What I didn’t really think about, going in, was that the idea of a golden age is ultimately a little depressing. As much as I might like to imagine how nice it would be to live at the peak of, say, the Beatles or postwar internationalism, it would be a heavy burden to know that the decline and fall was just around the corner. Fortunately, predicting the future is free of any buzz-kills like verifiability or precise dates. Nevertheless, I’d bet some of these golden ages are coming to an end sooner rather than later:

• Airline travel, cross-country road trips (I’d have said this golden age ended with the first fuel crisis), and other petroleum-heavy activities
• American television (The only new-ish shows I’ve been following at all are Lost and 30 Rock. I realize I’m missing out…)
• Seafood (Out of  everything, this  might be  most likely)
• Readily-available pornography
• The Web, as such
  • Specifically, “free online video” (I’d demur — we can do a lot better than hyper-compressed YouTube videos)
• Availability of gourmet food (but not necessarily the food itself)
•  The social standing of nerds (good point!)
• Disposable products (I hope this one’s accurate)
• Boston sports (note that this response was entered before the ALCS began…)
• Free water
• Cellphones (couldn’t disagree more)
• The American dollar (at best, as the commenter points out, we’re at the tail end)
• Physics as we know it
• Traditional manufacturing (to be supplanted by nanotechnology, if not the oil crunch)
• Punditry (yeah, I can see this one being true)
• Laptop DJ’ing (had a good run for a few years)
• Cheap high fashion
• Media piracy (I can’t imagine this going away any time soon)
• Money in politics (let’s hope!)
• Craft brewing, and beer in general
• Philanthropy (to some degree, as Robert Reich would say)
• The American middle class (at least to hear Lou Dobbs tell it)
• America’s National Parks (I’d date the end of this age to the start of Bush’s presidency)
• Leveraged finance
• Zombies not eating our brains (gotta love Metafilter)
• Plentiful energy in general

One closing thought: it’s pretty plain to see that a lot of these responses divide themselves handily into just one category: scarcity. What’s free today, I guess, probably won’t be free forever. This isn’t news, of course — we know that some resources are diminishing (oil) and others are being spread ever thinner (fresh water) — but it’s still provocative (to my non-economist’s mind, at least) to occasionally get one’s bearings on the problems of the world by reflecting that so many of them all have the same basic root. Huh.

1. The Charlie Brown Christmas album. It’s held up so well, wouldn’t you agree? Isn’t this the best kind of schmaltz: that whose fond associations with all of our childhoods allow us to overlook. Wes Anderson knows that “Christmastime is Here,” and so should you.
2. On that note, eggnog. Every year since I discovered its allure (eggnog was never a Ray family staple), I am surprised and elated by eggnog’s annual appearance in the dairy section. There’s plenty to look forward to around the end of December; eggnog remains a perennial surprise.
3. Band of Horses’ Everything All The Time. I hope it’s not a surprise to anyone that I’m really a very poor excuse for a music hipster — at best, I’ll pick up a few new releases between January and November every year as I see them hyped. Mid-December’s glut of best-of lists, though, is my chance to catch up on what I’ve missed. Anyway, these guys are charming. Sure, they sound a lot like My Morning Jacket’s slower stuff, but they do their own thing with the soaring guitars and ‘verb-splashed vocals.
4. Gloves! Jessica’s parents just got me some for Christmas, and they are wonderful.
5. Law schools! I’ve heard back from a few, and I think I’ll get some good news in the first few months of 2007.
6. Free time! Kind of! As everyone finished exams this week, I frequently complained that my hell was just beginning, as I intended to use my break to catch up work on my thesis. Well, I still do, but it’s not going as quickly as I had hoped. On the plus side, the free time to think has put me in a better mood about it than I have been recently. High hopes, and all that.

Here, in what is quickly becoming a regular feature, is your latest Recipe with a Narrative Structure.

You’ll need:

1 lb. bok choy (Napa cabbage), chopped
Several ounces of whatever kind of mushrooms you’re always intending to buy but can never justify.
8-12 oz. soba noodles
1 block fried tofu
Handful of green onions, chopped
Small white onion, chopped
Half inch of gingeroot, grated
Beni shoga
Rice wine or sake or, more likely, vinegar
Soy sauce
Sugar

Prep time: 3-5 days, 25 minutes

1. Google “beni shoga.” Ponder it.
2. Google “Japanese grocery in Ann Arbor, MI.” When you come up with nothing, try “Asian,” and then settle on Chinese,” even while you insist to yourself that you recognize the difference between different Asian cultures and their cuisines, even if Google doesn’t.
3. Try that place up on Broadway. Tell the nice lady at the counter you’re looking for beni shoga, then when she doesn’t know what you’re talking about, say “pickled ginger.” A-ha! She’ll lead you over to the gari shoga, which is not what you need. Buy it anyway, because you’re spineless.
4. Search the internet for beni shoga retailers. Settle on something from an Amazon seller. Delight in the $2.49 price tag. Heck, order two bottles.
5. Balk at the $11 shipping fee.
6. Wait 3 to 5 days.
7. In the mean time, head down to Meijer for groceries. Decide to check out the international foods aisle that everyone’s been saying has just been revamped and expanded. Swallow your pride when you find several bottles of beni shoga on the shelf.
8. Boil some water, drop the noodles in.
9. Oil the wok, sautee the onions then add the tofu and mushrooms.
10. Throw the bok choy into the wok, cook until soft. Pay no attention to the fact that for all outward appearances you are frying up a salad.
11. Drain the noodles, run them under cold water, then drop them in the wok.
12. Mix half a cup of soy sauce with a bit of rice wine and a teaspoon of sugar. Drizzle it into the wok and keep everything stirred up.
13. Set the biggest lid you’ve got over the wok, and let it cook for eight minutes on low heat. Stir occasionally.
14. Sprinkle with green onions and garnish with beni shoga, then serve. When your girlfriend tries the pickled ginger and doesn’t like it, sigh loudly and take twice as much for yourself.

In this post, I’m going to describe a true-to-life, eminently edible paradox of Italian food. Before I get there, though, let’s venture across time and the Ionian Sea to get to ancient Greece. Theseus suffered a famous philosophical paradox in maintaining his favorite ship: as planks weathered and warped, he was forced to replace them. Naturally, this happened to every plank on deck at some point. After what point, though, was Theseus’ trireme no longer Theseus’ trireme? After what point can it be said that the components of a set have been so fundamentally changed that the set itself is changed?

I encountered my own not-wholly-accurate rendering of this problem tonight in the kitchen. A Mediterranean cookbook Jessica and I purchased a few months back featured a recipe for a black ink tagliatelle with squid sauce which, by joint virtue of its sumptuous illustration and my own recent seafood kick, I felt I must try to recreate.

My problems began at Whole Foods. With one trip, I intended to pick up a pound and a half of salmon for my above-linked lox experiment and the fresh squid I needed for the pasta. I scored on the first count but struck out on the second: Ann Arbor is not the place for exotic seafood. Fine, I resolved; I still had some shrimp in the freezer that I’d been saving for pad thai.

Next, the tagliatelle. Tagliatelle (a word I have learnt to spell reliably only since beginning this blog entry) is a sort of classic, romantic magnum opus that only happens to be executed in the pasta medium. The typically reserved Wikipedia, reading here more like a menu from the Olive Garden, calls it “an expression of the art of hand-made pasta” (one wonders about the NPOV on that!). I was all set to pick up a recipe and get down to business hand-crafting some noodles, but Jessica advised against it. Jessica has experience with these kinds of things. Her advice came as we happened to pass through Meijer’s “Ethnic Food” aisle, so I grabbed a bag of store-brand spinance linguine and just sort of teared up a bit.

So, my black tagliatelle was actually green linguine, and the squid meant for its sauce was actually cocktail shrimp. Strangely, Google’s never heard of that, and anyway I get sort of headstrong about my impossible recipes, so I decided I would just press on. “Black Tagliatelle with Squid,” it was.

The rest of the ingredients, at least, posed no problems. Play along at home:

1. Begin by heating a generous spill of olive oil for a few moments, then sauteeing two chopped shallots. I left these fairly large, but on my next attempt I think I’ll dice them closely. Then come three pressed cloves of garlic and a half-handful of chopped fresh parsley. This can cook for a moment as you turn towards the TV to catch up on the episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which you’ve just become aware of last night when a friend lent you some episodes, and which is quite good in the Arrested Development vein of comedies.
2. Focus. Open the bag of shrimp, empty it of water, and drop its contents into the pan. You could probably substitute scallops here, but then you wouldn’t be making “Black Tagliatelle with Squid,” would you? Pour in about half a cup of white cooking wine as well.
3. Oh man, so this is the one where Mac and Dennis compete over the dead guy’s granddaughter at his funeral, and Charlie discovers the truth about Dennis’ grandfather. Hilarity totally ensues.
4. Focus. If it’s been a minute or two, and the shrimp have made the sauce a little darker in color, now’s the time to empty a fourteen ounce can of diced tomatoes into it. Otherwise, go back to the TV.
5. Once that’s done, put a lid on. If you’re using fresh seafood you should let it simmer for about an hour to cook all the way through, but even with my precooked shrimp I decided to give the sauce some time on low heat while the noodles were cooking.
6. Boil some water.
7. Dejected, drop the little curly noodle coils in, about two per diner. Wait for al dente status (and it will take a while, these little guys are thick), then drain. You know what to do.

Seriously, this dish turned out pretty well. I will definitely be making the sauce again, at the very least. Someday I hope to get a line on some fresh squid and some proud, wizened Bolognese to craft me some tagliatelle. Until then, I’m fine with putting the recipe’s name in quotation marks, and enjoying it just the same.

Anyway, it was delicious, and I’ve still got an appetite for it. Apparently, it’s not too tough to make. Expect a post soon regaling my triumph or defeat.

I write tonight, however, with a better outlook on creating Pad Thai than is typical on after I attempt to do so. Tonight, I finally created a decent, edible product. I am damned proud. Jessica, regularly the victim of my less-successful efforts, called it the best I’d ever made.

Anyway, I’m going to post my basic recipe here, in the interest of actually being able to throw it all together again sometime soon. Here it goes:

Dan’s Pad Thai for Two, One of Whom is Your Vegetarian Girlfriend

1 1/2 shallots
2/3 c. carrots, thinly sliced
2 eggs
2-3 Thai peppers, chopped
1 can bean sprouts, drained
Cooked shrimp
1 package Thai-marinated tofu, cut into strips
1/2 c. roasted, unsalted peanuts
4 green onions, chopped
1-2 limes, quartered
1 box Thai Kitchen Original Pad Thai kit (noodles and sauce)
Wok oil

Pre-preparation: Convince your girlfriend that you really do need a trip to Whole Foods for ingredients. Grant her that you do have a “meal kit” in the cupboard; argue that a meal-in-a-box is more a fertile springboard for one’s own culinary explorations than a meal in itself. Grant her that it is about to rain, and that it’s nearly rush hour. Acknowledge that you’re saving for a trip to Iceland; nevertheless insist that you can’t make Pad Thai without the goddamn peppers, at least, they say “Thai” right on the placard! Promise you’ll work the “meal kit” in to your recipe.

1) Drive to Whole Foods for ingredients. Wish that you were in a position to reasonably invest in more than two or three Thai peppers at a time. Recognize and accept that you are not at present in that position. Sample the Roquefort in front of the tofu display, then snag another few cubes on your way out.

2) Get over the shame of starting from a box. Maybe using a “meal kit” you bought from a yuppie supermarket will set for your ingredients a wholesome example on how to resemble Thai food. Maybe your girlfriend will eat it.

3) Boil some water.

4) Chop everything. Just kinda do your own thing here. Do NOT, however, touch the oil from the peppers with bare hands — it will sting for hours. Your girlfriend was first to discover their capsaicin-derived power, and it put her off from your Pad Thai for weeks.

5) Get your wok out. Oil it, and cook the eggs until scrambled. Pull them out and set them aside.

6) More oil; more vegetables. Throw the peppers, carrots, shallots, and tofu, then stir fry for a few minutes.

7) Realize loudly and profanely that you never put the noodles in the saucepan. Do so, and decide to just stir fry everything else a little bit longer.

8) When the noodles are soft and separated, drain them. Drop them in the wok and drizzle the sauce on top. Stir everything together on reduced heat. Now’s a fine time for the bean sprouts, too.

9) Assemble everything: Empty the wok into that big ceramic bowl that never fails to lend your casseroles a subtle sheen of legitimacy. Convince yourself that proper lime wedge-placement is the key to making your presentation look more “Asian”; act on this assumption. Maybe stick some chopsticks in there, too.

10) Drizzle more oil into your wok. Note that your girlfriend is a vegetarian. With her out of the kitchen, revel in your ability to cook tiny representatives of a species one of whose chief badges of merit is the “de-veined” label on its seafood counter coffin. Five minutes in hot oil will cook them from frozen. Amid the pop-poppop-ing of oil and ice crystals, you will feel as though you could justify buying several Thai peppers next time.

Here’s a feature I’d like to see become regular: Sunday night Thai cookin’ with Jessica. Last night’s entree was a delectable sesame chicken.

I wish I could offer a nice recipe write-up beginning with only the barest of ingredients. Ideally, I’d walk you through buying the exotic ingredients, simmering the sauce and rolling the noodles by hand. That’s not really how we roll here at Sunday Night Thai©, so I’ll be straight up: buy the box. It’s worth it for the spice packet alone, unless you already stock coriander and tamarind.

Allow me to digress on that latter ingredient. Tamarind does not in any real way exist. My adventures preceding an earlier Thai cooking experience (this one perhaps on a Thursday) confirmed this well enough. Nowhere in Our Great Nation’s capital does such a beast exist. Neither my local Giant, Wholefoods, nor even the Chinatown grocer who told me my driver’s license photo makes me look like a girl (it doesn’t) carried any such thing. After a not-inconsiderable period of research, I believe I now know tamarind’s dark secret.

Tamarind extract. Exotic, right? Delicious, right? Fruit, right? NOT HARDLY. One cannot find tamarind extract in the United States because we have laws in This Fine State against the consumption of adorable primates! Ferchrissakes! I’ve been to the National Zoo, readers. I have seen these furry political émigrés, forced to flee their own country for reasons of culinary persecution. It is tragic, dear readers; cute (these are foot-long monkeys, after all), yet tragic.

My research has further uncovered the gory process by which tamarinds are, er, processed. Babies are taken from their mothers in a bloody, vernal ritual outsiders call “the hunt.” They are caged and grossly overfed, so that by the early summer months the young pad thai prisoners swell to tragicomic (these are foot-long monkeys, after all) proportions. The young monkey-blobs, hardly recognizable, are then chained together and suspended from low-hanging tree branches, though anthropologists have not yet found any particular motivation for doing this. Readers who are easily put off by acts of animal cruelty should have had the good sense to stop reading some time ago, but if any yet remain, they’d better not click on this graphic depiction. From here, the unfortunate tamarind youth are dumped into a customary tamarind press. What comes out is a furry pulp, formless and, to the humanity of its producers, positively damning. The tamarind pulp is dried, mixed with coriander, and still actually a bit adorable (these were foot-long monkeys, after all).

That this “tamarind extract” should wind up on Our Glorious State’s supermarket shelves is despicable. That millions of Thai-loving hipsters, not at all dissimilar from you or I, should consume it blissfully unawares, is downright sickening. Somebody should do something, and that someone is Dr. Lester M. Crawford, George Bush’s FDA head. Won’t you do your part to stop the international trafficking of cruel, furry contraband? Why not write the FDA a note telling him how you feel about tamarind extract crossing This Noble Land’s borders. It’s up to you, dear readers.

Right. Sesame chicken. The package’ll tell you that limes, green chilis, and cilantro are optional, but don’t believe it. You don’t want to skimp here, believe me. Throw it all in a wok over medium heat, then add the soft noodles and drizzle the whole thing with sesame oil. สุขสันต์วันเกิด, as the Thai say!

The damages: I’m out $30 for ingredients, my dignity is gone many times over, I may have inhaled carcinogens, and I had to serve Thai food in a f****** casserole dish.

You know what would make this night better? Reviewing the new Jad Fair record. Angrily.