It’s all the same, just a little... not

Laptop is alive, almost back to normal! Thank you for all the lovely thoughts and good luck wishes. I hope to recover from the shock of it all shortly. Should only take another couple of six-packs. Whew. Now let’s get back to business, people.

I just came back from a nine day stay in London. Unlike most of the trips I go on, I wasn’t ready to go home at the end. Not nearly. I really could have used another couple of days walking around the city, sitting in ancient pubs drinking excellent beer, and eating all manner of fried and sausage-related foods. I fell in love (again) with the enormous preponderance of fresh sandwiches, pre-packaged in neat, triangular boxes, ranging in filling from egg salad and cheese to prawn salad (eeek. Kinda sketchy), sold in every coffee shop and market in the city. It has to be the box. I love that triangular box.

Everything in London is familiar, but not quite the same as what I am most used to. It's off by just a couple of degrees. Men’s suits fit better, beer is less carbonated and tastier, the cars drive in unpredictable patterns at predictably high speeds – toward the end of the trip I took to checking right, left, up and down for cars, just to make sure I would not get flattened by a giant red bus of doom speeding from out of nowhere. It worked.

As I mentioned, I was in London for work… and work I did. While the man friend explored London and went to see the galleries I am pissed about missing, I worked. Beh. I did have the evenings, and made the best of them.

The evenings were made up of the obligatory pub fish and chips with mushy peas at a pub near city center (wherever that is), with a light and crisp batter. Fried overload.

Suspiciously green but wonderful – the pea-est peas I have ever had.

There was also traditional pork pie, bought in a stiflingly hot indoor market in Brick Lane, the Indian/Bengali part of town. As if I would skip the Indian/Bengali part of town.


The pork pie was intense – butter-laden handmade crust encasing a slightly gritty filling of ground up pork and spices. It was as the name suggested – pie shell and pork. Wonderful smeared all over with mustard.

Pork pie, the 'after' shot.

The hotel I stayed at served full English breakfast every morning – beans (which I am now addicted to), black pudding, bacon, every kind of egg, stewed tomatoes, mushrooms, sausage, kippers, and all sorts of yogurts, fruits, etc and oh my. The Brits know their breakfast, that is without doubt, but kippers? Really? That’s hardcore, even by my standards.

Unfortunately, I don’t have too many other pictures to share. Most meals were consumed in pubs and either the light was too low for photography, or I was one too many pints past taking pictures. Most often, it was a combination of the two.

The beer… the beer was fabulous. And the people were super nice, the tube was marvelous (yes, Londoners think it’s shite, but come to Boston for a week and then tell me your public transport blows. I think not). In my 9 days there I managed to pick up some sort of bizarre accent and now say “Cheers!” at seemingly random times, and “brilliant” at wholly inappropriate ones. I can’t wait to go back and pick up other Britishisms – preferably ones that don’t involve bad teeth and imminent alcoholism. Though I may be swayed toward the latter, with enough perseverance.

Dinner Of Champions

You know those evenings when you just barely make it home from a long day (ok, month) and you're beyond tired and your whole body hurts and the mere thought of cooking sends a crushing wave of dread over you? Well, I know those evenings. Intimately.

Since I don't much fancy a painful death by starvation while waiting for a delivery man, I go to my stand-by, my dinner of champions: bread, cheese, olives and yep, booze (you can't see the beer in the picture). No cooking required.

I just had one of those evenings, in case that wasn't made clear enough. This time though, I lucked out - the very few things I have in my fridge turned out to be really good things - very aged (read: smelly) English cheddar, good bread, pickled asparagus, and some good whole grain mustard all piled on a plate. One wouldn't think that cheese and mustard go together and yet they do, marvelously.

Pickled asparagus isn't the most common of pantry items, but it should be. I first had it in a bloody Mary in Seattle and swore I would find myself a jar. The asparagus is slightly sweet and crunchy. Tastes a little like asparagus and a lot like pickle. It's a great substitute for cornichon on a cheese plate. I highly recommend it, if you can find it. I stumbled upon it in a posh grocery store in a strikingly un-posh neighborhood.

It took me about ten of these evenings before I figured out that there are a few things that I must have in my apartment at all times: bread, tons of cheese, olives, and...yes, every grad student's best friend in a bottle. Current favorite: Smithwick's.

The Kiss Of The Hops

I don’t know when or how this happened, but crap beer is, and has been for a while, the latest in chic. I was at a bar in the South End full of people who most would consider to be “hip” and “with it”. Many of these scenesters were sitting at the bar, wearing very nice shoes, enjoying something certainly involving truffle oil… all with a can of Schlitz in front of them. It was unbelievable. All the way down the bar, all the people were drinking Schlitz. Someone explain this to me because I don’t understand.

When did this happen? When did people start drinking PBR and Schlitz to be cool? And in the South End, no less! Is this the same kind of trend as wearing hideous trucker hats? Is it trucker chic?

All that being said, I spent all of Monday night in a bar drinking, oh yes, Schlitz. Let me make this clear – I am not a scenester, I am not emo, and I am not a trucker. So what, may you ask, was I doing sitting in a bar for 5 hours on a Monday night with a can (or two) of Schlitz in front of me?

The thing is that I am suggestible. I have never been able to resist the B-Side. That place has a gravitational pull directed right at me. Whenever I am within a five mile radius of the B-Side, I somehow wind up sitting there for hours, regardless of whether that was my plan in the beginning of the evening. [Those of you that are familiar with Boston will understand the implications of the previous sentence. I think all of Boston is about 5 miles in diameter.] I think I have started inventing reasons to go out to the vicinity of Inman Square, just to bail on the “plans” and go to the B-Side. It is absolutely my favorite bar, and employs my very favorite bartender (you can sort of see his back behind the Schlitz can in the drunk-like picture). Should I be concerned that I have a favorite bartender?

The B-Side has a feel and loyal clientele of its own. The back wall is filled with LPs that they actually play, on an actual turntable. The people that work there are very cool, laid back, thoroughly tattooed (so I am certain to like it), and have great taste in music – yesterday’s selection included very early Rolling Stones singles. Tall stands of hard boiled eggs are out on the bar instead of peanuts. How cool is that? The food is fantastic - garlicky blue cheese fries, mussels with basil, and the best calamari I have ever had in my life are just the tip of the food iceberg. I really think they put crack in the blue cheese fries. They are just that good. Don’t misunderstand though – this is not the place for typical bar food – the special that night was a flounder with haricot vert and a caper beurre blanc. Yeah. One day I will manage to get past the fries and eat an actual dinner.

So anyway, there I was on a Monday night, drinking a Bass, eating good things, when I happened to mention the bizarre Schlitz phenomenon to a friend who is a very, very bad influence (you know who you are). About a second later, I had a thoroughly entertained bartender and a can of Schlitz in front of me. Both the Owner-Patrick and Bartender-Mike were inspired to pop open beers of their own. And that’s when things started getting a little blurry, as the picture might suggest. Owner-Patrick thought us amusing enough to pull out another round when I was barely done with the first one.

Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t drunk. I think it may be a physical impossibility for me to get drunk off Schlitz. I could never ingest the volume of fluid that would be necessary to get to Schlitz-based drunken-ness. The beer is fizzy and hydrating, much like a carbonated Gatorade, with a only faint beer-like taste.

So I didn't get to the bottom of the cheap-beer-coolness phenomenon, but it wasn't for lack of effort. The bartender said we were punk rock. He may have been joking. [I totally am though, FYI]



P.S. Next post will be about Thanksgiving dinner! I am hosting for the first time this year. I had about 5 seconds of cockiness that were quickly followed by shear and persistent terror. Wish me luck.

I Am Learn'ed

I learn new things all the time. Not in grad school, mind you – there I only learn how much I don’t know. I mean that I learn things by exploring, by listening, by putting things in my mouth that make most people cringe. That’s how I learn – I eat weird things. I recently learned that chile on watermelon is stellar and that fried pickles are so much better than they sound. Recently, I learned something new about peanuts.

I had a chance to go to a Red Sox game a while back – they had started sucking royally and tickets to the games were easy to come by. The scalpers couldn’t give tickets away, much less turn a profit. Since I couldn’t make myself care about the Red Sox if I tried (although Theo Epstein is completely adorable) their suckage didn’t bother me one bit. I like going to games for the eating… and ok, the drinking.

We sat down right behind home plate with enough barely-yellow beer to last through at least half the game (my first thorough experience with Bud Light… *shudder* ), hot dogs, and a bag of peanuts. I don’t know why, but those were the best peanuts ever. They were salt encrusted and roasted to a perfect pale yellow (the good kind of pale yellow, not the Bud light kind).

I was busy drinking, talking about something perfectly insubstantial, and building a distinctly un-ladylike pile of peanut shells by my feet when I heard my friend’s peanut crunch differently in her mouth than in mine. You know why? She ate the peanut with the shell on. I didn’t know you could do that! Since anything that can serve as a vehicle for salt gets an A+ in my book, I tried it… and it was great. The nuts tasted a lot earthier (well, obviously). The papery dryness of the shell combined with the firm crunch of the nut inside and oh, there was all that glorious salt... Absolutely perfect with beer. Who knew that a plain old peanut could reach such tasty heights! Well, my friend clearly did, and now I do too… because I listened to her chew. I weird even myself out sometimes.

So engrossed was I with the peanuts and the conversation and ok, the beer, that I didn’t notice what was going on down on the field. The Red Sox had 11 runs scored against them in one inning. Eleven! In one inning! Seems like it would take work to suck that badly. It was at this point that I inquired as to who the Red Sox were actually playing… that seemed immaterial in the prior hour, with all those peanuts… and ok, the beer to occupy me. I may not have any recollection as to who the Sox were playing, but I sure remember the peanuts, and their shells. I am all kinds of learn’ed now.