Tag Archive for: cooking

cover

In “Buying A Used Wheelchair,” breaking my wheelchair and buying a new one on Craigslist, more record shopping, cooking borscht and getting accepted for publication.

Every week we order pizza from the place in town. On the day after, for lunch I eat cold pizza with Hoppin Hot Sauce on it.
(Hoppin Hot Sauce jingle)

Those who say don’t know & who know don’t say

Buying a used wheelchair selfie
Buying a used wheelchair selfie

Subscribers get the selfie and the show notes e mailed to them, and I don’t know what they do with them

Record shopping

I went record shopping at Amoeba and it turned out to be a pretty good score:

The record store person gave me “the nod”

Terminal Event

art

I broke the arm off of my wheelchair, with a bang. The manufacturer was out of stock, but I needed to find a replacement. I got on my computer and I searched eBay and sfbay.craigslist.org. craigslist came through for me

Cooking While Disabled

We made borscht. For the second year in a row, we used this Serious Eats recipe for Hot Ukrainian Borscht (With Beets, Beef, Pork, and More)

Accepted

After an uninterrupted months-long streak of many rejections, a few different editors wrote me to let me know that my writing was accepted. All in all, a piece of microfiction (in this case, a story of exactly 50 words) and two poems. It’s very exciting to turn the corner on this project and move from submission to publication.

cover

Chapter List

cover

Welcome to “Can You Eat Blood?” the first episode after a break for a few weeks. I had trigeminal neuralgia face pain, so I took a a couple of weeks off. I think AI would say that these are bunch of unrelated thoughts.

Shout-outs

  • Shout out to the poet Joe Imwalle who called me to thank me for sending a link to his linktree while at the same time insinuating (correctly or not) that almost no one listens to my podcast.
  • Joe played guitar in my high school band and now he’s a published poet
  • Shout out to Jeremiah Jahnson who gave us a shout out on KFJC, Saturday morning at 8:30
  • Shoutout to Hoppin Hot Sauce

Gray room

  • We went on a date at Yonsei Handrolls because the movie was too long to do otherwise

What To Do

  • When you have MS people are alwaays sending you scholarly articles like this one

Caramelized shallots

  • Chicken and pasta with caramelized shallots

Thanksgiving

  • Thanksgiving is for 14 this year
  • Thanksgiving menu

5% salt

  • I wrote the sauerkraut recipe for the school recipe book

I can breathe again

  • The espresso machine is back

No Swap

  • We’re taking a break from the Booze-Only Yankee Swap this year

Face on the fritz

  • My face is bothering me due to the storms in the atmosphere
  • Unfortunately I couldn’t eat dinner with my family
  • I had a scrambled egg on some rice so it’s not like I’m dying

Turkey Brain

  • A week away and the Thanksgiving meal took over my mind
  • I hope that I will be in the clear and so I can enjoy eating the meal and not be in fear
  • I’m put in the meat order after trying to put it in back in October and they were like, “We’ll do it next week.” I’m either super early or coming in in the nick of time

Cool hipster shoes

  • The guy at the mobility shoe store asked me what kind of shoes I want and I said I was a hipster and I was cool and he said so you want dress shoes?

Too Much Blood

  • Jan hasn’t been able to smell anything since he was 18
  • Nami drank Jan’s blood
  • But at least she didn’t drink her piss

Rejection

  • Uniform Rejection of All writing submissions

Disability studies

Mysterious note

  • “Not just the bad stuff but the stuff I thought was really good”

Washed up

  • In a discussion of popular music John John told us Lady Gaga is washed up

Welcome to What’s The Matter With Me? Podcast Season 7. Episode 31, “God Of Thunder”

cover

The provided text seems to be a collection of various unrelated topics and updates, including shoutouts, a fundraiser for KFJC, an art acquisition by SFMOMA, the outcome of a baseball game, discussions about tucking in a t-shirt, an exploration of self-sufficiency, cooking, and conversations about toxic behavior with your son.

ChatGPT

Shout Outs

  • Shoutouts to Rocky who dug the face tattoo idea
    • Remember to use the drawer.
    • Repeat: do not get a face tattoo, just a drawer full of scraps of paper with tattoo ideas written on them
  • Shouts out to Max Level, standing at the edge of an inky black ocean holding a torch aloft

Fundraiser is done

2023 KFJC Artist Shirt by Abigail Mae
  • The KFJC fundraiser wrapped up bc we raised our operating budget for the coming year
  • I donated to fundraiser @ KFJC and got the artist shirt (pictured above)

Outsider Granted Entry

JOSEPH ALEF, UNTITLED (JA 072), 2018, WORK ON PAPER, 22 X 30 INCHES via Creative Growth

“SFMOMA’s investment marks a historic milestone in the contemporary art world,” said Ginger Shulick Porcella, Executive Director at Creative Growth Art Center. “It has been far too long that art institutions have ignored or underrecognized artists with disabilities. These talented creators can no longer be relegated to the category of ‘outsider artists’ as they firmly occupy the walls of museums worldwide.”

SFMOMA

Rangers In 5

  • Diamondbacks lost the world series in five games to the Rangers
  • As promised, I now have an Adolis Garcia Rangers jersey on order for my son

Locked In With Deepak

Art School Job Prospects

  • The person who named cymbals had a really cool job
  • Do you think the hiring manager had other well qualified candidates?

Keep your shoes on

  • Tucking in a t-shirt in doesn’t make it look any more formal
  • If you are in my family, it makes you look like a pumpkin who thinks that a tucked in t-shirt is appropriate to wear to an event that it clearly is not
  • Otherwise, you wouldn’t tuck it in your silly t-shirt.

Everybody needs directions

  • Even Jesus Christ was not perfect

God of Thunder

  • I was the drummer from Def Leppard for Halloween
  • Tight reviews: one reviewer was 5’9″ 230 lbs “pretty sure my junk was showing”
  • The tights fit, and I don’t think my junk was showing

Exploration in Self-sufficiency

  • I took the kids to school by myself, picked them up, fed them, bath, and bedtime
  • So my wife could go to San Diego on a work trip

Green sauce for steak and vegetables

Get every last drop

Toxic messaging

  • Talking to my son about the imagined bullies in middle school
  • Trying to introduce the concept that making fun of a adisabled person is a toxic behavior, and as he gets older it’s going to be important to see that clearly
  • I am not at all sure that will help him
COVER

Welcome to “Chew On That”, an episode about new music, barbecues, and the cultural differences between cafes and diners

Best Sauce

Hoppin Hot Sauce Original Flavor

Check it out:
Hoppin Hot Sauce is on Amazon

News flash:
It’s the best sauce In the world

Big Up Listener

  • Shoutouts to Rocky
  • Shout outs to the people who listen to every episode

Boom Roasted

  • We needed to order another Filter for the ice Maker and bang i did it

Trip to the Cathedral

Tom's restaurant
Right around the corner
  • This is a podcast about nothing because i’m from the Seinfeld era

Ritual Hazing Absent Father

  • I had Dad drink cucumber skin juice
  • He grimaced. and we laughed and pointed at him

First Detroit Based Art Gallery And Studio For Disabled Artists

Progressive Art Studio Collective (PASC), a program of Services to Enhance Potential,  is seeking funding to complete the build out of our future Detroit Gallery and Studio in LANTERN. If PASC raises $50,000 by August 5, we will win a matching grant through MEDC’s Public Spaces Community Places initiative.

Sausages On Display

  • We hosted BBQs on July 4th & 5th
  • I’m an extrovert and my wife is an introvert
  • For the 4th we had sausages and ssteak
  • On the fifth, we ate hamburgers

MUSIC RUNDOWN

Sonny Rollins & Leonard Cohen
Ghast “O Akhea Rheon”

Kids are into this

Purchased the catalogue

$0.15/release

This Week’s Selfie

chew on that selfie
Chew on that selfie

GET THE SELFIE

Every time we release an episode

S

cover

Welcome to “Air Time” on the What’s The Matter With Me? Podcast

Across the street they had that place with Coffee & Tea, remember that? It was coffee with a black tea bag in it.

Best Sauce In The World

Stay For The Selfies

  • Surf it on over to Subscribe page and never miss an episode
  • Makes No Sense: Is the plural of selfie also selfie?

Air Time

  • KFJC radio is an outlet for neurodiverse people and people with speaking differences and it has been that way for a long time
  • Shout outs to the people who download every episode
  • Watching the Special Olympics Opening Ceremony on ESPN
  • Disabled people can be hard to organize
  • I’m glad they got airtime

New glasses

air time glasses
  • Went to Costco and got new prescription & frames
  • I made Chili with chile de arbol in it

Good For Ex-New Yorkers

Paralyze my muscles

  • I went To the doctor to get botox
  • Botox is cosmetic but also relieves tension, llike spasticity caused by MS

I was embarrassed by my parents too

  • John was embarrassed to have me drop him at camp in my wheelchair

Salad is healthy

  • The internet thinks franks and beans are healthy

Pox on our house

  • Koko has Covid

Sellout

  • Rollins plays with the Rolling Stones, uncredited, on Tattoo You

Don’t know how

  • I need to sell my car

Early fall

This week’s selfie

selfie
Hanging in there

Welcome to “Disability and Obscenity” on the What’s The Matter With Me? Podcast

featured image

Is disability obscene? Coverage of Michael J. Fox and Sen. Dianne Feinstein has me examining implicit connections between disability and obscenity.

People with advanced degrees can stomach the summary

  • Shout outs to Doctor Kathryn- she appreciates the summaries because they’re quick to read
  • Because she’s a doctor and they only get 15 minutes to do everything

Hah!

  • Finding humor in adversity makes it easier

Not Sick Anymore

  • Temperature report

24 Hour Meth Rave

  • Sonny Rollins met up with Sartre on his 1966 European tour
  • When he came back to New York City he could often be found at the jazz loft on the fifth floor at 89 East Broadway

The Emperor And The Caveman

  • I grilled a boneless ribeye, it came out perfect and it was a relief to eat it without the kids, who eat in opposing styles that are less than ideal in different ways

Navigating disability in public

Roosevelt remained paralyzed from the waist down and relied on a wheelchair and leg braces for mobility, which he took efforts to conceal in public.

From the Wikipedia entry “Paralytic illness of Franklin D. Roosevelt”

This Week’s Selfie

selfie
disability and obscenity selfie
cover

Welcome to “Five Nights of Sweating” on the What’s The Matter With Me? Podcast

A fever that doesn’t seem to want to go away; new music around the house; some terrible food. Maybe we can make the time pass quicker if we go to a grind core festival.

Is not wanted

  • I’ve got a fever that kept coming back

Word

  • What’s The Matter With Me? Podcast is sponsored by Hoppin Hot Sauce— it’s the best sauce in the world! hoppin hot sauce is on amazon so anyone can eat it with hash browns and and English muffin-egg sandwiches with or without cheese but definitely with Hoppin Hot Sauce

Feeling feverish

  • For the first 3 nights it was up around 102-103 F
  • In addition to Tylenol, I started taking Advil as a fever reducer, then I woke up covered in sweat with a normal temperature
  • Then the next day it would began again
  • I had an epiphany to drink Gatorade

Catching up with Sonny

  • Sonny Rollins has got a mohawk, where i’m at in Saxophone Colossus
  • At his shows, he came out with the cowboy hat, then he would take that off and had the mohawk underneath

Burnin’ Up

  • I sweat through the sheets for the 4th night in a row
  • Disgusting: I smelled like a case of unwashed grapefruit with a sour whiff of spoilage or maybe more than that
  • As if someone left me in the back hall, not in the fridge. by the dumpster near some unnamed liquid.
  • I need a clean up

New Music

On the fifth night

  • I sweat through the bed on the fifth night and woke up drenched yet again

Grim

  • In frustration at not being able to cook for myself, I took the reins at dinner
  • I ended up making fried gnocchi with spinach, Garlic, tomato, cream, a can of sardines
  • It could have used acid like lemon juice or vinegar to offset the tinned fish. There was a lot of cream though
  • It was terrible. the kids wouldn’t eat it.
  • I thought to myself, “It is making your nails stronger and increasing your hair’s tensile ability”

Made it through

  • On the sixth night the fever evaporated and I woke up mostly dry

Grind core for the whole family

  • Gilman is hosting the Fast, Wierd and Freaky Festival this weekend
  • It’s all ages
  • I might still be a little too tired plus John John is maybe not ready
  • Maybe he’s not even ready to hear the band lineup read aloud

Dad Butt Dials Me

  • Dad is butt dialing me again
  • We watched John Voight & Jane Fonda in Coming Home

This Week’s Selfie

selfie
After Five Nights Of Sweating
cover

Welcome to “Multiplex and Talent Show” on the What’s The Matter With Me? Podcast

This week, I used my wheelchair to go to the multiplex in Dublin and the talent show in the auditorium at my children’s elementary school. The movie we saw was “Inside” with Willem Dafoe and the elementary school talent show had a few truly bizarre, fun memorable moments.. Using my wheelchair made it possible.

Spicy Nut and Pretzel Mix

  • Whipped up the David Lebovitz snack mix because our dinner guest brought an extra pie. I think you could say it was burnt, but it’s still so addictive that it didn’t matter – it all gets eaten every time

Welcome in

Big Blood

At the Multiplex

  • I went to the Regal Hacienda Crossing Spaceport in Dublin. It is a multiplex at an outdoor mall
  • Shout out to Anjela the hair-cutter who told me she went to movies there when she was in high school
  • I went with Nami to the movie in my wheelchair. I like going to the multiplex in a wheelchair because multiplexes are big and huge and I don’t know if I’d be able to make it otherwise
  • We saw the movie Inside with William Defoe
  • It’s about an art burglar who gets trapped inside a smart house which more-or-less tortures him and features the destruction of millions of dollars worth of of art and furniture.

Kids Got Talent

  • I went to the children’s talent show in my wheelchair, but beforehand i emailed ahead of time to ask if they would save a space for me, which was no problem. they saved a space for me at the front of the room and a really sweet girl wearing a tap outfit helped me to get settled
  • There were great embarrassing song and dance routines, solo Hamilton, martial arts, gymnastic cartwheels I & II, Water Under The Bridge interpretive dances and SO much more. It was more interesting than I thought it would be.
  • My son told me he had a crush on a girl who did a gymnastic routine. When his mom asked why, he said it was because she “ran really fast”
  • “A pint is a pound the world around”
Indie rockers weigh in

Only one thing left

  • subscribe to the whatsthematterwithme podcast and you’ll get a very fancy nice email version of the podcast every time a new episode comes out its very handsome be sure to click subscribe right at the top of the page, just a name and your email is all we need to get goin and then youll always get the selfie

This Week’s Selfie

selfie
In the studio
car accident cover

I got in a car accident where I got rear ended, wasn’t injured and the insurers agreed that I was not at fault. This is a blender episode, with lots of little segments that all go in there.

Blender Episode

This episode contains lots of different segments, all going into the blender like fruit goes into the smoothie.. Stay tuned for lurid stories of rampaging young adults and their dangerous car accidents, but let’s start our blender episode back in the 1990s at Jamba Juice.

Juicy Tale

  • Do you go to Jamba Juice? My first thought was that I went there in the nineties, and that I don’t go there anymore.
  • Kind of like Noah’s Bagels, I feel like Jamba Juice belongs to the 90s the way Orange Julius belongs to the 80s
  • But I go there all the time because like El Pollo Loco, you can trust it, if you don’t trust anything, Jamba juice will feed me I get the peanut butter smoothie
  • Jamba Juice was originally called juice club
  • Began in San luis obispo in 1990
  • It was renamed in 1995.
  • In 1995, founder Kirk Perron swapped out Juice Club for Jamba Juice, which is a play on the African word, jama, which means “to celebrate.”

Music & Culture Festival

  • Like Carijama, the dormant Caribbean music and culture festival in Oakland’s Mosswood Park
  • Ended in violence every year 2001-4 after existing since 86

Making The Scends

  •  I have been using lent as an excuse to go to the fried fish place in San Leandro on 14th street Scends

Crate Digging Expedition

Session In Paris

  • Masahiko Togashi was a jazz drummer who sustained a spinal injury in 1970.
  • After his injury, Togashi had a custom drum set adapted so he could play drums using only his hands
  • At Stacks, I found a copy of 1979s Togashi / Cherry / Haden “Session in Paris – Song of Soil” with a picture of Togashi in his wheelchair on the back, something I haven’t seen very often on a record, so I bought it right away.
  • If you’re looking for a copy, they’re on Bandcamp

Pole Cane Stick

  • Got a new walking stick made of carbon fiber, the old one was aluminum.
  • The weight difference is like picking up a twig vs. blade of grass

Creative Destruction

I was on vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., on Nov. 7, 2021, when I awoke with the cacophony of a dozen dial-up modems blaring inside my head. Confused and alarmed, I called out to a friend staying in the room next door and could hardly hear my own voice. When he responded, I heard almost nothing at all.

The reason for my sudden hearing loss and the persistent ringing in my ears wasn’t immediately obvious, to me or to the emergency room doctor who examined me that morning. I hadn’t stood too close to the speaker at a concert or hit my head in some traumatic accident. I simply had gone to sleep with my hearing intact and, come morning, it was gone.

My life since that day has been difficult to describe, though the words I return to most often are “disorienting” and “humbling.” I spent months shuffling from one medical specialist to the next for a battery of tests and treatments. I eventually started wearing hearing aids and learning American Sign Language. And, perhaps most challenging of all, I confronted a new identity — disabled — that often leaves me feeling vulnerable.

At first, I also felt very alone. No one hands you a guidebook when one of the fundamental senses on which you innately rely is revoked without warning. Even the most attentive physicians are primed to focus on your physical symptoms, not the upheaval that a sudden impairment brings to your personal and professional life, nor the erosion it causes to your sense of self.

Steven Overley, “I had decades to make peace with my sexuality. My disability is a different story.” NY Times Subscriber-only newsletter (EXCERPT)
  • Acquiring a disability feels like forced creative destruction
  • Steven Ozerkey was guest writer for Frank Bruni’s newsletter last week and shared his perspective on acquiring a disability

‘Eyesight Compromised. Could Go Blind’

There is virtue in stoicism, but there is also danger in what strong people can hide. His own situation has made him even more keen to understand the other whose public face contradicts a private suffering. He proposes that each person should have a sandwich board listing her pain and how she adapts: “Imagine that our hardships, our hurdles, our demons, our pain were spelled out for everyone around us to see.” Bruni’s sandwich board would read: “Eyesight compromised, could go blind.”

You ask, why announce your troubles? Doesn’t everyone have something? “Well, yes. Tell us anyway,” I think Bruni would reply. Maybe if we knew, we might slow down, turn and fumble toward each other. Perhaps, then I could say that you’re not alone, and I’m rooting for you, because I am.

Min Jin Lee
  • Reading Min Jin Lee’s review of The Beauty Of Dusk by Frank Bruni, his account of impaired vision after suffering a stroke

AI Still Not Perfect

  • I asked openAI to summarize my podcast, and it said @johnleeclark hosted it, which isn’t true I host it. I appreciated the compartisom, and I’ll keep my eye on Clark, a DeafBlind poet.
Approach
By JOHN LEE CLARK

I spin around in the middle of the corridor. My cane taps against four elevator doors. I have pressed both the up and down buttons because there is a fifth elevator door. If I tried to tap all five I would come to closing doors too late. Let the fifth door open to a ghost. Let it be confused and close again.

Source: Poetry (December 2021)

RIP Judy Heumann

  • RIP Judy Heumann, who passed away on Saturday March 4, 2023 at 75 years old
  • She changed the way we think about disability, or the better. What an inspiration

Chimpanzeeing it

  • Since I got my teeth back I’m having to learn to use them to pull things into my mouth and not my lips. For the moment i’m kinda chimpanzeeing it

Shout outs

  • Shoutouts to Claude Hopper – congratulations on being awarded the Sal 9000 spot, Saturday mornings 6-9AM PST on 89.7FM kfjc.org. To get the ball rolling, I request Tapper Zukie

In the kitchen

  • Made a simplified meatloaf & cheesy polenta

Disabled Japan

  •  In Japan for example, it isn’t said that, “I am hot.” Instead you might say “Heat, there is.” It’s a group culture, which ios different from the West, where we live in an individually-oriented culture. In light of this, I have to reorient myself and figure out for myself.
  • How to exist as a disabled person in Japan? Rather than saying, “I am a disabled person, and they will accommodate me.”

Youth Gone Wild

  • I got rear ended and although it wasn’t my fault (the guy in front showed down, then I showed down, then I got rear ended) by a 20 year old driving his parents BMW which sustained a lot of front end damage
  • The kid jumped out of the car, cursing, yelling. At himself, not me, but it’s freaky when people start doing that, because it feels like they could turn it on you att any moment. But it was cool. I was bigger than him and an adult.
  • I am always afraid when I get in a car accident that somehow it’s going to lead to me having my driver’s license taken away, because I’m disabled.
  • I thought back to the Positive experience I had in the Hayward DMV, And I thought to myself, “I am totally allowed to be here,” and it got me through

Youth Gone Wild Pt. 2

You made it this far

  • Subscribe to the What’s The Matter With Me? Podcast and you’ll get a very fancy nice email version of the podcast every time a new episode comes out, it’s very handsome, be sure to click subscribe right at the top of the page, just a name and your email is all we need to get goin and then you’ll always get the selfie

This Week’s Selfie

selfie
Accident Survivor
I Got My Teeth Back cover

Welcome to “I Got My Teeth Back” on the What’s The Matter With Me? Podcast

I went to the dentist, and he attached some teeth to the posts the periodontist implanted in my jaw. It’s been almost two years since I had buck teeth in my mouth, and it is a big change. I made a lot of squash soup, adapting the method for one hand, and I’ve included the recipe in this post.

Shout outs

  • Shout outs to Klaudhopper, who asked about Hoppin Hot Sauce stickers
  • Shout outs to Tall John who called me up after I tweeted about not going to Japan

Teeth

teeth

These are the images I gave to the lab that fabricated my new teeth when they asked for pictures of what my old teeth used to look like.

teeth 2

Goes By Cam

  • Scam Likely probably goes by Cam
  • He calls everyone and no one takes his calls, on the answering machine he’s like hey it’s me, Cam- Cam Likely

Brain Lesions & Disease Progression

Slow

  • I had infusion which is a really long slow injection

Roasted Squash Soup

Recipe by John Hoppin

Roasting winter squashes face up concentrates flavor, and using convection during the roast increases tasty browning reactions. Using an immersion blender makes it easier to puree using only one hand. We eat leftovers for lunch with a grilled cheese sandwich and Hoppin Hot Sauce.

Servings
8 Servings

Cooking Time
75 minutes

Ingredients

  • 3lbs winter squash, cut in half, seeds taken out
  • 4T unsalted butter
  • Yellow onion, chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 4 cups stock

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 F {or 325 if using convection).
  2. Roast pumpkins until easily pierced with a fork, at least 1 hour. Let cool, then scoop out the flesh.
  3. Melt the butter in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat and once it is foamy, add the onion. Cook 5 minutes until soft.
  4. Stir nutmeg & cinnamon into the onions. When the smell permeates the room, add the stock.
  5. Add squash flesh, bring to a good simmer, stirring.
  6. Remove from heat. Leave to steam for a couple of minutes.
  7. Puree thoroughly with the immersion blender, using a stirring motion. Be extra-thorough to find any chunks of squash or onion that may be hiding under the surface.. It should be thick. I don’t do any extra sieving, so I want to take my time and be sure it is well-pureed.
  8. Add maple syrup, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Sonny At Rikers

  • Sonny Rollins got 1-3 years for having a gun. He was searched without cause. In 1952 he was at Riker’s Island. He arranged hymns for a hip chaplain at the Protestant Mission House, and he was paroled September 11, 1952

Theme Song

  • The theme song candidate for this month is less jazz & more industrial
  • I am considering whether it might have lyrics, maybe it’ll sing the intro part

Tiny Tooth Wrench

When they reattached them, the radio played Lionel Richie’s 80-s smash hit “Hello”. Neither the dentist nor his assistant knew the song. Turned out that the dentist was born in 1987.

teeth 2
  • The dentist used a little mini Allen wrench to attach them to the bases. there was pressure, it made my eyes water
  • I have teeth now, so I ate Ramen and spaghetti for the first time since my bridge broke and took my front teeth with it in August 2021

My Gumbo History

  • Cousin Emily came over for gumbo on Saturday
  • I made gumbo at the Rockridge Fish in Market Hall in 2003-4

Last night for dinner

  • i made red sauce italian sausage with leeks

This Week’s Selfie

I Got My Teeth Back Selfie
I Got My Teeth Back