We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Sloe Gin is a Brit thing. I'm not aware of people growing Sloes in the US. Sloe Gin is technically a liqueur and ideally homemade.
All I've heard of is a Sloe Gin Fizz. I'd try one and I'm sure I'd like it, but I do not handle booze well anymore other than wine and beer. I do love a gin martini, but...
I know that The Last Gentleman is his most famous book.
Percy, along with Mark Helprin and Cormac McCarthy, are the few contemporary authors for whom I have read everything they have written. True, they are all a bit dark at times.
I like this Amazon intro to Mark Helprin:
Educated at Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford, MARK HELPRIN served in the Israeli army, Israeli Air Force, and British Merchant Navy. He is the author of, among other titles, A Dove of the East and Other Stories, Refiner's Fire, Winter's Tale, and A Soldier of the Great War. He lives in Virginia.
I have not been much of a fan of fruit since I was a kid, but I do love grilled fruit for dessert or even as a side dish. Grilled Pineapple is the best thing with grilled Swordfish.
Most kinds of fruit can be grilled (apples and pears take longer than most). In Italy, fresh or grilled fruit is the usual dessert. (Gelato is not dessert - it's a street snack.)
No need for a recipe, but you can sprinkle some sugar on the fruit while on the grill.
I like all kinds of seafood. Shellfish especially. Mussels in a tasty broth, you betcha. No cilantro is my rule.
While banging around the New England coast on our boat this week we stumbled in the best mussels I've ever had - and I've had lots of them. Noah's in Essex, CT, on the river. Seafood place.
For one thing, these were large mussels, not the 2" ones. But they were steamed in their broth with the following ingredients: harissa,chermoula, cherry tomatoes, plenty of whole garlic cloves, chopped shallots. With toasted bread of course.
I had no clue what harrissa or chermoula were, but have to make me some chermoula soon (no cilantro). I think it would be good for baked Cod.
I'd be happy to live on those mussels for a week. With some wine of course. It's not that mussel broth require all of those ingredients, but it was amazing.
Mussels are "farmed," of course, nowadays. It's a real business and I am a good customer.
The Filipino version. I always thought the word was Philippino or something but I checked.
Anyway, we had a Filipino helper for years, when the kids were younger, and, without wanting to be racist, I still believe that they are the best people in the world. Besides their work ethic, they seem to be caring and loving souls. Yes, I know they like to eat dogs but that's a stretch for me.
She liked to make Filipino suppers, and I was all in on that. This was one of my favorites, served with white rice. The tripe is not required, but the peanut butter is, along with lots of pumpkin hunks:
On the Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia down to the Gulf of Mexico, it's molting season for the Blue Crab.
Some people don't mind picking the meat out of these delicious Blue Crabs for crab salad, crab cakes, a crab boil, or She-crab soup, but my preference is Soft-Shelled, right after the molt. You just eat the whole juicy thing, feathers and all. No waste whatsoever.
Sometimes you will get a batch of crabs whose new shells have begun to firm up a little too much, and are too chewy. I don't like that. Chewy is fine, but hard is not.
If you have any sauteed crabs left-over in the fridge, you can put one on white bread with some mayonnaise and salt and pepper, and it might be the best sandwich in the world.
It's the time of year when you send your kids or grandkids on the coast of New England out to the salt marshes and mudflats to dig Steamers at low tide. They are the most delicious seafood in the world. AKA Soft-Shelled Clams.
Digging for Steamers takes a bit of skill and gentle use of the right tool (a clam rake or, better yet, a clam fork), because you don't want to crack their fragile shells. And you have to know where to look, because they cluster. The fun part is getting covered with black marsh mud without having to pay for a spa.
You steam up a giant pot of them, just long enough for them to open and cook a bit, but not so long that they get tough or fall apart. You want to steam them, so don't use too much water in the pot. It's acceptable to throw a slice of onion in the water.
Then you pour everybody a mug of the broth from the pot and a heaping pile of clams. That broth is the essence of the sea and the marshes. And you give everybody a bowl of melted butter. I prefer them without the butter so you get the pure clammy flavor. You pull them out of the shell using their long necks as a handle, and I toss the necks to the gulls.
These in the photo below are not Steamers. These are Littleneck Clams, which should never, ever be cooked for any reason - which they have been in the photo. It's a disgrace. Cooking them turns them into clam-flavored chewing gum. They should only be slurped down fresh and alive:
These are Steamers. These precious critters are only eaten steamed, and I am convinced that God made them for that purpose:
We have the whole crew here this year, sadly without Popop who died a couple of weeks ago. Mrs. BD is busy picking out his funeral music. Yes, it will be an RC Funeral Mass.
Thanks to God, life goes on and Easter is a magical day, a feast day in Christianity.
I'm grilling 2 marinated butterflied legs of lamb - might be more than 16 people need especially including the littles. I have 4 1/2 grandkids and 4 step-grandkids.
Mrs. BD is making 2 traditional Rice Pies. I made some mint sauce. Everybody else has to bring sides.
I think we'll watch the NYC St. Patrick's Easter Mass live on the machine in the morning, cuz too much to do to get to our church. Yes, we Protestants do love an RC Mass and I do like Cardinal Dolan. Same narrative.
Easter blessings to all, regardless of views on existence and its mysteries.
I happen to love corned beef and cabbage (plus potatoes) - as long as there is plenty of horseradish mustard and beer.
The real name of the meal is New England Boiled Dinner. I cook it all together in a giant pot. If the pickled beef needs a knife, it's underdone. I think it should almost crumble.
I make some for family, including my Irish father-in-law, yearly. No Guiness, though. It really does not go with food in my opinion. Heck, it's a meal in itself. In Irish pubs, they throw one or two raw eggs in it, stir it up, and call it breakfast.
(Our kids are 25% Irish, 25% Southern Italian, 40% English, and 10% Scandinavian probably via the Norman invasion. In other words, all- American. Genetic mongrelization worked well for our kids, cuz I am 90% English, around 10% Scandinavian and thus overly-inbred in New England since the 1600s.)
It's complicated. "Scampi" means a large prawn-thing in Italian, so the American menu item "Shrimp Scampi" sort of means "Shrimp Shrimp."
I've had scampi in Italy. They are not really a large shrimp, but more like a crayfish. They will put one on top of a seafood risotto as a garnish. You only eat the little tail but it is almost impossible to get it out so I tend to give up on that.
Shrimp Scampi is an American menu item, not Italian. It means Shrimp cooked the way Italians cook their crayfish-things - butter, oil, garlic, alone on a plate with parsley on top. In the US, it's typically served made with American shrimp on a pile of pasta as a main course. I know that I am annoying about these things, but that ain't Italian. Not too bad though. Italians do not make pasta as a main course. Italians tend to be skinny.
Yeah, their lunch is our dinner. Their evening meal is spartan, like some soup. True, they often nap after their midday meal and close up shop for a couple of hours.
The best real Italian meals I've had were in Volterra. We have not been to Bologna yet, though. The big tourist places tend to make stuff that Americans and Asians think is Italian - like red sauce. Wrong.
And, because of my mood today, I'll be more annoying: Pizza in Italy is awful. For good pizza, go to NYC or New Haven. Yeah, it's junk food but fun with beer. I have a favorite pizza + beer joint in NYC, near the High Line in Chelsea. It's called Artichoke.
Readers know that I love stinky cheese. Sure, blue cheeses can be stinky but I'm talking about non-blues. For example, Stilton is delicious especially with some Port, but not stinky in my view.
The stinkiest cheese I've ever had was in southern France 18 months ago. At the end of a remarkable meal the Cheese Master came by with his cheese cart. Mrs. BD pointed out to him that I like stinky. He gave me a few small chunks of this and that, then a gooey spoonful of one. He gave me a look like "I dare you."
It smelled like a mix of aged road kill and aged wet dirty socks, a real adventure for the palate. It might have been Epoisses (Napoleon was a huge fan of Epoisses, which was once considered "The King of Cheeses") but I'm not sure. Seemed like that cheese guy was impressed with me because I got a kick out of it.
Boiled meat with onions is of course an ancient food. Now we know how to make it better, especially by adding more interesting flavorings along with the onions. Another thing we know about cooking tough meat (chuck, round, brisket) is that a low simmer is better than boiling.
I like to cook it in our slow-cooker, on low. Yes, it takes hours total but you get plenty of intermission time to get other things done.
My French chef friend learned how to make it in Paris. Yeah. Not all French food is complicated.
Mrs. BD has been whipping up an onion Focaccia to go with Sunday Chili. Some other things too, including a mortadella canape thing that Marcella liked, with cornichons.
Yes, I prefer cornbread with barbecue, but focaccia is good with Texas Chile. My main job was to slice onions very thin on the mandolin which is the only instrument I can play.
Like all breads, focaccia takes a while. If you do the bake part on a stone thing, you get the good burnt bottom. Best with lots of kosher salt on top.
It seems like it was the origin of pizza. Romans, Greeks, etc made this simple bread and put various toppings on it with olive oil - rosemary, garlic, onions, cheese, mushrooms - whatever. Of course, they had no tomatoes but when they got them in the 1600s they loved them, in my view, too much.
No matter where you live in the US, Chili is a basic warming winter supper. Always good for lunch too on a ski slope with a cold beer or two.
Chili is like barbecue: every region and every locale has developed its own favorite version. Up here in Yankeeland, it's usually made with ground beef and lots of beans. It's OK, not great. Something like this recipe. That's what moms and dads here make.
That's OK after a morning of skiing, but that is a pic of a real Texas Chili: no beans and no ground beef. 3/4 of a cup of hot chili powder?!? Well, I did that. Unless your Mom was a Texan or a Mezzican-American, you probably never had it like that. Stewed meat in tomato, garlic and hot pepper sauce, hot and spicy as hell - or as spicy as you decide to make it.
Got a deer on hand? Venison is as good, or better, than beef. Use your least-desirable cuts because it tenderizes during 7 hrs. in the crock pot. Best to kill the deer first too, if you know how to do it. Bow, spear, or AR-15. Who cares?
You can put the pure-meat version on rice if you need to. Never on brown rice. My rule of thumb: Nothing on brown rice. It took the Asians thousands of years to make rice white, so why go backwards? At Maggie's HQ we use Costco's tasty Basmati but there is nothing wrong with Uncle Ben's.
Braised short ribs are delicious, and generally have enough fat in them. Cheap too.
I have not been much of a fan of fruit since I was a kid, but I do love grilled fruit for dessert or even as a side dish. Grilled Pineapple is the best thing with grilled Swordfish.
It's an American treat - 
I like all kinds of seafood. Shellfish especially. Mussels in a tasty broth, you betcha. No cilantro is my rule.
On the Atlantic coast from Nova Scotia down to the Gulf of Mexico, it's molting season for the 
My rhubarb patch is ready for the first harvest. There are all sorts of things to do with it, but this is the simplest olde New England thing:
Neither is terrible, but both kinda bland for my taste. Baked Brie is a very good dessert.
We have the whole crew here this year, sadly without Popop who died a couple of weeks ago. Mrs. BD is busy picking out his funeral music. Yes, it will be an RC Funeral Mass.
It's complicated. "Scampi" means a large prawn-thing in Italian, so the American menu item "Shrimp Scampi" sort of means "Shrimp Shrimp."
Boiled meat with onions is of course an ancient food. Now we know how to make it better, especially by adding more interesting flavorings along with the onions. Another thing we know about cooking tough meat (chuck, round, brisket) is that a low simmer is better than boiling.
No matter where you live in the US, Chili is a basic warming winter supper. Always good for lunch too on a ski slope with a cold beer or two.