Sunday, January 30, 2005

How to Cram a Whole Week’s Worth of Fun into Two Days, with Bonus Homemade Marlborough Toffee

How can this whole weekend be fit into a little dinky blogpost?  It just can’t, but that has never stopped me from trying before, so here goes:

I did not get my passport last friday, but I’ve got my photos and Kel got hers and we’re ready to move on to the next phase soon.  My passport photos are are not being reproduced here for two reasons: 1) national security - we don’t want them falling into the wrong hands so some crazed Basque Nationalist can assume my identity and infiltrate our porous borders to make me look bad to my creditors and on cable television (or the internet(s)).  And more significantly, 2) in these particular photos, I look like a goddamn freak.  Since the photo is only shoulders-up, I think I rather look as if I had been photographed while on the toilet, too, but that’s probably just me.  Kel took one look at my photos and hooted with laughter, and then took on the pseudo-electronic voice of “space translator” to give my image self-expression: “I am Voltar, I am here to commit crimes, before I return to my home planet.” If I ever reach an international border I’m sure they’ll take one look at my shifty visage and welcome me with open arms, that will lead directly to a small and isolated cell.  Perhaps I can skate by on Kel’s photos which, as usual, are photogenically superior to mine. 

Waiting for me at home on Friday when I got back from work were six settings of Kel’s grandmother’s good silverplate flatware, which her mother kindly sent to from the old Shikshinny (Pennsylvania) home that’s she’s slowly breaking down.  The tablewear is pretty damn close to the sterling flatware I inherited from my grandparents, and the extra place settings will come in handy.  They even came with some very nice serving (or “servicing") pieces, and when you get down to it, one cannot have too many gravy ladles.  Euphemistic?  You tell me, Gravyboy McButterdish. 

Saturday I woke up as the dawn kissed our still-newly-painted walls, and dashed out the door to buy chocolate, evaporated milk, and butter, which I turned into mindblowing toffee in short order for to bring it to a birthday party we attended at Andy-n-Heidi’s house.  The centerpiece of this party was an endless and inexhaustable pile of awesome Chicago hotdogs, which Andy expertly grilled over hot coals while we ate a variety of gourmet salads and sucked down some freshly hand-cured toscana sausage made by one of the guests, who also happens to be the executive chef at one of the area’s finest restaurants - which, when the area is “the bay area,” means a lot.  He and Andy had also picked some grapes a few months ago, pressed them into wine in Andy’s basement, barrelled it for a few weeks and then brought in bottling equipment and put the juice down into bottles with a little yeast and sugar for a secondary fermentation… Andy uncorked a few bottles of this garage lambrusco for us; I found it lightly effervescent yet fullbodied, a perfect accompaniment to dogs slathered with kraut and carmelized onions with slow-cooked beans and corn salad on the side.  I ate till I was stupid (oh shut up) and then had a few cupcakes and some toffee to freshen up, and before I could stagger back to the winebar again I was ready for my third dog.  It was a delightful day and I fell asleep heavily and gloriously once I got home. 

Today we started with some positive domestic efforts, followed by me taking a very satisfying jog around Stow Lake.  We then scampered out to have a “brunch of discovery” with a friend from work who clearly knows a hell of a lot more about what to eat in my neighborhood than we do.  She took the bus in from Chinatown where she lives to meet us in front of Green Apple books, and then immediately fed us some wonderful viet sandwiches - one beef, one pork, both flavorful and crunchy and energizing, and of course, it was all at a place I’d walked past without noticing hundreds of times.  Our appetites whetted, she got us into the heavy stuff - at the little steamtable storefront across the street we sat down to lotus root, tofu, mushroom, and a plate of duck.  No, not that kind of duck - it was the most auspicious bits, the beaks and tongues, and the feet.  After this second course, we strolled through some markets to look for especially tasty and exotic produce, which we found (fresh water chestnuts!  green papaya!  balut!  (we took a rain check on the balut.)) Then up to California Street for a quick visit to an old Korean deli that was just opening up for the day, where they made us some korean sushi on the spot - $1.50 for twenty-count’em-twenty slices of delicious veggi roll, which we munched as we strolled back down to a dessert place on Clement that served us some of my longstanding favorite coconut milk drink with beans and gelatin noodles and fun stuff like that, plus some silken tofu in a sweet ginger sauce that really felt fun in my mouth and tasted great, and also some very counterintuitive but delicious baked yuca with coconut and sweet-salty nuts sprinkled over it; the frosting on this metaphorical cake was that the place was in the location that used to be the 6th Avenue Cheeseshop, which I hadn’t revisited for years. 

We also took a few moments at the local fish shop/aquarium to enjoy the mindblowing aquatic life rippling and surging around in innumerable saline tanks, and when we finally parted company I was full and very happy.  So happy, in fact, that I only had enough energy, once I got home, to plant my entire dorsal-posterior aspect on the big green couch and fall asleep for about two hours, at which juncture Kel woke me up so we could take a trip to North Beach (via a charming nearby coffee house) to visit an far-eastern knickknack shoppe and get ourselves a ranma - a carved wood panel we intend to hang over the bed once we upgrade to kingsize.  Unlike most of the ranma we see in our quotidian ranma peregrinations, of which I have plenty so just stow the ‘tude bro, this one is almost a work of nature, worn and non-representational, just woodgrain and
knotholes and the expression of the spirit of the wood.  We then tossed this 100 year old hunk of tree into the back of the conveniently-parked soob (two convenient parking spots on Washington Square Park on consecutive sundays - obviously my karma backwash has yet to catch up with me) and then we wandered down Columbus for a few pints at Vesuvio, which was as charming and accomodating as ever, and walked back slowly, picking out the spots where we need to visit next weekend, since these little trips are going so well.  (Ooh!  Brunch!  Ooh!  Deli!  Ooh!  Pastries - to hell with waiting for next weekend, let’s get some now!)

The drive back home along the marina was even more gorgeous than usual, with the sunset light casting deep shadows and bright highlights over the GG bridge.  Once we got home we found a message waiting for us - a dear friend inviting us to her house for an intimate superbowl transfat gorgefest and gigglrama next sunday, which we will surely attend.  Tonight’s supper was a little fortified miso soup, the rest of the Korean sushi, and our tasty italian baked goods, with a Futurama to wash it all down (and an Aquateen chaser, so it shouldn’t be a total loss).  Somewhere in the mix we even found time to tidy up the house, dust and vacuum, and get most of the laundry done.  And that new moisturizing lotion?  I’m soaking in it!  This was, evidently, exactly the weekend I needed, joyous and social, nap-addled and adventurous, productive and dissapated by turns.  Thanks for sharing it with me, even if only in retrospect.  In fact, I’m so glad you tagged along (and kept quiet during the moments of dramatic tension and the dirty bits) that I’m going to spill the beans and tell you a little more about that toffee I mentioned back up in paragraph four:

Friday, January 28, 2005

THE HARDER THEY COME, or, You Have A Friend In Cheeses

The stuff around that part of Clement Street wasn’t generally what anybody would call “classy” - a casket wholesaler, an irish bar, cheap housewares and cheaper clothes, a reconditioned bank that sold fire-damaged and bankrupt-company goods, a coffeehouse with a sign on the patio that said “No Spits”.... This area was low-key, comfortable, cheap - not unlike myself, though not quite as clean. 

One exception was little cheesehop just off the main drag, on 6th.  With its hand-painted sign and its windowfull of colorful tins and mysterious rounds and wedges, its quaint fenestered door and hand-hewn fixtures, it seemed to have been lifted out of another neighborhood, another country.  It smelled good in there - the kind of smell that would probably have been offensive anywhere else, but, there, signified the mystical combination of growth, decay, fermentation and arrest that ennobles simple milks and turns them into true works of craftmen’s art. 

The Sixth Avenue Cheeseshop (I could never think of that name without it singing itself in my head to the tune of a Springsteen song) was managed by a young woman with the sort of beauty and freshness that brightened days, deepened flavors, and uplifted spirits. She always had a ready smile and she really knew her cheese.  Upon entering, lungs filling with the sour bouquet of her wares and heart filling with the sweetness of her attentions, any patron would be assured of full satisfaction, whatever his or her cheesy needs may be.  The shop sold cheese, but wrapped it up in soul. 

I was there one afternoon to get a selection of fermented curds and fromageous comestibles for some little party or event we had upcoming.  When I arrived I saw that I was not the only patron in evidence - another gent, conservatively dressed and older than I, was already being serviced, so I busied myself among the exotic wares and eavesdropped discretely.  He wanted some hard cheese, a parmesian or asiago or some such, and he wanted it finely shredded.  She offered a recommendation; he approved; she cut and weighed out his selection, placed it in the heavy antique steel shredder, bestowed one of her priceless smiles on him, and flicked the switch. 

The one thing she hadn’t done was to press the heavy hinged steel plunger back down atop the cheese.  The powerful industrial motor leapt into action; the shredding blades spun and caught into the hard, friable block.  Instantly, the cheese, unrestrained, spun in the chute, lifted, was propelled up and out.  It flew across the intimate shop like an electrocuted cat, its whirling bulk describing a graceful arc from the shredder behind the rear counter to the floor near the front windows, where it slid, oily-slick and energized, under a low shelf.

The cheesemaid squealed; the distinguished patron gasped.  The cheese lay where it landed, catching its breath.  The shopkeep shut the shred motor, scurried over to redeem her goods.  She cut a new wedge for her customer, carefully ensured that it held its place in the shredder, ground it into savory bits and cashed him out.  He left, quarry in tow, and then it was my turn.  I don’t remember what cheese she sold me, but I do remember her telling me with a rueful grin, “You’ve got to be careful - those hard ones can really get away from you.”

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Freedom’s Just Another Word for the Bit Between Your Teeth

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this… but it’s been a week since I avoided listening to the inaugural speech, and slightly less time than that since I heard Jon Stewart lampooning it, and there’s a theme that has stuck in my head since then like a bad pop song you don’t quite know the lyrics to.  It’s the idea that this is a “free country,” and as such should be seen by the rest of the world as an exemplar of all that is fine and right.  As I recall the tally I saw on television (or the T-V, as some wags call it), Bush invoked “freedom” 27 times and “liberty” 15 times in a speech that celebrated the peaceful retention of incumbent power - a speech which I understand to have lasted 45 seconds, much of which time was dedicated to a musical number wherein he danced with an animated apple pie and a drugged monkey.  But I digress.