GRILLED YARDBIRD AND OTHER DELIGHTS

Eric, that most esteemed Tennessee Renaissance Man, knows his way around a grill. Those of us fortunate enough to have attended his legendary birthday parties know that when it comes to grilling tender, succulent chops, the Straight White Grillmeister is at the top of his game... and She Who Must Be Obeyed still raves about a sirloin steak he prepared for her several months ago.

But, until this week, Eric had never tried to grill a whole yardbird. It was left to old Uncle Elisson to show him how.

It may come as a revelation to some folks that chickens may be purchased all of a piece: a whole, fresh (not frozen) bird. Rather than hacking the beast into convenient edible component parts - breasts, thighs, drumsticks and such - the bird’s head is removed and jammed into the empty Entrail-Cavity along with the neck, gizzard, heart and liver (collectively known as the giblets), after which the whole mess is conveniently vacuum-packed in thick plastic film. Whether they call it a fryer, broiler, roaster, or whatever-the-fuck, it’s nought but a whole chicken.

Whole chickens are fine for roasting, or for converting into chicken soup... but it’s another matter entirely when you want to grill them. Their shape does not lend itself to easy grilling, being somewhat akin to a hollow football with wings and legs. But you can fix that.

First, you take the chicken out of its plastic wrappings. (Grilling the bird while it’s still encased in polyethylene does little to improve its flavor.) Reach into the cavity and yank out the giblets while you’re at it. I like to save ’em: the liver can be sautéed in a little olive oil or butter with a dab of sage, while the other bits and pieces can go into the stockpot.

Now it’s time to do some back-cracking. If you like living dangerously, you can use a meat cleaver, but I rely on my trusty Oxo Good Grips Professional Poultry Shears for this job. The heavy, curved blade cuts through bones with ease, and the whole thing disassembles easily for cleaning.

Lay the bird down with its ass-end facing you and with the backbone on top. Take those shears and cut toward the neck alongside the backbone. Now cut along the other side of the backbone to remove it. Save the backbone for the stockpot.

Now flatten the bird and turn it so its inside is on top. Cut in the center and remove the V-shaped keelbone. You can now flatten that sucker out like a book.

By way of a rub, I took a teaspoon of ground cumin and toasted it in a skillet. To this I added four chopped garlic cloves garlic, a teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes, and a teaspoon of pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika). All of this went into a mortar along with the juice of one lime (I also like to use lemon, adding the zest as well) and a tablespoon or two of extra-virgin olive oil. After mashing everything together, I rubbed the chicken with the resulting Flavor-Paste and let it sit at room temperature for two hours prior to throwing it on the grill. (Refrigerate it if you’re going to prepare the bird more than two hours in advance.)


A spatchcocked yardbird, ready for the grill.

When it came to the actual grilling process, we got the grill’s temp up to 350°F and placed the chicken on a high grate, well away from the direct heat of the flame. Turning the bird every fifteen minutes or so, it took about an hour to finish it, with crisp, flavorful skin, dark meat cooked through... and yet with surprisingly moist white meat.

It was a perfect companion to the brace of sirloin steaks Eric had prepared... and for the grilled, sliced summer squash, and the roasted asparagus.

They say you can’t teach an old bird dawg new tricks, but I’ll be surprised if our Tennessee Renaissance Man doesn’t try one of these bad boys again real soon. He’s got the tools for the job.

A MESS O’ MUDBUGS

The fare we enjoy during our annual Alabama Golf Outings ranges, as such things tend to do, from the ridiculous to the sublime.

We’ve had tough, gristle-packed steaks at chain restaurants... and, sometimes at the same place on the same evening, others that were “like buttah.”

We’ve traveled to the nasty parts of town for barbecue... because that’s where the best barbecue places are supposed to be. But sometimes it turns out to be more miscue than barbecue.

This year we hit a place called the Golden Rule in Pell City, a wide spot in the road somewhere roughly midway between Opelika and Huntsville. Bartimus Magnificus, a native of Birmingham, gave it the thumbs-up - he had known the place back when it was a one-location operation in Irondale. And, for once, Bart picked a winner. It was no Goode Company, but then again, we weren’t in Texas... and the collard greens were superb.

The next night, instead of the usual eat-a-steak-at-the-faux-Australian-chain-restaurant routine, we got adventurous. Big Marty had done some Internet research and had found a joint called the Po Boy Factory. N’Awlins-style food in northeastern Alabama? We were skeptical, but figured what the hell.

Surprise! This place was the Real Thing, a little chunk of Louisiana in a completely unexpected place. And the food was terrific.


A mess o’ mudbugs, AKA crawfish.

In addition to the expected assortment of po boy and muffuletta sandwiches, the PBF offered piles of boiled shrimp and crawfish, excellent gumbo and jambalaya, and blackened mahi mahi for those who wished something a little less traif. For dessert? Bread pudding with whiskey sauce, along with an assortment of pies... for those who still had the Gut-Room to indulge.

The thing that made the Po Boy Factory stand out, even more than the food, was the friendly, down-home attitude of the staff. It’s a family operation, and it showed.


Big Marty, Bartimus Maximus, Marie Thigpen (owner of the Po Boy Factory), and Houston Steve.

Beat the crap out of that faux-Ozzie steak place, to say the least.

A PROFUSION OF BUTTERFLIES

The wildlife was in abundance this weekend as we hacked our way around Hampton Cove, the Huntsville, Alabama outpost of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.

Some scene-setting is in order. Alabama, home of the aforementioned Trail, offers excellent golf on challenging layouts, all at reasonable prices... and so, once a year, I join a small army of Golf-Playing Idiots on a westward trek to the Heart of Dixie.


Small army of Golf-Playing Idiots. (I’m in the back.)

This year’s trip was was a step-out improvement over those of previous years. First, we had good luck with the weather. A nasty, wet forecast for Friday never materialized - we had a few sprinkles to deal with, but nothing serious. Also, temperatures remained moderate, a rare pleasure for an Alabamian June. But most important was our wise decision to limit our play to eighteen holes a day. In past years, we would cram ninety holes into three days in what could best be described as a sort of Golfy Demolition Derby that would cover the entire spectrum from fun to work to torture. This time, sanity prevailed.

Friday, we played the Links course at Grand National in Opelika. We always say, “what happens in Opelika stays in Opelika,” which means I don’t have to mention the complete absence of my short game skills that day.

Oops.

That evening, a scenic drive on the back roads took us to Huntsville, way up in the northeastern corner of the state. Huntsville is famous for being the home of the Redstone Arsenal and the United States Space and Rocket Center, as well as the landing area for scores of Nazi rocket scientists after WWII under Operation Paperclip. With all that German brainpower around, U.S. efforts to develop ICBM technology during the early years of the Cold War naturally were centered in what became popularly known as “Rocket City, U.S.A.”

We had no time to screw around with rockets on this trip, however.

Hampton Cove boasts two full-size layouts: the Highlands and the River courses. The River was especially fearsome. Despite a complete absence of sand bunkers, water came into play on sixteen of the eighteen holes. It’s not a course for the faint of heart... and yet, it is one of those completely unexplainable Mysteries of Nature that I shot my best-ever RTJ Trail round there. Who’da thunkit?


Where the hell did my ball go? The river knows...

Aside from seeing thirty-six golf holes over the weekend, we saw an exceptional abundance of wildlife.

There were geese:



There were ducks:



There was the occasional heron:



But perhaps most surprising was the presence of a profusion of papillons. Butterflies! They were everywhere, often congregating in groups. Tiger swallowtails, black swallowtails, admirals, painted ladies, you name ’em.

I saw this group of black swallowtails clustered together and grabbed a photo:



As I snapped the shutter, I could see that these beautiful insects were roosting upon a chunk of Animal Spoor. Shit! And that’s when I realized that the gossamer-winged butterfly will sometimes eschew his usual delicate sips of flower-nectar in favor of a more earthy dinner. In that wise, he is very like us humans: So often do we decline to reach for the stars, preferring to grub in the dirt.

Call it a moral lesson, one of the world’s Essential Truths. Butterflies, however beautiful, are still flies.

ONE TINY-ASS DAWG

This past weekend, the Mistress of Sarcasm and I enjoyed the hospitality of Elder Daughter and her two housemates.

It was our first chance to check out Elder Daughter’s new digs. Formerly living solo in an Adams Morgan apartment, E.D. moved to a large, rambling house in the rapidly gentrifying H corridor where she is part of a sort of Roomie-Family. It’s a huge improvement over her former situation.


Miss Kitty, one of the Animal Denizens of Elder Daughter’s house.

In addition to Elder Daughter and her housemates, there are several animal denizens of the residence as well. A parade of Foster-Dogs, one of whom (Craig) bears an astonishing resemblance to Laurence Fishburne, runs through at regular intervals. There’s a cat - Miss Kitty - who has adapted well to home life after having been rescued from the streets. And then there’s the appropriately-named Minnie...


Minnie - one Tiny-Ass Dawg.

...the tiniest frickin’ dog I’ve ever laid eyes on.

That Minnie is small is not too surprising when you consider her Chihuahua ancestry. But she is not just small, she is minuscule. Teeny-tiny. Small enough to be carried up Richard Gere’s ass with room left over for a whole family of gerbils.


Small enough to fit in one hand.

And she’s got a big, feisty heart, all out of proportion to her size. She takes no crap from the horde of big dogs as they traipse through the living room: She growls and barks at them like she’s ready to tear ’em a new one. Amazing.

Yet she is cuddly, in her own tiny-ass way.


Chris and Minnie: Tiny-Ass Love.

Best yet: Minnie is Ren Hoëk personified. She even speaks with a bizarre, Peter Lorre-esque accent! Gotta love it.

Update: Friday Ark #297 is up at (where else?) the Modulator... and this week, CatSynth hosts an exceptionally well-done Carnival of the Cats #324.

RIDE THIS

The sharp-eyed Mistress of Sarcasm could not help but notice this Washington, D.C. taxicab’s ID number as we left last week’s TEDxPotomac conference. And I could not help but capture it for posterity as we all cracked up laughing.



Makes you wonder just what kind of rides this guy was selling, eh?

BARBECUE IN BIRMINGHAM

Smokemeisters Henry L., Jerry C., and Elisson whip out their meat.

There’s an old joke about a rabbi who is out of town on a mid-week business trip. He checks into his hotel and heads out to a local eatery... and, as he peruses the menu, a thought pops into his head.

“I’ve never tasted of the flesh of the swine,” he thinks, “and I have always wondered what it’s like.

“Surely, if I were to order pork just this one time, God would forgive me - and besides, I’m away from home, and nobody will ever find out.”

His rationalization thus worked through, he orders the whole roast suckling pig. (Might as well go “whole hog,” eh?) And as soon as the waiter disappears with the order, the rabbi is horrified to see the president of his synagogue’s Sisterhood walk into the restaurant, accompanied by her husband (the ritual director) and their two children.

Of course, they recognize their rabbi immediately and, like one would do when encountering a hometown friend in a faraway place, they come over to greet him. The rabbi gives them a friendly smile, a hearty greeting, all the while silently praying that they will just go away and be seated on the far side of the restaurant.

No such luck. They insist on having the rabbi join them... and he is in no position to refuse.

Moments later, the waiter arrives, bearing a huge domed platter. He whisks away the dome to reveal a roast suckling pig, complete with apple in mouth - and the Sisterhood president and her family gape in open-mouthed horror.

The rabbi looks at the pig, then looks at them. He looks at the pig again, then looks back at them.

“Can you believe it? I order a baked apple, and look at the big production!”

* * * * *
All this is a lengthy prologue to the story of my Birmingham barbecue adventure... competing in a kosher barbecue cook-off at an event held by the Men’s Club at Temple Beth El, the Conservative synagogue there.

[That’d be Birmingham, Alabama, not the one in Old Blighty.]

Lots more below the fold.

I couldn’t not attend, for several reasons. First, our own Men’s Club had fielded a team to compete in the cook-off. Second, I’m a regional president of Men’s Club, and I wanted to be there to represent the region. Third, and most important, barbecue is in my blood... even if it got there by osmosis from She Who Must Be Obeyed.

SWMBO, you see, is a native-born Texan... and along with Eastern European Jews, Texans are one of the two kinds of people who know how to deal with beef brisket. If you fit into both categories simultaneously, there’s no stopping you... and thus I volunteered my services.

This being a kosher cook-off, certain special rules applied. To ensure that all meats, condiments, seasonings, other food ingredients, and utensils were acceptable, these were all provided by the hosting club. The meat itself - all kosher beef brisket and ribs - was supplied by the event’s sponsor, a well-known supermarket chain.

What chain was that, Elisson? I’m glad you asked. Piggly Wiggly, of course! Who better to sponsor a kosher barbecue cook-off?


Who better to sponsor a kosher barbecue cook-off?

Now, it should be explained that the relationship between Jews and pigs is, generally speaking, not especially close. Because observant Jews do not eat the flesh of the porcine mammal, they do not, as a rule, get jobs as swineherds. This being said, however, Jews differ from their Abrahamic brethren the Muslims in that they do not regard mere representations of pigs with horror and loathing. The smiling Piggly Wiggly mascot offends us not a bit, nor do images of Piglet (of Winnie-the-Pooh fame), piggy banks, or even foods that look like pigs:


Above: Pig Cake (contains chocolate, but no pork). Below: Panera’s Jalapeño & Cheddar Bagel Breakfast Sandwich (complete with ham and cheese). It’s OK if it looks like a pig, but not if it contains pig.

The Pig Cake pictured above is no problem for the average Red Sea Pedestrian as it contains no pork. On the other hand, despite its having been constructed with a Jewish breadstuff, the Jalapeño & Cheddar Bagel is verboten to the observant. It ain’t what it looks like, it’s what it’s made of... and even that matters only if you plan to eat it.

In any event, several members of our team arrived the night before, in order to season the meat and get it on the smoker in the wee hours of the morning. I arrived shortly after the Butt-Crack of Dawn, just in time to see the beans being assembled.


Our award-winning barbecue beans on the simmer.

There was competition, lots of it: twenty teams in all, with fanciful names like “Jews, Brews, and Barbecue,” “Delicious, Divine, and Devoid of Swine,” and “Limp Brizkit.” Most were local; we were the only entry that had come from a distance. And that, to be honest, was the point. We were there to make our presence known, to say hello. Taking home a trophy would be a bonus.

Our meat was ridiculously good, not least because we had gotten a head start on pretty much everybody by firing up our smoker in the dead of night.


Ribs and brisket.

For the last few hours, we kept the meat wrapped in heavy-duty aluminum foil to retain moisture. When I unwrapped the ribs, a puddle of orange oil - rendered out of the meat - told me that they would be heinously tender... and they were.

The drill was simple. At a designated time, the teams had to plate up five servings - first beans, then ribs, finally brisket - and deliver them unto the judging table. The dishes were then distributed amongst the twenty judges, a group comprising professional barbecue judges, local media celebrities and restaurant owners, and even a stray rabbi or two.


A few of the judges, hard at work.

We had a reasonable amount of brisket left over after plating up the judges’ samples, but it didn’t last long after our team (plus various competitors and hangers-on) descended on the remnants like a pack of starving wolves. Can’t say I blame them.

At the end of the day, we carried off two trophies - one for our beans, another for our ribs. Not bad for the visiting team! We’ll be sure to field a squad for next year’s event.

LAPSE DANCE

Ever since I saw The Time Machine - the 1960 George Pal version with Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux - and became hopelessly fascinated with time travel, I have loved the magic of time-lapse movies.

In a time-lapse film, hours and days flash by in seconds. Traffic becomes a pulsating river of light, and clouds puff into and out of existence. Time travel may be a physical impossibility, but thanks to the magic of the camera we can pretend that it is real.

Follow this link to Tim Tyson’s site and check out this stunning high definition time-lapse of the view overlooking the Chao Phraya river. That river, the lifeline of Bangkok, looks like nothing so much as a busy street in this speeded-up view, the boats doing their complicated, syncopated dance as the hours zoom by.

UNFORGETTABLE

Room 33 at the Hiiragiya Ryokan.

Two years ago this very night, Elder Daughter and I were here.

It was an evening of understated luxury, of tradition. I will never forget it... and I long for the day that I can return with She Who Must Be Obeyed in tow.

A PERFECT PLACE TO MAKE AN ASHE OF ONESELF

Biltmore House, with SWMBO and JoAnn in the foreground. [Click to embiggen.]

A few weekends ago, we enjoyed a most pleasant visit to Asheville with our friends Gary and JoAnn. It’s hard to complain about a town that has fine hostelries, excellent dining, and the monstrous, bloated Biltmore House, a monument to nineteenth-century conspicuous consumption that makes today’s Filthy Rich seem like smelly hoboes by comparison. And amusing street names, to boot!

We had been to Asheville before. The four of us sojourned there in the fall of 2007, and in May of the following year, I had traveled there for business under the auspices of the Great Corporate Salt Mine. That last trip afforded me my first jaw-dropping glimpse of Biltmore House, the “Biggest Little Cheesebox Bungalow in the World™.”

This particular visit had originally been scheduled for the end of January, but a freak snowstorm that dumped a record-breaking nine inches on Asheville put the kibosh on that. Other people who tried driving there from Atlanta had all sorts of problems - having to get hauled out of snowbanks, sitting in the car for nine hours - so the decision to cancel allowed us to dodge a Major Bullet.

Thus, our visit was in balmy spring weather instead of the chill of winter. Not altogether bad, I’d say.

We stayed at the Grand Bohemian, a property located just outside the Biltmore portcullis. The rooms were nicely appointed, although it didn’t take long to discern a certain bizarre Mittel-Europaische combination of Fine Art and Deer Hunting motifs.

Everywhere I wandered in that hotel, I kept seeing visual puns. Here are a couple:


The Branch Manager.


The Octomooose.

But my favorite piece of Hunty Artwork was this fellow:


They call me Mister Boar.

If you look real close (click the photo to embiggen), you might spot the pin from Helen, Georgia’s Oktoberfest on Mr. Boar’s chapeau. Recalling some of the infamous Bloggy Gatherings there, I suspect he’d fit right in!

The weather was cooperative during most of our stay, bringing moderate temperatures and sunshine as we traipsed the grounds of the Biltmore. Sunday morning, as we prepared to leave, the skies opened up... but it was too late for the rain to put a damper on our weekend. A leisurely breakfast at the Tupelo Honey Café’s new southern branch, and we were on our way back home.

A few more pics below the fold.

Our room at the Grand Bohemian. Note the antler-lamp.


Part of the Grand Bohemian’s impressive collection of European classical sculpture. There were more Greek busts here than at an Athenian titty bar.


The long portico at the back of the Biltmore House.


The backyard at the Biltmore, which costs more to mow each year than the GDP of most European countries.

FROM ASHEVILLE, A REAL-LIFE DICKE JOKE

Only in Asheville, North Carolina do you have this remarkable example of (probable) Unintentional Humor.

On our way downtown yesterday afternoon, we found ourselves at the intersection of Southside Avenue and two other streets. To the left there was Coxe Avenue:



And to the right? This:



[No, it’s not Photoshopped. You can look it up on Google Maps.]

So, what was this? Some road architect’s sense of humor? The boundary between Asheville’s African-American and Asian communities?

Things only got more surreal when, a block north, we saw a vehicle from Tennessee with this license tag [click to embiggen]:



What county was that tag from? You gotta be kidding...

Yes, indeedy. Just one block from the corner of Coxe and Short Coxe, we saw a car from County Cocke!

WINTER WANKERLAND

Men tracht und Gott lacht (Men make plans and God laughs). - Yiddish proverb

I’m writing this from the warmth of Chez Elisson... which means there has been a Change in Plans. For She Who Must Be Obeyed and I had scheduled a trip to our nation’s capital this morning, there to visit Elder Daughter and survey the remnants of Snowpocalypse.

Alas, it was not to be, thanks mainly to yesterday’s storm, a storm that dumped all of about three inches of the White Shite on us. It’s not much, but apparently it is enough to bring the entire operations of the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (whew! that’s a great big honkin’ mouthful of an airport name) to a grinding, shuddering halt.

I logged in to the Delta website late last night and checked us in for our 8:25 a.m. flight, at which time there was no indication there was anything amiss. And the airline asked for (and received) updated contact information. Presumably, if they had to cancel our flight, they had any number of ways to tell us about it. But they did not... and so we headed off for the airport at the Butt Crack of Dawn.

With the local roads sporting a thin glaze of black ice and frozen slush, we elected to make the ten-mile drive to the Dunwoody MARTA station and take the train to the plane. That was a wise choice, especially considering the heart-stopping fun we had negotiating the hills and curves enroute: Taking the freeway all the way to the airport would have given my sphincter a permanent clench-spasm.

We rode to the airport in the pre-dawn darkness. As we approached the airport stop, the eastern horizon was lit up in gorgeous colors of deep blue and red, the twinkling lights of aircraft on their landing approach visible against the impending sunrise. When the announcer came on the PA system to tell us we were arriving at the airport, so struck was she by the sight that she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, look out your left window - isn’t that beautiful?” (Would that ever happen in New York?)



Once we arrived in the Delta terminal, we quickly discovered that things had, overnight, gone all pear-shaped. Our flight - and about 90% of the others - had been canceled. No phone call, no e-mail, no nothing. And the terminal was packed with harried travelers, queued up to reschedule their flights. Packed, indeed: the line was folded in upon itself in the manner of Disneyland, and we were told the wait was over three hours long.


Alla those “XLD” flights? Not a good sign.

A handful of foreign departures was still flying, and an even smaller cohort of domestic flights. Other than that, nothing. That miserable two inches of snow had somehow kept almost every airline from putting planes in position to handle the morning’s departures, and from there, things must have rapidly escalated into Clusterfuck Territory.

As we stood in line - for no obvious reason except to preserve the illusion that we were accomplishing something - I tried to get American Express on the phone. And after an interminable period of holding, all the while with some bouncy, jazzy On-Hold Muzak blasting in my ear, we managed to establish that we would not be getting to Washington any time soon.

Crap.

Rather than fly up late tomorrow for an abbreviated weekend (and the risk of getting snowed in on Monday), we elected, reluctantly, to biff the trip. And so we headed back to the northern end of town, seated comfortably on our MARTA train as the whole north-south axis of Atlanta flashed by, incongruously daubed with snow. By this time the sky had turned a brilliant blue; the contrast with the trees, still completely white-encrusted, was startlingly beautiful.



That’s the magic of snow, I suppose. As much as it can be a royal pain in the ass, it offers a certain amount of visual compensation - especially here in the South, where it doesn’t stay around long enough to become grimy, grey slush.

Almost before we knew it, we had arrived at our destination, the Dunwoody MARTA station. Not the morning’s intended destination, to be sure, but a destination nonetheless, where we would salve our Elder Daughter-missing hearts with hot coffee and a lazy day under the covers. And the gradually thawing roads welcomed us home.

STARS

“If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inhabiting Greater Suburbia as we do, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I rarely get a really good look at the stars. Light pollution from a myriad of sources, coupled with the smog that accumulates around any urban area, will always manage to blot out all but the brightest denizens of the nighttime firmament. It’s one of those subtle costs of living amongst large hordes of our fellow humans.


A sky full of stars over North Georgia - February 2007.

The human eye can discern about 3,000 stars, but it’s only in remote places, far away from city lights and air, that one has a hope of seeing a fraction of that number. They say that the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, yet it was in a semi-remote part of Québec in the late fall, where the air is cold, crisp, and clean, that I saw the Milky Way with its billions of stars, stretched like a hazy band across the sky. These days I get to see the stars when I make my annual foray into the North Georgia mountains... provided we get a clear night.

And I saw them again on Wednesday night, camped out atop Starr Mountain in Tennessee with Eric, the Jeremiah Johnson of McMinn County.

Now, the last time I went camping in the woods was some forty-five years ago. That was in the summertime, in the wilderness surrounding Camp Wel-Met in Barryville, New York, sleeping under the stars with a small army of fellow Pubescent Snotnoses and a counselor or two. But a few weeks ago, when Eric called me up and asked whether I’d like to accompany him on a cold-weather camping expedition, I was signing on for a different sort of adventure.

We met Wednesday at Eric’s place, the fabled Straight White Compound, and crammed our rucks with the necessary supplies. Sleeping bags and Thermarests. A two-man tent. A portable butane/propane stove and accompanying cooking vessels. Five liters of water, along with a couple of aluminum bottles filled with the Water of Life. Miscellaneous gear. Two mysterious quart-sized Mason jars, wrapped up carefully in a scarf.

“Whatever you do, don’t break that,” Eric admonished. “That’s our dinner.”

Supplies packed, we piled into the Elissonmobile and drove about ten miles to the trailhead at the base of Starr Mountain. Rather than hike the entire way up, we wisely elected to drive about a third of the way and leave the car parked in a turnout. This is trickier than it sounds: The road, an old gravel-and-dirt logging trail built in the 1930’s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, was narrow and covered in spots by ice and tree branches knocked down by last week’s storm. But we parked the car without incident, shouldered our packs - each one weighing some 45-50 pounds - and began trudging up the road towards the top of the mountain, stopping every so often to rest our legs and take in the magnificent views to the east.

After a hike of roughly three miles, we were within a few hundred feet of the ridgeline. A reasonable expanse of flat ground was visible to the left side of the trail - Eric later speculated that there may even have been a house there in the distant past - and we decided to make camp.



Aside from setting up our tent, the first order of business was making a fire. We foraged around for some dry wood and a few rocks with which to border the firepit, and Eric set to work. Within minutes, we had a crackling campfire, thanks in no small measure to Eric’s firebuilding expertise... and the chunk of military-issue trioxane he used as an accelerant.



Fire built, we set about heating our dinner... the contents of those two Mason jars. For this we used a portable LPG stove especially suited to the task. What was for dinner? you may ask, and I will answer: Nothing less than a fine pot roast. Beef chuck, carrots, potatoes, and onions, all long-simmered in a rich broth. All we had to do was heat it and eat it, which we did with gusto.

As the dusk settled and the temperature began to drop, we hunkered down by the campfire and enjoyed a few wee drams of Macallan single malt and Jameson’s fine Irish, all the while admiring the sparkling, starry sky through the trees. Only twice did vehicles pass by on the logging road, and in no event did we have to deal with bugs, bears, or boars.

Later, as we folded ourselves into our sleeping bags and read Robert W. Service’s “The Law of the Yukon” - perfectly apropos on a frosty night - I felt a strange sort of contentment, the kind that comes with a challenge overcome. No, it wasn’t as though we were camped out with no tent in an Alaskan whiteout... but we were somewhere other than our soft, comfortable, civilized beds, and it made sense at an unexplainable, cellular level. For, somewhere buried in that reptilian hindbrain we male humans possess, there is a desire to kindle a fire and sleep in the woods out of doors that dates from when our earliest forebears crouched in hollowed-out shelters in the savannas of Africa.

When dawn broke and a hazy sun rose in the east, we cooked up some breakfast and coffee and rekindled our campfire from the embers of the night before. Then we packed up, cleaned up the campsite, and marched back down the mountain to the waiting mud-bespattered Elissonmobile.

[Hiking down a mountain, it should be noted, is way easier than hiking up a mountain.]


A hazy dawn.


Elisson, AKA Mark Frickin’ Trail.

Less than half an hour later, we were back at the Straight White Compound, enjoying hot showers, indoor plumbing, and the glories of Whomp Biscuits and MRE’s. Cushy? Hell, yeah. But it’s a lot harder to see the stars when you’re indoors...

More pics below the fold.

Dusk.


Elisson - a little light-headed.


Reading “The Law of the Yukon” by candlelight.


Morning by the campfire.


Eric surveys the valley to the east.

A DC DINNER TO REMEMBER

After spending a few days at a conference in Maryland, I seized the opportunity to spend some time with Elder Daughter in Washington, D.C.

She keeps herself pretty busy these days, Elder Daughter does. Juggles lots of projects, both at work and extracurricular. Somehow, she manages to keep all those figurative balls in the air.

Monday night, we had dinner at Nora, a lovely little place in the neighborhood of DuPont Circle. I had first heard of it in a post by the Bakerina several years ago; since then, we had seen it several times while walking in Elder Daughter’s neighborhood but had never set foot within.


Restaurant Nora.

Sometimes the things we wait for with a sense of happy, eager anticipation turn out to be disappointments. Dinner at Nora was not one of those things... which is a backhanded way of saying that it was excellent.

Nora claims to be America’s first certified organic restaurant. That’s not what attracted me to the place, although there is certainly nothing wrong with eating foods that are produced without pesticides, grown sustainably, and sourced locally. What attracted me was the menu, crammed with offerings among which it was almost impossible to choose. The temptation of simply saying, “Just bring us everything on the fucking menu” had to be resisted, though: Not only would our appetites not bear it, but the check would then be somewhere north of the GNP of several sub-Saharan countries.

We were seated in the cozy upstairs dining room, the very place where President Obama had thrown a surprise birthday party for First Lady Michelle a mere nine days before. The restaurant staff were still starry-eyed about it.

To get us started, I ordered an extremely dry Hendrick’s gin martini, straight up; Elder Daughter ordered hers with Grey Goose vodka (the Presidential vodka, we were told afterwards). And then we settled in to the serious task of stuffing our faces.

We ordered a couple of salads for starters: a local red and yellow beet salad with oranges, grapefruit, feta cheese, micro greens, beet tuile, and pomegranate vinaigrette; and a baby arugula and radicchio salad with roasted local pears, French Brie, toasted almonds, with port wine vinaigrette. The beet salad was almost jewel-like, the arugula and radicchio more substantial, the pears contrasting nicely with the Brie’s smooth creaminess.

By way of a main course, I selected a grilled Ayrshire Farm ribeye with roasted marrow bone, parsnip purée, carrots, garlicky chard, and a red wine jus. It was perfectly done, and the marrow bone - complete with slender silver marrow-spoon - was an elegant, yet earthy, touch. Elder Daughter, meanwhile, zeroed in on the pan-seared steelhead salmon with spaghetti squash, Brussels sprouts, roasted turnips, ovendried tomato, and black walnut vinaigrette. The fish was done to an exquisite medium-rare: superb.

We could have stopped there, but it would have been wrong. For there was the small matter of dessert.

We ordered a pear frangipane tart (sweet) and a platter of artisanal cheeses (savory) with homemade quince membrillo and nuts. Eaten at a leisurely pace, it was the perfect end to a delightful meal.

Earlier, as we had sipped our Martinis and waited for our meals to arrive, we had reminisced about other fine feeds, focusing on the meals we had enjoyed during our sojourn in Japan almost two years ago. What was the best? Japanese tapas at an izakaya within hours of our arrival? Udon and eel in a little noodle shop in the Ginza? The fourteen-course kaiseki dinner at the Hiiragiya ryokan in Kyoto? Unagi-no-donburi at the Takashimaya department store? Our sushi breakfast at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo? Each one was special in its own way; each one memorable. As this night’s dinner would be.

What memorable dinners have you had? And what was the best thing about them?

HOW NOW, COW TOWN?

We’re back after spending this past week in North Texas, specifically Denton (home of the University of North Texas as well as SWMBO’s baby brother Morris William and his family) and Foat Wuth, AKA Cowtown, stomping grounds for the Momma d’SWMBO.

It has been a gas, seeing our young nephew William and his sister Madison in their current state of Growing-Up-edness. William has always been quick to make witty wise-beyond-his-seven-years observations, but Madison, now three, has really come into her own. She loves to perform - the Dreidel Song is a particular favorite - and has her own way of keeping other people from horning in on her action. “You need to be quiet - you’re special!” she’ll say... and by “special” she means a more age-appropriate alternative to “STFU.”

And we had snow. Snow! The few inches we got wasn’t a patch on the mighty snowstorms of my Northeastern youth, but you’d never know that from seeing the excitement in the faces of William and Madison. Snow! What kid doesn’t love to play in the White Stuff until face and fingers are cold and raw, the better to warm up over a mug of hot cocoa?


Nephew William practices his mad snowball-throwing skillz.

No trip with the Elisson clan is complete without the uncovering of some sort of Bizarre Connection. One of the landmarks in Denton is the University of North Texas Murchison Performing Arts Center, named for its chief benefactor (and former regent) Lucille G. “Lupe” Murchison. Lupe Murchison was the sister-in-law of Clint Murchison, Jr., founding owner of the Dallas Cowboys, whose family’s many business interests included the Daisy Manufacturing Company, makers of the famous Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun (“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”). My connection? I used to study astrophysics with Clint’s daughter, back in my university days. Weird, huh?

Anyway, we’re back home now, watching as the year winds itself down to its last few days. No big celebration this year... just a quiet get-together with friends.

Peking Duck may, at some point, be involved.

THE VIEW FROM THE WINDOW SEAT

Ever since my Snot-Nose Days, I’ve preferred the window seat.

I don’t care that getting to the aisle (say, in order to use the restroom) requires that I get past two people. I can hold my water.

I like the view. It has fascinated me since my earliest trips on the Silver Aerial Bus... and I’ve been riding that bus for a loooong time. Over 55 years, ever since I was a snivelling two-year-old being dragged off to Miami to visit the grandparents.

Speaking of Miami, here's one I took of Miami Beach in 1969. The bizarre color scheme is the result of using Ektachrome Infrared Aero, a film that renders anything with chlorophyll (like living plants) in an unearthly red, as though H. G. Wells’s Martians had won the War of the Worlds.


Miami Beach. The small dick-shaped island is Allison Island; on the left is La Gorce Island, complete with Country Club. [Click to embiggen.]

More below the fold.

Washington, D.C. is always impressive when seen from the airplane window...


Lincoln Memorial.


Jefferson Memorial.


The U. S. Capitol.

Here’s New York, the city that never sleeps.


Manhattan and the East River.


Coney Island. You can see the legendary Parachute Jump tower easily, but you’ll need sharp eyes to spot the Cyclone and the Wonder Wheel. And a microscope to find the Jooette.

For a change of pace, here is the polar icecap, shot as I flew the Great Circle Route from Chicago to Tokyo with Elder Daughter last year.


Somewhere over the Bering Sea.

And the mountains of Alaska, America’s great wilderness.


The rugged landscape of Alaska, shot in March 1980 from a Chicago-Manila flight.

I ask you: From what other vantage point can you see stuff like this?