Category: Uncategorized

Okay, as you might have noticed, the Froz-T-Freez isn’t an actual Drive-In. It’s only a blog. And this is how it got started.

Years and years ago, I had daydreams of opening a record store.

But that doesn’t really explain anything.

Concurrent and somewhat coincidental to my frequent record-store-owning-and-operating daydreams, I came to develop a love of what I would call “authentic” fast food establishments: hamburger/shake stands with car hops or walk up windows, taquerías, Hawaiian plate lunch Drive-Inns, roadside diners (still haven’t really found a good one of these yet), etc. The smaller the town, the better. The more local and idiosyncratic the menu and condiments, the better. Secret menus or code names for certain items or variations of preparation, known only to the initiated, have come to play a big part in the mythology.  Another key factor is what James Murphy refers to as borrowed nostalgia.

At some point in my daydreaming, the obsession with drive-ins began to converge with the record store thing. It went through many iterations, but the final business model was that of the record store soda fountain. It would simply be a new variation on the drug store soda fountain which permeated America in days of old. The sodas and shakes would be authentic, the jukebox would be free, the soda jerk would be friendly and accommodating yet have impeccable musical taste, and the hipness and diversity of the kids who hung out there would be almost utopian.  Strange that in my daydreams I wanted to own and operate a teenage hangout when in reality I usually can’t stand places that are teenage hangouts.

But anyway. It turns out that I don’t really want to open such a business badly enough to devote my heart and soul to it, so it remains a pleasant daydream. And instead of a record store soda fountain, I have this here Froz-T-Freez. I guess my ultimate goal is to be that friendly and accommodating soda jerk with impeccable taste. I’m not in it for the money, so I tend to stock the racks only with the things I love. If you’re browsing you may find things you already know and like, or you may find something new.  But we cook everything to order, so if something’s not here that you would like on the menu, just let me know.  We may actually have a secret name for it already.

What a beautiful evening to have a flat tire at the mouth of the canyon.

Watching the rain pool up on the back patio and listening to some vintage Caetano Veloso.

My good old 20th century stereo is now set up, enabling CD, cassette and yes, even vinyl LP playback. Let the format fidelity wars begin!

Walked down the river trail to Bridal Veil Falls with the Beutlers this morning.  Fall was at the height of its powers.  Thanks for coming; it was fun.  Here are some pictures.  I didn’t take many, though.  I’m really sorry your camera was lost to the forests of Timpanogos.

Headed home from the gallery stroll in the slc. We didn’t buy anything.

Autumn is officially the best season of the year to live at Vivian Park.

Preparing first Sunday School lesson for our new class of 13-year-old boys.

Still numb from having three cavities filled this morning. Now drinking a Mexican Coke.

I’m spending today cooking chili. I’m not exactly sure how I got to the point where I spend one of my precious days off from work cooking chili, but we’ll see through the course of this post if I can trace it.

A few weeks ago, Gin and I made a batch of chili. This may sound unusual to some of you, and it is kind of unusual, since neither of us are known to cook. We used my grandma Naoma’s old chili recipe, which I had always wanted to try to make. A mitigating circumstance to our actual cooking of chili from scratch is that we had a nice new pot to cook it in and all the ingredients (my super-generous mom gave them to us at a recipe shower before our marriage. It should be noted that my mom herself has never prepared this dish, so the immensity of cooking chili from scratch spans the generations, at least for my part.) The chili turned out pretty good, and the recipe made a HUGE batch. Our shiny new pot could barely contain it all. This single evening of chili-making provided us with meal after satisfying meal, as I divided the substance into numerous containers which we froze and then reheated in the days/weeks following. It was an actual cooking success on our part. Maybe it wasn’t an unqualified success since no one else ever actually tasted it, but we thought it was good and since we were the ones eating it I guess that is what’s important.

Naturally, as our frozen chili portions disappeared, the thought occurred to us that we should try again. I also had this thought that it might be interesting to use chicken instead of ground beef, and black beans instead of red beans. And then, some sort of weird process went into mechanization. One morning earlier this week I found myself wandering around a grocery store looking for things to cook at home, since I was going to be at home alone a lot instead of in Salt Lake City at work (I’ve had all of this past week off from work). I went by the meat section. I saw ground beef and I saw chicken, and I thought of the chili. I bought a big package of raw chicken, and then a bag of black beans. And as a result of these rash decisions, I am currently spending my Friday morning (and afternoon, apparently) preparing a giant batch of highly experimental chicken and black bean chili. I had to do it because the meat was going to go bad if I didn’t do it today.

And now I’m in a bizarre situation where, although I am cooking food and have been cooking food for several hours, it is now past lunch time and I can’t yet eat this food. Am I forced to prepare something else, while I am still cooking the chili? Do I leave the chili simmering and actually go out somewhere and buy some fast food? Preposterous! The other thing that gets me about this whole business is that it might not even taste good when it gets done. It’s still a mystery. But it’s my mystery, and my day off. And I am in the kitchen, cooking chili. And typing about cooking chili. Now that does seem more like something I would do on my day off.

p.s. I’m even wearing an apron. This is a first for me, and I always thought aprons were stupid, but the last two times I’ve tried cooking stuff I had splatters all over my clothes. I’ve learned my lesson. It is just a regular apron, though, not a flirty apron.