Saturday, March 13, 2004
Carrots Are Everywhere.
or, Please, Frog, Don't Kill Me for Writing This.
I have this ridiculous morbid obsession with true crime stories, fueled by the prolific ghostwriters of John Douglas, the former head of the Behavioral Science department at the FBI. He's written about 8 of these "hunt the hunters" books, and why not? It's not like he'll ever run out of material.
In one of my favorite Douglas stories, he talks about a pair of police officers doing a random drive through of a local Lovers Lane. They drive past one presumably empty sedan before coming upon another car with tell-tale steamed-up windows. They pull up next to the parked vehicle and walk up to the car, shining their flashlights into the interior. As suspected, the occupants of the car, a man and a woman, were happily screwing away. The officers tap on the glass and put a halt to the festivities, telling them to put their clothes on and go home. The man in the parked car grows indignant, saying, "I can't believe you're making us leave! The guy in that other car is having sex with a chicken!"
"Whaaaa??" say the officers. The couple insist that it's true. So over to the other car go the cops. They sneak up to the car and peek in the window, and sure enough, the more traditionally-minded man was right. Douglas was made aware of this incident, because not only was the man having sex with a chicken, he also was videotaping it. Evidently, this videotape has been making the rounds of police precincts for years. Douglas has seen it. And of course, he goes on to make his larger point, that the man, who was having sex with a chicken but was talking in abusive language to it like it was a human female, was someone police needed to keep close tabs on, and not just in order to warn poultry farmers.
Like Douglas, our very own Frog has also worked with sex offenders. I'm not sure how we got on the topic of discussing her former line of work, but I suspect, knowing my morbid curiosity, I probably wheedled the conversation around to it. Picking up the conversation where it became interesting, she told me that the creepiest thing about her job was the normalcy of most of the residents. "They were just...nice guys," she said. "They could have been anybody's husband or boyfriend or brother. They were polite, soft-spoken. They'd walk me to my car at night..."
"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "They'd walk you to your car?"
"Yeah," she said. "It wasn't a great neighborhood where the place was, so it was nice to have that."
"So it's better to have a man you *know* is a rapist walk you somewhere than it is to walk alone past someone that you don't know whether he's a rapist or not?"
"Oh, no, they weren't rapists," she corrected me. "They were voyeurs, peeping toms, guys who had sex with vegetables in public places, flashers..."
"Vegetables?? Sex with vegetables?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, that's what I don't get about men. How can they get busted sticking a carrot up their ass, and everybody knows it, yet they can still walk around with their head up? I don't get that."
"That's exactly what it was! A carrot! In fact, we couldn't even serve carrots at the residence because it was too much of a trigger for him!"
"What do you mean, a trigger?"
"Carrots were too sexualized for him. And you know," she continued, quite seriously, "that's a big problem that he really needed to overcome because carrots are everywhere. It's not like kohlrabi where you kind of have to seek it out."
By this time I'm laughing hysterically.
"So what you're saying is, this man had an uncontrollable sexual attraction to carrots?!?"
"Yeah."
Honest to God, that's just taking the whole "comfort food" idea to a whole new level. How does that even happen? So I spent all day at work trying to find an online movie that showed two carrots having sex so I could e-mail it to Frog, but alas, I failed. So this will have to do instead:
Lemon Chicken Cutlets with Honey Bourbon Carrots
1/3 cup unseasoned dry breadcrumbs
2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme or 1 1/2 teaspoons dried
1 1/2 teaspoons minced lemon peel
2 skinless boneless chicken breast halves
2 tablespoons olive oil
Lemon wedges
Mix first 3 ingredients on large plate. Using rolling pin, pound chicken between sheets of waxed paper to scant 1/2-inch thickness. Rinse chicken with cold water so that coating will adhere. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Press both sides of chicken into crumb mixture to cover.
Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Carefully add chicken to skillet. Sauté until chicken is cooked through and golden brown, turning with tongs, about 4 minutes per side. Serve chicken with lemon wedges.
Honey Bourbon Carrots
1 pound hot throbbing carrots, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
3 T butter
3 T bourbon
3 T honey
3 T water
Throw everything into a skillet and saute it until carrots are tender. And for the love of all that is holy, please don't fuck it.
or, Please, Frog, Don't Kill Me for Writing This.
I have this ridiculous morbid obsession with true crime stories, fueled by the prolific ghostwriters of John Douglas, the former head of the Behavioral Science department at the FBI. He's written about 8 of these "hunt the hunters" books, and why not? It's not like he'll ever run out of material.
In one of my favorite Douglas stories, he talks about a pair of police officers doing a random drive through of a local Lovers Lane. They drive past one presumably empty sedan before coming upon another car with tell-tale steamed-up windows. They pull up next to the parked vehicle and walk up to the car, shining their flashlights into the interior. As suspected, the occupants of the car, a man and a woman, were happily screwing away. The officers tap on the glass and put a halt to the festivities, telling them to put their clothes on and go home. The man in the parked car grows indignant, saying, "I can't believe you're making us leave! The guy in that other car is having sex with a chicken!"
"Whaaaa??" say the officers. The couple insist that it's true. So over to the other car go the cops. They sneak up to the car and peek in the window, and sure enough, the more traditionally-minded man was right. Douglas was made aware of this incident, because not only was the man having sex with a chicken, he also was videotaping it. Evidently, this videotape has been making the rounds of police precincts for years. Douglas has seen it. And of course, he goes on to make his larger point, that the man, who was having sex with a chicken but was talking in abusive language to it like it was a human female, was someone police needed to keep close tabs on, and not just in order to warn poultry farmers.
Like Douglas, our very own Frog has also worked with sex offenders. I'm not sure how we got on the topic of discussing her former line of work, but I suspect, knowing my morbid curiosity, I probably wheedled the conversation around to it. Picking up the conversation where it became interesting, she told me that the creepiest thing about her job was the normalcy of most of the residents. "They were just...nice guys," she said. "They could have been anybody's husband or boyfriend or brother. They were polite, soft-spoken. They'd walk me to my car at night..."
"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "They'd walk you to your car?"
"Yeah," she said. "It wasn't a great neighborhood where the place was, so it was nice to have that."
"So it's better to have a man you *know* is a rapist walk you somewhere than it is to walk alone past someone that you don't know whether he's a rapist or not?"
"Oh, no, they weren't rapists," she corrected me. "They were voyeurs, peeping toms, guys who had sex with vegetables in public places, flashers..."
"Vegetables?? Sex with vegetables?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, that's what I don't get about men. How can they get busted sticking a carrot up their ass, and everybody knows it, yet they can still walk around with their head up? I don't get that."
"That's exactly what it was! A carrot! In fact, we couldn't even serve carrots at the residence because it was too much of a trigger for him!"
"What do you mean, a trigger?"
"Carrots were too sexualized for him. And you know," she continued, quite seriously, "that's a big problem that he really needed to overcome because carrots are everywhere. It's not like kohlrabi where you kind of have to seek it out."
By this time I'm laughing hysterically.
"So what you're saying is, this man had an uncontrollable sexual attraction to carrots?!?"
"Yeah."
Honest to God, that's just taking the whole "comfort food" idea to a whole new level. How does that even happen? So I spent all day at work trying to find an online movie that showed two carrots having sex so I could e-mail it to Frog, but alas, I failed. So this will have to do instead:
Lemon Chicken Cutlets with Honey Bourbon Carrots
1/3 cup unseasoned dry breadcrumbs
2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme or 1 1/2 teaspoons dried
1 1/2 teaspoons minced lemon peel
2 skinless boneless chicken breast halves
2 tablespoons olive oil
Lemon wedges
Mix first 3 ingredients on large plate. Using rolling pin, pound chicken between sheets of waxed paper to scant 1/2-inch thickness. Rinse chicken with cold water so that coating will adhere. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Press both sides of chicken into crumb mixture to cover.
Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Carefully add chicken to skillet. Sauté until chicken is cooked through and golden brown, turning with tongs, about 4 minutes per side. Serve chicken with lemon wedges.
Honey Bourbon Carrots
1 pound hot throbbing carrots, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
3 T butter
3 T bourbon
3 T honey
3 T water
Throw everything into a skillet and saute it until carrots are tender. And for the love of all that is holy, please don't fuck it.
