May 08, 2008

Taste of Tennessee...

Eric, being a Man of the World, is off enjoying the pleasures of Scotland with the beauteous Fiona, who is no doubt adding to her Extensive Penguin Collection...

...meanwhile, it struck me that my Straight White Friend is not only a Man of the World, but a Son of the Soil, a man whose tastes (refined though they may be in some areas) are, at their Fundamental Core of Cores, deeply rooted in the earth of Tennessee, the land of his birth...

...it's not easy reconciling the Raw with the Refined, rubberneckers, but Eric seems to do it...he has an amazing facility to elevate the mundane, converting the minutiae of daily life - a simple haircut, grilling a rack of ribs, watching his beloved Tree-Rats - into bejewelled vignettes, Bloggy Nuggets o' Goodness...

...and it occurred to me that Eric might well be the one to approach the humble, everyday fare of the Tennessean with the artistic culinary sensibility of the Japanese...the people for whom eating is not merely an act of absorbing sustenance, but a veritable cultural experience...a thing of extraordinary beauty...

...and so I present to you, gentle rubberneckers, my vision...Eric's take on Asian-American Fusion Cuisine, if you will...melding the Japanese appreciation of the exquisite with the culinary traditions of McMinn County, in a manner unique to the Southern-Fried Samurai...behold the Country Kaiseki, a fourteen-course Alimentary Extravaganza:

Aperitif (Aisu-korudu-biiru)
Budweiser

First appetizer (Chippizuke)
Fritos, Potato chips, Funyuns with Lipton's Onion Dip

Second appetizer (O-daborusu)
Meatballs in Heinz Chili Sauce-Welch’s Grape Jelly gravy
Chile con queso (Velveeta, Ro-Tel tomatoes and chiles) with Doritos
Vienna sausage with toothpick
Deviled egg

Biscuit Dishes (Bisuketto-mono)
Biscuits with cream gravy
Country ham biscuit
Biscuit with honey and sweet cream butter

Side Dishes (Saido-jishu-mono)
Beanie-Weenies, creamed corn, canned peas

Grilled Dishes (Yaki-niku)
Armour hot dogs
Cheeseburgers
Country-style pork ribs

Steamed Dishes (Mushi-mono)
Sweet corn on cob
Butter, salt, pepper

Gelatin Salads (Jiero-mono)
Lime Jell-O salad with pineapple chunks and mini-marshmallows
Ambrosia

Deep-fried Dishes (Age-mono)
Southern-fried chicken
Onion rings
French fries, ketchup

Vinegared Dishes (Binagaa-mono)
Sweet gherkins
Cole slaw
Potato salad

Soup (Kamberu-mono)
Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup

Cornbread (O-konobureddo)
Skillet corn bread

Pickles (Hainzu-mono)
Bread-and-butter pickle slices
Dill spears

Dessert (Mizu-mono)
Apple pie
'Nanner Puddin' (with traditional Nilla Wafer garnish)
Watermelon

All these miniature Works of Art would be washed down with liberal doses of cold Budweiser and Coca Cola Classic. Don't forget the Gas-X and charcoal tablets for afters.

Why go to Japan and pay outrageous prices for traditional kaiseki-ryori when Eric could fix you up right here? I ask you.

Keep Reading»

May 07, 2008

Hmmmm...

...hmmm... there doesn't seem to be anybody home... nothing on but a couple of nite-lights... nobody been 'round here for at least a couple of days... guess that 'splains the bird poop all over the chairs on the back deck... wonder if this key from under the doormat... yeah, i'm in...

...hmmm... doesn't look like they left in a hurry so it must have been a planned thing... that or the missus is a cleanup freak... the type that feels compelled to clean house before the house keeper arrives... she impressed me as neat and clean, but not to that extreme... oh, well... oh, several bottles sitting out on the kitchen table... and a few used glasses... [sniff sniff]... hmmm... scotch, maybe a single malt...

...uh oh... somebody in the next room... [hiding behind the fridge] [peeking out] ... damn, there's a weird guy with a ... wtf? ... a colander on his head... and he's talking to somebody on his cell phone... sombody named betterman? no, bitterman... yelling at him now something about No, I ain't your damn pal so quit saying that...

...he hung up now and is heading off to another room, so i best be outta here while i can get out the back and sneak off into the woods... but i've seen enough here that interests me... be back when the coast is clear...

Keep Reading»

May 05, 2008

Gone!.....

.... well, boys and girls, the time has come..... tomorrow will be spent packing, re-packing, searching, rummaging, doing a bit of laundry, and then packing a little bit more...... and we'll eventually jet off towards The Land of Auld Lang Syne sometime in the afternoon once the bags have finally reached a satisfactory heaviness....

..... and with any luck, we'll be safely tucked away and graciously surrounded by familial charm, goblets groaning with room-temperature Caol Isla, and lots and lots of stories of adventurous relatives...... indeed, we'll be all snug and cozy in a chalet at Craigendarroch by 9AM Eastern Standard Time......

... so with that, gentle rubberneckers, I am off....... and I leave you in the tender hands of the generous gentlemen who agreed to keep my seat warm until I get back.....

.... I hope that you all fare well...... I'll be back around midnight on the 17th......

Keep Reading»

May 04, 2008

Nuts....

..... I harbor a very well-developed dislike for squirrels..... this is no secret, of course, since I have voiced my hatred here on many occasions...... I'm a pretty good watcher of ole Mother Nature, and I have a keen ability to find the beauty in just about any creature.... so you guys are just going to have to trust me when I tell you that squirrels have absolutely zero redeeming qualities...

.... I even read somewhere that Daddy squirrels will sometimes sneak into the nests when the Momma squirrel isn't around and gnaw off the testicles of baby male squirrels to ensure that they have less competition when mating season arrives.... how sick, twisted, and just plain messed up is that??..... it's one thing to just go ahead and kill the infant males (like lions do sometimes) but castrating them and letting them live?.... I'm sorry, but squirrels are just plain evil.....

.... of course, I bring this all up to inform you that our beautiful world is missing one squirrel this morning..... and I, the Great White Hunter, bagged her.....

.... she'd actually been trying my patience for quite a few days.... but now I can tell you that her peanut stealin', birdfeeder robbin' days are over.....

..... see, I had been flirting with the idea of culling her for quite some time, but I was always stymied.... the shotgun was loaded with buckshot and I was too lazy to switch out the rounds..... my .22 magnum was in the gunsafe and I couldn't be bothered to unlock the safe..... blah, blah, etc, etc.... but then as I watched her somersault gleefully with a heisted hazelnut clamped between her teeth, I remembered a gift that Redneck had given me a few years ago - a most excellent scoped Ruger 10/22...... well, boys and girls, once I loaded up the mag and popped it in, it was all over but the crying....

.... in truth, it was all rather anticlimactic.... I eased out the door, racked a round, aimed, squeezed the trigger, and blammo..... she tensed up and vibrated hard for about five seconds, and then bit the proverbial dust & thonked to the ground beneath the birdfeeder..... I stood there a few seconds and waited.... looked around..... birds still chirping, wind still rustling through the leaves..... it was odd..... I mean, it's not like I expected the air to be filled with sirens, wailing women, or the crackle of some hammerhead returning fire, it was just as if nothing had happened at all......

..... which just goes to prove that Mother Nature does not begrudge a man for sniping a pesky squirrel..... in fact, once the deed was done, I think that the blooms on the iris were just that little bit more colorful.....

.... I only wish that I'd still been on the phone with T1G so he could have applauded my marksmanship...

Keep Reading»

May 03, 2008

Gravy...

..... what a day..... my goodness....... I spent the better half of the day cooking spaghetti sauce trans-continentally with T1G via telephone....... hey, I know that it sounds odd, but it all worked out in the end........ mutual spaghetti goodness was achieved across the miles.......... and while well fed, I am pretty sure that 'Jesus wept'...... or perhaps that was 'Juanita'....... you'll have to ask Joe about that....... I was too focused on the Italian Gravy........

..... other than that, well, I have enjoyed a fairly innocuous day....... it has been equally mild, sunny, windy, cloudy, grey, unremarkable, scary, lucid, ecstatic, unknown, dire, excited, and stark at various points during the course of today...

... typical, really..... yes?......

.... what a wild, wild world we live in!.....

Keep Reading»

May 02, 2008

Fruit.....

..... good afternoon, gentle reader..... I hope that you are well....as for me, well, I'm just peachy...... and hey, that reminds me, I'm actually going to have peaches this year.... I'm stoked.....

... last spring I planted a little peach tree at the edge of the patio between two dogwoods..... the lady in the garden section of Lowes said that it would "look nice" with pretty pink blooms each spring.... and being in a rather delicate frame of mind at the time, I imagined that having a tree blossoming in pink set betwixt a bunch of white dogwoods would be just the springtime ticket.... so, as you do, I bought that baby and planted it the same day.... little did I know that peach trees and dogwoods bloom a month apart... (... I know that now, but hey, it's all good..) .... and what's more, I had NO IDEA that it would produce fruit after just one year!.... hot damn, I am excited... that little trooper is only four feet tall and it already has about twenty five little peaches about the size of acorns dotted all over it.....

.... and the grapevine I planted two years ago?..... oh yeah..... for the past two years it has steadily crawled across the railings of the deck near the steps...... I checked it yesterday and it is dripping with tiny little clusters of soon-to-be-grapes..... so I'm going to have peaches AND grapes this summer.... I can hardly wait....

.... I've always wanted to laze on my deck in the shade, find myself suddenly a bit peckish, and simply lean back, pick something off of a vine/tree/bush and slake my appetite in the most slothful way that I possibly could...... and this year, ladies and gentlemen, that hedonistic wish is just about to come true.....

.... anyhoo, speaking of hedonism, I'm off shortly - as in on Tuesday of next week - for my annual trip to Scotland to visit the in-laws at The World's Smallest Hilton.... as such, I shall be out of pocket until mid-month..... yeah, yeah, yeah.... I know that y'all are going to miss me terribly... but hey, I promise to come back with lots of stories about eating fancy sausages, photographing sheep, and sipping delicious adult beverages in the shadow of The Cairngorms... and probably at least one story about rain, fog, wind, etc.....

.... but yeah, since I will be offline, I hope to blackmail, bribe, coax a few bloggers into dropping by to post once in a while...... hell, I'd certainly hate to have you guys bored......

Keep Reading»

April 30, 2008

Itch....

..... for a while I was an avid genealogist..... I was dogged and voracious and searched incessantly....... I spent hours cataloging my ancestors...... I read hundreds of books, scoured countless census records, and eagerly jotted each name, date, and location onto ream upon ream of paper.... and then after a while, I slotted each disembodied name into a 'family tree' database.....

... I suppose that it all began innocently enough..... you wake up one morning, take a sip of coffee and look at your surname and think, "gee, I wonder where I came from."..... and from that moment forward, your search begins...... you find yourself on the phone long-distance with elderly Great Uncles & Aunts.... prying birthdates, marriages, and maiden names from them as they strain to hear your voice over the wires..... over the miles, over the ocean, over the years and years of Time....

... God knows that I irritated most of my living relatives half to death with my persistent questioning.... but at the time, I was completely consumed with putting all of the pieces together..... but now, the bug is gone.... I reached a point - and I am not sure exactly where or when it was - that I stopped.... a point where whatever itch I had was finally scratched..... four years and 10,000 names, and I was done.....

.... 10,000 names, my goodness..... it seems so odd to type that number and actually see it sitting there..... but there it is.....

.... the result of all of this, of course, is that I now find myself in the odd position of being the 'family historian'.... as more and more of the older generation slide off to the hereafter, I seem to be fielding more and more questions from the younger cousins about "where we came from"....

... it's a strange juxtaposition....... one the one hand, I gladly give them whatever information they ask for..... but on the other hand there is a part of me that is greedy with 'what I know'.... stingy with the products of MY searching.... how I found out that 'Hull' was actually "Hohl" two hundred years ago... and how the family fled Germany in 1735.... I somehow feel a strange sense of protection over the history that I have learned...... a weird sense of pride in having pieced together so much on my own through research & toil....

.... but I know that isn't the right way to feel..... I should give - and I do..... after all, their itches are just as itchy as mine was when I was their age..... and now I am The One With The Answers.... I just have a lot more answers now than those old Great Aunts and Uncles had when I asked them 15 years ago.....

... my Mother brought an old photo circa 1910 by the house a few days ago.... it was of my paternal Great Grandfather & Great Grandmother.... she was excited to show it to me as she hadn't seen it before.... I laughed and thanked her....and then proceeded to show her the same photograph neatly tucked away in a bulging binder on the bookshelf.... she was both shocked AND pleased that my old genealogy addiction had been so thorough years ago.....

.... she sat on the couch and I told her my Great Grandmother's maiden name, who her first husband was, that her father was a noted physician, that when she died her hair was long enough to brush the ground as she walked, that she was widowed a second time when her husband in the photo died, and how her youngest son took her in with his family to care for her in her old age, I told her of how her Great Great Grandfather had been killed by the Cherokee, and how his father had landed penniless in Philadelphia.......

.... why do I know all of this? .... other than being an interesting story to tell, what other purpose does it hold?......

.... what was that itch that sprang upon me and drove me to search out name after name, detail after detail all those years ago? .... what was I looking for?..... what did I hope to find?.....

.... I've long since been cured from whatever forced me search out my ancestors.... but for the life of me, I still don't understand it..... we all have ancestors..... and in the end, they were people just like us... just people.... working, living, loving, fighting, failing, yearning, hating, trying, creating, destroying......

.... I wish that I knew what kicked-off that itch...... but even more, I wish that I knew what cured it....

Keep Reading»

by Eric | Permalink |