Image copyright © 1999 Tin Hat Novelties.

I bought this at the same used bookstore in which I picked up a copy of firearm enthusiast William Vollmann‘s latest in his “Seven Dreams” epic of squalor, Argall. (Please note, Vollmann’s link is to a fan site.)

I bought it because of the Belgian Waffles, with whom I’ve a standing offer regarding running reviews of bourbon, whisky, and scotch labels, bottles and packaging (but not the liquor – you should see how these guys drink). Here’s Bill’s recipe for “Wild Turkey Surprise.”

Apparently, or so I was informed, this sticker above is some sort of prank on a bear-protection organization, or something. I think Ken gave me a keychain for the ursine-oriented recently, come to think of it.

Uh, the image above is (c) copyright 1999 Tin Hat Novelties.

(I have simply STOLEN this from Ken, who inexplicably ran it as a comment, after it was suggested by Murph. I think of this as another facet in my ongoing effort to appropriate Ken’s identity for my own personal use as an art project.

Ken, I had NOTHING to do with the identity theft guys in New York. Really, I’ve never even TRIED to look up your credit record, and I was deeply saddened to hear of your recent difficulties in convincing GMAC that you did not owe them any money.)

Columbus, OH – Every year since 1990, White Castle System, Inc. has offered its famous “White Castle Turkey Stuffing” recipe to its customers during the holiday season. Even Cindy Crawford, who during a recent appearance on ABC’s “The View” raved about the stuffing recipe that her brother-in-law made for Thanksgiving last year. In keeping with this tradition, White Castle will once again offer this recipe in addition to the latest 10 award-winning recipes FREE.

The “White Castle Turkey Stuffing” recipe uses 10 or more White Castle hamburgers to stuff a 10-12 lb turkey. It is available in the new recipe booklet.

This new edition makes a great stocking stuffer, or can be used to make a delicious “White Castle Turkey Stuffing” dish for turkey dinners.

WHITE CASTLE TURKEY STUFFING

10 White Castle hamburgers, with pickle removed

1-1/2 cups celery, diced

1-1/4 tsp. ground thyme

1-1/2 tsp. ground sage

3/4 tsp. coarse ground black pepper

1/4 cup chicken broth.

In a large mixing bowl, tear the White Castle hamburgers into pieces and add diced celery and seasonings. Toss and add chicken broth. Toss well. Stuff cavity of turkey just before roasting. Note: allow 1 White Castle hamburger for each pound of turkey, which will be equivalent to 3/4 cup of stuffing per pound. Makes about 9 cups.

The latest recipe booklet “Recipes that can’t be beat,” is available now by calling the White Castle customer suggestion line at 1-800-THE-CRAVE, (1-800- 843-2728), or at any White Castle restaurant location.

(Yes, this is a real recipe)

Tonight Viv and I are having our buddies Don and Trish over. Once we woulda been heading out to eat at Chez Fancypants, as I am sure we will again. But given my restricted current financial situation, home-cooking will be the order of the day.

I have carefully larned the in-laws’ cookery, insofar as beans are concerned, and so tonight a fine Cuban meal is inbound. On the bill of fare are mojitos, black beans (easy easy but DO NOT forget enough salt, an entire green pepper, and a hank of bacon – the pepper, according to Viv’s mon, “gets the gas out”) and ropa vieja, Viv’s favorite.

Trish’s mom is from Puerto Rico and I imagine that there are similarities in the cuisines of the Caribbean neighbors.

Although we both know how to cook these recipes without cheatin’, we did find a great Cuban cookbook at the yummeria known as The Spanish Table (man, that website needs help – at least it loads fast) near the Pike Place Market the other day – A Taste of Old Cuba has tons of very simple, unadorned recipes that accurately capture the flavor and texture of my in-law’s diet from birth until they arrived in America, and even beyond; these dishes mean “home” to Viv as well, since Aida prepared them for her countless times as well.

It’s one of my deepest pleasures to be able to bring these tastes to my wife.

Writing this made me hungry.

Dave K requested the Guinness beef stew recipe. Quantities below are approximate. I often find myself with too much, so you may want to doublecheck against a book recipe.

• 1 to 2 lbs stew meat, cubed (tradtionally beef but chicken, lamb, pork, whatever, will do)
• 2 to 8 cans or bottles of Guinness
• some flour
• salt and pepper
• a green pepper, cut into chunks
• 1 to 2 cups cut-up carrots
• 1 to 2 cups cut-up celery
• 2 to 4 cups cut up potatoes
• a turnip, diced
• a large onion, sliced thin
• several cloves of garlic
• 1 lb mushrooms

There are some optional veggies you can add to the stew such as green beans, kidney beans, brussels sprouts, leek, scallions, broccoli, and even raisins. Have them ready if you wish.

Get a large, deep frying pan, a big soup-pot, and a broad-mouthed, wide dish. You may wish to get a big bowl, as well.

Dump the cut-up vegetables with the exception of the onions and the mushrooms (and the garlic, but that’s not cut up, now is it) in the soup-pot to get them out of the way. A bowl is fine too. If you put them in the soup-pot you need to be OK with dumping your starter stock on top of the raw veggies, which may be a mite messy.

Now put a cup or so of the flour into the broad dish. Add salt and pepper and some spices – whatever sounds good is fine. Oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, even a dab of ground mustard or allspice. The flour should be flecked with the spices and smell aromatic.

UPDATE: Now cut up or slice the mushrooms.

Now fire up the saucepan. If it’s nonstick, you may not want to add oil; otherwise add something to keep the fry from sticking. I use olive oil, corn oil or butter works fine too. Once the pan’s ready (flick water in to test; when the water sizzles and skates, you’re good to go) quickly dredge the cubed meat in the flour and add it to the pan, a handful at a time. Stir and reduce the heat in the pan slightly.

Once the meat’s started to cook, add the onions and the mushrooms. Salt and pepper. As the pan cooks, add the flour that did not travel with the meat into the pan; stir it so that it browns.

The mushrooms and the flour will absorb the oil in the pan, if you’re using any; feel free to add some more as that happens. Add the garlic during this period of time as well. You can chop it up, or use a garlic press, or pound it and then chop it up, whatever you like.

Once the flour begins to turn into a paste (you should be aiming to use at least a cup of flour here – getting it browned and saturated with beef juice and oil provides a thickener for your stew), and the meat is pretty well cooked, open two cans of Guinness. Pour about half of one into the pan with the meat. It will foam up, so add it cautiously. Keep stirring and adding the beer until a whole can is in.

Drink the other can as you do this.

Now reduce the heat a little bit more. Allow the pan to come to a simmer.

If you’ve added the veggies to the soup-pot earlier, you may want to put another can of beer in the pot now and fire up the burner; otherwise transfer the simmering beef and beer into the soup pot and fire up the burner.

Add another can of beer now if you haven’t already – the total should be two cans, one in the frying pan originally and one in the soup-pot. If you’ve held the veggies, allow the liquid in the soup pot to boil – it will foam, keep an eye on it – and add the vegetables.

Allow the liquid to return to a boil and then reduce the heat to a lowish point. That will change the boil to a simmer, which is what we want. Cover. Allow the stew to simmer for at least two hours. More time is fine. Be sure to stir the stew every so often so it won’t cook onto the sides of the pot.

UPDATE: feel free to add either more beer or some water if a) two cans don’t cover everything, a likelihood or b) the beer has boiled down too much. Don’t be afraid to improvise!

(Although if you use a sock or a rock or chunk of pla-doh or something don’t tell your spouse unless they come right out and ask very specific questions about what’s gotten into you this time and just how much of that damn beer did you have anyway and is there any left?)

About 45 minutes before you serve, remove the stew from the heat. Keep it covered. 15 minutes before you serve, stir and check the temperature by tasting. It shouldn’t scald; if it does, uncover. If it’s too cool, replace on heat, and heat on low until you’re happy with the temperature.

Serve with the beer and a baguette. Yummmmm.

The New Yorker‘s double Food Issue for August 19 and 26, 2002 is a standout issue of the magazine, for me, in many ways – every piece in the mag was fascinating, and one, “The Fruit Detective”, was a nearly perfect reading experience. Others apparently feel the same: MeFi poster semmi highlights the short one-page anecdotes that appeared throughout the book.

“The Fruit Detective” is a profile of a character’s character: David Karp, an ex-junkie ex-Wall Streeter who once produced a Lydia Lunch record and now spends his days in pith helmet, hot on the trail of both the world’s rarest fruit and the deeply sensual, rare experience of eating said fruit.

Simple, straightforward reportage on this eccentric person would have been enough to hold my attention; in the event, John Seabrook’s amusing, carefully crafted prose deepened my reading pleasure by echoing the manic qualities of his subject and by casting reported events in the mold of, among other things, hard-boiled detective fiction:

…Thomas Antel, the landowner, would let us view the plants only from across the road. Karp, clad in his pith helmet, attempted to extract information from Antel about the consortium’s intentions.

…

“So how are the plants doing?” Karp asked, taking out his notebook.

“It’s a learning experience, David, a learning experience,” Antel said, looking nervously at the notes Karp was taking. “What can I tell you? I wish I could show you the plants, but there’s too much money involved to screw this up.” He rubbed his face hard with both hands, and his mood seemed to darken. “People feel a sense of entitlement, like they can just come down here and see what we’re doing.”

Karp was undaunted. “Where did the breeder get his breeding stock from?” he demanded. “Because they say there are some varieties that taste better than others.”

“They may be right, David, they may be right. Look, I can’t talk about this. There’s some very big players involved in this thing, and they don’t care who gets hurt – that’s just the way it is.”

I loved this piece, giggling my way through it; and when it was over, I wanted MORE!

Lucky for me, Karp’s careful cultivation of his own quirkiness has made him an attractive media target. Here are some Google-found links:

On the Trail of the Fruit Detective, from the Santa Monica Mirror.

The Fruit Detective, apparently a supporting page for a radio show, California Heartland.

the Splendid Table is a Minnesota Public Radio food show, no longer broadcast in Seattle, which I recall enjoying. This link points to transcripts of Karp’s appearances on the show.

via groups.google.com, I excavated a long-lost essay about a pleasant summer evening dandled by in the Seattle neighborhood of Fremont, MUCH changed these days. I originally wrote and posted this on or about July 29, 1996:

This Sunday, a friend, my sweetie, and I went a-crawlin (for a bit) in the republic of fremont.

The short of it is: Eat at El Camino. Walk by the canal when you visit Fremont. Have a drink at The George and Dragon. And don’t forget the Dubliner.

First stop was the new Latinesque joint, El Camino (look for the red neon version of the car logo). We started with drinks around, a margarita (tart! but strong) a Red Hook ESB (as good as a block from the brewery could make it, and served at the micro-approved temperature of not quite chilled) and of course a Negro Modelo.

Dinner was two fish tacos and a plate of Chicken Mole. The fish tacos were the special, grilled swordfish, and arrived as separate elemnts attractively assembled on the plate: shredded goat cheese, yogurt, whole baked/boiled (?) beans, rice, a salsa-thingy (not the salsa but the spicy veggies/onion/pepper deal, kinda pico de gallo), and hand patted corn tortillas.

Didn’t try the mole but the sauce was rich in color and aroma and was devoured quickly, as were the fish tacos.

The topic of the origin of mole came up and my pal said he’d heard it was invented on the occasion of a visit of a Spanish king to Mexico from fear that his Highness might not be able to deal wit the spicy fare. Any comments?

The crowd was Fremont hipsters, a mix between aged hippies and aging post-punks; the staff was gracious if busy, and the decor and ambience of the place made me wish I had worn a large straw hat as I drank tropical cocktails. There is a deck, but turnover was minimal, and so we stuck in the bar (which is distinct from the dining area). Spendy, tasty, worth it.

Next, we headed to the redoubtable Dubliner and found it redoubtable again. For those not in the know, the Dubliner was Seattle’s premier European expatriate’s bar for some time. A no-nonsense beer-drinkin atmosphere predominates, leaning just a tad to the “60’s music dominates the jukebox” theme. I try never to miss a visit when in the Republic. A beer or two later we went for a stroll.

Our stroll brought us to the banks of the ship canal where we watched boats and ducks. A couple shared a bottle of wine by the banks of the calm and shallow body of water, its poplar-lined banks bringing memories of early childhood in Boston unaccountably to my mind. Sharing a bottle of wine there with a sweetie seemed like a superior experience, but the mission we were on soon returned to our minds.

Strolling up the hill by the Trolleyman, the Redhook Brewery’s on-site pub, showed us it was closed, but we were not disheartened in the least. We continued on in search of an out of the way joint known by the name of the George and Dragon.

Formerly a haunt of fear known as the Midget Tavern (I have no idea, but I’d like to know, ok?) the George and Dragon is a couple blocks out of the way from the normal Fremont beer-belly zone. Head up 36th towards Ballard, and a block or two before the street angles over, but after the kink at Bitters Co. and Rudy’s, a parking lot, deck, and pub appear, looking vaguely industrial.

We walked in, and I noticed two things:

More UK brews than I recognized (a surprise and treat) and more drunken British, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh expatriates than I was inclined to shake Proposition 187 at. We had scored. This was the bigtime in a pub crawl, the local joint that defies expectations and exceeds reasonable standards with out currying the favor or the trade of loafer-wearing yuppies.

The crowd was mostly from the UK (I had trouble understanding the English spoken by a couple of people there), mostly working-class, and mostly rowdy, but in a different way than the good people at the Midget Tavern used to get rowdy (or so I favor myself by presuming); I did not ever feel a serious fight was about to bust out while we sweated on the deck, savoring or brews: a striking light bitter featuring a nitrogen tap for the creamy-fine head we associate with Guinness, called “Green King”.

I thought it was appropriate to drink that brew in the former Midget Tavern as I must presume that the Green King is the leader of the Little People.

All in all, the G&D was a remarkable bar, and I unhestatingly recommend it to those among us who savor taverns and pubs. It manages the tricky feat of being everyday and extraordinary all at once, and deserves your trade…

See you in Fremont, where you can find me looking for the Lenin statue…

P.S: the Pacific Inn will get the treatment soon! I swear!

On May 5th, Viv and I finally pulled into the parking lot of the train-car diner south of the sports stadiums here in Seattle, Andy’s Diner. We, along with the rest of Seattle, have driven by this landmark for years without ever venturing in.

The restaurant closed for a period but reopened, I think, in 2001. Diners as a restaurant species in Seattle as a whole are completely endangered, and have been closing up all over the city since the mid-nineties. This is a drag since I subscribe to the “formica equals good cheap eats and bad coffee” belief system. I’m still not over the closure in the early nineties of the other Andy’s Diner on Broadway in my neighborhood, Capitol Hill.

Sadly, in fact, the last of the Hill’s greasy spoons, the kick-ass diner-slash-bar Ernie Steele’s (under the pseudonym Ilene’s Sports Bar) closed a few months ago, and just reopened as a Julia’s (an extension of the Wallingford eatery).

We walked the front doors of the train-car Andy’s at about 5 pm on a Saturday. The joint was totally empty. We were seated in a turn-of-the-century train car that had its’ original booths removed and replaced with two and four-top tables. The car was narrower than the cars currently used by the also-endangered Amtrak. It retained not only a great deal of the original fixtures but additionally a great deal of the preceding century’s nicotine buildup. For all that the car was currently non-smoking.

I tried ordering a microbrew (stupid! what was I thinking?) and was informed that actually, ALL the taps were offline, and I could choose between Corona or MGD. I shoulda just ordered a Manhattan. I went with the MGD.

I ended up ordering the 10 oz New York Strip with hashbrowns and breaded oysters. The oysters, much to my surprise, were a total triumph. This dish was once a staple of Northwestern cuisine, and I have many a happy memory of noshing on ’em with my grandparents. They don’t appear on many menus any more, and when they do, they often SUCK. Not these, not at all.

The steak was OK, nothing speacial. Viv got a porkchop dish which, I cannot stress enough, was spectacular. Our vegetables were also perfectly prepared. In short, to my astonishment, the cook kicked ass.

Our total bill? Forty-one clams. A complete bargain, less than half what we would have paid for the same meal and service on the Hill.

After eating, we wandered around the interior of the diner, which was apparently constructed entirely of old railcars (perhaps as many as ten). It was pretty empty, although a steady migration of middle-age folks were streaming into the “lounge car”.

Among other wonders, I found a case full of bowling trophies from the sixties, and a television lounge featuring not a soul, a seventies Zenith color teevee and several orange naugahyde lounge chairs.

These last wonders were located in a rail car which was used by FDR in the late 30s and was installed as a part of Andy’s at its’ opening in 1946. Let me clarify that: YOU CAN HAVE A PRIVATE PARTY IN A RAILCAR USED BY FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT AT ANDY’S DINER IN NEAR SOUTH SEATTLE!

Hm, I just realized that since the Museum of Flight (located just a smidge further south) currently hosts the Lyndon Baynes Johnson Air Force One 707, one could eat at FDR’s traveling table just prior to observing LBJ’s hydraulically mounted monument to the psychology of power. LBJ had a specially constructed seating area on the plane, with a raised seat for him. Everyone else got radically, unconventionally low bench seats at the table. The table itself is hydraulically mounted so that it can be moved up and down at the press of a button.

You’ll NEVER guess which person seated at the table could reach the buttons. By which I mean you already know who held that power.

So I think that’s a neat possiblility. Eat lunch with FDR and Eleanor, and thank them for the important things they did for our republic; tour LBJ’s plane, and realize he was practically a nutcase.

You should know I think that these two are also the best Presidents of the century, men who rival one another, and Lincoln, in the service they performed for our country.

Andy’s Diner,
2963 4th Ave. South,
Seattle, WA 98134-1914
(206) 624-4097

No URL that I could find.

But I did find this cool matchbook cover art for the jernt at the American Matchcover Collecting Club. Zounds! Someone tell Jimmy Lileks about this!

I lived in Switzerland for about a year when I was sixteen. I attended a french-language high school (probably acually a Lyceum, but I’ll have to look it up) called L’École Nouvelle de la Suisse Romande (roughly, “The New School of Romance Switzerland”). La Suisse Romande is a geographical subsection of Switzerland that may be understood, if vaguely, to mean “the non-german-speaking parts”; that’s pretty much the southern edge of the country.

While there, I learned to speak French, sorta, and got a taste for Swiss cuisine. Yes, yes, Swiss cuisine is like German food with really good cheese, but there’s more to it. There are really stinky sweetmeat-and-cabbage sausages called “saucissons” for example; and then there’s the wine they grow around Lake Geneva (“Lac Léman”), the body of water on which Lausanne is situated.

This wine is the wine around which my palate for wine formed, and all other wines are tasted in relation to it, at a pre-analytic level. This is despite my father’s best efforts to inculcate a well-formed palate on my part. He’s a winemaker of really long standing (his first batches were bottled around the time I was two, unless there are some even earlier vintages of which I’m unaware) and he’s damn good at it.

Now, let me clarify a bit: I know about wines, to an extent, and can taste wine with reasonable depth. I enjoy all sorts of wine. In fact, of late, my taste is moving toward sweeter wines, such as Reislings and the like. What I know about wine, and my long-standing interest in it, is due to the good offices of my father. Thanks, Pops!

However, because the Swiss wines grown near Lausanne are both rare enough (the Swiss don’t export the wine, by and large) and deeply-seated enough in my mind, these wines have the capacity to, quite literally, move me to tears when I have the good fortune to encounter them.

On Wednesday I was strolling through the aisles of one of our ever-multiplying neighborhood grocery stores when I saw the wines I have included photos of here. “Hm”, thought I, “a white cross on a red field. Hunh, that’s similar to the SWISS FLAG! Could these wines be from near Lausanne?”

So I bought one.

I opened it as soon as I got home to taste it, and, as Emeril sez, BAM!

As it turns out, the white cross on a red shield is the emblem of the Savoys, who had some sort of political sway in Switzerland for a period of time. The French département of Savoy is, in fact, the part of France right across the lake from Lausanne. These wines are really as close as I can reasonably expect to get to vins Vaudois or Valaisienne.

Especially as close as I can reasonably expect to find by walking around at random in the neighborhood.

All roads lead to Rome, I guess. Who’s the tribune this annum?

After we visited the Burke this weekend I made a trout dinnner from the highly charismatic fish seen here.

Ideally, I would have broiled it, but I do not trust my oven manipulation skills enough so I just baked it. It came out ok, but the impact of the lemon-soy-olive oil vinaigrette I basted it with was lost, as we discarded the skin. Filleting it went well enough; the spine came out with the head as it’s supposed to; yet somehow I was not 100% satisfied.

Well, there’s always more fish in the sea fish farm.

Several weeks ago, we spent a pleasant evening eating, drinking and bowling with Spencer and Sarah. When we returned, I offered a nightcap, “a wee dram of scotch”, and etymological curiosity awakened.

Could the ancient small coin of the near east, the drachma, be in some wise related to the (to me) indeterminate liquid quantity of a dram?

The answer is yes, and has its roots in the ancient measurement system we call “English”, but which is very much older than the nation of England. English measure is based on the principle of dual divisibility: each base unit is divisible by even numbers or odds, generally halves and thirds. These measures can be grouped to reflect proportional relationships seen frequently in nature, such as base-eight proportions or base-twelve proportions.

These systems of measurement and proportion were first enunciated in the Mediterreanean basin, probably in response to Egyptian principles of proportion and measure, and were strongly codified though the influence of classical Greek writings, notably Plato and Aristotle, each of who expounds upon principles of “true measure” and harmony in music and by extention to the physical world.

But what about that little glass of scotch?

Turning to The American Heritage Dictonary of the English Language:

NOUN:
1. abbr. dr. a. A unit of weight in the U.S. Customary System equal to 1/16 of an ounce or 27.34 grains (1.77 grams). b. A unit of apothecary weight equal to 1/8 of an ounce or 60 grains (3.89 grams). 2a. A small draft: took a dram of brandy. b. A small amount; a bit: not a dram of compassion.

ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English dragme, a drachma, a unit of weight, from Old French, from Late Latin dragma, from Latin drachma. See drachma.

Aha! “1/8 ounce”; and see DRACHMA! But how big is a shot? Well, a shot is 2 fluid ounces. So a dram is one-sixteenth of a shot. Not a lot. (In usage, it’s clear, it’s really commonly employed to mean about 2 fluid ounces, but’s etymology we’re after here, not usage).

Here’s Vitruvius on the matter (the oddball words are, I believe, an effort to render greek in the browser):

“6. The mathematicians, on the other hand, contend for the perfection of the number six, because, according to their reasoning, its divisors equal its number: for a sixth part is one, a third two, a half three, two-thirds four, which they call divmoiroV; the fifth in order, which they call pentavmoiroV, five, and then the perfect number six. When it advances beyond that, a sixth being added, which is called e[fektoV, we have the number seven. Eight are formed by adding a third, called triens, and by the Greeks, ejpivtritoV. Nine are formed by the addition of a half, and thence called sesquilateral; by the Greeks hJmiovlioV; if we add the two aliquot parts of it, which form ten, it is called bes alterus, or in Greek ejpidivmoiroV. The number eleven, being compounded of the original number, and the fifth in order is called ejpipentavmoiroV. The number twelve, being the sum of the two simple numbers, is called diplasivwn.

7. Moreover, as the foot is the sixth part of a man’s height, they contend, that this number, namely six, the number of feet in height, is perfect: the cubit, also, being six palms, consequently consists of twenty-four digits. Hence the states of Greece appear to have divided the drachma, like the cubit, that is into six parts, which were small equal sized pieces of brass, similar to the asses, which they called oboli; and, in imitation of the twenty-four digits, they divided the obolus into four parts, which some call dichalca, others trichalca.”

Soo… drachmas were divisible by six, although they also derived this from a base-twelve system.

And that’s as far as I’ll take this. I was looking to see if there was a direct connection from the divisions of the drachma to the Spanish coin, the famous “piece-of-eight” from which we get the term “bit”, as in “two-bit word scholar”, but although the usage and practice may be similar, it seems they are separated by a great distance in time and therefore may not share a heritage as do dram and drachma.