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Happy Turkey Day from the6149: Hopefully you all get a healthy dose of this today...
Thanksgiving is my fave holiday. No gifts, no funny fat man in a red suit, no bullshit. Just good friends, good family and good food.
Here's a little soundtrack for this post:
I'm always thankful; I don't take anything for granted...at least I try not to. I am very thankful for my wife and our exciting life. I am thankful for our health. I am very thankful for our families and our friends. Those are the 24/7/365 things I am thankful for.
Here are a few other things:
- Open G tuning (that one was for you, Keef)
- The Blues (specifically Charley Patton, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, R.L. Burnside, Otis Rush & Junior Wells)
- Neil Young's ever busy muse
- Hunter S. Thompson's wisdom
- The state of New Hampshire: ("Live Free or Die" is not only the coolest sate motto, they are words to live by)
And...of course I am very thankful for everyone that takes time out of the day to read what I post here at the6149.
Now get off the interweb and go get a second helping of turkey and all the fixin's.
Cheers.Judd
Same & Different: Business Class, Beers & Beans - Wheels down in London
Just go into London yesterday. Lots to say, but here are some quick hits:
My flight was twenty-three hours. Very, very long. Eight hours to Bangkok was long, but the next twelve to London felt like season finally episode of The Amazing Race. Fortunately I flew business class (a gift, not a habit). Being able to stretch out in to a horizontal position on a plane (alas, for sleeping) was insanely good.
I also had access to the "snack kitchen". I ate about twelve fresh fruit plates while everyone was sleeping. Lots of fruit: good for the hydration, bad for the digestive track.
I also had access to the booze cabinet. We almost had to divert to Russia for more Vodka. No amount of double-Bloody Mary's can ease the dull drone of the X-Man prequel, "Wolverine". One sip for each Hugh Jackman muscle flex. Two sips for every mutant love scene.
Flying business class is dangerous for the heavy economy class traveler. You get fast-tracked through customs, you get access to the club lounges and all free drinks and finger food you can consume and your bags, decorated with a "priority" tag, pop of of the carousel first. Of course, you pay for this...but the justification wheels start spinning as soon as you realise your airplane food actually resembles something you would order from a proper restaurant.
We flew @britishairways, and the service was excellent. The club lounges were great as well...except for the coffee. The lounges have beer on tap, spas, business centres, post flight shower facilities, wireless internet...but the coffee tastes like brewed plane tire treads.
It is a mystery to me as to why in club lounges at airports, at hotels and at sales meeting the worst coffee is served. There is no replacement for a well trained barista armed with high quality beans and an unapologetic grinder. No topshelf espresso makers and drip-drip-blah coffee makers can act as a substitute.
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London is massive. Coming from Sydney, I feel like virgin Pagan ritual conventional...and I like it! I forgot how much is out there. There is Abundance every where. I haven't seen this many brands and shops and people since I left the States back in 2005.
This place is a marketing and advertising dreamworld. It is consumerism run amok and no one is bothering to get out of the way. We went to Harrod's today. The wife had a full-on shopping seizure. She froze up and started quaking in her high-heels. Two security guards came running over like they were part of the A-Team and shoved some smelling salts up under her nose and snapped her out of it. They had obviously been well trained for emergency situations like this.
Check out this cool interactive store guide of this London shopping institution: Harrod's Store Guide
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We stopped in Whole Foods yesterday. I hadn't been there since we left Florida. This was my favourite grocery store by far. You pay for what you get and what you get is good. Two bits of "good" I loved and missed about Whole Foods: the prepared foods & salad bar and the beer selection.
As I walked around the store I checked in on my old friends.
The salad bar looked glorious in all of its sneeze-guard protected splendour. There was fresh from the can tuna with no mayo mixed in. And beans...beans as far as I could see (without turning my head). I used to get a big container with garbanzos, black beans, kidney beans, tuna and corn...and eat the hell out of that. My digestive tracked shuttered at the sight of that bean-a-palooza.
The beer selection did not let me down either. Yes, I am sad to leave behind Cooper's and James Squire back in Australia...oh, the time I invested in building those relationships...but, now i am able to hook up with some of my old time used-to-be's. The wife wished she had some of those Harrod's smelling salts to get me out of the good-beer tractor beam i was caught in.
My fridge has been stocked with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sam Adams & Negra Modelo and Model Especial. Same great taste, same messy result.
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More stuff from the streets of London to come to this blog soon...
The Sunday Sauce: Keeping the Family Tradition on the Front Burner
When I was a kid, my Old Man would spend each Sunday morning making a fresh batch of homemade marinara sauce. He comes from a classic Italian-American household and is third generation (my mom is third on her side as well). In his family (and then mine) his Mom cooked the traditional homemade sauce...the kind that needed all day to cook...and his dad made "the quick sauce". The marinara sauce is a bit simpler in preparation, ingredients and cooking time...but in no way less tasty. His dad made it. His dad's dad made it and so on and so on. How many people have eaten this stuff? How much pasta has been bathed in this over the years? How many times have I tried to duplicate the taste? Many...and I'm still trying.
Growing up, we would always have sauce on Sunday. The best times were during football season in the winter (I grew up in New Hampshire). We had a roaring fire and would set up some TV trays in the living room and feast on our trad Sunday pasta meal...which was not complete without garlic bread, salad and some of my Old Man's (again, legendary) homemade meatballs. We'd watch the end of the 4:00pm game and then we'd get seconds and watch 60 minutes. These were great family times...and some damn good food.
The Old Man's sauce really was the stuff of legend. I used to have friends who would ask to come watch football at my place on Sunday just to be there in hopes on being asked to stay for dinner. I had one very good friend (still is) who used to tell his parents he was going to church on Sunday night. He would go there and pick up a flyer or some type of evidence to prove that he was there. Instead of staying, he would show up at our house. My Old Man would have a plate of macaroni ready to go in the microwave. My buddy would walk in without knocking, go straight to the microwave and turn it, come in to a TV tray already set for him, eat and then leave in time to be "home from church". This happened like clockwork.
I used to take some to college whenever I would go home and back. My buddies would sneak over in the middle of the night, take the hidden key to the house and try and steal a container of frozen sauce to cook up back at their house. Sometimes they would sneak in at night and heat up some sauce (even when I wasn't there) and then accidentally wake up my Old Man. He'd come down (this is the wee hours of the morning) and help them out and feed them. To this day they all try and get the recipe from him. Nothing doing on that front.
My wife loves it too. She has begged me to get on with the tradition. Since we moved to Australia I have been making it more and more. It is not an every Sunday thing as of yet, but when we get the craving, I make the sauce. We usually share it with friends, too. Recently I made a Sunday batch. I took some snaps of the process. Here is a pictorial jaunt through the sauce making process. Soon enough some super-geek will enable smells and tastes to be uploaded to the internetas well. Until then, let your imagination do the wandering.
I am also including the playlist that I shuffle through when making The Sauce. It is full of blues, soul, country and roots music that was recommended/sold to me by The Kingfish, owner of Mojo Music in Sydney. The Kingfish's real name is Nev, hence the title of my iTunes playlist: "Nev's Nuggets".
(download)You need good music to cook food good. This list always stirs the pot. The Kingfish says that blues songs with food in the title are always good un's. An album like Andre William's "Rib Tips & Pig Snoots" is no exception...The Kingfish loves that one. How many songs with food in the title can you find...? The playlist is sorted by albums (middle column) and has 2,505 songs in it...more than enough for second helpings.
- Posted from Balmain, Australia
