food for thought

a few thoughts about falafel, and the good people who make them available to the public:

first of all, how do you explain falafel to someone who's never heard of it, and convince them to try it? i have had zero success on this one. honestly, chickpeas and unidentified flying spices mushed into little balls, fried and served with sesame paste sauce? terrible. vegetarian meatballs? (isn't a vegetarian meatball an oxymoron?) crunch patties served with flavor sauce? score one point for simpsons reruns...

second, what kind of community organizing action do i have to take for there to be more falafel in my neighborhood? there are two perfectly nice middle eastern restaurants within walking distance of my apartment, so i know i'm being spoiled here, but i was thinking something seedier. fluorescent lighting, cracked yellow tile floors, orange formica booths, bored bad-toothed man behind a small counter graced by a drink-pepsi menu board with the few remaining little block letters announcing that my fal f l & p ta will only cost $ 2. 9, thank you very much. wouldn't my little neighborhood be a better place? i also aspire to hire one of the local street personalities to sit for long hours at said formica booth nursing his coffee and shouting non-sequiturs at poorly dressed patrons such as myself while i squirt tahini onto my fal f l from a sticky ketchup bottle.

third, while i may not have my falafel paradise, i should really give a shout-out to the good people at more-respectable-falafel-institution cedars of lebanon. i hosted a dinner party the other night and, realizing at 5:30 that guests were arriving at 7 and i was still stuck at the office, called the good people at cedars with the following exacting demands: "hi, umm, i have 12 people showing up at my apartment in an hour. Can I get some combination of chicken, falafel, hummus and tahini?" in the time it took me to buy salad makings from the next-door produce market, cedars produced more food for $50 than i will reasonably expect to eat in this lifetime. don't ask me why "food for 12" meant "so you want falafel, do you? just back that forklift right up to our loading dock, and soon you will feed the whole city of chicago!" so thank you, cedars. but now i have two problems: 1) how will i fit the upcoming thanksgiving leftovers into my freezer now that there's no room left? 2) will anyone ever come to my place for dinner again? they know they'll be eating leftover pita and chicken shawarma until 2006.