Flat Chicken Sauteed with garlic and olive oil under a bacon press, brown rice, fried zucchini chips

I absorbed this while watching that gripping episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where Data, the android, gets his first human girlfriend. In the end she dumps him because he is emotionally unavailable. All I could think was, what a dipshit! Data cleans her apartment, brings her liquor, cooks her dinner, gets her off, emits no offensive odors or effluents, and could care less if she sleeps around; in short, he's the greatest, most advanced, most brilliant vibrator ever invented. And this idiot bimbo just chucks it all away!

Star Trek is grotesquely patriarchal.

Pan-roasted Chicken Folded Around Sundried Tomato and Goat Feta From Dripping Springs, TX

Vegetable chunks, also pan-roasted

This dish was a triumph. Still, you can't have everything. I am aware that it resembles guts spilling out of a turtle that has fallen to its death onto jagged rocks.

Previously Frozen Minestrone, Part II

Confucius said it best: "He who has frozen blocks of minestrone, has frozen blocks of soup." And, as Emerson before him opined, "Soup is Nature's masterpiece."

Happiness Is A Block Of Soup >>

Beef Tacos Chuy's, Barton Springs, Austin

This is the restaurant where the Bush Twins got busted for underage drinking. You'd think Chuy's might have learned their lesson about not carding people, but, no, they're still up to their old tricks. I ordered a Margarita and the server didn't bat an eye!

Snyder's of Hanover Mini Pretzels

What's up with pretzels? They universally taste like crap. Even those big-ass soft pretzels they sell in airports and those carts on street corners--you always want them to be more. The modern pretzel does not live up to the hype. What is a pretzel today, but a doughy salt-delivery mechanism?