Pork Is the Life

Last night’s asparagus soup was my best ever – it’s Lee Bailey’s, actually, but I prefer three tiny red-skinned potatoes to the one diced russet he asks for, and I upped the amount of asparagus in the stock. Perfect with the wheaty olive bread from the cute lesbian teenagers stand at the Farmers’ Market, fresh mozz from the high-strung FM cheese guys, and carrot cake afterward. (Joy’s, the new new one, not the crap, yuppie old new one, but kind of white-ish and inferior to Sylvia Lovegren’s autentico ’70s recipe from “Fashionable Foods,” which has, I think, brown sugar in it. I used a lot of ginger and put sour cream in the cream-cheese icing, because Spike is an alien and doesn’t like sweetened cream cheese.)

So no pork belly at Polyface at the market today, but they did offer me pork jowl, the suggestion of which sent all the men behind the iced-down tables into orgasmic raptured. I heard the words, “pork candy” in there somewhere so – sold! And at five bucks for a pound and half, how could I refuse?

The charmingly grateful hydroponic lettuce lady (”The Asian greens mix? Thank you! Here, yes; thank you. That’s five dollars, thank you!”) had a lovely mix of very young bitter greens – mustard, some chards and collards. I figured I could do the pork belly-and-scallop thing I had been scheming about just as well with the jowl cut, and the greens would be a nice side.

The interwebs led me to a citrusy rendition, and I mashed up the braising recipe with one for a more wintry roasted version, cutting off a lot of the fat, rubbing the jowl meat with a mix of dried thyme, coarse salt and honey, and putting it on a bed of eighth-ed lemon pieces, halved kumquats, skinny peeled carrot pieces and onion. I poured chicken stock over the whole thing and stuck it in the oven at 200, oh, 3 or so hours ago, turning every 30 mins. It smells fabulous.

I am also trying to render the fat I took off, but the stovetop method requires constant monitoring. I put it in the oven, so we’ll see – I hope it won’t need more water in there. Some of the pieces are kind of … leathery. Oh well, the lard would just be a laignappe, but I wouldn’t mind cooking up the rest of those little potatoes in it, if it works. Got big, gorgeous scallops, too, at the fishmonger’s, three each, so let’s hope I don’t overcook them. I’ll make a kumquat gastrique to top the scallops and make a sauce form whatever’s left in the pork-jowl pan. James Boyce via Mark Bittman, by the way, has a recipe for skate with tamarind gastrique that has my head spinning – I can’t WAIT for skate season.

Wow; you’ve all been so nice. Thanks to my friends, I’ve made up my mind not to go to Cannes this year. Dr. Artman with his be-limed temptations and Lindermann with his Stuff White People like were particularly convincing.

I started a long post about ruining my knee and going back to the accordion lessons and dancing like an oaf in front of the teevee in order to keep up with Patricia Moreno, Fiend With Silky Hips, but then I lost the router or something and it all died. So I gave up. For, like, two months.

And now I got nothing.

Midway through all the Buffys, so that’s fun. Saw a couple August Wilson plays; saw Shen Wei Dance Theater, which was not “shit,” as Spike stated. Heard Denise Mina, one of my favorite authors, speak at Borders; she gave me a hug and signed a book for my mom. Going to L.A. in May. Uh, can’t stay away from icanhascheezburger. Takin’ next week off, so there’ll be more.

Back when I nail “Second Hungarian Rhapsody,” my absolute favorite thing to play.

Then Again, Maybe I Won’t

I can’t talk to Spike about this because he’s got his own problems, and it’s hard to articulate in the first place, meaning if I can’t explain the issue, he can’t help me. It’s one of those, “I should have such problems” things, so I don’t want to sound like a complete ass complaining – well, except that for about half of my small but select pool of faithful readers, it’s a problem they, too, understand – but … I’m completely torn about whether or not to go to Cannes.

I realized just recently that I’ve been going about applying for accreditation all wrong. Instead of sending my daily online blog (they scorn the Interwebs) and the ONE wrap-up that ran, grudgingly, in print, I should have sent the many Indies & Arties blurbs, directors interviews and straight reviews of the films I saw there that name-checked the Festival.

Their criteria are completely berserk and impossible – very French – so I don’t expect to be bumped up a color. (In fact, I suspect it’s nigh-impossible to go to Pink if you’ve been deemed a Blue.) But I could easily sklathe my way in again on the strength of all those interviews, reviews, etc. And Spike got our old studio back at Cote de Mer apartments. And the pizza is so good. And all our friends are there. And it’s Cannes.

OK, make the chart:
1) Lame but not uninteresting moored yacht parties, pizza, good coffee, merguez sandwiches by the sea, Lovey and Duckie, the insider glamour of it all, ignoring Leo Di Caprio and freaking out over Song Kang-ho. It’s Cannes.

2) People. Glenn and Claire, John and Sandi, Tony, Phillip, the lovely Frenchwoman whose chic mule slid off her foot and caromed into Spike’s ankle while she cried, charmingly, “C’est ne pas un attaque!”

3) Mailbox 1578, dedicated to the one and only me. I wonder who’s kissing her now.

4) “Raoul!”

5) These amazing movies I would not otherwise see. The heart-filling rush when the actors and director of a film you knew nothing about but has swept you away rise from their cordoned-off seats and the whole world seems to come together as one great, gabbling, multi-headed, multi-tongued, movie-mad entity and you are there, clapping and crying a little from the sheer joy that, “Fred Claus” aside, this magic is being made in languages you don’t speak and people are crazy, crazy to say something new.

OK, cons:

1) Almost two weeks in which to write my poor neglected book with Spike not mooching about the house.

2) Gotta pay my own way.

3) What am I doing? Is it really useful for my work? I mean, I make it so. But the paper would be fine without me getting giddy over Israeli/Romanian/Korean/yes-even-American directors every other week. Am I kind of a, well, not-good person to use the paper as an excuse to take off to the South of France for 12 days?

4) People. Those rotten snubbing snobs who take to the hierarchal system like ducks to water. Do I have to spend another year being denied entrance to popular movies by the imperious guards, cooling my heels in the burning sun along with Spike and Phillip freaking Lopate and the guy from Rotten Tomatoes, while total unworthies with friends in high place swan by?

5) My book, my book, my book.

Help me. I only have a couple of weeks to apply and they’re pestering me. Plus, I have a really cute resort-wear wardrobe.

Slaughterhouse Me

I mentioned earlier in this blog that I can slow the rate of my pulse using mental power, but there’s more: I am actually trying to slow the rate of my blogging down to Thundercheese pace. He might actually be the world’s most inattentive blogger. But I’m throwing in the towel, because, well, there’s been pork fat, and accordion-playing, and quandaries, and Don McLean.

The last shall be first: One night some weeks ago, I awoke with the vague knowledge that some outside entity had woken me. A sound. Sounds. Music. Now, this is a neighborhood in which it is not unexpected to hear the boom-thump of hip-hop coming from some outsized, tricked-up SUV as Kid A slows down to pick up/buy drugs from/chat briefly with Kid B. But this…this was not hip-hop. It was a tune, a sort of insinuating, whiny, sexually frustrated, sentimental tune – soft rock. I sprung from my bed to see what was the matter, and immediately identified it – it was so freaking LOUD – as coming from the front of the house. So I peeked out the living-room curtain, and parked sorta between our house and Troy’s next door was a white compact, lights off, license place impossible to grok, thanks to the crap lighting on 18th St. (hello, county department of public works?) absolutely blasting “Vincent.” You may know it better as (watch it: This stuff gets into your head fast and tenuously) “Starry, Starry Night.”
Was someone taunting me? What were they driving at? I gaped at the car, Don McLean’s horrible insinuating, whiny, sexually frustrated, sentimental voice pounding in my ears, praying for it to end, end, end. Finally the song did end, and the next one on the tape started up! The car’s lights came on, it paused for a while, then pulled away. Not a single neighbor came out to chase the miscreants away. It was like a horror movie.

OK, as to the pig fat, I scrapped the idea of making Anthony Bourdain’s pate de campagne and decided to start on the bunny slope with his rillettes. Porky, easy, delicious, or so he claimed. On Super Bowl Sunday, I bought two pounds of pork belly, my new obsession, a couple of meaty shanks (mistake! Get the pork shoulder with minimal fat as directed) at the farmers’ market, and stopped by Whole Foods, where the nice butcher lady gave me a heavy pound of fresh pork fat for free gratis. I decided against parsley for the bouquet garni because, eh, parsley, plus I’d have to walk all the way across the store again and it was insane.

Cut the belly into biggish pieces (or dice it, like I did; I was talking to my mom, ironically about how make rillettes, and got distracted) and put it in a big enamel pot (not the underseasoned cast iron Dutch oven I used) with a couple of cups of water. Spend a frustrating, finger-nicking half-hour pulling the thick pigskin off the shanks (or get the shoulder or butt like you were supposed to), and dump them in the water. Add the bouquet garni, boil and simmer for six hours, stirring every so often so it doesn’t stick. But it will, because after six hours that hot spot is reacting like whoa.

After checking the Web for advice, dice the pork fat, put it in a cast-iron pan with a little water and pop it in the oven on very low heat, checking it in a panic every 20 minutes because if you burn the fat it is ruined, ruined. Three or so hours later, you should have delicious cracklings swimming in a sea of clear, gorgeous melted lard and your kitchen will smell like a slaughterhouse. Decant lard from cracklings, strain, strain again and chill.

At the end of hour five, dump in the belly-shoulder mix a half a bottle of Calvados. Burn away almost all the liquid. Cool, shred the meat, pick out the whole peppercorns you insouciantly threw in the pot, you minx.

Put the now-snowy lard in the microwave to melt. Jam the meat into ramekins hard, banging down the pots to get the air out. Find the meat is way too oily – hence no shanks – microwave it like crazy and strain out the excess fat. Jam, etc, again. Put a thyme sprig on top and pour a layer of lard over. Don’t eat it with Spike’s homemade baguettes that night while watching the Patriots lose (ha!) because it needs to marry up for three days in the fridge. It will be bland and Spike will eat all the Buffalo-style wings you made instead, claiming the rillettes delicious with chicken bones sticking out between his teeth.

I haven’t tasted it yet. But it looks very professional. I’m going to start covering everything in thyme-embedded homemade-rendered lard.

Next: duck confit! I’m an animal-fat superstar!

Death of Many Salesmen

So it’s my birthday, if you really want to know. I had a mostly lovely day at work — everyone was really nice about my aging process — but I am so STEAMED over this work thing. It’s stupid, and totally corporate, and I told myself when I started this job I wouldn’t get sucked into crap like this, but grr…

OK, so, on Monday we get a message from the HR dude: The sales drones will be holding their weeklong “boot camp” in the “bistro.” The bistro is, ok, it’s us in a big open-plan space lined with offices (boss’, mine, etc) around two walls, then abutting the open space is a half-wall, behind which is the kitchen (two refrigerators, a microwave, fancy-ass hot-drink machine, soda (free) and snack machines, sink, etc. Beyond that narrow space is said “bistro” — foosball table, ping-pong, TV, sofas, chairs, potted plants, long diner-like peninsula, lots of hang-out space, all the way to the windows. The water-cooler is in there, too; that’s pretty much the only thing we use in there, but ocassionally, a pretty fierce on-and-off ping-pong tournament starts up.

We’re, like, grr, because we can’t help the fact that we were relocated a couple of years ago from the 11th floor to the 10th, heretofore known as the bistro floor — the bistro and its kitchen are for the use of all wpni employees (four floors of us). That’s where the parties and presentations are held. We had asked HR to give us at least a heads-up when an event is planned in the bistro, because everyone but us is on a 9-to-5 schedule and by the time they troop down for restorative beers and the like, we are on monster deadline and don’t want to listen to their carousing, at least not if we can’t snag a beer or two and park it in our file cabinets. Valentine’s Day, Halloween, some idiot’s going-away party — all are occasions for the bistro to be crowded with noisemaking fools disrupting our deadline sprint. A heads-up, that’s all we asked. (I, actually, asked.)

So when we come in on Monday it’s a fait accompli — they’re shoving chairs aside and setting up long communal tables and prepping megaphones whatever for their rah-rah sales boot camp and we recieve this email asking that we stay out of their business. OK. Except it’s a SALES BOOT CAMP, and there is much laughter, clapping and repeating of motivational slogans, not 20 feet from where our poor benighted staffers are attempting to do interviews and write.

Day One sucked. The sales idiots had put up a huge barrier between our area and the kitchen (!) with a sign saying the kitchen and bistro were off-limits, They were loud and obnoxious, and we fumed at each other over their apparent lack of interest in our need to make a fucking deadline. In response to the initial email, I emailed back, Uh, where are we supposed to store our lunches, since the kitchen is off-limits. The head of security called me and said we could of course use the kitchen, just not the bistro, and to ignore their assholity. (Though not in so many words.) Fine, but for the record, I had sardines in my lunchbox, and was more than prepared to let them fester in the newsroom and see how everyone felt about our being banned fromt he refrigerators around, oh, 2 p.m. I’m South Beaching, by the way. Hence the sardines.

The next day, they were again loud and obnoxious. Looks were exchanged. At their lunchtime (free pizza for all), they all came out into the kitchen and spilled over into OUR area and proceeded to gossip and chat and cell phone at the loudest possible decibels. I went over to a particularly loud group and asked if they could possibly keep it down as we were on deadline. They ignored me. Then, Vicky came stomping out of her office (closest to the action) and said “FUCKING-A!!” Then went over to these selfsame people and asked again for them to STFU because we are working. They ignored her. She was doing her live chat and needed. To. Concentrate. God!

So this morning the big sign was pushed back to where the bistro begins. Jenn and Vicky had built a chair-fort between the idiots’ space and their own, and posted a sign on the wall asking them to please keep it down and take their cell phone calls upstairs. I go to the water-cooler, which they have at least moved into that hallway, to fill up my thermos for tea, and some blond bitch ostentatiously comes over to lip-read the sign.

“Is this, like, to keep us out?” she asks, gesturing at the chair-fort.

“No,” I say, swirling my tea. “This is whatever y’all moved the chairs to.”

“Huh.” And off she goes.

So I go to tell this to the people closest to the noise, and while I’m standing there, two blond BITCHES actually cart the fucking Bistro and Kitchen Are Closed sign to block off the kitchen. Then they take the chair fort apart, complaining that “It’s a fire hazard” like you would care if Jenn and Vicky had to climb over a damn chair to get to the stairwell. Today, they were at their finest–larfing, screaming, clapping and munching up a storm at lunchtime, which happened to coincide with my lunchtime, which involved heating up my sad chicken breast and vegetables in the microwave, with dirty/suspicious looks in attendance, as if I want your crap order-in meal.

A couple of people went to the purported head of this event and asked for a little consideration. He said he’d “try.” We sent a mass email to our boss, who also said he’d try but that probably nothing would be done. This is RIDICULOUS. We got right in these jerks’ faces and asked them to please keep it down as we were working and they wouldn’t even turn around. And the loveliest thought? Two more days of this shit. Can anyone advise?

Can We Come Out Now?

Oy — they’re over, yeah? How were my holidays? Thanks for asking! I didn’t blog much, actually, since I 1) took a week off (of work, which meant I was supposed to be writing something else) 2) prepped for my parents’ visit 2) hosted my parents 4) took off for the cabin for New Year’s weekend and 5) have been at work ever since (and in between all times mentioned, as everyone took that week off except for stupid me).

So, here’s the tree:

And here’s me under it:

And here’s a picture of the beautiful Vietnamese water puppet my mom brought back for me. Water puppets are really spectacular; she also brought me a lot of information on them. Now I can put on my own water puppet show, but it will have to be a one-character play. I shall call it “Tranh.” Ha! Little Robert Morse joke, there. Don’t be alarmed.

There are no pictures of the folks because, as you can see, I have the shakes. I cannot hold the digital camera still to save my life, so the pictures of my parents came out disgracefully blurry.

Then we went to the mountains of Western Maryland, past the aptly named Frostburg, near the aptly named Blue Knob, for a five-day respite. We set out late and by the time we hit Cumberland it was getting dark and began to rain. Then it began to storm — the rain was bucketing, the weeny little roads were unlit, every other driver near me (and they were all behind me) knew the roads and drove impatiently while I silently begged someone to pass me and not take off hell-for-leather so I could at least see by their taillights. Visibility was zero coming into Garrett County. By the time we reached the aptly named Accident, I was so grateful to not be going 80, I can’t tell you. I drove with geriatric slowness, as the signs requested, up and down the twisty, tricksy resort roads (we were right near the ski resort Wisp, actually a good bit closer than where we usually stay) and finally dead-ended at a cheerily Christmas-lit wooden mansion where we stopped, determined to sleep there whether it was “our” house or not.

This is what greeted us:

A crackling fire, a comfy couch, a lit Christmas tree strewn with goodies, a flat-screen DVD loaded up with video games, board games and mah jongg on the boil. It was worth every harrowing moment. Which isn’t to say there weren’t harrowing moments to come. There was, for example, a Zombie!!! attack:

That’s Dr. Artman and The Other Doctor contemplating how best to save the town from zombies.

There was also mah jongg. Chen chen!:

There were cocktails:

That’s Dr. Artman’s infamous fluourescent light-up stirrer. I did not drink cocktails, for what it’s worth.

I had champagne and Gloom:

That’s the morning after it snowed. The Other Doc made a people-scape of snowmen on the upper deck (one of the upper decks), and Spike made rabbit ears out of the scarf I knit for him before marching down to the lake with Dr. A:

It snowed again on New Year’s Eve, and we left the next morning. Our car got stuck going up what I hadn’t realized coming in was a rather treacherous hill (down, in; up, out), so the Docs helped us out. I spent the morning shoving a Nissan up an icy hill and then trudging for 15 minutes up the snowy hill in my knit minidress and Uggs to meet Spike where I was sure he had stopped, once out on the gravelly road, to wait for me, repeating, “I am a man of destiny, I will not die.” (Spike laughed at that, bless him), drove down out of the mountains into increasingly sunny, warm weather, ice streaks on the car, my limbs now shaking from the effort, and I went directly into work. I still can’t raise my arms.

I can’t tell you how satisfying the first season of “Beverly Hills 90210″ is after that, lovely as it was.

Next up: My stupid goddamn birthday. At least Project Runway is back. I am a man of destiny …

Newscasters Are (Mean) People, Too

Hahaha! So wrong!

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like — AUGH!

Ah, Christmas. The smell of a 40-year-old white plastic tree rendered golden with significant flood damage! The secretive pleasure of eating Dr. Artman’s Snowballs in bed after a long evening of watching Melrose Place, Season 3 episodes. (That sounds dirtier than it is — or maybe just as dirty as it is, actually.) Lovingly writing out Christmas cards only to find out that half of them can’t be sent because either the fuckers moved or I don’t know someone’s SO’s last name or they had a stupid baby and I have to acknowledge it on the card or I ran out of Xmas stamps (twice). The joy of spending fully half my wrapping time patting around under my crossed knees because I just HAD the scissors they can’t have DISAPPEARED. Drawing vulture after vulture after vulture for Spike’s present. (Don’t ask.) Looking like a heifer in my holiday gowns after too many rich daubes and lamb-shank stews. Shooing the cats away from eating the tree/the ribbon/the New Yorker/the outdoor swags (which I’m totally gonna get to putting up; I swear)/the poisonberry wreath.

What we need, you see, is to gay things up a little. Mary Christmas!

Yes, everyone needs a he-she ringmaster in sequined tails with lipstick, an embonpoint and a riding crop for their holiday decor. This horrifying thing was brought to you by Dr. Artman and the Other Doctor. Let me put it in context. At the National Arboretum’s Orchid Show, Dr. A stated that “I’ve had sex with men, but this is actually the gayest thing I’ve ever done.” Upon presentation of the He-She Ringmaster? “This is gayer than the orchid show.”

You want to see it with purple lights? But of course:

It’s not as if our tree was very heterosexual before this abomination made its debut. No, we haven’t finished decorating it. We sort of feel as if the H-S R is pah-lenty glitter enow.

Does This Tomato Make Me Look Fat?

So the Hunger in America project released new findings and, it seems, new categories for exactly how many and – this is key – how much Americans are going without. It’s scary and eye-opening, but the part that really rocked me back on my heels was the designation “food insecure.”
Actually, there are subsets within food insecurity: “food insecure without hunger” (where is my next meal going to come from? Oh, here it is) and “food insecure with hunger” which sounds like “hungry” to me. Nevertheless, in the spirit of ousting these chilly designations, I propose a new set of hunger guidelines.

• Must undo pants button
• No thanks, but it looks delicious
• Don’t mind if I do
• I don’t do Chilean sea bass and other unsubstainable species
• You gonna eat the rest of that?
• Very hungry, but anorexic
• Hungry

The Horror, the Horror

This

fills me with dread.

I know I don’t work in a normal office, and I know that most cubicle farms are like this one, and I remind myself to be grateful for that every time this ad is on. But there is something so peculiarly horrible about these ads (there’s a series of them, each horrific, featuring the same sub-”The Office” cast of characters), so contemptuous toward the working world. It’s the way the blond woman pushes her puppet hands up in the air, I think, and the sad, balding fat guy’s day is enlivened by the soothing strains of Oldies radio he was too repressed to dance to even when he could still see his feet, and the way the black chick gets her groove on to “It’s Raining Men,” which really should be sad, balding fat guy’s song, if you know what I mean. And that boss who looks like the Burgermeister of Sombretown! Those poor people in their gray break room feasting on microwaved snacks, buoyed up by corporate crumbs like shitty AM radio, which are as pearls to these drones — how can this not be a comment on cubicle culture and soul-draining toil?