Maggie's Farm

We barely made it out of Yankeeland in a blizzard last week (thanks to our fine drive service with 4 WD Lexi limos), and barely made it home last night in another snowstorm (thanks, fine driver).

I will post some of my travelogue pics and fun info from the only Caribbean island and the only elite boutique hotel (35 rooms) there that Mrs. BD likes (no computers, no WiFi, no TV, no cell service, no pool, no lifeguards, no clocks, no A/C, no windows - all open to the tropical breeze - no phones, no salespeople, no elevators because all the totally-private and jungle-surrounded little villas are one-floor, the best diving and snorkeling in the New World - and you can leave all of your valuables on the beach - wallet, watch, cameras, etc all day without any concern, for hours) when I get organized. 

In fact, this pic is a mid-1700s French sugar cane plantation manager's house, now embedded in jungle a 45-minute jungle hike from one of the resort's two little private beaches. Thanks to the mountainous volcanic terrain (unlike most of the flat coral-based Lesser Antilles), St. Lucia has a rain forest habitat but it happily has mostly sunny days with occasional spitting light showers which you ignore.

We're having 30 friends over here at Maggie's Farm HQ for a casual wild game dinner tomorrow night. Perfect for a 10 degree (F) winter night. I'll have all three fireplaces burning.

Three of us guys now do the cooking for these events, and lucky are the invitees.

Hor's doevres: Slices of rare charcoal-grilled wild venison filet mignon and slices of rare Canada goose breast, en croute, with a dab of horseradish.

Entrees: One hunting pal is making his favorite venison curry with rice. My Louisiana-born and bred hunting buddy is making wild duck gumbo. I am making wild duck breast with dried cherry sauce, with cheese grits. Or maybe a warm duck breast salad. Can't decide.

Somebody offered to bring a big salad, and somebody else graciously offered to bring home-made desserts. I supply the beer, and everybody will bring a bottle or three of red wine.

I'll provide pretty good cigars too, for them what wants 'em. In my experience, women never complain about guys and cigars when men do the cooking and party planning. We'll have to set up a few extra tables in the living room to do this, because this ain't no palace (but not a trailer either). The persnickety Mrs. BD just hates it when a plate of gumbo or a tankard of Pinot Noir gets spilled on her furniture. 

Everybody likes pancakes, especially with a side of bacon, sausage, and/or fried eggs.

Readers know that I like to throw a handful of frozen cranberries into the batter, and that I am particular about Maple Syrup - Grade B, not Grade A.

I also like to make cornmeal pancakes (as in photo). I tend to overweight the cornmeal/flour ratio, and I like to throw some canned corn or frozen corn into the batter. Good stuff.

Kids love it. They will grow strong, healthy, average or above-average, and attractive on this feed.

By the way, have you ever used molasses on pancakes? It's delicious, especially on cornmeal pancakes.

A re-post -

Gourmet pizza nowadays often comes without tomatoes and with all sorts of other toppings, but it was the basic  tomato-mozzarella mix that made pizza so popular, beginning in the 1950s, in the US. It was made for beer.

That basic format relied on the importation of the tomato - originally a yellow fruit, the "pomi d'oro,"  from Mexico to Europe in the 1500s. Cortez brought more than gold to Europe.

From its Greek origins to Chicago's Pizza Uno, the story of pizza is about immigration, entrepreneurialism, and invention. Now, "93 percent of Americans eat pizza at least once a month."

Modern pizza originated in Italy, although the style favored by Americans is more a friend than a relative of the traditional Neapolitan pie. Residents of Naples took the idea of using bread as a blank slate for relishes from the Greeks, whose bakers had been dressing their wares with oils, herbs, and cheese since the time of Plato. The Romans refined the recipe, developing a delicacy known as placenta, a sheet of fine flour topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves. Neapolitans earned the right to claim pizza as their own by inserting a tomato into the equation. Europeans had long shied away from the New World fruit, fearing it was plump with poison. But the intrepid citizens of Naples discovered the tomato was not only harmless but delicious, particularly when paired with pizza.

Cheese, the crowning ingredient, was not added until 1889, when the Royal Palace commissioned the Neapolitan pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito to create a pizza in honor of the visiting Queen Margherita. Of the three contenders he created, the Queen strongly preferred a pie swathed in the colors of the Italian flag: red (tomato), green (basil), and white (mozzarella).

Read the whole American Pie at Am. Heritage. 1960s image of Miss Rheingold (a bigger deal in NY than Miss America) from the article. Extra-dry Rheingold Beer - the beer of New York baseball, brewed on the east side of Manhattan until the 1970s.

Cropsey was a landscape painter of the so-called "Hudson River School."

This is the Adam and Eve Mountains in Orange Co., NY.

My Christmas present to Mrs. BD was piano lessons from a fine teacher who comes to the house. Mrs. BD had lessons in youth and had an incredible music education later. She is music-oriented, but now can only easily play basic things - Happy Birthday and Christmas carols and Auld Lang Syne - she reads music but wants and needs to be able to play chords, jazz riffs, serious pieces, etc., especially since we replaced the old and now have my late Dad's Steinway baby grand. What a sound! It fills ye olde cabin with rich noise. I don't care about missed notes or the sound of practicing. I love to hear it all, including the "damn, damn, damn."

Barking dogs, "damns" from the pianny, drier thumping, vacuum cleaner roaring, the scullery maids dropping pots, doorbell ringing, Blue Jays squawking outside, a young 'un yelling "Where's my sneakers?" - the lovely sounds of home sweet home.

Mrs. BD "gets" music, but pretty much dislikes pop music, country music, rock - and Dylan. She's not a snob, just finds them all annoyingly juvenile, unrefined, and stupid - except for a little Motown. What she loves is opera - and anything you can dance to. She wins Charleston competitions, and that's saying a lot, because the youth these days are into vigorous retro dance.

I am musically-retarded and tone-deaf but, in my wasted youth, a little cannabis plus a history of music course helped me hear, seemed to open my ears and, for some reason, that effect has lasted despite being drug-free since college. I still have to close my eyes to listen. You can get WQXR via the internets. Good fun.

So are Bob Greenberg's Great Courses. We love them.

When I grew up, we had an upright in the kitchen for kids' lessons, and a Grand or Baby Grand for the grown-ups in the parlor. I am told that the life span of a fine piano is 40-50 years if kept away from heat, sunlight, and given proper humidity - and then it's worthless junk, useless if not pretentious decor to put pictures on, or a $20,000 factory refurbishing. Unlike fine violins, old pianos are basically garbage which you have to pay somebody to get rid of. I placed Dad's in a northern corner of the parlor which has no nearby heat source except a fireplace that we only light up about 15 times per year for a few hours, for holidays and winter parties.

I am going to coat those windows with that UV stuff to protect the wood. It's around 25 years old, so it still has a good life left in it. My Dad would bang out Mozart for an hour a day on this machine, during cocktail hour. The good old days. "Damn, damn, damn" when he missed a note.  Mom would do Christmas songs and children's songs with nary a "damn."

The previous family piano was a black Chickering Grand piano. Like all pianos, it aged and was junked.

Those excellent Legacy speakers? I can play pretty good Bach on the CD player and my old Denon record player. Recorded music mostly destroyed the American family music culture which was based on home-made music. Well, that plus radio and TV all turned Americans into inert and passive blobs.

A medical man, "C.T. Azeff," is interested in this newfangled blogging biz. He emailed me this initial offering which is partly in response to If Obamacare Doesn't Kill Small Medical Practices, Bureaucratic ICD-10 Coding Requirements Might :

OK class, take out a pen and piece of paper, I am going to tell you a bit about ICD 10.

First, don't be alarmed by the prophets of doom who say you docs will be required to use this carefully crafted taxonomy in order for the insurers to refuse to compensate you for your services. This is true. I had dinner with an oncologist friend who is in bankruptcy because even though his patient's insurance company gave prior approval for a $100,000 course of chemotherapy they maintained that did not obligate them to actually pay for the cost. He already had, and on multiple occasions.

Back to ICD 10. This document will allow you to kick back and have some laughs about the conditions you likely will not be called upon to treat. The Monty Python crew had a field day constructing this and they've arranged for the ICD 10 office to be right next door to the Department of Silly Walks. Viz:

V9733XA: Sucked into a jet engine, initial encounter
V9733XD: Sucked into jet engine subsequent encounter (Should this person be allowed on runways?)
V9733XS: Sucked into jet engine, sequelae  ( this is for the litigators)

But, don't overlook,
Index to External Causes of Injury
Accident
E919.1   Bore, earth drilling or mining

            Land  or seabed
E919.7 Bulldozer
E909.9 Cataclysmic:
            Earth surface movement or eruption

So, be grateful if you only have to deal with intangibles and won't get blood on your shoes.

I'll be back soon to discuss Scott Stossel's heroic battle with anxiety and transgressive therapists.

CTAzeff

Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It reads:

A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazingly appealing. She believed him to be her dream guy and soul mate so much that she fell in love with him right then and there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.

A good friend left off this load of split Beech last weekend. I have to unload it, which is fine. An excellent gift. Beech is heavy as lead and as hard as nails, so hard that it destroyed saws so foresters left it alone until power saws came along.

All of the majestic old Beeches around here are dying of a bark fungus.

Here's the place where your editor Bird Dog spends many hours in work and study. Kids and wives wife were never really welcome in here except to search for books to read - but dogs, friends, and cigars are always welcome. No TV in here, thank you, but there is a radio and CD player.

I was experimenting with camera settings, and this was not really as sharp as I was aiming for. I was hoping to be able to capture the antique Eskimo animal carvings on the mantle, but it does give a general idea of The Inner Sanctum on a dark, snowy winter evening. A comfortable if humble study, perfect for me:

The American Robin is semi-migratory (populations edge southwards), and can be found almost anywhere in the US in wintertime. Here, our winter Robins are probably Canucks, while our local summer breeders are probably in South Carolina.

In the northern US, they live on old berries and fruits in the winter, usually foraging in flocks. Sometimes they get drunk on fermented rotten fruit. They do not eat bird seed.

This pic was from a reader a while back, taken, as I recall, in Lenox, MA:

It's the time of year when people fuss over nailing down their schedule for the year. Choosing and planning takes a lot of time and thought.

We have a few good ones lined up this year - one a lazy grand luxe, one an exploration of Sicily (pick up Costco rental auto at the Palermo airport, and head on out, meander all around, hike up Mount Etna, take a ferry to Malta, probably get lost a few times despite the GPS, then eventually fly out from Catania), and the annual family reunion in Cape Cod with all the sibs, kids etc. Plus I hope the list will include a hunt trip for me and pals in the fall. Maine or Manitoba. Carpe Diem.

Here's one of the tenutas we chose - Tenuta Cammarana - (near Ragusa and Lampedusa, and not far from the ferry to Malta). In Italy, we always stay in tenutas (agriturismos) and I highly recommend doing that. Usually you'll be the only Americans there, which is not a bad thing when traveling. Karen Brown has researched them all for you.

I will take pics of Roger de Hauteville's ancestral Norman castles. Those crazy Vikings went everywhere, didn't they? Adventurers and warriors by nature, those Danskers.

I am already ahead of myself, because for 2015 (the good Lord willing) it will be a multi-bedroom villa in Tuscany, or maybe the Midi, with pool, cook, rental vehicles, etc., for ten days with room for friends and all the Bird Dog crew and any significant others. Not expensive, but something I want to do for all before I reach deep middle age.

What adventures and trips have y'all planned for 2014?