The Heat

Mongolian Grill, you lit a fire in my belly and put a bounce in my step.  Half asleep and hung-over, I didn’t think I’d make it through the TA workshop this morning.  When it finally ended, there was the matter of helping BER move.  Which wasn’t too bad since there were so many people helping out—and some CSU workers, equipped with a sturdy dolly, moved the real big stuff.  When we finished the work, we ate.  And it was an uneven mix of intensity and magic. 

If you’ve never eaten at Mongolian Grill, you must know this:  it’s where dignity and self respect go to get bitch-slapped twice.  First, there are the portions.  MG provides you with the option of a small, medium, or large size bowl; and no matter which size you choose, the bowls don’t come equipped with lids.  Which means you aren’t restricted from piling noodles, veggies, and meat well beyond the plane of the bowl’s rim when working your way through the buffet-style assembly line of raw ingredients.  Anyway you stack it, you’re going to get a ton of food.  Now someone might say that you don’t have to pile it so high, that you don’t have to eat all of it, or that you can take home what you can’t finish. 

I would respond to this person by saying I do need to pile it this high; I want to get my money’s worth.  I would say I do need to finish it because the thought of wasting food conjures images of starving Chinese babies—a total fucking bummer when you’re eating tasty food.  And in response to the take-home option, I ask you to consider the following:  doesn’t a huge bowl of food sitting in front of you feel like a challenge that no one thinks you can conquer?  Especially the food itself.  Doesn’t it seem as though your meal taunts and tries to intimidate you?  It starts to say things like, You’ll never finish me.  You can’t commit to seeing the simplest task through to the end; how do you expect to consume every bit of me? 

And that’s when I realize the food has a point.  I haven’t finished unpacking all my stuff since moving to this new apartment.  I worry about my thesis:  are these pages I’ve written eventually going to take the shape of a novel, or should I continue to write short stories as a contingency plan?  And my comps: I haven’t even decided which prose writers I’ll be discussing, let alone which poets I’ll read!  And what the hell is prose poem, anyways?  An unformatted poem?  So I went into the meal with every intention of destroying it.  And I would have, too, had it not been for the second bitch-slap to decency that occurs at MG. 

When you’re done piling mounds of soft noodles on an already packed bowl of food, the assembly line ends with a fine selection of sauces to season your meal.  Above the sneeze guard, the folks at MG have provided a chart to assist you in seasoning the food to a particular taste.  For those who like mild foods, they suggest combining sweet and sour, sesame oil, a Mongolian BBQ sauce, and other mild or sweet tasting sauces.  For dip-shits who can’t taste anything unless there’s enough heat on their food to put down a small bear, MG offers a guide to suit their tastes as well. 

What I failed to realize when combing Mongolian Fire Oil with Jalapeños and pepper oil was that MG suggested complementing the heat with some of the milder sauces.  Whether it’s to enhance the flavor of the heat or counteract the spicy sensation, I was too tired, hungry, and hung-over to notice the message—the warning—that the sweet and hot elements need to be combined.  Another mistake I made was looking at the ladle quantities for the large bowl.  I had been loading up a medium bowl, ladling enough Fire Oil over my noodles to end that small bear.  First bite and my sweat glands were off to the races.  My nose dripped at a hare’s pace.  The pepper flakes declared war on the remaining alcohol in my stomach.  As I stated earlier, I didn’t finish (almost, though).  And it wasn’t because the seams of my stomach were about to burst.  No.  I couldn’t handle the heat and still feel comfortable being around other people in a small booth.  I felt disgusting.  I knew that since I drank and didn’t get enough sleep the night before, combined with the mammoth bowl of MG I had just eaten, I would go home and crash.  I would fall asleep and wake up at eight o’clock, screwing up my whole sleep cycle.  I would develop a routine of naps that wouldn’t allow me to function during normal daylight hours. 

But that’s not at all what happened.  The MG had conquered the toxins in my gut; the turning point—the Invasion of Normandy—of the war being the peppers’ alliance with my sweat glands—the allied forces stepping in—saved me.  The food ate up the alcohol in my stomach and caused my body to sweat out anything else that might have been contributing to my hangover.  I didn’t go home and sleep.  I finished organizing my apartment, breaking down wrecked boxes, and stacking books on my shelves.  I cleaned out my car, throwing out unnecessary papers, garbage, and other clutter.  I washed all my dirty clothes and stored away everything that needed to go in the closet.  I scraped the gunk from my guitar’s fret board, polished its neck and body, then restrung it.  I worked on some writing and completed my assignments for the TA workshop tomorrow.  I got a lot done on what I assumed would be an unproductive, wasted day. 

I attribute my productivity to Mongolian Grill. 

Thank you, fine eatery.  You really had my back today.  I was so pleased with the job you did that I ate your leftovers for dinner. 

Still really spicy.