Five
Short-Shorts-
------------------------------------------
The Monk Bought Lunch....
The monk bought lunch, or at least that is what he told me he did. By this time he was getting on my nerves. Always lobbying for sympathy and asking for remuneration. If it wasn't lunch, he was pointing out a favor he did or laying some complex guilt trip about something you never thought about. Yeah, he always bought a little of something, and I was getting sick of hearing about it. I was always taught that one should do things out of kindness, but the monk seemed to always do things as a means for leverage- Leverage over my time, emotions, ethics, sorrow. He was a strange monk alright. If he stopped wearing the lipstick and six inch heels under his brown robes and stopped walking with an eight-foot staff, he may not have bitched so much, and people would say, "See that guy there. He's a monk. And he is always doing things for others and he has never once asked for anything in return." But I guess that type of monk is obsolete these days, and my monk was only in it for the ego and the power.
------------------------------------------
Potato Dish
I forget the name of it,
but it's a potato dish with a light creamy cheese sauce, onions, chives and a dab
of sour cream served with hollandaise over asparagus. I had it when I was in the Congo back in 1983
and it was just magnificent- just what a military man needed after a hard stay
in the bush. Back in those days, when
you went into the bush, it meant that you were risking your life. Folklore of the natives told of a giant ape
that liked the potato dish as well. Sometimes
when you cooked it and the wind blew its lovely fragrance into the bush, the
bush would move and stir a bit, then when you returned from taking a dump, the
dish would be missing or, on rare occasions, it would be dirty with a lot of
hair in it. I miss those days, and the
dish.
------------------------------------------
Chicken Lips
------------------------------------------
The Monk Bought Dinner
The monk bought dinner. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or
later, but when it finally occurred, it threw us all for a loop. The lunches we could handle. Hell, we even got used to them; but when he
picked up the dinner bill, it was a serious action that signaled that he was
moving on to bigger and better things. It was most definitely a surprise that none of
us expected, but that was the monk's specialty. He took an unwarranted amount of pleasure in
throwing you off your game. Not a very
"monkish" thing to do, but as you know, our monk never fit into the
proper stereotypes. He was a strange
fellow. I guess that is what led him to the monastery to begin with. One point that he regularly touched upon was
chocolate soufflé. None of us ever saw
the monk eat dessert, but I cannot tell you how many times I heard the monk go
on and on, ranting and raving about chocolate soufflé. It's all very weird now that I think of it.
But despite the fact that he never ordered one, he was a good monk in the
end, and he did pick up the dinner bill.
------------------------------------------
An Ancient Russian Recipe
###
