Land's End. Straw hat required.

Turkey necks are purchased on trays of 10-12 in the super market poultry section.  I had never bought them before.  I'd had no reason to.  For giblet gravy, the pertinent innards and meaty non-standards usually come packaged inside the turkey, and one neck (whether or not it's the actual neck of the beast at hand) is sufficient for a decent-sized boat of savory sauce.  Cervical bones of flightless birds fall into that strange category of questionable, exotic, or ethnic menus that also include pork ears, tripe, face meat, and pig's feet.  Otherwise, turkey necks have one use: bait.  A week ago, I didn't know that. But I do now.  An invitation to a crab boil is what opened these new horizons.  Some friends of ours were planning a trip to the Rockefeller Preserve, and in the course of our conversation I revealed that I'd never been crabbing before -- in fact, I had just learned to eat the things from the shells only a few weeks earlier.  What had begun as an informal dinner invitation had in moments become a call to adventure. 

 License.  In order to catch crustaceans legally, it's necessary to pay the state a modest yearly tax of $5.50.  Now the accompanying documentation only proves you have 5 bucks and a half in your wallet, not that you actually know what you're doing.  I was no wiser after being made legal than I had been before.  Crab nets.  They come in various forms and shapes, depending upon how much you're willing to spend, and whether you'd like to reuse them on future excursions.  We went for the higher end: a set of concentric metal rings inset with substantial nylon netting.  It was something like nested basketball hoops with the hole closed up and with a Styrofoam float attached to a retrieval cord.  There were other models  made of less costly aluminum rings with thinner netting of something akin to trussing twin.  Also, there were metal nets that resembled collapsible fruit baskets some people hang in their kitchens to display bananas.  Our net was big and green.  Carrying it through the sporting goods store was empowering.  What the license failed to prove, the confident carrying of this net-and-ring device certainly did: we were going crabbing, and we knew what was what.  For a total of twenty dollars and fifty cents, we had become experts.  Walking out to the car, Blaine reminded me "Now, you own a crab net."  Of all the oddball things I've purchased in 40 something years, this was actually the most unlikely for me.  But it was very cool.

Every alarm in the house was set for 3:30am.  The required gear had been prepared and stowed in the car the evening before.  At 4am we were on the road, and by 4:30 we had met the rest of our group, having made one pit stop for convenience store coffee and the de rigueur honey bun (a junky confection best enjoyed on early morning road trips and at continental breakfasts concluding Easter Sunday sunrise services).  I knew we would be driving to Abbeville, then to Kaplan, then turning south.  Beyond Kaplan extended a territory I had never explored.  In every way terra nova. 

As dawn approached, the arch of the Louisiana boot was silhouetted in a scrim of balmy ground fog.  Pastures and fields yielded to limitless grassy marshland; live oaks to gnarled water trees, sparsely green, some long dead, reduced to skeletal hydras rearing serpentine headless necks hung with smokey moss. High perched water birds hoped for an easy catch.  Here was the end of the world.  At the edge of this landscape, begins the sea.  

The expert crabber has two methods at his disposal.  The first involves a length of cotton twine, one end tied around a hunk of bait meat, the other held in the hand.  The meat is tossed into the water to attract a hungry crustaceann.  Vibrations up the string signal the hunter to start a slow pulling of the creature from the water, as a second person stands ready with a fish net to capture the crab before he realizes he's been duped by clever human generosity.  For those hoping to entrap several crabs at once, there is the crabbing net -- like the one we had purchased.  Several hunks of meat are tied to the inside, and the whole thing is tossed into the water.  After a period roughly equal to the time required to consume one beer, several Fritos, and a sandwich, the net is hoisted from the water.  If Neptune's smiling, the contraption should be teaming with clamping claws.  Easy in principle.  It's the variables that determine success: the time of day, the number of others who also rose at 3:30am, and most crucial: the moon phase.  Turkey necks entwined, nets cast, we waited.  An alligator swam listlessly toward the shore.  A neighboring fisherman armed with a rod and reel cast his hook and caught the attention of the aquatic reptile thanks to a colorful bob at the end of his line.  Jaws opened and the beast was hooked.  The man tugged and the plastic bob flew up into the air, over his head and became ensnared in the pier behind him.  The Alligator paddled away.  Laughter ensued from the pier as the ruddy man tried untangling his line for a second cast.  No luck on our end.  "Mais, get dat bat!" we heard from the pier.  Had the alligator returned?  A bat?  We turned just in time to see the same man hoist a writhing eel from the water, set it carefully onto the edge of the wooden walk, in order to beat it to a pulp with the aluminum bat his friend had brought from the truck.  "Das an eel.  Dat thing'll burn you like a jelly fish."  There were perils here I had never imagined.  Even when first jumping from the truck to set up folding chairs, I landed directly into an ant pile.  Crabbing wasn't working where we were.  Too many people, and the moon had instructed the delicate scavengers to crawl away from the shore.  "Dey say on de othah side, da crabs ah runnin'."  Sound advice, we supposed.  Packing up our gear, we set out for "the other side".  A single-laned gravel causeway led from the main road straight out into the marsh.  Pools and canals lined both sides.  Cars parked precariously on the inclines.  We found our spot and sunk our nets.  Pulling them out, we were alarmed to find them completely covered with a thick black ink that splattered up from the water onto us.  This was the residue from last spring's offshore oil disaster.  The raw black sludge from deep inside the the earth had found its way here and settled atop the mud.  A dilute mixture of household cleaner was all that could clean this away.  Grease. This was the catch that ended our excursion.  Making our way back to the highway, we wondered whether crab caught from that mire was actually good to eat at all.  But this was the region where the fisherman lived.  From very nearby, they took their boats out and caught crab and shrimp in deeper waters.  Surely someone had live crabs for sale.  The way to find this out is to ask locals.  On Saturday morning, locals are at local grocery markets.  Ma and Pa shops with short aisles and dim lighting.  Stelly's.  "You know of anyone selling fresh crabs and shrimp?" Blaine asked.  The cowbell atop the door clanked.  "Morning!" While the clerk thought it over, she shook her head. A lady with a tight orange perm pushing a tiny shopping cart rounded the corner near the register, engrossed in small talk with an unseen person, "Poor Hazel.  She's bad fa dat." 

"There's another store on the other side of the Intercoastal Canal bridge.  We can ask there." We phoned the others and let them in on our plan.  "Now, when we go in here, there'll be people just sitting around visiting and drinking coffee."  Blaine had stopped here before.  The place was unassuming.  Neat.  A simple screen door marked the entrance from the porch.  "Morning.  Want coffee?"  Awesome.  The same questioning for live seafood was answered with a call to an adjacent room.  "Ma, you know someone selling crabs?" A middle-aged woman entered the room drying her hands on a dish towel, which she adroitly threw over her shoulder.  "Na."  One of the men pulled out a cell phone. "Wait. Let me see."  Two calls later, he was giving us directions to a local source. "Come to think about it, just follow me. She lives across the street from me."  Our caravan followed.  The road ended at a giant chest full of live crab.  Nine dollars a dozen.  We reached for our wallets. 

In essence, this wasn't cheating.  We had assembled the gear, purchased the licenses, driven here before sunrise, tied strange meat to string, seen an alligator hooked, and witnessed a caustic eel bludgeoned to death on the pier.  We had done everything prescribed for this, but had caught nothing.  And besides, there's no rule that forbids access to the most abundant crabbing grounds on the planet: a professional fisherman's ice chest in Forked Island, Louisiana.

  

   

                

L'heure exquise

I met Blaine after work.  Clients of his had recently made a trip to New York and returned with a little green box for him, neatly wrapped up with a yellow bow.  Per se, the things are chocolate nougat sweets, but they enjoy a peculiar mystique. "Before we do anything else...look, Teuscher champagne truffles."  They may not be consumed alone -- that would diminish their magic, like being the sole witness of some spectacular astronomical event.  No one else would ever believe or could ever imagine the true length of the comet's fiery tail.  So at the end of this day,  we stopped to look up -- only for a few moments -- to share something exceedingly rare and indescribably special.       

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree.."

A few weeks ago, I called a holiday for myself which corresponded to a Saturday on which Blaine had done the same.  Initially we had plans to travel with another couple to a local casino for some event called "Indian Bingo" or some such.  Prospects of winning a gigantic jackpot attracted us to the idea.  In the eleventh hour, the other couple backed out of the trip.  This gave rise to our query: did we really, I mean really want to drive down there for a 7 hour bingo game?  After all, we were both off. So this was the stipulation: if we don't do what we had initially planned  for this rare free Saturday on which both of us had successfully dipped below the radar, we would need to accomplish something more beneficial than discovering hidden channels listed in the cable "On Demand" menu.  Blaine had been contending for a while with a problematic backyard.  I understand it had once been a stellar outdoor room, yet through a chain of events including a tremendously cold, freezing winter, the paradise had come to resemble the inner sanctum of Fred Sanford's digs in TV-land (that's his assessment, not mine).  Over time, the debris had been cleared away.  The center of the backyard features a concrete paved area in the middle of which is a square planting bed.  A fabulous palm tree lives in its center.  Around it was a hodgepodge of various plants and such.  The plan for the day: transform this section of the backyard into an extension of the patio sitting area where we both enjoyed spending time.  Blaine was already on a planting spree: pots and planters long retired had their pensions cut and were pressed into service again: petunias, evergreens, and a host of other plants to add color and personality.  So too this palm tree bed.  Years ago, I had made a raised bed in my own courtyard by using retaining wall blocks.  It had saved me the effort of plowing up the earth to achieve the depth for planting.  A load of blocks and 4 Canna Lilies later, we were dragging our injured push cart across the parking lot back to the vehicle (of course I had to select the one with the busted wheel to transport 2 tons of cast cement).  We excavated the random plants from around the palm tree, set out the blocks in three neat, interlocking rows, then carefully unstacked them, spread beads of cement, then re-stacked.  The mini wall framed the bed and gave the area a finished look.  Several bags of top soil  provided a happy planting area for the new Cannas as well as some of the salvaged flora.  While the bed was coming into its own, we moved our attention to the rest of the patio: cleaned, rearranged, repositioned.  The result: three unique sitting areas in one extended room full of plants.  Into each planter: a bamboo Tiki torch.  After all, the proper outdoor room requires the proper outdoor lighting.

"Where Alph, the sacred river, ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea."               

Several times through the week, we will meet for a light something for dinner after work, which for both of us is usually late.  Weekends have shorter days and often leave some room for the extra special: meals enjoyed in private prepared by either or both of us.  When the temperatures are hot, or if it's pouring rain, we eat indoors, but on the nicer days, we're outside in the rejuvenated greenhouse, especially for breakfast.  Last weekend, I made Saturday night dinner and Blaine prepared Sunday breakfast.  Saturday evening was the prelude to Father's Day, so Rousses was packed with conscientious worshipers of Dad preparing to grill -- no express lanes open, naturally.  I was planning a light summertime dinner: tortellini with basil pesto, a Romaine salad with walnuts and ramen noodles dressed with a sweet/sour vinaigrette.  The overfilled grocery store had brought me late back home and caused me to run slightly later for my anticipated 6pm arrival in Broussard.  Everything fell into place however, as I unpacked and got started on dinner.  Being late makes me nervous, and when I'm nervous in the kitchen weird things happen.  All went smoothly until I had all the pesto bits in the blender.  Although the ingredients were grinding away nicely, I felt I had to speed along the process just a bit.  Crunch!  I had destroyed Blaine's favorite bamboo spatula I thought would be keen to use as a tamping device for the fresh basil leaves.  As retribution, the Universe caused my hand to slip up the handle of the hot skillet whose interior I was wiping clean of nut and ramen noodle debris in preparation to saute the chicken tenderloins to sit atop the pasta.  The side of my middle index finger knuckle was effectively singed.  On the bright side, no slivers of bamboo had ruined the bright green sauce, my finger really didn't hurt (that much), and we both enjoyed our lighter side dinner.  Before we retired to the living room to enjoy our Black Magic Napoleons from the Rousses bakery, we took a trip to the Broussard Albertson's in search of breakfast fare as well as something from Red Box.

Blaine makes eggs in a way we had discovered last Christmas Day at Hilary's (Channeling Ina: read her blog!).  She had prepared the most fabulous eggs in ramekins baked in a bain marie and seasoned perfectly with herbs, garlic, and butter.  If you like soft boiled eggs this is the way to do them without having to fuss with the shells.  No polite cracking with the bottom of a tiny spoon or the typical Teutonic knife decapitation method I use, a technique espoused in my family passed down from my German grandfather ("I wish he wouldn't do that.  It's so impolite").  The only variation Blaine uses is that the cooking is done in a toaster oven instead of the regular oven, and there's no bain marie.  With the proper timing, the yokes come out runny, but if the eggs are left in to set, it's still a tasty dish.  At Albertson's, Blaine found a giant fruit bowl with a generous amount of berries among the melon slices, shredded cheese, grits, bacon, and Texas toast. Upon our return to the house:  movie, chocolate Napoleon, and the remainder of a quiet evening amid the flickering Tiki torches.  

I was looking forward to the ramekin eggs.  "Shrimp and Grits!" Something completely unexpected.  It's considered truly Southern, shrimp and grits, but it's really something more of a treat than a staple.   "I was thinking about what to do with the grits, and shrimp came to mind," he said.   When I cook, I have recipes in my head.  I generally know what I'll be using, how much to use and what techniques to follow.  Blaine is a visual artist.  He cooks like he paints.  He sees what he has and adds what he needs, and it works out.  In German, we'd say er kocht nach Schnauze -- he cooks by his nose.  I love watching him cook and it's fun working as his sou chef.  His shrimp and grits were prepared with standard grits cooked with milk and thickened with grated cheese.  He rendered a generous quantity of peppered bacon and reserved the grease to cook the shrimp.  Shrimp and crumbled bacon were served in bowls atop the cheesy grits.  Ramekin eggs, shrimp and grits, and a sweet fruit salad enjoyed al fresco with plenty of Louisiana coffee drunk from colorful mugs.  We are both tremendously busy throughout the week.  When things slow a bit on the weekends, we are afforded a gift of free time to be savored bite by bite like a costly truffle.  Sitting back and looking out at the beautiful green space, I have come to realize that I don't have to be the Emperor of China to know I am one of the luckiest men alive.  

     

         

Forget the Cookies

At a recent social function at my shop, amidst the various offerings of tasty amuse bouche was a plate of cookies that were by far the winners of the afternoon's snack buffet. Here's how you make them:

2 egg whites
pinch of salt
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
2/3 cp sugar
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cp pecan pieces
1 cp chocolate morsels

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Beat egg whites until foamy.  Add salt and cream of tartar.  Beat well, gradually adding sugar.  Beat till stiff peaks form.
Add almond and vanilla.  Fold in pecan pieces and chocolate morsels. 
Drop by teaspoonsfuls on aluminium foil on a cookie sheet.  Place in oven and turn off heat at once.  Leave overnight or at least 7-8 hours without opening the oven door.

 

Seafood Lasagna and Rustic Caesar Update

"Potato soup or French Onion, babe?" was my question I texted last Friday night as to which would be preferred for dinner on Saturday.  At the time I asked, Blaine was standing in his kitchen laboriously de-heading some 30lbs of fresh shrimp just caught that day, thanks to procurement efforts of a client.  Plan change. No soup.  Seafood lasagna paired with our friend Hilary's Rustic Caesar.   A quick trip to my neighborhood Rousses assured efficient assembly of all the bits.  It's a humble assortment of ingredients for the lasagna, but for the salad, I used Romaine and Endive -- still not necessarily ultra chic, but you know.  At the checkout, everything went through without question.  I was so pleased not to land another Chatty Cathy.  I said it before: one of my most intense pet peeves is being subjugated to superfluous commentary on my groceries by a cashier.  Here's how I see it: if you sell it in the store, and you're ringing a customer, you should know what it is and whether it's vegetable or mineral.  Most importantly: no comment is necessary.  It is of no interest to me whether or not you've ever eaten it, have no clue how to prepare it, what it looks like to you, or how it compares to what you generally serve your family on weeknights.  As the Romaine hit the scanner, I saw it coming.  I could read it in her face.  "What's this?" I wanted so much to tell her it was a single lemon, since that would grant me a bargain, but I had a lemon in my order as well, and it would have been more difficult to convince her that the lemon was Romaine.  Blaine later referred to it as "weird lettuce".  Next time I'll be prepared.  Then the endive.  Same question.  Facetiousness took my soul, but prudence checked my tongue.  "Dead birds" I was yearning to explain.  "Endive."  "How you spell that? N-dive?" (the punctuation was spoken: "the letter n, dash, dive?").  Always an adventure.

  

In rough form, here's how one prepares the dish:

Shrimp

Scallops

Krab (I refer to this as "crab with a K".) 

Sliced Green onion

Clam Juice

Chicken Broth

Grated Parmesan

Milk

Whipping Cream

Lasagna Noodles

Prepare the lasagna noodles in the customary fashion.  In a skillet, saute the onion in butter.  Add broth and clam juice and let simmer.  Add seafood and allow to cook until shrimp turn pink.  Strain, reserving cooking liquid.  With 1/2 cup of butter, prepare a blond roux.  Add 1 1/2 cup milk and the reserved cooking liquid.  Allow to simmer and thicken.  Turn off the flame and fortify the sauce with 1 cup of cream and approximately 1 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan.  Add seafood to the sauce and prepare the lasagna strata as usual.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes.  

Visit Hilary's blog, Channeling Ina, for the details of preparing the Rustic Caesar.  It was a perfect starter for the seafood dish, and the N-dive gave just the right bit of pepperiness and added texture.  For a whole shredded head of weird lettuce and two dead birds, I doubled the dressing quantity.  

After dinner: carrot cake and coffee enjoyed sitting in over sized leather chairs, four feet sharing an ottoman. Movie choice:  For Colored Girls.  Life is good.            

Happiness is a lemon slice

I suppose it's a good thing to befriend the bartender, especially when he's good at what he does.  And that's exactly what we've done by becoming regulars at O'Charley's.  Although it's a chain restaurant, our frequent flyer status has stripped away the impersonal atmosphere of most chain joints.  The two-for-one martini sweetens the pot even further, and add to that this little potable, and you have a win-win: the Happy Raspberry Surprise.  We had started off our Martini affair with what the menu calls an Apple Martini or some such.  Several visits later,  we spotted a rather intriguing flavored potion on the drinks list involving Italian lemon liqueur.  Although it wasn't a bargain cocktail, the bartender held the glasses under the bar and inserted the premium booze anyway, explaining apologetically that he was only allowed to use lemon juice --  our little secret.  This started off the cocktail creativity behind the bar.  On our next visit, we requested the same martini with the imaginary shot of Italian, only this time, he took Blaine's suggestion to make the drink with blueberry vodka.  And thus the birth of the signature Martini incorporating said flavored vodka, chambord, and the secret lemon sauce.       

Sideways Glance

Alerted to this site by friends who immediately thought of Libellus at the mention of summer seersucker, I made haste to inspect the newest re-invention of the traditional warm weather garb of Louisiana gentlemen, crooks, and politicians.  The Suckerlab offers only a few items in two colors of the classic cooling fabric: trousers, hoodies, shorts.  Typically, the color stripes are arranged vertically in the garment, but these turn convention on end, offering potentially scandalous horizontal patterning.  But nothing goes better with a balmy Louisiana summer....except maybe a dirty martini (but who says you can't have both?).  I rather like these trousers, but were I of portly stature, I would loathe them, opting for my traditional blue and white suit with tan and white spectators.  Pocket and waistband facings are of orange fabric.  At least in the case of the pockets, the contrasting color is visible.  All this said, were I ever to wear these re-designed favorites, it would only be for the most casual of settings, since the trousers in their slouchy relaxation resemble pajama bottoms rathers than legit trousers.  The shorts version of these is perhaps the more prudent choice.  For warmer months, there is also a corduroy incarnation which like its seersucker counterpart, turns the pattern on its side.  These and other edgy designs at http://www.betabrand.com/. 

    

The Commutative Property

It's a basic mathematical concept most of us learned in elementary school, that by adding 3 and 2, for example, the sum will be 5.  By the Commutative Property,  adding 2 and 3 also equals 5.  As it turns out, this identical concept can be applied when common sense fails and the brain synapses refuse to fire.  Last Sunday I hosted a function at my shop which required the offering of a modest spread of sweets, savories, and mild potables derived from grapes.  As my sweet, I opted for the general crowd pleaser in South Louisiana: the petit four.  In Lafayette, the best miniature cake cubes have for generations been procured at one place: Keller's Bakery.  However, and especially now since the block of Jefferson Street downtown where Keller's is located has been torn to hell by construction for the past 6 months blocking easy access to the place, the title of best petits fours now goes to Rousses Market in Youngsville.  Although there's a Keller's branch in Youngsville, it's on the opposite side of the village from the Maison -- and as the streets are arranged here,  it's not an easy journey to travel laterally.  Rousses is both convenient and the bakery is -- permit me to step aside should there be a sudden clap of thunder -- superior to the age old Lafayette confectioner, at least as far as petits fours are concerned. They are moister, more flavorful, more colorfully decorated, and noticeably larger than the Keller's variety.  So, for my function, there was no question as to the source of choice.   Just in case there was a run on them (which could happen, given that most local high schools were matriculating this weekend), I found it prudent to call in a pre-order for a late afternoon pick-up.  Here is the verbatim exchange with the clerk at the bakery:

Libellus: I would like to order 2 dozen petits fours to be picked up at 4:30 this afternoon.  Is that possible?

Bakery: No, sir. We need at least 24 hours. 

L: I see.  So I wouldn't be able to order those today?

B: No, sir. 

L: Well, how many petits fours do you have on hand at the moment?

B: We have at least 4 dozen. 

L: Very good.  Would you please reserve 2 dozen of those?  I will be there at 4:30 to purchase them. 

B: Yes sir. I'll set them aside now. 

L: Thank you. 

Despite the superior quality of the petits fours, those who prepare them may not shine as the sharpest spades in the shed.  Nonetheless, a bit of uncommon sense makes for great conversation at the buffet.   

The Rustic Caesar

Perhaps it's my fondness for most things Classical, but more than likely it's because a pedestrian green salad with the typical ho-hum Italian dressing is boring.  Nothing beats a good Caesar -- just ask the Gallic tribes.  My rule: the creamier and anchovier the better.  Hilary from Channeling Ina has published an extraordinary Caesar recipe which relies solely on the anchovies contained in the Lea & Perrins' -- so no extra fish chopping required.     



Channeling Ina: Crock Pot Love: "As a busy mom I am always in search of a great crock pot recipe. Being a tried and true cajun lady I just cant get over some of the bad cro..."

Trees




The original: Blaine's Tree

 


Libellus' Tree









Painting With a Twist was our venue last night, along with a sizable group of friends to re-create an original painting.  Some time ago, Blaine had attended a painting session there, and his rebellious, non-conformist nature inspired him to fill his canvas with his own creation: The Confetti Tree, which was taken on by the franchise to be offered as one of its regular models.  The premiere was last night.  Our "Twist" of choice: an expert re-make of our favorite specialty Martini, the "Happy Raspberry Surprise".   



Not for Knots.

Scanning through the men's section of the Interweave Knits website I came across this.  Doesn't he look cute in his fabulous knit neckties?  Were it not for the hair, I would swear the photos were from the mid 1980's. I confess, I did own several of these....when I was 16 -- and that was 1985.  Seriously?  Knit ties?  With the price of the cashmere lace weight required compounded by the mind-numbing repetitive stitching it will take to produce a bulky strip of fabric that, in the end, will resemble a goiter even when knotted in a four-in-hand, I'd rather spend the extra bucks and head out to the nearest Versace boutique for a fine silk creation that stands up to a full Windsor.    

The Klops Experience

Klops

One of my favorite meals growing up was something rather mundane in form, a simple meatball affair.  But with such foods: the secret is in the sauce. Königsberger Klops, it's called.  A dish named for a German city that's now in Russia.  And when I was a kid, that fact was always brought up at the dinner table whenever Klops was on the menu.  "And of course now the damn Russians sit there," my mother would start.  "The Russians in Königsberg, the Pollocks in Danzig, the French in Strassburg.   What a shame."  That's when my attention would turn to the capers floating in the creamy gravy.  The shrinkage of the German Empire from the moment Bill left his Under den Linden digs at the dawn of Weimar up to the final map redraw after Yalta was a cause celebre at home  -- a major cause celebre -- and Klops would evoke a barrage of opinionating.  Enduring the barbs of postwar politics was worth a bowl of Klops, though.  I made it for us last Saturday, but instead of the de rigueur boiled potatoes beneath the sauce, I would make potato dumplings -- Kartoffelklöße.  My Saturday is generally done by 4pm.  I would have roughly an  hour to assemble the ingredients, get them home and complete the prep work, in order to leave for Blaine's house by 6.  The Albertson's near my shop, I knew, had a good European food section -- at least they did the last time I had seriously shopped there, a couple years ago.  Front row parking -- a bad sign? Shopping carts lined up at the door.  I test drove three before I settled for the fourth that, like the others, featured the cliche broken front wheel.  I carried a neat list of items.  Moving through the veg department, I gathered all I needed.  Rounding the corner to where the Euro section used to be, I found an inexhaustible selection of Mexican food items neighboring an equally extensive selection of Asian foods.  The die-hards will go through the trouble to grate potatoes and prepare a goopy paste for the dumplings.  My mom always used the Panni mix, and I am a firm believer in carrying on tradition.  Al's used to carry the mix.   I would assume a previous manager had perhaps enjoyed a lengthy tour in Germany as a GI, which guaranteed his customers a healthy choice of Oetker cake mixes, unique canned goods, glass mugs of low-end beer hall mustard, cans of herring in dill sauce, Wieners in jars, and potato dumpling mix.  The new guy I suppose was more a soy sauce and refrito type.  Euro foods: all gone.  Even the Matzos were gone.  A whole shelf of colorful Santeria candles to light curses on my neighbor, but no potato balls.   There I was, aimlessly pushing a squawking cart full of food for the weekend through a labyrinth of products I didn't need.  It must be somewhere else, I thought.  So, then begins the quest.  Every aisle, every end display.  I was on a time limit, and what had turned into a quick trip to pick up a few things had turned into a goose chase.  And this bonus: every idiot with poor spacial usage skills was shopping at that particular Alberton's this afternoon.  The spacey lady who parks her cart and screeching, untrained urchin in the middle of the aisle to hunt for Lesieur peas ten feet away.  The obese chip eater stocking up on provisions who sees you pushing your cart down the aisle, yet somehow manages to wobble into your path. The feeble senior patting down the lane who decides to wedge his cart between one side of the aisle and the jutting display of Gladware containers to set up a roadblock until he's decided whether the poptarts or cream of wheat is more suitable.  Frustrating.  All this and still no Panni mix.  Why didn't I just go to Rousses?  Why?  Instead, I wasted 45 minutes in grocery hell.  The end of my rope was close.  Seconds later, I slipped off the end: I abandoned my cart filled with everything except a key food item.  Right there in the aisle by the ramen noodles.  I just left it standing there, walked out the store back to my car, and drove to Youngsville.  Rousses is near my house anyway.   Within 20 minutes I had reassembled everything I had been pushing around Albertson's and had located the Panni.  In addition to dinner, I had bought items for breakfast.  I would prepare asparagus and leek quiche with an open faced  Wasa crisp bread topped with prosciutto and herbed brie.  The coast was clear.  The exit was in sight.  The cashier in front of me was ringing up the a small order, so I slid into her lane and set out my treasures on the giant rotating disk.  The guy before me was buying a box of sushi prepared in the store and a couple other random things.  "Is this sushi?" the clerk asked.  "Yep." "You like that?" "Yep." "Never had that."  I was doomed.  I had encountered the chatty Cathy checkers at Rousses some time ago, but had thought that the annoying practice had been addressed.  I prefer a friendly, businesslike checker over a curious and inquisitive one who comments on your items.   If sushi man couldn't escape the third degree, my order would announce the circus had come to town.  "Are these leeks?" "Yes."  "Thought so."  "What is this?!" "Prosciutto."  "What's that?" "Ham." "Oh." "Is that cheese old?" "No, it's crusted with herbs." "Looks old to me. You eat that?" "Yes." "You making a pie?" "No." "Well, you have a pie shell, thought you was making a pie." "No, no pie". "I hate asparagus." "OK."  "Mashed potato mix?" "No."  When I was ten,  a humble wad of ground beef could evoke emotional polemic from the displaced.  Thirty years later, it turns out, a muddy mine field still extends between a hungry boy and a bowl of spuds and meatballs.  Send an unsuspecting friend to shop for you, then when he gets home frustrated and flustered, do this with the items he unpacks:       

2 lbs ground meat

1/2 onion, minced

bread crumbs

salt & pepper

1 egg

2 cups beef broth

4tbl butter

4 tbl flour

1 small jar of capers

juice of a small lemon

1 egg yoke + 2 tbl water

Combine first 5 ingredients.  Roll into meatballs. In a large skillet, prepare a blond roux.  Stir in the broth and add the meatballs. Cover and let simmer.  Add capers.  Turn meatballs occasionally.  When the meat is cooked and slightly browned, add lemon juice.  Combine egg yoke and water, temper with sauce and add to skillet.  Serve in bowls over potatoes or potato dumplings.          

     

Bunny Tracks: cum odore suavitatis ascendat...

Of course there's the appeal of the cuteness factor here, but besides that, the chocolate bunnies and other sweet goodies embedded in this ice cream have made it hands down my favorite pre-packaged flavor.  Lately, I've become a major fan of dessert, and tonight I insisted we have a little sweet after our meal of delicious panini.  Off to Albertson's for some random items and a confection.  I concede that it was already rather late as bakeries go -- about 7:30pm -- so granted, the grocery store bakery had a distinct East German ambience: empty shelves featuring oddball, mismatched cake slices, weather-beaten cream pies abused in their plastic containers from a day's maltreatment by customers shuffeling them in their stacks, many with iceing smeared against their plastic windows blurring any hope of visual identification.  A cake and pie orphanage sparsely populated with candidates whose immediate adoption at their age would be rather unlikely.  Sad.  Blaine suggested the freezer section, then as we considered the fashionable and trendy cakes pictured on the frozen boxes behind glass, ice cream came to mind.   We saw all the typical flavors, but then...Bunny Tracks.  Blaine had enjoyed this stuff before.  I'd never heard of it, but one read of the ingredients kept me from returning the container to the confines of the freezer.  And even better: this is not a seasonal affair, despite its Eastery name, thank goodness!  No need to purchase toppings, whipped cream, fruit and such to doctor a pedestrian plain vanilla.  Bunny Tracks is all-in-one ice cream bliss.  I confess, if left alone with a tablespoon, a container of this dairy ambrosia and a complete set of Fawlty Towers DVD's, I could most glutonously polish off  every morsel by the time the first disc played out.  Back in my early 20's, a bachelor prone to bouts of unbridled culinary hedonism,  it had been rumored that I might from time to time have been inclined to such spontaneous dessert consumption.  Yet having doubled my years since then, and now enjoying the company of a loving and stable partner, I have put off childish things in favor of savoring the sweetness.  Bunny Tracks ice cream is best enjoyed in pairs.  One bowl for you, one bowl for him.  Or, one big bowl and two spoons.     

What it is

So I'm starting off this week with a poem by Erich Fried (1921-1988).  Almost all of Fried's works are very simple in form like this one, but they pack a punch.  Each is like a little vial filled with a concentrated essential oil.  I first was introduced to his poetry in 1994 during a German language and literature convocation in Taos, New Mexico by Austrian librarian and Fried expert Volker Kaukoreit.  During a seminar, Kaukoreit read this poem, and it has captured my heart ever since:  "What it is".  

Was es ist

Es ist Unsinn
sagt die Vernunft
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe

Es ist Unglück
sagt die Berechnung
Es ist nichts als Schmerz
sagt die Angst
Es ist aussichtslos
sagt die Einsicht
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe

Es ist lächerlich
sagt der Stolz
Es ist leichtsinnig
sagt die Vorsicht
Es ist unmöglich
sagt die Erfahrung
Es ist was es ist
sagt die Liebe

It is nonesense 
says Reason
It is what it is
says Love

It is misfortune
says Calculation
It is nothing but pain
says Fear
It is hopeless
says Insight
It is what it is
says Love

It is ridiculous
says Pride
It is foolhardy
says Caution
It is impossible
says Experience
It is what it is
says Love 

Uomo della gleba

Having spent a sizable chunk of my days in the Ivory Tower -- first in academia, then in the ecclesial version of the same -- here's how it is: living life in academic confinement, there's no hard work in arriving at a belief that what's really important is the echo off the elephant tusk fortifications that 1) keep one insulated (etymology: Latin, insula, -ae, island) from the barbarians at the gates, and 2) can foster the sort of ego-building that encourages one to inscribe the words Pontifex Maximus Jovis Optimi Maximi after one's signature.  If you've ever given a paper to a room of academic collegues, but then re-examined the scene from a standpoint outside the Tower, the whole affair seems a farce.  Behind the desk, reading 20 pages of esoteric bilge to 50 philologists is (what the rude swain would call) nothing short of an invitation to a pissing contest.  While sifting through mounds of block quotes and supported theories and propositions, the audience are hard at work, not listening, but preparing questions to refute and debate.  Not because they're interested in what the reader has to present, but because they're pissed that they hadn't thought of this all themselves.  How silly it seems now, looking back, reading a load of crap to just such a crowd assembled in a Gothic wood-paneled hall at Yale about tangential fantasy worlds in a particular work of German Romantic literature, when, down the street people still waited in their cars at the McDonald's drive-through, a kid somewhere ate the cream center from her Oreo before the chocolate cookie part, and someone's dog relieved himself beside a tree.  Life went on regardless whether there ever existed a frame story, a magic crystal, or a mystical passage through a secret cavern.  The Tower's echo and re-echo had caused us to levitate (or at least believe that we could) several inches off the floor, and what all else went on outside didn't have much consequence.  The Ivory Tower rewires one's thinking, a fact that becomes very obvious indeed when one leaves the sacred precinct of Most High Jove.  I did.  And what I found was a life rather quiet yet still quite logical.  Not so much in a philosophical logic sort of way, but in a common sense logic sort of way.  The world Outside is a place not where literature is lobotomized and autopsied, but where it lives and functions as a reflection of life, if not life itself.  Instead of chunks of gold, I discovered what I had been all up in arms about was really beautiful clods of earth, and that I was not a demigod of literary analysis, but actually a man of the field, what one of my Latin profs had called, as we sat reading Cicero's defense of Milo, uomo della gleba.  Applying high flung ways of thought within a context extra muros I've come to realize is about as effective as attempting to use a German hairdryer in the United States.  The plug just doesn't fit, and even if it did, there wouldn't be enough juice in the line to make the thing operate.  It's been a while since I've been from under the yoke, so to speak, but old habits die hard.  Now and then, I still find myself wanting to chase butterflies, letting my mind wander into wacky hypotheses and the various means of proving them -- not so much now in hopes of winning a laurel, but just to exercise that part of the brain that's often about as useful as the Windsors of Buckingham House.  And that's the sort of thing that can get me into trouble.  In the Ivory Tower, when a misstep happens in the logic department, you usually find a colleague who still thinks like you do, so you both haul off to a coffee house to hash things out, and at the end of the day, the theories should point to the fact that you were right all along.  The tail, as it were, can be shown to wag the dog, after the consumption of just the right amount of black coffee.  If any concept can be described in words, a creative mind can, and with enough motivation, demonstrate that even a circle is square if certain conditions are favorable.  On the Outside, instead of coffee and rhetoric, there's a special confection that's bitter to eat, but sweet when you learn the lessons that constitute the goopy filling.  It's called humble pie.   I'll take another piece, please.  It tastes especially earthy this week.              

Beatrice, Kensington Palace Called.....

...please return the cartouche to the front gate.

Manfred Fink does it up right

This aria from Franz Lehar's 1929 operetta "Land of Smiles" sweeps me away every time I hear it.  I never grow tired of it.    There are few songs that combine plain, clear message with such breathtaking poetry.  I suppose it means I'm a completely hopeless romantic drawn in so easily by sappy texts.  Or it could mean that Lehar is on to something here, and that I might actually have decent taste in music.  I'll let you judge.  Recordings of the song are around in various incarnations performed by tenors of different nationalities.   For this post my first choice was Fritz Wunderlich, then tonight I found this performance by tenor Manfred Fink.  I adore the way Wunderlich sings this, but I really like how Fink's voice blossoms in the super high range.  If you're in love, your heart will melt.  If you're not, or if you're recently fallen out of love, the song might just make you bitter.  So caveat auditor.


Dein ist mein ganzes Herz!

Wo du nicht bist, kann ich nicht sein.

So, wie die Blume welkt,

wenn sie nicht küsst der Sonnenschein!

Dein ist mein schönstes Lied,

weil es allein aus der Liebe erblüht.

Sag mir noch einmal, mein einzig Lieb,

oh sag noch einmal mir:

Ich hab dich lieb!

Wohin ich immer gehe,

ich fühle deine Nähe.

Ich möchte deinen Atem trinken

und betend dir zu Füssen sinken,

dir, dir allein! Wie wunderbar

ist dein leuchtendes Haar!

Traumschön und sehnsuchtsbang

ist dein strahlender Blick.

Hör ich der Stimme Klang,

ist es so wie Musik.

Yours is my entire heart.  I can't be where you're not, like when a flower wilts if it's not kissed by the sunshine!  Yours is my most beautiful song, because it blossoms forth from love.  Just tell me once, my only love, just tell me once, I love you.  Wherever I go, I feel you're close.  I would like to drink your breath, and prayerfully fall to your feet, to you alone! How wonderful is your glowing hair!  Lovely as a dream and anxiously passionate is your beaming glance.  When I hear the sound of your voice, it's just like music.      

The Trad: Pat Conroy's Shrimp & Grits

I know what I'll be making this week. Matter of fact, I have some fresh shrimp in the frig at the moment. Note to self: procure bacon this evening.

The Trad: Pat Conroy's Shrimp & Grits

The humble Tea Kettle

They all have the same contents, and in fact they all almost always look the same.  Pastel baskets with plastic Easter grass, crammed full with chocolate footballs, malted dino eggs, and nondescript jelly beans.  If there's a gift to be given, my rule of thumb is this: make it unique.  Break the rules.  Conforming to convention is boring.  I did use a basket, yes, and I did pay hommage to the basket stereotype by including chocolate.  At Christmastime, I had searched out the proper container to deliver the news of our trip to the Myrtles -- a French Press coffee maker (I love reusable packaging).  Wondering why we hadn't yet used the French Press for Sunday morning java, I learned that no tea kettle was available.  Blaine isn't a tea drinker, so not having a proper kettle is excusable, and also a good thing, because it allowed me to extend the Christmas gift to another holiday and create a gift around the missing element.  I envisioned a basket with the kettle as the focal point, surrounded by an assortment of unlikely Easter sweets: a Toblerone bar, Ritter Sport Mini Squares, Lindt truffles, chocolate covered pretzels.  The sugar was rather easy to locate.  The kettle was the hard part. 

I don't know what it is about kettles.  Most everyone has a decent one, but shops don't always carry the ones you're looking for.  The utilitarian campfire kettles, the miniature ones, the decorative ones are ubiquitous.  Remember, I'm not in for the cliche.  I want something different, stylish, unusual. Regarding my own kettle, I had hit pay dirt at a department store Calphalon close out sale about a decade ago when I picked up a sleek, oval model with a slanted lid and handle for about 20 clams.  I've never seen another like that.  Department store kitchen departments can be hit and miss.  Back then, it was hit, but with Lafayette traffic, the season what it was, and my depleted stamina and patience for unruly crowds, a trip to the shopping mall would be tantamount to water boarding.  There is one kitchen shop in Lafayette.  Only one, and it's snooty.  I don't like snooty.  Snooty is tiresome.   Snooty is an attitude that can set in when a gal marries up, bids adieu to the Rustling Pines Mobile Home Court, gets the mullet restyled, and switches her chew from Bazooka to Dentine.  

I parked in front of the shop -- This was my second trip here, ever.  The first was for an offset spatula one Christmas when I had been called upon to produce two Sachertorts.  That time, I had to do everything short of drawing a picture of the thing for Ms. Bubble to understand what it was I needed.  The weird thing about this place is that they have everything, and usually a good selection of everything, but the employees obviously have no more knowledge about a kitchen other than it's where the help cook the grits. Gird your loins.  The place had expanded its floorspace since my last visit.   Two gum smackers were perched on stools behind a long counter.  "You need somethin?" one of them asked, breathless.  Her late afternoon gossip had been interrupted by a customer.  How annoying is that?  "Yes.  I need a tea kettle."  "A what?!" She wrinkled her face in seeming disbelief, as if I had just asked her for a gift-wrapped turd on a sterling platter.  Her mullet was showing (and so was her Walgreen's color).   She looked over to sisterwife and nodded in the direction of retail floor: "you going?"  Her friend rolled her eyes, slid off the stool, and schlepped herself around the counter.  I followed.  She may as well have been the ghost of Christmas future, hooded, boney finger.  She stopped in the center of the store, said absolutley nothing, lifted her arm, extended her index finger,  pointed to a cabinet, turned and resumed her perch behind the counter.  Good thing she had interpersonal skills.  I'd hate to know what she'd do if someone needed help finding something here.  

I dug around in the pile of tea kettles and found the one that was right: the Le Creuset Zen.  I took the box to the gum smackers.  What they had lacked in customer service, they well made up for in cash register usage. I was impressed.  I really should have asked the smacker with the boney finger how to use the kettle I had just purchased.  "You wanna bag?"        

Easter is actually....fun.

For the majority of my 40 something years, Easter Sundays at best have been gigantic flashes in the pan.  At  worst, they were high-stress dramas rivaling the interplay of Sue Ellen and JR at the Southfork trolley bar.  WASPy nightmares.   And all this came with detailed preparation: frenzied clothes shopping excursions, exotic grocery store visits in search of  some whacky ingredients you'll use once in a lifetime for that "extra special new side dish recipe", the hope of discovering that one place in town that carries the best lamb leg.  The late Saturday night horror that so-and-so only packed shorts and the ensuing sermonette entitled "You make this long trip, knowing where you're coming,  and you bring nothing for church?"   Long story short, there has always been simply too much commotion for a day you'll typically end up doing nothing more than eating, sleeping, and complaining about  kooky relatives.  It's Easter when you long for the crazy Texas aunt, 6 times married, to arrive with her 98 year old insurance victim #6 in tow to deflect all this loving Easter scorn (More about her in a later post).  Easter lunch chatter is typically spiced with profound musings regarding the spiritual plight of un-churched or semi-churched relatives, why some failed to send Easter greetings, or despite the importance placed upon learning Luther's Small Catechism and his having served his entire teenage years as an altar boy, his Easter card this year featured a rabbit instead of the risen Christ.   Is it time for my nap yet? This polemic as well as the potato-miso-fennel hotdish are weighing heavily on my stomach.    In the scheme of things Easter had always been much like George Washington's birthday, but with a gamey roast, plenty of sour grapes, and a mind-numbing scavenger hunt through retail hell for someone's daughter's perfect easter socks -- or worse, the Easter shoes -- 12 hours before the blasted bunny's visit and photo time by the flower bed.   No memories, really,  of fabulous Easters past.

I've lived in South Louisiana for 13 years, and typically carried on the drudgery of Easter year after year.  It's what one does.  Early last week, I wasn't anticipating a holiday.  But then Blaine was excited about Easter.  There seemed to be something he knew that I didn't about the paschal feast.  "Fun" just hadn't been a concept that paired naturally with mention of "Easter".   It was high time to break the old, loathesome chocolate bunny mold.  Easter as a holiday needed a good pressure washing.  Easter needed a serious overhaul.  And this was the year for it. 

We were invited to spend Easter Sunday afternoon/evening with friends.  I hadn't dyed eggs since I was 12.  Once the nieces had sleuthed out that the Easter Bunny was a hoax, dyed eggs were passe.   The process was deemed too messy, too time consuming, a pointless waste of food.  But this year, there would be eggs, and these eggs would be magnificent.  And no monochromatic primary colored eggs.  Blaine described a process involving pens, markers, crayons, and a daring approach to coloring them -- multicolored eggs attained by dipping sections into small portions of dye, allowing the dye to swirl around the shell to create intriguing color patterns and designs.  Draw on an egg? I liked the idea.  It was creative, fresh, and new.   Besides, the impending pacquer'ing competition made the task even more important.  There would be egg judging: most colorful, most, creative, most, most, most.  And most important: the most resilient when one end was pacquer'd against that of another to see which would crack.  Bragging rights. 

We boiled and decorated 2 dozen eggs plus some extras, should there be premature casualties.  The day for me began at Church, having been called upon to play and to add another bass voice to the Handel Hallelujah.  The afternoon was reserved for a most excellent Easter celebration with some really good friends.  Everyone brought their eggs, set them out to be admired.  They were all very beautiful and all quite unique.  Smiles and laughter amidst these fantastic creations.    This is the sort of Easter Day I had never had before, one on which everyone enjoys everyone else's company.   No bickering, things are laid back, easy-going, and just plain relaxing.  Blaine won "Most Creative Egg", I won "Most Colorful Egg": the eggs' brief claims to fame. In the end, all the eggs were destined for deviling on his holiest of feasts.  Pacquer'ing commenced.  Each of mine cracked.  A few of Blaine's stood the challenge, until they, too, succumbed.  Phyllis, however, armed with one of Hillary's tie-dyed eggs, knocked out one after the other, until finally, one of Blaine's compromised the shell of steel.  Phyllis, victory in sight, nonetheless won the accolade of "Most Reuthless Egg", having eliminated the majority of the day's combatants.   The remains of the day, cracked and damaged, were repacked in their cartons and carried to the kitchen for peeling.  As we stripped away the colorful shells, I discovered an egg in my carton still intact, unpacquer'd.  Jeanne was standing by and was challenged to dethrone Blaine's viking warrior egg that had vanquished the Most Reuthless.  Crack.  Jeanne victorious.   

What an amazing Easter Day this had been.  One well spent in great company.  Good friends, new traditions.  Now, I can add another fantastic holiday to the calendar, one whose arrival had formerly been dreaded, once garlanded with overrought familial drama, insipid boredom, and endless tedium was now liberated from the tomb, made to walk in the newness of life!         

Cleopatra lives!

Simone Kermes sings the Piangero from Haendel's Caesar.  We are forced to fall in love with her, hate her, and to have pity on her. The transition between the sections here is not easy, but Kermes does it with fire, as she hurls us along in a storm of sweeping, angry passion  One moment she's contemplative regarding what is to become of her, then she's raging in planned vindication, only to return to muse upon her uncertain future.  Kermes offers us a true glimpse inside the mind of the clever Nile Queen.       

Pacquer des Oeufs

Sunday morning there is something in store which I have heard of before, but never engaged in.  A competition involving Easter eggs. After doing a bit of digging, I discovered the practice (locally called "pocking" or with the French spelling "pacquing") is fairly widespread throughout Europe and even into the Middle East.  Here's how it goes: knock the pointed end of a hard boiled egg against that of one's opponent.  The one whose egg cracks is the loser.  Other names for this include the English "egg jarping" and in German Eierkippen or Eierticken.  The Cajun name for this seems to be a play on words.  With  the Anglophone spelling, pock, we have the implication of a smashed dimple in the shell, while the Francophone spelling, pacque, recalls the word for Easter: Paques. I rather like how the local French name transforms the noun into a verb: "to Easter", as it were.  The preparation and decoration of the eggs is only the first step.  Then, through their use in pocking, the eggs come into their fullness, having been duly Eastered.     

The more things change...

Strange the things you think of when the memory is jogged while talking to a friend from the University days.  The study of language and history is the study of colorful life.  What human on earth isn't fascinated by the nutty things that others do?  I think it's in our nature to be curious about our confreres.  And when they do it in another language, their undertakings seem even more remote, mysterious, and secretive.  At the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, tucked along a back wall of one of the upper floors of the Mullins Library (this is all before the renovations.  I have no idea where to find these items now) was a bank of gigantic hardbound tomes.  Each was about 36"X24" or so.  Big.  And heavy.  This was the Mullins set of the CIL -- the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.  So priceless these things were to us classicists and historians, and of course they could only be consulted in the library.  For one, they're just too massive to tote back to the digs, and for two, if even one volume went missing, someone in the Latin philology brood would know, since that would be the one volume they'd need this Wednesday.  Now and then a professor would borrow a volume, someone might play a prank, or purposefully misplace one for private viewing.    "Ok, who hid Rome II in the French stacks?"  "I went up there and Pompeii was missing." "Stop hiding Germania.  Don't you know I'm writing on Tacitus?" The CIL contains printed editions of all known Latin inscriptions throughout the world: "The Body of Latin Inscriptions" it's called.  If you want to learn more about the in's and out's of the CIL, the German philologist and archaeologist Theodor Mommsen who started the compilations back in 1853, follow this link to the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities:   

http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en/index_en.html

The CIL is something an interested party could loose himself in quite quickly.  And it's mostly because we all enjoy reading about the crazy messes people get themselves into.  One thing we learn from it, even if it's just because we have a few hours to kill on a Sunday afternoon: Desperate Housewives and Peyton Place are nothing more than modern re-tellings of the same crap humans have been embroiled in since an angel with a flaming sword was made to play the bad guy and expelled two fig-leafed protoparents from Paradise after they were told that sex was a sin and that discussing one's hoo-hoo publicly or someone else's is not polite. So what's in the CIL?  Everything.  You name it.  The standard official stuff: building inscriptions, landmarks, and such.  Tombstones, lots and lots of tombstones, and best of all graffiti and curse tablets.  The political messages on buildings is what the school boys read in Latin III.  Not until they hit the Hallowed Halls are most introduced to the good stuff.  The Moet, the Grey Goose.  These are the strange death grave markers, the "I hate you so much, that I wish for you..." curses, and best of all, the motherload: scribbles from the walls of perhaps the raciest of all Roman cities: Pompeii.  The old prudes who scramble around after church services handing off  the "white ribbons against porn" have no idea that all the stuff that the "men of today are engaging in" is really old hat for humans.  Homo Sapiens: been there, done that.   Human kinkiness came about perhaps around the same time that the first thong was sewn in Eden.  Some people suffered  weird deaths then like some folks do today: "Poor Claudius, decapitated by an ox cart.  No one really liked him anyway."  They cursed their neighbors: "If she so much as looks at my husband in that way again, may her hair fall out and may her tits shrivel to the size of grapes." And they warned about the floozies who offered good times at bargain prices: "Don't choose Scintilla.  You might be burning after."  No surprise that Scintilla means "spark".  Romans were literary too, even while they sinned.  

The CIL continues to grow.  There are some 20 or so volumes at the moment, and more and more material for the collection is found almost everyday.  Reading the CIL might seem a nerdy student's passion, but really, it appeals to something more than just that.  It's the discovery how we connect to other people.  That they aren't so much different from us.  The dude who took out a stylus in the first century and scraped a warning onto a brick wall about a sparky hooker who gave him crabs more than likely had no idea that his admonishment would become the focus of academics 2000 years later.  But, who hasn't overheard similar words in any number of social situations?  The CIL gives us a chance to eavesdrop on the ancients.  There's plenty of time to read about the big names and their scandals, but the ordinary, everyday folks are far more interesting (and their stories are found in the CIL).    Mainly because we can so easily relate to them.  "Tertullia's hair is so out of style.  That's what she gets for buying a slave from Gaul." Good stuff.  

Dirty Grey Goose Martini Please, Three Olives

Peggy Lee sings Baubles, Bangles, and Beads from the musical Kismet.  Whenever a singer in the voice studio arrives with this number in her folder (as happened this afternoon), I simply can not wait for the final chords of the score.  They are the musical equivalent to a well mixed dirty Grey Goose martini. Delicious.  

Sirloin and Salmon, but pitch the casserole.

Dinner this evening was at our most frequented spot: O'Charley's.  Armed with advice from one of Blaine's clients, we ordered completely different entrees.  He took the Louisiana Sirloin, and I opted for the Cedar Planked Salmon.  The steak was masterfully seasoned (not in the South Louisiana sense.  Herbs here.  Not Cayenne).  We suspect an enchanted marinade  that imbued the entire cut with flavor.  Garlic butter topped the steak.  Regarding the fish, we theorized last weekend that the wood not only infused the fish with its smokey flavor, but also should draw out any hint of fishiness.  Correct on both counts.  The plate itself brought with it an amazingly tasty aroma.  The generous portion offered bold salmon flavor accented with a hint of lemon pepper.  One of the most delicious pieces of salmon! 

De rigueur: Caesars.  One can quite easily make a meal of salad alone at O'Charley's.  The dressing is extra creamy with plenty of anchovies, cheese shavings and croutons -- all tossed properly so that the final bites are just as tasty as the first. 

Blaine and I very often opt for identical sides without consulting each other first.  As our second, we chose the "Broccoli Cheese Casserole".  I was envisioning an individual serving in a ramekin of something similar to quiche.  Far from that.  What arrived was that pedestrian microwaved concoction typically served from a covered Pyrex dish that consists of sticky rice, Lipton cream of something, frozen broccoli crowns, and some sort of white cheese.  The result: a bland combination of lumpy wallpaper paste, tapioca, and shamrocks.  But chin up, casserole: if you continue to be a menu failure, at least your left-overs might be used to spackle fractures along the inner surfaces of fiber glass swimming pools.

We suggest: instead of the casserole, choose a potato or the asparagus, and, unless you're a loyal subject of Caesar, split the salad.  One is more than plenty to start.  Price?  $32 for two, including one glass of beer for each of us.  Amazingly good price point here, considering the quality of the entrees and size of the portions.             

In lieu of high church festivities for Holy Week...

...there are always large scale choral works such as the Bach St. Matthew Passion to help keep the observance of the Christian high holy days.  So much of the Holy Week liturgies is dependent upon music: anthems, canticles, versets and the like selected from the dawn of time to accompany the complex rituals of these days.  When one's ears are abused by the Via Dolorosas crooned into wireless Las Vegas lounge mics, there is some solace to be found in the bone chilling text and exquisite counterpoint of this Baroque masterpiece.             

Monkstrap Bliss

The "Rollins Bucklestrap" from Johnson & Murphey.  I've always loved monkstrap shoes, having owned several pairs over the past decades.  The shape of the toe has changed from round to pointed to squared off over the years, but the same basic design has never changed.  Shall I procure them?  I'm quite tempted.