THE LATE, GREAT HAROLD RAMIS

I sing of filmic talent Harold Ramis,
Who for his comic genius was quite famous.
His soul, departing, found its way to Hades:
Far from the ideal place to charm the ladies.
And yet he faced his fate direct and square-on,
For when he met that vulgar Boatman, Charon,
Addressing him with breathless, laughing screams,
He said, “Is that the Styx? Don’t cross that stream!”


Harold Ramis, 1944-2014. Requiescat in pace.

Harold Ramis, jokester for a generation, has passed away at the age of 69.

Along with Chris Miller and the late Doug Kenney (one of the founders of the National Lampoon Magazine), Ramis wrote the script for Animal House, the first of many brilliant comedies. Whether acting, writing, directing, or producing, he left his imprint on some of the most memorable filmic comedies of the past four decades. Ghostbusters, Stripes, Groundhog Day, Caddyshack, and Back to School are but a few.

The man was brilliant. I’ll miss him, now that the Ghostbuster has become a ghost himself.

Ave atque vale, Harold! Alas that you have one more stream to cross: the Styx.

SIMPLICITY

When it comes to Breakfastly Breads, is there anything that quite compares with a toasted English muffin, its myriad nooks and crannies adrip with melted butter?

Sure, some swear by their cinnamon buns... but those rely on sugar and spice to get the job done. An English muffin, though, is simplicity itself. And when they’re homemade and fresh off the griddle, why, so much the better.

HAVE A HEART

Science fiction?

No. Just new technology. Interactive live holography... brought to you by Israel.

Next time the assholes from BDS start talking about boycotting Israel - the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only country there that is remotely aligned with Western values - tell ’em that when they need heart surgery, they can’t use any of this.

Arthur C. Clarke once famously said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I think this just might qualify.

I SHOULD BE ASHAMED... BUT I’M NOT

Ancho Chile-Cinnamon Brownies.

I should be ashamed of myself for making these. Fortunately, I have no shame.

They're intensely chocolatey, with a nice cinnamon undertone and a pronounced burn from the ancho chile and cayenne pepper with which they are dosed. (Any four-year-old Aztec will tell you that chocolate and chile play well together. Now go out and find me a four-year-old Aztec.)

In case you’re curious, I have managed to give most of these bad boys away. I wanted to taste ’em, but I need a pile of brownies in the house like I need a third ass-cheek. And if I were to eat enough of ’em, I could very likely grow a third ass-cheek.

A VALENTINE VALEDICTORY

The estimable Velociman writes a Valentine’s Day tribute to his father, who passed away thirty years ago this day. Perversely enough, it was a myocardial infarction - a heart attack - that did him in.

The Senator has been the subject of many of V-Man’s finest writings. Though he has been portrayed as somewhat curmudgeonly from time to time (mostly for comic effect, I suspect), it’s clear to me that a deep and abiding filial love is at the root of every word.

“I see all these Valentine hearts, and they are wonderful. My dad had a heart almost big enough for the world, but far too big for him.”

Go read the whole thing.

A SOLITARY VALENTINICAL LAMENT

Valentine, circa 1938, from the collection of SWMBO’s late Daddy.

This Valentine’s Day is bittersweet, for my Valentine - variously known on these pages as She Who Must Be Obeyed, SWMBO, or The Missus - is away.

The various Fates that determine the school year calendar had set aside this four-day weekend to be a furlough period. The good news? You have a four-day weekend. The bad news? Your paycheck is gonna take a hit. And all this was before the second coming of Snowpocalypse 2014: thanks to the second major winter storm in two weeks, SWMBO had a one-day work week this week.

This gave her time to run off to Foat Wuth to visit her mom, who is celebrating a Major Birthday this year. Good times. But it means that I am apart from my sweetie, and that is, as they say, Tough Nougies.



I love my SWMBO, I really do. We’ve shared our lives now, either as brash young lovers or as a married couple, for some 38 years now... and she is still as beautiful to me as she was on the day we met. No: more so, because with maturity comes intelligence, confidence, and radiance; she is blessed with liberal doses of all three.

She has given me two children, the finest children I could ever desire, children that I would be proud to know even had we no blood relationship. My Other Valentines, if you will.

She’s not afraid to use a little salt in her food... and her language. She will go to the Kitchen Device Emporium with me to shop for colanders, even though she knows the nefarious uses to which I will put them. She makes me laugh... and she can make me cry like a baby.

I know I tend to repeat myself; it’s an affectation of Advanced Age. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: With my love, every day is Valentine’s Day.

THE MORNING AFTER

Ice-encrusted tree branches last night.


Morning. Snow, still falling, now blankets everything.


There’s still a thick layer of ice under that frosting of snow.

We sailed through Snowpocalypse II (2014 edition) just fine. No power loss, no trees down, no (major) branches cracked. Our magnolias, which at one point in the storm were swaying precariously, have lived to blossom another day.

The snow crunches underfoot, owing to there being a granular sleet and black ice underlayment. Nice.

She Who Must Be Obeyed essayed the roads a few minutes ago and managed to make it to Dunwoody with no problems. Of course, there are the usual idiots who drive like they’re on the Bonneville Salt Flats, but that cannot be helped.

Time to scrape the driveway. Then, it’ll be hot chocolate o’clock!

ON SLEET

Sleet - little pellets o’ doom - encrusting our steps.

The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella;
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just’s umbrella.

- Lord Bowen

The sleet it sleeteth on the South
And on the North as well;
But Southern roads enrimed with ice
Are a special form of Hell.

- Elisson

FEEDING THE BEHEIMAH

Between meals Stella naps, sprawled luxuriously.

Beheimah is the Hebrew word for domestic animals: horses, cows, oxen, and suchlike. (You may know it in the form of the biblical word Behemoth, the enormous land-based counterpart to Leviathan.) The Missus and I use it, tongue-in-cheek, to refer to smaller domestic animals as well. Cats, f’rinstance.

Back in the days when we owned a horse - yes, Esteemed Readers, the Elisson family actually owned a horse some fourteen-plus years ago - we would refer to the twice-daily task of lobbing a bale of hay into said horse’s stall and loading up the trough with oats as “Feeding the Beheimah.”

When we would arise in the early morning hours, the first question we would ask was, “Whose turn is it to feed the beheimah?” And one of us, dutifully, would run off to the stables.

Regardless of whose turn it was, though, there was an ironclad rule: You would feed the beheimah before you fed yourself. The horse, after all, cannot replenish his own trough; meanwhile, our cereal and coffee could wait.

These days, Stella is the only non-human mammal resident at Chez Elisson, and it has become her daily practice to inform us when Breakfast-Time has arrived. This she does by clawing at our coverlet, making a hard-to-ignore skritching sound. If that does not get our attention, she begins to paw at the headboard, or to march around on the bed meowing piteously in her unique squeaky voice. And the Missus and I will turn to each other, asking simultaneously the traditional question: “Whose turn is it to feed the beheimah?”

It’s worth getting out of bed just to watch her galumph down the stairs, where she meows eagerly as I replenish her kibble and open the daily can of Meat-Goop. A well fed beheimah is a happy beheimah!

IT APPROACHES...

Yep - it’s the Frozombie Apocalypse, Part Two. Lookee:


Winter Storm Pax bears down on the southeastern United States... with Georgia right in its sights. The arrow points to our location. [Click to embiggen.]

The predictions are more dire than they were for our last wintry weather event, the two-inch snowstorm that brought a mighty metropolitan area to its knees a mere two weeks ago.

That was snow. This will be snow along with a metric buttload of ice, if the predictions are to be believed.

Thick ice is way, way worse than snow. It causes trees to bend and shatter under its weight, bringing down power lines. And it is a fearsome obstacle to all kinds of travel. In the NOAA’s words, “Winter Storm To Result In Impossible Travel Conditions With Widespread and Extended Power Outages.”

Impossible. Travel. Conditions. Holy fuckamoley.

I don’t mind being cooped up in the house. We have adequate provisions of food, drink, and Adult Beverages to get us through several days of inaccessible roadways. But ice storms bring with them the prospect of power outages, which are most assuredly NOT fun in the winter. We have a pretty robust power grid in the immediate neighborhood, but when you’re dealing with an “event of historic proportions” (as described by the fearmongers at the National Weather Service) you’re paddling in uncharted waters.

We’ve dealt with ice storms here before, the last one being nine years ago. And we’ve experienced them in other places as well: New York, Houston and southern Connecticut.

My first Icy Experience was in New York, with a storm that coated my car with a solid half-inch glaze. When I rolled my car window down, a completely intact “window” of ice remained in its place... it was completely impossible to drive even at a fraction of a mile per hour without sliding to the side of the road. (Those were flat streets, never mind the hills and curves of Atlanta.) And the day we began our relocation from Trumbull to Houston back in January 1991, an ice storm struck southern Connecticut. Somehow, the movers managed to get our belongings out of the house intact despite having to skate their way to the moving van.

Ice storms suck.

The good side of all this is that businesses and schools are being way more proactive than they were two weeks ago. The city will be shut down tomorrow. Hell, it was already mostly shut down today, with supermarket shelves having been stripped bare as early as Monday morning. (There was a run on hamburger meat and chicken, either because everyone was sick to death of bread and milk or because the paleo diet is more popular than anybody thought.)

To my fellow Georgians - hunker down and be safe. To everyone else - hope this doesn’t happen to you.

TEMPLE OF DOOM

Shirley Temple, 1928-2014. Requiescat in pace.

The Good Ship Lollipop has sailed for the last time: Shirley Temple Black (née Shirley Temple), who achieved fame as a child actress in the early 1930’s, has passed away at the age of 85.

The unfortunate tabloid headline “Black Death in California!” suggests itself.

Lovable, talented, and wholesome, Shirley Temple ruled the Hollywood box office for four consecutive years, a feat that seems inconceivable today for an adult, never mind a prepubescent. As an adult, she served as U.S. Ambassador to both Ghana and, later, Czechoslovakia, as well as Chief of Protocol of the United States, positions to which she was appointed under the Ford and first Bush administrations. Prior to her serving in those roles, she had been appointed Representative to the U.N. General Assembly by Richard Nixon.


Shirley Temple’s hand- and footprints in concrete outside the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. An almost identical image resides in the Elisson Archives, taken during my first trip to the west coast forty years ago. Photo credit: Wikimedia.

With some ginger ale, a splash of my homemade grenadine, and a maraschino cherry, I could make a Shirley Temple cocktail - a nonalcoholic drink, presumably suitable for child actors - and imbibe it in her memory. Alternatively, I could use ginger beer, a shot of rum, and a squirt of Luxardo maraschino liqueur to make the adult version: a Shirley Temple Black.

I will miss Shirley: She was, for one, my late grandmother’s namesake. Her films were already Old Stuff by the time I was of movie-watching age, but her films and impact on American popular culture were part of the backdrop of the world in which I grew up. As time moves on apace, more and more of the pieces of that backdrop are disappearing into the Eternal Night that awaits us all, alas.

Ave atque vale, Miss Temple! Godspeed... and may your voyage on the Good Ship Lollipop be forever sweet.

Update: Kevin Kim weighs in with his own tribute.

Update 2: Meryl Yourish adds hers.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...

It was fifty years ago yesterday that the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and changed American pop culture forever.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to write a post on this subject, given that everyone on the planet with an internet platform, blog, Facebook or Twitter account, or Big Chief pad is weighing in with their nostalgic memories of the Big Event... but why not? After all, I was there to see it.

In February 1964 I was in sixth grade. The tragedy of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, less than three months before, was still fresh in everyone’s mind. The eagerly anticipated opening of the New York World’s Fair was still over two months away. And suddenly, in the midst of the winter, these effervescent British boys showed up, radiating enthusiasm and light.

I had no idea who the Beatles were; at the time, I was completely oblivious to popular music. But there was all kinds of buzz having to do with the arrival of the group in the States, mostly being passed along from one pubescent girl to another. It seemed like that was all anyone wanted to talk about. The Beatles! They’re gonna be on Ed Sullivan!

The Ed Sullivan Show was, at the time, a Sunday evening staple, the quintessential exemplar of the Television Variety Show, a genre of entertainment that has completely vanished from our airwaves. Today, cable, satellite, and streaming Internet television offer whatever kind of narrowcasted entertainment you might wish, served up on a ridiculous plethora of channels. But try to imagine what it was like with only three major networks, when broadcast signals floated through the ether without cables and satellites to help them. Then, you didn’t have whole channels devoted to 24/7 sports, or news, or cooking, or cartoons, or music, or home renovations. You watched what was on, whatever the hell it was. And if that happened to be a variety show, you had a veritable three-ring circus of vaudeville-style entertainment, from stand-up comedians to musical acts to jugglers to ventriloquists. Like the weather in Texas or Georgia, if you didn’t like it, all you had to do was wait five minutes and you’d have something different. Ed Sullivan was the king of variety, an impresario from whom a single word could determine whether an entertainer would flop or become a household name.

Like millions of other families, the House of Eli would have the TeeVee Set tuned to Ed Sullivan on any given Sunday evening. And on February 9, 1964, I made sure I was parked in front of that set, although I didn’t really know what to expect.

And then Ed announced them... “Ladies and gentlemen... the Beatles!”

As the group launched into “All My Loving,” my first thought was, “Hey, these guys aren’t bad!” They certainly didn’t sound quite like anything I had heard before. The lyrics weren’t what grabbed me as much as the somewhat off-kilter melodies. As they played on, I grew more and more fascinated with this new (to me) sound. Damn catchy, it was! By the time they got to “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” I had decided that I really liked the Beatles. At the time, of course, I didn’t realize that they would practically rebuild popular music and transform the culture of the 1960’s to an unprecedented degree. (How many of us did?)

The band’s breakup in 1970 coincided roughly with my graduation from high school. My old life was ending and a new one was on the verge of beginning; it was, perhaps, an appropriate time to say farewell to the group that provided so much of the soundtrack for my coming-of-age years.

But we never really have said farewell, have we? Two of the boys are gone forever, but their music lives on. And against the backdrop of the ages, fifty years is but a drop in the bucket.

SOUPSUAL HARISSMENT

Campari tomatoes with lemon zest, capers, and fleur de sel.

The Missus and I had ourselves a pleasant little Sunday evening repast... just the two of us.

Nothing too complicated. I dug a couple of rib-eye steaks out of the bowels of our freezer (now, there’s a metaphorical image for you!) and defrosted them prior to giving them a preliminary roast in the oven.  (Par-cooking the steaks made it an easy matter to finish them off on the grill to our exact specifications.)

By way of sides, I hacked some Campari tomatoes into quarters and dressed them with a little lemony olive oil, lemon zest, capers, and fleur de sel. We also had a bunch of asparagus lurking in the vegetable drawer, so I roasted that off and doctored it up with lemon zest and nutmeg... one of my go-to ways to fix those tasty little spears.

And then there was the soup. Every so often, it’s nice to have soup with supper - sometimes it will serve as the entire meal - and when I saw this recipe for spicy carrot and ginger soup with harissa, I had to give it a try. The photo alone was enough to sell me... plus, I had a couple of cans of harissa lying around in the pantry, begging to be used for something more than shelf decorations.

Harissa is a North African condiment - especially popular in Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, and Israel - consisting of ground up chile peppers and spices. It’s a Middle Eastern version of sambal or sriracha, and it can range in intensity from piquant to nuclear furnacelike. It’s the kind of stuff that attracts my attention when wandering the aisles of the Weird Food Emporium.

I have an unfortunate tendency to buy exotic ingredients in the expectation of cooking something that momentarily catches my interest... or to have around “just in case.” As a result, I’m prepared for almost anything. Also as a result, I have to go through the pantry every so often and chuck stuff that has sat around for multiple shelf lives.

I had two (count ’em!) cans of harissa paste hiding in the pantry. One of them was bulging suspiciously, and when I looked at the “Best By” date, it was something in early 2006. Out it went. Fortunately, I had another tin, this one of much more recent vintage... and better yet, it wasn’t bulging. That’s the one I used.


Spicy carrot and ginger soup with harissa... soupsual harissment at its finest.

How was it? Damn good. The flavor of the carrots was front and center, with warm spices and just the right amount of tongue-tingling burn from the harissa. It was a fine first course, setting the stage nicely for that tasty, meaty rib-eye. 

With a bottle of 2000 Terre Blanche du Château Tourans Saint-Émilion Grand Cru to accompany our beefy feast, we had a perfectly lovely Sunday. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow comes the ice storm!

THE PREACHER

He came from a hamlet in rocky Tibet
In a robe dyed with saffron and perfumed with sweat.
A friend to both Man and to humblest Beast,
He taught the deep secrets of flour and yeast
Because full well he knew that to get into Heaven
A soul must be nourished by grain and by leaven.

He tackled the tasks of his life unafraid,
And daily he made eggy bread with a braid,
With twists and with turns like a cloth on a loom:
(He’d bake half a dozen; his oven had room.)
That oven was kept hot by regular rations
Of firewood, dried by the heat of his passions
For peace and for love, the cessation of violence
And an end to disease, thanks to medical science.

He preached Bread and Peace, without one speck of drama:
This Tibetan sage, AKA Challa’i Lama.

COLANDER HEAD FRIDAY

Darth Elisson.

I don’t care that blogging is dead -
I just wear a colander on my head!

Today we present Darth Elisson, who (courtesy of Houston Steve) is sporting a natty black plastic model that vaguely resembles the topper worn by Dark Helmet in Spaceballs.

We are pleased to note that the latest Cook’s Illustrated magazine showed up in our mailbox yesterday evening. Just in time for Colander Head Friday, the March/April 2014 issue featured an in-depth review of colanders [subscription required to see the full results], a video extract of which we are pleased to present herewith:



I’ve always liked Cook’s Illustrated. Their exhaustively tested recipes rarely disappoint, and now that they have enshrined the Pasta Strainer in their sacred pages, I am even willing to forgive them their ridiculously aggressive marketing tactics. My only complaint - and it is, admittedly, a trivial one - is that they evaluated colanders based only on their pasta straining functionality without regard to their utility as Perforated Headgear. Comfort counts too, ya know!

Ahh, well. Baby steps.

ON THE PITFALLS OF BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY

SWMBO has a FitBit.
But SWMBO’s FitBit quit.
Shit.
Now she’s in a snit, ’cause her FitBit quit.
Hope she doesn't throw
A “My FitBit Quit” shit fit.

TOLKEIN WEPT

LOTR gets the Trololo Treatment. Stupid, yet strangely amusing.

TRAINING

Stella strikes a regal pose on the loveseat in our sunroom.

She’s the queen of all she surveys:
She eats, she shits, she plays.
And when she gets all tired out
She plops right down and lays.

Stella’s life has settled down into a comfortable routine, especially now that she has her humans trained.

Sometime between 5:30 and 6:00 in the morning, she will make her presence known by attacking our feet through the covers. If this fails to get our attention, she will then commence to wandering all over our bed, making her squeaky little meowing sounds. Next up: pawing the headboard. Why, I do believe it’s time for Kitty-Breffus!

A playful one, this Stella. Walk into the sunroom where the kitty fishing pole is kept - a whiplike affair with a mylar doodad on the end, completely irresistible to cats - and Stella will inform you that it is time to entertain her.

She is getting stronger, too. She can now leap up on the kitchen counters in a single bound. This is an activity we strongly discourage... and yet it is hard to stifle an amused chuckle whenever we catch her in the act.

THE PHILOSOPHER: A 100-WORD MONOLOGUE

Martin Buber once took a trip to Aruba.

He had come to Aruba via Cuba, where he had learned to play the tuba.

But in Aruba, he discovered two foods that would change his life.

The first was arugula. Buber discovered what salad lovers have known for years: You’ve never had really good arugula until you’ve had Aruban arugula. Buber would devour arugula while learning the bugle.

The second was rugelach. Aruban rugelach was exceptional... and Martin Buber dug rugelach.

Picture it: Buber, after playing tuba in Cuba, would eat Aruban arugula and rugelach while learning to blow the bugle.

SUPERB OWL

Brie with IPA-habañero jelly... the perfect food for a cheese-eating surrender Bronco.

This year’s Super Bowel was singularly unexciting, what with the Seattle Seahawks dragging the Denver Broncos straight to the glue factory. Peyton Manning will probably be having nightmares about this game for years, alas.

Even the commercials mostly sucked. (OK, there were one or two good ones, but there’s something perverse about deriving any enjoyment whatsoever from advertising.)

But we didn’t give a crap, because we had gaboons of food and a small mob of friends to share it with. Two kinds of chili (chicken and beef); two kinds of bread (whole-grain sourdough and Southern-style cornbread); a metric buttload of meatballs in the traditional grape jelly-Heinz chili sauce gravy; Ro-Tel dip; a hunk of Brie carved to look like a football and buried in IPA-habañero jelly... and lots, lots more.

Just so you know: The Missus, being from Texas, knows her way around the chili pot.

(I will own up to having made a dish that resembled a Bad Brain, a whole cauliflower head slathered in a spicy sauce and then roasted. It was, emphatically, Not A Success... unless you define a successful dish as one that tastes like ass. Burning hot ass.)


A skillet full of Southern-style cornbread.


White bean and chicken chili (top); beef chili (bottom). Mmmmm, chili.

We will be eating leftovers for the foreseeable future.

GROUNDHOG DAY

©2006 King Features Syndicate.

Yes, Groundhog Day. The day on which we ask the famous question, “How much ground could a groundhog hog if a groundhog could hog ground?”

You would think that Groundhog Day is a singularly American holiday, steeped as it is in Local Color, Historical Tradition, and More Than A Little Utter Silliness. Think about it: a day on which a large rodent is expected to predict the weather based on its paranoid reaction to Conditions of Illumination. And as if Punxsutawney Phil weren’t enough, down here in Georgia we have our own General Beauregard Lee to do the predictin’ honors. Gaaah.

But, ridiculous as Groundhog Day may be, we Americans don’t hold the patent on silly-ass animal-based holidays. Herewith, for your delectation, Lost in the Cheese Aisle presents an overview of...

Groundhog Day Observances Around the World

Canada
The Canadian equivalent of Groundhog Day is Muskrat Day, March 1. If “Inuvituk Izzie” sees his shadow, no maple syrup may be consumed until the Queen’s Birthday.

Germany
Domestik-Schweinestag is observed on March 15. A randomly-selected domesticated pig is taken outside. If it sees its shadow and squeals, it is promptly slaughtered, smoked, and eaten in the form of Rauch-Schinken (smoked bacon) to prevent malevolent Teutonic spirits from lodging in people’s hair.

Tanzania
Tanzanians celebrate Banana Slug Day on July 10. If Blinky the Banana Slug does not return to his habitation promptly after being coaxed from it, people refrain from eating bananas for six weeks. At the same time, they are encouraged to slug one another repeatedly and without obvious provocation.

India
The closest Indian equivalent of Groundhog Day is Cow Day, observed every freakin’ day of every year. If you see a cow, you are expected to get the hell out of its way. You are never expected to eat the cow. By observing Cow Day properly, Indians are assured of having twelve months of suffocating humidity, heat, and monsoons. As usual.

Know of any other interesting international holiday traditions? Leave a comment and tell us all about ’em!

[Originally published on February 2, 2005 at Blog d’Elisson, this post gets resurrected periodically... just like Bill Murray’s character in the movie Groundhog Day.]

DOWN WITH THE SLICKNESS

We’re in the early stages of what they call a Winter Weather Event here in north-central Georgia, with the ground (and roads) getting covered in an ever-thickening layer of slick white stuff.

The local schools have released their inmates students early, clogging the roads with panicked mommies and daddies who now need to schlep Junior home where he can enjoy his video games and hot cocoa in lieu of his education.

The aforementioned clogged roads are packed with idiots. Okay, that’s true on any randomly selected day, but the idiocy level hereabouts ramps up to an astonishing degree when there’s the most minimal suggestion of ice on the roads. Normal driving practices - don’t block intersections, for example - are kicked to the curb, exacerbating an already nasty situation.

Mark Twain is usually credited with the observation that “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” As if to prove him right with a vengeance, the media are providing their usual frantic running commentary. If boiled down to its quintessence, said commentary consists of various rephrasings of “It’s snowing and the roads are slicker than snot.”

We don’t get snow very often around these parts, at least not enough to accumulate. The public works departments are ill-equipped to handle jobs like sanding and salting the roads, much less plowing them after a snowfall. (“Whutchew think this is, Spud... Chicago?”) Combine that with a goodly supply of hills and curves, and you have every reason to simply hunker down in place... much as we had to do in Foat Wuth after the infamous ice- and snowstorm that struck on December 5, not quite eight weeks ago. Hey, it’ll melt eventually.

“When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” Herman Wouk’s advice is clearly being heeded by the thundering hordes who even now are scouring the supermarket shelves for the basic Snowstorm Emergency Supply Pack: bread, milk, and toilet paper. But not us. I can bake any bread we might need, and the Missus and I don’t drink milk. We have enough Tee-Pee to house a whole tribe of Native Americans. So the usual panicked last-minute foraging is unnecessary. Too late for that anyway.

A nice pot of lentil soup and a few tots of whisky, and I do believe we can weather the storm.

Postscriptum: The Cobb County schools declared an early dismissal, but they may have waited a tad too long. By the time the middle schoolers were released, the buses were having a tough go of it... slowing matters down yet more. It was closing in on 4:00 pm when The Missus was finally able to leave, by which time the roads were completely buggered. Being of sound mind and body, she decided to walk home rather than take her chances in the car. She managed to make the 2½ mile trip on foot in less than 55 minutes. (Meanwhile, horror stories of 6+ hour homeward journeys and of people camped out in Waffle Houses began to pour in.)

Now that we’re both home, I am prescribing roasted salmon, roasted Brussels sprouts with capers and balsamic-soaked dried currants, lentil soup with beef kielbasa, and lashings of High West Campfire.

Postscriptum the Second: Rather than hitting hardest south of the metro Atlanta area, the storm struck the city head-on with not all that much snow, but with horrendous icing conditions. Coupled with hilly topography, snaky roads, and enormous amounts of (routine) truck traffic through and around the city, all that iciness created a traffic clusterfuck of epic proportions. The last time we saw anything like this was in January of 1982 - the infamous SnowJam. (The winter storm of January 2011 - dubbed Snowpocalypse - dumped more snow on us, but the city seemed to be more prepared for it.) But looking at the photos and hearing the stories, I’m thinking that SnowJam 2014 has exceeded them all.

Postscriptum the Third: Atlanta brought to its knees by a two-inch snowfall? Har dee har har. The Daily Show weighs in...

South Parked, indeed. Hothlanta. The Frozombie Apocalypse. Take your pick.

DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Eli the Goat - one of the Mistress’s charming handcrafted finger puppets.

Some time ago, I wrote a post that described the vaguely remarkable fact that my posterior is removed by only two degrees of separation from those of Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy. Strange, but true.

As the Missus and I were watching Downton Abbey last night - yes, Esteemed Readers, I do watch Downton Abbey - we both realized that we are, in like wise, connected with Masterpiece Theatre host Laura Linney.

It seems that Miss Linney collects needle-felted finger puppets - specifically, the ones hand made by the Mistress of Sarcasm. It’s a thin sort of connection, but nevertheless, it exists. Two degrees of separation once again.

Appropriately enough, Miss Linney’s earliest acting credit was in the 1990-92 period, when she was an understudy in a stage production of - what else? - Six Degrees of Separation. How ’bout dat?

JANUARY GUILD EVENT

The Atlanta Sommelier Guild kicks off its 2014 schedule with an event that celebrates “wintry reds and hearty fare” at a restaurant that is new to me: Au Rendez Vous Bistro in Chamblee.

Good red wines are usually inducement enough, but what sold me on this event was the fact that the evening’s offerings included duck (twice!) and rabbit. I’m all about the duckies and bunnies. Check out the menu:

2009 Woodward Canyon Chardonnay - Columbia Valley, Washington*
Rillette de porc with pickles and French bread

2010 Tensley Camp Four Blanc - Santa Ynez Valley, Central Coast, California**
Vegetable crêpe

2003 La Barroche Châteuneuf-du-Pape - Rhône, France*
2011 Domaine Lafage Tesselae Old Vines - Languedoc Roussillon, France**
2011 Lesec Les Galets Blondes Châteuneuf-du-Pape - Rhône, France***
Aubergine gratinée - roasted eggplant with tomato sauce, beef, spices, topped with cheese

2006 Karl Lawrence Cabernet Sauvignon - Napa, North Coast, California***
Canard et gésier sautés au vin rouge - duck, turnip, onion, herbes de Provence, red wine, brandy

1994 Chappelle Laurette Madiran - France**
1995 Château Montus Madiran - France
Cassoulet - duck confit, pork sausage, and white beans cooked in tomato sauce and fine herbs

2002 Mitolo G.A.M. Shiraz (screw cap closure) - McLaren Vale, Australia***
2002 Mitolo G.A.M. Shiraz (cork closure) - McLaren Vale, Australia
Lapin rôti à la sauce moutarde - rabbit in mustard sauce with herbs and brandy

Rare Wine Company New York Malmsey Special Reserve Madeira****

Lagniappe:
1990 Domaine De Cambes - Bordeaux, France***
2000 Château La Croix Martelle Grande Réserve - Minervois La Liviniere, France**
2007 Marquis Philips Cabernet Sauvignon - McLaren Vale, Australia**

I’ll probably pick at the eggplant - the stuff gives me instant heartburn, so I generally avoid it - but that won’t keep me from enjoying the wines that go with it, or all the other goodies. Duck! Duck! Rabbit! Yow!


The long table set up for our event at Au Rendez Vous.

Update: Good Gawd, I ate enough duckies and bunnies to depopulate a Disney cartoon. We’ll have to come back to this place during regular dining hours. Regular menu prices are reasonable to the point of outright frugality, and the food is well prepared French home cooking.

The two Mitolos were tasted blind, i.e., we were not told which one had the screw cap and which the cork until after we had declared our preferences. The overwhelming favorite (mine as well) was the screw cap version, which tasted bright and young despite its tannins having been smoothed out by over eleven years in the cellar.

COCKTAIL DU JOUR

The Bijou Cocktail... a real gem.

Today’s tipple is a veritable jewel: the aptly named Bijou Cocktail.

I like a gin-based cocktail, and I have found that gin pairs very well with green Chartreuse, the powerful herbal liqueur created by Carthusian monks in the early eighteenth century. (Last Word, anyone?) So when this bad boy caught my eye on the Serious Eats site a few weeks ago, I added it to my drinky To Do list.

1 ounce London dry gin
1 ounce sweet vermouth
1 ounce green Chartreuse
1 dash orange bitters

An alternative version, in case the alcoholic punch and herbaceous pong of the Chartreuse are too much for you, is this:

1½ ounces London dry gin
½ ounce sweet vermouth
½ ounce green Chartreuse
1 dash orange bitters

It is a real gem, this drink, with the rich color of topaz. And the taste? Wow, just wow. May I suggest you try one at the earliest opportunity.

WINSTON, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

It’s the 49th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s passing.



They don’t make ’em like ol’ Winnie any more. [Little-known fact: She Who Must Be Obeyed is thought to be a distant relative, through Churchill’s mother.]

A CONVERSATION WITH THE ETERNAL ONE

Let us be thankful for everyday miracles... and the Unseen Hand that helps us get through every day.

Me: God, can I ask You a question?

God: Sure!

Me: Promise You won’t get mad... or wax wroth, or whatever it is that You do?

God: I promise.

Me: Why did You let so much rotten stuff happen to me today?

God: What do you mean?

Me: Well, first off, I woke up late.

God: Yes...

Me: And then, my car took forever to start.

God: Okay...

Me: At lunch they screwed up my sandwich - got the order completely wrong and, on top of that, I had to wait while they made me a new sandwich.

God: Hmmm...

Me: On the way home, my cellphone went dead just as I picked up an important call.

God: All right...

Me: To top it all off, when I got home I just wanted to soak my feet in my new foot massager and relax... but the darn thing wouldn't work! Nothing went right today! Why did You do all that to me?

God: Well, let’s see. This morning before you got up, the Angel of Death was at your bedside and I had to send one of My angels to battle him for your life. But I let you sleep through all that... it would’ve just gotten you upset.

Me (humbled): Oh.

God: I didn’t let your car start because there was a drunk driver on your way to work. He probably would have hit you if you had been on the road.

Me (ashamed): Oh.

God: The first person who made your sandwich today was sick and I didn’t want you to catch his stomach virus - I knew you couldn’t afford to miss work and spend the next three days throwing up.

Me (embarrassed): Okay.

God: Your phone went dead because the person that was calling was going to lie to your boss about what you said on that call. I’m not a big fan of giving false witness, so I didn’t even let you talk to him. Saved you some trouble at the office.

Me (softly): I see, Lord.

God: Oh, and that foot massager? It had a short circuit that was going to blow the GFI... but your GFI was defective, so you would’ve been electrocuted instead.

Me (horrified): Really? I’m so sorry I doubted You, Lord...

God: Naw, not really. That last one? I was just fucking with you. Sometimes I like to mess with people just to see ’em get pissed off. So sue Me.

[Lifted - sorta - from Facebook.]

A CATOLOGICAL SCATOLOGICAL OBSERVATION

My feline life is mighty grand:
I pinch a loaf onto the sand
Then dig a hole and bury it
That others may not smell my shit.

When Daddy’s in his litterbox
He pulls his pants down to his socks
And drops his load into the bowl
To flush it down a wat’ry hole.

O, Human! Life must be so bitter
To crap without some honest litter.

SPRINGSTEEN SQUARED

You just gotta love Jimmy Fallon.

Ohhh, I cannot wait for Jay Leno to get the hell out of Dodge. I might even start watching the Tonight Show once Fallon’s on board.

LEMON: A 100-WORD STORY

Miles Davis wanted a new sound.

Kind of Blue was a classic, and he had recently taken steps into electronica with his landmark A Tribute to Jack Johnson. But there was so much more he wanted to do. “How?” he wondered silently.

As he lay awake in bed, an unbidden memory of an old Our Gang comedy short came to him. In a flash, he knew just what to do.

Two weeks later, the group was in the studio to record Bitches Brew... with one extra.

“Kid, here’s a quarter. When I start playing, you start sucking on this lemon.”

[The Weekly Challenge topic at The 100 Word Stories Podcast is lemon.]

THE GIFTS OF GRAIN

The gifts of grain are as diverse as human imagination.

Grind the precious kernels into flour and you have the raw materials with which to make the Staff of Life: bread.
 

Two boules of pain au levain with whole wheat... my latest foray into whole-grain sourdough breadmaking.

Bread is alchemy, the seemingly magical transformation of various powders and liquids into something completely new. It never ceases to amaze me.


Mmmmm... bread. The perfect Butter Conveyance Device.

Another alchemical transformation is possible. Ferment the grain and then distill it, and you have Spirituous Liquors. Case in point: rye whiskey.

If you have a load of rye, you can do any number of things with it. You can sell it outright. It’s easily transportable, and as long as you keep it dry and away from insects and vermin, it will retain its wholesome character. You can add value by baking it into loaves of rye bread. Bread, however, has a limited shelf life, so an efficient distribution and marketing network is critical.

By converting your rye into whiskey, you solve the shelf life problem. Whiskey doesn’t spoil or go stale; it even improves while it is aging in the barrel. It’s also easy to transport. Now, that’s value-added!

If you have some rye whiskey sitting around, you should consider doing something useful with it. Why not make a Cocktail à la Louisiane?



The Cocktail à la Louisiane is a sweeter cousin of the Vieux Carré, one of several venerable tipples originating in old New Orleans. If you like that one, you’ll probably like this as well.

Cocktail à la Louisiane

¾ ounce rye whiskey (I splurged and used WhistlePig 100/100)
¾ ounce sweet vermouth (Carpano Antica works well, so would Punt e Mes)
¾ ounce Bénédictine
4 dashes Peychaud’s bitters
4 dashes absinthe (Herbsaint or Ricard also work)

Combine the ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker glass. Stir well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a maraschino cherry.

If you wish, drink your Cocktail à la Louisiane and eat a slice of bread... it’s a grainy twofer!

SUBSTITUTE

We like to gripe about how crappy the economy is, but even in the depths of the recession that struck in 2008, Americans, by and large, didn’t have it so bad.

Then, as now, millions continued to go to the House of the Evil Mermaid to purchase $4.50 lattes. But when times are tough, you don’t drink latte or cappuccino - you drink good old American coffee.

And when times are really tough, coffee becomes hard - or impossible - to get. That’s when coffee substitutes start getting popular.

Any number of substances can be used to stretch a meager supply of coffee, or to replace it outright. Roasted chicory root is probably one of the better known coffee extenders, having been a mainstay of Louisiana cuisine for years... probably owing to coffee shortages during the War Between the States. And C. W. Post made a fortune selling Postum, an instant beverage made from wheat bran, wheat, molasses, and corn-based maltodextrin. Postum was not marketed as a coffee substitute but rather as a healthier, caffeine-free alternative to coffee... which made sense, because it in no way tasted like coffee. It was unique; I liked it and would go through periods of weeks when I would even prefer it to other hot beverages.

Coffee substitutes are still popular in Germany, possibly due to a perverse nostalgia for World War II food scarcity. The generic German term for ersatz coffee - Muckefuck - is amusing to the English speaker, but it is no more than a corruption of the French expression mocca faux - fake coffee.


Take that, muckefucker!

These days, I’ll enjoy the occasional cup of French Market coffee with chicory - it’s a tasty version of my favorite hot drink, best made strong enough to stand a spoon in. But no way will I tolerate substitutes for my other favorite hot beverage: chocolate. Lips that touch carob shall never touch mine!

MARK YOUR COLANDERS...

...and be sure to make note of Thursday, January 2, 2014, the date on which Perforated Headgear achieved a new level of respectability in the great State of New York.

It was on that date that Christopher Schaeffer, a practicing member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (just what those practices are, who can say?) was sworn in as a member of the Pomfret Town Council while wearing his religiously mandated colander.


“‘Strainer’ things have happened.” Christopher Schaeffer is sworn in as a member of the Pomfret Town Council while wearing a colander, the Pastafarian version of a yarmulke. [OBSERVER Photo by Greg Fox.]

A few years back, there was a bit of a stir when an Austrian gentleman insisted upon being photographed for his driver’s license whilst wearing a pasta strainer. The courts eventually agreed with him on the basis that his wearing a Holey Chapeau was dictated by his religious beliefs... and that he was psychologically fit to exercise same.

The struggle to extend the religious legitimacy of the Church of the FSM has now reached our fair shores, with the Town of Pomfret in the lead.  Pomfret, which lies on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie roughly midway between Buffalo, New York and Erie, Pennsylvania, has shown itself to be a community that welcomes those with unorthodox spiritual views, a positive sign in my not-so-humble opinion. Pastafarians everywhere, rejoice!

As for me, I need no religious approbation in order to wear a noodle strainer on my own noodle... for I am Captain Colander.

PANIC AND PREPAREDNESS

“When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.” - Herman Wouk

It’s going to get really, really cold here tonight... maybe not by Antarctic standards, but certainly according to the norms of the region.

Five degrees Fahrenheit is pretty damned cold, especially for Georgia. We don’t see single-digit temperatures here all that often - maybe once every decade or so. But as it happens, five degrees is not much different from the weather we experienced in New York a few days ago, except up there the subfreezing temperatures were accompanied by a full-blown blizzard that dropped close to a foot of snow on much of Long Island. Yeef.


A wind-sculpted post-blizzard snowdrift.

That Arctic blast was pretty much the only thing the media were talking about for two days - not much different from the way they do things Down South - except that in New York and its surroundings the local infrastructure is actually geared up to deal with a dozen inches of snow. Here, all they can do is sand a few overpasses and hope everyone stays home.

Before that storm hit Thursday evening, we stopped by a local market to pick up a few necessities. Bread and milk - the usual suspects - were not on our list. It always fascinates me how bread and milk are pushed to the top of everyone’s Emergency Preparedness Rations list. When did carbs ’n’ casein become the mandated Go-To foods after the Snowpocalypse? People actually panic if their local stoopidmarket runs low on their Butter Conveyance Device inventory, as though there is nothing else available to eat during a snowstorm. It’s almost as bad as Christmas shoppers coming to blows over Tickle Me Elmo, this desperation to grab hold of a gallon of two-percent and ten loaves of Pepperidge Farm Honey Wheat.

[People also panic if supplies of toilet paper are thin on the ground before a big storm. This is a perfectly understandable concern: Nobody wants to be reduced to tearing pages out of their old telephone books (remember them?) when the household’s stash of bunwad runs dry, and the option of using wet washcloths is simply revolting. In such cases, conservation is the order of the day. We were blessed with adequate supplies, so we did not go into Tee-Pee Panic Mode.]

As for us, with our basket of goodies we were prepared to weather a lengthy stay indoors. Hot chocolate, roast chicken, peanut butter, various chunks of cheese, plenty of fruit and Greek yogurt, a bag of bagels, and an assortment of smoked fish... and the remnants of a (mostly unconsumed) handle of Scotch whisky should things get really desperate.

As it turns out, the great northeastern blizzard - Winter Storm Hercules, they called it - was mostly an overnight affair, and by mid-day Friday it was perfectly feasible to dig ourselves out and use the still-mostly-untraveled roads to pay a visit to Eli, Hizzownself at the Veterans Home. And by the time we headed home on Sunday, all we had to deal with were the normal mobs of frantic travelers at the tail end of Holiday Season.

When you’re prepared, there’s never any need to panic. The running in circles thing, though? That’s kinda fun.

Update:


Brrr!

QUARTERDAY

Today is my Quarter-Birthday.

I’m 61¼ years old today. Joy!

It is entirely appropriate to celebrate one’s Quarterday with a quarter of a birthday cake, an entire birthday cake being presumptuous, excessive, déclassé. In lieu of a quarter-cake, a cupcake or two is an acceptable substitute.

I will abstain from cake, however, now that the holidays are behind us. No, a simple meal at one of my favorite local restaurants will be just fine.

We’ve got reservations for two at Horsemeat ’n’ Waffles. I love the waffles - just the thing whether you want to go sweet or savory. The appetizers are to die for... but the manes are where the chef really shines.

TEE SHOT

The New Year stretches before me
Like a fairway at a golf course.
Surprises await:
Some good, some not so good.
Will my tee shot be errant or true?
Will I stroke my putts smoothly?
Will my ball find the short grass,
Or bury itself deep within a bunker,
Lose itself in the woods,
Or drown in the depths?

When I step up to the tee,
I have no idea what will happen.
I have only experience to guide me,
Along with vague knowledge of the laws of probability.
But nevertheless,
I needs must swing away.

2013 - AVE ATQUE VALE

Today is the last day of 2013.

It is the anniversary of the day - thirty-eight (count ’em!) years ago - on which I met the woman who would eventually become my one and only Missus... a story that, of course, merits its own post.  

Assisted by the relentless media disgorgement of “Best Of,” “Worst Of,” and “Who’s Dead Now?” lists, I tend to become reflective during the final days of each calendar year. Even better: As a Red Sea Pedestrian, I get to have two periods of maudlin navel-gazing every year - one for the Gregorian year and one for the Hebrew year.

It is a natural thing to do, I suppose, as we turn the leaf of the Calendar-Book. We reflect on what’s past while we look forward with eagerness (and no small degree of trepidation) to what is to come.

We had our share of heartache in the past twelvemonth. In early December, She Who Must Be Obeyed lost her stepfather, a sometimes sweet and often difficult man who had been part of our lives for over three decades. Our sweet little Ragdoll kitten Levon died suddenly and unexpectedly in June, an emotional body blow that is gradually healing thanks to the fuzzy ministrations of Stella, the newest feline member of the Elisson clan. Add to these personal losses the backdrop of other bereavements our family and friends have had to endure, and the passing of so many familiar faces of popular culture... suffice it to say that these days, I don’t ask a whole lot of questions about for whom the bell tolls, lest I get an answer I’m not gonna like. (I also don’t buy green bananas.)

Happy moments? Sure! This was the year, after all, that SWMBO celebrated a Significant Birthday (gentlemanly decorum forbids my being specific about the number) with a week-long debauch vacation in Las Vegas with Elder Daughter and a horde of our good friends, followed by an unrelenting stream of parties and other pleasant diversions. And we had the pleasure of the company of both our daughters at the one and only Thanksgivvukah to take place in our lifetimes.

As in years past, we have enjoyed the comfort of family and the warmth of friendship. We have dealt with the pleasant and unpleasant, both disappointments and happy surprises. We have managed to ride this blue marble for yet another trip around the Sun. And, in so many ways both great and small, we are blessed.

May 2014 bring you, Esteemed Reader, the good things life has to offer - health, happiness, love, safety, and success - without limit; and should any less-than-good things cross your path, may they be infrequent and insignificant. Happy New Year!

THE REPORTER: A 100-WORD STORY

Another day, another despotic hellhole, thought Quinn.

Despite his cool outward demeanor, he was nervous. The San Margol secret police had yanked him out of his hotel in the dead of night. It was obvious that certain government officials were unhappy with the last story he had filed. Now they were sweating him. Quinn didn’t think they’d stoop to torture, but who knew?

His inquisitor was delivering a lecture.

“If you want to dine on pressed duck, no problem. French press coffee, also no problem. We have freedom of the press here in San Margol... except for the printing press.”

NEW DIGS: A 100-WORD STORY

When the Missus and I decided to downsize, we bought a clownhouse in the city.

That’s right: clownhouse. Like a townhouse, but with clowns.

They issue you a rubber nose that also functions as your key. Squeeze once, the door opens. Squeeze twice to lock. Honk! Honk!

Closet racks are designed to accommodate grotesquely oversized shoes, of course. And the garage is big enough to hold two Volkswagens... along with the fifty-eight clowns that ride in them.

We loved the finished bozoment, but what finally sold us was the house of worship next door, presided over by Charlie the Chaplain.

[This is the 1000th post at Lost in the Cheese Aisle. Whoop-de-do!]

WELL COMPOSED

Quoth Stella: “I would rather be well composed than well composted any day.”

I call this particular composition “Cat Reclining on Antique Hitchcock Chair.” But “Kittizen Cane” works, too.

This could be a still life save for Stella’s twitching, switching tail.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

No, this is not who you think it is. It’s Eliyahu ha-Navi (Elijah the Prophet), who celebrates Passover every year by passing over all the world’s children in his magical sleigh-like chariot.

Tomorrow is Christmas, or as we Red Sea Pedestrians call it, “Wednesday.” We will celebrate the day in the tradition of our ancestors, by going out for Chinese food and seeing a movie.

In days past, these were activities that, on Christmas, would be practiced almost exclusively by us Jews. Lately, though, there has been a disturbing tendency on the part of the Christian population to indulge in these selfsame amusements.

I suppose the siren songs of the silver screen and of the steaming tureen of hot and sour soup cannot be denied, even as the freshly unwrapped presents litter the floor beneath the Christmas tree... but it does make it harder to secure restaurant reservations and theatre tickets. Whatever happened to staying home with the family and drinking yourself silly with eggnog and wassail?

Regardless of how you decide to spend the day, let me wish a healthy, peaceful, and most Merry Christmas to our Christian friends. (And save us a seat at the movies, OK?)

CURSES! RECURSION! or,HOUSTON STEVE’S TWO GRAND-DADS

Houston Steve and two old grand-dads. [Click to embiggen.]

This photograph amuses me no end.

Houston Steve is pictured here with a bottle of Old Grand-Dad bourbon that is old enough to be a Grand-Dad itself, having been distilled in 1959 and bottled in 1964... just in time for our friend Sid’s Bar Mitzvah, the occasion for which the bottle was purchased.

Alas, this particular Old Grand-Dad is now expired, having gone where all of our spirituous brethren eventually go. I am proud to say that I had a hand in hastening his demise... as did both Houston Steve and Sid.

But there’s another Old Grand-Dad in the photo, this one being Houston Steve’s very own grandpa. He’s the one wearing the Santa Claus suit in the picture displayed on the iPhone... and standing next to him is none other than the young (and beardless) Houston Steve.

As I said, this photograph amuses me no end.

COLOR ME SURPRISED

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” - Captain Renault, Casablanca

Phil Robertson, patriarch of the Robertson clan of Duck Dynasty fame, has been suspended from the show indefinitely by A&E based on comments he made in an interview with Drew Magary which was published in GQ.com. Comments like this:

“Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men... Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers - they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”



Robertson and family hail from outside Monroe, Louisiana, where the Missus, Elder Daughter, the Mistress of Sarcasm and I recently spent the night enroute back home from Texas. I was a frequent visitor to Monroe back in the days when I was employed by the Great Corporate Salt Mine, and I can tell you without much equivocation that it is not a bastion of, ahhh, progressive politics.  On the contrary, it is populated by a whole lot of people with decidedly conservative views. That Phil Robertson should speak of gays in the same breath as sheep-shtuppers and drunkards is about as surprising (to me, anyway) as the notion that the sun might rise in the east.

These views cannot have been a secret to A&E... but I suppose the issue is that Phil dropped them into an interview where they cannot be conveniently edited out, as they would no doubt have been had he voiced them during the shooting of a Duck Dynasty episode. It is a bit disingenuous for a television network to take a family of rednecks (albeit rednecks with more money than Gawd) and trot them out in front of the American public in the context of a reality show and expect people to believe they are something other than what they are.

Me, I’m not a big fan of shows like Duck Dynasty and Honey Boo-Boo. With the former, you can at least pretend you give a crap about the Robertson family - who have managed to become very successful entrepreneurs - but both smack of the same cringeworthy “Let’s make fun of these Country People” mentality. OK, Honey Boo-Boo and her family may indeed be worthy of ridicule, but still, there’s something patronizing about these Redneck Reality Shows that sticks in my craw.

Look, Phil is entitled to his views on religion and sin, and he is free to speak them at will despite the fact that I disagree with most of ’em. (The Bible that condemns male homosexuality as an “abomination” likewise considers the eating of swine’s flesh an abomination, yet I don’t see these folks rushing to avoid their bacon or country ham. Just sayin’.) At the same time, the good folks at A&E are free to fire Phil at their whim if they feel that his expressing those views might negatively affect their business interests: It’s their call. But they’re the ones who put Phil and his family on the Teevee Pedestal to begin with - teed them up, so to speak- so a little more forbearance on their part wouldn’t have been out of place.

But I do have a Modest Proposal.

I think somebody should create a new reality show featuring an entrepreneurial family - one that has made its fortune in the Marital Aids industry. You could call it Dick Dynasty.

(ba-dump-bump)

THE CHEESE AISLE DICTIONARY, Vol. 19

More stuff that should be in the dictionary but isn’t.

Long-time readers of my previous site may recall the Blog d’Elisson Dictionary, installments of which may be found in that site’s Archives. For other entries in the Cheese Aisle Dictionary, simply click on the sidebar link for Cheese-Dic.

And now, the Word of the Day:

peemuffin [pee-muf-fin] (n) - The solid mass resulting from combining cat urine and clumping litter.

“I just cleaned out the cat box this afternoon... Good Gawd, there must have been twenty pounds of peemuffins in there amongst the turds. Yecch!”

COCKTAIL DU JOUR

The Twelve Mile Limit cocktail.

I’m always looking for cocktail recipes that will allow me to use my stash of homemade grenadine syrup. The venerable Jack Rose cocktail, not to mention the somewhat more obscure Monkey Gland and Have a Heart, fit neatly into that category... and I was pleased to have found a recipe for yet another grenadine-fueled drink in my weekly e-mail from Serious Eats.

Presented for your delectation, the Twelve Mile Limit - a concoction of rum, brandy, rye whiskey, and grenadine that will scramble your brains like an egg if you get careless and have more than one. It is, despite its rosy color, not a Girly Drink, especially if you make it (as I do) with Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum.

Cheers!

YET ANOTHER WHACK AT CAPTAIN JACK

Fans of Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey - Stephen Maturin novels will be happy to know that Houston Steve and I have continued our tradition of hosting a dinner in the style of an early nineteenth century Captain’s Table. Our latest effort began this Saturday just past, at the customary eight bells of the afternoon watch... four o’clock post meridiem to you landlubbers.

All of the usual Foodly Suspects were in attendance: the Roast Beef of Olde England with individual Yorkshire puddings, the roast goose with giblet gravy, the Toasted Cheese, and the Christmas Pudding, the latter having been flambéed in brandy and doused with warm custard sauce. In addition, there was gravlax and caviar served upon blini, those tasty little buckwheat pancakes (OK, not especially British), accompanied by my homemade akvavit (also not especially British). And for the pièce de resistance, Eric had prepared a sticky toffee pudding... a classic dessert completely in keeping with the historical tone of the evening.

Of course, Jack Aubrey and his particular friend Dr. Stephen Maturin would not consider a dinner worthy of the name unless it was accompanied by prodigious amounts of wine, especially claret during the meal and sherry with the afters. And wine we had a-plenty:

2010 Château Saint-Sulpice Bordeaux Rouge
2010 Scala Dei Negre Priorat
2005 Opus One
1999 Château de Lescours Saint-Emilion Grand Cru
Taylor Fladgate 20-year-old tawny Porto

Priorat?  What might that be? many of my Esteemed Readers may ask. It is, in fact, a Catalan wine, the very first wine mentioned in O’Brian’s Master and Commander:

“Allow me to fill your glass,” said Jack, with the utmost benevolence. “This is rather better than our ordinary, I believe?”

“Better, dear joy, and very, very much stronger - a healthy, roborative beverage,” said Stephen Maturin. “ ’Tis a neat Priorato. Priorato, from behind Tarragona.”

Strong, indeed: at 14.5% ABV, this stuff had the alcoholic kick of a red Zinfandel, and plenty of body to spare. Completely appropriate as well, given Dr. Maturin’s combined Irish and Catalan ancestry. The one we had was produced at Scala Dei, a winery dating back to the twelfth century.

Of course, we also enjoyed some fine single malt Scotch: Bowmore 12-year-old, as well as a few wee drams of the legendary Mackinlay’s Shackleton Discovery Edition whisky... tipples that, while not contemporaneous with Captain Jack Aubrey and his associates, would certainly have been appreciated and thoroughly enjoyed by them.

Was it a fine evening? Yes, it was, thanks to excellent company and good food. And one of the most pleasant things about it is the voluminous pile of leftovers, which we shall be revisiting later this evening. ((discreet belch))

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

Separated at birth? Elisson and the late, great Sandy Becker in his Hambone character.

It’s amazing, the childhood memories that can be evoked by a nutjob in a pith helmet.

Anyone who was a kid in the New York area in the 1950’s and ’60’s will remember Sandy Becker, the legendary children’s entertainer. Alas, most of his shows are lost to the ages, as WNEW, the TV station for which he created, them did not realize what a gold mine the old tapes could eventually be.  Instead, they taped over almost every single one.

But we, we Children of New York, remember Sandy... and when we see a pith helmet, the first thing that comes to mind is Hambone.

Hambone was just one of Sandy’s creations, along with Norton Nork, K. Lastima, Arthur Arrowroot, and Dr. Gesundheit. The Hambone bits didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but who cared?

As skooldays.com describes it,

“One of the more memorable and bizarre characters in Becker’s lineup was the mad disc jockey Hambone, who danced to the song of the same name while dressed in a pith helmet with a long plume, goggle-like eyeglasses and a gaudy military uniform. Spouting nonsensical advice like, “Cut the grass so the ants can pass,” Hambone quickly became a fan favorite.”

It was ridiculous. It made no sense. It was completely dopey.

It was hysterical... at least, if you were a kid.



And you’d better believe that I think of Sandy whenever I put that pith helmet on.

POST-THANKSGIVING COMFORT

After the wretched excesses of Thanksgiving, there’s no better way to dispose of Turkified Remnants than by making a nice pot of soup. It’s an Elisson family tradition of long standing.

Green bean casserole... made from scratch.

Generally, Soup Night is the Sunday following the holiday. By that time, the turkey carcass is pretty well picked over and most of the other goodies - the sausage-rice dressing, the green bean casserole, the sweet potato pudding - have been devoured.

The soup starts with me taking the turkey carcass out of the fridge and busting it all to flinders before shoving it into a nice big stockpot, where it is joined by a pile of mirepoix - chunks of celery, carrot, and onion - along with a few cloves of garlic, some peppercorns and parsley stems, a bay leaf, a few sprigs of thyme, and cold water to cover. There was still plenty of meat on this carcass, and I still had on hand some of my chicken stock, packed with gelatin from all the chicken feet I had used, so there was flavor to spare. After a slow simmer for three or four hours, we had a big potload of rich turkey stock.

The next step was to strain the stock, removing all of the solids. Once those had cooled enough, I picked out all of the chunks of turkey meat, discarding the bones and vegetables. The meat went back into the stock, along with some diced carrots and parsnips. Back on the fire it went for another slow simmer.

After about a half hour, I threw in about a pound of lentils and (just for grins) a handful of barley to give the soup extra body. And then it was only about an hour before it was Soup o’Clock. Behold:


Turkey-lentil soup... perfect comfort food.

If this ain’t comfort food, I don’t know what is!

MINUTE BY MINUTE

Minute by minute
Day by day
How long we have
No one can say

We live, we breathe
We laugh, we play
And suddenly
We’re nought but clay

Minute by minute
Day by day
How long we have
No one can say

There’s nobody
That you can pay
To keep the Reaper Grim
Away

Minute by minute
Day by day
How long we have
No one can say

Whether you’re straight
Or whether you’re gay
You’ll hear the Apocalypse-Horsie
Neigh

Minute by minute
Day by day
How long we have
No one can say