CHRISTMAS BY THE SALT, SALT SEA...

Well, as you may well know by now, Tama got what she wanted for Christmas with the arrival of the golden grandchild... come all the way from Ideeho on the iron horse.

Since we were hosting inlanders here by the seaside we opted for an oceanic food theme for our holiday repast. A late afternoon visit to our neighborhood fishmonger yesterday got us the raw ingredients and this afternoon we "got to it" in earnest.

The four of us Talia & Rich and we'uns did some serious and nearly terminal damage to the following...

We came damn close to all being members of the clean plate club with just enough left over to make a nice seafood gumbo to go with tomorrow night's boneless country pork ribs in a chocolate BBQ sauce...

 We stuffed ourselves silly on the bounty of the sea and the bottled hint-o-heaven from Russian River Brewing Co. while the wee one slept near by.

Good food, good times and family close to hand... pretty much a tried and true formula for a Merrie Christmas.

AUTUMN IN VERMONTA CRUZ

Here ya go. This is as close to winter as we seem to get here along the bay.  The sky gets a wee bit darkish and one of the neighborhood trees gets all yellowy-orangey in it's leafy bits. Okay, there you go, it is officially the first day of winter. 

Once, a year or so ago, there was talk of local snow but that was a bunch of hooey in the end, and we were watching the news last night with the weather guy jabbering on about the mid-west being in the clutches of the massive winter storm.  they were showing footage of a freeway in Nebraska with about 6 inches of snow sticking to the ground and in the background you could hear the Anchorman chipping in saying, "boy, they are really getting a lot of snow..." 

we're dreaming of a wet, dark green Christmas...

TWINKIE, TWINKIE, LITTLE STAR...

Well, a year has slickered by and, mostly through personal neglect, our live-inna-bucket Christmas tree is still alive and well.  Longer of limb and taller beyond it’s bigger bucket, it needed only a quick pinch or three to remove the odd brown bits and a quick if somewhat weighty lift from the deck to the living room.

As I stated last year, I have concerns about a live tree casting me, willy-nilly, into that pit filled with a writhing bevy of suck ass white liberals.  I dedicated some time to my powers to circumvent this fate and finally found a happy solution.

It has been my habit for most of my adult life to decorate my tree with a changing theme each year… western, Cajun, fruit & veg, Mexican and the like.  This year, to distance myself from the Whole Foods crowd, I settled on a tribute to junk food.

Off to the stores in search of ornaments I was both pleased and surprised to discover glass baubles shaped like hot dogs, bottles of whiskey, cupcakes, popsicles, mugs of beer, ice cream cones, hamburgers and a big banana split.

Okay, enough of a cash outlay for this project. To fill in the rest of the tree I turned once more to my old friend Photoshop, Prince of the Dark Arts.  Faster than you could say Hostess ten times, I had created a nice selection of teeny Spam cans, miniature Velveeta cheese boxes, orders of fries and scaled down boxes of movie popcorn.

A quick swivel from art table to sewing machine and I had a lovely garland of small breakfast sausages.  

Start with a string of red chili pepper lights, add the decorations and some nice rubber doughnut chew toys, drape your sausages and top the whole affair with a memorial Twinkie star and you are ready for the fat man to make an appearance.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good bite…

HE'S BACK JUST IN TIME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

So my friends Lovely and Michelle tend to go “whole hog” on the Christmas decorations, and while there the other day I was casting about for something to read while in the bathroom. Luckily there was a lovely little, holiday themed thrift store tome from the classic series of Jokes for the John.  It offered the usual bits about greatest hits of the holidays, factoids about popular gifts, the origins of the Christmas card… and an odd little gem about the Catalan region of Spain.

And I mean to tell you that the operative word here is odd.

So odd that I researched its authenticity and then decided to pass it along here in it’s curious entirety…

In Catalonia, Spain, a region along the country’s border with France, it’s tradition to display a Nativity scene at Christmas. And like most Nativity scenes around the world, the ones in Catalonia include figurines of the standard Christmas story characters: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Three Wise Men, some shepherds, a few sheep and cows. But unlike other Nativity scenes, those in Catalonia feature one more character -  El Caganer.

Whoa…who?

You know, El Caganer… a shepherd with his pants around his ankles, taking a dump. He shows up most places year round and is usually found squatting behind a bush or bale of hay, wearing the traditional red Catalan hat and smoking a pipe. But ever since the late 17^th century the region’s Christmas Nativity scenes have always included El Caganer, which translates literally to “the great defecator”.

It’s unclear exactly how the tradition started, but the Catalan people have always been a mostly agricultural society, and defecation was a symbol of fertility and good crops.  Therefore the most commonly heard explanation is that El Caganer is there to bring fertile soil, good crop yields along with good luck and prosperity to people who “invite” him into their homes.

Originally made of clay, today’s El Caganer is usually made of plastic, and comes in a variety of characters beyond the traditional monk or shepherd – famous soccer players, a police officer, actors, rock stars, Santa Claus or political figures like President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the U.S. President George W. Bush.

In December 2010, a 19-foot tall defecating giant at the Maremagnum Shopping Centre in Barcelona, Spain snagged the Guinness World Record for Largest Caganer.

Wanna learn more? Google him or go to caganer.com and buy yourself one.

And if that ain’t weird enough, the region’s children have their own special Yule log called the “Caga Tio” or “pooping log”. It seems that for two weeks before Christmas this loaf-sized wooden log, sporting a painted face and red hat, sits on a table in the family home and every day the children and adults “feed” him by offering food and wine.

Then on Christmas Day the children move the log to the fireplace hearth and cover it with a blanket. The children then hide while their parents put wrapped presents, candy and other treats under the cloth. The finale comes when the children return and beat the log with sticks and pull out the presents while chanting:

Poop log! Poop log!

Poop candy for Christmas!

If you don’t, we will whack you again!

And with that, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year…

THE BETTER GUITAR

Don’t you just hate feeling like a complete dolt? You know, where you go listen to live music on a whim and two songs in you find yourself wondering, “How in the hell did I not even know about this person? Have I been living under a large stone for the past decade?”

Such was the case last Wednesday night when the lovely Tama and I motored up to Felton to a music bar called Don Quixote’s. I had seen an ad in the Weekly about a woman named Muriel Anderson and I was intrigued mostly because it said she plays the harp guitar.  If you are unfamiliar with this instrument then close your eyes and imagine a regular old steel string six string guitar. Got it? Good. Now imagine that someone has nailed a dulcimer to the top of it and strung that with bass guitar strings… no doubt simpler to envision than to play.  The one she played (her traveling one…) had a total of eleven strings, but some run to a couple dozen or more.  It was popular in the United States during the first decade of the 20^th Century and all the big names made them for a while.

Not only is she a stellar guitar player (in 1989 she was the first woman to win the National Fingerpicking Guitar Championship…) with digits like greased lightning, she is all over the place stylistically.  I figure she must have paid more for her guitar than I did for mine because hers came with a whole lot more notes inside just dyin’ to get out.

She opened with some space age stuff she wrote and moved directly into a Greek food inspired instrumental in 13/8 time. A traditional piece for the koto, adapted to the guitar for her upcoming Japan tour and a piece she "co-wrote" with Beethoven. Then it was off to Ireland and then a lullaby from the CD she wrote and recorded as a present to a good friend’s newborn.  Her grandfather was a saxophone player in John Phillip Sousa’s band so, of course, she had to play Sousa’s Liberty Bell March. Then a tasty mélange of flamenco tunes on a spanish guitar, a passel of fiddle tunes, the 1906 hit Nola, several nice pieces she learned sitting around Chet Atkins kitchen and a medley of high speed banjo tunes that she adapted for guitar in tribute to her friend and neighbor the late Earl Scruggs.  Toss in some Beatles, Don McLean and Dire Straits and, by golly, you got yourself and evening’s entertainment.

I had never even heard of Muriel Anderson before, but you can bet I won’t forget her any time soon…

POOR FOLKS EAT BETTER

Man, I love “poor people” food.  To me it spoke volumes about her dining habits  when Fran Lebowitz said, “If you’re going to America, bring your own food.” Being a New Yorker she must have been dining out above her station or something because the America where I grew up (and hey, she’s five months younger than me…) is full of succulent, tasty and filling bowls, plates and platters available in a variety of styles where ever I have wandered.  In other words, when you travel, eat where the po’ folks eat.

Biscuits and ham gravy, jambalaya, etouffé, roadside tacos, paella… simple yet elegant.  And, no, I’m not talking about some nouvelle grub where some wunderkind has “deconstructed” a tamale and topped it with a flash frozen, whipped reduction of plankton larvae letting him think that merits a 2 ounce portion for $27.50… grits and eggs for breakfast, please and hold the rutabaga sorbet and the less than useless plating dribbles of coffee infused eel saliva…

What I am talking about is the kind of good, solid food found in its natural state only if you cook it yourself or have shirt-tail relatives living around the wrong side of town who will let you in at dinner time.

Oops, am I ranting again?

To me personally there is nothing I love more than a big old steaming bowl of posolé, that unforgettable southwestern staple. 

Now I recognize the limb I am climbing out on here… since the geography is so vast so, to, are the recipes. I’ve had it in beachside restaurants in Mexico where it was thick enough to eat with a fork and I’ve had it at a Christmas Posada in New Mexico where they were feeding dozens of folks and it ran mostly to liquid and “cheap seat” cuts of meat.

When I make it (and I often do…) it lands somewhere right in between.  I learned it from a long time resident anglo of New Mexico and my first taste became my own personal idée fixe.

For dinner for 2-3 folks, I start with a pork chop, trim off all the fatty bits, toss them into my deep cast iron 10 inch with a little oil and hit the heat. This renders out the yumminess without leaving you with the chewiness later on. In this caldron of flavor I toss diced onion, garlic and red pepper for a quick sauté and then dump in the meatie, porkie bits to brown and caramelize before dumping in enough water to fill the pot mostly full. In go the diced, mild green chilies, a passel of hominy and the usual suspects in the spice and flavor department.

This goes on the back burner, on low for a day or two until everybody gets married and winds of up in bed together.

Guests almost here? Ah, now for the finishing touches…

Take to hand a pile of fresh veggies… tomato, avocado, peppers, green onion, radishes and cilantro, for example. Plate all this along with lime slices, roasted pumpkin seeds or peanuts and a bowl of hard, crumbled Mexican cheese. Take a moment to heat up some corn tortillas and you are done but for the serving up.

Like a good serving of Pho, it don’t look like enough food but it will fill you right up every time.

FIESTA SURPRISE INDEED

Those of you who are no stranger to my blog will already know that I often rail against them what would mess with the classics… pizza doesn’t have clams, spinach has no place in eggs benedict, beer is only water, yeast, hops and barley and tuna noodle casserole has only canned tuna fish, cream of mushroom soup, noodles and, if you must, a smattering of frozen peas. Crushed soda crackers on top…end of story.

What, then, do you do with that tin of canned tuna in chipotle sauce you bought on a whim at La Princessa Mercado in Watsonville? Well, you leave it in the kitchen cupboard awaiting some manner of inspiration until, in final exasperation, you cook up something that the 1954 Betty Crocker would have called Fiesta Surprise or Tuna a la Mexicana.

While the noodles are boiling you fetch up a large bowl and blend together:

            1 can of cream of mushroom soup

            1 small can of mild, diced green chilies

            1 can of tuna in chipotle sauce

            1 small handful of frozen peas

            1 tablespoon each of diced red pepper and sautéed onion

            ¼ cup crumbled hard Mexican cheese

            salt and pepper to taste

Drain the boiled noodles and stir into the other ingredients. Slap it into a covered casserole and sprinkle the top with crushed taco flavor Doritos. Bake for 25 minutes at 400º.

Serve with a side of steamed veggies and sliced bread with butter… and may I recommend Jello parfait for desert.

SHRUBS ON WHEELS

For the first time since immigrating to Insanity Cruz I was in town the weekend of “Woodies on the Wharf”, an eighteen year tradition of filling the Boardwalk wharf with a wide variety of classic vehicles that prominently feature real wood trim on their exteriors.

Now let me say that I have had a woody for woodies since I can’t remember when and this started out like dyin’ and goin’ to heaven without having to get all dressed up.  Then, after you have seen your umpteenth late 40’s, dark blue Ford (which, to the untrained eye, looks remarkably like the late 40’s, dark blue Pontiac right next to it…) you find yourself walking faster and choosing photo ops more slowly… I mean there were seemingly hundreds to see.

There were woodies in every style and stage of decrepitude and redemption. Some shinier than brand new and looking more like a decoupaged  novelty  than a vehicle while others looked like a “one-owner” that had been rode hard and put up wet.  The more complete the restoration the more likely there was a large photo of the “before” carcass of the car replete with tales of finding it in a back pasture with a tree growing through the floorboards, etc.

The longer you strolled the more the cars began to blend together and the more one began to eyeball the folks around you and evesdrop on conversations… the homeless guy, watching his friend get a citation of some sort, saying to the cop, “Can I get a ride in a cop car without having to going to jail?” and the cream of the motorhead comments, “The older you get the more you hire someone else to do shit.” And, “That piece of chrome under the back window is definitely not original.”


As you strolled faster and a thirst for a cold beer grew you still had to stop once in a while when something very different popped up.  A 1933 Rolls Royce Shooting Brake, the lovely and diminutive Morris Minors, an Austin hearse converted years ago to a roach coach...

And then there was the cutie below which is actually a heavily after-marketed 66 VW bug beautifully and skillfully re-invented.

We both agreed that the best ones were well loved and a little shopworn around the edges, showing that the car was still a car and not one of the family jewels only taken out to be worn to the Governor’s ball, as it were.

A GATHERING OF THE TRIBES

It has become an occasional tradition (if there is such a thing…) for my lovely wife to invest our tax return in the corralling of all the children for a chance to let us all yak face to face.  It started in Corvallis and then Quincy when we were in residence, but there it was up to us, being the locals, to entertain and direct… and besides, with more butts than beds we always had to farm someone out. 

The obvious and perfect solution was to rent some neutral ground betwixt and between home towns with room for all.  Last time it was a vacation condo in Truckee, CA and this year we all gathered at the slightly cob-webbed and dusty resort town of Lava Hot Springs. Buried deep in the rolling, Mormon infested hills of southeastern Idaho, Lava (as the cognoscenti call it…) was a rail stop top spot through the first half of the 20^th Century and still features gallons of artesian hot water everywhere including most all accommodations. Really hot tap water, a hot tub every ten feet and hot water pools somewhere on every property mean good, clean fun for one and all.  The lack of development and expansion which has kept all this charm intact thru the second half of that 20^th Century comes at a price… limited shopportuities, a “grocery” store (one) which offers little beyond hot dogs, processed cheese and disturbingly spongy, glaringly white bread, a dingy, musty liquor store with limited hours and even more limited options, and an alarming faux wholesomeness as large Mormon families fill every nook and cranny of the campgrounds and ice cream parlors… our fault for unconsciously  planning our event on the cusp of Father’s Day weekend.

I can best explain my choice of “faux wholesomeness” by dredging up that old Idaho adage, “Why do you always take two Mormons with you when you go fishing? Because if you just take one he will drink all your beer…” Lots of Utah license plates which means lots of adults 150 miles from their Bishop’s all seeing eyes.

None of this, however, invaded the little complex we all called home for four days. Within our enclave there was much love and laughter, grand stories both told and spawned, beer and cocktails and too much killer food created by the talented culinary skills of one and all… particularly the children.

Most everyone came with a partner and a dog and, blessedly, the only small child present was embryogenic, though well represented on screen.

At least on the surface, everyone liked any and all new faces and the new members were unanimously initiated into the clan after showing their interest in getting the tribal tattoo shared by the family.

There was a nice outdoor bar and restaurant right next door and the town was sleepy and near comatose until Saturday night so all was quiet and the scenery was vast and verdant. (early June is the fleeting green time in the high desert…)

Four days was just long enough so that everyone could still leave sorry to see the others go.  We had flown into Salt Lake City and rented a car, so we had roughly six hours to drive 140 miles, leaving plenty of time to hop over to my childhood and visit Soda Springs, land of my ancestors.  No particular points of interest left for me there with the exception of a drive just out of town for the traditional guzzling of water from the source… Hooper Springs.  Cold and strongly mineralized, it is claimed by some an acquired taste but to me tastes better even than beer. And that says a lot…

Still playing for time we took the back roads through the country hot spots of Grace, Thatcher and Franklin - the oldest town in Idaho. Although” town” is a generous designation, Franklin has probably been upgraded from “wide spot” since, being just north of the Utah border where gambling is forbidden, the one convenience store in town has steadily sold more winning lottery tickets than anywhere else in Idaho.

Giving up all hope of forestalling the inevitable, we turned in our rental car and spent the next 3 hours in the airport reading and imbibing at Squatters brewpub which proffers alcoholic beverages such as Polygamy Porter and The Stumbling Missionary.  Finally our plane arrived and we embarked on our direct flight to San Jose… if, like Southwest Airlines, by direct flight you mean a stop over and plane change in Phoenix and four hours and ten minutes to fly a crow’s distance of 586 miles. 

On the other hand it was Father’s Day and having testicles earned me a complimentary gin and tonic on each leg of the flight.  One takes one’s consolations where one can.


Happy birthday my love...

BAD ENOUGH THE FIRST TIME

One of the problems associated with living in Santa Cruz in the twenty-first century is the ubiquitous horde of freaks who stopped setting their alarm back about 1985.  Now I got nothing against a bit of nostalgia and, yes, I still own and often buy music from my youth.  That being said, I do spend at least some of my waking hours seeking out visual and auditory stimulation that has been created since then.

In other words, this is a rant against that evil second only to karaoke... the dreaded Tribute Band.  A very brief and by no means comprehensive tour of the local venues revealed a staggering list of these. Now I'm not talking cover bands... I have nothing against somebody charging me money and then tossing in a little Hendrix or Dylan or even, god forbid, Stevie Nicks.   No, I'm talking about lop-sided, half-assed, groupie staffed bands trying their darnedest to "keep the dream alive" by standing on stage like ventriloquist dummies from hell and doing a passable to excellent imitation of a xerox copier.

My 10 minute search let me know that within the next 90 days I can drive less than a dozen miles to hear once again the dulcet sounds of Michael Jackson, The Grateful Dead, The Grateful Dead (different band...) The Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, The Allman Brothers (the last two a double header for the really desperate...), The Beatles, Steely Dan, Tom Petty and Phish (for christ sake, they're still touring...)

Some of these are bands I like (liked...) but it has been my experience that Tribute Bands tend to cover the more tiresome "hits" and leave out the sleepers.  And let's not forget that for the price of admission I could wander less than a dozen miles down the information highway to the itunes store and buy the songs I liked performed by the people I liked.

Go ahead and start a garage band at your mom's house... but if all you want to do is make a meager living as a leech maybe it would be best for all concerned of you just stayed in the garage.  In fact, if the car is still parked in there... maybe think about starting it up.

YOU HAVE TO DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE

Those of you who know me or have read the header on my Beer Blog will know that my five year plan was to visit every microbrewery in the golden state.  Well, so much for aiming high.

With the influx of breweries who insist on dabbling in the dark arts of fruit flavoring and, god forbid, food pairings, I have made an executive decision to amend my vision. 

I conceived this plan while dwelling in Quincy with its population of 5000. After a year here in Insanity Cruz just the thought of multiple forays into the densely packed hell that is Los Angeles (7500 people per square mile…) only to find beers filled with blueberries or sushi grade tuna or whatever leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and a knot in my belly.  I mean lets face it… 1870 was the last time that LA was the same size as Quincy and back then Quincy had a brewery of its own so why bother?

I’m not some corn-fed beauty from the Midwest longing to be in movin’ pitchers and, even as a child, Disneyland was something to watch on TV and generated absolutely no desire to actually organize a visit.  The California of my childhood was the coastal redwoods, a mission or two and the golden gate bridge tempered with the stories of Sutter’s Mill and the Donner Party.

Armed with this personal view, I intend to sketch a rough line east from Pismo Beach to Needles and cede everything south of it back to Mexico.  Sure we lose the Getty Museum but we get to keep nearly all the trees and Lone Pine where most of the movies of my childhood were filmed anyway.  And hey, that will move Northern California up so it includes the stuff above Sacramento. It’s a win/win situation in my book… are you with me people?

IT’S A SOCIAL DISEASE. IT’S A LOVELY ENGLISH DESERT. IT’S…

Having a can of said dessert on hand, last Sunday I decided to let my anglophile flag fly free.

The day began with a full English breakfast of tea, bacon and sausages, boxty (the English version of hash browns involving shredded spuds with salt, milk and wee bit of brown sugar), a thick slice of fresh tomato fried in the bacon drippings, baked beans, fried eggs and toast left to cool before buttering.  It sounds like an odd combo of items on a plate first thing in the morning until you have a bite of tomato and beans seasoned with a bit of egg yolk. And besides, as Tama pointed out, if you mixed it all together you would have huevos rancheros with toast instead of tortillas… huevos small holding as it were.

Dinner was roast beef with spuds and veg and a couple of cold lagers… a little more garlic than the classic English fare so I reckon it falls into the category of regional foods.

Dessert, the cause of it all, was as yummie as can be expected out of a can.

Nobody seems to agree on why it’s called Spotted Dick… well, Dick anyhow. The Spotted part comes from the currants or sliced plums that are always present in the pudding… (yep, it’s a pudding, from the French boudin meaning a small sausage, that referring to the shape of the bag in which it is traditionally steamed… see, you learn something every day).

Folks seem a little less direct about the Dick part.  The “snoots” are sure it is a mangling of either Spotted Dough or Spotted Dog. These would be the same stuffed shirts who attempted, unsuccessfully, to re-christen it Spotted Richard a few years back.

The more organically minded claim it is called Dick because of the long, sausage shape it acquires from being steamed in a muslin bag.

Without revealing any dark secrets I will say that I like Dick. The reasons are threefold:

1- I have a dirty mind.

2-Because you heat it up with boiling water while it is still sealed in the can, the instructions for opening the hot can suggest you place a towel over it because it may “spurt”.

3- You serve it at the table smothered in a rich, creamy custard sauce.

Try it. You’ll like it.

“OH WHAT A LUCKY MAN HE WAS” –Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Last night as my lovely wife and I were gathered ‘round the studio downstairs we heard a loud clatter from the street outside our home… sounded rather like the Tin Man had gone dumpster diving out back of the old sheet metal works.

Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a somewhat complex fender-bender wherein person or persons unknown (to us…), while driving inattentively up our little cul-du-sac, drifted a wee bit too far off to the right and clipped a parked contractor van, giving it a poke just behind the front, driver’s side wheel well. It banged the hell out of the bodywork and bent the steering bits, leaving the poor thing a little wall-eyed in the front end.

Applying Newton’s third law, the driver then bounced back to the left, graciously sailing past the next car parked in line, a charming, sixty thousand dollar Porsche Boxter soft-top, until over corrected steering rolled it smack dab into the ass end of a VW Passat, car three in the demolition derby line. Then, as John Prine says, “The police arrived at a quarter to five and pronounced all the victims okay.”

Bet Mr. Boxter is having second thoughts about parking on the street in future…