Show up with lots of wine

We are all guilty of a few etiquette indiscretions once in a while.  It seems, however, in the digital era of meet-ups via twitter (tweetups), business by blog, and “friending” on facebook, the rules of the game are changing. Can you remember the last time you received a hard-copy embossed, formal invitation to anything besides a wedding?

Don't pick your nose

Just because you didn’t receive a paper invite to dinner doesn’t mean the rules should be left by the wayside in the way you RSVP, attend, and follow-up an event, even if it’s as small as a dinner party for four.  I have been meaning to post about dinner party etiquette for some time, and the holiday season- replete with festive fetes- is the perfect time for all of us to bone up.  What follows is a list of some key etiquette points, though it’s by no means exhaustive. I also polled friends for their pet peeves. Remember, this list is subjective and opinion-based; I’d love to hear what irks you, and especially what nuggets you wish to preserve from your bygone Miss Manners lessons.

In most cases, don't bring the dish to your lips

1. Be consistent.  Just because you’ve established familiarity with someone doesn’t mean you shouldn’t appreciate their invitation to dinner as much as if it were a new host. If you would bring a bottle of wine and dessert on a first invitation, continue the equivalent pattern instead of lapsing into a slap-on-the-back and a “thanks for the food, dude.”

2. If you are the host of a dinner party, it is polite to ask your guests if they have any dietary concerns.  It would be an uncomfortable shame all around to make prawns for a guest who is allergic to shellfish, so ask before you prepare to save everyone embarrassment.  Personally I welcome diners’ nuances as a challenge. If someone comes over who is gluten-free, it helps me get out of my typical pasta-every-night-of-the-week routine.

Were you born in a barn? Get your shoes off the table!

3. If you are invited to a dinner party, ask what you can contribute to the meal.  If the answer is nothing, bring a beverage (typically a bottle of wine) nonetheless.  You do not need to break the bank on a hostess gift, however if you’ve made something recently or find something particularly suitable to your host, by all means go ahead, though this certainly goes above and beyond and need not be repeated every time as the bottle of wine should.

Really? A sombrero at the dinner table?

4.  Take your hat off at the dinner table. #statingtheobvious

5. Reciprocate.  Not everyone has the means or desire to host ten-course soirees, but it is a nice gesture to welcome those into your home who have previously welcomed you into theirs.  If you don’t enjoy cooking, invite people over for a theme night such as take-out sushi complete with sake and an anime film. Heck, you can even have people over for bakery-bought dessert and a glass of sherry.  Most of all don’t worry about being judged.  Your friends will love the gesture and the good time more than they will mind your tiny apartment or non-matching glassware.

6. This should go without saying, but complement the chef. Even if you don’t like it. I’m not condoning dishonesty, but surely you can find something nice to say, after all, he has slaved for hours in the kitchen to present you with a meal that is a representation of his friendship with you.

Lose the celly

7. Ditch your cellphone. Don’t answer it at the dinner table under any circumstances.  If you need your phone for emergency reasons, keep it on vibrate and check it surreptitiously if it rings. Only take EMERGENCY calls, and do so out of earshot of other guests.

8. Close your mouth when you chew. Do not talk with your mouth full. This is a really big one for many people I polled.  Seems like common sense, but I guess you’d be surprised, what with some of the horror stories I’m hearing.

Shut yo mouth, woman!

9. If you do receive a mailed invitation to a party that you subsequently attend, it is polite to send a written thank you rather than verbal or via email.  If much time has passed and you continue to forget to do so, an email will suffice.  If you attend a non-formal invitation dinner, you do not need to send a written thank you, but an email or even phone call is in order.  I have been informed by several friends that if you are sending a written thank you and you are part of a couple, each part of the couple should sign his own name rather than one person writing the entire note.  It is apparently a matter of respect. I envision Betty Draper making Don Draper sign thank you’s at the end of a long day with bourbon in hand and lipstick on his collar.

10. If someone brings a bottle of wine, open it unless they explain that it’s for another time.

Elbows off the table, dork

11. Do not bring an additional guest unless you receive permission from the hostess.

12. If you are going to be more than 10 minutes late, call or text. 15 minutes early is even worse!

13. Hold your tongue if you have the urge to name-drop. It just makes you sound like a climber, and baby, you’re already at the top!

14. Do not constantly attempt to one-up others. As in: Oh, you broke your ankle? That’s nothing; I broke both my ankles while in Tangiers on a Special Forces mission to recover 90 kilos of heroin.

15. Rely on the invitation for details about the party rather than contacting the host. Only bother the host if the information you need is not contained within the invite.

Don't look so bored (really, just an excuse to use this fab pic)

Now tell me- what are some of YOUR etiquette matters of the heart? One final question: is it ok to TWEET at the table? You tell me!

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

I had the surprising pleasure of spending three days in Detroit recently. I say surprising because, to be honest, I was not looking forward to it, but I came away longing for more time in the sorrowfully-beautiful city. Detroit has old-world sophistication and pockets of thriving culture nestled in cachets amongst the rubble wrought by a ravaged economy. It’s an old-soul kind of a city- every novel experience carries with it a sense of nostalgia for heady days gone by.

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

I spoke with dozens of locals about my highlights over the three days and I was struck by how many of them hadn’t heard of or hadn’t visited many of the places in which I found myself. One local summed it up best when he said “Detroit is the kind of city that you need to have a sense of adventure to appreciate. You could live your whole life here and miss most of the really remarkable things.” I dove into Detroit with typical Salty zeal; when I travel I don’t much care for sleep or spas. I like to do what the people do and pound the pavement from dawn til dawn.  I slather the marrow of the city I’m visiting into my every orifice then lick it off as I process the experience over the days that follow. Detroit has been a tricky one to lick clean- the marrow of that city coats to the quick.

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

My old friend Stephanie- top-notch tour guide and Detroit native- took me to White Castle, Lafayette Coney Island, The Booby Trap on my beloved 8 Mile, The Cadieux Café, Polonia Polish Restaurant, and the Urban Detroit Farmer’s Market. Between each place she pointed out landmarks such as Detroit’s abandoned train station (easily one of the top five most captivating examples of ruined architecture I have ever seen) and the Heidelberg Project (which is a found-object art installation spanning several city blocks in a nearly-abandoned area of Detroit).

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

Over the three days I ate like a trucker (and cursed like one too- even adopting a little twinge of that unmistakable Detroit drawl) and threw all caution to the Midwest bone-chilling wind when it came to the things I was willing to put in my body. After all, I had to give a full report- you lovelies deserve the best, so let’s just call those 30 White Castle burgers me “taking one for the team,” ok? Speaking of White Castle, I ate there twice. I have an incurable penchant for seedy burger joints and somehow am able to suspend my politico-religious morals and foodgirl cred in order to eat in them. 90% of the reason I ever get on a plane to California is for In N Out burger (always stilo animalo, ya dig?) and White Castle was a notch I hadn’t etched into my belt until Detroit.  Thank you Detroit, oh Paris of the West, for satisfying my fleshy carnal desires.

Scene from the Heidelberg Project

There is another reason I ate at White Castle twice, one I don’t want to admit because it isn’t nearly as cool as fessing up to the fact that I wanted to stuff my gob full of those tiny little individually-cartoned sliders of sauce-gasmic proportions. The first time I ate there I reached for my laptop bag containing my camera so I could sufficiently document the experience and realized I had left the bag at the car rental shop at the airport an hour away. Panic ensued and I hurtled back down the byway toward the airport in a Detroit-bred American GMC-but not before I ordered a little taste of what was to come, for I never neglect my pangs of famishment, notwithstanding emergencies. The laptop and DSLR were just fine- see- Detroit is as honest as these winter days are short!

Day two of White Castle proved more satisfying than day one by far. I ordered damn near everything on the menu, including such oddities as “chicken rings.” What, pray tell is a chicken ring? Let me enlighten you to a fact commonly understood by the underground illuminati of the fast food good ol’ boys club. If you fashion anything into the shape of a ring then fry it, it WILL taste better. Case in point, donuts, or the object most ubiquitous to making this point: the onion ring. White Castle clearly understands this deep within the underbelly of their walk-in refrigerators and so, the chicken ring takes flight! Literally too, since we tossed them like little frisbees to see if they were at all aerodynamic.  I mean, when you’re engineering mechanically-separated saline-enhanced chicken parts, the least you can do is make them aerodynamic, right? Verdict: chicken rings are gross, but funny when you tease your friend by likening them to certain other types of rings she might use on her husband’s you-know-what.

I ordered the classic sliders in several ways: single, double, with cheese, without, with sauce, and without and finally, with bacon. I ordered just about every other non-hamburger-based slider on the menu as well, from the pulled pork to the chicken supreme to the fish sandwich.  One surprising (and thoroughly scientific) discovery I made was that bacon does not in fact make EVERYTHING better (the horror!), just most things. Perhaps White Castle gets their bacon from really anemic pork bellies, or something, but the bacon-added slider did nothing but dry out the sloppy succulence of the perfect, miniature meat patty. In terms of the hamburger-esque sliders, the single with cheese and sauce was my favorite. The rest of the sliders were largely forgettable with the exception of the pulled pork, which was much better than I had anticipated.

The fries are little kid crinkle-cut-style and really took me back- back to 3^rd grade, that is, and the Sawtooth Elementary School Cafeteria. Good when hot, but you might as well be eating day-old smegma once they cool even a millisecond. The fish sandwich is something I would pay $100 NOT to have to eat ever again. I’m not certain what bottom-dwelling white fish they use to compose the clammy patty, but it smelled more like the girls locker room after a heated asparagus-eating match than anything reminiscent of actual fish. I think I was wise to stay away from the clam strips too, don’t you?

I realize this is sounding more and more like a non-satisfying experience and that is not the point I wish to convey at all. Here’s the thing- when you go to White Castle you’d do well to stick to the true beefy slider menu, you’d do fine to order a double, and you’d be happy with the cheese and sauce. Washing it all down with a chocolate shake is also a damn fine idea. Don’t think you can’t swiftly knock back ten of these puppies either- if I have room, so do you. My only major source of contention with White Castle is the prolific packaging. Each two-inch slider comes in a dura-built little carrying case that’s frickin’ nice enough to hold a wedding ring (well, if you’re inbred and live in a sawed-in-half doublewide). Considering that most people order 5-10 sliders, that’s a lot of waste. And Detroit didn’t seem to up on the whole recycling movement, either. I did not see a single recycle bin throughout my visit. So yes, White Castle, you know the secret to a good fast food slider, and yes, I’d enter you bi-annually if you moved west of the Rockies, but you’d do well to clean up your act a lil bit.

Tales from Detroit will resume in part two of this post, but I wanted to quickly leave you with this image imprinted on your frontal lobe. The scene of the crime: a “gentlemen’s” club called “The Booby Trap” on 8 Mile- the famed Detroit street that Eminem portrayed in said movie of same name starring himself and the late Britney Murphy. The subject: yours truly, bursting with verklempt excitement over having her picture taken in such an illustrious location. Come back next time if you care to see just how many Coney Dogs and “Loose Hamburgers” I was able to cram between my lips, plus, Featherbowling 101- defined and delivered!

On Eight Mile at The Booby Trap

But Salty, how is that possible? It’s not even over! (Plus, we all seem to remember you getting eliminated- did you finally lick the brown acid off the spherified slice of encapsulated pie?) I know, I know, but really, it’s true- winner winner chicken dinner right here over in my little single-wide slice of cyberspace- how about you? Are you a winner too?

Here’s the thing. Project Food Blog, hosted by Foodbuzz, was/is a contentious contest that generated a shitstorm of blog posts, tweets, really bad videos, controversy, burns, costumes (and more costumes), sleeplessness, memories, blood and tears. Does the blogosphere really need one more highfalutin hussy dropping her lil’ dime bag in the mix (that’s my ill-conceived slang for do y’all want to hear my .02)? I can hear the resounding shouts of yes, yes, please Salty, lay it on me baby, tell me exactly what you think, oh Stiletto Ninja of the Chartreuse Night!!!

Stiletto Ninja

Ok, ok, enough with the accolades (winners get accolades, you know?) and stop throwing your pudding panties and crotchless cupcakes at me- I’ll tell you what I think. And I’ll do it in a way I couldn’t throughout the duration of the contest, because, you know, I highly censored myself when I was making foie gras powder look like crack cocaine seeing as how I didn’t want to offend any potential voters. But now, now that I’ve transcended Project Food Blog and licked my loser pile of thermo-reversible jelly up off the floor to discover that I am, in fact, still me, I can call it as I see it, F-bombs, thinly-veiled innuendo and all.

Foie Gras "cocaine"

And the main thing I want to say is that neener neener neener, I FUCKING WON! But guess what? At the end of the day, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US WHO ENTERED THIS CONTEST WITH ANY VERACITY WON! We are all fucking winners! And I don’t mean this like the stupid “my kid is an honor student at Slacker Academy this quarter” winners, either, because I’m definitely more part of the “my kid beat up your honor student” contingency.  Yes, kids, in this contest, many Childs were Left Behind, but guess what (I’m looking at you, Laura Bush)- THAT’S OK! One person may take the cake, but we can all chug the champagne and play strip poker til the wee hours, so suck it up, bitches, give yourself a gold star and humor me.

From Alice Eats Wonderland Entry

Let’s peer, for a moment, through the looking glass, and count the ways we won. How many of us made new friends? Show of hands here please… I can honestly say I made friendships I will keep for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t trade that for all the gold neckclocks in Flavor Flav’s collection. How many of us were introduced to blogs we previously didn’t know existed but now deeply admire? How many of us are plotting cities to visit based on said new friends and blogger crushes, and how many of those awesome people are actually coming to see us? How many bottles of limoncello were personally sent to us by hyper-talented other participants in the contest (ok, maybe just me!)?

photo credit: http://devourtheworld.blogspot.com/

This section of the ranting essay is all about HUMAN CONNECTIONS. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again- at the end of the day, at the end of our lives, what do you think really matters? Whether Foodbuzz put on some blogging contest back in 2010 or whether you’re gazing into the eyes of the people you love, holding their hands, reaffirming those human connections that compose the most profound moments of your life? If the blogging contest in any way had something to do with you encountering someone who touched your life irrevocably, shouldn’t you offer up a hallelujah or a hell yeah to Foodbuzz and say- thanks, guys, thanks for being my wing man so I could properly stalk Foodwoolf and get her to reveal her mad genius to me!?

Why else are we winners? Because we were inspired to be better. We thought harder, wrote purtier, created crazier, promoted wisely-er, and cooked some damn fine food in the process. We traveled to foreign lands, we splayed our souls for the world to see, we edited, we videoed, and we challenged ourselves to perform at our personal bests. Undeniably, Project Food Blog will inspire a generation of well-crafted bloggers. Many of us now realize there is a social and moral responsibility behind our words and have attempted to reconcile that with writing about food.

Personally, Project Food Blog helped distill the convoluted freneticiscms of my disjoined thought processes into something resembling cohesion. I realized that I need structure and I like assignments. I realized food and words are my medium through which to make a big ol’ stiletto stamp on the world and I’m now on a singularly-focused mission to do just that. I want people to think about what they shove into their Strawberry Chapstick-rimmed gobs whether it’s hempseed granola and two teaspoonfuls of Yoplait or a solitary pizza flower. Project Food Blog helped me come to that realization so, you guessed it, I’m a winner yet again!

Pizza Flower

Here’s the thing. I made a promise. I said that if I won Project Food Blog I would wear a meat dress to accept my crown. Well, there will likely be no crown for me unless @bayareaglutton fashions one out of a sausage necklace and sends it my way, but because I’m counting my blessings and counting my naughtly little self among the winning faction, I still probably owe it to you to wear a meat dress, don’t I? Don’t get all excited and scroll down- THERE IS NO MEAT DRESS IN THIS POST. But, it’s coming. You, my especially-beloved, spectacular readers, will be subjected to the blinding vision of me in a meat dress forever documented on this here blog at SOME POINT (yes, I’m wishy washy) in the next few months. Now if anyone has any ideas on how to properly fasten prosciutto to slippery skin, send ‘em my way.

PS- In the real contest that’s still really going on and is not just manifest in the chicken scratches that come out of my ass- er, imagination, vote for NoRecipes- he’s the total package and deserves to be the actual winner. Maybe I can even convince him to wear a meat dress too.