Ray Halliday: Heiny of a Piney!

I think this is P#11. I promise to eat it by cutting it and eating it. No juicing-wastefulness.











I've never had, or seen wild rice! It was ridiculous. I was terrified. Alone in my little apartment with weird, unrecognizable rice. I called the anti-terrorism squad who helped me identify it as okay, or Canadian rice. They thanked me for my continued patriotism and told me that I could not be too careful with an unfamiliar food. They told me to use less water next time.

47 years old. Where have I been? What have I been doing? The answer is nowhere and nothing. No experiences at all.

Wasted Pineapple

This is not the pineapple you think it is.









As usual, I thought I had a good idea. I like rum and I like my friends so I invited my friend Dani up for dinner and some rum drinks. I have a borrowed juicer and I knew a juice recipe that had all the things I think go great with rum: pineapple, lime and mint. Sounds great. Plus I had made some regular + sun-dried tomato pesto. I had mung-bean vermicelli, you know, that clear kind. I also had some plans to do with a pot of lima beans. It's great, even though I'd been on a big downer. The night, and the drinking was designed to pick me up. Pick us both up.

But, quite frankly, and I am admitting it to myself and to any others that care to listen. I do not like mint drinks. I tried to make this mint juice one time and I thought I just over-minted it. I think fresh mint can be kind of bitter if too much is used, and both the last time I tried it, and this time, when I totally cut the recipe past half, I got the bittery mint blues.

Which, I must tell you is a waste of a good pineapple. I enjoy a good juice now and then and the fun of a well-made juicer. But, watching pineapple go through it, all sticky and strange, the pulp all still full of juice, the beautiful fibery goodness of pineapple given up for the juices I could have anyway just by putting the delicious pineapple unjuiced in my mouth, is enough to send me to fruit-blues jail on the spot.

So, I was happy to have juiced and then almost immediately felt like a big juicy failure. Dani drinks because she knows I enjoy it. And the way I was enjoying it was dirtying up my drink with more and more rum to mask the failure my juice. Which, by the way, was meager in amount-ness. Another thing I don't like about juicing a pineapple, it's a big looking fruit, but yields a small amount of juice.

So, don't get me wrong, the food was delicious, the company great, although moods were both running a little bit dark, and this wasn't helped by the rum putting my buddy on the verge of a migraine. Sigh.

Luckily, we were sitting there talking and counting up our friends who are currently dying, when who should stop by but our wonderful neighbors across the hall. Two Chris's, married with a three year old Hazel, who I enjoy sharing my juice with. Hazel said the juice made her lip tingly. I had the same reaction.

The Chris's brought another bottle of rum. Darker and more delicious than the cheap stuff I had. Plus, they brought good cheer, wonderful conversation and our chirping the night away attracted Joel from down the hall. And then there was more merriment! At least I think there was. I remember the next day feeling kind of exhausted and out of sorts (still).

Ah, well. I am eating my pineapples intact from now on. Pineapple #9, I hardly knew ye, and forgot, even, to take your picture.

Ray Halliday: Forget About It

Look, bananas over mangoes. I do not know what I was talking about the other day. I was just having a crabby day at work. I do not want any of those things. I bought some of that Asian hot sauce like in the restaurants. As long as I have enough toilet paper to blow my nose, everything else does not matter.

Thank you, everybody, for the cards and letters. You all gave some great advice. Especially you, Bobby H. from Cub Scout Troop 113, a pony or a riding lawnmower sounds way better than a baby. And I must thoroughly agree with you, your baby brother does sound stinky.

P.S. Did I mention I ate a whole pot of chili on Friday?

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Ray Halliday: Grim Forecast

I have recently decided that I need a career change. But I am skill-less and have a feckless quality about me, feckless qualities, am basically feckless, a feck. I want to have a girlfriend, get married and have a baby. I am 47 years old.

I would like to have two forms of transportation. A Honda Civic DX hatchback from years gone by, and a Suzuki SV650. However, I cannot seem to pay my taxes, have unpaid bills from years and years ago, and, honestly, I have nowhere, really, to go.

I eat pretty right, as you know, and enjoy fruit.

I have dreams for the weekend including chili, pesto and saag dal. All of which I can make pretty good or well.

That is all. Please enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Li'l Feller

# 8.

I've always identified with Charlie Brown and that stupid tree. I think this pineapple will be just fine. It just needs a little love.

How Not to Eat a Pineapple

Beautiful pineapple #7.

This was still delicious, but I cannot recommend eating one this way. Best to skin it first. And that green top is not that tasty, it's kind of pokey.


Also, this morning, I had a mango that was so good, that I thought perhaps it was a trap, like a mango Trojan Horse. As I ate deeper into it, I thought perhaps there might be a bunch of bees in the middle, or a radioactive pit designed to, I don't know...somehow take me down, maybe take down the whole human race. It was that sweet, that perfectly ripe that had I eaten perhaps five minutes earlier or later, I wouldn't be writing this now. But it was so good, I didn't see it as just a fruit, but something more...something evil.


Also, I am looking for a replacement for almonds and raisins. I am eating too much of them. I love them too much, and am afraid I will soon be somehow punished for it.


Life with a lot of fruit is not all that it's cracked up to be.

Typical Day at Ray Halliday's

This is a picture of me.

Ray Halliday Apologizes!

Dearest, y'all,

I am very truly sorry for not giving you a picture of me and my beautiful pineapple #6. I have plenty of witnesses that can step forward and verify it's existence and my cutting of it and eating it up. Joel Murach was there when it was boughten! Mike Farino, Jola Zandecki, Mica (of Mica's Mango) Lee Williams, Timmy Binko, Lee Chae and the amazing Lois all witnessed it. Kara Daillak and Django? Did I forget them? No, I did not. It was real. It was perfect and we all (minus Mica who's got an allergy or something to them) enjoyed it a lotly.

It was out in some town where there was woods and tents, and kids.

Everyone had a nice time, encoutracized by pineapple.