEFENSE MEASURE, CRASH MY ENTIRE BODY INTO YOURS. DON'T EVEN LOOK AT MY FEMALES." To which I say, "Pfffft. As if. Up your fluffy white tail, man."

A minor side effect of all this was that I never ate breakfast. Or, not in the normal sense of the word anyway. A couple of pickles and a chocolate flavored vitamin pill were usually the only accompanying nourishment I took to my morning classes. Maybe this is why I wasn't a very alert or interested student. Or why I hated gym class. Or maybe that was everyone.

Miracle of Miracles

My prayers were answered!!!!

So I was at Halsted Foods the other day, doing my regular grocery shopping and....well... the way I shop for groceries is very structured. This is to avoid a situation where I become stressed out and start talking to myself because then no one will help me because they think I'm crazy. I go up aisle one, and down aisle two. Up aisle three and down aisle four. Always. It helps me. Truly, if you have never seen me in a large store then I must assure you that it overwhelms me. For instance, I was at Macy's the other day -- THE FLAGSHIP MACY'S -- looking for flannel sheets and somehow I wound up in this nearly abandoned part of the store stuffed full of product that no one was even looking at besides me. Pots and pans all shining at me like wanton prostitutes, a dining-room sized table stacked high with nothing but Pizza-Made-Easy! pans, a small clearing of petite Christmas trees overloaded with gold and red ornaments, display furniture of various shapes and sizes that all seemed to lumber around me as I walked down a glossy hallway absolutely and completely alone. I was ducking around pillars and blenders, trying to ignore the eeriness of happy-go-lucky piped in music when I finally encountered a sales representative. "HI OKAY WHERE IS THE ELEVATOR?"

"Over there."

"Thank you. Dear god, you are the only person I've seen in 10 minutes. I thought I might be trapped in some kind of art film!" I get so stressed out I actually say things like that to people. But this isn't what I was originally telling you about.

So I was walking up aisle two of Halsted foods, looking first to my left and then to my right AND THERE, TO MY SHEER AND EXTREME DELIGHT was a can of "Hungarian style" sardines in Polish packaging.

That's right. My local grocery store just started AN ENTIRE AISLE dedicated solely to Polish foods. I nearly died and went to heaven. Incidentally, I met YET ANOTHER employee of Halsted Foods. I don't know his name so we will call him Rather Large Cute (Highschool?) Boy. Rather Large Cute (Highschool?) Boy was stocking groceries on the other side of the aisle and I approached him with glee, wearing straight up awe-on-my-jaw:

Me: Excuse me....is...is...is..THIS NEW???
RLC(H?)B: Oh, yeah it is.
Me: Ohhhh myyyyy goddddd.
RLC(H?)B: Hahahaha, you like it?
Me: Let me tell you something, I used to live in Ukrainian Village and you could find this stuff anywhere. I mean anywhere. In an alleyway, down in the gutters, on the bus, ANYWHERE.
RLC(H?)B: Hahahaha, what is it? I can't read it.
Me: It's Polish.
RLC(H?)B: Oh okay cool!
Me: You don't even know how much this means to me.

Then I went to the deli counter but, alas, they don't sell chopped liver. And when I say "they don't sell chopped liver" what I really mean is, they have no idea what chopped liver is and need me to describe it to them before they tell me that they don't have it.


Le Sigh,
Toujours amour
pour tu,
parce-que tu es mon favori,
avec les bisous bisous,
Mackenzie

Symptom: No Appetite

Hello out there. Mackenzie here. Writing to you between shuddering coughs, wrapped tighter than a swaddle in flannel sheets, two fleecies, and two comforters. It may be difficult for me to go on but I will try. Like Poe's young songbird wife, so lovely and raven haired, brimming both with virtue and a bacterial fester of consumption, I will attempt to sing a simple melody despite the bloody expectorate it conjures. As feverish rapture devours me, not unlike poor and tortured Raskolnikov after his foray into murderous philosophy, I still tap forth with the last reserves of my courage and strength. To you, my friends, to you.


I really have had the flu for the past 4 days but I'm feeling better. It's been sort of a gentle malaise all day today. Speaking of gentle malaises, have you met my friend Luba? She volunteered to contribute the bulk of today's content since I was feeling so unwell.