Have Some Pooty

I have a coworker who is from India, he is a Sikh. He wears a turban and all. His name is Garm, and his wife is named Binkle. They're great folks, and Mrs. Wiggy and I like them very much. Last summer, we invited them over to our house for a wonderful 4th of July bash, complete with American-style hotdogs, hamburgers and so on, cooked on the grill and topped off with a visit to the local fireworks viewing area. All in all, it was a pretty nice night. And we've been promising each other to get together ever since.

So this long weekend, we put out heads together and came up with Friday night after work being a pretty good time to do it. This time, we'd be their guests at their home, and they'd cook us some traditional Indian cuisine.

Now, I need to make a confession here. I'm pretty bland. In fact, Mrs. Wiggy laughs and refers to me as "Mister Vanilla" when I say such things. She heard me making fun of some fella on the TeeVee who hated to change, and she roared with delight - insisting that if *anybody* doesn't like change, that would be me. She could have a point, maybe.

And I'm also a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to food. The list of food that I don't like would pretty much fill the Superbowl, even after they took the top off. The food I like is described as follows...red meat, starchy noodles, coffee, and beer. Some eggs once in a while to keep the edge off, maybe a taco or a burrito or some corn-on-the-cob. That's pretty much it. Don't like fish, they're too flat. Don't like any seafood, for that matter. Don't like ribs, too much work. Don't like chicken wings, same deal. And I'm pretty much of a late bloomer when it comes to veggies and fruit, too.

I can't blame my parents - they always had a garden, and they loved fresh produce, and they cooked it up and presented it in interesting ways and my three younger sisters just love the stuff. Me, not so much. Growing up in the midwest, we did eat a lot of food others consider strange, though - like lots of canned veggies and fruits - which I like. Grits. Bratwurst. And so on. So it isn't their fault that I am like I am. I have no idea what my problem is.

Mrs. Wiggy is always on me to try new things. She says it is OK if I don't like them, but she insists that I 'give them a try'. I don't even know what that means. I mean, if it smells like death in the kitchen, and it looks like an escapee from a gruesome car accident, do I have to put it in my mouth to make 100% certain that I hate it? I guess so.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, talking about how I'm a 'fussy eater' as they say. Funny how I managed to get some danged fat eating just cheeseburgers, eh?

You might think I'd have viewed this visit to my pal Garm's house with trepidation, given my proclivities, but this was not the case. In fact, I've had a couple of close brushes up against an Indian restaurant, and survived it. They usually have something on the menu that resembles food I recognize, and there are only so many things you can do to a chicken, most of which remain edible. So I had high hopes and no fear when we set off for Garm and Binkle's house.

We arrived at the appointed time, and were ushered in. Garm was not wearing his usual turban, but instead he wore was for all the world appeared to be a pair of pantyhose on his head, with what I can only presume to be his hair pushed up to the front and center and cordoned off by a rubber band, making a knot about the size of a baseball on the top of his head and leaning towards the front. I couldn't take my eyes off it, all I could think of was a clown in the circus with one of those tiny hats. I kept thinking he was going to squeeze a hidden bulb in his pocket and the thing would spin around or shoot water or something. It never did, though.

The house smelled like Indian food and a lot of it, which Mrs. Wiggy adores. She inhaled deeply and commented favorably on the aroma. I was trying really hard not to gag. I find it difficult to describe just what Indian food smells like to me. Something like plastic burning inside an electronic device mixed with garlic and cloves. Or a bag of hair on fire with an onion inside. Something like that.

I mastered my nearly overwhelming desire to run outside and fall over retching, and we were welcomed in to their lovely home. We settled down in the living room and I noticed that although we had a conversation in a normal tone of voice, a television on in the background was broadcasting a satellite feed of a Sikh religious ceremony at a rather high volume. Apparently, this needed to be on during our visit, perhaps it was to cleanse us for what was to come. I don't know, I'm guessing here. Maybe it is like having the NFL on when guests come over, or NASCAR racing here in the South. Just being neighborly.

Anyway, we were soon escorted into the kitchen for what I thought was dinner, but instead it was just a snack - an appetizer, as it were. The entire kitchen table was covered with dishes of various types and sorts, all colors and consistancies I had never seen food exhibit before. To me, it resembled nothing more than a dozen open paint cans with various globs of dirt floating in them. Mrs. Wiggy made lip-smacking noises, and soon our plates were piled high with stuff, which I believe contained pooty, pooty-pooty, abu-grahib pooty, and hey-nonny-nonny pooty. We took it back out to the living room and everyone dug in. I tasted mine and then pushed it around the plate a bit, hoping it would evaporate or something. I looked pleadingly at Mrs. Wiggy, but she didn't feel like taking any off my plate, although she made hers nice and shiny clean, as did our hosts. I was the sole non-pooty eater in the bunch.

I put the plate down on the coffee table, where it glared at me accusingly, and tried to change subject of "Why Wiggy doesn't like good food," which is always a fun topic. Mrs. Wiggy was trying a bit to save me, telling stories about how she had to work at it to get me to eat green chile when we lived in New Mexico, and how the steam used to come out my ears and my head would sweat like it was raining on only me.

We proceeded to have an interesting discussion about life in India and how they had met each other, how long they'd been married, all that type of thing. Garm is a preacher's kid, his family is from Atlanta, and Binkle is direct from India, it was an arranged marriage, but not completely arranged - they had exchanged email and phone calls and had met a number of times, and they were in agreement with their parent's wishes, so they were happy and they were glad to be married to each other. Although they are in their twenties, they've been married just four years, like Mrs. Wiggy and me.

Dinner was eventually served, and we went again to the kitchen, where once again, Binkle had filled the counters, table, and every other flat surface of the kitchen with pans and plates and tureens brimming with food. The smell was amazing - Mrs. Wiggy was in heaven, and I was trying to recite my multiplication tables in my head.

We sat down, and Binkle filled my plate with brown rice (always a safe bet, I love rice) and some chicken in a garlic sauce so thick it looked like wallpaper paste, and some chick peas in some kind of brown stuff sauce. On the side was yogurt with what appeared to be a disemboweled plum drowning in it, and a couple of lumps of something vile and maloderous that resembled something I've cleaned up that the cat left more than once after a sound of much hacking. By the way, did you know that yogurt can be 'spicy'? Well, me neither. Imagine my surprise. Like spicy peanut butter or something. The mouth just isn't ready for that.

I started with the rice, which I was informed is called 'rice'. Well, at least it wasn't pooty something. It was fine, until I got to the part where the pickles were mixed in with it. Pickles? Finding pickles in rice is like finding pickles in ice cream, or pickles in jello. It oughtn't to be. And this was a fine, relish-like pickle, and crunchy. Rice should not be crunchy, I'm pretty sure there's a law about that somewhere.

So I'm choking down the Budweiser that Garm got me, and trying hard not to let actual tears run down the sides of my face, so I try the garlic-infested chicken. Not bad, really, although there is so much garlic that I feel myself become toxic in mere moments. I should mention here that I grew up with powdered garlic flakes being the closest thing to real garlic I'd ever tasted. My first brush with real, fresh, garlic gave me the fragrant trots in about 10 minutes, which is not something that really impresses dates, for you single guys out there. And here I am pounding down garlic cloves like they're potato chips. Oh, this is going to be interesting later on.

And hey, I grew up in an Irish-American house. We ate cabbage and hard-boiled eggs, and pap could chase the dogs out of the room when he got going. I'm a chip off the old boiler room, and I can clear about 500 square feet if I'm given the right fuel. I can give a Dutch Oven that could get me arrested in some states. Not that I'm proud or anything, but I'm wondering if we're going to be able to depart before I render the area into an EPA Superfund cleanup site.

Well, I had about six more beers, and managed to shovel in some lumpy things without having to smell them much, although the pickled crunchy rice was still giving me a slight case of the heaves. We had some kind of desert, which I frankly don't remember much of. I was too busy repeating 'Don't throw up, don't throw up' to myself like some kind of mantra. Our hostess was naming each dish as she shoveled more of it at me - pooty pooty pooty sahib, bad sign pooty, singalong pooty, and nasty-foot-smell pooty.

My host kept looking at me as I chugged beer and made what I presume were drowning man faces, and he asked me if I liked the food okay. I kept assuring him that it was wonderful, not the best job of hearty lying I've ever done, but it beat the alternative, which was to inform my friend that his wife's cooking reminded me of being force-fed a slice of retreaded tire coated in coal tar. I wanted to scream a claw at my mouth with both hands, but I kept putting down the beers and shoveling the various types of pooty in my mouth and nodding like an insane drinking bird.

We finally left about 10:30 p.m., and I realized of course that I had done a fairly poor job of convincing Garm and Binkle that I loved their cuisine. Thankfully, Mrs. Wiggy did indeed love it, and she appreciated it, and I hope that I can find some way that we can meet in the middle on this in the future.

But for now, we got home and I immediately stripped off and threw my clothes in the laundry room - the very smell was urging me to drive the big white porcelain bus. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, popped another beer, and chewed up a big hunk of provolone cheese which had been hiding out in the back of the fridge for nearly too long. I kept belching and tasting that food again, and it would make me shudder and groan like the starter motor on my dad's 1963 Plymouth in a 20 degree Illinois winter.

Listen - I am making fun, and I know that it's at my friend Garm's expense. He is a great guy, as I said, and I wish to hell that I liked that kind of food. His wife Binkle went all-out, that much is clear - trying to make what is probably some of the best authentic Indian food around these parts, and I wanted very much to be appreciative and enjoy it. Mrs. Wiggy clearly did, but for me it was a form of torture, and I'm sorry that it turned out that way.

Otherwise, it was great. Have some pooty?

Smooches,

Wiggy