Category Archives: Uncategorized

Remembering. Preserving. Pickling. Keeping. Putting up. Memorializing.

All these words give my heart a sense of time as an enduring thing. The slow tick of the watch rather than a stopwatch race towards our destinies. Tick, tick, tick. Let time and patience do their work. And perhaps a little salt.  Salty sweat, blood and tears.

Kick off BBQ season with Rick’s Picks pickles!
 
Grill-worthy serving suggestions:
 
Dress up cheeseburgers with Green Tomato Condiment, curried green tomato pickles with flavor notes of ketchup and mustard rolled into one.
 
Pair Smokra with brisket and BBQ chicken, our popular okra pickled in Spanish smoked paprika with just enough heat to stand up to the ‘cue! 
 
Chop Bee ‘n’ Beez for hot dog relish; our bread-and-butter pickles have just a touch of sweetness for an unbeatable tangy-sweet combo. 
Garnish summer plates with our cucumber pickles!
 
Kool Gherks – crunchy whole dills
Spears of Influence – cumin lime dill spears
Slices of Life – our classic sliced pickles

Heartfelt thanks to the Sublime Miss M for keeping the Lunch Encounter full of spit and vinegar. Without vinegar we’d have no pickles. Without spit, no kissing. No kissing worth mentioning.

Boonswoggle bikin’ today with Ben, an illiterative lad, who managed magnificently to mouth several luscious, illiterative lines. Nicely notable nerdish words were debris boom and back-up beepers.

Queued curbside, tourist trailers don’t boast debris booms but should.

As last call looms back-up beepers broadcast burnished boasters.

Speaking of wienies, many years ago when bike messengers ruled the DC streets, Ben was a pedal jockey, a tall, adorable one, and he carried a pen, a personal pen, a pen no one would steal cause it was obviously HIS. You got to have a pen when it comes time to have the manifest signed. Ben’s pen had a little bird on it, a bird on a tiny spring, a bird with a very pointy beak, facing IN. Scribble your John Hancock with that pen and the little bird pecked away wildly, tapping for plastic beetles in his tiny plastic tree. “It’s a pen pecker,” Ben would grin. “The product, not the condition.”

Home On the Range

SANDWICH FOR LISA

Life’s a BITCH

No, it’s not

It’s a bit CH

A BIT of a sandwi CH

–If e.e. can do it so can I

Rye bread

Mustard spread

Salami pickle brie

Rye bread

Wry bred

Must turn instead

So lamely pick on me

Wry bred

–If I can do it so can e.e.

Jonathan Perkes, May 2009

When Cummings was a boy, his father bought a farm in the Sandwich Range of the White Mountains from a farmer named Ephraim Joy. Cummings was indebted to his boyhood summers at Joy Farm for his Wordsworthian love of nature.

His many poems that celebrate the natural world and the denizens of the forest were inspired by his New Hampshire summers.

I heard a guy talking about these on PRI today, and thought you might want to investigate, writes Malcolm Riviera.Check it out at Holly Eats. Never a dull moment.

All photos by Renee Comet with styling by Moi!

Those Australian beef and lamb folks are exacting, fun-loving, generous and – do they know how to raise tasty animals! Sun-soaked, grass-fed and robust, one can vividly imagine the feel of their warm coats under the palm of a hand on a hot day.

After five days of hard work, they sent me home with a cache of deliciously fatty ribeyes, which made their way to West Virginia for a snowy weekend. From the grill to the breakfast table to the supper sandwich, the ribeye is my all-time, all-around, preferred beef steak – thin, thick, bone in or out, hot or not, salt, pepper, thereyougo.

Thanks for the alert and the research go to intrepid sandwich correspondent Michele.

For today’s Geo Quiz (May 15), we’re in search of a good sandwich.

What’s simpler than a sandwich? A slice of bread, something in the middle, another slice of bread. This humble yet elegant snack, nay, meal is enjoyed in countless variations the world over.

British food blogger Simon Majumdar recently asked his readers this question:

What’s the world’s best sandwich?

Name the city that matches the GPS coordinates of this mackerel sandwich!

And for the answer….click here.

(Psssssst. Istanbul)

Yer welcome. So welcome. You have no idea. We ate eggs in Champaign. I did anyway. You ate pancakes. Eggs in ’em. We were an egg’s throw from an iconic sandwich, the Horseshoe, just a few hours too late, cause you know, if you wanna be a hot chick who does not live in a coop, you gotta get your beauty rest. We were not up till morning-that-is-truly-night with a Hangover Horseshoe (it’s a sandwich look it up), greasy-chinned, glassy-eyed, salt-deprived. Nope. We used facial astringent and slept. Ate our eggs at a respectable hour in the a.m.’s. Do so hope I am not setting a permanent pervasive personal trend with that grown-up, eggs-only-in-the-morning thingy. I’m okay with occasionally having to learn about the evening before second or third hand.

Hot Chicks: Legal or Not, Chickens Are the Chic New Backyard Addition

I do want chickens. I do, I do, I do. They are illegal, unless you can keep ’em 100 yards from your fence line. One hundred yards is pretty far if you are talking sous-urban fence lines. I feel like pecking holes in the walls over this. Ain’t this the blinkin’ suburbs?? What the *#$%@? Someone sold me a bill o’ goods when they rhapsodized about the absence of broken glass, barred windows, panhandlers and metal-detectors. The picture of bu-cow-lick nirvana is distinctly out of focus without egg layers. The ones who lay big eggs within arms reach.

Getchyerself a few ostriches, the neighbors would welcome a chicken or five. Just enough to give eggs enough for late night fried egg sandwiches with onions. Before I leave this earth I want to wake once more, just once, on a Saturday morning and reconstruct the previous evening from the eggy clues on the stove. We had sandwiches – ohmyachinghead – oh yeah sandwiches – ohmyachinghead – fried eggs Watson – ohmyachinghead – onions, butter, grilled sourdough, drip, splatter, smear, eggs. Eggs! In the middle of the night when you are staggering, elated, inspired, hungry. Hours, at least 3, before the achinghead.

Ya think we could have a few ostriches? Those eggs make a humdinger of an omelet and an ostrich is not poultry. Quiet too.

The Mayberry Sparrow

*It’s a good story, that I cannot tell well. Birds are funny. Birds are funny, but I did not originate that. Apropos of nothing, nothing discernibly about birds, a landlord said it, in a moment of extreme awkwardness. All purpose that remark, and omni-compassing. Funny peculiar. Understood? Understood.

Today, in honor of Mother’s Day, I was. A mother that is. As a reminder for years to come I have made a list for myself.
Honey Don’ts (talking to myself. aLOUD):
Bandaids
Vacuum cleaner
Fly swatter
Apron
Sponge
Legos
Pancake batter
Weeds

He did, however, make his own sandwich.

And in spite of the slumber party for himself…the lunch for my mother and sisters…the Friday night school activity capping our event fatigue…the making of the birthday cake, bridal shower invitations, and pretzel “gazebo”… and the burying of our dog’s ashes… in spite of….no, because of these familial responsibilities I feel gratefully parametered, as a mother, a daughter and a sister to mothers.

To put a finer point on it I turn to Along-for-the-Ride Heidi and a laundry list of fine wordables she gifted me. A series of transformatively good words, positively put: evitable, wieldy, exorable, gainly, and corrigible. They are unexpected without their typical in-and-un escorts. And strong. Surprisingly fresh.

The joy of motherhood was magnified for me today. 500%. Five words for five boys times 100%. They were, unquestionably, evitable (yes, what would I do without them?), wieldy (yes, Miss Lisa, whatever you say, Miss Lisa) , exorable (it’s a good age, nine, so much less coersion needed.), gainly (gorgeous is more like it, whew), and corrigible (I will always be your mother. Be afraid. Be very afraid). Today I was in love with being a mother. Inexorably.

My Mother’s Day card read, “Roses are red vilest are blue I do like you.” He did, however, make his own sandwich. Next year perhaps he will make one for me. And perhaps I will buy him some pajama pants that fit.

Roadtrippin’ to Champaign, Illinois for a Bottle Rockets show at the swanky High Dive last week with Heidi, our first stop was Cumberland, Maryland, where we were mighty tempted by the Slumberland. Wordplay does so lend itself to motels, taverns and beauty parlors. Locally owned motels summon me. Just how many shades of tile will be interlocked in the shower? And tell me, what is a CDNT DIS and do I qualify? Maryland Masala, we will miss you.

Wheeling, Double U Vee Ay, Coleman’s at Centre Market, was our intended stop for lunch. LUNCH!?! We squeaked in one hour before closing on Friday evening, after sitting, ignition quieted, for two hours, reasons unknown, in western Maryland. A nail biter for the tour director, me. Eeeeek.

Heavily overcast skies blanketed Wheeling’s small town, down-at-the-heels somberness. A dozen classic cars and hot rods lined a sloping street, while that-side-of-middle-age admirers slouched about or hunched over the PA. Beige folding tables, a handful of plastic chairs. One size fits all tees and wisping white bits or boinging grey pincurls emerging from unisex ballcaps.

Inside, Coleman’s at Centre Market hopped. Not a sock hop.

Built in 1853, the Upper Market House is the only cast iron columned market house in the country.  The building has 54 hollow Roman Doric columns cast in Wheeling, Virginia.  Every other column innovatively acted as a downspout for the roof. The building was constructed as an open market, but was enclosed in 1886.  This market house has been in continuous operation since the mid-nineteenth century.

A popular notion, Friday evening Fishwiches, in Wheeling, come to find out. Busyness prevailed. A hatted, hair-netted lady up to her elbows in SBP (standard breading procedure) kindly directed our snapshotting to the ordained below-sign, outdoor location. Getouttahere, she smiled, between the lines.
Heidi was on a bit of a slaw jag, even going so far as to state, “I love cabbage.” Quite bold of her. Dang those fries are perky, but we were unswayed as we had already payed, and the potato cheer squad was situated beyond the cash register.

The meal was sand cheap, so to speak. I hadda regular. Separate line for the deluxe and I would have suffered separation anxiety from Heidi who was feeling her irregularly regular self. Chowda. Did they mean that?

That girl Heidi, my partner in dishdemeanors takes such elegant photos. She ate chicken of the earth. Shhhhhhh. Regularly irregular.


I conformed. Fishwich, chowdA, (they were all outta oyster stew, which I have craved since), and oyster crackers, or, er, um, clam crackAs. Tartar, tA tA!

Whatever floats your boat.

Once you’ve got the deadman’s float down, it’s on to propulsion. Considering the intense hankerin’ I feel for the Bottle Rockets lately while I wait, drained dry of patience, for their new album to debut, I have not mentioned them over at the Lunch Encounter since, hmmm, since, hmmmm, it’s been too long. In my mind, I am pacing the widow’s walk for Lean Forward, the album to come. Leaning, leaning, into that curve, giving it the outrigger’s turn so as not to scrape my pedals on the pavement.

The Bottle Rockets will propel you, put the wind at your back, point your spyglass toward lesser known, land-locked meccas such as the High Dive in Champaign, Illinois. Those fellas give me reason to live, to live more, and to drive in search of sandwiches.

En route, an Indiana pork tenderloin sandwich – maiden voyage for me, a roast beef sandwich in Wheeling going out, a fish sandwich in Wheeling comin’ home. Every kinda pie in between.

Photos for Record Store Day at Euclid Records by prettywar-stl
If anyone can link the Bottle Rockets to toast on a punt, I can, doncha know. All rivers lead to toast.