Cinco de Mayo - A Kitchen Story

A couple of weeks ago I saw some Oaxaca (Wuh-Ha-Kah) cheese at the grocery and without specific intent I grabbed some. As one might expect when Oaxaca cheese shows up at the grocery, Cinco de Mayo is probably not too far off and we found ourselves there yesterday and again... me without specific plans but coincidentally some Oaxaca cheese.

International Plagues being what they are I had grabbed several packs of corn tortillas sometime in March and as of yesterday was down to my last 9 and have not seen them in grocery stores since March. I had also picked up equal amounts of flour tortilla's because Annie is all about the flour while Meg & I are full on corn tortilla folks.

It was starting to look like a blend of corn & flour tacos would be on the menu... although personally I just can't eat a decent Americanized taco without some iceberg lettuce and a hint of fresh tomato. Alas, we were out of both.

Meg had to be at her office yesterday and had decided she would stop at a local farm/grocery store to grab a couple things and so I asked for both ingredients.

A couple of days ago at the grocery they had giant leeks... I've never seen such huge leeks before, I simply had to get some and work them into as many recipes as I could think of.

In the kitchen yesterday afternoon I began building the menu with tacos as the main item. Of course we always have pinto beans handy and so this would be on the menu.... but this wasn't any Tuesday night dinner... this was Cinco de Eato... where you're supposed to ramp up your Amerixacano menu, right? And those big ole leeks were looking up at me from the bottom shelf of the fridge with their "Don't forget us" eyes and it made me realize I could not ignore fate.

As I looked at the leek it only took but seconds to realize that leeks are just nature's version of the enchilada shell and that these big boys were meant to be stuffed... but with what?

Enter Meg's bad habits.

Meg has this bad habit of buying food she never eats and I watch it go bad. But not tonight baby, not tonight! I was on fire... oh excuse me.... en fuego. That sweet potato that had been sitting there for weeks like its many cousins before it that had found their way into our trash before use... that sweet delicious potato was about to head to Mexico on a one way trip courtesy of my ample kitchen prowess.

Meanwhile Meg was at the grocery and reached out to let me know they had poblanos (chili peppers) and so I told her to grab them. Menu updates mid plan will often happen and this was one of those times. I already planned to stuff a leek, why not stuff a pepper too... Chili Relleno is one of my faves.

She also arrived home with those tomatoes and some iceberg, the latter of which unfortunately would end up not being used at all due to the menu update, but worry not for seis de mayo is just cinco plus uno and a fine reason to have a taco.

This is not the place for a recipe but I stuffed that leek with partially cooked sweet potato, that I further sauteed with red bell pepper, garlic and chunked tomato and some spices to give it a flavor of what I can only imagine any self respecting Mexican would say "Justo como mamá solía hacer" (Just like mamma used to make).

I make a decent red sauce that we often use for Mexican inspired meals and that was sitting idle on the stove top. I put some into the casserole dish, dropped 5 stuffed leeks into it and baked for 20 minutes, added some Oaxaca cheese and baked for 15 minutes longer.

While all of that was baking I made the chili rellenos which also was smothered in the same red sauce. I opened a can of pintos and threw them in a pan to heat and then warmed up a few tortillas.

I would not call these great pics, and of course the pics can't capture the flavor, but this was a pretty decent cinco de mayo meal.

Chili Relleno

Leek stuffed with sweet potato,tomato, red bell pepper and garlic

Saudade

I had posted a poem about a mirror to face book the other day. It was a sort of story that I wrote in poetry style about a certain nostalgic melancholy for a lost loved one or perhaps a long ago moment of a joyful time… or perhaps even a sad time. The poem was written in response to a real world mirror belonging to Meg that she had acquired from her mother, who had passed away about  14 years ago. Meg had a very close connection with her mom and still struggles today with that loss as does her sister Kerry and perhaps all of her siblings, but I see it most in Meg and Kerry.

So as mentioned, the poem was written about a mirror similar to Meg's and specifically something Meg had said. She mentioned how she had watched her mom brush her hair in that mirror and thinks of all the times her mom did just that over many years. Meg's attachment to her mom now extends itself to the objects she surrounded herself with including that mirror and I think this is a normal human thing to do. This reminded me of my own mother's mirror, attached to her dresser opposite the foot of her bed and how as kids we would jump up and down on that bed and see ourselves in that mirror. I recall my grandfather's death in the late 70's and my mother helping me with my suit and my hair in front of that mirror as we prepared to attend his wake and funeral. I think it's even possible one of my sister's got ready for her wedding day in my mother's house and probably saw herself in that mirror.

So  I wrote this poem, "In the Mirror" and shared it on Facebook, but even as I re-read it an hour or two later I found it difficult to find the rhythm... and so I recorded myself reading the poem to help people hear it the way I wrote it. Then I opened the post in Facebook and tried to edit it to include the recording, but something went wrong and I lost the entire post including a couple of lovely replies I had received form a couple people who had read it. And the post about a nostalgic melancholy for  a thing lost, becomes it's own nostalgic melancholy of a thing lost as I'll never get that back, but I valued those comments as I always value words that anyone is willing to take the time to write in response to anything I've said or done... I never take that stuff lightly... it always matters to me, even the teases and the attempts at putting me in my place (usually by my brother, who by the way has certainly sat upon me on that bed in front of that mirror and farted.)

The title of this post is "Saudade" and is pronounced sort of like Saw-Dach-Ay. It's a Portuguese word that basically defines the emotion I was trying to capture in this poem.

so here it is... my poem, in written and in spoken word form. Enjoy:

In the Mirror

As mother brushed her hair

Daughter bounces on the bed behind her

Looking in the mirror

Her daughter’s smiling eyes remind her

There was a time when she once too

Jumped on her mum’s mattress

While staring in the glass

as it looked back at her

And then a high-school dance

As brother made fart noises to tease her

About the boy who called

He’s standing in the entry uneasy

She brushes her hair Like her mum

But now mum is standing behind her

They stare into each other’s eyes

As they stare in the mirror

Many years go by

Her mum has passed away and she’s grieving

Brother pulls her near

This isn’t a day for his teasing

The mirror catches glimpses

of a family thrust into sadness

As the echo of a reflection

Ghostly watches them too

And then another year

She’s looking like a bride in the mirror

Her niece is on the bed

Unbearably bouncing quite near her

She turns to yell

But the smile in her eyes are a gleaming reminder

She was young too, This is what the young do

As she recalls her own youth

She turns to the mirror

And her thoughts are clear

Cause she’s seen the proof

This mirror has seen the smiles and tears

Of the people we knew

The lives we’ve lived, the ones we’ve loved

And the things we’d do

It captures those moments

Like the echo of the ghost

In a reflection of truth

Throw Your Arms Around Me

NOTE TO READERS: if I write something in italics and parenthesis... please imagine me looking around to make sure no one's paying attention to me before whispering the thing I'm saying in parenthesis as you read it.

Neil Finn then

Are you familiar with Neil Finn? Maybe you know of his name because he recently joined Fleetwood Mac. Maybe you're familiar with his solo career or one of his more well known bands, Crowded House or Split Enz.

In the early to mid 80's I had an awakening to music... I went from being a more or less vapid listener of whatever was the cool thing based on the folks with whom I surrounded myself to discovering a combination of sound and content. I needed something other than dance music. I needed something other than rhythm and melody. I needed poetry. I needed content. And I needed something that I could imagine myself singing in front of an audience as they admired me and my cool band. Oh don't pretend you didn't do the same thing with whatever your musical choice was.

If you follow my blog at all then you've already heard about this when I talked about "the The" and if you recall that was 1986. Two other bands I had discovered in 1986 was "Hunter's & Collectors" and "Crowded House". So while my peers were listening to Eddie Murphy... yes that Eddie Murphy, sing my girl wants to "Party All The Time" or Prince singing "Kiss" or maybe even Steve Winwood singing "Higher Love", I was listening to something else.

Neil Finn now

Not to single out these two bands that I had mentioned... there were some great tunes out there that crossed genres like "Sledge Hammer" by Peter Gabriel or "West End Girls" by Pet Shop Boys and a whole slew of others.

With myriad hits like "World Where You Live", "Don't Dream It's Over" and "Something So Strong"... Crowded House was an instant Success. It didn't hurt that they had the street cred of Neil Finn from the already successful Split Enz, New Zealand's most famous and successful band ever... well at least in 1986. But a lesser known member of the band was Nick Seymour. We'll come back to him in a little bit.

Hunters & Collectors

Hunters & Collectors, another band from down and under hit me from out of the blue with a song that punched me in the gut, made me want to sing and made me want to do that weird thing I called dancing and most people probably called "Bil having some kind of seizure again" and it made me feel a little... (dirty). The song... introduced to me as "The Slab" was originally titled "Betty's Worry" and had a specific lyric that if one thinks about it... tells you what the song is about.

(Here we go)
Oh yeah
Better get my head down there
Oh, where?
Down there in that cavern where heaven grows

Okay, I'm leaving that there for you all to figure out for yourselves. But man does that video reek of the type of male behavior that's been rampant in the news of late.

Back to Hunters & Collectors for a moment. The lead singer was Mark Seymour... older brother to Nick Seymour mentioned earlier as a member of Crowded House. Mark had this great song, originally released as a single and played a little harder and faster, it was re-released in 1986 on their "Human Frailty" album and then again in 1990 as a slightly better produced version. The song was called "Throw Your Arms Around Me" and while I imagine it was probably well known in Australia and possibly throughout the UK and Canada... it was a much lessor known song here in the States... that is until it was covered by Neil Finn.

Neil Finn essentially covers the mellower version and it's also been covered by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam as well as several others... usually from Australia or New Zealand where the song is more of a national classic despite never having been a hit by it's original performer.

These days I hear it a lot while listening to 92.5 the river and its been on my mind that I'd like to get the Hunters & Collectors version out there again. I know that won't happen... but at least you now know it exists and if it's a song you dig.... maybe you'll go check out the original(s).

In Autumn

I meant to write this earlier this week... or even within the week prior. Specifically so I could post it no later than yesterday, October 8th 2018. This is not a day without significance, this is not a week without significance. This is not a month without significance.

I have a love hate relationship with fall and particularly the September October stretch. As autumn rolls in and the summer fades away I always feel a certain melancholy or the feeling of love lost, as if I had spent the spring falling in love, the summer adoring my love and early autumn finds my love's full potential as the foliage bursts into fiery reds, orange and yellows. But as the leaves fall away bare tree branches seem to be pointing to the oncoming cold and lonely winter sky. Hibernation is nigh. Time to gather... gather my thoughts, harvest my emotions, process them for the winter pondering while I await the spring and with it, my new love.

That's probably far more revealing than I should ever be... you're welcome.

Thirteen years ago, as Meg was spending countless winter and spring hours with her mom, who had a stroke just before Christmas, I was working on the bits and pieces of a dream. As Meg spent the spring-summer stretch losing her mom, we were in the throes of construction... in more ways than one. As autumn approached and Meg's body was building a baby we were assembling the final components of our small business and on October 8th of 2005 we opened a little tea house called Licorice & Sloe Company. One of the finest endeavors I would ever undertake. The baby was pretty cool too.

Ten years and a week ago we closed the doors to said small business. I could talk about all of the reasons why, but they don't matter anymore... only the memories matter, only the friendships I still maintain from that period of my life matter, only the people who found each other in that tea house and are still connected or eventually married matter. To this day I walk around town or at the grocery store and former customers, familiar but still virtual strangers, approach me to tell me they miss the tea house. Some times they just walk up to me and say... "hey, you're the tea guy." I think that's my personal favorite... it's not a bad thing to be known as the tea guy. The kids that used to work for me would call me Teadog. It became my trail name whenever I hiked. They're grown up and living lives across the united states but they still visit us when they get the chance and we consider ourselves lucky to know them, they are just wonderful people... all of them.

Just prior to ending the Licorice & Sloe Company Tea House, I began to get these severe headaches. I tried dealing with them on my own, but eventually saw a doctor. They never quite figured out what caused the headaches though I have my own theories, but during the doctor visit they discovered I had kidney disease (that's an oversimplification... but let's keep it simple today, ok?). Upon official diagnosis they told me I'd be fine, that they'd give me some blood pressure pills and that would prevent me from needing to even consider dialysis until I was in my late 60's or early 70's. Four years later I was on dialysis and another four plus years later, a year ago this month, I had a kidney transplant.

As this year anniversary approaches and I ponder my last 10-15 years, defined by myriad springs of falling in love, summers of loving, autumns of brilliant colors and winters that run the gamut from frigid cold and deep snow to unseasonably warm and all the ups and downs that filled those years... I feel a little lost for direction. There is this potential for a "reasonably normal life" post transplant, but a wall in front of me of my own making that I can't seem to climb. I want to go do... but do what? I want to not waste this time, but the time I spend not wanting to waste it is wasting that time. I don't know where to begin. I feel stuck in the muck and the mire of my own comfort. I'm incapable of breaking away from this stagnant place. I feel bound and cemented to the earth of my life... like a tree... whose leaves have flashed their brightest colors and are falling away... with winter at my door.

Maybe I'll find answers in the spring.

Daughter

For full effect play this while reading:

To all the boys I've loved before... I'm watching "to all the boys I've loved before". Oh no... I'm not sitting next to Annie while she's watching "to all the boys I've loved before"... it's Saturday morning... my time... the girls are (were) sleeping. I made myself breakfast... really good breakfast... then I Netflixed and chilled alone (what?... it's a thing)... and I chose "to all the boys I've loved before"... it looked cute.... wait, what? Did I just say it looked cute... I.. I.. I meant to say funny... it looked funny.

Last night we went to Mamma Mia, not Mamma Mia 2, Here We Go Again at the movie theater... we did that over a month ago. We went to the live performance of Mamma Mia at the North Shore Music Theater. Not because I was dragged out to see it... because I secretly bought tickets then told Meg & Annie we're going to see it. And just like I do every time... I got teary eyed at any scene that involved the potential fathers and Sophie. While watching Mamma Mia 2, I got weepy at the Donna scene in the church, if you don't know what I mean then you'll need to go see it.

There are times I half expect to die too young, because of my kidney disease, and not see my little girl grow up and fall in love or maybe not but instead become someone who does things that make me so proud that the only possible expression of that pride is through tears. I hope that's never the case... the dying young I mean... not the proud dad thing.

What is it about a daughter that turns a man into a sack of goo, a weepy sentimentalist, and a watcher of Hughsesqueian teenage chick flick romcoms? I wasn't there for Amber's youth, so I never experienced this with her. Charly made me feel the emotions of pride for his achievements through those early years... the preschool drawings and father's day cards. The kindergarten performances.  The excitement in his eyes over things he never saw before. But I didn't turn into goo until Annie. Now I can get weepy at the silliest things. I have to keep tissues in my pocket in case.

I remember the first time Annie saw me get weepy at a movie... she was only about  four or five years old. She asked me what was wrong? I told her the movie made me sad. She came in close as if to hug me with her whole little body, she stroked my cheek as she looked me in the eye and said "oh daddy, it's okay, don't be sad, it's just a movie." Then she followed that up with the best hug I think she ever gave me.

Play this for full effect while reading this part

Then she was in that play where she was a mother mouse who had lost her son, and there's this song playing, you probably know it or at least heard it once or twice if not several dozens of times. Rise Up,by Andra Day. And there's that part where she's not singing words, but that kind of ghostly wooing between the words "and I rise up". Annie's character along with another mother mouse are calling out for their missing sons during that wooing and it just kills me... even thinking about it... I'm a wreck. This is something only a daughter can do to her father.

It probably helps that she's so sensitive. She used to cry when she was so happy that she didn't know what else to do. These days it's a rare occurrence, probably because she's so much more aware of the cynicism of the world we live in and worries about how she might be seen by others. But oh when her heart breaks the only thing that matters is her mothers arms while she cries so hard you can't understand a word she says.

Anyway... I'm a better man for Annie in my life, even if she's turned me into a weepy sack of goo.

Bad Superheroes - a lengthy undertaking

Alia Shawkat as my vision of Wysteria

June 13th, 6:15 AM... I sat in front of my computer as I do several mornings, while drinking my tea and eating my toast, and I began to write about a dream I had earlier that morning.

In the dream, young Humans With Abilities (HWA) are on the rise and there is general concern about knowing who has abilities and what those abilities are. It’s a natural concern that one can see would literally take place in a real world scenario of this nature. So there is a branch of the government created that tries to monitor these HWA and furthermore make determinations on which of these are of a quality that is potentially dangerous.

In my dream there was a “superhero” named Wysteria (I don’t know why), who wanted to make more of these young “superheroes” active. There was this committee within the above mentioned branch of the government that determined whom among the people with special abilities qualified as a hero and who didn’t. One woman within the committee said “these young people with abilities aren’t superheroes, they are special and therefore have special needs. These are young people with special needs.”

Awake, but with that dream very much on my mind I thought to myself... In a world of superheroes, they can't all have amazing talents. I like the idea of lesser talented humans with abilities forming a superhero team, where they need to rely on each other in order to get the job done.

Because of the dream I started to create this list of “bad superheroes”, heroes that weren’t particularly useful, but had the desire to do good and when paired up with other superheroes of a similar caliber could actually make a difference.

For example:

Earlier today I was walking and talking with Annie and she told me a story about a mega hop scotch game she was setting up for the kids to play at her summer camp. I hear Hop Scotch and I think... Hop Scott, a human named Scott with the special ability to hop like nobody's business, and loves to draw with chalk on pavement. Side note, he was born with an unusual speech impediment that makes his letter Ts, especially at the end of words, sound like the letters "tch" so when he introduces himself as Scott it sounds like Scotch... "I'm Scotch and I like to hop, some people call me Hop Scotch."

Occasionally I come up with only part of an idea, the name but no well defined skill set.

Al Fresco - (nickname - Al) Not sure which way to go with this one. Is he a superhero who’s kryptonite is the indoors? And then what are his super powers? Or does he have an alter ego whose name has something to do with being indoors (Hank Hermit). Or is he a superhero whose powers specifically relate to being outdoors? And then are his powers contingent upon the conditions of his outdoor surroundings?

Sometimes I even have golden nuggets of pure genius.... at least in my own mind.

Naomi Naive - Her superpower is that her belief in things that probably just aren’t true and couldn’t possibly happen seem to be true or to actually happen simply because she believes it’s true. Often these things seem to be just coincidental happenings and highly improbable things that occur, but have nothing to do with Naomi. Still she always seems to be present when they happen, so no one can prove that it wasn’t her belief that enabled the very thing to occur. Dr. Void - Believed to be only a rumor, no one has ever seen Dr. Void and most (perhaps all) superheroes just don’t believe he even exists. But Naomi Naive is a true believer and sure enough, whenever she brings up his name, “Don’t worry… Dr Void is coming, he’ll save us.” something always seems to happen that saves the day.

These of course are just a few examples of some of my superheroes, and I've also created non superhero characters and villains. I've even created a timeline that begins in the 1970's and is currently up to 2041. In my timeline all of our real presidents are presidents in this universe and our current president is not only elected a second time, but during his second term he changes our system of presidential term limits so he can remain president until he either dies or decides to no longer be president and he holds the office until 2029. I haven't decided if he's defeated or killed off yet.

The thing is, while this started off as a goofy joke.. I'm kind of getting into it and the jokes are becoming less frequent and this is turning into something that I'm personally finding quite interesting. I've got twenty two different characters, one that's actually two characters and another that's actually five characters... so you could say I have twenty seven characters. On top of that I have six other characters who exist in theory, but have yet to be named and defined. And as I've mentioned, my time line begins with "Three Mile Island" in the 1970's and runs through 2041 before my main set of characters... a team of gals I refer to as Girl Team Six (GTS), begin their lives as superheroes.

Now if only I had the skill to draw comic book superheroes I'd be all set.

Pizza 101... an idea in the making... of pizza

The meet up to buy ingredients

Recently a friend had asked me to teach him and his girlfriend how to make pizza. Of course I had to do this, not because he was a friend but because I love to teach people anything that I know how to do. I've professionally taught AutoCAD at Wentworth Institute of Technology between 1998 and 2005 and briefly between 2009 & 2010 at both Wentworth and Whittier Vocational High School.  For many years of my career I've held the position of being the guy who knows all of the answers about AutoCAD and how to use it to do (enter any task here) as it relates to what we did at the myriad companies where I've worked.

Prep work

Also during our run of owning a Tea House, I hosted many educational events around making and drinking tea. And of course I have several years of parenting under my belt which often includes teaching my children random things that I know. There's joy in this kind of work because it's not work... it's purposeful socializing and the reward is never the money that I might get paid but the look in a person's eye when they feel a moment of success or perhaps because they just took a bite of some food that they made and didn't believe they could, as was the case with my friend and his girlfriend.

The socializing during the making of and the eating of the pizza included a conversation about teaching people to make pizza. And I'm sure this sounds a bit conceded but I don't mean for it to, the thing is, I've yet to find a pizza at any pizza shop or restaurant that's as good as the pizza I make. And while that might sound conceded, I know in fact that its part and parcel to the success in the pizzas that I make.

More prep

See... I heard myself saying to my students "the most important ingredient in making any good food is confidence." And that was the first time I ever made such a statement. Now confidence alone doesn't make a good pizza, but without it you're relying on pure luck to give you the thing you desire and if you get that once in three times that you try, that would be pretty impressive. But knowing the end result will be great if you apply yourself at this moment will greatly increase the odds that every time you make a pizza it will be at least decent.

Of course I told them the second ingredient was love, or actually they told me because I really said, "Do you know what the second most important ingredient is?" and they all answered including my daughter who was standing by watching and the one thing I know I've taught her is that when I cook for her the first ingredient is always love.

Getting started

So back to teaching people how to make pizza... I think this could be a brilliant idea. I just don't know if there would be any takers. So if you're local to me, want to know how to make a great pizza, and are willing to pay for the ingredients (I'll take care of the confidence but you'll need to meet me half way on the love) let me know. I need to try this a couple of times before I can decide if it's worth making a greater effort to make it an actual thing.

By the way... no one ever taught me to make pizza... I learned through several years of trial and error. My first pizza was made for my girlfriend Sandra when I was 18 years old as a means to not only feed us, but to impress her. It was made with a Pillsbury dough, jarred sauce, pre-grated cheese and some pepperoni. I've come a long way... and you'd be a fool to not take me up on this. To quote one of my students from the other night... "Oh my god, how come this tastes so good?" I told her it was the love.

Unfortunately, we were so busy eating that pizza, we forgot to take pictures of the finished product. If the students share theirs I'll update. (UPDATE: These next five pictures are courtesy of Kyle's GF Erika.)




A little dough tossing



Finishing the margherita pizza



Building the veggie pizza, the organized part



Building the veggie pizza, the sloppy part



The finished margherita pizza



The Students

Assembling ingredients

Pizza 101 with Annie about 8 years ago