The Bukowski Diet

When trying to decide what to eat, eat what you believe Charles Bukowski would have been most likely to eat. Eat kielbasa on rye with mustard. Wash it down with beer. Eat eggs scrambled with fried, nearly burnt onions and salami. Wash it down with gin. For snack, eat the rest of the kielbasa, handed to you wordlessly in individual slices by a man who cuts the kielbasa with a knife, using his index finger to push the knife through the sausage, toward his flexed thumb.

The rest of the weekend, eat impossibly fluffy French foods prepared by talented foodies. Wash them down with mimosas. Attend brother’s graduation in a fizzy daytime drunk. Eat graduation dinner prepared by talented foodie brother to the specifications of carb- and dairy-intolerant mother. Grilled shrimp, chicken, sausage and asparagus. Salmon delicately broiled with garlic and dill. Mixed greens with delicious vinagrette whisked by foodie brother’s girlfriend. Break all carb and dairy taboos with homemade brownie sundaes. Fail to buy wine by six o’clock on Sunday, feel gourmet brunch daytime drunk give way to gourmet dinner sobriety. You have broken the Bukowski diet.