The Price of Morals, Charlie Brown

Ice Queen Interviews Vincent Rendoni

Ice Queen: Well, first of all, I saw that you had a conference that you were just at, that you were speaking at; how did that go?

Vincent: Oh, that went really well! Actually it's funny, I have kind of an interesting blend of my professional and my creative life a lot. I use my Twitter for both because I've been working in copywriting for almost a decade now, but during COVID 19, I kind of got back– I'm like, Well, life is very short, so it's probably time to start writing now, if not now then never.

So actually, the last conference I was speaking at, I mean, I'm part of the Jack Straw Writers here in Seattle, but I also speak a lot, like about business,[ Adopts a faux-serious tone] a person of business, so I kinda have both lives I try to weave between.

Ice Queen: It looked like it was fun; it looked like you had fun other than the slight COVID scare.

Vincent: Oh yeah. I mean, I was there for a whole week, and I had nothing to do on the weekends, so I'm like, Well, I'm gonna make my time in here in San Francisco.

And I'll be back again in November for the release of my book!

Ice Queen: That will be very exciting! I can't wait!

Vincent: You are already credited in it too, as an acknowledgement.

Ice Queen: WHAT? My first acknowledgement? I might cry!

Vincent: No, I'm happy to hear that! Some places were like ...cool, but I'm like, Well, I think it's cool to acknowledge a magazine in my book. I thought it was pretty neat.

Ice Queen: I think that's sort of like the goal, right? Like to, to have that sort of mention, I don't know why someone wouldn't be super jazzed about it.

Vincent: I know that's why I'm excited that you wanted to move it up. 'Cause my book's maybe coming out in late in November so I'm like, Oh, wanna make sure we get that stuff ahead of schedule!

[Side note in 2026: I'm the worst (╥﹏╥) ]

Ice Queen: Perfect! Okay, I've got your pieces pulled up here. So, tell me about "Songbird With Plums."

Vincent: You know, what I like about "Songbird With Plums" is– it's clearly a fictional, retelling of meals I made with my grandmother, but growing up, you know, I have somewhat of a disconnect from my Mexican heritage– a large part of these books and poems is kind of getting back to it, and I remember all these meals she used to make.

People have a really narrow view of what Mexican food is I think, and it actually really bugs me to a major extent, but there's actually all these delicate dishes that have somewhat Middle Eastern ingredients with them, like quail and pomegranate and walnuts... I mean, the white mole of Puebla is all about like blending these wet Lebanese ingredients I believe that came over and I've just been kind of obsessed with looking at the history of the world's first fusion cuisine, which is Mexican food.

My grandmother used to encourage me to eat things that were outside of my norm. So it was usually menudo or birds or venison– especially tripe, which is still one of my favorite things on earth to eat– but I wanted to think of a story kind of like the bird in France that you eat whole with one bite.

Ice Queen: Oh yeah, it's like the [it absolutely was not whatever the heck she said] or something like that?

Vincent: Yeah, I cannot pronounce it, but I'm just like, oh man, like I kind of got obsessed with that image of you having to eat something and then cover your eyes as you do it, 'cause it's such a sin against nature.

It's kind of an interesting thing, 'cause I was thinking about that with my grandparents, you know, they've done some fairly (what we'd probably consider to be) shady things by today's standards, but to them it's like, Oh, we don't really give a crap. We're just trying to survive. We don't think too much about what is good and what is evil.

They were always a morals are for people who can afford them kind– that's kind of their general attitude. So, I wanted to take a poem to combine all of that: my heritage, their attitudes, and also just a lot of the fantastical storytelling I grew up with, and even just being like in a cooking in the kitchen with my abuela– that was always really nice memory, so hopefully I pulled it off in that poem.

Ice Queen: The first line sort of really sets the scene:

Abuela is craving quail with plums.

and it was so intriguing to me– I loved the language in this poem.

Vincent: It's good timing for a Fall dish, too. I'm like, oh, quail and plums! Like that's about there, right?

Ice Queen: Reading that it was like, This is the entrance into the work and I'm so ready for the rest of this!

Vincent: Oh, good! I'm glad you liked it so much, Ice!

I appreciate that.

Ice Queen: I mean, I sort of don't put anything in that I don't really love. That's the beauty of being able to have just the one person!

Vincent: The benefit of being queen of your magazine.

Ice Queen: Exactly! Queen of my little world. [Pause] So, then tell us about "Heartbreak Mole".

Vincent: Oh, so this is – man, I was so glad when I found your magazine about food because I didn't realize how many poems I had started writing that have food involved in them. So mole, as you probably know, is a very special dish. It's actually not like traditionally in a way, like ubiquitous, say Mexican, it's actually more of a Oaxacan thing. Although that's, you know, every state has their own version and my grandparents had their own version of it too–very thick and chocolatey.

But there's also a bit of familial distance between my grandmother and my aunts who are like a whole generation before me. I later learned why, which is not a poem that's meant for a fun, or food magazine. But I remember once, she was really was distant from my aunts, and she wanted to make something to comfort them.

Mole is usually a celebration food, but can also be kind of a comfort food. The kind of thing you see at a funeral and you know– this is when I was studying a lot of the middle Eastern parts of like Mexican cuisine– and I'm just like, I really like the idea of walnuts and orange blossom– really exotic, kind of foreign, even in Mexican cuisine, but there's this image I had just stuck in my head of a drop of blood going into it. I don't know what was on my mind when I was thinking about that; you make this really delicious dish for someone who you love, but also kind of hate, but we're obliged to do something for them when they're grieving.

Like all bets are off when someone is grieving and going through crap; and I think that's when they broke the silence a little bit. They probably went right back to it, by way of my tia. But yeah, and so I remember her making mole, but I was like, let's take this. But the blood part is obviously fictional and poetic –it's poetic license, but I remember part of mole is just kind of sitting there and letting it wait. It requires patience. And I don't know. I remember those memories just sitting in her kitchen, just waiting for it to boil over being incredibly impatient and wondering why shit wasn't ready, but like patience, patience, patience.

Ice Queen: Yeah. No, I mean like it also, it makes sense that you would serve mole at a funeral, because funerals are supposed to be like a celebration of life, right? Like, they're supposed to be a celebration of the person who did live. So, it is definitely comforting in a time of grief, but it's also still a celebration.

Vincent: Yeah, it's amazing what you can heal and fix by throwing a bunch of fat and fat and sauce people. I mean, I was thinking about it in terms of weddings– I was in Mexico in a cooking class and I made a white mole, which is strictly used for weddings.

But my grandparents made the one that was like chocolate and dark and I still prefer that one above all else.

That's why there's a Oaxacan restaurant in south Seattle that I like to go to that that actually still makes it; but also know calorically what's in it, so I'm like maybe, like, after another day.

Ice Queen: Yeah, there's actually an episode of Chef's Table on Netflix–I mean, I've seen so many episodes, but this particular one mole is like what they're known for; and I wanna say it's sort of like that some like it cold, some like it hot, some like it nine days in a pot, sort of thing they just sort of build on what they already had going.

[Note: This is not even kind of the nursery rhyme]

Vincent: Is this Pujol in Mexico? The hundred year old mole. They serve you a new version and an old version, and the one that's been on the pot has been going at it for like years and years. Enrique Olvera. The 1000 day old mole.

Ice Queen: I watched that episode and I was like, oh my God, that sounds so cool.

Vincent: I just sent you a link. Don't be mad at me, but I actually have the pleasure of going to that restaurant in Mexico city.

Ice Queen: Not mad, but I'm sadly jealous.

Vincent: Oh man. You gotta go to Mexico city. It is a food lovers dream. It was bit of a heritage trip for me to kind of see like, you know, my own stuff, but I was like, holy crap–there is not enough room in my stomach to eat everything I want to here, but I'm in a perpetual state of, yeah, I could eat.

Ice Queen: So that's what brings me to the last poem, which is the most quintessential yeah, I could eat place in the whole world.

Vincent: That one, so one thing about poetry is I write about dark stuff– obviously, like most poets do–but I also write a lot about funny things because I think there's a lot of joy in the world in silliness.

It's important to write about that as much as like, you know, the passing of time and death. So that one is one of my favorite poems. I've kind of been holding that one back for a little while and I'm like, this is really well-suited for Ice Queen. It's actually a real memory.

I went to graduate school in Pennsylvania. I got my MFA out in Chatham university. And Mexican food at that time, about 10 years ago, was pathetic–and you know, in my opinion, it's still pretty pathetic. I mean, unless you're in California or Arizona, New Mexico, most Mexican cuisine is pathetic even here in Seattle.

Except for I proudly live in like a little like Mexican enclave almost here in Seattle, and we have some really great places, but there I was so desperate Taco Bell seriously was the top ranked Mexican restaurant in Pittsburgh on Yelp, but you know, when you're far away from home and it's winter and you're kind of in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, which you think Mexico food is bad in Pittsburgh, it's even worse in Pennsyltucky.

I remember seeing like the, the purple pink and white lights of Taco Bell, and I'm like, we gotta pull over, like, I need a fucking crunch wrap. I need even the facsimile of Mexican food. I know people bash Taco Bell–I bash Taco Bell– and I'm too old to digest it anymore, to be perfectly honest, but there's something joyful about just, you know, something quick and happy that fills you up. And then you like have that moment of cringe and you're like, oh grandma, I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did this. Like, you know, you taught me to appreciate food and here I am eating like the most quick and simple– but all I can do is laugh about that.

I like food, but I'm also surprisingly not that picky of an eater either.

Ice Queen: See, that's where we differ– I have the soul of an adventurous eater, but the mind of a child, to the point sometimes even just eating chicken, I'm like, okay, this is flesh. And then when I use the word flesh in my mind, I'm like, that's disgusting.

Vincent: It's like my wife and I strip down a chicken and you know, I'm not gonna waste any meat, but she'll say the word carcass and the word carcass triggers something in me. I'm like, can we just say the leftovers or the bones? Even those two words are better, right? "The carcass" is so... I don't know– I mean, I guess I am getting a little bit pickier, I'm in my late thirties now so I have to pay attention to more things than I used to.

Ice Queen: There's something about it, sometimes even eating a chicken wing– you know, you see that vein going down and I'm eating it and I'm like, well, I'm already committed for doing it, but I'm also very aware that this is kind of gross.

Vincent: Good for you for being that present of an eater though, that's really cool. I'm glad you could do that.

Ice Queen: See, I never thought of it that way you made me feel a little bit better about myself. Thank you.

Vincent: Maybe I could stand to be more, because I'll just eat whatever. Maybe I don't have a good sense of smell, like maybe that's what it is, or even a good sense of taste. I'm just like, cool, that looks good. Though, I do have a strange weakness; the one food I do not enjoy– and it was very random, the day I learned it I was eating sushi (and I will eat whatever sushi's put in front of me)– I had sea urchin sushi and just like the texture and flavor, like the intense umami. That, and black licorice, those two things– those are the two things I can't eat. I would actually rather starve on a mountain top than eat those.

Ice Queen: So do you not like fennel as well?

Vincent: Oh, I love fennel– I like to grill it, air fry it, chop it up with blood oranges.

Ice Queen: That's so interesting, that's such a licorice flavor! Maybe if you had black licorice in like the smallest amount?

Vincent: If it was not sweet– maybe, you know, it's the sugar. Sugar bugs me a lot, actually, if it's something's too sweet, that will stop me from eating it.

Ice Queen: Same. I used to be sort of like, give me as much sugar as you can, but now, now I taste something I'm like, okay, well this is unpleasant–like it hurts the teeth just little. Though, speaking of sweets, tell me about the recipe you chose and then what made you wanna showcase that recipe?

Vincent: Okay, so it's the end of summer, and I was thinking about my favorite dishes growing up. And there's actually one particular dish that like, I will lose my mind. It's not that it's particularly hard to find, it can be in Seattle–you really have to go to like a pastelería to go find it– but I'm a big fan of pumpkin empanadas.

Growing up, my grandmother had a bakery here in the south end of Seattle called Hacienda Sanchez, which I think is really funny it's called Hacienda Sanchez; it was a little place like in a strip mall and hacienda implies like a large estate, and Sanchez was her maiden name before it was Rendon, then Rendoni to pass in the United States. So I have these memories growing up and going to her bakery. There was all these women downstairs who did not speak English–I doubt they were even speaking Spanish– and smoking cigarettes and rolling dough.

She would always make my favorite, which is a pumpkin empanada, or empanadas de calabaza, and it's just to this day, it's still a very sentimental flavor for me. Unlike most other empanadas, this one has a whole wheat dough, so it's kind of thick, it's thicker, more hearty., and usually people say enriched tastes better than whole wheat, but I think the whole wheat actually emphasizes the pumpkin flavor better than an enriched white or pre-made one.

Even in today's standards, I will use pre-made empanada dough if I'm making things at scale, but this is one of those things where I'd like to have made from scratch and inside of it, the pumpkin was usually mixed with like cinnamon, brown, sugar spices. It's a very delicate blend that usually is within the same range of spices and additions, but it's like one of those things that no one's ever really gotten right since my grandmother, you know? You want to taste the pumpkin, but you want to taste the cloves and the cinnamon and brown sugar in equal doses. Maybe she sprinkled some rum inside there for all I know, I have no idea. And many people, including my extended family, have tried to make them and you know, they're really good, and I'm sure you have this too, right, like, oh, that's really fucking good. It's so close to the real thing, but it's just not there.

My grandmother passed away in 2015 and with her, there's this weird familial issue that occurred where like all of the recipes were taken by one of those daughters–and my family strange has these strange issues and divisions, and, to get the recipe, I'd have to go through some unpleasant loops with some evangelical people. So I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna like go through recipes and tweak and listen and taste them and see what gets the closest. I'm currently compiling which ones were the closest and trying to figure out what the twist end thing was.

So it's almost kind of the the way I'm learning Spanish; I'm kind of learning it backwards. I'm like, well, I know all this stuff, but I need to keep reverse engineering it until I get it. And so that is why I'm choosing pumpkin empanadas for Ice Queen.

Ice Queen: I'm so excited and, in a way, I also think it's somehow almost a little better that you don't have the recipe because it would be so heartbreaking to have the recipe and make it, and it still not be right.

Vincent: That would bug me, and I don't wanna give up a bad recommendation either.

And here's the big thing, too: I'm only looking for Spanish language ones or Nahuatl like, it will not be from some like Karen, like saying I discovered an empanEHda and I'm gonna make it from scratch.

Ice Queen: Yeah, no, it's gotta be, it's gotta be right.

Vincent: I'll keep, I'll keep exploring and keep you posted, how about that?

Ice Queen: That sounds wonderful, and I cannot wait because I'm so ready to eat this because I have plans to make every recipe that gets sent in to Ice Queen.

Vincent: I think it's really cool what you're doing. When I saw, I think I saw you on Heavy Feather Review, and I was like, okay, it's gamers and food– what's not to like about this project?

Ice Queen: I mean, I like it. I figured someone else might like it too.

Vincent: Well, yeah. I've been following some of the, the writers you've been like putting up and they're like, you know, it's pretty cool. You're not getting some slouches here!

I will tell you, after you write a book, you really take a long break from writing. I feel like I ran a marathon and now I'm like, I don't wanna think about writing until about October and then I'll give more of a shit about it again.

Ice Queen: After I completed MFA, I had the same thing. I was like, I don't even wanna look at any of this.

Vincent: So, well, I mean, I think you did the right thing. Just keeping the momentum going, you know? I think I told you I took a few years off, too many years off, and then it took the world's worst pandemic in the last hundred years to be like, wow, I'm gonna die someday. I should get some poetry out.

Ice Queen: Well, good on you for that!

Vincent: Well, thank you for taking my pieces too! I know how hard it is to run a magazine. I've been an editor before. So, appreciate you taking your own free time to make this cool little project. I'm excited about the pixel art too.

Ice Queen: Yes, that's probably one of my favorite things. It's just to make these very strange little gifs that I put out on Twitter.

Vincent: You know, I don't think it's that strange though. I work in pretty cutting edge advertising and marketing and multimedia narratives are like really gonna start emerging, I think the next 10 years, like how do we study VR XR? Like visual meets audio, meets this, meets accessibility. So I don't know, I think what you're doing is really cool, and I appreciate it.

Ice Queen: [diverting attention because she got flustered] What is your favorite family or personal recipe? I've asked this question before and just been like, oh, well it's obviously gotta be this, and they were like, actually, no, and then I looked like a fool, so I'm not gonna assume here that it's the empanadas!

Vincent: This is actually a really good question that I'm trying to think about.

Because I can give two answers, that'll be very different from each other. Okay. So if you couldn't tell by my name, in addition to being Mexican, I'm also Italian too. I'm only like a quarter Italian though, but it actually somewhat plays like the other half of my heritage, and my mom was one of those mothers who would actually on Sunday, make sauce with like pork shoulder, noodles– that thick red sauce that just like bubbles all day long and fills a house and, you know, it's Sunday. And, you know, even if I'm like, don't know what I want, like, it almost always sounds good. Reminds me of my mother, like growing up in our household, happy times; but, on the flip side, is something much more simple.

When I would visit my abuela, like in her little house in Burien, which is south Seattle area, in addition to empanadas, her sweets game was obviously, you know, peaked out. There's so many pain dulces I could go through, but one of the simplest things she would make, and this is not even technically I think a Mexican dish. I think it's more of like a Southwestern indigenous one– it's sopapillas. Fried in butter and honey, and oh, my god, it's so simple, but done correctly it's just the most pleasant thing in the world.

Sorry for the wide swinging spectrum, but from both sides of my culture, it's like, yeah, spaghetti on Sundays, but also sopapillas when spending the night at Abuela's house.

Ice Queen: Oh, I love that. Like just the spaghetti and then sopapillas, like yeah, it actually sounds like they would go well together.

Vincent: It's funny. Many people see Mexican and Italian culture as being like really distinctly separate. If anything, they seem way too, too common to me. Roman Catholic backgrounds with loud families that drink too much and love each other and too intensely.

Ice Queen: Bouncing off close relationships, what would you say is your relationship to food in your writing?

Vincent: Oh, for me, it's memory. I've talked a little to you about this, it's like a little bit of a disconnect from my heritage growing up, or almost like a willing disconnectivity. You know, my father who is olive skin, black hair looked, his name was Orlando– he looked very, very clearly Mexican, but like he did not speak Spanish, cause that's how my grandparents wanted it.

Like, they're just like blend in, even change our last name to Rendoni took people can think we're Italian, but food was like the one thing that I think him and I both connected on even after my grandparents, I remember like him taking me to like a taco truck and imploring me to try some things like besides like Taco Bell stuff. Like, I want you to try this dish, and I want you to try this– have some cactus and eggs, eat this hot pepper. Try beef tongue– beef tongue was my uncle's favorite dish, and it's funny, it's actually still one of mine to this day. So, food is the connection of memory. I don't come from the most literate family, I don't come from a lot of readers or writers, but I do like that food is an expression: food is our history and timeline.

Ice Queen: Love that, beautifully said. So, this next question is a two parter and it sort of follows along with relationship to food and your writing: What do you love about food and writing and what are your favorite food themes in writing?

Vincent: You know, I don't think I actually have a strong answer for this. When I think about food and writing it's often themes. This is gonna sound kind of weird, but I actually don't like finer food or like complex food, I actually am very interested in just what people eat like on a sustenance basis.

I think there was a bit of that, like Instagram culture I was really interested in like, look at this fancy meal and like, look at this cool thing I'm doing. And then it became a bit of like I'm showing off my wealth and privilege. And then as I got a little bit older, I think about how the rest of the world actually eats.

And most of it is like for protein, for sustenance, or carbohydrates, like just to survive. And I think I learned that a lot, believe it or not, with learning how corn is nixtamalized, the process of which like ancient Mexicans actually nixtamalized their corn so they could actually live. Corn was not enough to sustain themselves, but adding minerals and creating like chemistry is how they did it.

I guess the things that interest me lately is– it's funny, I actually don't read a lot of food anymore, and I guess my tastes –no pun intended– have really changed a lot, but I think I like stories of people like me who try to go back and try to see what their stories are.

'Cause like I've noticed there's a lot of stories now about biracial or multicultural people trying to like get back to their heritage, get back to something or even just understand something that feels just a little bit out of reach and it will forever be out of reach like some kind of magnet.

I mean the book I think of, it's not even a book I particularly enjoy, was Like Water for Chocolate. I mean, I guess the reason I'm kind of feel this way is I think a lot about like how drought and climate change is working. I could fetishize food right now, but I'm also thinking about how is agriculture going to work the next 20 years of our lives. I have that on my mind.

Wow. That's a major bummer. Right? So maybe I like dystopian and science fiction stories where food is at a premium. I was thinking of a video game I played a few years ago called the Outer Worlds. And it's just like, people are getting sick, but with a mysterious disease in the outer rim of this galaxy and like this illness and people are like, not doing so well and why is that? One thing they brought up, there's actually a problem that's might be occurring here on earth is like, well, this is an easy solution. Your food is not nutritious. You are literally starving while feeding yourself, because you do not have the nutrients needed to begin the complex process of survival.

Ice Queen: That's interesting. I think it was the Phantom Toll Booth. Do you remember that book?

Vincent: Oh, God. Yes. Phantom Toll Booth, yes.

Ice Queen: And they ate the subtraction stew, so they were eating and the more that they ate, the hungrier they actually got, because it was actually taking away from their bodies instead of like giving them anything,

Vincent: Oh, damn, yeah. So that's what I've been pondering with writing and food, I guess; Like how are we gonna feed ourselves and everybody? So maybe that's just news [laughs] not even a book poem.

Ice Queen: It's like, I just like real life, I don't read. So I guess that, the Outer Worlds sort of goes to my next question of what your favorite food scene is in TV movies, or video games.

Vincent: What have I really enjoyed recently? So,I actually liked the Taco Chronicles. That was always one of my favorites from Netflix, cause that's the whole personifying a lesser known dish in Mexico and showing how the cultural heritage works there. I really enjoyed that. What else have I really enjoyed?

Is it gonna be fucking lame if I say Ratatouille?

Ice Queen: No, it could never be lame.

Vincent: I mean, it's 'cause I have a little niece now that I'm thinking about Disney stuff, but I remember the synaesthesia of flavors of like say like a fatty nut meets a berry and literal explosions that go up in someone's head.

I know there's a fine science and you have people like J. Kenji López-Alt, who I'm actually not a major fan of; he somehow become a Seattle major influencer. I do not like his somewhat ultra scientific approach to food, and I also hate him because he has a negative opinion about Seattle teriyaki, which is like our regional food, so that pisses me off to no end.

You just triggered an interesting food thought for me, but it's like, you know, outside from Mexican and Italian food, the Seattle teriyaki is like an IMPORTANT THING.

Like, yeah, it's actually a fading thing like here and it's actually very complex people are like, oh, it's Japanese food. It's actually not, it's Hawaiian, but it's Korean, but it's Japanese: it's actually all three of these things mixed together, and they're actually fading away from Seattle, which is a damn shame, 'cause it used to be an affordable meal that paupers and princes alike all enjoyed here in Seattle.

Like growing up was very common to see hamburger and teriyaki, Chinese food and hamburger and teriyaki like Mexican teriyaki, these are things that I've legitimately seen growing up in Seattle and I love that fusion of culture. Like this unabashed fusion combination– it's probably a metaphor for something of myself, but I really like that part of it.

Yeah. But but yeah, I think I actually strangely get passionate about the subject of teriyaki.

Ice Queen: Unlocked a little level in there!

Vincent: You did! I'm like, huh? You've triggered something. I remember this, like, it's not just all Mexican and Italian things–it's like the Asiatic food of my childhood is important too with eating Japanese food and Korean food here in the greater Northwest.

Ice Queen: Oh, I love that. Okay, so this questions is more into the actual physical act of cooking. Do you bake or cook a lot? And then how, and when did you get into it?

Vincent: Oh you know, I actually enjoy probably grilling most of all. It's one of those things I really just have like a knack for. I'd say my wife's a better baker and she's a better like by the book cook, but I like, I just like maintaining heat over an open flame.

So I'm maintaining food over an open flame. Be it vegetables, protein substitute, just anything like that. I notice that people are so afraid of the grill and I don't know why maybe it's because it is very high heat and you have to like regulate things very carefully.

There's just a big joy of bringing in a plate full of like mixed grill and roasted vegetables of eggplant and summer squash and asparagus. I really enjoy that, but, like mole, I also enjoy any dish where it gets to sit all day long and fill the house with the smell. Give me those big guisados that just like bubble and boil over all day long.

Ice Queen: Okay. This is where we get serious [Note: no it is not]: If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

Vincent: Fuck. What would I eat for the rest of my life? What is like the thing I do not think twice about? Honestly, I'm a really simple person at the end of the day, but I really like Mesquite grilled chicken with you know, refried beans and rice. I think I had it like two days ago and I could definitely easily have it.

One of the coolest parts of this neighborhood is sometimes in Fall, there's actually like Mexican grocery stores that create, like they do the pollo al carbon open flame outside and you can smell it wafting in. And I'm like, well, I know what I wanna have for dinner.

It's a very simple classic meal, but if it's an everyday thing, I could definitely have some every day.

Ice Queen: So then this is the second part of that question: What is a food that you've tried so hard to like, and you just don't?

Vincent: Oh, that is a really good question. 'Cause I do not dislike much. I'm trying to think what are some unpopular foods? Okay. This is gonna blow your mind. Maybe as someone who's partially Italian.

What of my least favorite kinds of food is actually an olive. I'll eat them if they're there, and sometimes they sound good after some drink– everything sounds especially good then, but otherwise the olives like are just really something I just can't do. Ugh!

Ice Queen: Oh, they're so gross to me. It doesn't matter if it's a black olive, a green olive, like, no, I can't, I can't do it.

Vincent: Oh, also the second one, and I only think it's 'cause I had a bad experience as a kid: it's cottage cheese. I think I took, as a kid, a bite of a rotten bit of cottage cheese and I was done.

I will never eat this again. My wife swears by it and that I would actually enjoy it now that I'm more of a healthy eater but I'm like, I just simply can't do it.

Ice Queen: I mean that makes total sense to me. Okay, I know you have an event you need to get ready for so we'll end it here after our last question: what are some of your favorite literary magazines to submit to currently or read?

Vincent: Oh, that is a really, really good question. So actually one of my favorites that I keep trying and trying to get into because I really enjoy it is the Los Angeles Review. That is one of my absolute favorites. Blue Mesa Review was another one that I've really enjoyed for quite some time.

One I did get into recently was Quarterly West. Let's see...trying to think of some other ones. Who's declined me?

Ice Queen: Yes. Let's gettem! Shame them! [Laughs]

Vincent: No, no, no, no shame. You know how it is! I really enjoy New Ohio Review, I actually think I have a subscription to them. Oh, X-R-A-Y, I like them for flash fiction actually quite a bit! Yeah. And this is just a classic one. I really enjoy Brevity. I love flash creative nonfiction so much, it's something I've only recently started to try out myself, because what is poetry? What is poetry and fiction? It's all just the same people are so genre specific and I'm like, oh fuck that.

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Vincent Antonio Rendoni (he / him / his) is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Dead Chicano Mixtape (Red Hen Press, 2027) and A Grito Contest in the Afterlife (Catamaran, 2022), winner of the Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets as selected by Dorianne Laux. His work has appeared in AGNI, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Quarterly West, and december.

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Erin Armstrong has an MFA from CU-Boulder and is the editor-in-chief of Ice Queen Magazine. Her works are published in The Citron Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Banango Street, New World Writing and elsewhere.

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