This is my 400th blogpost, a habit I kicked off 10 days short of 4 years ago. I think I’m getting my money’s worth from WordPress. Today’s post, as befits my recent trend, it’s about food. Christmas dinner, to be exact. But you don’t need to wait till a holiday to make this. It’ll make any day a special occasion.
When I asked my wife Kathy what she wanted for Christmas dinner, she said “oh, just a turkey”. I’d been fond of taking on slightly more exotic birds (1), but knew we had a 12 pounder in the freezer taking up space. A lot of space. I agreed, and vowed to make the most out of that boring old bird.
the bird
I decided to brine the bird. I had time. I’d had good luck with turkey breasts and duck(1). By the miracle of osmosis, more juice enters the turkey muscle than exits in the salt bath. Plus, you can include all sorts of things to influence the ultimate flavor of the bird. The process is a little complicated, so here’s how it goes.
Of course, it took a little research. Who’d a thunk ol’ Martha Stewart would be the best contributory?
A 15 quart Playmate cooler is a good resting place. Helps that keeping the temp below 410F during brining process is essential. Bought ice from the store and multiple frozen cold packs wrapped in a Ziploc kept things cool.
Here’s what it looked like (before bird landing):
Later, see our bird in repose. Here’s the recipe:
After a night or two in the tank (I read that after 18 hours, the bird gets too salty), it’s time to retrieve the bird, rinse it, and pat it dry. To make that skin scrumptious, you rub it with brown ghee (brown clarified butter) (2), maybe 3-4 TBSB, be generous! Place the bird in a baking pan and cook at 5000 (convection) X 30’. The bird will look beautifully brown and almost done!
Can we eat it now?
But 2 hours in the Pit Barrel smoker will finish the job. It’s just a 55 gallon oil drum fitted for BBQ (3). One of the best investments I’ve ever made.
See here the turkey panorama.
That’s a magnificent thing you’ll have there. Any appendage will be moist and sumptuous.
But in the interim has been cooked the gravy! That exquisite treat requires only a little extra attention. By cooking the bird mostly hanging in a smoker, you miss out on the brown bits in the roasting pan that contribute so much to a good gravy. That pan the bird sat in for its half hour 5000 shock will have some stuff. Here you just are using those useless bits that come in a bag inside the turkey. You neglect them at your peril. Watcha got is a neck, a gizzard (stomach), heart, and liver. Simmer these for a couple hours and you got some good juice you can turn into the piece de resistance of any turkey dinner, the gravy! Here’s how it goes:
Trust me, it was exquisite. I had some mashed potatoes waiting for it, but my glycemic eschewing sweetie whipped up some sauteed cauliflower rice for the occasion.
Then comes the end of it all. Gather up the few bits of leftovers for later. You’d think with a 12 pounder and 2 people there’d be more. We tore away the breasts for later sliced delights. But the bones and carcass sat there and we decided to put it back to work.
Here’s how you beat that turkey carcass into submission.
Ah, man. That’s some dandy soup. Sure didn’t last around here.
I don’t know if when ol’ Ben Franklin was proposing that the turkey to be our national bird he was thinking of all the great ways we could eat it. Knowing what a bon vivant Ben was, I’m sure that eating, drinking, and other pleasures of the flesh factored into his considerations, so who knows. Regardless, we’re saluting the eagle and not eating it, but we love our Mr. Turkey in all its guises. God Bless America!
Hygge was fading on Harbal as the evening progressed. The fire had drawn closed as Kathy and I absorbed into our screens had failed to feed the place. Faced with our next big event of the evening, “Sashay’s Shimmy Shimmy Ko-Ko Bop” show on WCBN (1), we struggled to restore the ambience. We’d found that our homemade firestarters were not up to the task of making a roaring fire, only working with a $4 store bought “Dura-flame” (2). We had but one of these left in the house, and wondered about tomorrow’s fires.
Kathy had a solution. She was hoping to find a use for her Christmas present, her Coolina knife (3). I bought this for her knowing the relish she took whenever deploying our cleaver. I hoped she wouldn’t take it out on me. She happily took the knife down from the rack and cleanly cleaved in twain a Duraflame. One half would start this evening’s fire while the other would wait till tomorrow morning. Violence well applied.
Hygge burns anew at Harbal. All’s well for the 4th day of Christmas.
“Keep me up and f**k me up”, such was the request from the unnamed supermodel who walked in to celebrity bartender Dick Bradsell at Fred’s Club in Soho London sometime in 1983 (1). A simple concoction, initially called The Vodka Espresso then the Pharmaceutical Stimulant, it caught on like wildfire with revelers who wanted to keep the party going (what, was there no cocaine?). I guess caffeine is safer. Nomenclature evolved to “espresso martini” and many have claimed parentage. The only relationship to an actual martini is the glass In which its served. No gin, vermouth, or olives come near this drink, although it packs a similar punch. Added to that it’s so smooth going down and it keeps you up ready for more, more, more.
I can’t say my drinking life has been very eclectic. I’m a beer guy lookin’ for the best IPA you’ve got. But on a recent trip to Chicago our desire to watch the Big 10 Championship game landed us at Moe’s Cantina in River North, a Mexican place. On their cocktail menu was this “espresso martini” thing. Frankly, I was a little sleepy coming into that big game. I ordered one of theirs, which they make with a fine tequila (Patrón Añejo). It went down smoove and perked me up. I was all there for the game, which never got very exciting. A few more for good measure, and I saw the appeal. I vowed to duplicate the drink once I got home. The recipe is very easy.
And the product is so very pretty.
Kathy likes to muddy up the surface with her whipped cream, but it’s well worth it.
There are even recipes for the impatient. You’re supposed to let your espresso cool first. It’s coffee dammit, and who doesn’t want that right away?
I recommend for all the coffee impatient out there the Aeropress, putting at your fingertips the power of a $1000 espresso machine (2). And, of course, the metal filters are essential (3).
As I write this, Kathy and I have drained the last martini made with this morning’s espresso. Thus, we must engage STAT technology. Fortunately, we are well versed in this drill and shall see our glasses filled in no time. Prosit!
On the back of his Christmas card to me, my ‘burg buddy Jim wrote “P.S. Learn to spell Harbaugh (It ain’t Harbal)”. I figured he needed a little lesson, and wrote him thusly:
“From your admonition on the back of the envelope, I knew I had to set you straight. Bear with me here. Our little neighborhood on this cul-de-sac – Fair Acres – was carved out of an apple orchard in the late 50s. All 13 houses went up in 1958. The developer, one Harry Baldwin, decided to offer his name to the new street, contracting his two names. Har-Bal. Get it? Jimmy wouldn’t be born for 5 years yet. Harbal is a very unique street name. If you GoogleMaps it, the only place you’ll find that’s close is somewhere over in India. The residents have gotten restless over the name at least once. In the late 60s early 70s, there was a movement to change the street name to “Defiance Moraine”. That’s the geographic structure atop which we sit, crap the glacier threw up extending all the way down to Defiance Ohio. As the petitioning began, some relatives of Harry Baldwin came out of the woodwork and said such a change would defile his memory, so Harbal stood. When Jimmy came home in 2014 to save Michigan football, I proposed the same change you suggested. I thought it would be cool to have Coach come to the ribbon-cutting ceremony. My proposal was roundly rejected by my neighbors. They were very fond of our unique street name, and knew more of the history behind it than I did at the time. Some had doubts about the longevity of coach’s tenure. If he leaves, where would that leave us? So I’ve joined my neighbors as a proud and staunch supporter of the unique Harbal name. Kathy and I enjoy spelling out the difference between Harry Baldwin’s contraction and our beloved football coach’s name whenever asked for our address. Given Jimmy’s long rumored flirtation with the NFL, I hope all the rumors prove false and Jim lives up to his stated life plan “Play till I can’t, then coach till I die.” Go Blue!!
Andy Williams was right. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” (1). While The Day isn’t till Monday. I’m sure most of us have been celebrating for a while already. Trees and lights start to go up around Thanksgiving, and Christmas music, and of course the ads, have been peppering the airwaves since before that. But it’s really starting in earnest now. My best friend Eric had a virtual Christmas present exchange with his far flung family last night. He said his son-in-law found him an app to help organize it. Tomorrow, those of us blessed with some Norwegian blood will break out the aquavit and gravlax – and for the daring, lutefisk – to celebrate Little Christmas Eve. Then, those lucky Italian Catholics celebrate the ending of Advent’s meat abstinence with their Feast of the Seven Fishes (2). And we all know what happens the day after that. How many of us “yust go nutz” (3)? It can be a pretty frenzied day, as birthday parties often are. Please don’t take my title and tone as sacreligious. Has there ever been a bigger birthday, for crissake? A little letdown after is inevitable, but it shouldn’t be because the party’s over. That silly Christmas carol is right. There really are twelve days of Christmas, each day an established feast day worth celebrating. So after Christmas, it’s like Rodney Crowell sang, with help of his ex-wife Rosanne Cash and smooth-voiced John Paul White: “It ain’t over yet” (4). To help you through it, I’m reposting here the body of a text I posted 3 Christmases ago about those 12 days (5).
“dandy dozen
Merry Christmas to all my friends and whomever happens to stumble on this site! It’s morning as I write this. No presents yet, not even breakfast. Kathy and I sit by the fire, excerpts from the Messiah playing, sipping our orange-juice free mimosas. The nature of the crisis at hand hit me early. Kathy and I have a shoe box full of our favorite Christmas CDs, which lives in the storage room till this wonderful time of year. Between Spotify, WRCJ and WFMT, most of our Christmas music needs have been met by our iTouch. We decided this morning to pull and play our favorites. We’d played a few here and there, but there were a lot we haven’t heard for a year. The pile got pretty big pretty fast and we realized there weren’t going to be enough hours in this day to play even a fraction of them, no matter how late we stayed up. What to do? The thought came, aren’t there 12 days of Christmas? Sure we all know the silly song with the French hens, turtle doves, five gold rings and all, but what about those 12 days? For most of us Americans, it’s back to work on the 26th and that’s that. Maybe a little bargain shopping and some lousy football with a hiccup for New Years, plus still a slowdown at the office, but the post-Christmas hangover wastes no time in arriving. Those of us church goers hear our pastors refer to the Sunday after New Year’s as “Epiphany”, but I’m not sure we emerge knowing what “an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure” we’d just experienced. But if we understand Epiphany, we might begin to understand the bookends of what was once a week and a half of festivities, not just the climax of Christmas we’ve come to accept. Epiphany marks the day the baby Jesus was visited by the Magi (the 3 Wise Men). Not that long ago, each day between Christmas and Epiphany was marked by a feast honoring a saint. Here it is explained (from 5).
The eve of day 12 – Twelfth Night – is still a big deal in England. One big party. Poor and rich often change roles. Shakespeare titled a play about it. Practically speaking, it’s traditional to take your Christmas decorations down after 12th night. We leave ours up to Imbolc (Feb 2nd, a.k.a, Groundhog day (6). It’s all about light, dontcha know. Those Christmas lights sprang from a much older tradition which sought to bring light to the darkest time of the year. By Imbolc, you can perceive that that darkness really is lessening, so the lights can come down.
Some say early Christians appropriated this time of year to celebrate the birth of our Savior in order to co-opt the Pagans, who had a dandy celebration going at the time of the winter solstice called Yule (7). I don’t know how long the Pagans went at it after Yule, but the Christians sure knew how to keep the party going! Falling away from the church means some spiritual losses to be sure, but look what else you’re missing! Kathy and I are looking forward to celebrating the next 12 days to the fullest, including playing all that Christmas music!
Paul Schutter was a teacher of mine back at Vicksburg High School. He taught me driver’s ed and math and served as my golf coach and chaperone to a junior year DC venture. A mountain of a man with a college sports past he never talked about, he was our gentle guide through all these things. He died last December after a long bout with Parkinson’s.
Last weekend’s venture to the ‘burg for “Christmas in…” (1) was followed the next morning by services at Vicksburg United Methodist Church, where I am still a member after signing up at age 16. In the bulletin was listed “Remembering Our Church Family and Friends with Christmas Wishes”. They were mainly shut ins and those who had lost a loved one. On the list was one Marilyn Schutter. She’d be one dealing with a loss, still. The emotions that welled up in me thinking about her husband made me sure I had to write her a letter. I was going to post that letter here verbatim till my wife Kathy, who’s very good and well-practiced at reining in my potentially inappropriate behaviors, pointed out that Mrs. Schutter might not want to see so personal a communication become a public document. But Kathy said it would be o.k. to share my reminisces of my dear teacher, so here goes.
I first knew Mr. Schutter as a teacher, of course. I believe he taught me how to drive a stick shift, “3-on-the-tree”. Then, he became our class’ guide through the angles of geometry, our Captain Cosine (the nicest of several nicknames we cooked up for him). There in the front of the class was this giant of a man who could have beaten any of us to a pulp (and some of us deserved it), but all we got was his gentle way and self-deprecating humor. He never let on about his sports exploits at K and Western (he was a star football player and champion shot putter), but when he took us to those places, he proudly pointed out their features, like how Western never paved a footpath until students had walked it for a couple years, establishing the best ways to go.
I at least played one sport well enough to get to know him as a coach. I canned football after my freshman season, so it was on the golf course he got to try to make something of me. My teams were never champions, but I did letter, and proudly wear that big V on my varsity jacket still (2). But Mr. Schutter was also assistant coach of boys’ varsity football, and he certainly looked the part.
Next to him are head coach Mike Blough and fellow assistant Eddie Knapp. Mr. Blough coached me in JV basketball and Mr. Knapp had some championship baseball teams. The diamond at VHS is named after him.
Mr. Schutter was charged with chaperoning two from my junior class and 3 from the class of ’69 on a “Domestic Exchange” trip to D.C. where we’d visit Lee High School in Alexandria Virginia. He was also the driver. I don’t know if he was with us at the time, but I had my first taste of beer at a bar in sight of the White House. He was always a good sport, and even took pictures of us in scenes less embarrassing than they looked.
He grew to be a friend of my dad, probably through church. They played golf and became buddies. He was one of Dad’s pallbearers at his March ’03 funeral.
I regret I lost contact with my old teacher. I’m sure he was kinda surprised when my dad told him tales of how I seemed to be making something of myself. I heard through the grapevine of his struggles with Parkinsonism. So sad a man who could once do so much with his strong body would now be shackled with that horrible disease.
When I heard of his passing last December, I communicated the news to all my VHS’70 classmates who had an e-mail address. I received many replies with fond remembrances. If the Captain had any enemies at VHS, they weren’t in my class.
There’s a video with scenes from his life as part of his obituary on amsfuneralhomes.com (3). I recognize some of those shots! It demonstrates clearly how the Schutters had a rich and full life together.
I’ll forever miss him, grateful for all he did for me, and will never forget him.
‘Tis the season! For the last few years, my wife Kathy has gotten me to write a Christmas letter detailing our adventures in the past year. It’s great fun to relive those experiences, and even more to figure which of your friends, family, and acquaintances you’re going to inflict them upon. This year, we dug up 130 victims. Thank God for e-mail, ‘cause if I were sending each of them a Christmas card it would run me $85.80 at present rates! And that’s not accounting for international postage! You can buy a lot of beer with that! For the rest of the world that we have not managed to capture, it’ll all be out here on my blog. So I hope you’ll take a few moments to chuckle over what the Ikes/Clarks had to endure this past year, be glad it wasn’t you, and join us into looking toward a better 2024. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Go Blue!
Kathy and I opened this year across the pond, underground. We were starting a trip we’d been anticipating nearly 2 years, booked in January ’21 and delayed by COVID. The main attraction was Hogmanay, a raucous and fiery New Year’s Eve festival the Scots have been having since Mary Queen of Scots in 1561 forbade them from celebrating Christmas, as it was “too pagan”. The intrepid Scots merely moved things up a week and have been reveling ever since. But instead of being out in the streets reveling with the natives, we were in the basement of Globe Bar, eyes fixed to the big screen their owner had assured me on-line that he’d stream the Peach Bowl. Our boys made some uncharacteristic mistakes, but the game remained close. When we stepped outside to see the fireworks at midnight, they scored 2 touchdowns in quick succession. Not enough. Despite this bummer of a start to the year, we dragged ourselves at 4 in the morning in the rain to our waterside cottage in South Queensferry by the Firth of Forth, a North Sea inlet. We had a lovely view of the bridges from our flat, especially at night. We had a bird’s eye view for Loony Dook, in which crazed Scots celebrate the new year by taking a dip in those icy waters. Edinburgh was a bus or train ride away, but ol’ S.Q was pretty cozy with nice restaurants, a good pub, and trails that went everywhere.
Home saw a quick turnaround, as we’d booked a house on Madeira Beach Florida, on the Pinellas Spit, set to start in 10 days. Kathy could relax a little, as this would be the last time we’d be out of North America all year. After the whirlwind of the 6 months itinerary following her retirement, seeing 5 countries and 24 American cities*, she’d asked that I cool it a bit. Being a good husband, I listened.
In Florida, we had everything we needed: a comfy porch overlooking the Gulf and proximity to those stores we’d need for provisions. My brother John and his wife Karen came over from Clearwater for a visit in which a large grouper was mercilessly devoured. John likes a good cigar and we indulged.
February saw two Texas trips. Kathy went to Galveston “on business” (no pictures) then dragged me down to Fort Worth a couple weeks later to see the first ever live show put on by Babylon Bee. They’re a bunch of funny kids out in California who dump outrageous and unbelievable political humor in your inbox every day. Some highlights of the show we saw are accessible on YouTube, but if I provided links, I might offend some of the recipients of this letter. As VIPs, we got to wear name tags, and they let us pick out own pronouns!
We mostly stayed put in March, but we did go out. Of the 37 concerts we saw in 2023 (so far), 9 were in March. 4 of those were in Chicago packed into a 5-day St. Patrick’s Day train trip.
We always love an excuse to visit La Jolla, ever since my 2017 Winter UCSD sabbatical. We’d become very fond of a church there, La Jolla Presbyterian (“LJ Pres”) and they were given responsibility for this year’s Easter Sunrise service in Balboa Park. Two days after Palm Sunday we were off for a 12-day visit. Easter morning was magnificent, and we’ve already made plans to be out there in 2024, even if a different church will be doing the honors. See the glorious pavilion that served as ground zero for our services: Spreckels Organ Pavilion,built in 1914 and the largest outdoor organ pavilion in the world.
Those west coast trips usually include a jog up to the Bay Area to meet a couple of my old Barnes buddies and catch up with the Pescadaro branch of the Clark clan. See us here after dinner at the Costanoa Lodge, which hired Orion after talking with him at the table. Those Clarks can get so silly sometimes.Left to right: Janet, Mertz (Jim), Kathy, Aislinn; back Orion, Skyler, Uncle Ike
May and October are the prettiest months in Ann Arbor, so why would we go anywhere? Except for a brief trip to Battle Creek to see their Brass Band and a jaunt south to Cincinnati to visit Kathy’s 87 years old Uncle Chuck. We had a great time bringing him up to date on all matters family and Wolverine.
Visitors came to us. My good Barnes (StL ’79-‘82) buddy Dave, now a concierge doc in the Bay Area (Petaluma) wanted to come visit his brother in Livonia. We offered up our downstairs guest bedroom and he accepted. The facility, including its bathroom, hadn’t been used for a while. Dave noticed his sink didn’t drain but managed by coming upstairs to use other sinks. After consulting 3 plumbers after he left, we learned our problem wasn’t a simple clog, but a totally rotted out sewer system that needed replacing. Thus began an assault we’d endure well into the Fall months. We’d get a nice new driveway and front porch out of it. Cost a bundle, and our homeowners policy picked up a little less than half. It brough to mind a moment with one of our neighbors, the late much-missed Victor Hawthorne, a charming Scot who had been dean of the School of Public Health. Faced with a similar project, albeit on a lesser scale, he said “That’s life. One day you get a nice vacation in Bermuda and the next you get a new sewer line.”
Here are some of the excavations.
We were homebodies in July, too. Usually, mid-month sees a special day, July 16, on which Kathy, my birth mom Marlene, and my birth dad Dick were all born. We’d gather again at her house in Stanwood that day, but this time it was for her memorial service. She’d passed away in late April, 2 ½ months short of her 91stbirthday. Mom’s place often saw big crowds for. celebratory events, sometimes spawning tent cities. It was a big Irish wake this time – complete with pig roast – just like she wanted. But I can’t say there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.
Another one of those visitors showed up end of July. It was my oldest living cousin, Rinnie-Linnie from Arlington, escaping that Potomac steambath for Michigan, where she had relatives on her mom’s side in Lake Odessa and whereabouts. Her late dad gave her that nickname, as he did all his 9 kids, based on her affection for Rin Tin Tin. She brought along her two eldest, firefighter Maria and engineer Luke. We kept each other entertained. Linda spent time taking pics of all the space posters for her sister Sandy’s husband, a big-time space nut. They seemed to deal with the bad sink drain o.k.
In August, it was time to travel and see music again! Flint for Boz Scaggs, Cuyahoga Falls for the Outlaw Music Festival (featuring John Fogerty and Willie Nelson), Paw Paw for my VHS70 classmate Cheryl Shelton Dennis and her Jazz and Blues Heads, and Three Oaks for Robbie Fulks.
September means the coming of school year and the football season. Both Kathy and I still feel the tugs of the former, but no one’s expecting much of anything of us these days. For the latter, the hype was unavoidable. We were about to see the greatest Wolverine team since Crisler’s ’47 National Champion Mad Magicians. So, of course our various travel plans would have us missing 4 of the 7 home games. One of those breaks was a much-needed respite to Windnsea Beach in La Jolla, escaping those jackhammers for a week.
We did go on the road to Minnesota first weekend in October to see the battle for the Little Brown Jug (we kept it). Minny was o.k., and afforded Kathy a chance to tour the North American Jellycat Headquarters, in the TractorWorks Building on North Washington.
Mom gave us another trip in November. For years, she spent her winters in her condo in Mazatlán, by the Gulf of California. Shortly after she died, my sibs figured it would be a good thing to congregate down here to remember her. Indeed, it was. We took a bottle containing her ashes out on a sailboat into the Gulf and tossed it as bagpipes played. There were instructions on the bottle what to do if found, but not in Spanish.
November culminated in The Game, of course. That’s one ticket we were so happy not to give up, although selling it would have paid many bills. Can’t put a price on that feeling seeing the final scoreboard and watching all rush onto the field. 3 straight!
Which brings us to where we are now! We did take a short train trip to Chicago to experience Christmas there, but it didn’t seem the same without snow. We’re still waiting for that in AA, although a few big flakes came down Monday morning. Regardless, the hygge is high at Harbal, we have a fresh cord of wood in the rack and plenty of bottles of Blaufränkisch Left Foot Charley to make glühwein. Merry times projected. May you all enjoy something similar
So, from Harbal by our concolor fir, we bid you Merry Christmas and Go Blue! We extend to you a hearty Norwegian Sköl with a nice California pinot.
I love it to be presented with a castoff I can turn into yet another taste treat. You’ve seen what happens with duck and turkey cast-offs (1). This week found me receiving more bounty. Kathy liked my brined turkey breast so much it was gone quickly. So when they came on sale at Kroger’s, I picked up another one which is already in the brine same day, smoked the next, and being eaten as I type. Then at Meijer’s the next day, I saw they has big butt hams on sale. I get a lot of mileage out of those, so of course picked one up. The home butchering got some big chunks ready for slicing, some smaller bits ready for snacking or soups, and of course the bone. This being a butt ham, it’s not just a nice smooth femur, but that bone and its articulation with the acetabulum of the pelvis. So I’ve actually got 2 bones. What can you do with them? Oh my! My Dutch soul craves some tasty split-pea soup. But I’m also gonna have this turkey carcass. So this calls for a little creativity. I’ve already landed on a name “turham splt pea soup”. Maybe a little homage to my best friend, Eric Durham. That name got embellished when I learned the Dutch call their soup “Erwtensoep” (pronounced: Air-ten-soup) or “snert” (2). Who wouldn’t want a bowl of snert! But now the recipe! I have 9 recipe cards for split pea soup in my box, all cut out of newspapers and pasted for later use. None by itself seems right for this project, so I do what I always do confronting a new recipe, make a spreadsheet! From this I can discern trends and pick and choose what I want in my recipe. I added a 10th column for my recently discovered “true” Dutch split pea soup.
So this is how I approach a new recipe. I pick and choose ingredients that look good. I nearly always add more garlic and whatever it might take to bring up the heat a little. With this one there was a vegetable choice.
Nearly all threw in some celery, such a common ingredient in soups. But I chose to follow the Dutch into their root cellar and grab some celeriac (celery root). This ball of goodness ain’t going to win any beauty contests. It’s what those stalks grow from, but the root is prized for its flavor, nutritional (even medicinal!) properties (3), and preservabilty.
In the dead of winter, when the boer is craving some snert, he’ll have some balls of celeriac around when all the celery is long wilted away. The root still has the celery flavor as well as some starchiness, especially nice when your low glycemic index sweetie says no potatoes. So, here’s my recipe
The making of it was not without some drama, as I was shocked to find my cache of legumes of many varieties did not include split peas! Out to Kroger’s Kathy goes, a 5’ drive. Then it was time to take a leek, and none of those! Kroger’s had none so a 30’ round trip to Busch’s was necessary. It’s good that she loves me still. Cooking stuff in this Insta-Pot thing in nothing flat is possible with its pressure option, but I wanted the ingredients to get to know each other in their leisurely overnight bath, so Mr. hi-tech Insta-Pot became a plain old slow-cooker.
In the morning, dem bones came out, and showed their bath had been a pretty thorough cleanse. All that color they once had turned into more goodness for the soup. I’m sure it’s a sacrifice of which dem bones can be proud.
A little more cooking as the newly chopped but well-cooked onions and the meat have to join in.
And boy do I have some snert! Some will get frozen in a few days after I figure how fast we go through this stuff.
It’s a meal in itself, but a little rye bread on the side sure helps. With all that ham, I made sure to lay in some rye bread. I’ve got a nice loaf of Zingerman’s Jewish rye, and thanks to my Latvian friend in Kalamazoo, I have an outstanding loaf of Black Rooster Baltic Rye (4).
So here we are in the middle of winter, almost Christmas, and can all use some snert. As our old bones are soothed by the goodness we ingest, remember to thank dem bones that made it possible (5).
It’s been 9 years and a week since the accident. On a bike trip in the hill country of Chile on little Christmas eve, a rocky hill presented to be negotiated, little dogs accompanying the locals who came to see the crazy gringos. When one of those pups ran across my path near the bottom, I hit the brakes and hurdled over the handlebars into the ditch as the bike stayed behind. That would change my life for at least 6 months, and in some ways longer. Even when fully recovered, I could not mount a bike without fear and had to cast aside that once treasured pastime (1). Although my right arm was worthless for 6 months, I never missed a day of work and don’t think I killed anybody.
After I was home for a month or so, Donna, my chief’s secretary, asked if might write a recollection of the experience for RheUMination, our Division’s quarterly magazine. Even though I chose to respond in verse, she still published it (2). A certain reader out there has been chiding me about my poetry chops, so this is for her.
There were a couple last lines that didn’t make it in. I’ve lost the original. But I think it went like this, including the first 2 lines:
“So 3 months into this venture
The numb dumb hand
Still can’t do much
But others have. It’s grand!”
Not an experience I’d care to repeat, for sure. But nothing makes for a better doctor than becoming a patient, and boy was I. I lost track of how many, but my doc count was well beyond double digits. Kathy sometimes said I should have declared disability and taken the 6 months off. I would have gone nuts. Figuring out the daily challenges of clinical medicine is what used to drive me. Add the challenges of a chronic injury, and I had my plate full, in an interesting way. Thank God, it’s all in the past. But the experience shall forever be with me, and I’ll never look at a weiner dog the same again.
She was married when we met. 6 kids and 12 grandkids later, still is. A freshly minted nurse and a newbie intern, we clicked in a way that’s sustained a friendship now into its 5th decade, almost all at a distance. It opens and closes, of course. My curious letter that wedged the latest opening last year found in the updates some things I hadn’t known about her. For example, she’s a budding artist, following in the footsteps of her very talented late father. She was surprised I was still obsessed with a wild band from the 70s, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. Those would come together to produce a curious product, which I’ve just now seen.
As I bombarded her with all things Commander Cody, I shared a picture taken after a concert at Bull Run Restaurant in Shirley, Massachusetts (1), Saturday June 13, 2015. Bill Kirchen, once Commander Cody’s lead guitarist, was the headliner, and George Frayne (Commander Cody) himself was guest. Those pairings were rare and precious, so it was worth the plane ticket. The picture was just my wife Kathy, me, the Commander, and Kirchen, clowning around on stage after the concert.
A few years back, I asked George if he would paint it. An accomplished artist with 2 degrees from UofM Art School and an internationally recognized body of work outside of music (2), he occasionally did paintings on commission in addition to his own paintings and sculpture. He said the picture was “too detailed” for his style and turned down my request. He died a year later. When I told my nurse friend this story, she offered to take on the project. She put in some serious work over the summer, asking for more pictures and videos of Bill and George, and even for the TED talk Kathy gave (3), figuring she’d get a better take on Kathy’s looks from moving images than from stills. She’s never met Kathy. She figured she knew what I looked like, even if she hasn’t seen my face up close since 1982. Tougher for her with my image was getting my very detailed “Hot Rod Lincoln” t-shirt right. We had some general discussions about background color. She’d hoped to have it done by my September birthday and came close. Neither of us wanted to trust this treasure to the post, so we had to engineer a handoff. One of her sisters lives outside of Grand Rapids, and Kathy and I were set to travel there in mid-September to meet up with some friends and family. Her sister had an appointment that took her away when we would be by, but the package was on her doorstep as promised, and the handoff was complete.
I didn’t expect what happened next. Instead of tearing into the box right after I brought it through the door, I carried it to a corner of our bedroom, where it sat till such a time when I thought I’d be emotionally ready to view it. The artist would ask me periodically if I’d seen the work, chiding me for my reluctance, even citing how the paints she used had to breathe, and how leaving them in that box could harm the appearance of the picture. Another issue was where to hang it. Kathy and I have plastered nearly every square inch of our wall space with posters and pictures. The solution came to me as I was folding laundry last week. We’ve yet to attack that room, and there’s one good size wall where the picture would hang nicely. Because of some clever things I’ve done with some of the other wall space down there, the room is now on the “house tour” on which we take interested visitors. So, when I finally took the package down there and opened it, I figured I should tell the artist about it. Here’s how it looked (the 4X6 photo is now a 24×30 canvas):
Here’s what I wrote (song interjects later).
“I didn’t finally see it till 6:36 this morning. The pre-dawn unveiling wasn’t born of anything romantic. I wanted to get all that cardboard into the recycle bin for the Wednesday morning pickup. All my Tuesday plans, including the hanging, were a wash with yesterday’s 1:40 awakening. I got up after 5 today, so it’s going to be a better one. After doing the dishes, I snuck into the bedroom so as not to disturb the sleeping Kathy, picked up the package and headed downstairs. I’d stuffed several sharp objects in my pockets, along with my cell phone and Oontz. Setting up, I asked Spotify to play the Commander Cody channel, and it obliged with “Hot Rod Lincoln” right off the bat (4). It didn’t take all those songs to get the job done, but I sure enjoyed “Willin’” (5), “Seeds and Stems” (6). and “Lost in the Ozone” (7). The only sharp instruments even near your box were my scissors cutting the strings. After that, I just peeled off the duct tape. I swear there was a flash of light as I opened it. Must be that amazing deep electric blue you used in the background. But all the characters are very bright (at least on canvas). Kathy looks nice, no trace of Wicked Witch I could see (the artist and my Kathy had had some earlier encounters that were a little contentious). You made the two tall gray guys look better than they really are. The Commander looks a little befuddled and simian. Maybe the latter is apt. He did share the bill with Godzilla in “Hollywood Boulevard”, the 1976 movie in which the band appeared (8,9). But bottom line, I love it beyond belief and will be forever grateful for your efforts.
Oh, I had to cut off Spotify after “Lost in the Ozone” and turn back to WRCJ and my usual classical music morning. The Commander’s music does not promote responsible behavior and I have a big day planned.”
And one thing I forgot to say: I may have blown this as a birthday present, but it sure makes a wonderful Christmas present! Ho! Ho! Ho! Hic! (10)
P.S. Commander Cody never made a Christmas album, but Kirchen sure did! If you’re looking for some Holiday honky-tonk joy, check it out! (11). You can see the whole show on YouTube, and see Bill in his COVID silver tresses! (12).
4. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Hot Rod Lincoln. (from Ten for Two, premiered 4/1/72. Produced by John Lennon and Yoko Ono). Posted to YouTube by RW Ike 3/19/21. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8TeHA4UL_8
6. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. Seeds and stems again blues (from Ten for Two, premiered4/1/72. Produced by John Lennon and Yoko Ono). Published on YouTube by RW Ike 3/4/21. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb_Bz4SssxM
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