I'm ashamed to admit I'm not sure I've ever had a muffaletta. Can anyone recommend a good place to get one in Los Angeles?
No. A muffaletta must be from New Orleans. Preferably from Central Grocery, but there are a few other places, too. (My preference is to get it with the olive salad and have it wrapped up, and put a plastic fork in the bag. Then walk over to the river and find somewhere to sit, open the bag, and use the fork to scrape all the olive salad off. So the bread absorbed all the good flavor, but you don't have to deal with the icky brininess of the actual olives.)
It doesn't work right with bread other than the crumbly bread that they've got there, and I've never had that exact texture of bread anywhere but New Orleans. I read one theory that it's the humidity in the air that lets it get that texture.
Ahh well, I haven't been to New Orleans yet. One more reason to go.
Any sandwich that starts by throwing away the olives can't be all bad. But any sandwich that starts with olives can't be all good.
Of course, I just ate a piece of pita with salsa on it, so I may not get to vote.
but you don't have to throw away the olives, do you?
I think the point where my brain is getting stuck is, "I still haven't found one person who I want to be in a relationship with and who wants to be in a relationship with me, and the process of trying to find someone totally sucks, and there are people who do this multiple times?"
Hil is me.
Me too. I mean, I'm finding the conversation thoroughly fascinating, but in practise the prospect of finding ONE human being on the planet with whom I could fall in love, and who could fall in love with me, seems like some kind of holy grail. A holy grail that has been sucked through a subsequently-trashed stargate and ended up in the Bermuda triangle, where it is protected by sharks with lazers mounted on their noses. And screeching eels. So on a purely personal level I'm simply not optimistic enough to imagine there would be some kind of objects-of-requited-affection-being-like bloody-buses-scenario, where you drum your fingers grumpily for years and then a whole bunch arrive simultaneously. I mean, if I could get past my likely insecurities & jealousy, in theory that would be grand, and Go Team Vonda McIntyre. But – yeah. Honestly, I'd just be surprised and delighted to find one person. Jolly well done those of you who manage to find several – more power to your collective elbows.
…actually, thinking back, when I was six or so I remember coming home and asking my mum whether one was allowed to marry more than one person. And my mum, presumably thinking I meant sequentially rather than simultaneously, said yes. And so for quite some time I was cheerfully convinced that I would be able to marry 2 boys I liked and one girl I liked, and All Would Be Well. I still remember the sense of having been cheated when I discovered that not only was I only allowed ONE spouse at a time, but it had to be a boy.
In retrospect, I was a SCREAMINGLY camp kid. (Also, I never DID quite grow out of being the five year old wearing her mum's high heels and borrowed Big Hat and feather boa to ride a little yellow horse on wheels down our steep driveway.)
With or without panties?
Ah yes. It's little moments like that that remind me you folks mean trousers when you say pants. I mean, obviously I KNOW this perfectly well, and yet still I don't manage to internalise it. Suffice it to say that the preceding pants-oriented conversation was a trifle more saucy in my head. Only a trifle, though.
Heh. When I was a teenager I used to think I was poly, but it turns out I was just reading too much Heinlein.
God, coffee on keyboard!
Some more theoretically than others, not being able to start sourcing lizardlike men with 2 penises.
Oh, Jesus. I read that book, or one disconcertingly like it. Er. And its sequel. In fact, a lady in the bookshop ( I was about 15 at the time, I suppose) who was perusing the shelves actually broke the great Affable Silence that is the norm among strangers perusing the same set of bookshelves in order to gush over said (or perhaps its sequel?) to me. She was (from my perspective) A Grown Up. I was slightly scandalised at the time, since I so happened to have read the first one already, and considered it to be Very Interesting if not the kind of thing one wanted one's mum to stumble across, what with it being wall to wall shagging of barbarian warriors and feisty princesses and so forth.
Back in the 90s when I was part of a sextet consisting of three married couples, we had a couple of dear friends who we loved but who declined to participate in anything more sexual than the occasional drunken grope. He was straight and she was bi and they talked about maybe taking a female lover some day but they had some very firm specifications for such a girl. They had seen that with the joy of poly sometimes comes pain and so they decided it would be best if a potential lover was someone they both liked but did not have particularly strong feelings for.
I don't think the universe likes it when you make up your own rules about these sorts of things. They both fell madly in love with a girl and were soon as married as one can be without the blessings of the law.
I'm just saying: you might not want to tempt fate by stating out loud those things you don't think you're capable of.
One more before bedtime. I just ganked this post off B3ta by The Resident Loon. I lurved it so much I had to share:
My dirty little trick...
I'll share with you one of my best secrets, the one that has been of more use to me than any other.
Ready?
My secret to getting people to do my bidding, which almost invariably works, is...
I ask nicely, with a smile, and say thank you after.
I smile a lot, and am polite to everyone, even if I'm a lot farther up the food chain than they are.
I speak gently to waiters, cashiers, janitors, security people, secretaries, and all of the underling types I come into contact with, as you can never tell when they might make your life a LOT easier simply because you treated them with respect. As a result, I tend to get people to do me an awful lot of favors, both great and small, and have a much easier time of things.
Now that I've told you this- don't tell anyone else, okay? I mean, imagine what would happen if everyone did this! Then where would we be?
I'm just saying: you might not want to tempt fate by stating out loud those things you don't think you're capable of.
...this wasn't addressed to me, was it?
Cook's Illustrated had a very good mufaletta recipe back in March (online only?), but you have to cheat on the bread unless you live in NOLA or know how to bake it yourself. (Theirs just uses a scooped-out flattened boule.)
{{{bonny}}} strength and comfort for all of you. Also what an awesome gift. May your practice grow as big as your heart.
Thank you so much for the kind words d. I'm beginning to realize the scope of what I've promised (after a major anxiety dream last night) and am trying to imagine good outcomes for us all. Trying...as Yoda might say...is not doing. But I'm doing what I can.
