Quiet Reparations

Archive for January, 2005

December 31 2004, 09:11 PM Hey, Glen!

It turns out there's also a North Roast Meat Hill Road!

December 31 2004, 09:55 PM The Corner Turns

January 01 2005, 01:58 AM The Slick Bricks of Woodmont St.

Let it mark the beginning of the new year (or perhaps the end of the old one), but I put it to you: I believe my new New Yearly tradition is a good, brisk walk. The important part of the walk is then this: while walking, if one should spy the beginning of a street, one ought follow that street until it ends, or the year does.

January 01 2005, 11:29 AM Time Is Hard

Nothing like starting the year off right with a bug in the CMS.

January 02 2005, 11:28 AM Club Tactics

Everything I know about Dance music I learned from my younger brother and Son House.

This is something of a simplification, but there is a little truth in it. I would submit that the motive power of good music, any good music, is the catch and throw of tension and release. This is particularly true of the blues; perhaps the most accessible recommendation I can offer towards this is The Sky Is Crying from the second side of George Thoroughgood's first live album, or perhaps when Joe Perry busts out at live shows. The Blues is much deeper than this, of course, but if you already know that, I do not need to give you examples. I will: seek the five disc set of the American Folk Blues festival, and on the first find John Lee Hooker's rendition of The Night Time.

Good Dance music is like this. Again, accessible recommendations of this phenomenon are The Crystal Method's first album, or (the aforementioned here, and somewhat less so) East Coast Edition of Sasha and Digweed's Northern Exposure II.

What I have learned from my brother is that dance music does not have to be simple. Sonnets are simple; it is surprisingly easy to crank out sonnets, in part because the form is so rigid is leaves one few choices in how to go. Good sonnets, sonnets that use the form well, they are harder. Harder still is the contemplation of how to heighten the form and the meaning by breaking it, putting tension into the work. There are stacks and stacks of CDs of rigid dance music, and there is little wrong with any of it; the purpose is to ram a melodied, insistent metronome into a darkened crowd of sweaty movement hopped up on its own shared experience. But there is also examples of the genre that work to master the form.

I have learned to largely follow my brother's nose in these things. While he is not a professional DJ, he is an accomplished amateur, and he has impeccable taste. He has learned to discover (and led me to learn to discover) dance music that is deeply layered, syncopated to cause delight, and, for lack of better words, undismissive of the complexity of the human condition, even that stripped and simplified condition in the throes of the dance floor.

The real trick, though, is storytelling, and this is where the art lies: to string these songs together, blending them without seam to move us from place to place, so that at the end of an hour, elated and spent, those on the floor are in an entirely different space from where they started. It is a form of storytelling with awesome feedback, for it is the crowd that moves, and the crowd's moving that must be catered to, teased, and ultimately released. The music is part of the path to letting go. The good Dance music makes one conscious of that act, but demands it anyway.

January 03 2005, 11:26 PM The Oats Have it

I have learned a trick for treating with oats for breakfast in the warmer months. The trick is this: the night before, fill a jelly jar (for which you have the lid) 3/4 full with old-fashioned rolled oats. Cover the oats with apple juice, and stir in 1/4 tsp. Vitamin C powder. Put lid on jar, and let stand on the counter over night, and eat it in the morning. If you like, other juices can be used: grape juice, or apricot nectar, or other such things. Citrus juices do not work so well for this, somehow. If you like, this can be eaten with yogurt as well. I somewhat like it.

It's colder now, though, and warmer fare is called for in the mornings. I used to make quick oats, but I have been given a method for making the old fashioned stuff. For each (generous) portion, put 1/2 cup rolled oats and 1/2 cup water in a sauce pan; lid it, and leave it on the stove overnight just before bed. In the morning, ad 1/2 cup milk and bring to heat, stirring, until the oats are tender. This should happen quickly; somewhat quicker than fifteen or twenty minutes, certainly, and there will be much less temptation to walk away from the stuff and have it boil out onto the cooktop like I did the other morning (amazing stuff, oatmeal; somewhat not unlike concrete, under certain conditions). When done, one can add bananas or wheat germ or brown sugar or raisins or flax meal or maple syrup or whatever, and the good breakfast will do a lot to get one to work, even if on the way one might get drenched by the unhappy addition of puddle and truck.

January 03 2005, 11:48 PM The Patient Hare

January 09 2005, 01:14 PM Fetch For Me The Dustpan

There is a dark and fragrant water in my tea cup. I have sweetened it some; there is precedent for that. The tea is not so hot as to bite, but warm, the good warm that follows on from scotch or skating (I cannot skate). It is crisp outside, but not cold, and I must walk a while today. The tea will keep me.

I have had some luck with cookies, these years, primarily of two types. What I mostly find myself making are hand-filling, cakey things that whimper under the weight of nuts and fruit and lumps of chocolate. I have had some success with more buttery cookies, too, and while they are still very good, I have grown to like them less.

I do not know how to make crisps, snaps, little dry discs that clatter together like bones. I think I will try to find some ginger today. I think that's next.

January 11 2005, 07:51 PM Crate Sinister

January 15 2005, 04:22 PM The Balloon Tree

On the way to the grocery (on at least one way to the grocery) there is a balloon tree. It is a stately thing, tall and free of leaves. The bark is lightly colored and uniform, perhaps to camouflage it against the slate skies that are so prevalent here. It reaches high into the air with a pleasing, reaching splay of limbs, growing ever finer. Out near the edge of itself, a growth of balloons has sprung forth, colorful and ducking in the breeze.

Here is the story of how I make cocoa; I have most likely told this before. I will tell it again. Around here, I ask for cocoa at local eateries, and they need to confirm with me: "do you mean hot chocolate?" I have no complaints with what I get; what I get is an excellent drink for a diner, or a sidewalk. The particular cocoa of this story is not that.

In no particular order, you will need whole milk, cocoa powder, white sugar, vanilla extract, hot water, and something else. You will need a pot to cook it in, and a spoon to stir it with, and a mug to drink it from.

The milk should be whole. I am at a loss to argue the point; it is winter, and it is cold, and the drink is decadent in its deep simplicity. The milk is also the foundation of the thing, and as such, should be the best you can easily get. The milk should be fresh. When poured out, it should be white, white, and seem heavy in the glass.

I have fights about the cocoa powder. A friend of mine is a tremendous fan of dutch process cocoa powder. I find the stuff good for baking, but not for this; I miss the twang. I habitually use the stuff in the common dark brown box from that famous little town in the other end of the state, but I will readily admit that I do this because I have always done this. This drink is like that.

White, granulated sugar; I have not found anything else to work. They tell me that vanillin is vanillin, and our taste bugs can't discern the difference between real and artificial vanilla most times, but I think this is one of those times. I always buy the real stuff, anyway; one never knows. Keeping a kettle on the stove for hot water is sound practice; hot hot tap water will work as well. There is something else. I promise I will tell you what it is.

The sequence is simple. For each mug, put one (and some) heaping tablespoons of cocoa powder and one (and some) scant tablespoons of sugar in the bottom of a sauce pan. Add hot water (boiling is fine); add just enough to make a mud from the cocoa and the sugar. It should be thick and have much glop to it, and turn glossy under the spoon. Smash out any lumps. Put it on the stove over medium heat, and add how many mug's worth of milk.

Mix well, and then the hard part: watch. Do not let it over heat. Stir it well to keep it moving, so that it does not scorch. Ten thousand things will invade your kitchen: tiny mice in pirate costumes, gentlemen from the Amateur Astronomer's Collective to inquire about the new comet they have espied in the breakfast nook, Mr. Containment on a sushi bender, bears. Ignore all of these. Test with a finger or taste with a spoon to see if it is hot. If it is, tipple a tiny amount of vanilla into the brew, swish, and then pour out into mugs.

Now you will need something else. It is this: one nutmeg, and one nutmeg grater. Make sure you spend no more than three dollars on the grater; any more and you've got the wrong kind. Make sure you use whole nutmeg; pre-ground stuff loses most of its life and sits sullen in the jar, unready to please you. Grate just a bit of nutmeg over the cocoa at the last minute. It will float on top, and the heat of the drink will wake it up. Do not make it so heavy as to flavor the drink: the nutmeg is for the nose, in the act of drinking. Go gently.

It is usually best to clean the pots immediately after pouring. If circumstances do not permit, let them soak in the sink, and carefully carry the cocoa off to the sitting room. Better: the fireplace. These things are worth planning.

I can easily imagine how a hand lost grasp of the score of thin white strings, sending the balloons upwards to fidget and sit at the top of the tree. This is most certainly what has happened, and in a day, or week, those balloons will shudder and fold, one by one, until the tree is then decked with a handful of limp colored shards and some tired twine, growing yellow in the elements. Perhaps some rain or wind will knock it down eventually. Perhaps not.

Or instead: we have a new botanical, a new ecological niche exploited adroitly by a tree that has lucked into the discovery of a new way of flowering, eye catching and bright against the winter skies. Perhaps through some natural process those seeds will break free and wander the winds as more classical seeds do. I have cocoa in a cup, and a plate of thin spice cookies, and I watch the skies.

January 15 2005, 04:38 PM Also

Go Steelers!

January 15 2005, 07:52 PM Auger

January 15 2005, 11:21 PM Department of Anomalies

The RSS feed should be fixed; apologies.

January 16 2005, 04:47 PM Split Pea Soup

You will need a soup pot, at least six quarts big.

• olive oil
• a bay leaf or two
• 1/2 lb. carrots, chopped
• 1/2 lb. celery, chopped
• 1/2 lb. onion, chopped
• 1 apple, peeled, cored, and chopped
• 1 potato, peeled and chopped
• 1 qt. apple cider
• 1 qt. chicken stock
• 2 qts. water
• 1 lb. dried split peas
• 1 ham hock, smoked
• 1 1/2 tsp cumin, toasted and ground
• salt

I do this the way I usually do this; I start with the carrots. When the carrots are chopped I throw them into the pot with the bay leaf and a bit of oil and crank up the heat. Then, chop and add the celery; chop and add the onion. Bring the heat down a bit, and leave well enough alone until the vegetables begin to caramelize.

When those are done and the house smells good (and you can't stand it anymore) pour in a bit of the chicken stock and stir up the good bits that are on the bottom of the pan. Add the rest of the liquid. While that comes back up to heat (crank the stove back up), peel (core) and chop the potato and the apple and add them into the liquid along with the ham hock. When it all comes back up to a simmer, add the peas. Reduce heat and cover.

(There is a school of thought that requires deep and soulful inspection of each pea for deformity or stoneness. Pour 'em out into a pie tin and give 'em a swish. Take out anything that doesn't look right. Dump the rest in the pot.)

After everything has simmered for a bit and the potato is tender and the peas are done, pull out the ham hock and set it aside. Traditionally, I would recommend running the soup through a food mill, but I broke the food mill, so I used the stick blender instead. The stick blender works fine. Grind up everything into a puree, and put it back on low heat.

(One thing that's nice to do is dig out the meat from the ham hock, chop it up, and add it back to the soup.)

Add the cumin, and salt to taste. It's pretty good with less salt, but it can certainly take a lot. According to me, best served in a mug. It you're of a mind to make croutons, they go well, but I find they are not needed. When it snows outside (and it snows outside) this is a very welcome soup.

January 17 2005, 07:57 AM The Ingredients of Tea

At one point, the people who know more than I do rather politely suggested that I should stop drinking coffee. I have tried this before; I had met with some success, but I did not enjoy it. They suggested tea. I had tried that before, too, but I had not enjoyed that, either.

I was comfortable with the morning violence of coffee: the grumbling step into the kitchen, the bleary poking of the machine. I looked forward to the first strong sip, sending a welcome jolt down the throat and sometimes burning the tongue.

(It has turned out that eating breakfast is a side effect of tea.)

Tea is not like that. Tea has standards. One needs to pay attention to the thermometer for tea (one needs a thermometer!). Half of the trick to tea is learning how to make tea well. The other half is learning to pay attention so the thing can be done, even in the early hours of the morning.

January 17 2005, 06:52 PM Bell Clear

January 18 2005, 06:12 PM Hey, Rob!

In Naples, there is a thin street that is paved with timbers on end. The buildings are close and tall, and the sky is a bright stripe of blue ribbon to those looking up past the large open windows and the lashes of the tiled roofs. The walls are simple, cleaned by sun and rain, and are rough with time. On the street there is a simple doorway, framed in oak. The door is painted with a black paint, slick and looking freshly wet.

Behind the door lives an elderly woman. Her hair is grey and flecked with white. She smiles for you. She holds a cat, a gentle cat, and spends fingernails behind its ears. She sits near the top of the stairs, which is somewhat unfortunate, for sometimes she manages to fall down them.

The basement she lets to the Parson. It is unclear what the Parson is up to down there. His stated purpose is that he makes wine, and needs the dim coolness to store his tries. He is shifty, and has dark eyes which seem to float on his face above his collar, and his fingers are very long and thin. They have soft skin, those fingers, and glow unnatural. Sometimes, when the elderly woman tumbles down the stairs, she knocks him clear over to the other stairs, and into the next basement, below.

The basement below. It is colder, and dimmer, and the walls are in rough stone and timber blacked with time. One thin bulb hangs down there, and swings sometimes. There is an oil lamp, too, and matches, for when the lightbulb becomes depressed. In the corner of this place is an ancient altar, to a god forgotten, a god for simple food of flat bread and thin sauce, and a scatter of cheese. It is the dusty altar of the pizza god, and to one side there is a stack of stained and aged boxes, thin and bent, chalices of past sacrifice.

The pizza god hates you.

January 20 2005, 09:39 PM Sometimes It's What You Get

It is cold, it is cold here. The wind has been up, and snow has been falling. The mercury has risen a little, but not with any amount of mirth. We are already in the grinding season of cold, somehow, dim evenings and breath seen. I have pulled down some pesto from the freezer.

I feed it a little heat and stir it to turn it green again, and coat wide noodles of homemade pasta with it under a mane of shredded parmesan. In one corner of the kitchen table, it's summer again.

January 23 2005, 08:20 PM This Is What We're Eating

We are eating snacks. We are eating pretzels and goat cheese dip, we are eating potato chips and a different goat cheese dip, we are eating crackers and goat cheese. The goat cheese is a goat's milk gouda. It is not aged. It is a creamy white, and sweet. It is very nice.

We are making salad. We have cleared room on the coffee table so that we can chop up the blood oranges and the fennel and carefully put the pieces into the bowl at our feet. Onto the small cutting board goes a bunch of mint to be roughly chopped, and it joins a handful of pine nuts in the bowl. The mess is dressed with a little bit of blood orange olive oil, which I had never heard of, and barely believe in. The salad is mostly oranges.

The next involves chicken. The chicken swam in marinade. The chicken now sits beneath a blanket of peppers and onions and mint. Would the weather have been warmer, we would grill it on soaked skewers outside over coals. It is not, so under the broiler it goes. It is nothing we have ever made before.

We are doing all of this while the Steelers play; as my brother points out, there is plenty of time. I will also note that my brother has gone to take a shower, perhaps in hope to wash the gunk off of himself that is making us tank.

Faith.

January 23 2005, 09:49 PM This Is What We Ate

Damn.

January 25 2005, 07:07 PM Switches Thrown

January 26 2005, 02:05 PM Camera Obscura

The camera opens like a fan, and an hourglass lens on a wooden plate fits into the front. There are brass ribs cut with channels to accept knobs meant to be tightened by nothing more strong than careful fingers. They lend architecture to the thing, standing itself up against the bellows. A cape is on it now, noisy cloth, dark on the inside and silvered without. There are clicks and scrapings from under the cloth as the focus is found, and lengths adjusted.

"Midwest photo exchange. Well worth the trip."

I do not know if there is enough light in here; I do not know how much light this needs to work, or to work well. The cloth moves, more adjustments made. Strange tools come out of bags and are held by faces to gauge and check. I wait for the snap and the whir of the image taken, when the camera will capture the intersection of this time and this place.

"I am measuring light reflected from you, not from outside."

The clock has become noisier, and the light does not change.

"Look up."

The subject stands waiting.

January 28 2005, 09:15 PM Two Unthinkable Things

One: I have run out of jelly.

This poses a problem, for there are few things as oddly beautiful as a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. I know them well. I have eaten smears of sugary, creamy peanut butter and bitingly sweet jam on slices of wonder bread, pulled with care from small clear plastic bags. I have eaten gentle tea sandwiches of delicate peanut butter and spicy marmalade on pullman bread. I have had them on toast, thick toast, where the heat of the slice wakes up the peanuts and makes the preserves run quick. I like them on the soft brown bread they make in coffee cans, I like them in pita bread, I like them on stout baguettes, a yard's worth of sticky, squeezey, heavenly lunch.

I have learned some things (some of which with you may violently disagree). I have found the perfect bread for the damn things to be unseeded deli rye, big floppy slices that ride soft in the hand and give the sandwich a subtle tang. Some would argue for the large jars of industrially smashed and sweetened peanut, syrupy and smooth, but I do not: from the peanut butter I want the taste of roasted nuts and salt, heavy on the tongue with oil. I save the dulcet notes for the jam, thick and bright with a summer's sweetness from a time when sweet meant juice on the chin, and not a tank truck filled with corn extract. The important part is the juggle: getting this just right with that, so that there is flavor and play.

But I have run out of jelly. I have bananas, but that is another story.

Two: I canceled the cable.

January 30 2005, 11:43 AM Making Ready

The squash is cooling on the marble. It is soft and sweet and peeling away from the skin from roasting so long. It still steams a little, and fills the house with a creamy, golden peppery smell. I have learned: I will save the tips of my fingers this time, and wait until it is merely warm before I go after it with a spoon.

Sitting on the fridge is a bowl with the beginnings of bread in. This is easy: 1/2 cup good wheat flour, 1/2 cup briskly warm water. Cup the palm tightly, and cover the bottom of the hollow of the hand with yeast, and then cast the yeast in. Mix with a spoon until uniform, and then give it one hundred brisk stirrings. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, and set to a warm place.

Something fell out of the tinfoil from the squash in the hot oven. It drilled down and hit the baking stone, setting up into a mound of carbon as big as a big cookie, and three times as tall. The house smells of that, too. I will need to clean the stone again.

January 30 2005, 06:54 PM Ready Made

I keep forgetting how bread responds to time. The extra hours for the sponge, and the stolen minutes for the long risings in the bowl and on the board, the quick quarter hour naps for the dough in between major stages. The best minutes of all are those extra minutes the dough spends in the oven, turning more golden with each and smelling somehow better than the last. The bread has been cooling for a little while now, but it is still warm, and goes very well with some comfortably low-rent Brie and watered glass of white.

The muffins are done.