Indecisive Recipes, Vol.I: Jumbo Gulf Shrimp (Or Not) Boiled In Provencal Hops If You Want To

The complex flavors of this kinda-refined dish will perhaps be the talk of your meal. You never know.

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 bottles of imported beer. It can be non-imported beer if you want. As long as it's beer. But whatever.
• 1 head garlic split across. Substitute a tablespoon of jar garlic if you're not sure if you have a head of garlic. Maybe you should check first?
• 1 calabrese pepper or mild-ish pepper. It depends how you define “mild.” That’s a “you” decision.
• 1 tablespoon anise seed if you feel like it.
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest or whatever lemony-type zest is available to you. I’m not sure what to do if you have no citrus zest. I’d probably ask a cook friend what to do. That’s all I have here. Sorry. No cook friends? Me neither. (Sigh)
• .5 ounce hops which are pretty hard to find so whatever.
• 24 ounces water. I KNOW you have water, right? I mean I think I know. You do, don’t you? If I’m making assumptions, I apologize.
• 4 sprigs rosemary. See fennel (below). Or disregard if you want to. Wait…I think it was rosemary. That’s an herb. I’m like 60% on that, for sure, pretty much.
• 4 sprigs fresh mint. See fennel or rosemary. Your call.
• 1 head chopped fennel or fennel-like herb or plant. Something fennel-ish if you're up for it.
• 16 jumbo shrimp or really big shrimp but somewhat large is fine if that's all you have- your call. And use less if you want to. Or more.

METHOD:

Place all ingredients except shrimp in a pot and bring to a boil. That should take some time in all likelihood, but who knows? Once boiling, add shrimp and cook through. I think when the shrimp are pink that indicates they’re cooked through. You’d probably have to break one open and see. Maybe it was white that meant cooked. Anyway, I’m unclear on this so I defer to you or a cookbook. Depending on the size of the shrimp this should be 4 or 5 minutes. Or a few more minutes. Or less if you're in a hurry. In that case maybe you shouldn't have started cooking. Right? No? Hell, I dunno. Spoon shrimp and some of the boil into bowl. Not a ton. Pick the amount you want to spoon. Or ladle. Is a ladle a spoon? I think so. I'm pretty sure it is, but you're the boss. Or chef. Or amateur chef. Cook. Whatever. Listen, this is pretty intense for me right now, so I’m going to go lay down and nod off. Maybe. Close my eyes. Or read for awhile. Maybe I’ll see you later-ish?

Jokes Frequently Incapable Of Eliciting Laughter, Vols. I, II & III

I.

A man walks into a bar with a chimp perched on his shoulder.
The chimp asks the bartender for a beer.
The bartender doesn’t flinch; he asks the chimp what specific beer he’d like to drink.
The chimp asks to see a beer list.
The bartender explains that they sent all of the beer lists off to a local printer for lamination and as luck would have it, through some sort of organizational mishap the lists were lost and never returned.
The chimp relates a similar story in which he sent his memoirs to a typist for transcription and the typist deemed them illegible.
The bartender fails to see the correlation.

II.

A priest and a rabbi are rowing across a large body of water in a canoe.
The priest asks if the rabbi if the water is safe for drinking.
The rabbi fails to hear him as he’s thinking about something he saw on television last night.
It was an infomercial about cordless electric hedge clippers.
Maybe they were battery-operated or even solar; the point is- no cords.
The rabbi snaps back to reality and says “I’m sorry, what?”
The priest forgets what he asked initially.
The rabbi realizes that he has no hedges anyway.

III.

Q: How many hamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: Hundreds of thousands, probably. They’re pretty small and have no opposable thumbs.