clearly non-kosher mussels for Jesus dinner

Mussels mania continues unchecked at Harbal!

For many years, Thursday evenings at our place have been reserved for “Jesus dinner”, a simple repast befitting our Lord consisting of fish, bread, and wine.  It grew out of my weekly foray to East Ann Arbor (EAA) medical campus, where higher ups deemed I should go see patients once a week.  Out in EAA, you see, was the geriatric population and Lord knows how they might need a rheumatologist.  My attachment to Geriatrics began long before they moved their clinic from the Cancer Center (joke: triage at entry, relief at which clinic you’re assigned).  Old folks tend to appreciate the attention they get from doctors more, and their ailments can often be remedied by a light tweek.  Unfortunately, they treated EAA as just another rheumatology clinic and I saw all comers.  Eventually, I was able transform the resource into just for injections only.  Patients and fellows liked this setup, patients as they were getting needs met at the hands of someone who knew what he was doing and fellows as they got concentrated exposure to doing these procedures.  Still, the duty was a pain, requiring a 12 minute 5 mile drive right after Rheumatology Grand Rounds (I’ve always hated any clinic assignments you had to drive to).  But the staff was nice and patients appreciative, so  o.k.

Which brings us back to Jesus dinner.  Right on the 10 minute drive home is Plum Market, with excellent bread, fish, and wine, which makes for simple delicious dinner.  We weren’t doing this for long before we thought a certain pair of sandals would be welcome at our table, and the name stuck.  During COVID, its helped that they do virtual wine tastings once or twice a month, conducted on Thursdays.  You pick up your 2-3 bottles beforehand, then consume them while Madeline Triffon, their head wine babe, and her earthy vintner guests, talk you through the tasting.  We’re happy we always have most excellent fish snacks to go with.

So I have a huge hankering to make more mussels after Tuesday’s big success.  Aren’t mussels seafood?  Could be a big problem for Jesus, as a Jew subject to those dreaded dietary laws.

“These you may eat, of all that are in the waters. Everything in the waters that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or in the rivers, you may eat. But anything in the seas or the rivers that has not fins and scales, of the swarming creatures in the waters and of the living creatures that are in the waters, is detestable to you. You shall regard them as detestable; you shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall detest their carcasses. Everything in the waters that has not fins and scales is detestable to you.”

Leviticus 11:9-12

No fins or scales on them mussels.

But I think Jesus was no big fan of the dietary laws

“Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”

Mark 7:10-11

So we proceded with our animules lacking fins or scales and took several liberties with last Tuesday’s recipe. Fewer mussels, wine not beer, more tomatoes, and some others; we invited our Lord, as always, and gave thanks and praised him for the goodness of our victuals.  We shall ever watch what comes out of our mouths, as that is what defiles.

Here’s what came out of the pot

Per a recommendation I came across on-line, we paired it with the same wine I made it with:  a least the first bottle.  A rosé was called for, but our rosé stock was depleted, with a South African number from Kathy’s stay there years ago and a Lads 2 from our trip to the mission peninsula maybe 5 years back.  Out tastes have changed since, and we poorly tolerate any sweetness.  So we mainly drank our “fruit friendly” Bastide Miraflors 2018, a red.  Suffering was minimal.

Here’s the recipe

the best

I don’t know how I stumbled onto this. But John Prine Spotify passed it by me once again tonight. Every boomer needs to hear this, again and again.

Before this, I didn’t know who Rodney Crowell was. Now I have tickets to see him at City Winery in Chicago on Veteran’s Day. For fun, we’re staying at Trump Tower that night

“You can’t take for granted, none of this shit”

quick tune

Spotify runs so many by you. Tonight its the John Prine channel, which features very little John Prine. But some squeaks through, like the one below. This one was borne as something to roll over the credits of a movie. Daddy and them,https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166158/ about a dysfunctional family headed by Andy Griffith (!), with Billy Bob Thorton, Laura Dern and John himself among the lowlifes under him. There was a lot of drinking involved. But the song for the credits was sweet, and one with which Kathy and I forever identify, even if we don’t (quite) drink like Andy Griffith’s family. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA-vD5pyuS4

“against all odds, baby we’re the big door prize”

Belgae moules!

Kathy and I spent a wonderful early Saturday afternoon at lunch in Hopleaf in Andersonville https://hopleafbar.com.  We took a long Red Line ride to Uptown then a walk over to Clark, where the bustling once-Scandinavian neighborhood sits.  Our lunch feast was a full order of mussels accompanied by a big cone of frites and ailoi, washed down by American (War Birds Lazurite, 3 Floyds Zombie Dust) and Belgian (Brasserie du Pont Bière de Miel, Brasserie Lefebre Barbãr, Piraat by vanSteenberge) beers from their dizzying array.  As we picked apart each little creature to consume the morsel within, sopping as much as possible of the wonderful broth in which they were cooked, we got the notion of an even more elegant dish that might be concocted.  Not that there’s a thing wrong with mussels.  It’s a simple dish we should cook more often.  Mussels are relatively cheap, low calorie, and take up the flavors of whatever you bathe them in, whether it be based in beer or wine. Plus, it’s always fun to play with your food.

Belgians have given us their wonderful monk-revered beers, chocolates, frites (on the streets of Amsterdam, they’re “Belgian fries”; don’t know how the French got their hands on them), mussels, and the odd sport of feather bowling, which you can still play at the Cadieaux Café in Detroit http://www.cadieuxcafe.com/featherbowling/. 

But we’re Americans.  Can’t we take a recipe up a notch?  So that’s where Kathy and I got the idea of a mussels pasta dish.  Cook the mussels, shuck them all and reserve the meats, add some sautéed mushrooms, thicken the pot liquor to serve as a sauce, cook some pasta, mix mussels, mushrooms, and thickened liquor, spoon over and voilá. Grated cheese on top is optional.  A little bread on the side for sopping, then the pairing.  Could be a Belgian beer, could be a white wine, probably not a red.  But a fancy, easy, and tasty dish, don’t you think?  I write this now the afternoon of our experience, but won’t post till I have a proper recipe card and at least run through.

Here it is

Bon apetit! (can’t get it translated into Flemish without paying)

Mmmmm.  Can’t beat those little crustaceans, especially when they’re so abundant!  What started as a dish for Belgian peasants is out there for all of us, and eating like a Belgian peasant might not be all bad.  At least the beer is good.

LT and the future of clean

Today’s departure morning left us temporarily homeless.  AirBnB checkout was 10 and our Amtrak 352 to Ann Arbor didn’t leave till 1:25.  Fortunately, an Amtrak business class ticket provides wonderful shelter in the Metropolitan Lounge, missing only free beer to make it a thoroughly satisfying experience.  But that time of morning, we were looking more for breakfast than beer.  After coffee and a donut from Stan’s next door to consume while we finished packing, we were off.  One stop on the green line north then 8 more on the 151 Sheridan bus west and we were there.  The Metropolitan Lounge gives a place to park, for free, all your luggage.  Freed of all but our computer bearing backpacks, we were off in search of.  The venerable Lou Mitchell’s, a block south on Clinton then a block east on van Buren, was our destination http://www.loumitchells.com/.  A classic, full service, we got everything and it’s all good place, diner, it’s been in business at the same location since 1923, at the start of route 66, and has attracted its share of politicians and celebrities.  As it came into view, I could almost taste my corned beef hash with two over easy eggs splashed with hot sauce.

But the place was eerily quiet.  A COVID victim?  The liberal posted hours of operation on the door – 6 AM-2 PM  – came with the sad caveat: closed Monday and Tuesday.  So we turned to Yelp, which told us “Little Toasted” was serving breakfast nearby a 4 minute walk east on van Buren.  As we approached, it became familiar.  The jaunty “LT” script was on the side of the Chase Bank blue glass skyscraper that housed it on the ground level.

We’d tried to get into it last October during height of COVID and it was closed.  We remained wary as we approached, but saw at least one person eating in the big open courtyard next to the sunken railroad yard, and the glass doors, helpfully labeled to indicate which glass panel was actually a door, let us into the big room with the big angled bar, at which were seated the Mexican owner and two helpers.  He assured us they were serving breakfast, led us to our seats, and pointed out the 2 QRs, one for food, one for drinks.  The had a burrito and avocado toast, which both sounded tasty, plus would whip up a bloody Mary for me and a couple mimosas for sweetheart, even though neither were on their cocktail menu, which featured fancier items.

  The place is actually a snazzy bar, catering more to a lunch, after work, and early evening crowd.  But they did breakfast just fine.  We found it all delightful, and tarried to drink in the ambience.  The sun was out, the thermometer hadn’t yet reached 80, and there was a slight breeze, salsa music playing in the background, but not too stirring to nudge a mellow mood.  We learned from the owner he had just recently reopened, and had hopes for more business as people started to come back to work.  At its pre-COVID height, the Chase Bank building hosted more than 7,000 employees in a typical day.  Now, there were barely 100.

Getting ready to hit the road, it was time to visit their facilities.  Perhaps we were catching a glimpse of the future.  There were 3 individual units, each asexual, of course.  Rooms were spacious.  The sink in one corner was appointed with modern soaring curved stainless fixtures, operated with a wave of the hand, dispensing into a deep rectangular stainless steel sink.  Then came the proof of how much the management cared for its patrons: each toilet had a CoCo bidet seat http://www.biolifetechnologies.com/  Europeans had often pointed to absence of such items from the American bathroom as proof of their own cultural superiority.  Having had one in our own home for the past couple of years, I see their point.  The CoCo bidet has numerous controls which I punched one after the other trying to flush the toilet, without success.  Finally, I saw a gleaming panel above the toilet on the wall, about the size of a cafeteria tray, that turned out to be a rocker switch upon which any light tap led to a flush.

Clean is nice, and as a physician I applaud pursuit of that state.  But in our COVID insanity, I submit that the trait of cleanliness has been elevated to a secular holy virtue, with laud for those who strive to attain it and disdain for the unclean who fall short, or worse, don’t even try.  For it was in the lobby of the Chase Bank building that I saw a modern day altar to the holy virtue of cleanliness, specifically the rite of hand washing.  There, just across from the 3 individual bathrooms, was a long rectangular deep stainless steel sink appointed with four sets of the same gleaming curved fixtures that adorned each sink in the individual bathrooms.  It was not hard to envision future patrons stepping up, beginning their ritual with a casual hand wave past the sensor, like a sign of the cross, collecting the soap, then rubbing hands rhythmically together, perhaps with ”pop goes the weasel” in their head to assure proper duration, all in full public view to others who might even be applauding, just as the Pharisees prayed in the open so as to be seen for their devoutness. Then maybe they’ll go back in the bar, have another drink and some dirty food, then go back and do it again.  If they hang around long enough, maybe they’ll get to use the CoCo.  I didn’t see a Chicago Board of Health seal of approval anywhere around the place, but the owners should seek one.  Anything you can do to get a leg up in this competitive market.

eat Harold’s

Harold Pierce makes the finest fried chicken in the Midwest, maybe the best on earth https://www.seriouseats.com/harolds-fried-chicken-chicago.  He deserves his self-appointed title as “Fried chicken king”. He started in ’51, catering mainly to south side black neighborhoods, with his first restaurant at 47th and Kenwood, right at the border of the ghetto and Hyde Park.  The chicken is fried in half beef tallow, half vegetable oil, and is incomparably good. 

Because of his restaurants in Hyde Park, he has attracted a loyal following of eggheads, including me and, yes, Obama.  One of Obama’s female operatives was a high level exec for Harold, but I can’t seem to dredge up her name.  He has expanded not only across the region, but across the country, with franchises in LA, Las Vegas, Arizona, Minneapolis, and Georgia.  There are thirteen outlets in Chicago alone.  When the Chicago restaurant scene becomes too oppressive, we just love to retreat to a bench in Grant Park with a bag of chicken and another bag of beer and just chill.  Trouble is, everyone else seems to get the same idea about the same time and the local Harold’s becomes a zoo.  You’ll be a distinct minority at any Harold’s.  His people know and love their chicken and just glancing around you can see how much.  But there are ways around this impasse.  Harold’s accepts orders.  You can access the menu of the local outlet (they vary place to place), let them know what you want, and it’ll be there to pick up!  Not immediately, as Harold takes pride in making things up fresh, well worth it.  And lately, even on-line ordering is possible.  But it’s a trip to figure our how. Somehow, I learned that my favored nearby S. Halstead station is https://haroldschickenshacktogo.com/menu.  I think maybe I have cracked the code, as I sought the menu for the nearby S. Michigan Avenue shop and typed “Harold’s chicken Michigan Avenue” and got https://haroldschickentogo.com/, same URL but with their address!  So I guess the key is to find your chicken shack from the 13, then type in the address.

https://m.haroldschickenscorp.com/locations/

It’s only chicken, but it’s worth the fuss.

Chi jazz

Kathy and I never fail to take in some jazz when we come to Chicago. Usually, it’s at the venerable Jazz Showcase in the South Loop or the much older Green Mill in Uptown, way north, sometimes Andy’s in the Near North. Tonight it was Jazz Showcase to experience the irrepressible trumpeter Victor Garcia in a quartet that featured a tiny girl singer from Barcelona with an unpronounceable name. The fun the group was having percolated to the audience and a good time was had by all.

I don’t think Kathy and I have ever had a bad time at a Chicago jazz club so we always come back for more.

Last year, realizing these Chicago trips were going to become a regular thing, I set out to see if we were covering all our bases on the jazz front. Don’t want to get into a rut. I sought out all the jazz clubs I could find and compiled a list. Seems there’s a few more. Some don’t do jazz all the time. A lot have been shut down, at least partially, by COVID, and are only beginning to emerge. Jazz Showcase, Green Mill, and Andy’s have been up and running for at least a month. But here’s the list:

Jazz Clubs in Chicago 3/10/20 (43)

Loop and near south

Jazz Showcase

806 S. Plymouth

60605

312-360-0234

http://www.jazzshowcase.com/

Buddy Guy’s Legends

700 S. Wabash Ave

60605

312-427-1190

https://buddyguy.com/index.cfm

(blues)

Tortoise Supper Club

350 N. State

60654

312-755-1700

https://www.tortoisesupperclub.com/

M Lounge

1520 S. Wabash

312-447-0201

60605

https://www.mloungechicago.com/

The Bassment

353 W Hubbard St

60654

(312) 386-5778

https://www.thebassmentchicago.com/

Roof on the Wit

201 N. State St -27th floor

60611

Home

312-239-9502

Home

roof top bar

loop

Bottom Lounge

1375 W Lake St

b/t Loomis St & Ada St

60607

312-666-6775

Home

Near West Side, West Loop

Jazzin’ at the Shedd

1200 S Lake Shore Dr

b/t Field Plaza Dr & Columbus Dr

Shedd Aquarium

60605

312-939-2438

https://www.sheddaquarium.org/programs-and-events/jazzin-at-the-shedd

every Wednesday night in the summer

Near North

Bandera Restaurant
535 N Michigan Ave

60611

(312) 644-3524

https://www.banderarestaurants.com/

Andy’s Jazz Club

11 E.Hubbard

60611

312-642-6805

http://andysjazzclub.com/

Doc B’s Restaurant + Bar

100 E. Walton Street

60611

312-626-1300

Doc B’s Restaurant + Bar

55 E. Grand

60611

312-999-9300

https://www.docbsrestaurant.com/

The Signature Room at the 95th

875 N. Michigan Avenue

60611

312-787-9596

https://www.signatureroom.com/room/

top of the Hancock: high in the sky and what a view

Pops for Champagne

601 N. State

312-266-7677

www.popsforchampagne.com

(wine bar)

Winter’s Jazz Club

465 N. McClurg Court

60611-5144

https://www.wintersjazzclub.com/

Fremont

15 W Illinois St

60654

312-874-7270

https://fremontchicago.com/

Untitled Supper Club

111 W Kinzie St

 60654

312-880-1511

Home

River North, Near North Side

Blue Chicago

536 N. Clark Street

60654

312-661-0100

http://www.bluechicago.com/

River North

The Back Room

http://www.backroomchicago.com/?fbclid=IwAR1n0IcDcOlgLoX2pSmJu7ndAd3NGms6XEehs2DFT1tgJN2uZsP-foP5I5Q

Long time high priced Rush Street tourist trap (which still featured good acts) is moving to River North.  No address yet.

Howl at the Moon Chicago

26 W Hubbard St

60654

312-863-7427

Chicago

Near North Side

Lincoln Park

Elbo Room

2871 N Lincoln Ave

60657-4201

(773) 549-5549

https://elboroomlive.com/

Lincoln Hall

2424 N. Lincoln Avenue

60614

773-525-2501

Home

Lincoln Park

way North

Green Mill

4802 N. Broadway

60640

773-878-5552

http://greenmilljazz.com/

come early and score a seat in Al Capone’s old booth

Schubas Tavern

3159 N. Southport Ave

60657

773-525-2508

https://www.schubastavern.com/

Le Piano

6970 N Glenwood Ave

60626

(773) 656-0456

https://www.lepianochicago.com/

Rogers Park

Serbian Village Restaurant

3144 W Irving Park Rd

b/t Troy St & Kedzie Ave

60618

773-478-2900

https://serbian-village-restaurant.business.site/

Irving Park

(not sure if it is still open)

Northwest

The Owl

2521 N. Milwaukee

60647

773-253-5300

http://owlbarchicago.com/

The Whistler

221 N. Milwaukee Avenue

60647

773-227-3530

https://whistlerchicago.com/

The Hideout

1354 Wabansia Ave

60642

773-227-4433

Home

(great little dive.  Been there many times to see Robbie Fulks)

Innjoy

2051 W. Division

773-394-2066

https://www.innjoywickerpark.com/

2200 N. Milwaukee

https://www.innjoylogansquare.com/

Hungry Brain

2319 W. Belmont Ave

773-687-8230

http://www.hungrybrainchicago.com/

The Kinetic Playground

1113 W Lawrence Ave

60640

773-769-5483

https://www.facebook.com/thekineticplayground

Elastic Arts

3429 W Diversey
#208
60647

http://elasticarts.org/

Logan Square

California Clipper

1002 N California Ave
60622

773-384-2547

http://californiaclipper.com/

Humboldt Park

Constellation

3111 N. Western

60618

312-555-5555

https://www.constellation-chicago.com/

Roscoe Village

Davenport’s

1383 N Milwaukee Ave

773-278-1830

http://davenportspianobar.com/

Wicker Park

Rosa’s Lounge

3420 W. Armitage

773-342-0452

https://rosaslounge.com/

Logan Square

far west

FitzGerald’s

6615 W Roosevelt Rd
Berwyn

708-788-2118

http://www.fitzgeraldsnightclub.com/

Oak Park

Occasional big bands

Chicago by Night

5600 W Belmont Ave

b/t Central Ave & Parkside Ave

60634

773-794-0300

https://www.chicagobynight.net/

Empty Bottle

1035 N. Western Ave. (1050N, 2400W)
60622
773-276-3600

https://www.emptybottle.com/

Dive bar in a dark part of town with mainly alt acts.  20s crowd.  Occasional jazz.  Cheap beer, they say.

Ukranian Village

south

(Jimmy’s) Woodlawn Tap

1172 E. 55th

773-643-5516

(Sunday nights)

Famous Hyde Park hangout, moved from its original location

Hyde Park Jazz Society

at The Promontory

5311 S Lake Park Ave

60615

312-801-2100 (Promontory)

http://hydeparkjazzsociety.com/

https://www.promontorychicago.com/

Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts

University of Chicago

915 E 60th St

773-702-2787

https://arts.uchicago.edu/explore/reva-and-david-logan-center-arts

Woodlawn

The Quarry Event Center

2423 E 75th St

b/t Phillips Ave & Yates Blvd

60649

312-259-1143

https://www.thequarrychi.com/

South Shore

(don’t write off South Shore.  Looks pretty c

shameless plug

If you’ve got a Kindle and a spare buck, you can read my new book! Actually, it’s just a 9-page essay about an event from my youth. I thought it was too long and too deep to post on this blog. Here’s the link https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095BS8VRJ

I think Amazon gives me 30 cents. I probably will spend it all in one place.

tallow, ho!

Blame it on the Rockies.  We were at a Colorado Springs bar munching away at some delicious fries, moved to take a second glance at the menu which indicted they’d been fried in beef tallow.  Of course!  I’d realized just recently that frying is better done in animal fat.  Much maligned lard has fewer calories than butter and has a much higher smoke point than any of the common vegetable oils (1).  So I have a nice chunk in my refrigerator that I use liberally.  But that’s a pig product.  Could I produce a bovine equivalent?  It turns out I had 7¼ pounds (3.4 kg) of beef suet in my garage freezer, the one I’ve had since my internship (42 years).  They took up a not insubstantial portion of my freezer capacity (0.3 cubic feet in a 16.5 cubic foot freezer).  I acquired the stuff when I bought a whole sirloin to slice into steaks and discovered a fairly substantial apron of fat, maybe accounting for the bargain price.  Originally, I saved it for the birds, as I’d heard that birds in winter like suet. Years passed without ever the hanging of suet and there it sat.

So home from Colorado I looked up how you might convert suet to tallow. It’s pretty darned easy https://yourfamilyfarmer.com/recipes/how-to-make-beef-tallow-from-beef-suet.  Of course, I ignored the instructions and just kept my 8 quart pot of suet on low for 3 days. There was a slow and steady cook down, filling the house with an aroma of a pot roast in the oven.  Not all bad.  One by-product of rendering (what this process is called) are the “cracklings”, bits of meat and fat from which no more fat can be rendered.  This is where pork rinds come from. Well, beef rinds are no less tasty and I now have 2.3 pounds (1.04 kg) of them.  I’ve been snacking on them but they get their first real tryout as a condiment tonight when a handful go on a salad.

See here the sequence of rendering:

Pot full of suet

Pot after 2 days rendering

After 3 days it was time to separate cracklings from tallow and proceed

But that’s a lot of cracklings!

But just look at that beautiful tallow, filtered through cheesecloth, just hitting the 1.75 L mark

So 3.4 kg of suet yields 1.75 L tallow.  That’s a 51.5% yield.  There a lot of “energy” in that stuff.  At 115 cal/TBSP (same as lard, a little less than olive oil), that big measuring cup contains 15,715 calories.  How fat would you get if you downed it in one big gulp?

I divided my 1.750 L of my very own home-made tallow into 2 quart jars, 3 pint jars, and a 1 ½ C  number.  This stuff isn’t just for eating.  It can be a fuel for candles, and makes excellent skin care products.  We’ll see if my sweetheart, who is very particular about cosmetics, rubs it on her face.  She’ll have to gauge the effect on her husband, who is very fond of items bathed in tallow.  A little wood ash and we could make soap! https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/how-to-make-soap-from-ashes-zmaz72jfzfre

When first poured

Hour later

Rendering used to be a big thing on the farm, as all that fat from the season’s butchering was thrown into the rendering pot, producing tallow and lard that would take them through the winter.  They weren’t watching their waistlines so much back then.  This replica of a “pig pot” I inherited from my late Aunt Dorie is the sort of thing that would have been used for rendering.  However, prior to the rendering, the pot had another function.  Filled with boiling water, into it would go each newly dead pig for scalding, followed by the scraping off of any hair with a sharp scoop.  Young men like my Grandpa Slater assisting in this task, then cutting up the pigs, were rewarded with a few cuts of meat for their own use, never the choice cuts

So we further go into the brave new old world of animal fats.  We’ve already discovered duck fat, leading us to choose supermarket ducks over the free range grass fed numbers of my colleague Michelle, as they are too scrawny.  Can schmaltz (chicken fat) and goose fat be far behind (Ann Arbor parks are overrun with sources)?

It all brings to mind one of Roy Blount Jr’s old food songs.  Roy, now 80, is a Southern writer and raconteur who was a regular guest on the old Prairie Home Companion.  He also performs with the “Rock Bottom Remainders”, a group composed only of writers, which have included Dave Barry, Stephen King, and Mitch Albom, among others. As I was watching all that wonderful beef fat render, I couldn’t help but think of the one of his food songs that goes:

“I think that I shall never cease

To hold in admiration, grease…”

That’s all I remember.  The Ann Arbor District Library and Amazon are racing to get me a copy of the book (2).  When I get it, I’ll update, so stay tuned.

Update, Tuesday May 18th. It’s a tie. Kathy drove me to the Ann Arbor District library downtown so I could get there by noon. The disembodied figure on the big screen in the caged-off entryway explained my book was on the shelf, bearing my name in alphabetical order, and already checked out. Happily, I headed home with it under my arm to find a pile of packages on the doorstep, one of them from Amazon bearing my book!

So here’s the cover

Overstuffed with paens to food. I anticipate many hours of pleasure, and more than a few pounds of weight gain.

And here’s the song in question. Much more to it than what I remembered

I like the line in the 3rd stanza “Oh when our joints refuse to function”. Wish I’d know that back when I was practicing. I could have just recommend to my patients to get more grease in their diet. They were always asking about diet, anyway. But, grease, that’s the ticket. Tallow if you’re lucky enough to score some.

References

1.         Maynard C and Scheller B.  The Bad for you Cookbook.  New York: Villard Books, 1992. pp 69-70 (on lard)

2.         Blount RJ.  Save Room for pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations.  New York: Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016

make it add up, doc

Those invites from the “predatories”, journals and conferences alike, just keep on coming.  For those of you not in academia, a “predatory” journal exists mainly to fleece authors of often astronomical article processing fees (APCs).  Journal costs used to be covered by subscriptions and/or support from organizations.  With most journal articles now accessed on-line, and some journals going completely virtual, money to run the printing presses and pay for postage isn’t such a big-ticket item anymore.  But there still are some regulatory costs and making an article look nice from the submitted double-spaced manuscript takes some work.  On-line access to conventional journal articles is “free” only to those with a subscription, which could belong to the institutional library from which the seeker might be working.  Otherwise, you have to pay, and it’s usually not cheap.  This is an impediment to authors who want to get the word out about their work.  Enter the concept of “open access”, in which the author foots the bill for publishing his or her article in exchange for the journal making access to the published article free to all comers.  Started by physicists and computer scientists in the late 80s and 90s, the concept was named and formalized just after the turn of the century (1).  Many legitimate journals offer this as an option.  Lab researchers cover the costs out of their grants.  Published articles are the currency by which success in academics is measured.  Knowing this push, new journals began to spring up 10 or so years ago as entirely open access.  Seeing the desperate academic author as cash cow, these journals actively solicit articles, usually with very flattering e-mails.  If that sounds like a sleazy operation, it is.  These journals have all the trappings of “real” journals, with editorial boards, a stated commitment to peer review, snazzy online graphics, and PDFs of your article looking every bit as pretty as something in the New England Journal.  But they do serve a purpose, sort of like the “easy” girl back in school everybody took out.  It can serve as a start for the young writer.  For this old writer, it served as a restart when someone from the Journal of Surgery and Surgical Technology asked me to write something for their upcoming issue on arthroscopy, the thing that made me unique back in the day.  I invited two friends, my mentor Bill and Bill’s student after me and now good friend Ken.  I asked Ken, a successful professor with a decent slush fund, if he might cover the APCs.  He agreed, and even negotiated them down a bit.  What came out – “Arthroscopy in rheumatology: a reminiscence” – looked pretty nice (2).  So nice, we buffed it up and submitted it to the world’s premier rheumatology journal: Rheumatology (Oxford).  Yes, that Oxford.  Lo and behold, they took it, after a few revisions (3).  Between time of acceptance in late July and e-publication December 1st (the paper journal was mailed out in February), I constructed a rather long spreadsheet of all those people who had been important to the development of rheumatologic arthroscopy, emailing each a brief statement and a link to the paper.  Most were academics who worked through a library and thus could get free access.  One fellow, an orthopedic surgeon, my hero Lanny Johnsn, contacted the editor of Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopy and Related Surgery about having me and Ken write a letter to their editor informing all those orthopedists of our article, which was appearing in a journal orthopods don’t generally read.  The kicker was we’d have to make the Rheumatology article open access, a service Oxford University Press would happily provide for the mere sum of $4225.  Even Ken’s slush fund isn’t that big.  I went to work on Rheumatology’s editor, pushing the possibility of reaching a much larger audience.  After some promising exchanges, I stopped hearing from him.  I went ahead and wrote the letter, submitting it with the warning the article might not be freely accessible.  I was told the link was working, and they accepted the letter (4).  So that invite from 2 Julys ago netted me 3 new entries on my C.V.  More importantly, it reintroduced me to the joys of writing and publishing, and I have 8 or so manuscripts in various stages of development plus 3 more already submitted with one published (5), one needing revisions (eventually accepted 6), and one seeking another journal (eventually found 7) (as of 4/28/21).  Two of the 8 were prompted by a predatory invite; although I had negotiated the APCs way down, what got written was so nice I pulled it from the predatory and am buffed them up some for a “real” journal. One could go in today (6) and the other still needs a little work, both on the manuscript (8) and on the YouTube video Sara and I published to illustrate one of the procedures in the manuscript (9)

Then last Thursday, I got the craziest predatory invite I’d received yet: from a business journal!  Ms Wright, from the offices of Crimson Publishers in NYC, said she had a shortfall of one article for her upcoming issue of Strategies in Accounting and Management and might I help support them with my article by the next Thursday?  It need only be brief, a 2-page opinion/mini review/case report.  I wrote back I could write something about the memorable accounting class I had in high school, but only if they waived their APCs.  Ms Wright did not seem deterred by my meager business credentials and said I only need pay the “web hosting fee”, which was trivial.

I found 778 words and two online references, submitted it yesterday and received Ms Wright’s thanks and a bill for the web hosting fee, which I’ve paid.  It has to go through “peer review”, of course, but I’m pretty sure Ms Wright is one of those ”easy girls”, so I’ve gone ahead and put it on my CV (10)

I don’t think I’m violating any copyright laws here:

Make it add up, doc

Did you hear the one about the rheumatologist who was asked to write something for an accounting journal?  Yep, that really happened, and here’s the result.

Accounting was one of the easier classes I took in high school.  I’m not even sure why I signed up for it in the first place.  I had zero desire to go into business of any sort, let alone become an accountant.  I was good at math, but that was going to take me into something scientific.  A lot of my buddies were taking accounting, so I did too.  I ended up liking the class.  Everything was very logical, with satisfaction to be had in getting the right number in the right column and seeing everything balance up.  I think running numbers makes my brain put out endorphins.  I got that from my dad, a time-study guy at G.M. (they eventually called him an “industrial engineer”); we’d have a contest at grocery checkout, seeing who can add up the bill faster, and always beating the cashier.  That machine got a lot of fun work in accounting class.  The class was taught by workbook and we were allowed to go at our own pace.  When it began to look like I could actually do it, I set out to finish the two-semester course in one term, and did.  My three friends who took accounting most seriously didn’t do that, although they got As too.  Each went to Western and focused on business, Rod and Eric in accounting and Steve in marketing.  All saw success, Rod and Steve in aerospace and Eric in banking.

At our high school, only grades from the first seven semesters counted toward class ranking.  Greedy for As and grabbing for that top prize, I asked that both my accounting As count toward my final GPA.  Johnny Mac, our vice-principal, granted me that.  I wonder now if he knew what the consequences would be.  He was always one to teach you a lesson one way or another.  It’s been more than 50 years, but I can still give the details verbatim.  My friends still ask me about it on occasion, just to bait me.  At dear old Vicksburg High, class grades were weighted, with an extra point added to honors or advanced placement classes.  After 6 semesters, my GPA was well north of 4.0.  I think I may have gotten a B in Phys Ed, which mercifully was required only freshman year.  Now you think Mr. number crunching genius could have added this one up.  Accounting was neither an honors nor an A.P. course.  4 points was 4 points.  And what did those 2 accounting As do to my GPA?  Yep, they brought it down!  That very smart girl Kay beat me for valedictorian by 7 ten-thousandths of a point!  No, I’ll never get over it.  And yes, Mr. McDonald, I’ve learned to scrutinize more carefully the potential consequences of my greedy actions.  Goes to show you can learn from a class long after the final exam.

Being salutatorian wasn’t half bad.  The salutatorian greets the assembled as the ceremonies begin, so no one has fallen asleep yet, then gets to sit down – job done – and take in the rest of the evening.  There were no real consequences of my fall from the top spot.  I got into the honors college at Michigan, graduated with high distinction in Zoology, then got a masters in Micro as I waited to get into a very good med school (University of Chicago), had the computer stick me at Barnes in St. Louis, was welcomed back to Ann Arbor for my rheumatology fellowship then taken on as faculty for what was an immensely satisfying career that is still giving me things to write about even though I haven’t seen a patient this decade.

And the role of that accounting class?  Maybe more important than I think.  Many folks my age say the most useful course they took in high school was typing.  I didn’t take typing (would have brought down my GPA).  While I disdained the business side of medicine, I understood what was being discussed when the numbers flashed up on the screen, and kept careful track of my own clinical activities and occasional grant-getting to make sure I was getting proper credit.  There may be a little more in my 401K as a result.  Accounting is important in medicine.  A PubMed search of those two terms nets 144,454 references (1).  Rheumatology as the crossed search term gets 2,799 (2).  So, yes, I would recommend that every high schooler take accounting.  Life is better when you can make things add up.

References

1.         https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=accounting+AND+medicine

2.         https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=accounting+AND+rheumatology

REFERENCES

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_open_access#:~:text=The%20first%20online-only%2C%20free-access%20journals%20%28eventually%20to%20be,were%20developed%20without%20any%20intent%20to%20generate%20profit.
  2. Ike RW, Arnold WJ, Kalunian KC.  Arthroscopy in rheumatology: a reminiscence.  J Surg Surg Technol 2020;2(1):27-35.  https://www.jsurgery.com/articles/arthroscopy-in-rheumatology-a-reminiscence.pdf
  3. Ike RW, Arnold WJ, Kalunian KC.  Arthroscopy in rheumatology.  Where have we been?  Where might we go?  Rheumatol (Oxford) 2021;60:518–528.  Epub 2020 Dec 1 https://doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/keaa560. https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cyGg2gV7ZQUK1
  4. Ike RW, Kalunian KC.  Arthroscopy in rheumatology. Arthroscopy: The Journal of Arthroscopic and Related Surgery (in press). 2021;37(5):1364-1365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arthro.2021.02.024
  5. Ike RW, Kalunian KC, Arnold WJ.  Why not wash out the OA knee?  J Clin Rheumatol 2021;27(2)43-45.  https://doi: 10.1097/RHU.0000000000001672
  6. Ike RW, Kalunian KC.  Regarding arthroscopy: can orthopedists and rheumatologists be friends?  J Clin Rheumatol 2021;28:177–181.  https://doi: 10.1097/RHU.0000000000001802
  7. Ike RW, Kalunian KC.  Will rheumatologists ever pick up an arthroscope again?  Int J Rheum Dis2021;24:1235–1246.  Epub 2021 July 29.  https://doi: 10.1111/1756-185X.14184
  8. Ike RW, McCoy SS, Kalunian KC.  What bedside skills should the modern rheumatologist possess?  (submitted to J Clin Rheum)
  9. McCoy SS, Ike RW.  Labial salivary gland biopsy by Dr. Sara McCoy (silent).  Posted to YouTube by RW Ike 7/17/21.  Available at: https://youtu.be/O7hxT6OLfH0
  10. Ike RW.  Make it add up, doc.  Strategies in Accounting and Management (SIAM) 2021;2(4) SIAM.000542.2021 https://crimsonpublishers.com/siam/pdf/SIAM.000542.pdf.