I’m sure you’ve realized by now I like to distribute Bobby McFerrin’s 1988 hit “Don’t worry, be happy” very frequently (1). I think it’s often the appropriate response to news I’ve just conveyed, like the latest on Omicron (2).
One of my dear friends and faithful readers Sandy asked about the characters in the video. Was that Robin Williams? In fact, yes is the answer. Bobby did the video with 2 other characters, Detroit’s own and our beloved and much missed Robin Williams along with dancer extraordinaire Bill Irwin, also considered “clown” (3). Watching the video again with that knowledge makes it even more fun. I recommend doing it frequently.
My sister Jolene gave all of us a wonderful Christmas gift, a framed reproduction of a photo of our mom lounging on the beach – with her mom! – on Santa Anna Island (now Anna Maria) – a seven mile barrier island off the Gulf coast of Florida – where they used to escape to in the winter. Mom is spectacular, probably age 17-18, but so is her mom, who’s 25 years her senior.
She’d go on and entice a smooth-talking once MSU linebacker for rollicking times in Port Austin, when that was a happening thing. Their coupling resulted in me, so here I am. My mom went on and married Italian electrician John and had a wonderful life, raising the 4 kids who are my brother and sisters, John dying some years ago. I’m happy I could interject myself in the past decade into her life. I’ve loved her since our first meeting, and my wife has noted all the scary similarities we seem to show. She was beautiful to me long before I saw this picture, but oh my. How did I get a mom like that?
It’s a good doctor who can explain things. I’ve been trying to do that with Mr. Corona for almost 2 years. But Dr. Ted Noel, a retired anesthesiologist/intensivist knocked it out of the park today (1). I’ve been emphasizing the high rate of errors coronavirus makes in replicating its RNA genome as source of all the mutations we’re seeing. But I totally forgot about recombination, which is almost certainly what gave us the friendly monster we call Omicron. Let’s welcome him, and catch him if we get a chance. It’s a way more effective vaxx than those science fair experiments they’re still trying to foist upon us, which not only don’t work, but greatly increase the risk for catching Omicron. And there’s that VAERS thing (2). Booster schmooster!
I’ve called on Bobby McFerrin several times in the course of this thing. But his message to us applies now more than ever (3). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Happy Boxing Day, my friends. In the U.S., only Massachusetts takes it as an official holiday, and the employees don’t even get to take it off. But those in the Queen’s realm are busy seeing that those who have served them over the year, and some of the poor, are getting their boxes of thanks. Long before that, today marked the feast of St. Stephan, you know, where good King Wenceslas looked out. All reminders that Christmastide is far from over, with 11 days remaining to celebrate. I wrote about this a year and a day ago. As I went back to consult that post to help plan my next week and a half, I thought it would be worth sharing https://theviewfromharbal.com/2020/12/25/dandy-dozen/
Twisted how our Christmas traditions develop. Perhaps because they are so varied shows how rich and wonderful our traditions really are.
Following a tradition we made years ago – nothing to do with Christmas – got us into a situation that tangled up our traditions and introduced us to some new possibilities. All of it has made for a most enjoyable Little Christmas Eve.
This latest recipe that got us there grew out of our weekly search for something for Thursday dinner. For many years, I had a weekly posting at East Ann Arbor Health center, taking me home after clinic past Plum Market, which had great seafood and Zingerman’s bread and of course wine. We enjoyed the simple meals I took home and at one point realized, who else eats like this? Thus was the concept of “Jesus Dinner” born. Some of our entrées even simmered over a charcoal grill, although I don’t think we ever achieved the exquisite offerings of John 21:15-17. We did stray to the non Kosher at times. As long as it came from the sea. It was toward this sin we would go for our next dinner, set to occur on Little Christmas Eve. That white clam sauce with linguine looked mighty tasty, so there we were headed.
It was also important to eat fish on Little Christmas Eve, a holiday important to Norwegians such as our 25% selves. Usually the fish is more substantial, like a big slab of gravlax. For purists, there’s the noxious slab of buried cod, lutefisk. Peppering the celebration with scallops and other shellfish is allowed.
Little did we know that our clam recipe would drop us into a whole other tradition. My food.com recipe told me this dish is often the centerpiece of the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a southern Italian tradition where to celebrate the end of the proscription against meat set to occur on Christmas, a feast of seafood gets thrown the night before. Nothing special about 7, as that was appended in a piece in the Philadelphia Enquirer in 1983. Looking over expected recipes, I said “not tonight hon”. We had some scallops in addition and that was that. But pretty dandy nonetheless. Now we’re eager to see the 2019 movie of the same name (1). The plot involves a working class Pennsylvania family near Pittsburgh welcoming WASP-y girlfriend for Christmas. Kathy and I would probably identify with the WASP-y girlfriend, tho’ we both have Pittsburgh roots. Kathy’s dad was born and raised there and I lived near there for a couple years as I was growing up.
As Jesus said (Mark 7:18-19): “There is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him, but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man.” So it doesn’t matter much what we eat. Come these Holidays food takes special significance for the memories it triggers. But maybe we should just make stuff that tastes good. America is still the grand melting pot, so why not take advantage of all the wonderful things that have come before? Kathy and I still haven’t decided whether 2 consecutive seafood nights will be the norm at our forthcoming Christmases. I have no Italian blood, but my dear dad enjoyed his WWII duty in Rome and my birth mom married an Italian electrician, happily carrying the DeLuca name ever since. Why not add a little “when the moon hits your eye with a big pizza pie”. Can’t go wrong when Dino is singin’ ya to it (2).
We did find some Norwegian/Scandinavian music for our Little Christmas eve (3, 4)
But check out what you’re missing
First, the requisite pot ( a wok here) with the wonderful slop
Probably looks better in a bowl over the linguine. That’s a chunk of a Zingerman’s baguette in the foreground. Sop duty
Finally, if you should wish to reproduce this masterpiece (it’s a very simple recipe that I only changed a little from Food.com)
The sleet and ice falling on us Saturday morning sure didn’t get us dreaming of a white Christmas, but it did that magical Michigan thing of helping us enjoy the great indoors all the more. With the fireplace roaring and the lights on our 11’ tree twinkling, the hygge was like a scented oil engulfing us with a sense of comfort and contentment. Such a setting requires a proper meal, and the kind of food that satisfies on days like this doesn’t come fast. I knew what we needed, and got started early at the farmers’ market. Not much left, and most of the vendors will be shutting down till the market reopens second weekend in January. But a few of the hardy farmers had their wonderful root vegetables laid out. Who can resist those pretty parsnips, hardy turnips, glorious plump carrots, and tightly packed sprouts? It was a bad year for rutabegas, so that’ll be missing this year. But later that afternoon, those hardy veggies would be joining some generous chunks of beef in my biggest iron pot to emerge with Sunday’s stew.
Now every stew is a unique exercise, as each season always presents its own variety, although the basics remain the same. I don’t know if it’s my accounting background (1), or just all those years of rheumatology trying to keep complex things organized, but I approach each new or revised recipe with a spreadsheet in which I lay out features of what I’ve got and probably tried already (see below). For our stew, that means 3 from the recipe box and 5 from the binder.
Spread out, commonalities become apparent: like stuff to never leave out. Couched in some recipes are little tricks that don’t translate to the spreadsheet, like my late Aunt Dorie’s admonition in her excellent recipe for “Perfect Brown Stew” (how do you argue with that? I’ve made it and it is) for a teaspoon of lemon juice to tenderize the meat and add a little zip. Notes for a little sweetener creep up all over, and I recall how nice that “Mahogany Beef Stew” turned out with that good dollop of hoisin sauce. And what about the horseradish kick from “Fine Cooking”? Also not getting into the spreadsheets are the “end of recipe” instructions on how to make a nice brown gravy to finish. Who likes runny stew? I had good luck using chickpea flour last run through my “beef & brussels sprouts stew”. What do you call runny stew? Soup!
So I will inscribe the new recipe in my lab book then get to chopping and browning. The stew will cook slow in the oven while we’re at the basketball game, sit to cool in the garage over night, then be at the ready for whatever meal we choose on Sunday. Maybe we’ll have it for breakfast, with a nice bold red. Well, eggs and bacon on muffins with Hatch’s green chili sauce washed down by Vampire Marys (2) beat that out, but dinner is coming.
Here’s what it looks like in the pot. Shame the internet can’t do aromas yet.
And here’s the recipe if you care to try. Hurry up while your farmers still have their parsnips, turnips, carrots, and sprouts! (I never put the sprouts in this one as there wasn’t enough room in the pot).
Remember, recipe cards don’t tell the whole story. This one misses that I forgot to put the potatoes in till late (they still cooked), I never used the wine I had set aside, I had to put some dry thyme in as I only had a couple sprigs left, and there really wasn’t 2 T of horseradish in that last jar in the house. Plus there are pauses that are key to making a good stew. For this one, there was the overnight in the garage (Michigan’s high capacity refrigerator), another warm up this afternoon for the thickening, then the several hours in a slow (1750) oven awaiting my sweetheart’s return from Winter Commencement ceremonies (any excuse to get into those doctoral robes). All that time for the marrying and mingling of flavors. But it’ll be ready for sure, and hygge will be served along with stew and wine.
And then, remember back in school when they told you to “show your work”. Here’s the stew spreadsheet I created to get to this recipe. Everything old is new again.
Here’s a look at our beautiful fireplace in all its glory, centerpiece of our living room and greatest source of the hygge we seek in these winter months.
Whenever either of us is home, it’s burning. Both of us have always loved a fireplace, and I think the only times we didn’t live in homes with such a resource we were in apartments pursuing our fortunes. But those fortunes have brought us here and we are so very happy with our surroundings. Not everyone in our neighborhood is as happy as we are. Realize we live in an enclave of libs, and concerns about global warming , including fireplaces, persist. As we approached our second wood buy of the season, I thought I’d check things out. Turns out a cord of wood, as it burns, releases 2.5 tons of CO2 (1). Oooh, scary! I feel warmer already! But for perspective, it’s been estimated that John Kerry’s private plane travels released 116 million tons in a year. (2) If you make a 30 mile commute each year in a car that gets 22 miles a gallon, you’re releasing 4.3 metric tons. If you want to take to the friendly skies to visit grandma, that 5000 mile round trip will cost ya 2.23 tons (3) Given that the whole USA accounted for 6,558 million metric tons of CO2 in 2019 (4). I’m not sure we need to worry about our tiny piddle in a very big pond. As an average household, we pump 49 tons in every year so our fireplace habit exceeds that a little. But as the whole CO2 global warming thing is basically a dead, discredited, BS issue, we on 1611 Harbal are going to fire it up and enjoy our hearth and hygge.
One of the joys of blogging is connecting with like minded folks. Some bloke from the U.K. caught one of my blogs on Omicron and offered up a bit of his work. He describes himself as a retired Chartered Building Surveyor with no medical background other than dealing with his own ailments. He blogs under the impressive name of Baldmichael Theresoluteprotector’sson. He’s composed a guide to all the “variants” that’s informative and hilarious. Did you know that “Omicron” is an acronym for “moronic”?. I’ve never tried to make a link like this. Let’s see if it works https://alphaandomegacloud.wordpress.com/2021/12/02/various-variants-covid-19/.
We diehard Michigan fans are stuck waiting the weeks till New Year’s Eve and the Orange Bowl. This is uncharted territory for us, who haven’t tasted a Rose Bowl since 2004 (back when it mattered). Now we wait and see if Aidan Hutchinson can win an improbable Heisman and cower in anticipation of our SEC opponents. Fortunately, there’s Pete the Plumber with his heartening predictions. Yes, we are pissed off. https://fb.watch/9O2URs4tAM/
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