 
Antoine's, a fiery deathtrap? Surely not! The venerable 163-year-old restaurant, New Orleans' oldest, is now being required by fire officials to hire off-duty firefighters to be on the premises at all times in order to remain open, due to "numerous fire code violations".
[A]fter Mardi Gras, the restaurant will have to close its second floor until the violations are corrected, [Mark] Jee [chief of the Fire Department's fire prevention bureau] said. The first floor may remain open so long as a fire official is present.Gee, I wonder if that's the same Mark Jee that was a couple of years ahead of me at school. He was a funny guy. Breaking News: "Rumsfeld calls for preemptive strike on Louisiana." by Diane E. Dees. (Man, dat ain't no fair. We can't have no undaground bomb sheltas, 'cause they flood! Just like in da tombs in da cemetery! What good is an above-ground bomb shelta?!)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In a speech that surprised even such high-level Republican confidantes as Bill Frist, Tom Delay and Brit Hume, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld today called on Congress to allow George W. Bush to proceed with plans for military action against the state of Louisiana.Hmph. Some people are such unadventurous eaters. Career U.S. diplomat resigns. On a more serious note: John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat who has served in American embassies from Tel Aviv to Casablanca to Yerevan, has resigned his post. His letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell was published in the New York Times (via Lyn; site userid/password annoying/annoying):
The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.Just what we need. More and bigger guns! American handgun manufacturer Smith & Wesson, apparently reacting to a slump in sales, is now producing the biggest and most powerful handgun in history. Mark Morford opines:
That's right, it's the new Smith & Wesson .50 caliber handgun, the biggest and deadliest the company has ever made, the most powerful production handgun in history, in fact, even bigger than the famous monster scum-killer .44 Magnum Clint carried in "Dirty Harry," because, you know, that's important to know.What an obscenity. God bless America.
Who is killing the great chefs of Europe? The critics, it seems. Famed French chef Bernard Loiseau reportedly committed suicide on Monday, after losing two ratings points in the GaultMillau restaurant guide (his restaurant went from 19 to 17 on a 20-point scale.) I can't wait for this "Wind" to break! Last weekend Wes and I saw a trailer for the new film by Christopher Guest ("Waiting for Guffman", "Best in Show" as well as his "Spinal Tap" fame). "A Mighty Wind" is his take on the early 60s folk revival, featuring a group called The Folksmen, who've actually been making hilarious Kingston Trio piss-takes for years, and whose membership consists of Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Guest himself. (These three gentlemen are also known as David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel of The Tap.) During the entire trailer we laughed and laughed; I'll be there opening day. Then we saw the feature, "The Pianist", and ... didn't laugh. That movie-watching day was a wee bit of an emotional rollercoaster. (Part of) why Tom DeLay and the Republicans turn my stomach. Both Wes and Steve K. sent this one in this morning, and all I could do was shake my head and gape. DeLay attacked Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean for a speech he made that was critical of the Bush administration and its war plans, calling the speech "outrageous" and going on to call Democratic opponents of war in Iraq "reckless" and the Democratic Party "the appeasement party". Read the linked article to its end, and you'll see that the words for which DeLay attacks Dean and the Democrats have certainly been heard before... about four years ago.
Cocktail of the day. An original from the fertile mind of Dr. Cocktail, who showed me this recipe over Sazeracs at Arnaud's Bar, Iberville Street, in the French Quarter.
Francis the MuleFrom The Onion and why it's jest about my fav'rite newspaper.
Bacon Good For You, Reports Best Scientist EverYou need only follow one simple rule when you're considering dining on Louisiana cuisine when outside Louisiana.
with very few exceptions, you don't eat there. It's not that Louisiana cuisine is impossible for non-Louisianians to make; not at all (man, lemme tell ya, Tante Zoë's Creole and Cajun Cuisine in Dublin, Ireland is wonderful). It's just that lots of non-Louisianians seem to want to make it to cash in on it without knowing what the hell they're doing. Brennan leaps to action with caveats about the latest outrage to be perpetrated on Louisiana cuisine: apparently Applebee's has come up with a "Cajun Combos" menu, complete with a "Cajun glossary" that's ... well, insulting. Most of the dishes offered would probably be more or less unrecognizable to most Cajuns, and let's not get me started about Bourbon (Street) Chicken again. Brennan is channeling Fox Mulder and sees an evil conspiracy with regards to my recent injury; shades of a Looka!-reading Applebee's employee imagining me unleashing my inner Ignatius and shrieking, "What degenerate produced this abortion?!" If you're inclined to eat at Applebee's (which I'm not; I dislike most chains, particularly ones that try to pass themselves off as "your neighborhood restaurant and bar"), stay away from their so-called "Cajun" menu. Otherwise, don't blame it on us.
Quelle tragédie! Or, how my trip home to New Orleans ended up with a trip to Urgent Care. Seeing as how air travel in the United States is an even bigger pain in the butt than it was before, I decided to eschew checked baggage this trip and take only my requisite two carry-ons. I packed them brilliantly, with a week's worth of stuff and even books and CDs that I'd never need but packed just in case. My main carry-on had so much stuff in it that it was the Tardis of baggage (except without the time travel). Unfortunately, I didn't take into account the possibility of my wanting to bring things back with me. Despite that, I managed to stuff even more stuff into my Samsonite Tardis -- more books, more CDs, gifts, and ... three precious bottles of liquor. One was a gorgeous 20-year-old tawny port that was a housewarming gift from some old friends; another was a Bourbon we'd been wanting to try: George T. Stagg 15-Year-Old "Rye Recipe" barrel strength, named "Whiskey of the Year 2002" by the Malt Advocate. Plus ... one more bottle of the very limited-edition Sazerac 18-Year-Old Rye Whiskey for the stash, 'cause when that stuff's gone, it's gone. (The prices on this stuff at Martin Wine Cellar and Dorignac's were $6-12 less than anywhere else, especially L.A., even if you could find the stuff there, which is difficult). I couldn't wait to get these babies home. It's all the Transportation Security Agency's fault. I didn't have a boarding pass yet, since I hadn't checked any luggage and Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans doesn't have those spiff e-ticket self-check-in stations that LAX has. The TSA lady told me I had to cough up my printed itinerary, and in order to do that I had to let go of the Tardis. It instantly tipped backward, presumably in perfectly cinematic slow motion, and from behind me I heard a sickening thud/crack! One sniff and I knew we had a casualty. Eighteen-year-old rye whiskey began to gush out from underneath my bag, like a pool of blood spreading from beneath the body of a gunshot victim. Thirty-five dollars worth of rye -- rye that'll be sold out soon, at that -- gone. I gaped. I nearly wept. For a moment, my evil brain showed me a picture of me down on my hands and knees, lapping up the puddle of spilled spirit like a dog, then sucking the rest out of my t-shirts and boxers. (Fortunately, that image didn't last long.) Being a "get up and do what needs to be done" kinda guy, I asked some of the airport personnel, mostly comprised of the thoroughly nonplussed TSA people, for some cleanup help. "You have to get all that broken glass out of that bag before you can go through security!" said one of the intrepid TSA folk, thinking only of our safety and not of my emotionally distraught state. (My bairns! My poor bairns!) Grumbling, I looked at the crumpled, misshapen bottle, an eviscerated corpse of large, jagged shards and microscopic glass dust. Be careful, dammit, I thought, and reach into the bag slowly. Actually, what I did was to not be careful and I thrust my hand into the bag. Bad idea. I learned a new word later that day. That word is "avulsion". There was bleeding, but surprisingly little pain at first. That was because the bottle shard that got me was as sharp as a scalpel. What it had done (caution, squeamish people) was to carve a chunk of flesh out of the first joint of my left index finger, between the pad and the side, leaving an avulsed crater of exposed, raw meat about the size of an index fingernail and about 1/4 inch deep. I immediately applied pressure, trying not to think about that really ugly wound, and was mostly pissed about my lost hooch and worried I'd miss my flight ($100 for any changes!). There hadn't been much action from any airport personnel with regards to actually helping me, so I strolled over to the highest-ranking-looking one, held up my left hand, and removed the pressure. One horrified look and a lovely pattern of blood spots on the floor later and "MEDICAL EMERGENCY!" was being barked into walkie-talkies left and right. Okay, a little overkill, but it got their pokey butts in gear. As has been said in New Orleans many times, "Dey got two speeds in dis city -- slow, and stop!" The Jefferson Parish paramedic on duty at MSY, a paragon of professionalism and bedside manner, winced and cringed and said, "Ooh!" when he saw my finger, which is not unlike your dentist saying "Oh shit!" when all you can see is that big light of his; i.e., nothing you ever want to hear. He did manage to contain his gorge long enough to put a pressure bandage on, give me some spares and make some nauseating comments about how I'd need to have the would cauterized if the bleeding didn't stop. Lovely, thank you. Everyone from security and airline personnel to fellow passenger-screenees were very nice, and they let me jump to the head of the line. I made it to my gate with a minute to spare ... only to find that we were delayed for 40 minutes due to the ever-popular mechanical problems. Great, I'll just sit here with my throbbing finger and watch it gradually saturate the gauze. A perfectly splendid way to end one's vacation, wouldn't you say? That was one long feckin' flight. Wes took me to Glendale Urgent Care as soon as I got home, and 3 hours later I was all X-rayed (looking for lodged broken glass, which I didn't think was radiopaque anyway), rinsed and debrided (Oh Jesus H. fucking CHRIST that hurts! Haven't you barbarians heard of anesthesia?!), Betadined, Neosporined and artfully bandaged. I've had to shower with a plastig bag taped over my hand for the last two days. And it took a long time to type this. New Orleans food porn will have to wait a bit.
The Cocktailian. Today's article by Gary Regan tells us about "The genesis of two apple drinks" created at San Francisco's Chaya Brasserie -- and he learns that they can lead to matrimony. I've been curious to try that Van Gogh "Wild Appel" vodka, although I'm much more hopeful about Citadelle's offering -- an apple infused vodka without "wild" in the name. I'm also skeptical about the second cocktail this week; it calls for that Pucker swill, and it seems to Cosmopolitan-y for my taste. I'll surely try the former, but ... my favorite apple cocktail so far is just homemade apple-infused vodka (1 bottle SKYY, 3 Granny Smiths and 1 Golden Delicious, cored and sliced, and three weeks in the fridge), with the tiniest hint of bitters. Yumm!!
Home again, home again, jiggity jig. It was an awful, cramped flight (legroom on United stinks), but it got me home in time to make it to the Saenger to see Prof. Peter Schickele perform his own music as well as the music of P.D.Q. Bach (the 21st, and least, of Johann Sebastian Bach's 20 children). Since then, it's been nothing but eating. Oh yeah, visiting family and old friends, going to art galleries, shopping ... but really, it's been pretty much nothing but eating (and drinking). If I'm not careful, I'll be starring in a new 1950's horror film, "The Incredible Expanding Man." Irene's Cuisine Gorgeous, as usual. This time I had the added experience of 1) a truly (and surprisingly) lousy Sazerac, and 2) a waiter with whom I had gone to seventh grade and haven't seen in thirty years. He recognized me, and when I heard his name I remembered him instantly. "Oh yeah! That girl Linda had a huge crush on you, and when you transferred out of the school she sat in class and cried for a week, then carved your initials into her leg with a pencil eraser!" To which he kinda twitched and replied, "Uh ... huh?" Well, he had already gone by then, and didn't get to experience all that wailing and caterwauling. The food, though ... fine as ever. I got that deceptively simple-sounding Pannéed Oysters with Grilled Shrimp -- perfectly crispy-fried oysters and smaller-than-I-expected shrimp (well, they're not in season yet), over a drizzle of beurre blanc, with a spinach and bacon salad in a raspberry vinaigrette that kinda trickles down and mingles with the beurre blanc, and some grapes and apple slices on the side. Gawd. Veal Sorrentino for the main, the thinly pounded slices of veal covered with prosciutto and mozzarella, with a mushroom gravy and red cabbage, shoestring fried carrots and green beans on the side. Hoo-boy. The Camellia Grill; or, "You are such a great big huge feckin' oinker." So after an all-day family gathering that included my mom's intensely rich and lovely pasta jambalaya (more like Mr. B's than mine) and an übermoist pineapple-banana cake with cream cheese frosting ... of course I get hungry around 10:30pm and head to the Camellia for an omelette. In case you haven't heard me talk about the Camellia Grill's omelettes, they're about the size of a rolled-up newspaper, eggs whipped up to a frothy delight in a Hamilton Beach milkshake blender and poured out onto a well-greased grill ("Excuse me," said an unsuspecting Camellia newbie once, "what's that the cook just poured a big puddle of onto the grill?" "Grease!" replied the waiter. Yeah you right.) into a puddle about two or so feet across. If you've ordered stuff in your omelette, that goes into the grease first, and then the eggs are poured over all that. It's then flipped into thirds or fourths, plopped onto a huge oval plate, decorated with a pile of French fries ... and then the resultant work of art is placed in front of you. You can't help but let out a little moan (although whether it's one of anticipatory delight or mortal dread is entirely up to you). Not only did I moan, but the couple next to me moaned too. "Oh my God," said the girl. "That looks astonishing." Oh yes, hon, it was, it was. I didn't just get a plain omelette (nor do I know anyone who has there). I didn't just get one of the suggested omelettes from the menu. I built my old time college special, then made it worse. The potato, onion and cheese omelette ... with bacon. I had never in my life added bacon to that omelette, but some evil little pork spirit materialized on my shoulder and whispered into my ear, "Mmmmmmm, baaaaaaacon." God damn, it was good. I ate every single speck. Um, and then one couldn't help ordering a slice of chocolate pecan pie, could one? Because one was at the Camellia, and that's what one does there.
Happy Valentine's Day! And a happy birthday to Mike Doucet of BeauSoleil. Meat-eatin' chicks! Wow! Neat! Keen! A web site for real girls!
Cool-2B-Real is about real girls like you! Whether you're in school, playing sports or just having fun, strive to be the best you can be! Real girls are "keepin' it real" by building strong bodies and strong minds... and they're feeling great about themselves!Of course, what the site's all about is encapsulated in the little image in the lower left-hand corner of the front page. (It's what's for dinner!) This time I'm walkin' to New Orleans ... (That's a lie. Actually, I'll be flying.) Home for a week -- my belated Christmas visit. There'll be lots of eating and drinking, and if I stay up late enough I'll write up a little food porn for everybody. Hmm, I wonder if I could put bigger pants on my Amazon wish list ...
The good, the bad and the ugly. The continuing joys of home ownership: The Good - The curtain rod is up over The World's Most Useless Picture Window, so as soon as we find decent and affordable curtains we'll no longer have a spectacular view of our next-door neighbor's ugly gray stucco house and the rotting, mildewed bare wood railing along their side/back steps. The three new phone jacks have been installed (at frightful cost), so now we have more than one working jack in the house. The DSL's active. The kitchen's getting gradually cleaner and more tidy, and the nifty antique wall-mounted bottle opener is now mounted on the outside of the cabinet next to the Dutch door. Hey, wanna beer? *fssssst!* The Bad - Wes took a half-day off to wait for the appliance guys to come and install the dishwasher and garbage disposal, only to be told that we bought the wrong kind of garbage disposal that won't fit unless we get all the sink plumbing replaced, and that we have to have some additional plumbing work done before they can install the dishwasher. (Delightfully wasted day, that.) We can't use the DSL yet because we opted for the Windows XP software to run the DSL (since I have an iBook that leaves the house) and Wes' spiff new PC on which it'll be installed has been delayed for weeks now by the gross incompetence of the knuckle-walking Australopithecine morons at the company where he bought it. We have ants. Lots of ants. (I'm about to unleash the truly toxic chemicals, the Sarin of the insect world.) The Ugly - That would be the caulking (exterior, paintable) we applied to the part of the clapboard outside the stairwell window where there'd been some water damage and which needed sealing, done on Saturday just in time for yesterday morning's torrential rain. It might be sealed and waterproof now, but it sure looks like it was done by two new homeowners who don't know what the hell they're doing. I love my house. "DiCaprio could kick Elvis' ass." Food writing in Fortune magazine? Yep, and some hilarious stuff, too. In "We've Got to Stop Eating Like This", we meet a pithy New Orleanian chef named Bobo, a teacher at the French Culinary Institute who just got a great new gig ... cooking at a K-12 school.
Chef Bobo is receiving handmade cards from grateful students with variations on the theme "We love your food!"Bless you, Bobo. The rest of the article studies the fattening of America, and why it was hard to resist. My favorite comment was in this passage:
"As a civilization we've never had huge amounts of food before. Used to be, in the winter you had to eat dried salmon or figs or grandma," says futurist Bruce Sterling, author of the new book Tomorrow Now. "I don't think there's ever been a society that when presented with an endless stream of free cheeseburgers would have said, 'No, thanks, I'll go back to my gruel here.'"Quote of the day. "My favorite infomercials are diet infomercials in which the male host cries." -- FJ!! van Wingerde, as quoted in a .sig file on soc.motss. Misplaced priorities, methinks. Intelligence reports now indicate that North Korea possesses untested ballistic missiles that are capapble of hitting the United States, and our reaction is "Hey! You ... wacky North Koreans! You'd better stop making that plutonium or we'll start lobbing diplomacy at you!" Meanwhile, the primate that currently occupies the Oval Office is frothing at the mouth to attack Iraq, a country with a decimated military who have not threatened their neighbors in over ten years and who might have some unspecified and unproven "weapons of mass destruction"? Yes, Saddam is a horrible person, a dictator and a bully and a thug and a murderer. But those motherfuckers in North Korea are crazy, and all of us here on the left coast are potential nuke targets. I worry a lot more about North Korea than I do about Iraq. Back home we say "urnge". Our current state of "terror alert" is orange.
Oscar noms. For the industry it's all about more money and fabulous parties at Spago. For Wes 'n me it's all about the same money (not enough of it being made, and too much of it being spent on movies and DVDs) and a fabulous Oscar Night party at our house (my food isn't quite as good as Spago's, but it's damned good nonetheless). No big surprises this morning, although I had to say, "'Gangs of New York' got a best picture nomination?" Given that my reaction to that movie was "God, what a mess," I was hoping for "Far From Heaven" in that slot. Of course, I want "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" to win, just like I wanted "Fellowship of the Ring" to win last year (and it should've). Despite that, I predict it'll be either "Chicago" (which I loved) or "The Hours" (which I haven't seen yet; yeah yeah, I know, but it's got that kind of buzz). I'm really glad Queen Latifah got nominated, too ... and I can't wait to see what she's gonna wear! Duct and cover. ShrubCo have issued detailed advice today on how we should all prepare ourselves for biological, chemical or nuclear attack by terrorists: stock up on duct tape. (NYT access: annoying/annoying)
The mostly common-sense guidelines urged families to prepare a "disaster supply kit" that included a three-day supply of water, one gallon per person per day; food; a battery-powered radio; a change of clothes; an extra set of car keys; and cash.I'm presuming that chemical weapons attacks aren't generally announced in advance ("I do beg your pardon, old chap, but you might want to get up on your trusty old ladder and duct-tape some sheets of plastic over all your doors and windows, because we'll be spraying your neighborhood with Sarin in a few hours and you'll certainly want time to prepare, won't you, heh heh, there's a good lad, off you go."), and even if there were such an attack it wouldn't do a whole heck of a lot of good to tape plastic over your windows after it already happened. To me this sounds very much like the absurd "duck and cover" films of the 1950s, in which the gubbamint (bristling with nuclear weapon-missiles) tried to make people believe that they could survive a nuclear blast by ducking under a desk and rolling up into a ball (when they would actually probably be vaporized in the first three-fifths of a second if they were close enough). To me this sounds very much like an administration hell-bent on war who are trying to scare the population into going along with them. It's tinfoil hat time again. I haven't noticed anything like this yet myself, but this morning I got this missive from my friend Rick:
As I was driving in to work today, stuck in the joy that is a rain-soaked L. A. street system, I noticed several military trucks -- Humvees primarily but also a larger troop transport type thingie. They are not caravaning, they are not taking the freeways for the most part. I saw one on Tujunga avenue in North Hollywood, one on the 101 through Studio City, two on Sepulveda Boulevard heading out of the valley, and another down here near the Federal Building where I work.The military on civilian streets? Um, yes, it does. Les cochons sont dans le ciel! A rain of swine?! Oh, I must have one of these. Quote of the day. Now, I've been a major proponent of praline bacon, that delectable breakfast treat first encountered at Elizabeth's down in the old neighborhood back home in New Orleans -- bacon dredged in a sweet dark praline sauce with ground pecans and a hint of cayenne, then baked until crisp --, but I'm not terribly sure about this ...
"Eggs, move over. Bacon has a new best friend: Fudge."Fudge-covered bacon? Ohh, I dunno, Crowww ... (Then again, I did make bacon-pecan brittle last year.) Jason Kottke: Super-genius. (Move over, Wile E. Coyote.) I'm not talking about all that tired old web design/weblog celebrity stuff, either. I'm talking about his (and Meg's) real contributions to humanity:
Meg and I are tired of this technology and design crap, so we're going to start over and create a new line of scented candles based not on flower or spice smells, but on cooking smells. Here's what we have so far for scents:Bacon-scented candles? I'll take six dozen, please. UPDATE - Casey says that there is already a bacon-scented candle product out there (striking terror into the hearts of vegetarians everywhere, no doubt), but it's made for hunters who want to attract bears. Hmm ... that kinda puts it into the Beggin' Strips category ("Bears don't know it's not bacon!"), so I'm holding out hope for a successful career change for Jason and Meg.
I don't know, dear, I've never kippled! Our ardent cocktailian Gary Regan offers his latest biweekly article on the joys of mixology. This time he offers a drink to do Kipling proud, the venerable Pisco Sour, which is to a whiskey sour as a Jaguar is to a Chevy. Don't fear the egg white in this drink; it's there for texture and a creamy head, and the drink doesn't taste of egg. If you worry about salmonella, use a pasteurized egg white product from the refrigerated dairy section of your local market, such as All Whites. Bartender! There are toroids in my Tia Maria! The Q&A section of New Scientist offers explanations of what happens when you pour a thin layer of cream on top of Tia Maria coffee liqueur. (Via Teresa)
QuestionSounds fascinating. Although the idea of performing scientific experiments with the contents of my bar does have some appeal, I must confess that Tia Maria and Cream is not one of my favorite drinks. I'd prefer a Sazerac (which I had last night), and a Martini with Old House Orange Bitters (which I had the night before).
Headline of the day. Sent in by Steve, who says, "Reuters has outdone itself."
Rolling Stones Give Free Concert; No One KilledTalk about the passion. One of my favorite rock albums ever, which blew me away the first time I heard it, turns twenty. From Creative Loafing in Charlotte, North Carolina:
Twenty years ago, four young men decided to take a break from recording their first album at Charlotte's Reflection Studios. Bored and without a car, they ambled across Central Avenue to the Salvation Army thrift shop. The young quartet -- Bill Berry, Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Michael Stipe -- often spent their free time this way, but on this particular day they weren't having much luck scouring the used record bins or poking through the vintage clothes. In the end, all they settled on purchasing were a couple of colorful plastic dinosaurs.[ Link to today's entries ]
Recipe, shmecipe. Here's a really nifty food site called A Muse for Cooks, described as "Bright ideas for cooks who don't use recipes. Here you'll find over 1500 brief 'recipes' that aren't recipes at all. Just quick sketches designed to inspire good cooks. The ancient Greeks had muses to guide painters, musicians, poets and astronomers. This MUSE is for you. Wow. Check this one out, in the "stews" section, which I will try very soon.
BANANAS AND BEEF -- Make stew using garlic, onions, pepper, celery, ginger root, chili pepper, cilantro, cumin, salt, white pepper, burgundy wine, tomatoes, beef and beef stock. When meat is tender, add slices green bananas, sliced yellow plantain, diced sweet potato, cubed butternut squash, diced new potatoes, diced chayote, and white corn. Adjust stock and cook until vegetables are soft.This will be great fun for people who know how to cook but who don't necessarily want to challenge themselves with the difficulty of cooking right out of Escoffier. I'll try that stew soon! I also love their gumbo recipe, which is beautifully simple (even though I'm not a tomatoes-in-gumbo person). When you consider that my gumbo recipe is two pages long (including specific instructions for making stock), theirs is less daunting. (That said, theirs assumes you don't have to be taught how to make stock and roux; mine is written for beginners. So don't be daunted by my recipe! It's worth it.)
GUMBO -- Make a rich, brown roux and in it sauté garlic, onions, celery and green pepper, cooking until vegetables are tender, then add chicken stock, chopped tomatoes, some tomato juice, chopped fish fillets and shrimp, crab meat, crawfish, plus sliced Andouille smoked sausage, fresh or frozen okra, cayenne and a few bay leaves. Simmer for another hour or so.Sheer genius. Kallisti over at the fabulous La Feé Verte site has collaborated on creating the ultimate drinking game. I can hear you saying now: "Dude, you're years out of college and in your (very very very) late thirties (thirty-eleven, in fact!). You're too old for drinking games." Ah, but you're never too old for the "I, Claudius" Drinking Game. (Thanks, Jonno!) I'm already fairly well-equipped for this. I've got a fig tree in my backyard, a case of reasonably tasty and incredibly cheap red wine in my kitchen, and we always have good olives and cheese around. Now all I need is the DVD box set of the series (which I've wanted for ages), and we're ready to play! Hmm, might we want to install a vomitorium somewhere? Apparently the average player consumes approximates 2.67 bottles of red wine throughout (to be true to Roman history, it's red wine we're quaffing). The rules, in brief.
1 quaff for: Banishments in General, Executions in General, Suicide in General, Adultery in General, Orgies.I'll be home in New Orleans week after next. I think I'll have to head to the Shim Sham on Tuesday. Obituary of the day. My friend Deb sent this along, noting that the passing of this gentleman "makes the world just a bit more ordinary." From the Washington Post:
Sam Lewis, Armadillo EnthusiastAll this time I thought armadillos were just roadkill, and carrier's of Hansen's Disease. Who knew people raced them?! So long, Sam. (Wan Wan Land?) My folks were looking for a DVD/VCR combo box, and asked if I knew about a Sansui brand they'd seen at Sears. I wasn't too familiar with the brand at all and asked Wes (our resident Sound and Vision subscriber if he'd heard of it. A look for a Sansui corporate website turned up something ... else. Their disclaimer:
Thank you very much for your access.[ Link to today's entries ]
Aiee! Just when you thought the Hello Kitty Vibrator was weird, the Scourge of Sanrio attacks the culinary world, with both gadgets and (rather vile-looking) comestibles. Blurgh. Poll: Only 40% would support Bush for reelection. A Los Angeles Times poll has determined that less than half of the population would vote for George W. Bush in 2004, and currently 40% of those surveyed would consider a Democratic nominee. I'll bet that Bush's numbers will continue to decrease, and there's plenty of time for them to do so. If we're lucky, all of ShrubCo will be out on its collective tuchas in less than two years. Let's not offend the warmakers, shall we? A reproduction of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" that hangs at the entrance of the United Nations Security Council has been covered by a blue curtain. A diplomat stated that "it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or [the U.S. Secretary of State Colin] Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings." Apparently U.N. officials insisted no symbolism was intended in the decision to hide the tapestry. "The cover and flags were meant only to provide a strong visual clue to television cameras filming diplomats in the corridor", the officials said. Mmm hmm. Yep, they were right -- irony's dead. That's because they're murdering it.
He lives where? According to a friend of mine who's in the biz, "in the music business it seems more people were surprised to learn that Phil Spector lived in Alhambra than that he might have shot someone..." Demise of Columbia predicted ... in 1980. Gregg Easterbrook, a columnist for the Washington Monthly and senior editor at The New Republic, wrote an article twenty-three years ago detailing the problems in getting Columbia off the ground (it was still a year away from its maiden voyage at the time), and how its inherent design was fraught with danger.
Some suspect the tile mounting is the least of Columbia's difficulties. "I don't think anybody appreciates the depths of the problems," Kapryan says. The tiles are the most important system NASA has ever designed as "safe life." That means there is no back-up for them. If they fail, the shuttle burns on reentry. If enough fall off, the shuttle may become unstable during landing, and thus un-pilotable. The worry runs deep enough that NASA investigated installing a crane assembly in Columbia so the crew could inspect and repair damaged tiles in space. (Verdict: Can't be done. You can hardly do it on the ground.)In the aftermath of the Columbia disaster some people are already calling for a return to expendable rockets to launch payloads into space. Easterbrook's article made a good case for that in 1980 (pointing out that a Saturn V can launch four times the payload weight than a Space Shuttle, and into a far higher orbit as well). Will we see Saturn Vs being made again?
Technical problems are just that: technical. Much of what's wrong with the shuttle will someday be fixed. If money is no object, as it usually isn't in space launches, we can pay more for reusable shuttles than for throw-away rockets if we have to. But the question never answered is -- what will the shuttle do that rockets couldn't do?If we're going to continue with manned space flight (and I fervently hope we do), Congress needs to reconsider having scrapped the plans for a second-generation shuttle (with better thermal protection for reentry than those delicate tiles) that, we can only hope, is a lot safer than what we've got now. Yes, space flight is inherently risky, but Challenger was brought down by a failure in a two-dollar rubber O-ring, and it's possible that Columbia was brought down by tile damage resulting from a chunk of insulating foam. Today, over two decades later, we're hearing echoes of Easterbrook's article in today's New York Times: "Even if flight controllers had known for certain that protective heat tiles on the underside of the space shuttle had sustained severe damage at launching, little or nothing could have been done to address the problem." One thing they need to address before the Shuttle goes up again is how to rescue the astronauts in case of predictable mission failure. Earwig, the angry inch. I swear, some of these fuckers are an inch long. There haven't been quite as many earwigs around the house, but there are at least two are three showing up every night to bask in the light of the porch light. I'm hoping that when we head to Armstrong Garden Center to spend a housewarming gift card on a garden sprayer and a gallon of concentrated insecticide, it'll take care of the earwigs as well as the hordes of little Nazi ants that keep marching into the house in columns, singing the "Horst Wessel Lied". Michael kindly provided lots of handy earwig-related links, as well as finally ending the wracking of my brain ("I have my answer! I'm walking on air!") as to where I saw that earwig-in-the-ear TV show. It wasn't "The Twilight Zone", it wasn't "Outer Limits" ... it was "Night Gallery"! (Of course!) The episode was entitled "The Caterpillar", was written by Rod Serling himself and starred Laurence Harvey (of "The Manchurian Candidate" fame). A Minnesota-based forum provides some eradication tips while reassuring us that "the good news is that they don't crawl in your ear and bore into your brain. (That's a relief.)" Also, some tips on earwigs from Colorado's Master Gardener. "I took a look at the earwig that came out. I killed it, as a matter of fact -- I squeezed it. It was a female, that earwig... and the female lays eggs." (AIIEEEEEEEE!) Word of the day: butt. I'll bet you didn't know that a butt was two hogsheads.
buttLearn somethin' new every day, I'm tellin' ya ...
Bizarre. Legendary rock producer Phil "Wall of Sound" Spector was reportedly arrested for murder this morning, having allegedly shot a woman at his house in Alhambra. Apparently he's hasn't been averse to waving guns around in the past; Dee Dee Ramone said that during the recording of the Ramones album "End of the Century" Spector pulled a gun on the band members. In better Phil Spector-related news, it seems that The Beatles' final album Let It Be will be re-released this fall minus all the orchestration Spector added after the band's breakup (and without their approval). George approved of the new mix before he died, and Ringo said it sounds "really great". I'll buy it. The Irish Catholic Church's slave labor camps. ABC News reports from Cork, Ireland on the recent spate of revelations of over a century of appalling practices by the Church:
A sudden spate of TV exposés, docudramas and a major motion picture have brought to light one of the most shocking episodes in the history of the Catholic Church i n Ireland -- the existence of the now-notorious "Magdalene laundries," a sanctified form of slavery.Good Lord. The "One True Church" indeed. This afternoon's bit of fun and a few minutes of time-wasting, brought to you by the latest amusing page making the weblog rounds -- Which Poetry Form Are You? As for me ...
Check out all the other samples of poetic forms; they're lots of fun.
Let us now bow our heads. Rick D. Husband. William C. McCool. Kalpana Chawla. David M. Brown. Laurel B. Clark. Michael P. Anderson. Ilan Ramon.
January Looka! entries have been permanently archived.
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