Sausagetarian

Growing Food Is not a Trend

2009-06-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

"Man, it is cold out there at the Dogmatic cart! Our spot at the Bleecker Playground is an enigmatic microclimate, a black hole that sucks the temperature down at least a good twenty degrees. Tourists and foolish teenagers stroll past in flip-flops while we cover over the grill, warming our numb hands. If the afternoons were busier then it would not be an issue, but when it's slow there's not much to do besides thinking how miserably cold it is.
My co-workers have taken to wearing multiple pairs of long underwear. I tried this yeasterday and found myself only marginally warmer, plus I felt like a fat slob."

That's from 2007, probably late October or November. I rescued this draft of a post from some dusty computer brain archive in the outer-dimension netherlands of ephemera. Now it sees a sliver of daylight, even if only by my eyes.

Fast-forward two and a half years: it's mid-spring 2009, and we're planting a garden plot in Portland. When I signed up for a spot in the community garden on the other side of the field behind our yard, I figured it would be a good way to experiment a little, and get a few shriveled squash and withered leaves of kale, if nothing else.

But now that I am digging around out there, the relative enormity of the plot dazzles. There is so much space to plant seeds! It makes me giddy and dizzy, and a bit overwhelmed. I've worked about a third of the ground so far, and in what I knew was foolish haste planted chard, kale, and fennel seeds already. The soil is too heavy and needs to be amended with a big truckload of cow poop.

Our plot was fallow last year, and so I am now combing through various ground covers in search of dandelions to eradicate before I give the ground a working-over. It is work indeed. I should get a hoe, but all we have is a shovel and small trowel.

This whole blossoming of gardening in the face of global financial adversity is heartwarming, but the concept that gardening is cheap is a lie. Seeds, yeas, are relatively cheap. But our plot coasts us $100 a year. Our wheelbarrow was $30 at the sued tool shop, but the more I use it, the more I realize how great it would be to have other tools, like a hoe, a rake, and one of those asterik-looking devices you twist to loosen up the dirt. And a bench, and a trellis or two, and the aforementioned cow poop. Gardening nourishes the soul, but it also plants the seeds of consumerism.

This new wave of so-called "victory gardens" needs a new handle. Our gardening is not like the Greatest Generation's stalwart raising of vegetables in order to defeat the Axis; no, our victory shall have to be over the consequences of our own rampant greed. A victory over credit. In order for our victory garden to succeed, I shall have ot keep our own slender credit card sequestered deep in my wallet, and settle for back-breaking labor over nifty tools, even if they are secondhand.

No More Cocks

2007-01-27T20:02:00.000-08:00

The Dogmatic cart is no longer open. It's been a while, like since the end of November 2006. Dogmatic may return someday, but I'm a free agent now (i.e. unemployed) and don't keep up with Dogmatic developments.

I am still no longer writing a blog, although you can read my stupid MySpace page, which has become my default writing-promotion page. I post links to my most recent articles on my MySpace blog.

And, in order to put photos on your MySpace blog, they need to be online. So I post photos here in order to put them on my MySpace blog. That accounts for the untitled photos that are not related to anything. The end.

2007-01-17T06:29:00.000-08:00

">Link

I needed to post these online for a non-blog reason

2007-01-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

Back in Action

2006-10-31T05:25:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a break from posting. I still work at the sausage cart and all, but I find that my observations have not been very sausage-related, and I don't want Sausagetarian to morph into an outlet for my frustration at living in New York and working yet another dead-end service job.

Go read some other blog. There are, oh, only about a thousand really good ones out there. I'm busy writing my novel. Check back in a few months when I'm discouraged about novel-writing; maybe I'll be posting again. And thank you for reading!

Competition?

2006-10-23T06:01:00.000-07:00

Rachel Ray in the burger business? Interesting. Look out, she may tackle sausage next.

Cool Stuff You and I Missed

2006-10-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

I got a group photo from the organizer of the 2006 New Jersey Hot Dog Tour (you know, the one my husband and I missed the bus for and so we went to Ikea instead). Check these folks out, man. They look like they could learn me a thing or two about hot dogs.

In another news of missed events, the Vendy Awards were yesterday. Yup, at the very moment I was slaving away at my own mobile food vendor cart, people in the know were celebrating the excellence of other mobile food vendors. WNYC announced the winners today (in between pledge drive rambling about free Tony Bennet CDs with a gift of $50), but I was still half-asleep in bed at the time. None of the winners were sausage-related, I do recall that.

Career Advice

2006-10-22T17:21:00.000-07:00

A vociferous New Yorker came by the cart this afternoon as we were preparing sausage for a family who were visiting the city. He told the family a portion of his life story, then he told my co-worker Juliet a portion of his life story. Juliet reciprocated by telling him her life story.

This fellow was going about the neighborhood, saying his goodbyes—he was moving to Cleveland the next day. He told us when he lived in the West Village in the 80s, the neighborhood was full of crack and tranny hookers. Then he talked to the tourist family some more, about a good many things: the improv class he took a few years ago, the quality of cupcakes at Magnolia, the amiable homeless man he was friendly with and the noisy homeless man he used to rap on the head from his apartment window…

At last the family moved on. Our new friend moved on to us, discussing everything under the sun. He was a nice guy, but very manic; he took a lot of energy. He was a creative director and he was moving to Cleveland to, oh, I dunno—direct Cleveland creatively.

After ordering a beef sausage with ketchup, he asked us what we did. I told him I was a food writer. “What, like restaurant reviews and stuff?” he said (this is what everyone says.”

“No,” I said, “I develop, test, and edit recipes.” I would have elaborated, perhaps, but he didn’t give me a chance.

“No, no, that’s all wrong. Listen to me, I give great advice—just yesterday I got this interior decorator a great job.” He filled us in on his brilliant breakthrough with this woman’s career, and then he told me he’d do the same for me. “It’ll change your life, but I gotta make a deal—give me a bottle of water.”

I considered it for a second. “I’ll sell one to your for a dollar, and I’ll pay for the other half myself with this tip you kindly gave me a minute ago.”

“No,” he said, “you gotta give me a free water.”

“Then it’s off,” I said. “I can’t give water away. It’s against the rules.”

“Whatever suits you,” he said, “but you’ll regret it.” He stayed another ten minutes, talking and talking—Juliet was delighting in this guy—and then he left. It was like a long exhale as he stepped away.

I wonder what he would have said to me. Maybe it would have been helpful, but what does he know about my career? He knew that I’m a writer working at a sausage cart, which is maybe enough. But he does not know anything about me, who I am, what I really want to do, any of my background in cooking or writing. People are so quick to tell you how to fix everything right up. When talky know-it-alls come around, I usually stay mum and let them get their kicks. Probably they think I’m some demure, shy nerd. But maybe one of these days I’ll speak up. I should have told that guy his life would be totally great and different and amazing if he’d shut up every now and then.

After they guy left, Juliet mentioned how he reminded her of Neal Cassady/Dean Moriarty—she’s reading On The Road at the moment—but I disagreed. Sure, he had the same unbridled energy and loudmouth lust for life and attention, but this guy was a successful creative director, not some drunk freezing train tracks in Mexico. In any case, I think Neal would have drove me nuts, too. Dean Moriarty, he’s just a guy in a book—you can shut a book. People, you can’t shut.

We Have New Bread

2006-10-20T07:51:00.000-07:00

Dogmatic switched baguettes. We were using baguettes from Tom Cat, and I liked them. They had a nice golden-brown color and a crust that shattered pleasantly when you bit into it. This, however, meant that when we cut the Tom Cat baguettes at the cart in the morning their crusts shattered and made a big crummy mess. The Tom Cat baguettes had an airy interior that sank quite effortlessly onto our toasting spikes, too.

Now we're using baguettes from Pain d'Avignon. Their crust does not have the same deep caramel color, but their crumb is denser and tangier. I'm not sure which baguettes I prefer. Every day I do little experiments, seeing how long it takes to get a good toast on the interiors of the Pain d'Avignon baguettes (longer than Tom Cat) and tasting little bits of bread to get a handle on their flavor. This baguette switch has provided me with way too much entertainment, but I'm a nerd and find these bread comparisons intriguing.

The other day someone from Berkeley, CA's collective The Cheese Board came by with a few of her friends. She was in town for a co-op convention and had read about Dogmatic in the Times. I told about our recent baguette switch, which led to a little bread talk. Nice. Despite its name, the Cheese Board is known more for its baked goods than its cheeses (not to put down its cheeses). They sell pizza by the pie and by the slice, and the line for this pizza is usually too long for somone like me, soneome who thinks people who wait in line for an hour just to eat are saps.

But I have had Cheese Board pizza a few times. They make one kind of pizza a day and that's it. Every time I've been there it's a sauceless pizza. They seem to alternate between three-onion/three-cheese and three-mushroom/three-cheese. The crust is great, but to me it's more like very cheesy flatbread than actual pizza.

The Cheese Board is in Berkeley's fabled Gourmet Ghetto, not far from Chez Panisse. I used to drive through down Shattuck through the Gourmet Ghetto quite often, usually on my way to Amoeba to get records. In fact, just typing this is making me quite nostalgic--every day this happens. I recall our life in California and I look around and think "Why the fuck did we move to New York?" But then I think about all of the brazen pedestrians in the Gourmet Ghetto, Berkeley intellectual types with their 3,000-dollar strollers and fair trade hemp beanies and shit, how they'd just stroll right into the street no matter what because they were too busy thinking about getting a soy latte at Peet's to bother looking. I almost hit this dumb-ass UC Berkeley student right in front of the Cheese Board, in fact. That's exactly what drove me nuts about living in the San Francisco Bay area. Of course, New Yorkers jaywalk as well, but it's different, somehow.

All of the time I mull over how my husband and I moved across the country so I could get a great job and here I am, working part-time at a sausage cart. It's a way better job than the job I had in Berkeley. I guess we could move anywhere and there will be wonderful aspects and crappy ones. And there will always be eccentric, low-paying service jobs waiting.

Slow Day

2006-10-19T05:48:00.000-07:00

Walk down 8th Avenue on my way to Bleecker Playground, pass bum in camouflage cargo pants digging through the trash for recyclables at Abindgon Market, singsonging "I'm a bum, I'm a bum, I'm a bum, yeah I'm a bum..."

Drink juice box, fruit punch flavor, despite dislike of juice. All-natural organic juice blend tastes a lot like Hawaiian Punch.

Eat piece of toasted baguette with feta sun-dried tomato sauce.

See man with half-chewed cigar dangling from mouth walk past us three times in half an hour.

Cops come and harass bum in camouflage pants, who by now is digging through the Bleecker Park trash cans and continuing to loudly proclaim his bum status. Bum leaves, cop car lingers for ten minutes or so.

See guy who I though was Henry Winkler, then realize is not Henry Winkler.

Attempt to read Village Voice's Best Of issue. Throw paper away five minutes later, after reading "Savage Love." Best Of issues suck. Attempt to read New York Post. Learn the Eddie Murphy knocked up Scary Spice. Am amused by appropriateness of this has-been coupling. Wish them well. Scoff at Post's overblown coverage of Madonna's adoption of baby from Malawi. Throw Post away.

A mom at the playground says "Excuse me, sir, do you have any ice?" I turn around and tell her I'm a woman, perhaps with more malice than is due. She is embarrassed. I say don't worry about it, give her cup of ice. Spend next five minutes watching six-foot models and model wanna-bes walk by in knee-high suede boots and American Apparel leggings. Feel dowdy, old, and impossibly unstylish. Be glad am married to husband who apparently does not mind that I am easily mistaken for a man.

Sell bag of Tings.

Eat toasted baguette with white cheddar jalapeno sauce.

Eat apple.

Eat granola bar.

See little girl on scooter coast by with a friend, also on scooter. Their moms are on foot. Little girl says "There's that cooker girl who's always here!" Little girls scoot away. Look at kids frolicking in playground and realize even the kids in this neighborhood are more stylish than me.

Eat toasted baguette with pesto.

Break down cart. Head to subway station to get the hell home. Notice my end of platform is eerily deserted, notice C train on opposite side of platform is stopped and empty. See swarm of MTC cops loitering around. See big wash of blood on the platform just below the closed door of empty C train. A cap sits on platform next to wash of blood. See no owner of hat or blood. Turn away from sight of whatever just happened in order not to be lookie-loo. Woman with cameraphone takes picture, MTA cop yells at her and calls her a sicko and yells at people on platform to either get on a train or get away. Half a dozen more MTA cops and about a dozen firefighters walk to scene of mystery event, stretchers in tow. They walk, don't run. Figure maybe someone died--otherwise they'd be running. Maybe six stretchers go by. How many people were involved in this thing? Feel weird, in the way. Just want to get home. Realize if Weegee were here he'd be photographing all this. Realize all those Weegee photographs I like so well are of real dead people and their real living bereaved. My E train finally comes. Get on car, as it speeds past the fiasco on platform passengers crane necks to get a look. I don't look up from my New Yorker. Look at New York Times website this morning, see no mention of event. Guess it's just another incident in the city. Update: Looked on New York Post site and found out what happened. Morbid curiosity satisfied. I knew the trashy old Post wouldn't let me down.

The Sausage Index: Good. Ate a shit-ton of baguettes with cheese sauce yesterday, but actual sausage intake is well under control. Last sausage consumed was last week, a cigar-sized beef sausage to small to sell. I grilled it off and ate a few bites plain (man, those things are salty), then with spicy ketchup.

Puschart Shop Talk

2006-10-17T06:53:00.000-07:00

The best things about working as a mobile food vendor—besides the abundant availability of sausage and the daily opportunity to work out of doors—is talking to customers and passersby. Under normal circumstances I am horrible at making small talk, but the Dogmatic cart is a wonderful source of banal but appropriate material for casual conversations. People ask how long Dogmatic had been in the park (about five weeks), who came up with the idea (people who are not me), where the idea came from (people who are not me), what the sauces taste like (depends on the sauce), what we plan to do when it gets cold and snowy (dress warmly and give it our best shot).

I’ve found that New Yorkers are particularly asky. I’ve worked a number of jobs that involve dealing with the public, and most anywhere in the country patrons and customers are talky—they’ll mention the rain, or the traffic on the way over. I’d have to ask them questions to get a good, non-weather conversation going. But here, in New York, usually the customers are the ones who ask me questions. Where did those toasting spikes come from? How do you get this cart here to the park? Do you own this? They want to know. I love it.

This weekend, a fellow walked by the cart, did a double take, and turned around to face us. He was probably in his mid-forties, heavy-set but not fat—a very regular-looking guy. In our West Village neighborhood, most of our customers are either young and stylish or old and eccentric, so everyday folk stand out a bit. He asked me how much a dog was. I told him they were five dollars, and he said, “What the heck. I’ll have a beef sausage with white cheddar jalapeno.”

While I prepared his order, he told me he operated a hot dog cart for twenty years, so when he saw our cart it stirred his curiosity. I asked him how he prepared the dogs, and he said “boiled. It was a non-processing cart.”

Ah! Dirty water dogs. So that’s a non-processing cart. In New York City, any cart that sells mixed, cooked, chopped, cut, toasted, steamed, or grilled foods is considered a processing cart and must have a sink. A cart that sells items as-is, such as pre-packaged ice cream novelties or uncut, unheated bagels, is non-processing. But there’s an exception: carts that sell boiled (a.k.a. dirty water) hot dogs need not have a sink. This hot dog loophole is so illogical to me. I told him that, and the ex-hot dog man said that it boggled his mind, too, and that he couldn’t even sell knishes at his cart, just hot dogs, which had miffed him.

By this time his sausage was ready, and when I handed it to him he thanked me and walked away. I would have loved him to linger so I could ask him questions about the hot dog business. But maybe he was in a hurry, or maybe it didn’t occur to him that someone might find years of experience working at a non-processing hot dog cart very fascinating. But it was fun to have a few minutes of shop talk. I need to seek out other mobile food vendors during their slow times and pepper them with questions, and then I’ll be the asker.

Bum Fight

2006-10-16T06:12:00.000-07:00

The brick-paved area surrounding Bleecker Playground has its share of bums. I recognize most of them now. They are generally harmless people, mostly men, mostly down on their luck and intoxicated into oblivion. All day long they lounge on benches and talk about god knows what.

Dogmatic and the Bleecker Bums have an unspoken code: live and let live. We hadn’t had any problems so far, except for the time this tattooed-face guy dressed up like a leather pirate (complete with gauntlets studded with three-inch metal spikes) demanded a free Coke because he was crazy and had just returned from Iraq. I’m sure deployment in Iraq can mess you up, but I’m not sure such it would result in such rapid, visible mental and physical decay.

We haven’t seen the Leather Pirate since, thank god. Bums are like pigeons: if you feed one once, you’d better get used to it pecking around your feet. No one should go hungry, but the bums do what they have to do to get by, and so do we.

Last week, though, I messed up. This new bum I hadn’t seen before came up to us during a very slow spell. I was just entering the tip of my 24-hour flu, and I was sitting on the rear tire of the cart, yearning for some Advil and a nap. “Hello ladies,” said the bum as he sidled up. He looked fairly tidy, in clothes that actually fit him. He babbled for a bit, saccharine pleasantries about how lovely our smiles were and all that crap. I smiled mutely just to humor him, but he didn’t go away.

“I’m just wondering, ladies,” he continued, “if you happen to have a little bit of food you could share with a hungry man. I haven’t eaten in a long time, and I’d appreciate any little bit of food you’d throw away otherwise.”

We don’t throw food away. Throw sausage away—that’s a sin! I shook my head at him. But he persisted. “I’m very hungry, ladies, and God said never to turn a hungry man away.” This evocation of God did me in. I never help anyone. I’ve worked in close proximity to bums at several jobs, and I feel that giving them spare change and/or sausage is not the best way to help them. I prefer to save my change for tipping barristas and clerks at bagel shops, people who work hard.

But that’s all I do. Tipping junior college students hardly qualifies as charity. I used to donate money to good causes, but that’s when we had money. Nowadays the difference between me getting a black coffee in the middle of my Dogmatic shift is if I get a dollar tip or not. I hate having nice things like a warm apartment and a car and stable parents and yet not doing anything to help other, less fortunate people. Like the bum hounding us—even if he was annoying, he probably was hungry.

Early that morning I’d made a tuna sandwich at home to eat for lunch that day. But sitting there on the cart’s rear tire, the thought of eating lukewarm canned fish was revolting. Why should I waste my lovingly made tuna sandwich? Our passivity wasn’t chasing the bum away—we’d either have to be nasty or generous to him. I chose the latter.

The bum was overjoyed. He thanked us about five times and requested another set of smiles. I wanted to tell him he was pushing his luck, but I didn’t. As he finally loped off, I regretted giving him that sandwich. We were not seeing the last of him.

I went home sick later that day and didn’t come back to the cart for another two days. Upon my return, I discovered that there’d been unrest among the bums of the park. My tuna sandwich guy had been bragging about his food score to all the other bums. And one of the bums had stolen the backpack of Michael, my Dogmatic co-worker who had the propane fireball in his face. Michael had no valuables in his backpack, nothing but his Dogmatic uniform—which we saw the next day, hung up on the gates of the playground.

One the day of my return, one of the bums was particularly belligerent and vociferous. He swore a lot and had a pair of boxer-briefs on his head. I eventually recognized him as the tuna sandwich bum. That bastard—bragging about my sandwich! That’s the last time he gets anything from me, especially if he’s going to sit around with boxers on his head and threaten the other park bums.

The next day was quite chilly in the park. I finally got a tip and I went over to get a cup of coffee at the corner market so I could have something warm in my hands. When I got back, Jes, the car supervisor, excitedly told me that one of the bums had just beaten another bum to a bloody pulp. I was both glad and bummed to have missed the fight—I’ve never seen someone beaten to a bloody pulp in front of my own eyes. That’s okay, I guess. The triumphant bum—the beater, not the beatee—was strutting around the park with a menacing gleam in his eye.

The bums have been agitated lately. There’s something in the air. Deborah, the park attendant, came over and told us to get her if any more bums cause trouble. That’ll put at least a temporary end to these eruptions of bum violence—even the Leather Pirate would be a fool to mess with Deborah.

Dogmatic's Lame Homepage: Vote!

2006-10-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

We're on MenuPages now. Too bad we don't have a menu, at least not a paper menu. We write our menu out on a chalkboard every day. The nice, nerdy young MenuPages guy who came by the cart the other day had a clipboard with him, and I think he wrote our chalkboard menu down on his clipboard.

As much as I like to draw and doodle and make things look pretty, I hate writing the menu on the chalkboard. I'm left-handed and hold writing impliments in a unique (some uppity right-handed snobs might say "wrong") manner, which makes it difficult for me to write legibly on vertical surfaces. It takes me about twenty minutes to write the menu on the board. That's ten minutes too long, and it still looks like something a third-grader in the slow class did. My consolation was finding out the other day that these lovely ladies are/were left-handed as well.

Dogmatic's own page is up, as well. While the little cartoon characters are great (I like the butt-crack hescher and the guy who looks like Sonny Bono in particular), overall the page is LAME! No information whatsoever. Like, where and when can I get these so-called Dogmatic things? What do they look like? How much do they cost? What are fabulous people like Florence Fabricant saying about them in the press? Can I see a picture of the cart, so when I actually do find your location I'll know what to look for?

So, keeping in mind the vast differences in a meandering, self-indulgent blog and the homepage of a business, leave a comment and vote for the site you think is best. I'm counting on you here, folks. I wanna see numbers! Like, three comments total would make me happy.

Update, 10/19/06: I guess I didn't post the link to the Dogmatic site when I originally posted this. I fixed that, and just to be super-nice, I'll even put it down here: www.dogmaticgss.com.

Rained Out

2006-10-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

My flu is gone. I triumphantly returned to work at the cart yesterday, only to have rain cut my shift drastically short. Our Dogmatic cart has a metal shelf right over our prep area, a “tin roof” that creates shade on sunny days and protection from raindrops on crummy days. So we were fairly dry in the rain, but business was abysmal. We figured it was a lost cause, and we shut down around four.

Shutting down the cart is a pain in any case—it’s not hard, but it is dirty work that involves a lot of wiping down rough-edged metal surfaces and exposing the delicate skin of one’s face to flying droplets of grease and crud. Yesterday it was wet work, too. We shut the cart down in record time.

So, because of my flu and the rain, I have worked a grand total of 4 hours this week. Fortunately darling husband has a real job, and can be counted on to bring the bacon home. Apparently I can’t even be counted on to bring the sausage home.

Most street vendors are not so lucky. Your cart is your life. A week with several cold, wet, slow days can make the difference between paying bills timely or late. And if you have the flu, well—either the cart is open or it’s closed, huh? I slept my flu off, but I know at least a percentage of mobile food vendors would have spent it boxed in a roach coach, where they’d perhaps puke discreetly into a small trash bin in their cart. There are no sick days in the world of mobile food vending.

The Sausage Index: Zero. I have had no Dogmatic sausage in over…um…four days! Yesterday, during my pathetically dead shift, I did consume a small bit of baguette for training purposes. We have a new sauce, brie with white truffle oil, and I wanted to try it. Let's just say that sun-dried tomato feta is in no danger of being toppled from #1.

Important Safety Tips

2006-10-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

This is a very unflattering picture of me with poison ivy. I got it while running on trails through Forest Park, close to where my husband and I live. My running and hiking on trails had led to a handful of very nasty bouts of poison oak and ivy over the years. All I have to do is get within a few yards of the stuff for me to break out in seeping blisters. I had poison oak on my upper lip when I met Julia Child at a book signing. I was mortified about it, but good old unflappable Julia didn’t bat an eye. What a woman.

The poison ivy presented problems for me at the Dogmatic cart. The mother lode of sores on my arm are, as you can see, utterly repulsive, and not anything you’d want to spot on the exposed flesh of anyone preparing you food. But poison ivy heals faster when it’s not bandaged. My solution was to cover the big-ass sore up with band-aids, medical tape, and gauze right before the beginning of my shift. By the time I was riding the subway home after work, I’d be scratching away at those scabs like mad. Ick.

That’s all over with now, thank god. But as the poison ivy started to clear up, I got a 24-hour flu that got me sent home in the middle of a shift. I felt fine that morning, but as the day progressed I couldn’t stand up for more than two minutes without getting dizzy. I slept for two days straight and am in nearly tip-top shape now. I figure the poison ivy weakened my usually impenetrable immune system and made a gateway for flu germs on the subway or at some other germ-ridden spot one so often comes into contact with in this city.

So my safety tips are to stay away from trails, and to wash your hands at every opportunity. I myself will completely ignore the former (no way will I stop my much-needed nature infusions) and rigidly adhere to the latter (I wash my hands so many times a day it’s crazy, and I even count to twenty).

And here’s another, possibly more important safety tip: when lighting pilot lights, make sure all of the burners are OFF. My valiant co-worker Michael was kissed in the face by a fireball because one of the cart’s burners was still ON when he was lighting the pilot lights. It singed his eyebrows and gave his entire face what appears to be a severe sunburn. Michael is an actor, and his immediate concern was the state of his face—his vehicle, as it were. Don’t fret, he and his visage are fine. I was not there to witness it, but I don’t wish a similar episode on anyone. It taught me to always wear my little white Dogmatic baseball cap when lighting the pilots just in case a fireball comes a-callin’—if you can’t save your face, save your scalp.

Bleecker Playground Poems

2006-10-05T18:54:00.000-07:00

navy suit man
loud on cellphone
businesstalk in park
under bricked-in trees
shiny shoes step away
just as pigeon shit falls
misses him
damn
***
sullen balloon man, tall and
narrow like the hotdog balloons in his caddy
he comes on slow weekdays to make a little cash
hoping the mommies in the playground
will be generous and get balloons for their kids.
he ties hotdog balloons in simple shapes-
flowers, swords
-why do they all look like penises?
a mom, distracted, sits
on a playground bench
amidst toddlers with balloon penis-swords and penis–flowers
she chews on the nipple end of a half-deflated balloon
spaced out just like me
***
Homeless guy
old bread
feeds skank pigeons
why
***
Sex in the City Tour
always they eat cupcakes
then snapshots on Carrie’s stoop
woman throws Magnolia Bakery Cupcake icing
on sidewalk for bloated pigeons
who poop on my backpack
outside, I smile at lady
inside, I beat her face

Hot Dogs Meet the Big O

2006-10-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

How did I miss this? The New York Times made a video about organic hot dogs months ago. Months! So it's not breaking news, but these Times video extras kind of suck, anyway. Just goes to show how much talent it takes to turn out a minute-and-a-half bit of news fluff--more than you think!

Dogmatic's sausages are not organic, per se, but they do come from animals who live in rainbow-spanned green meadows that they share with dwarf technicolor ponies who have sparkle tattoos of stars and seashells on their asses.

And, like this "new" crop of organic weenies, our sausages are nitrate and nitrite free. Nitrates and nitrites supposedly can lead to cancer--and for a weenie/cock-lovin' gal like me, that's a bit scary. But cured meats made without the dual Ns have a dismal brown look that's about as appealing as a dirty gym sock. I have a tiny packet of this scary stuff called TCM (tinted curing mix) at home. TCM looks like salt or sugar, but it's highly toxic, so they dye it bright pink to avoid confusion with more common granulated products. TCM contains the dual Ns, and it only takes a fraction of a quarter teaspoon to turn pounds of meat pink-red. I got my TCM from the local slaughterhouse in Marietta, Ohio for a sausage-making jag I was on at the time (I also got my pork casings from them). Anyhow, TCM is pretty creepy because it can kill you, but it's nearly essential for the proper sausage/bacon/ham appearance.

When I was in cooking school, my charcuterie instructor (yes, the CIA taught charcuterie back then) told my class that back in the old days, meats were cured with sea salt, and sea salt has naturally occurring dual Ns--so meats cured with sea salt had that happy rosy blush. I'm not sure how organic franks get the pink in their weenies (the Times video alluded to sea salt and celery juice), but I'd like to lean more. Maybe it's time for a field trip to the organic sausage factory.

Yesterday's Sausage Index: One turkey sausage with sun-dried tomato feta sauce, plus one toasted baguette with sun-dried tomato feta sauce but no sausage.

Bohemian Hall Double Dog

2006-10-03T06:09:00.000-07:00

This Weekend’s Sausage Index: Two, in the form of frankfurters consumed at the Bohemian Hall in Astoria on Friday night. Bohemian Hall, also known as “the beergarden,” is the sort of place you hear lots of people mention when you first come to New York City. It’s the last of its breed, the largest beergarden in the city. I’d imagined a Wonderland of beer, like unlocking the door to the Secret Garden and stepping inside to see a lush enclosure of greenery and fine European suds. Well, it’s more like a huge dirtpatch with hundreds of picnic tables and drunk folk in ultra-casual mode. It’s a lot like the dining area at the county fair, actually.

They do serve food at the beergarden—starchy, porky fare like bread dumplings and schnitzel. We made our way there on Friday night, I with visions of bread dumplings and mushroom gravy in my head. But no, that night they were serving only Americanized Oktoberfest-y fare: kielbasa with kraut and fries, hamburgers and fries, hot dogs and fries. The kielbasa were major schlongers, like eight inches of sausage. I’d just eaten a slice of bad pizza and could not handle such intensity, so I got the hot dog. For four bucks, I got two decent franks on one bun, plus a side of sort of okay fries made from fresh potatoes. The franks were a deep red, mildly spiced with a good flavor. This two-franks-one-bun configuration was new to me, a double dog. I like the double dog.

Some Commonly Asked Questions

2006-09-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's Sausage Index: 3 spears of asparagus with sun-dried tomato feta sauce (non-sausage), plus 1/2 each beef and turkey sausages, cut up, in a box of Trader Joe's macaroni & cheese consumed with husband for dinner (sausages brought home because cosmetic flaws rendered them unsellable but emminently edible).

We set the cart up at Union Square yesterday for a special event with Allure Magazine. I was working the afternoon shift and arrived to see the cart abuzz with action. It was perhaps our best day yet, sales-wise. A prominent position on a busy corner didn't hurt. But I have to say that Union Square lacks the charm of our regualr spot in Bleecker Playground.

More people walking past the cart means more random querys.
Commonly Asked Questions
-Dogmatic...is this a cart for dogs?
-How long have you been here? Is this your regular spot?
-Do you have a permit for this? How did you get that permit? Was it hard?
-How do you get the hole in the bread?
-Do you have regular mustard?
-What's better, the beef or turkey?
Infrequently Asked Questions, Infrequently Made Comments
-What's a baguette?
-Is this free?
-This cartoon here on the sign of the woman with the sausage saying "Portable sausages...I don't get it"--well, I'm embarassed to say so, but I don't get it, either.
-Grilled asparagus--is that a sausage?

Pat and Jennifer Love Hewitt

2006-09-27T06:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I ate two turkey dogs during my shift. The first was with sun-dried tomato feta sauce, which was gone for a bit and then came back. Sometimes we rotate sauces, and blue cheese didn't cut it for me, so the return of S-DTF was a happy sight.

Turkey dog #2 was with spicy metchup (spicy ketchup and Dijon mustard). I had dog #2 because it was a mistake; sometimes we throw one too many sausages on the grill. And I just can't chuck a good sausage.

Both dogs I gobbled up with animalistic speed. Standing there behind the cart, generally blocked from the view of passersby, I though of the chorus in the song "Jennifer Love Hewitt Litterbox":
In the Jennifer Love Hewitt Litterbox
Little band from Cotati, the Mismatched Socks
It's Patrick at Top Dog, he's gobbling a cock
The Jennifer Love Hewitt Litterbox
The song is by Willard's Canteen, the one-man band of Matt Pamatmat. (Listen to it here.) Pat is a curious fellow, a friend of ours who lives on Dr. Pepper, bacon, and sausage. He can drink a liter of Dr. Pepper in under two minutes. You think I am kidding, and for Pat's sake I wish I were.

Pat's favorite place to eat is Top Dog, the wonderful Berkeley, CA hot dog institution. Top Dog serves what is probably the closest thing to a New York hot dog in the entire San Francisco Bay Area, but they also serve veggie dogs, turkey dogs, brats, hot links, etc. Pat likes the calabrese. I eat hot dogs fast, but Pat has me cornered in the cock-speed department.

So yesterday I did my feeble Pat impression behind the Dogmatic cart. Pat my be fond of the noteworthy Top Dog, but in all other culinary arenas he is suspicious of quality. Dogmatic's baguettes would probably throw him off, although there is a chance he would go for the white cheddar jalapeno sauce.

Today I will try my best to forgo any dogs at work. I am doing a sausage micro-fast. But I am weak, and I may gobble a cock anyway, and as I'm gobbling a cock, I will think of Pat and say, "This dog's for you." And I'll say it with a mouth full of half-chewed sausage.

Dogmatic in the Times

2006-09-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

See, I told you so. Scroll down a bit to see Dogmatic--we're under the blurb about the new Broadway Panhandler.

Hours of Web-Based Hot Dog Entertainment

2006-09-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

Here's the excellent Hot Dog, Sausages, & Bratwursts area of the very active Roadfood forum--the place where I found out about the New Jersey hot dog tour I missed the bus for. If you have a hot dog concern or issue, it is a good place to go.

FloFab and the Inspector

2006-09-25T09:39:00.001-07:00

If you are working at a mobile food vending cart and a health inspector shows up, you must drop everything you are doing until the inspection is over. Even if you have a line of ten people waiting for food, you cannot cook until the inspection is over. Even if Florence Fabricant from the New York Times comes by, in fact, which is what we found out the other day.

It was a slow period at the cart—mid-afternoon on a weekday. I was working with Jes, who had stepped away for a moment, and I was contemplating whether I should wipe crumbs off the spike machine or look into space thoughtfully when a tidy-looking man walked up to the cart with a distinct sense of purpose. He showed me his I.D. badge and license and told me he was a health inspector. I tried to hide my excitement—I’d just received my license in the mail and was eager to show it off to him—but he was not there to see me or my license. He wanted to see the permit for our icicle tricycle, the custom-built cooler-on-wheels that we serve gourmet sodas from.

Jes saw what was happening and scurried over to speak with the inspector; since he didn’t want to see my mobile food vending license, there was little I could do for him. They were going back and forth with calm civility about parks department regulations (the inspector was quite a nice fellow) when an older woman came up and introduced herself as Florence Fabricant from the New York Times (faithful readers may recognize her name from a snarky previous post about pigs in blankets). Wow! Florence Fabricant, the mouthpiece of all that’s shaking in the food world of New York, was right there at our spiffy little cart. But I was immobilized by the presence of the health inspector, and therefore unable to prepare a sausage for her.

It was incredibly awkward, mainly for me. I told Ms. Fabricant that the inspection would be over in just a few minutes, if she didn’t mind waiting, but she told me unfortunately she was in a hurry. We stood, she pressing buttons on her cell phone and me shoving my thumb further up my butt (that’s completely a figure of speech, by the way). I considered telling her that I was a food writer, but perhaps she would have asked me what my name was, and I’d tell her, and she’d say she didn’t recognize my name and ask me what kind of food writing I did, and I’d say, “Well, currently I write a little-read blog about working here at this gourmet sausage cart.”

It didn’t seem like a good idea. I thought about mentioning how I’d read her article about pigs in blankets, since it was sausage-related news, but I declined to do so. This is what separates those who get ahead from those who do not. Get-aheader: makes charming but idle chat with Florence Fabricant, tells her to read his or her fabulous sausage-cart blog, gets cushy gig at New York Times. Me: Just stands there.

The inspector left, and our Dogmatic cart received no violations. But Florence Fabricant departed before he did, saying she’d send someone on Friday. It was very eventful for an uneventful afternoon. Of course, I was not working on Friday, though I heard that someone from the Times did stop by the cart.

So keep an eye on the New York Times for Dogmatic. And we are in the latest Time Out New York, though to see the online edition you need to shell out some skrill.

Famous People

2006-09-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

Some famous people came by the Dogmatic cart this weekend. I won’t say who they were, but I will say they were real people and not plastic, inhuman people like Jessica Simpson or Puff Diddlydoole. I will also say that the famous people got three turkey dogs and one beef dog. They were good customers.

I tried my best to be nonchalant towards the famous people, and because I was trying so hard I probably came across as a total ass-kissy nincompoop. The famous people didn’t seem to notice; I assume after years of celebrity, they have developed the skill to ignore the conspirational niceness of non-famous folks during everyday interactions.

As long as we’re having famous people visit our cart, I might as well become very dreamy and shallow and make a Dogmatic Famous Person Wish List.
-Any member of Sonic Youth, preferably Kim and Thurston with their daughter Coco in tow.
-Kirsten Dunst.
-Werner Herzog.
-The Olsen twins (either or both), just because it would make a good story to tell people at bars.
-Jonathan Ames, even though he’s not really famous, and even though I doubt he eats sausage. From his writing I’ve gleaned he’s not big on processed meat (even if it’s all-natural and nitrate- and nitrite-free), or any food item that gives one gastronomic pleasure, unless it’s a banana. Mr. Ames, please note that we do sell grilled asparagus spears, and that if you pass by the cart when I am working, I will comp an order for you, which is not something I would do for the Olsen twins.

Once Juliette Binoche came into the chocolate shop where I worked. She bought a pint of ultra-premium strawberry ice cream. I’m sure I acted silly around her, too. I wish it were not so. I am idealistic and simple and would prefer to treat all customers with equal kindness and professionalism. Come by and get a sausage and see if this is the case. Hopefully you are not famous, lest I act like a dingbat, but maybe you won’t even notice.

Man Push Cart

2006-09-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

My food vendor license and I.D. badge came. I am so legit now. The envelope was square and it didn’t fit in our odd, narrow mailbox very well. I knew right away what was in it, and I tore into the envelope with the excitement of A Christmas Story’s Ralphie when his Little Orphan Annie decoder pin finally arrived in the mail. I wonder if I can use this I.D. to get into bars and stuff.

My husband and I took in our first feature at one of New York’s arty cinaplexes, and of course we saw a film about a mobile food vendor called Man Push Cart. The movingly dingy little movie has nothing to do with sausages, but I was moved to see it because the film’s protagonist, Ahmad, operates a roach coach on some anonymous busy New York City street corner. Even though the bulk of the story takes place out of the cart, that’s not how it feels; the scenes with Ahmad going about his daily pushcart routine are shot in such a claustrophobic tightness that it infiltrates the whole film—boxing him in, as it were.

Ahmad is boxed in in more ways than one. He rises at 2am to arrive at the commissary by 3am, and then he pulls the silvery mass of his cart however many blocks while fighting off the ominous headlights of hulking semi trucks and buses that whoosh past him bullyingly. Then Ahmad sells tea and coffee and bagels, then he pulls the cart back to the commissary, washes it, and makes his way back to his craphole apartment back in Brooklyn—but not before trying to hawk a few bootleg porn DVDs for extra cash.

Cash is Ahmed’s stumbling block. He has none. His wife is dead, he’s estranged from his young son, and the pop idol career he had back in Pakistan is only a shadow of a lost era. Ahmad is simply too emotionally and physically numb to make the push for a better life. He’s only a shell.

It’s not a happy movie, and it won’t be bringing in any new roach coach recruits any time soon. As far as I could tell, Man Push Cart’s depiction of mobile food vending is accurate—especially the scenes in the dismal, cave-like commissary. Luckily, we don’t have to move our cart manually like Ahmad; we have the Dogmatic cart towed. But not every pushcart proprietor can afford that. We also don’t have to carry a propane tank around like a silent sidekick, as Ahmad does. A little cash in hand, I guess, goes a long way to make a potentially miserable job a truly enjoyable one. We are fortunate that way.

Mobile food vending, for most people, is a very hard way of life. My husband and I left the theater, feeling glum after the film’s glum credits rolled. We stepped into the noisy, smoggy streets and the litter hovering above the balmy grates in the sidewalk, and we then vowed not to see any more movies set in gritty New York City in the theater as long as we continue to live here. Movies are for escape, not reality. We get enough of that.