Process the perishables. STAT!

Chances are you have a few little comestibles here and there left over from The Old Times, when you could still afford to buy foodstuffs. Some of these may have a short shelf life. You may be feeling so dispirited and frightened you hesitate to approach these precious, precious fresh food items. "The Last Lemon," you might be saying to yourself. "I mustn't touch it, there shan't ever be any more, and we will need it for the winter!"

But this is wrongheaded.

Job one in your Desperation Kitchen is to either consume or preserve what will go bad before it goes bad. Do not, in sadly hopeful effort to feed a future which may never come, toss precious, life-giving calories into the inexorably oxidizing maw of the terrible present!

(Instead, eat 'em your ownself.)

Pineapple Fro-YO! A neoDustbowl Receipt!
(See? I spelled it "receipt" 'cause that is the kind of nonsense spelling they used to get up to back in the days of Glen Miller)
I awoke this morning and remembered that there's a depression on. Heart seizing, I rushed to the kitchen, wild to eke out another day or two of hardscrabble existence. "Hellfahr," I said to myself, "there are three fresh pineapples left over from my massive fruit party, and that was like two weeks ago, what am I thinking??"

And it was true: I got these three pineapples for decoration (Nutritive food! As decor! That's actually how we used to think back then!) from The Fruit Viking, whose stall is at the other end of the Saturday farmar from Ditchweed Guy and who is as different from Ditchweed Guy as night is from noontime. The Fruit Viking might also be called the Luxuries Viking. He has greenhouses and can grow anything that occurs to him. So he he outsells everyone at the farmar because he has nothing but amazing and unexpected edible delicacies. Cherimoya once? Okay? Five different kinds of basil? That's the way the Fruit Viking rolls.

So I had been eschewing the Fruit Viking's stall because I had been on that damnation diet for that godforsaken contest I won and then got esscrute out of my prize for by the demonic gym people, and the Fruit Viking was a little disgruntled because I had not been coming around. (When I told him I couldn't buy any fruit because I was on a diet, he said, "We're not allowed to discriminate against different races anymore, but praise heaven we can still abuse the thin." Then he made as if to spit on me.)

The Fruit Viking was finally mollified when two weeks ago I bought three pineapples and a $10 bag of basil to make pesto from. (In the morning! In the Evening! Ain't we got fun! In the meantime! In between time! Ain't we got fun!) (That is what I was singing while I blithely tossed $12 at the Fruit Viking like $12 was of no more consequence than an offbrand Tic Tac) (I was singing it because it is a song of the Gatsby era, I am pretty sure. Anyway, I ain't singing it now, I can tell you that! 'cause we ain't got fun and we ain't got no $12 to spend on no luxury food items from no Fruit Viking!)

So this morning I cut the armor off the aging pineapples. To do this, you whack the top off the pineapple and the bottom. Throw away the bottom (unless it's further into the depression, in which case you might consider retaining it and making a watery, unpleasant soup stock from it). Retain the top and plant it in a pot in a sunny window, or, if you live in a pineapple-friendly climate, in a carefully guarded corner of a brownfield somewhere that only you know about. It may grow into a pineapple. But probably not.

Luckily when I cut off their skins, which is the next step, I found that my three were still in good shape despite my hideous profligacy of the previous two weeks.

You take your knife, which is either a short chef's or one of those nice Chinese knives (or it's a sharpened piece of a drainpipe left over from when you went out and cannibalized the deserted, half-built subdivision for metals to sell at the recycling plant) and you slice down the sides of the pineapple, removing just the barest minimum of skin. there'll be a regular pattern of "eyes" all along the pineapple, and these you pare out with your paring knive (or your scrounged shiv). In this fashion you reduce waste to a minimum.

Now cut the pineapple into rounds and dice. The Fruit Viking sells "edible core" pineapples, so I include the core section with the rest, but let me tell you something, champ: whether your pineapple core is edible or not, you eat it. This is no time to quibble over "edible/not edible." If it's not POISON, you eat it. That's the rule these days.

Freeze the pineapple.

Put about, say, a cup of frozen pineapple chunks in the food processor and grind up. Add enough yogurt or buttermilk to make your froyo the consistency you like. This is liable to be waaay too sour--if you can afford a banana, freeze that, too, and add it.

(But you probably can't afford a banana.)

If you have cinnamon left and it's really good cinnamon, that will sweeten it some. Really good cinnamon is just amazing stuff. It's too bad we won't be able to get ANY cinnamon soon because soon the Internet will go dark and we'll burn the libraries for heating fuel and forget all human knowledge including the route to the spice islands or how to navigate. Better lay in a good supply now!

Frozen fruit + yogurt is an excellent and delicious dessert item. Add whatever sprinkly things you've got around. If you have any Fage, the Greek yogurt, left over from the happy days of yore, your fro-yo will be just that much more creamy and delicious and amazing. Do not fear Fage because it is so butterfatladen. Very soon fat of every sort will be rationed and soon after that there won't be any more fat full stop. Then won't you rue every day you didn't eat that delicious Fage! Certainly you will!

Behind, ahead, behind, ahead--it's a NIGHTmare!

Okay, so now I'm ahead again by a teenyweenybeentzie weentz. I gotta say this does not fill me with the pure light of joy, it just makes me more and more fearful. Recently a co-worker who for some reason has an issue with my almost fainting every time I stand up mentioned that part of my little obsession problem might be capitalism. I said, "O, heavens, no, it's not the money, the money is only $750, I just want to WIN." She nodded sagely and inclined her head gracefully to mutter something to her slender clavicle about competition and capitalism. But you know what? Whatever! She's a bald-headed buditist, so what does she know. (She's not really baldheaded but may as well be, as budditist as she acts all the damn time damn.) In a minute she'll be asking me to spend my exercise careens through the trackless brownfields sweeping the path before me with a special broom to clear insects out of the way of my thrashing cross trainers. Actually, dag, that would get in a ton of upper-body work, wouldn't i? Say... maybe being a budditiss is not such a bad strategy. You basically don't eat anything until you prostrate yourself before the meager bowl 47 times for each compass point or something, and even then you're probably supposed to joyfully gift half of your thin chick pea gruel to the koi pond in order that the koi within can attain higher states of koi consciousness on their journey to meet bodhi satvah or whateverthehellitis. Damn! Buddhism is an excellent diet and exercise regimen! No wonder that lady has those krazy klavicles goin' on.

A friend has agreed to try my diet (not this crazy bullshit I've been doing since June in order to slaughter all competitors and achieve Capitalist Nirvana, but my real, sane, how I lost all the weight I gained in my 20s diet). Another friend is cautiously interested. I am lobbying a certain family member hard. I sent that individual some links to terrifying studies today. Next step, the horse head in the bed. Soon everyone I know will be eating ditchweeds and achieving metabolic stasis. And all because of the tenacious Mr. Slick!

Fears

What if Slick just didn't weigh in last week and in fact he has lost seven pounds and is 3 percentage points ahead of me?

What if one of my thigh muscles snaps? You know how when you were in gym class with some sociopath like for instance Earlton and they told you to duckwalk all over the gym and then they told you to run sprints? You know how you feel like your thigh muscle is going to snap? What if it did?? If my thigh muscle snapped, I'd be paralyzed and then how would I get my cardio?

What if Ditchweed Guy NEVER comes back?

wrst F33rz 2tlly r3@lizd!

Ditchweed guy was not there
and neither were the ditchweeds. I was forced to buy zucchini and cucumber instead. Zucchini and cucumber of dubious pedigree, too. My heart is cold with fear: what if ditchweed guy is kaput for the whole summer? I will be forced to SUPPLEMENT with MAINSTREAM FOOD!

More Bulletins:

• Slick is STILL in first place.
• I walked up some stairs.
• Earlton's Klass is tonight!

I am in second place.

There is one dude, I'll call him "Slick," ahead of me by... 00.34 percentage points. I think. Unless I messed up the math, which is possible: I lied last week when I said I lost 18 pounds. I've only lost 16 so far. But whatever: out of 35 people, I am second from the top. I shall destroy "Slick." He will not win. He cannot win. I will win. The end.

Here's how to make hard boiled eggs:
Boil a bunch of water.
Gently lower eggs, cold from the fridge, into the water. Use one of those wire baskets on a bamboo handle that they sell at the Asian marts.
Bring water back to boil.
Turn it down so they're just simmering.
Wait 13 or 14 minutes.
Immerse eggs in cold water.

My Greatest Fear
When I get to the farmers' market today, ditchweed guy will have quit selling ditchweeds. Then what? THEN WHAT, AMERICA?

Larry McMurtry

When you're eating to win, you have to cook all day. The way I manage, I listen to Larry McMurtry books while I chop and chop and chop and chop and dice and mince and sauté and bake and stew and steam and blend and stir and eviscerate and wash and spin and rinse and drain. It is just verb verb verb verb verb when you're in the kitchen, and it's hot and dull in there. And in my kitchen they put the sink and counter in a stupid place nowhere near the window, so you're trapped standing in the same spot for hours, staring at tile. Also the lighting sucks and I lack the inclination to do anything about it. But for Larry McMurtry, I would die in there. Unfortunately, the version I have of All of My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers isn't read by Wolfram Kandinsky, if that is how you spell it. I hope it doesn't mean anything happened to Wolfram K. I would cry.

I've developed a rhythm with this. I lose weight Wednesday through Friday, hold steady Saturday through Tuesday, lose more weight the following Wednesday through Friday. So far it's working a treat. I was in fourth place last week because of all the Red Stripe you have to drink when you're on vacation, but I expect to see some movement this week.

Hey-Wow Things To Do With Kale!
You know, it turns out kale soup blows. But there is another hey-wow thing you can do with kale that doesn't. You can chop it up coarse, flash fry it 'til it's bright green (it's inedible at this point because it's still all fibrous), then snatch it out the pan and throw it in the food processor. It will be much reduced in bulk. Grind it all up, add basil, nuts, garlic, olive oil and cheese, grind some more, and you have pesto with greater food value than pesto without kale. It tastes mighty fine and is jewel green. These days I'm actually doing this with collards and the various weird ditchweeds sold by Ditchweed Guy at the farmers' market, not kale, because it's so hot nothing but collards and ditch weeds will grow. There's still basil, though, so I'm good.

Thank you, Larry McMurtry (I know you're reading this). I love you.