Eight days ago, I put some cheap port in a 2-liter whisky barrel. I just had a nip from the barrel. The port is darker and more brown than it was a week ago, and the flavor is more complex. I can definitely taste the char and some deeper caramel notes. I’m going to leave it in the barrel a bit longer.
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I just finished You Don’t Die of Love, a collection of short stories by Thomas Thonson. I don’t normally read short stories, but I was intrigued by the book’s cover, which somehow promises a mixture of hope, promise and experience. The book did not disappoint. The book is cleverly constructed with characters that overlap among the stories, which are all about the film industry — for example, the detective who worked on the possible homicide of the main character’s wife in one story, becomes the focus of another when he retires and finds love in a Hollywood alleyway (it’s not what you think). These unpretentious-but-compelling stories are about life and disappointment and hope and experience and grace. The characters are deep and believable, and the way they recur throughout the book creates a sense of recognition that grows as you read the stories. I felt like I really knew these people. I really liked the book, and I recommend it. I received a complimentary copy of this book to review it.
I am constantly amazed by what specialists can make of their data. I shouldn’t be. That’s what specialization is for, after all. But it’s beautiful when it happens. This is from an article about identifying the origins of a ship found under the World Trade Center ruins:
An oak sailboat in New York could have originated anywhere in Europe or North America. Dutch ships originally carried sloops across the Atlantic in the 1600s. Whose side was this sailboat on? Pederson said when they first heard of the find they weren’t sure if they could track the soggy wood - when the team saw the keelson, the upper floor of the hull, the planks looked like white oak. When Blanchette confirmed their suspicions but added that they’d be getting a sample of hickory from the keel, the tree-ring team were relieved. The hickory keel sample was key - “it’s been extinct in Europe for two million years or so,” Pederson said.
So once the team did their own grueling process of slowly drying the timbers, waiting to see if the wood would decay, then sanding the samples, and counting the rings, sometimes as thin as one thousandth of a millimeter, and hoping each sample would provide at least 100 years of rings to make the sample comparable to other chronologies then the scientists got started looking for a match. They used a computer system to compare their samples with chronologies of forests from the New York State’s Hudson Valley and then took a stab at a historical timber chronology they have from Philadelphia, “and that just about nailed it – really good,” said Pederson.
…If the hull was part of the original vessel and not part of a refurbishment, the tree ring data point to a launch date for this shallow-sailing sloop that was sometime after the 1773 winter’s Tea Party in Boston, and likely before the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in the vessel’s hometown. This is a boat that sailed during the American Revolution
The combination of learning, collaboration, hard work and technology that makes these kinds of conclusions possible is awe-inspiring.
Experimental filmmaker George Kuchar, whose no-budget, lo-fi, “plot, schmot” technique became a genre followed by generations of San Francisco art students along with auteurs such as John Waters and Andy Warhol, died of prostate cancer Tuesday with his twin brother by his side. He was 69.
Mr. Kuchar made more than 500 films and videos…. With titles such as “I Was a Teenage Rumpot” (1960), “Hold Me While I’m Naked” (1966), “The Devil’s Cleavage” (1975) and “Insanitorium” (1987), Mr. Kuchar’s films have been labeled campy, avant-garde, underground and simply indescribable. He used friends, relatives and students as actors, hastily constructed props and shot in whatever shabby locations he could find.
I just finished reading Ex-heroes, by Peter Clines. It’s a post-apocalyptic zombie novel set in a world where super heroes are real. The story is told from the point of view of the heroes. The heroes are trying to protect a community of normal humans who have sheltered in the Mount (a film-studio-turned fortress. I think you can guess which one) from hordes of zombies — called Exes, as in ex-humans — in Los Angeles. And then things get worse. Much, much worse. Not all the threats to the heroes and the people of the Mount are zombies, not all of the zombies are what they seem, and worst of all, some of the heroes are ex-heroes.
The normal humans in the story are underdone. In general, they are not really characters, they serve to illustrate the irrationality, fear, and short-sightedness of humans which justifies the roles the heroes have taken on in zombified-LA. This is forgivable because the heroes are so vividly alive. They have complex, believable inner selves and sensible strengths and weaknesses. There’s no kryptonite or ex machina limits on the heroes powers, their weaknesses and strengths are all of a piece. The story is nicely balanced between action and story, with a thrilling clash at the end of the book that is very well paced and well told.
There’s a lot of talk in zombie-circles about whether or not the zombie-genre is played out. In the recent crush of zombie stories (in movies, TV shows, books, etc.), there are very few new plots or mechanisms. Of course, the best zombie stories aren’t about the zombies anyway — they are about the humans. This book adds something to the genre — new ideas, an intriguingly clever new source for zombie-ism, new kinds of characters. But that’s not to say that this book is for zombie-fans only. It tells a good story as well.
I was not surprised to learn that Clines is a television scriptwriter. The book is extremely visual, and shifts across multiple first-person perspectives. Each chapter is written like a scene. In this case, this is a strength. The story is so well-structured that the shifts across time, space and characters are not jarring at all.
I was sad when the book ended, because I wanted to spend more time with these characters. So I was really pleased to learn that there’s a sequel due out soon. You know I’ll be reading it!
I just put 2 bottles of cheap Taylor Port in my Copper Fox Whisky Barrel. I’m hoping to both improve the flavor of the port and flavor the barrel.
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I recently bought a small food processor. I chose the KitchenAid Chef Series 3-cup Food chopper. My full size food processor broke 2 years ago, and I wasn’t going to replace it — but there are just enough times that I want a chopper that I finally broke down and decided to get a small one.
One of the things I wanted it for was to make pesto. I love pesto. I make it throughout the summer, but in September of every year, when my basil plants are at their most lush and flavorful, I make tons of it — some to eat fresh and some to freeze. I won’t lie. Frozen pesto is not as good as fresh pesto — but in the middle of winter, when fresh basil is impossible to come by, frozen pesto tastes like summer. But I needed a food processor. I’m not willing to do that much chopping by hand, and as much as I would love to have a giant mortar and pestle like Julia Child’s, I have no place to store such a thing.
I had to experiment a bit before I figured out the right proportions of the ingredients for my small chopper. It wasn’t quite as simple as cutting my standard recipe in half. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps I don’t measure accurately in small amounts. Perhaps my chopper extracts more moisture from the herbs. I don’t know. What I do know is that this pesto is delicious!
When I make this, I measure the herbs and oil by volume, and everything else by weight. It’s easier when you are dealing with such small amounts to do as much as possible by weight. I give both the volume and weight measurements in the list below.
When I’m making pesto to freeze, I set up everything assembly-line style. I measure the herbs into one bowl and the nuts, cheese, and garlic into a second bowl. I set out pairs of bowls all over the kitchen until I run out of one of the ingredients. I measure the pepper and oil directly into the chopper. To freeze, put each batch of pesto in a small plastic bag (I use the small snack size bags). Squeeze out all the air and seal. It’s important to get all the air out — air is what makes pesto turn brown. Thaw and serve over pasta OR slice a chunk off and use it to finish pork chops — just put it on the chop after the last time you turn it and let it melt.
Mini-Prep Pesto
slightly less than ¼ cup (0.7 ounces) nuts
1 garlic clove, peeled and quartered
¼ cup (coincidentally, also 0.7 ounces) grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup loosely packed fresh herbs
3 ounces (by volume) extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Notes on ingredients:
Put the nuts, garlic and Parmesan cheese in the mini-prep. Pulse several times until the mixture is the texture of small pebbles. Add the herbs, and pulse until they are all chopped fine. Add the olive oil and pulse one more time to combine.
Serve over pasta. I like to cook up about 6-8 ounces of thin spaghetti.
You can find a version of the recipe suitable for printing here.
John P. Robinson and Steven Martin have shown that people who read and/or socialize are happier than people who watch TV:
“TV doesn’t really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does,” says University of Maryland sociologist John P. Robinson, the study co-author and a pioneer in time use studies. “It’s more passive and may provide escape - especially when the news is as depressing as the economy itself. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise.”
This isn’t news. In fact, this study is a few years old. The methods used carefully control for time and causal effects. It’s still not possible to say that TV viewing causes unhappiness — but it’s very suggestive. Of further interest is that people who watch TV are happy with what they watch — so while they are unhappy overall, they say they like the shows they watch. This suggests that TV might be a symptom of unhappiness rather than its cause — or that viewers are not aware that watching TV isn’t satisfying their needs, in part because most of us are unaware of what our needs really are.
Readers, on the other hand are happy. I was particularly pleased to note that it doesn’t matter what you read — newspapers, magazines, light books, serious novels, non-fiction. Now I have an excuse for reading all those zombie novels!
Garden History Girl’s post about Crooked Forests. I was particularly taken with the idea of the abandoned cane forest — I imagine the gardener/craftsman who planted the trees was quite worried about them when World War I interrupted his work. I hate to think of what happened to her or him.
More recent examples of tree-shaping include the work of Pooktre Tree Shapers. Their tree-sculptures — living and harvested — are magnificent.
I finally managed to make jam in less than two hours. This time, I came in at 1 hour and 45 minutes. I’m hoping to get the time down to about an hour, but that will require more practice. Delicious practice.
Last year I made 8 half-pints of peach jam, and I experimented by adding different flavorings to each — bourbon & vanilla (separately and together), red stag whiskey, grand marnier, etc. The one I liked the best was the bourbon & vanilla, so this year I decided to go all in and make a whole batch of it.
And then, I couldn’t find my recipe. I searched all over for it. It’s just … gone. I rustled up another one on the internet, adjusted the flavorings a bit, and came up with this. It’s really good. While I was filling one of the jars, I messed up and got jam everywhere. I didn’t want to bother cleaning it up, so I didn’t process that one and sampled it with ice cream. Wow. It’s in the fridge now, waiting for me to have it on toast in the morning.
I used no-sugar-needed pectin. This stuff is amazing. Standard pectin requires tons of sugar to gel,usually equal in volume to the fruit, which makes the final product too sweet for my tastes. No-sugar-needed pectin can be used with no sugar at all, however I’ve read that sugar-free jam turns dark. Plus, I think some sugar brings out the flavor of the fruit. When I make jam, I usually add a cup of sugar, then start tasting (with a clean spoon each time!), adding more as needed. For me, this jam was about right with 1 cup.
Here’s the recipe. When i made it, I nearly forgot to add the bourbon! It’s so close to the end that I was ready to be done and started racing. I highlighted that step for you with an underline, just in case you have the same trouble.
You can find a version formatted for printing here.
Bourbon-Vanilla Peach Jam (with no-sugar needed pectin)
Yield: 6 half-pints
Ingredients
3.5 pounds, or ¼ peck, peaches or nectarines (to yield about 8 cups of raw, chopped fruit)
¼ cup bottled lemon juice (always bottled!)
½ or 1 whole vanilla bean, scraped and cut into chunks
About 4.5 cups table sugar
No sugar needed pectin
¼ cup bourbon
Directions
Chronicling society’s detritus since 1999.
