Christmas for the Fogies

     It’s about time I got out the Christmas DVDs.  I identify with Clark Griswold in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.”  Like him, I always wanted to do Christmas up big.   At one point we had all the relatives to dinner.  We cooked a turkey according to a complex Italian recipe and bought a ham through the mail from Virginia.   We had to soak the ham to reduce the salt, and then we simmered it in a pot we borrowed from a restaurant.   When the restaurant closed, we acquired the pot, and it’s still in the cellar.  When the ham had been soaked and simmered, we glazed it with brown sugar and baked it in the oven. The ham kept for a long time.   We’d turn the bone into pea soup about the time the crocuses started to bloom.  

      Now we spend Christmas visiting the grandchildren.  It’s great to be around them, but things have changed.  As it so often happens after the onset of fogiedom, much has dropped away.  I’ve learned a thing or two over the years.  With the prediction of a cold snap, I went out to the garage and took the tree out of its bucket of water so it won’t be frozen in, when I want to set it up.  I’ve enlisted outside help getting it into the stand. Annette and I could manage to get it to stand straight, but probably not without cross words. 

     I’ll still watch “Christmas Vacation,” and laugh at the funny parts, but it’s mostly to relive the past.   I’ll decorate the tree to songs that were old when I bought the CDs years ago.  You know, Gene Autry doing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and Bing Crosby crooning“White Christmas.” We just received a Stilton cheese from England and soon we’ll have some friends over, light a fire in the fireplace and pour the port. 

      I was out in the woods yesterday gathering greens to decorate the mantelpiece and windowsills.  I bought poinsettias.  When the house is decorated, we’ll have guests in to see it, but now the lights and greens are mostly for us.  Like everything else, the display is simpler now, but we haven’t let Christmas slip out of our lives.  My motto is one word – persevere.

Neptune Oyster

My father-in-law, Arthur Sirrico lived as a boy in Boston’s North End.  Some men visited his apartment and demanded money to get an associate out of prison.  His mother gave it to them.  When the child asked why, she said she had to.  Later the family moved to Plymouth where Arthur could work outdoors.  He managed the gardens on the Hornblower estate, and later became Park Superintendent for the town.  He owned a garden center on South Street near the playground that bears his name. 

When I visited the North End as a young adult, I remember groups of men in tailored top coats and pearl gray fedoras who we liked to think were Mafia. If they were, they had their own lawyers and didn’t have to extort bail money from the locals.

When I taught history in high school I had a class on World War II.  My students were all boys, and if a girl signed up for the course she felt uncomfortable and transferred out.  I used to collect first person accounts of the war.  I would bookmark lurid passages, and once a week I would read them to the class. I called this gory story time.  One student said, “Oh Mr. Talbot, that’s gross! Tell us some more.” 

Gory story time was so popular; I tried it in a U. S. History class.  It didn’t go over well, and one girl in particular complained it made her sick, so I abandoned the practice.  I took the kids on a field trip to the North End.  They found the neighborhood more interesting than the Paul Revere’s House and the Old North Church.  I happened to be walking next to the girl who had complained about my stories, and I noticed a pig’s head on a plate in the window of a butcher shop. I didn’t mean to tease her; I just thought it was interesting and I said, “look.”  She turned her head and fainted.  I caught her under the arms before she hit the pavement.  The North End was a foreign place.   

  

I hadn’t been back for years, but a short while ago Annette and I made the trip.  Gone are the butcher shops with skinned rabbits hanging in the windows with their paws left furred so shoppers could be sure they weren’t cats.  Gone are the lambs hanging on hooks, and I saw no pigs’ heads.  The buildings looked different.  Bricks had been power washed, and buildings reinforced and renovated.   I heard no Italian spoken and the school children were a mix of ethnicities.  Some of the stores that used to cater to the tastes of the Italian population are gone, and those that remain have a gourmet shop quality. 

We had coffee in a cafe and there were two men at a nearby table who looked as though they might have been Italian.  They were contractors, but not the kind who were going to whack cousin Sal who is skimming off the top and has no respect; they were going over building specks and talking about subs and portions of the job which would cost hundreds of thousands.

There are more restaurants than there used to be, and we headed for Neptune Oyster at 63 Salem Street.  There was such a long line waiting for the restaurant to open for lunch we worried that we wouldn’t get seats, and, indeed, we were the last to be admitted to the small space.  I missed the European feel of the old North End, but we gain and we lose as time goes by.  When I tasted an appetizer of yellowfin “coyne” crostini, I didn’t pine for veal cutlets accompanied by pasta and red sauce. The raw tuna was heaped on a toasted slice of fresh Iggy’s bread that had been spread with avocado.  The chunks glowed like jewels and were the best raw fish I ever ate anywhere.  Another best was a tentacle of Spanish octopus with a Marcona almond Romanesco sauce, and Basque pepper. I’ve eaten octopus on Mykonos bathed in sunshine with a view of the Aegean Sea, but this was better.  

Fried clams are everywhere, but those at Neptune Oyster were freshly opened and expertly fried, making them a rare experience. We asked the waiter about the tartar sauce, and he said it was made with mayonnaise.  Perhaps so, but the Neptune Oyster version was lighter and full of flavor.  It was light years away from the clam stand version you get in the little paper cup, and if the restaurant comes out with a cookbook I’ll buy it for that one recipe.

The Neptune Johnnycake was sweetened with honey butter and topped with a pile of smoked trout topped with caviar.  You got sweet corn meal smoky fish and salty sturgeon roe.  It was lovely. 

Back in the times I’ve been reminiscing about you couldn’t have found food like this in the North End or anywhere in the whole city.  A short distance away from the Restaurant the trees on the Rose Kennedy Greenway were coming into leaf.  It is certainly an improvement over the dirty gloom that lay under the old Central Artery.  I’m not a fan of the tunnel that’s under your feet, but as I said, time changes and you gain and you lose.

When There Were Letters

     One thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do in this blog is rant, so I won’t.  However, I think we fogies may be happy in our hearts that there are things we were born early enough not to have missed.  I read today that the student mailboxes will be closed forever at my Alma Mata, Bates College.  It seems that due to email , Facebook , and texting, letters are a thing of the past. 

     When I was at Bates, there were three students to a box.  Mine was assigned to Rushforth, Swarthchild , and Talbot.  David  Rushforth  and I ended up in Plymouth.   Actually Caroline Tabor preceded me alphabetically in the class of ’62, but Bates was very straight laced, and I guess they thought coed sharing of mailboxes was indecent. 

     When the mail was in, a crowd gathered around the mail boxes with people dialing the three digit combinations and the sound of the little doors being slammed in frustration if they didn’t get any.  Letters were for the most part hand written.  There was no spell check.  Our teachers told us if we didn’t know how to spell a word we should look it up.  Dictionaries didn’t give your their best guess of what you were trying to write, so you did the best you could. 

     There was something about a letter that has been lost.  There was the paper, the handwriting, the ink (or pencil), and even the spelling.  The effort it took to write a letter was part of the pleasure you got from receiving it.  Some one cared enough to write it, seal it, put a stamp on it, and mail it.  You touched what they touched.  You could picture the person at his or her desk or kitchen table writing to you. 

     It may be that the slowness of the job let us think more carefully about what we said, although I won’t swear to it.  When I was a teenager, my mother advised me, “Never say anything foolish to a girl, and if you do, don’t put it in writing.

      Letters could be kept and often were.  I love to read John Adams’ letters to Abigail and her letters to him.  I enjoyed Harry Truman’s letters to Bess.  People reveal themselves in letters.  One of the great losses to my family history was the time the letters of William Talbot, who was a sea captain and a Mississippi River pilot, were put out into the garage where the dampness turned the old paper to powder. The one that escaped described New Orleans during reconstruction.  Captain William was sympathetic with the suffering of the people, but he said, “Bostonians, with their love of liberty, would never stand for it.”  I quoted that to a modern day New Orleans steamboat captain, and he was not amused

     There were the letters of Michelangelo and the love letters of Abelard and Eloise, but the best book of letters I ever read was by E. B. White.  I think if he wrote a shopping list, I’d want to read it. He was a prolific correspondent.  Usually when I’m reading a long book, I’m happy to come to the end, but I was sorry to close that one.  One of these days I may start again.   

     I don’t know what future historians will do.  Will people someday read The Emails of Hillary Clinton? Perhaps it will be The tweets of Kim Kardashian.  I’m glad to have lived in the age of letter writing.  It’s nice to get an email, but it was better to get a letter.

The Engine

I think I can.  I think I can. I think I can.

I think I can. I think I can.

I

think

I 

…

can.

What am I, nuts?

A Healthy Diet

     Pythagoras, the ancient Greek geometer who is known for a theorem you learned in high school, prohibited his followers from eating beans.  It seems the proofs one needed to explain the sides of a triangle required a lot more thought than pronouncements about diet.   It’s still true.  

     The list of things I’ve been told never to eat includes all fat, anything that contains cholesterol such as eggs and meat, wheat flour because it has gluten, and any vegetable that has been sprayed, chemically fertilized, or genetically altered. Salt and sugar are bad for me, as is diet soda.  As a matter of fact all artificial ingredients are considered potentially toxic.   Tomatoes were once thought to be poisonous, but that was before my time. 

     Some foods were thought to have an almost magical benefit to my health.  In my early childhood it was milk – “nature’s most nearly perfect food."  We’re not talking skim milk either; rich whole milk was the best.  “You never outgrow your need for milk,” I learned when I watched “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.”  Later in my life it was thought milk should be avoided, but now it’s back so long as it’s not from cows that have been treated with bovine growth hormones.

     Yogurt became the ultimate health food.  Red meat was also good for you, especially if you were a man who did physical labor or played football.  I remember eating gummy oatmeal in the college cafeteria on the morning of game day, and seeing the football team show up to be fortified by a hearty steak breakfast.  We lesser mortals got to enjoy the smell. 

     Then the superfood became brown rice.  It was part of a macrobiotic diet in which you balanced the yin and yang of your food.  It was claimed this prevented all manner of ills.  Cancer, it was written, was unknown among followers of the regimen.  Remember oat bran?  You could buy it in a jar and sprinkle it on anything you ate.  Dunkin Donuts would sell you a softball-size oat bran muffin.  Now the headliner is kale – preferably organic kale. Drink a kale smoothie, and you can leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Alcohol, which was once abhorred by folks who considered their bodies to be temples, is now good for you in moderation. 

     Like Pythagoras, the people who give you diet advice get it off the top of their heads.  Sure there are scientific studies, but most of them have small populations or are otherwise flawed.  I believe in eating a wide variety of foods and not too much of any one thing. Do this, come from sturdy ancestors, and be aware of highway speed limits, and you’ll probably be fine.  There are, however, certain forest mushrooms it’s better to avoid.

Bondir

     There is something to be said for a restaurant where you order your favorite dish every time you go, and it always tastes the same.  It’s as comforting as the pillow upon which you lay your head, but Bondir isn’t that sort of place. Oh it’s comfortable enough, and the staff is welcoming, and there are no snooty waiters peering down their noses to see which fork you choose.  We entered the premises at 279A Broadway in Cambridge on a chilly evening and were offered a seat by a warming fire.  We sipped Spanish cava and enjoyed the homelike atmosphere. 

     But as soon as they brought the bread basket, what we thought of as reality began to twist and bend.   There was “sea bread” in which black squid ink ranged across the slice like the negative of a photo of the Milky Way.  The bread also contained shrimp and seaweed.  I think the shrimp may have been dried and ground to a powder. The bread had the heartiness of wheat and a briny flavor that reminds you of the scent of the ocean when you walk in the froth of waves in the cool of a summer sunrise.  I ate it in fascination tinged with disbelief.

     I’ve often read about foods like this.  Restaurant critics in the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century knew exactly how a dish was to be prepared, and a chef who didn’t send it out in in the classic fashion suffered the eloquence of their disdain.  Now critics, not wishing to seem like the concert-goers who rioted during the first performance of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” are content to list ingredients with an adjective thrown in here and there. I, on the other hand, know that you, dear reader, want me to tell you whether or not you’d like it.

     My answer is that depends on your ability to shed preconceptions and be open to new experiences.  When a chef leaves the safety of the orthodox there is a danger of his creating an abomination, and the only safeguard from this is his talent. Brendan Joy, the head chef of Bondir is a man in whose hands the diner is safe.  Once you realize that you will have entered an alternate reality, you relax and enjoy the ride. There are delightful surprises. 

     You don’t have to ponder the menu; they bring it to you, and that’s what you’re going to get.  Of course you have a little wiggle room.   One of our party was a vegetarian, and she requested a substitute for the Beef Rib, with a confit of radicchio, bordelaise, and pickled kumquats.  She got fluke instead, and they left the crisp curls of Parma ham off her portion of winter squash tortellini with black walnut. 

     The staff believes wholeheartedly in the excellence of what they offer.  We were brought a large bowl containing celery root and shreds of black trumpet mushrooms sitting in a warm broth made from those ingredients.  When Erin, our server, saw me lift the bowl to my lips and drink the exquisite liquid, she beamed. 

Chef Joy sent out a little extra consisting of a wild rice chip with Umami powder and black cherry puree.  You will recognize the consistency of the chip if you eat Cheez Doodles.  There are many crisp snack chips in Asian cuisine that are similar to it, but despite the wild rice base, it was still a chip.  The powder ramped up the savory flavor, and the sweet fruit astonished the palate.  Joy is not without audacity.

     The prix fixe menu is $68 per person for five courses.  They are small, but if you don’t make a face and push some of them aside, they make a satisfying meal. For $35 more, i opted for an extra of risotto with black truffle.  I was excited at the prospect.  The risotto was the best I ever had, but I reached for the flavor of the truffle and didn’t find it.  Annette, who sampled it, thought it was fine, but a truffle should knock your socks off, and this one didn’t. 

     That was my only complaint.  With the bottle of the cava and three other glasses of wine plus my risotto, the bill was a budget-buster, but considering the excellence of the ingredients and the amount of skilled labor that went into their preparation, the dinner was a bargain. I advise you to skip bacon and egg breakfasts at your favorite café, forgo hamburger lunches, and even a steak dinner kicked off with a martini. Save your money, push all your chips onto the table, and take a chance.  I’m betting you won’t be disappointed, but if you’re the timid soul, stick with IHOP.

     We finished with what the menu lists as a Red Ida Fritelle.  I’ll call it apple fritters with white chocolate, caramel sauce, and a topping of brown bread ice cream.  It was perfect and sent us out into the December night a happy group.

Autumn

Green leaves that were pristine in spring

Are torn to tatters

But the late September day,

Nearly resembling,

The welcome warmth of May,

Seems all that matters,

Though should I stoop to pluck

An autumn aster

I’d wish I had the luck

To rise a little faster,

And roses that were once like girls

New and tightly furled

Now resemble, truth to tell,

Old women with their face lifts gone to hell.

Old Age

The glue

That holds my

Soul to body fails.

It dries and cracks

To strew

My pillow nightly.

I’m doing all I can,

But nails and tacks

Are painful,

And duct tape

Is unsightly.

Fogy Fashion News

I had occasion recently to attend a function where the attendees were required to dress up.  This was no problem for me.  I have two suits, one for winter and one for summer, and I plucked from my closet the summer one.  I wore my best white shirt and a nifty pink bow tie with flowers on it.  Annette had bought a simple dress of an attractive color and a pretty sweater to go over it.  I thought we looked nice. 

When I arrived at the shindig, I was as flabbergasted, as fogies often are, at how things had changed while I wasn’t looking.  I noticed the featured element of today’s style seems to be skin.  Total nudity will never be fashionable until someone discovers a way to make money out of it, but revealing garments are the rage.

 I suspect today’s dress shoppers are influenced by “Dancing with the Stars,” and the red carpet at the Academy Awards.  The trouble is the attendees at these televised events have bodies they labor upon daily with diet and exercise.  If these methods fail, there are procedures collectively known as ”work.” Limbs, necks, tummies, and breasts are shapely, firm, and upholstered with flawless skin. 

This is not the case with some of the women present at the do to which I was in attendance.  They seemed to have chosen garments that the reminded them of professional beauties without considering what the revealing elements were liable to reveal. Skirts that my out-of-date vocabulary might term micro-mini fluttered provocatively above legs that had long been absent from the treadmill.  One damsel seemed to have been recently jumped upon by a large dog as there were red scratch marks up and down her thighs.

Many of the gowns seemed to have been acquired at considerable expense, but they were cheap compared to those worn by the celebrities their purchasers wished to emulate. There was no designer to match dress style to body type.  No seamstress made alterations so the fabric lay in attractive folds over the flesh it was meant to conceal. One woman bulged alarmingly inside a diaphanous dress that must have been extremely difficult to zip up. It was cut low, revealing almost all of her enormous  breasts, the right one of which was decorated with a rose tattoo, which may have been provocative twenty years ago.

When I got home, I regarded myself naked in the bathroom mirror. I was glad my trousers had been held up by suspenders instead of a belt which would have pinched them in at the waist.  I was glad my shirt was not of the tapered European sort. My jacket covered my torso pretty well, but had been worn unbuttoned lest it strain at the midriff.  Despite my relative satisfaction, I was possessed by a resolve that lasted long enough for me to make do with black coffee and toast for breakfast

Oral Hygiene

Having achieved fogiedom, I've lived a good many of my years without the benefit of an oral hygienist, but times, as they seem to keep doing, have changed.  After a session of scraping and digging below the gums, the woman informed me from behind her surgical mask that I had bad oral hygiene.  I was about to tell her she had no business calling me a dirty old man, when I reflected that my teeth, like the rest of me, aren't what they used to be.  I asked what I must do.

“Do you have a timer on your tooth brush?” she inquired.  I didn't even know there were such things, but I pretended I hadn't sprung for the option.  She told me I should brush my teeth for at least two minutes; I should floss for a minute and then rinse with mouthwash for one minute.     My rebellion was quelled, and I gave it a try, but not without doing the math.

I now brush for two minutes.  I don’t need a timer on my toothbrush, any more than I need a telephone that can find the nearest pizzeria, but I have a watch.  I floss for another minute and rinse for a minute.  I figure I spend another minute getting things out of the cabinet and putting them back.  Annette likes it if I clean the sink. 

So I spend five minutes twice a day.  That makes seventy minutes a week.  Now with fifty-two weeks a year that makes 3640 minutes a year or 61 hours.  Allowing for eight hours of sleep, I dedicate the waking moments of 3.81 days per year cleaning my teeth. 

All right, I've exaggerated a little bit. I multitask and put away the toothbrush, floss and Listerine bottle while I’m sloshing the mouthwash around , and on some mornings  I make the excuse that I haven’t gotten anything between my teeth since I flossed the previous night, so I skip that chore.  So let’s forget the 81% of the fourth day and round it off to three days.  It’s still a lot of the time I've got left before what Saul Bellow called “the inevitable tragedy of the fifth act.”  

I’m reasonably healthy so If I give myself an optimistic ten more years, that’s thirty days.  Do I really want to spend a month at the bathroom sink? So far I've knuckled under, but I’m thinking it over.  I didn't rebel much in my youth.  In the fifties I had a brown leather jacket, not a black one, but it isn't too late to misspend my old age.

  

Walking at the supermarket.

It was too cold for the salt to melt the ice on the roads so even in slow motion I slewed on the curves and slid a little at the stop signs, but the day of the storm I didn’t get out at all.  In this season the pathway for my walk is the supermarket.  I estimate seven times around to be a mile.  This is not the transcendental saunter into Nature idealized by Thoreau, but neither is it a gym. 

The supermarket is better in a number of ways, the first being you get to use it for free.  The smells aren’t as sublime as the autumn woods or the summer beach, but the deli department, the fish counter, and the bakery are better than the stink of a jock on an adjacent treadmill.  As for comradery, I’m greeted by a friendly deli man, the checkout ladies, and the fellow who stocks the shelves. 

I’m not as easily lost in thought as I early on a summer morning am at the beach. In the supermarket I have to watch for carts emerging from aisles, oblivious shoppers pondering labels, and slowpokes of various ages, but it’s safer than crossing the street.   Visually, there’s nothing like sunlight filtering through forest leaves or the flight of a tern with a sand eel in its beak, but supermarket colors are bright and varied, and the displays change from week to week. 

I like being among foodstuffs, even those I don’t buy.  I pass the cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli and remember childhood suppers on winter evenings after sledding.   I don’t want to go back to Table Talk Pies either, but somehow I’m glad they’re still there.  I check prices as I go by, and if I see solid pack white tuna at 10 for $10, I stock up. I do my shopping when my walk is done, rounding the store one final time. Being almost a daily shopper, I don’t usually have more than I can take to the express checkout, but over the winter I pay for the use of the heat and light and the wear of my shoes on the supermarket floor. 

My walk isn’t as soul-healing as one of Thoreau’s but it gives me a change of scene, raises my heartrate for the prescribed amount of time, and fills the pantry too.  I don’t get nailed at a crosswalk by a skidding car or slip and break an aging hip. We fogies deal with winter as best we can.

Grill 58

Grill 58 at 284 Monponsett Street in Halifax is a restaurant I’d never have found if it weren't for word of mouth.  It’s set in a strip mall of the sort you’d pass without a sideways glance if you weren't in the know.  I had recommendations from Frank who works at the garage where I get my car fixed, and from Annette’s aunt Valerie, who knits sweaters for our grandchildren. The praise was so effusive Annette and I ventured into the countryside to see what the excitement was about.

Where some cafes have jukeboxes, Grill 58 provides a tableside television into which you’re invited to feed coins. I was disposed to make snide comments about the poor man’s dinner and a movie, forgetting that in the privacy of my home I've been known to sup before the flickering screen.   I suppose the invention is useful for families in which the children haven’t learned restaurant manners and need an electronic drug to prevent them from running amok betwixt the tables.  There were no children when I was there. and none of the TVs was on.

You are also invited to play Lotto, but all electronic amenities faded from mind when the waiter served my fried scallops, which turned out to be absolutely the most outstanding delicacy I've ever eaten from a plastic basket. They were, incredibly fresh, tender, sweet, and perfectly fried.  Annette got the same scallops breaded, buttered, and served broiled with mashed potatoes. As we ate, we began planning what we’d get on our next visit. 

My scallops came with fried onion rings.  This side dish can be wretched when mishandled, but these rings were well-nigh perfect.  There were also french fries, which I was going to rate as ordinary, but on a second taste I noticed they had a nice potato flavor and were lightly fried so they weren't greasy.  Neither were they crisped with the sweet coating that has become just about ubiquitous.  My daughter tells me it’s scientifically developed so the combination of fat, sugar, and salt will deaden the messages sent to your brain which tell it you’re full.  

On the second visit, Annette and I split an order of cheeseburger sliders.  I warn you these are so juicy they squirt when you bite into them.  You get a choice of cheeses. We chose cheddar, and got the real thing, not processed American cheese.  They came with tomatoes, lettuce, and more of those great onion rings.  The buns were much better than the standard hamburger rolls and they were grill toasted to a crisp buttery finish.  We ordered the burgers medium rare, and mine was slightly pink inside.  I give Grill 58 high marks for this.  Often when a wait person asks you how you want a burger cooked, it comes to you brown and dry, no matter what you say. 

Grill 58’s fish chowder had a silky mouth-feel that was rich with cream, not pasty with thickener.  The fish was fresh and perfectly done.  There were bits of quahog in the chowder. (Be warned if you’re allergic to shellfish.)  I think they took their clam chowder and put in generous pieces of delicate cod.  I give it top marks for restaurant chowder. I was beginning to see a pattern in which everything you order gets a little tweak that makes it better than expected.  With the fish it’s perfect freshness.

We weren’t really hungry when it was time for dessert, but we split an order of gingerbread.   The generous portion was the extra in this order.  It was moist, slightly chewy, dark with molasses, and spicy with ginger and clove.  The whipped cream was our first disappointment. It was the aerosol kind that melts into a thin white liquid on the plate.  I wish they’d whip their own.  The gingerbread also came with a small scoop of ice cream

Once again we left contemplating another visit. On that occasion my fried clams were fresh-tasting and not at all greasy.  The lunch basket didn't have a mountain of them, but the quantity was all a person my age ought to cram into his antiquated digestive system, and it was a good deal for $9.95.  The clams came with the same onion rings and fries.  

Annette’s chicken supreme was tender and juicy.  Everything I've sampled at Grill 58 has been carefully cooked.  I remembered how many tough slabs of boneless chicken breast I've eaten forlorn cafes. Annette complained that the supreme sauce lacked the flecks of tarragon she enjoys when she orders the dish at the Mile Post in Duxbury, but it was a lovely gravy that tasted of chicken. 

Annette remarked that, at lunchtime, the grill is filled with old folks.  It’s not that we didn't fit in with the crowd, but we were reminded of our status as we looked around. Fogies go out for lunch.  They tend to have early bedtimes and some of them don’t like to drive home in the dark. They like good food at reasonable prices and pass the word when they find it. 

I haven’t dined at Grill 58 in the evening, which means there are things on the regular menu I haven’t tried.  I hear the pizza is good, and I expect the steaks are is as delectable as the sliders.  I haven’t tested the bar.  Of the things I ate, the fried scallops were the most outstanding, but I’m ready to recommend that you begin your own exploration.

November Song

Was there ever a bard who failed to remember

The song of the soaring lark

And penned an ode to November

With its growing cold and dark?

And as the year began to fizzle

Who scorned the buds of May

To sing of the gloomy drizzle

And praise the shortening day?

But I who romped ‘neath April’s sky

Trudge out when the warmth’s unseasonable,

To walk the world ere the year must die,

And stoutly resolve to be reasonable.

I look for beauty in somber hues

And scuff the fallen leaves.

I take my song from a stalwart muse

And shun the one who grieves.

Kindle

Out of the gray mist of my fogyish mind emerges something I once read. These things influence you and cumulatively make you the person you become, but when they pop into consciousness, only the point – the part that made the difference in your development – remains.  It was about some explorers – anthropologists maybe –taking up residence in a primitive culture. I can remember neither the name of the visitors nor that of the people they studied.

 The natives had become used to marvels.  These foreigners bounced about in Jeeps and even landed in small planes.  It all became as humdrum to the villagers as it is to us today.  Then the wizards installed a pipe to bring water from a distant spring into the middle of the village, and the locals gaped in awe.  Carrying water had been hard and necessary work, and presto, water was made to appear right where it was needed. 

The mysterious strangers had at last accomplished a miracle that meant something.  Up to that time it was as though they’d been sawing ladies in half and putting them back together again – amusing, but not exactly important.  Now that the backbreaking labor of hauling water had been made to vanish through the magic of plumbing, there was new respect for the visitors.

Naturally I got this information from a printed page.  The reason that I thought of it was I have acquired a Kindle.  I was going to tell you I’m the proud owner of a Kindle, but clichés don’t always say what you want them to.  I’m not proud.  I've been resisting Kindle ownership on ethical grounds. 

I’m a lover of used books.  I sell them every summer at the Plymouth Antiquarian Fair.  I love the fact that books have lives that extend from owner to owner and I’m proud to be part of the system of passing them on.  This year we didn’t get as many donations as we have in the past.  There are many possible reasons, but it was suggested that people are buying their books on Kindle and don’t have to clear their shelves. 

I have a nightmare fantasy of some Orwellian dictatorship in which the Ministry of Truth gains control of the providers of e-books.  There can’t be that many of them.  There doesn’t need to be an orgy of book burning like there was in Nazi Germany.  Some night a signal reaches out and books are altered or disappear.  I saw my new Kindle quietly turn itself on and upgrade.  It was eerie.   

Where are the original copies of the Gospels?  The answer is they no longer exist.  For centuries when the old editions were gnawed by rats or riddled with worms, monks laboriously copied them by hand and protected them in libraries.  Our oldest versions are in Greek, which was not the language of Jesus and his friends. The work of translation went on and on.  Parchment and paper carried the Word.  Now it is possible to fear that form of the preservation of literature is about to end.  Our heritage may dwell in the cloud.

I have to admit my Kindle is a nifty little thing.  It’s portable and can hold a lot of books.  I used to have a recurring dream that I was walking through my house and discovered a door I hadn’t noticed before.  I opened it and found myself in a  library crammed with books.  Now I can hold such a library on my Kindle, and if they are old books and out of copyright, I can download them for free. My Kindle is like the trickle of water in the primitive village, and I’m impressed in spite of myself.

The Kindle has a clear screen with crisp print that’s easy to read.  If my eyes begin to fail I can increase the size of the type.  The device has a nice feel to it.  It’s solid but not too heavy, and the back has a satiny finish that’s pleasant to touch.  It almost makes up for the tactile feeling of real books that I’ve learned to love.  I don’t want to fall in love with my Kindle, but I may.

Fogies are the natural enemies of the newfangled. It is for us to treasure the old ways and preserve them if we can.  It is also for us to move into smaller quarters and let our possessions, including our books pass into the care of others.  I see myself in a room in a nursing home rereading Moby Dick on my Kindle.  Then I will fade into the Great Elsewhere and leave the world to the young.  Maybe it will be all right.

Port Bistro

I was excited about the opening of Port Bistro when I learned it is the sister restaurant to Sintra in Braintree. The hospitality and the food were worth the trip, but now I have only to drive to Kingston where Jenkins has taken over the space that housed La Paloma at 14 Main Street near KFC and the Purple Building. http://www.portbistrokingston.com/

I was first impressed by the wine list, and when I remarked upon it, I was introduced to Melani St. Pierre, who put in great deal of work selecting wines for the restaurant and is proud of the result.  Her title is Wine Director; she says sommelier is a masculine term. No matter your wine expertise or lack of same, your experience at Port Bistro will be enhanced if you place wine selection in her hands.

Served with a square of polenta, the long island duckling was tender, juicy, and unctuous without being greasy. The spiced orange glaze was a little sweet for my taste, but not so much as to spoil the total experience. To go with it, Ms St. Pierre recommended Bedell Merlot from North Fork, Long Island, NY. That‘s certainly a terroir I’m not familiar with, and the wine reached heights to which I didn’t think the variety capable. I decided then and there this Wine Director has a great deal to teach. I see the bar at Port Bistro is convivial with winebibbers, and I suspect that the place is becoming a destination for those who appreciate wine.

When visiting Port Bistro on a weeknight, I often choose a half portion of pasta.  I like the baked rigatoni served with chorizo sauce, roasted peppers, melted fresh mozzarella and topped with crisp basil-scented crumbs. It’s a treat for $11, and I spend the savings on wine. On a recent visit I selected a half order of braised beef short rib cannelloni. The meat was removed from the bone and served with a béchamel sauce enhanced with porcini mushrooms, tomato confit, and a demi-glace with truffles. With it I enjoyed a 2012 Castello Di Nieve pino nero. This is a Spanish pinot noir and an outstanding example of the variety, which can sometimes be a little thin.  It was graced with velvety tannin that elegantly balanced the sprightliness of the grape. 

Annette had baked haddock, which was perfectly fresh and moist from vigilant cooking. “This is good fish,” she exclaimed, “This is as good as I would make!”  (Having learned the art from her mother, Annette is famous in our family for her baked haddock.)

On that evening she and I split a salad of arugula elegantly dressed with lemon and extra-virgin olive oil and garnished with shavings of parmesan cheese.  The greens were fresh with the characteristic hint of bitterness.  I get so many bad salads in restaurants, it was a delight to have one so thoughtfully conceived and carefully made.  

We finished up with crème brulee, and I had a piece of chocolate cake with a rich molten center and a scoop of coffee ice cream.  It was more food then we require on a Wednesday night, and next time we hope to manage a little restraint.

Port Bistro is a rising star upon the area’s restaurant scene. I look forward to further exploration of the menu, and just contemplating the wine list makes my future seem bright.

Casablanca

Much blood has been spilt,

but I have the letters of transit.

They are in perfect order

and actually quite beautiful –

fine paper, crisp print, legible handwriting.

Neither high officials nor brutish border guards

dare question them.

Possessed of incredible privilege,

I trudge the desert alone.

Soylent

I just got the latest New Yorker and read “The End of Food” by Lizzie Widdicombe.    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/12/140512fa_fact_widdicombe?currentPage=all It tells of the invention by a Californian named Rob Rhinehart of Soylent, which is a food substitute. Like most of his friends, Rhinehart had been living on McDonald’s dollar meals and five-dollar pizzas from Little Caesars. He and his friends thought eating food was expensive and an interruption of their work. 

He is quoted as saying, “You need amino acids and lipids, not milk itself. You need carbohydrates, not bread. He said fruits and vegetables provide essential vitamins and minerals, but they’re mostly water. He decided that nutrients – the things you need from food – could be reduced to a powder which could be dissolved in water and drunk.  For him the problem was solved.  He claims that for the past year and a half he’s been living almost exclusively on Soylent. Widdicombe reports that he looks healthy. 

Soylent is nerd food and has gained a following among computer engineers and other bright young workers.  Rhinehart claims that his discovery will eliminate the need for agriculture, which he says is an inefficient use of resources.  Of course some agricultural products are used in the production of Soylent, but Rhinehart dreams of a time when farming will be made obsolete by Soylent-producing algae that would turn out the product using only sunlight and water.

This is the opposite of the Whole Foods philosophy.  Instead of removing chemicals from food, you remove the food and ingest chemicals. If you protest that you can’t live without rocky road ice cream you can have it.  Rhinehart calls this recreational eating, which he condones and occasionally indulges in. 

As a person who has found good food one of the blessings of life, I’m somewhat appalled, and yet I’m not outraged at the idea. I lunched today on a ham salad roll from a supermarket deli.  The roll was sweet and cottony, and the main flavor of the ham was salt which remains on my palate as I type. I was able to get it down with the copious lubrication of cheap mayonnaise – sugar, salt, and fat. I’m embarrassed at this confession, but I was tired from my morning chores and didn't feel like rustling up a better meal.  Rhinehart in his dollar meal days was a fellow sufferer.  Considering the number of Americans who subsist mainly on fast food, he may have invented a godsend.

But I continue to seek out new foodstuffs, and am trying to tempt the Foodie Pilgrim into undertaking with me an excursion to Boston to explore the bizarre foods of Chinatown. I was there a short while ago and sampled a dish of tripe and tofu at the Great Taste Bakery & Restaurant. 

http://www.bostongreattastebakery.com/  These are two foods I've long striven to learn to like.  I had been making progress with tofu, but tripe had defeated my attempts to achieve appreciation – until then. Perhaps my self-congratulation at my new ability skewed my judgment as to how good it actually was, but it sure wasn't bad.  If I've mastered tripe, can the conquest of duck feet be far behind?

A History of Chowder

Robert Cox is a robust man who looks more like a lumberjack than a scholar, but his wit, assortment of degrees, and ornamented prose belie first impressions.  His recent lecture at Pilgrim Hall was full of information and humor, and its topic was chowder.  Having heard it, I bought The History of Chowder; Four Centuries of a New England Meal, which he co-authored with Jacob Walker.

Both my grandmothers made chowder.  They used salt pork, milk, potatoes, fish or clams, and served it with crackers.  They seasoned it with pepper and sometimes floated a pat of butter on top.  My mother made it the same way, and I’d come in wet and cold from sledding and tuck into a steaming bowl that spoke to me of family and home. Like all New Englanders, I thought this chowder had been passed down from time immemorial, and I couldn't imagine eating it any other way. 

As I grew to manhood, I learned the world is not as innocent as my mother’s kitchen. In Rhode Island they leave out the milk, and in New York they add tomatoes! But these were traveler’s tales from beyond the outskirts of civilization. Now my eyes are opened. The History of Chowder is packed with information that takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the past.  The authors write: “This most comfortable of comfort foods carries a subtle aftertaste of international conflict, of conquest and enslavement, of the blood and tears that made Europe imperial and shaped the modern world.”

Now I find Rhode Island chowder is the oldest version made today.  It was born aboard fishing boats and was built from ingredients at hand.  The ocean teemed with fish.  Salt pork kept well in barrels and was a staple of seafaring life.  So were crackers in the form of hard tack.  Onions would survive on board if kept in a dry place.  You cooked them in pork fat, added a layer of fish and a layer of ship’s biscuit and kept alternating the ingredients in the pot.  Fresh water was scarce on shipboard so they only used a little, and they had no milk. In the days when chowder came to be, potatoes were not popular in New England.

This hearty pottage was cooked by men for men, but chowder came ashore, and women civilized it.  When I make stock from fish bones and freeze it so a cod filet from the fish market will make quick and flavorful chowder, I’m tinkering with a dish that has been tinkered with from the time Europeans reached these waters and these shores.

I often read about food, but this book taught me things I didn’t know about local history.  It seems pigs were agents of colonialism and had almost as much to do with the displacement of the native people as the diseases harbored by the newcomers.  Pigs are easily transported and pretty nearly raise themselves.  They can be released into the wild and live off the land. The Pilgrims fenced their fields, but the Indians didn't so the invading swine devastated native crops. Pigs also rooted in the clam flats that were mainstays of Indian sustenance.  The white man salted pork and packed it away, and it became a basic ingredient of chowder.  

I enjoyed the appendix of chowder recipes that starts with one for diet chowder from the seventies that made my blood run cold. It’s made with skim milk, onion flakes, parsley flakes, and either butter flavoring or a teaspoon of oleo. How far we've descended from the time when hearty chowders were built and devoured on the ever-moving sea. I liked the reproductions of recipe cards, but I have to say most of the images in the book are badly reproduced and a lot of them are just plain lame. Never mind, A History of Chowder is a short, but fascinating treatise on local history centered around one of our most iconic regional dishes.  After you read it, you’ll never look on a bowl of chowder the same way again. 

Maxims

“Do what you love; the money will follow.”  There have always been starving artists. “Whatever doesn't kill you makes you strong.” Unless it weakens you – ask any fogy about old age.  “Crime doesn't pay.” Some people never feel guilty and never get caught.  But there’s one maxim no logician has ever been able to refute.  “It is what it is.”

Veal Chops

Since I’m a frugal Yankee, my gym is Shaw’s Supermarket.  I’ve gotten to know the staff so I have the same camaraderie I’d get in a gym I had to pay for.  I go early when the aisles are free of shoppers, and I walk briskly seven times around, which I estimate to be a mile.  It’s just as good as a treadmill. When I’ve finished the seventh lap, I get a cart and go around again.

Being there early, I find bargains.  There’s a spot at the end of the meat counter where they put the stuff that didn’t sell, and the other day I found two veal chops that had been discounted deeply. They started at $7.00 each, but this isn’t Whole Foods, and they languished. They were marked down to $5.00 – still no takers.  Now they had manager’s special stickers deducting $3:00 from the lowest marked price so the $7.00 chops were $2.00 each.  How could I resist?

We pan-broiled the chops in a cast iron skillet, the kind my grandmother called a spider.  Then Annette made a sauce using pan drippings deglazed with wine and Cognac. She thickened it with heavy cream.  

We had the chops for lunch accompanied by asparagus and a lovely Rosé D’Anjou. When I thought how much this luncheon would cost in a fine restaurant, I felt smug.