Sometimes it’s just too hot to be chili

I know my way around a kitchen. My old man owned a string of restaurants while I was growing up.

My mornings consisted of rising before the sun and doing prep work in the kitchen before taking off for school. After school, I’d work a couple hours doing whatever needed doing, then come back again after close to clean the floors.

Sounds like a Cinderella-esque existence, but it wasn’t. My dad paid me waaaay more than I was worth and for the most part, the quality of my work was lousy. On top of that, I almost always dragged a few friends along to do the cleaning at night; a teenager will work hard for unfettered access to a commercial deep fryer and freezer full of bad-for-you food to toss into it.

My point is, cooking has been a part of my life since I can remember. Nobody’s going to mistake me for a Cordon Bleu chef, but I can put together a meal without much trouble, regardless of the ingredients available.

This has come in handy over the years. My last two wives (both of whom had many good qualities) couldn’t boil water without setting the house afire. So most cooking tasks were relegated to me. I didn’t mind. I like to cook.

However, my new wife, Ms. Taylor (formerly Lori Frankforter), is something of a prodigy when it comes to preparing food. She doesn’t make simple fare, like me, but fancy-schmancy “artistic” grub best suited to a garden party at The White House.

Everything she cooks looks like it was painted by Monet. Her food should be framed and hung in the Guggenheim. Seriously. It’s too pretty to eat.

Even her midnight snack fare is breathtaking. She can take a bag of taco chips and month-old salsa and turn it into a repast fit for Henry the Eighth. (I am I am. Sorry. Try getting that song out of your head now.)

At any rate, her talent has prompted me to work a little harder, to be a bit more creative with my own cooking. That includes simple stuff like chili.

Now that the temperature has dropped into the double digits after a summer of Sahara-like abuse, chili, stew and other stovetop-type chow again seems like a good idea.

So last Saturday I made a trip to the market and purchased some nice, fresh vegetables: peppers, jalapenos, onions, tomatoes, some steak. Everything I need to put together my signature chili.

I say “signature chili,” but I don’t really believe in recipes. I subscribe to the “a little o’ this, a little o’ that” school of cooking. Nine times out of ten this works out just fine.

But after working all day cutting veggies, dicing meat, adding seasonings and simmering ceaselessly, what I wound up with in that chili pot … well, it wasn’t good.

Oh, it might be good for getting the rust off an old Buick or melting holes in steel plates, but for eating? Not so much.

I got a little over enthusiastic with the peppers, particularly the habaneros. As you may already know, habanero is Spanish for “Go ahead Gringo, if you dare!”

The best thing you could say about my chili is it could, in a pinch, double as rocket fuel. I managed to choke back a couple bites anyway, because I’m a man and I have to pretend spicy food doesn’t scare me. Ms. T (fLF) was under no such constraints and wouldn’t even go into the kitchen while the chili was sitting out uncovered. She was afraid it might rise from the pot and attack her.

Since I was raised in a large, Catholic family, I’m psychologically incapable of wasting food, even bad food, so I divided the chili into several Tupperware bowls and buried them in the freezer out in the garage, behind some earlier failed experiments. The chili will sit there for a year or two, after which time I’ll be able to toss it out guilt-free. Not logical, but it’s a system that works for me.

Problem is, I’m still in the mood for chili. Guess I’ll do a little shopping this afternoon. But this time I’ll present all those ingredients to Ms. T (fLF). She’ll transform them into chili that’s not only delicious, but pretty to look at.

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 730-1414

When it comes to wedding vows, it’s best not to ‘wing it’

Well, I’m married. The wedding was Sunday. Ms. Taylor (formerly Lori Frankforter) and I tied the knot in front of The Chapel in the Pines at the Wheatland Music Festival in Remus.

It was a tiny, but lovely ceremony in a charming, rustic location. My bride was beautiful, the sun was shining, some of our favorite people were there. Everything was perfect.

Except for my vows.

For weeks leading up to the wedding, Ms. T (fLF) obsessed over her vows, which we had decided to write ourselves. She wrote hers out longhand and then rewrote them, practiced saying them aloud in front of a mirror. For all I know, she hired Morgan Freeman to serve as her voice coach.

And still, she was so stressed about reciting her vows on the Big Day that she could barely sleep at night.

I, meanwhile, being a professional writer and crafter of words to rival The Immortal Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon, decided I’d just sorta wing it. I had a few ideas in my head, good ones, but I didn’t bother writing them down.

I mean, c’mon, it’s me!

Ms. T (fLF) felt the same way. She was certain my vows would be the very essence of romantic poetry, golden-hued words on a par with anything ever penned by Blake or Keats. She just knew her vows would rattle like tin cans clanking together when placed alongside my luminous prose.

I was a shining bastion of confidence; she was shaking like an oak leaf in an October hurricane.

Right up until the moment the minister asked us to recite our vows.

I opened my mouth, gazed into the pellucid, blue eyes of my delicate bride, and utterly lost the ability to speak English. “D-uh, Lori,” I croaked. Then I mumbled some stuff that made about as much sense as a presidential candidate’s stump speech. I eventually stuttered to a halt halfway through a string of random vowel sounds that didn’t quite qualify as a sentence anyway.

I felt like I’d just gone 15 rounds with Ali in his prime after being suffocated with pillows soaked in Novocain. To no one’s surprise but my own, I looked like a complete fool.

Then, in a strong, clear voice, Ms. T (fLF) recited her own vows. They were the best I’ve ever heard and should be engraved in granite for the edification of future brides and grooms. They made my disjointed utterances sound like something an inebriated Pee-wee Herman might bark while welcoming a television audience to his Playhouse.

But the wedding went on and a few minutes later, Ms. T (fLF) and I were being congratulated and toasted with cheap champagne.

Turns out there are no “do-overs” when it comes to wedding vows. Once the ceremony’s over, nobody’s interested in what you “should have said.”

Still, I’d like Ms. T (fLF) to know what I meant to say. Which is this:

“Lori, when it comes to romance and relationships, I have been around the block so many times I’ve worn a groove in the pavement. But in the years before I met you, I was simply coasting through life, never really happy nor sad, just … content.

“You reminded me that contentment is a terrible thing; that love is not something to be ‘coasted’ through, but rather a strange and powerful force, one that inspires and destroys, that builds us up and tears us down, that breaks our hearts and then heals them again.

“You shook me from my emotional complacency, dragged me kicking and screaming from my comfortable, dim purgatory and out into the light of your love. I was uncooperative and ungrateful.

“But I am grateful now. With you, I am more than I would ever have been alone. And together, we are amazing.

“You saved my life, Lori, and I can’t wait to share the rest of that life with you.”

Yup, that’s what I would have said. What I meant to say.

So … sorry, babe. You married a writer, not a speaker. I guess you already figured that out, based on the mumbled jumble of bumble I delivered at the altar Sunday.

If we ever renew our vows, I promise, I’ll write ‘em down first.

mtaylor@staffordgroup.com

(616) 745-9530

Saying goodbye to my old last name is weird

So, Lori Frankforter and I finally decided on a last name, the one we’ll be using after the wedding ceremony this Sunday. As I mentioned earlier, we’d considered an amalgam of our two, current surnames (my favorite being “Frankentaylor”), but in the end decided they all sounded too much like something that would rise from the slab in a mad scientist’s castle.

We also looked at the traditional fallback route: using my admittedly boring last name. She actually liked the idea of being “Lori Taylor.” I guess when you’ve gone through life named after a much-maligned meat product, anything seems an improvement.

I’ve never been happy with my own last name. For one thing, it’s my adopted name. My “biological” name remains forever shrouded in mystery, which is my way of saying I couldn’t get my mom to talk about it and now she’s passed and with her the opportunity to discover my true origin. (I assume it has something to do with being rocketed to Earth from my native planet, Krypton – something like that.)

Also, Taylor just doesn’t fit with the rest of my name, which was visited upon me by my Irish grandparents: Michael Patrick Kevin … Taylor? See, it just doesn’t fit.  Should be O’Malley or Shaughnessy or Sweeney.

I figured, since Lori and I were getting hitched anyway and name-changing would be happening as a matter of course, now was the time to take the plunge. Now or never. We opted for now.

Turns out it’s harder than you may imagine to pick a new last name for yourself. After six decades as Michael Taylor, everything else sounds … weird. After weeks of discussion – in large part “mostly in jest” names like “Papageorgiou” and “Fizzlebottom III” – we had all but given up.

Nothing felt right.

Then my lifelong buddy, Terry Cavanaugh, whom I’ve known since ninth grade, left a Facebook post suggesting “Guinness.” Why? Because, for the past 20 years I’ve been making music every weekend with The Guinness Brothers Band.

Now, other than the fictional character I “play” onstage, there never really was a brother in that band named Guinness.

I named the band after the beer on a whim because I couldn’t think of anything better and our first gig was coming up fast. I needed a name for the then-fledgling group and figured Guinness Brothers would do in a pinch. The name stuck. And against all odds in a business rife with musical mortality, the band has managed to hold together all these years.

At any rate, Lori Frankforter saw Terry’s post and decided she liked it. I have to admit, I do, too. Michael Patrick Kevin Guinness. I can live with that. And, as I mentioned earlier, for Miss Hot Dog, anything’s an improvement.

We’ve already filed the paperwork at the county clerk’s office. After saying our “I do’s” Sunday afternoon, we’ll be Lori and Mike Guinness.

Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of a silly thing to do, but what the hell. You only live once. Or maybe twice. I’m not here to argue theology.

Naturally, there’s a truckload of paperwork to be done following the ceremony; trips to the Social Security and Secretary of State’s offices. Probably a lot of red tape beyond that even. Nothing’s easy once the Feds get involved.

But I know my Lori. She will persevere and cut through that red tape like a hot knife through butter. I’ll sign where she tells me.

I just hope we’re not making a mistake here. I mean, we could have gone with “Fizzlebottom III”.