Two in one day! Now with sprinkles!

Did Yoda really mean to mix up his words? Maybe he was just a little green dyslexic animal who regurgitated what he saw on his Dagobah soap operas. There. I’ve just dated myself. Personally, I think I put the sexy in dyslexic. Going to have a t-shirt made with that line, I am. Patent pending. I’ll sell it to Urban Outfitters. I’ll be rich! Have you ever watched one part of a VHS so many times that you wear out the tape? How long can you manage to suck on a hard candy before you just have to bite into it? I can always judge how well I’ve slept by how big the drool puddle is when I wake up.

There’s a wee digression for you. Shall we take a break? I can wait…..no I can’t. I found out during my week in Crete that perhaps, just maybe, redheads don’t have quite the patience I had hoped for. I mean, I didn’t wrench off a tree limb and start pounding someone into a bloody pulp, but I definitely needed a few “Serenity now” moments. Ah, the idea of beating someone senseless with an olive branch makes me laugh funny ha-ha. It’s almost depressing how excited I got at the sight of fava beans and spring peas growing in the wild. After all my years as a chef, the fact that I get so worked up by seeing these things exist naturally; It’s a sad reflection on the state of the world and how detached we are from our food. We spent a day with one chef, foraging in the hills for wild greens and herbs that we ate that night. Another day found us watching the chef of a seaside restaurant diving for sea urchins and octopus that we would eat, fresh, moments later. It makes me start to realize that I became a chef not just to learn how to cook, but to be closer to my food. We’re spoiled: we get to see fruits, vegetables, meat and fish in their entirety. Or at least in larger wax-treated boxes. I have spent hours trying to convert small groups into bone-in chicken-ites, but there will always be those who love that boneless, skinless chicken breast. You know, the one that you individually wrap in aluminum, and throw in your freezer, so you have a tasteless brick of frozen wannabe poultry to help fend off intruders? Or maybe you live in a safe neighborhood, and just use it when you power-walk in the morning? The possibilities are endless!

But I’m getting off topic. As a chef, I get to see things as they should be, more or less. So when even I become so taken by wild almonds and beans growing in the hills of Crete, I get scared for the rest of the world. Crete has a deep-rooted connection to their land, but you can already see this beginning to wear away at the edges, namely the scattered cities along its coast. “From dust to dust” is more than a line in Sunday church….we are part of the earth, and when we begin to lose that connection, we begin to lose part of ourselves.

And just so I can make this a more traditional random sandwich (Mmmm….randwich) rather than an awesome open-face sandwich that you proceed to drop on the floor, fun-side down, I shall end with this: I wish my pen caps were flavored. And had some whitening power as well. It would make my chewing habits so much more rewarding. BicFresh pens? C’mon!

The anti-iTunes rant.

*This appeared first in an e-mail to my friend Roger, and I most graciously accept his permission to reproduce it here. But then again, it was my rant, so I mean to say that I most graciously accept his willingness to share the words he inspires me to write with the rest of the world.

Here it is: A well-scripted piece o' brain gunk that the general contractor of inter-personal relationships then mixes and uses as mortar for the brick wall that forms the foundation for our friendship. And...I'm drunk.
But seriously, I'm coming to realize that my own quams with the iTunes are, well, just a couple. First, it's still difficult to start a word with a lower-case letter, and then switch to a capital one, and then finish the word as normal. It's just not right man! It's like a sequel to Aliens Vs. Predator. The knowledge that you screwed up the first one SO ROYALLY makes you think that you can go out and make another that will not only be better, but will leave people wondering what they were smoking on the first one, or worse, make them go back and see the first one, and then come out crying that they now have another movie to add to the long list of "Name a movie where the sequel was better than the original," or some crappy ice-breaker small talk thing that they use at parties when people are tired of playing Spoons, or when keg stands lose their fun because some frat idiot thinks it's cool to try and get the wheelchair kid to do one, and he ends up getting his head caught in wheelchair kid's spokes on the way down, and he's wearing one of those stupid neck braces after, and can't turn his head, and so eating peas at dinner is just gonna piss him off more, and...well you get the picture.
Seconds. and I'm being serial. I like the physical having-ness of the CD. I understand you usually save a couple bucks from buying on that service that begins with a lower-case letter that now refuse to spell, but then my friend comes to me wanting some Chris Cornell, and I can't give it to them without the CD or authorizing them, and I'm down to my last authorization. So what to do. And to make matters worse, I'm stuck in Italy without my CD's, well I just have this growing list of artists I want. This kind of jammy, but trippy Soundtribe Sector 9, Leroy, there's some good stuff out there that I want. But if I hear that damn Rihanna song about music that stops, and she doesn't want it to stop, and so there's some complaints about who is actually stopping the music, and so they try to figure out who is trying to stop the music, and these people, they are hoping that whoever it is does not actually stop the music? I want that song to end. To just freaking disappear. I would ask that of Rihanna, but she's got this forehead you can probably land small planes on, so if her music career falters, they'll probably just fly her down to the Amazon, and sink her in the river so her head can be used as a small dam to help fight soil erosion. Because that's a big problem down there.

Working my moo-jo? Haha....oh man, that's dumb....

Finally, some food (poisoning) inspirations

So the girl sitting next to me pushed it away and said "Ugh, too much saffron!" But of course me, I just dug into the dish with my usual unabashed gastro-faith, pausing only momentarily to wonder if the barely room-temp seafood was still good. See, I'm not a huge fan of saffron, so I didn't worry about the rice, but I saw half a seared scallop, and some mussels, which did in fact have a bit o' the funk to them.
Who's got two thumbs and loves a good bout of shellfish poisoning? This guy....
(Damn you, one-dimensional communication medium of the internet, for not allowing a better portrayal of my ashen, bed-ridden face, but with two HUGE thumbs.)
I've gotten legitimate food poisoning maybe three times in my life before this current infestation (which, if my level of health is directly proportional to my level of sarcasm, has taken a turn for the better....scratch that, I'll probably be sarcastic on my death bed.) Two times were within two weeks of each other, and my experiences now allow me to give fair warning to those wishing to visit Ecuador: 1.) It's probably a good idea to avoid sushi in Quito (and certainly only the truly foolish would eat there more than once,) and 2.) If an Amazonian tribesman offers you a rough-hewn wooden cup filled with a brownish liquid that smells like it was extracted from the feet of the whole tribe, then you'd better have some great interpersonal skills, or prepare to buy stock in Pepto-Bismol.
Ok, the third wasn't really food poisoning, just this incident with honey mustard, sunstroke, I'm sure you get the picture....
Is anyone still reading this? I'm sorry, I'm trying to be positive, really.

I love ya kid, but your drums suck.

Phil Collins. Don Henley. The guy from the Everyday Visuals. There are definitely drummers out there who can sing. And my uncle Johnny? Definitely not.

I remember these great stories of him opening for the Stones, of dragging his first kit home on the green line from Copley out to the end of the D line (that’s got to suck.) The Midnight Suns was his band….great name….I’m still hoping that some random Google search will bring up some clip of him in a bandana and crappy ripped jean jacket. But these stories wouldn’t be complete without a puff of smoke and this gargled hacking laugh in your face. Tremendous individual though. The man was Boston through-and-through. God forbid any other 2^nd tier blood reads this, but he was my favorite of that group. You always knew when Johnny was coming, because someone busted out the ashtray and the O’Doul’s. And if I got home late, I’d hear him plugging away at my snare, over and over again. Then he’d come downstairs with that kick-ass swagger of a man who had a bass drum instead of a heart, and it’d always be the same….”I love ya kid, but your drums suck.” Nothing like a consummate rocker to put me in my place.

He actually walked out of a Who concert back in ’00, shaking his head at the testosterone-crazed youth bouncing around to “My Generation,” shaking his head and muttering, “you kids just don’t get it.” And that damn drum stool! He had this crap woven-topped, weak-legged drum stool, this crappy little thing that obviously hadn’t gotten enough vitamins in its youth. Which was, coincidentally, sometime around the early 70’s, when my uncle first bought it. If you looked at the thing, it just fell over. Like those damn goats (seriously, check out YouTube for fainting goats or something like that…freakin’ hilarious.) So Johnny gives me this piece of crap one year for Christmas, and it’s all sentimental, all eye-water and lung-butter, which was cool. So then I give it back to him the next year, trying to be all sentimental back (or cheap, depending on how you looked at it.) He opens this, and totally deadpans “What the hell is this? What made you think I wanted this back?” This ritual went on for at least 3 more years. The poor guy even picked it during a Yankee swap. Oh well.

Funny thing is, I’d love to have that stool right now.

Johnny never actually claimed to sing, but his band was pretty tight, according to my mom, and my nana used to talk about how much bacon the Jewish guys in the band would plow through after practice at her house on Saturday mornings. I’m not making a direct connection between bacon and singing abilities, because if I were, than my history of bacon sandwiches at the Abbey would’ve made me Frank Sinatra. I guess what I’m trying to say is, his drumming was great. His sarcasm superb. His ability to make himself a better person was truly admirable. But if I had to tell him about his singing, it’s probably come out something like: “Johnny, I love ya, but your singing sucks.” And that’s the truth.

My uncle Johnny died this morning.

I miss you Johnny. Keep the beat, wherever you are.

November 15th - Atlantic musings

The first of what I will only assume will be many, many, many written texts. It had take six years to un-cramp my hand from all that furious note-taking in Roman History, and now I get to look forward to fingertip bruising from furious note-taking in this crazy new era of technology. At least I don’t have to worry about breaking my space bar from excitement, like some college room-mates I know.

So I get through baggage, my first lesson in the whole metric conversion….it goes well enough, the lady at the ticket counter didn’t even blink when I voiced my surprise at how little the dead babies in my suitcase actually weighed. Good bargain for the buyer, if you’re getting it by the pound. Then off through security, and Steve and I end up at the Sam Adams “Brew House,” which is really more of a “Brew Semi-Circle,” complete with head-inducing soundwaves for your Guiness, and Octoberfest on tap. So what if it’s not actually October? So what if your non-Sam Adams beers outnumber the Sam Adams beers by a 4 to 1 margin? So what if the guy’s wearing a Harpoon shirt while pouring you a Sam? I’ve got freakin’ soundwaves in my Guiness! You can actually taste the sound of the potato famine in every sip! And I don’t know about you, but I’m all about hearing my food from here on out. I don’t want to even see it, I want to feel like I’ve eaten purely from the sound of it. Does broccoli actually scream when it’s being ripped from its roots? God I hope so, because Andrew needs his audible greens.

But I digress. And why type when I could be scarfing down fresh-squeezed orange juice from the can? Why am I wondering how many f’s there are in scarfing when there’s regulation-sized Coke….uh, light? Am I seeing that right…To be had? Mmmmm….Parmalat…the wave of the future. Now all we need are shelf-stable, square cows, and we’re in business. Forget dead babies…shelf-stable cows are the perfect food. If they make them sound good, that is.

Apparently God was taking a smoking break when they created the monstrosity of a sandwich they just served me. And by served I mean boomeranged it from the safety of business class. Why is it that when you ask the stewardess/sky waitress/flight attendant/mile-high runway model/whatever’s P.C. these days for anything, they get this twinge of “does not compute” in their eyes. And I think they clone themselves in the overhead compartments. Apparently, as a row of four people in coach seem to add up to one whole person in business class, we get the equivalent of one-fourth of a sandwich each. That seems right. Once we’ve understood these crazy opposable thumbs and learn how to make fire, us coach serfs shall rise up, I tell ye. And then we’ll create a better sandwich. Yes, that sounds like a good order of progression. I won’t even go into what I think was in the sandwich, because the combination is probably a punishable offense somewhere. I’m just praying that this is the worst food I have the entire next year.