Heartplug

Extrapolation

Many Tex-Mex meals are considered heartplugs. The original heartplug concocted at informal Second Advance get-togethers consisted of refried beans, ground beef, cheddar cheese and perhaps a few slices of tomato cooked together in a single pan and washed down with a quaff or two of beer.

In France, the reigning heartplug comes from the south. Known as a cassoulet, it is a weighty kind of white-bean stew which contains pork sausage and pieces of duck that have been cooked in lard. Aside from its hearty punch of cholesterol and raw lipids, an emptied cassoulet bowl can be worn on the head as a hat.

The cassoulet finds a cousin in the Fabada Asturiana. Comprised of white beans, shoulder of pork, black blood sausage, spicy sausage, saffron and other seasonings, it can be found not only in its native Asturias but wherever Spanish restaurants are found. Like chili con carne, the fabada tends towards the complex end of the "Smithson Heartplug Scale" developed by MIT researcher Marylin Smithson in 1986. Although heartplugs the world over fall all over the spectrum, AA'ers tend towards the simple end, which translates to fewer ingredients, less cooking time and lower costs.

Although there is no small amount of pride among those who favor more complicated recipes, even the most jaded gourmand respects the simple heartplug, which to quote Smithson, makes up the "warp and woof of the urban peasant's sustenance."

See Also

• BBQ
• Dallas Dumpling
• Heavy drinking
• Incidentalist Dead Flesh Bonanza

Desiderata

William Flintrock invented a psychotropic drug which he attempted to market to the atrabilious, the truly bummed-out, the lonely and the love-lorn. Briefly marketed from his garage as "The Heartplug", it was eventually known as "an absurd boondoggle" when it failed to garner FDA approval.