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:
When I was six my dad took his sabbatical in Oxford - six month’s worth. We all went along with him. He arranged lodging with an Oxford professor who was spending a similar length of time in LA - we just traded homes for the duration. He lived in some rather cozy (though painfully modern) apartments on the outskirts of town. The one thing about Summertown House that wasn’t modern was Ray. Ray was the “scout” for St Anthony’s college - the butler, actually, and he served the professor whose home we had occupied for the summer, so Ray served us during that time. He was a very pleasant chap, reserved and punctilious (as well as I can remember him from 1970), and we got along so well that my mom stayed in touch with him after we went back home. A few years later he wound up ditching his job for one as valet to the Duke of Marlborough, a man so rich that they named a cigarette after him. Ray’s new digs was Blenheim Palace and he settled in as best one can under such adverse circumstances. Once he’d gotten comfortable enough to start stealing from his patron, he sent us the following recipe, advising us that this was what they made when the royal family visited:
Marlborough Toffee
(no marlboroughs were injured in the making of this confection)
Cream together 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup superfine sugar, then mix in 1 cup flour. Spread this into a greased 8” square pan and bake it at 350F for 15-20 minutes.
Meantime, melt together 2 oz butter, 2 oz superfine sugar, 1 Tablespoon Lyle’s Golden Syrup, and 2 oz sweetened condensed milk, stirring constantly until it all goes a nice golden brown color. Pour this evenly over the shortbread base and allow to cool.
Melt 8 squares of semi-sweet chocolate (use a double boiler, don’t risk burning it) and pour the melted nectar quickly over the toffee, shaking the pan to achieve smooth coverage. The recipe actually calls for 12 squares but I find that a bit overwhelming; I also added some crushed hazelnuts for texture and, as they say ‘round the manorhouse, giggles. Let it cool; slice it up, scarf it down. This may be as close as I get to a hereditary title, and it doesn’t last for very long - but while it lasts, damn, it’s good. So next time Relizabeth Ejina pops round your place for a cuppa, you know what to serve her. Just watch her carefully - I understand she’s quite the vixen when you get a little sugar into her. If you know what I mean.
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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.
I understand from the “T-V” that lots of people who live in other countries are tired of having us jam the polished apple of our freedom down their comparatively fettered and downtrodden throats. They don’t want to hear how free we are - especially when the platitudes we are mouthing obviously have so little to do with the reality on our mean streets. This isn’t San Andreas, people - we can’t just do as we like. There are rules in this country, at least for the wee folk like myself. And really, that’s a more important philosophical point than Grand Theft Auto credits it to be. Government should not, in my opinion, be in the business of guaranteeing absolute freedom, in crafting the perfectly-level playing field - because in the absence of oversight, the bullies and vandals will steal everything worth anything and befoul whatever’s left. Rather, I expect my government to ensure a fair chance for all - to learn, to earn, to thrive, and to pursue happiness, but not at the expense of others. Government, I think, should be in the business of restraining the strong and defending the weak, so that all of us get a fair shot at happiness.
For this to work, we have to trust our government. Maybe not the individual players, but the institutions as a whole. I want to believe that the national policy is transparent, that the people we elect (or place in office) are doing what they said they would do, that their promises of freedom and liberty and self-determination are some vague reflection of their intentions. And here’s my problem: it just ain’t so today. We are told something as a “confirmed fact,” like the Sadaam-9/11 connection or the consequence of certain behaviors or the state of the environment or the economy - and then we find that it’s not true at all, and the response from on high is either that it is so true, or that they never said it was true in the first place. Revisionist history has given way to the revisionist present day, in which the basis for what is being done here and now is a moving target unworthy of credulity. We’re being fed lines of crap on every front. Social security is not fatally out of balance. AIDS is not transmitted by tears. Marijuana eases chronic suffering. Most poor people are not to blame for their own woes. But every damn day we get buttered up afresh with a bunch of “freedom and liberty” hooey and while we’re sitting there grinning like cretins with cousins, they slide another bag of burning poo onto our doorstep and tell us it’s the liberty torch.
And the thing is, we are not so goddamn free. I don’t mean that we’re not free to smoke in schools or to carry firearms around Disneyland; these are the sorts of restrictions on personal liberty that benefit those of us who prefer to be free from random sprays of bullets or from lung cancer and fouled air. But there are other personal liberties that are much more, shall we say, liberating for the individual than they are destructive to society. I think so, anyway, and the countervailing opinion is grounded in a religious zealotry of moral sanctimony and egocentric dominion that is inimical to the founders’ ideal of the pursuit of happiness. (And don’t give me that crap about how religious those wankers were. Ben Franklin would get thrown out of any evangelical synod you’d care to name, assuming you can name any, and that you care.) And this was what got me all huffy and puffy when I heard the coverage of the inaugural speech: If we’re so goddamn free, why can’t we:
* Marry the consenting adult of our choice
* Breath air that is meaningfully and progressively protected from huge corporate polluters
* Have choice in mass media (since megamergers have resulted in an unprecedented concentration of resources, and the FCC has defaulted on its stewardship of bandwidth)
* Craft our own response to reproductive issues (rather than having the government actively working to elliminate choice)
* Go to court or to school without having some fundamentalist jamming his gawd down our throats
* Set local educational policy locally to provide the foundation that children today need to make intelligent decisions about sex and drugs, instead of conditioning educational funding on fealty to an ordained and suspect ideology like pure abstinence
* Take the medicine the government has approved without it hurting or killing us
* Get and use the best medicine available for the woes that ail us
* Get the best price on the medicine we need even if it means shopping across the national border
(This is just a hodgepodge list off the top of my pointy head. I know there are a lot of other freedoms that the government denies to us. I just don’t feel like getting any more upset than I already am by thinking of them.)
And as we are unceasingly told how free and liberated we are, even in the face of these inhibitions and restrictions, and even as we berate the rest of the world for failing to meet our lofty standards, we are denying them critical health care support because we disagree as a matter of national policy with their approach to local population control and STD issues; we are even preventing them from working together to address environmental concerns that scare them but that we insist don’t exist. The freedom we laud, the freedom that we export in the barrels of guns and inculcate in unnamed detention centers where people learn its value by its utter loss, is not the freedom that other people actually value. It’s the freedom we tell them they want, and if they disagree with us, they pay a terrible price. Which, in this particular instance, is four more years of having to avoid hearing our president’s voice. If I could be free of one thing, that might be my first choice.
I was right, I had no idea where this was going. But I went and said it anyway. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll get my focus back and I’ll have a cute little essay about drinking beer or buying cheese or something benign like that. I mean, to the extent beer-n-cheese are benign. I suppose, in the proper combination, they can be pretty lethal too. But at least they don’t tell me what kind of government I need.
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