Boeuf Bourguignon

When I first met Michelle at the University of St Andrews, in the post-Prince William/Kate Middleton days, her cooking skills ranged from tea to toast. She has come quite a long way since.

(Coincidentally, just as William gave Kate a sapphire engagement ring, I gave Michelle a sapphire ring, but our on-bended-knee ceremony took place at Edinburgh Castle.)

In 2007 we moved from our post-graduate student housing in St Andrews to a flat in Edinburgh, after a search that tasted like “Alice in Wonderland” with a dash of “Catch-22”.  The kitchen was one of our favorite rooms, with lots of light and a view of the park. I did 99% of the cooking, but there in Edinburgh she felt a bit more adventurous, and showed some culinary courage.  One night she cooked a marvelous meal of Indian food that she claimed she had made before back in Boston; it was hard to believe. Astounded, I watched her prepare the dishes: one was a chickpea extravaganza featuring 877 ingredients and exotic spices, and requiring 422 steps; the other was a chicken and cashew dish that featured 1038 ingredients and required 612 steps.  It was all very surreal to think that this tiny toast maven could prepare such impressive and delicious food.

But mostly, in the roughly three years since, she has proven to be a microwave girl.  Her kitchen skills include popping in a Lean Cuisine bag, and opening individual containers of cottage cheese. If she opens a container, pours a cup of coffee, or puts a slice of delivery pizza on a plate, she shouts, “I cooked!”  We disagree on what constitutes ‘cooking’ but I am a lenient kitchen policeman.

We bought the “Julie & Julia” movie that came out last year, about the young New York blogger who cooked her way through Julia Child’s seminal “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” of 1961, and have watched it several hundred times.  (Trust me, I have it memorized.)  In addition, we bought Julia Child’s memoirs, “My Life in France”, which also seasoned the movie.

Recently, something inside Michelle snapped.  She has cooked difficult and demanding items from “Mastering” and she keeps on plugging. She sits on the couch and flips through recipes, proud that many of the pages now look well-used. Then in a flash she jabs a page with an épée thrust and shouts “Ah HAH!”  It’s my job to encourage her, so when she says that she wants to try a new recipe, I grab a wine glass and my monogrammed Swiss cutlery. Friends who have been to my house for dinner will tell you that I’m pretty comfortable in the kitchen, but my most important kitchen implement is still the corkscrew. “Sweetheart, you want to try what?  OK, I better go buy a bottle of wine.”

A few months ago she cooked the roast chicken with mushrooms in cream and port wine recipe featured in the movie (Poulet au Porto), which was fantastic, along with potatoes sautéed in butter (Pommes de Terre Sautées), which is just like it sounds, only more so.   For our anniversary dinner a few weeks ago, she cooked Lobster Thermidor, and she needed me to perform just one function, crustacean execution.  Like with Michelle’s counterpart from the movie, the Julie character, plunging a live lobster into a boiling pot was a problem. Someone with a hairy chest had to kill them first, which somehow seemed more humane.  After I dispatched the unlucky lobsters with a knife, Michelle still needed to hold my hand when she picked up a lobster and plopped it into the pot.  The result was delicious, a prize winner.

Last week she cooked the classic French chicken in wine dish, Coq au Vin, which was very yummy.  This week, she has set her mind on mastering the art of cooking Boeuf Bourguignon, a beef stew made with bacon, onions, mushrooms, and two and a half gallons of wine, half of which goes into the chef, again as featured in the movie.  To make this demanded the proper cooking equipment, a casserole dish constructed of enameled cast iron, which can be used to sauté on the stove, and then transfer seamlessly into the oven.  Last night the man of the house brought home one marketed by Mario Batali, and this savior was treated to much jubilant, giggly dancing and squealing by the female chef of the house.

In her cookbook, Julia Child refers to Boeuf Bourguignon as “one of the most delicious beef dishes ever concocted by man.”  We’ll find out soon.

“If the women don’t find you handsome, they should at least find you handy with a corkscrew.”

Boston Boxes

Greetings All.

I hope your world is a sea of tranquility, and better than mine.  Yesterday was pretty rough.

You could say I experienced a spot of bother.  A tsunami of bother is more like it.  As you may know, Michelle and I have at last moved into our condo in East Boston.  It had been rented, so we couldn’t move in until the first of August.  We painted the living room and bedroom, and assembled monster IKEA bookshelves, since we own lots of books.  Friday the new bedroom furniture arrives, and Saturday the movers will bring all the rest of Michelle’s stuff that she has had stored at her parents’ house when she left for Scotland, including a new mattress to go on the new bed.  Sleeping on an air mattress is best left to children and dead people.

Of the three bookshelves, we thought it would look good if one of them had the optional glass doors, but one of them was missing the little black knob.  Plus one of the bookshelf panels didn’t look right.  Rather than face the bureaucratic hell of getting IKEA to fix my problem, I went to the hardware store just down the street to see what Adid could do for me.  I grabbed a small panel with the color I wanted and left.

As you know, I bought a gorgeous 1996 Audi A4 Quattro 2.8, with paint that looks new since the ophthalmologist who owned it kept it in a garage.  It’s no surprise: I like to look at my car.  As I walked out the back door I glanced lovingly in the car’s direction.  Gulp.  It wasn’t there.

I shook off the sucker punch and walked out into the street for a better look.  Wait, did I park it there or somewhere else?  I parked it RIGHT THERE, dammit.  Then I noticed that there were no cars on the street at all…?  I glanced up and saw the sign on the pole, informing all that on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of every month cars are not allowed on the street due to scheduled street-cleaning.  My car had been towed.

I called Michelle, and she suggested I go to the police station in the neighborhood, since they would know what company handled the city’s towing needs, and where the car would be.  Great, so now I faced a towing charge, at least one day’s “storage” fee, PLUS a parking ticket.  I went off to find some advice.  Adid said that there are complicated scheduling arrangements involving street-cleaning and snow-removal, and that parking tickets and towing are pretty common in this part of the city.

Michelle came home for lunch to help me out, and we walked the few blocks to find my car, which somehow had escaped dents, scrapes, nicks and other heart attack-inducing flaws.  One hundred seventeen dollars to the towing company, and another forty for the parking ticket.  Great.  Oh, we were just getting started.

Maureen, my contact at the Edinburgh shipping company who sent home twenty boxes of my stuff, emailed me a shipping document and told me to expect my stuff to arrive around Monday, August 4th.  Sure enough, I received a call from British Air Freight that the pallet of boxes had arrived, and that I could come and take possession after it had cleared Customs.  In order to collect the boxes I needed to rent a van, which I did in Braintree.  It was large and bulky, with steering and handling like a smallish oil tanker.  We set off for South Boston, where the big commercial piers are, trying hard not to hit other cars and trucks on the convoluted highway system Boston has evolved over thousands of years of highway engineer inbreeding.

We found our way to the right place, and were told to take the paperwork up to Customs, just upstairs and across the hall.  We had a nice chat with the police officer with the Scottish last name, who told us that he married an Englishwoman.  (I tell my “Scotland story” whenever I run into someone who might find it amusing.)  We compared notes regarding little British expressions that make themselves at home in our speech, such as “bloody”, “dodgy”, “loo”, and so forth.  The guy wouldn’t stop talking, but I see that as a good thing, since such a person will help people he likes if they need it.  Soon we were heading back downstairs to show the completed paperwork and get my hands on my stuff.  (This all took place this way because I was told that either a shipping broker could handle the paperwork or I could do it myself and save the broker’s fee.)

Back at British Air Freight the guy took our documents, now stamped with the approval of Customs.  He said everything was OK, and gave me a form to take to the warehouseman.  We walked over to the fenced area of the secure warehouse, handed over the document, and waited confidently.  Oops.  One of the lesser lackeys came over and told us there was a “little problem” with my property, and that they were “looking into it.”  Uh huh.  Then the more important guy came over, with a smile on his face.  He told us that the shipping company guy was 65 and couldn’t read anymore, and then showed me the document the old guy had handed me, which had someone else’s name and address, and listed the contents of the shipment as “cat”.  He laughed and asked me for my original paperwork, and then zoomed off to get my stuff with his forklift.  He even helped to load it all into the van, this while we compared stories of studying in Scotland and his kids in college.

At long last, with my 20 boxes of books, clothes, CD’s, DVD’s, shoes, hats, kitchen miscellany, glassware and everything else — my entire life, in other words — we headed back to the condo in East Boston.  Arriving safely, I backed the van into the tiny lot, to better unload it all.  Of course you can’t see a damn thing, even with a plethora of mirrors, and while I was making sure to not hit Michelle’s car, there was a modest crash and the tinkling of glass.  Whathef*ck!

I had hit the phone pole, breaking one of the rear door’s windows, and now the inside of the van’s cargo area, and most of the street for three or four square blocks was now decorated with tiny bits of broken glass; street bling.  Michelle sprang to my aid — she is phenomenal at doing this — and assured me it was no big thing, and not to worry about it.  My heart was pounding as we unloaded the van in record time.  I carried each box to the top step of the first floor landing, and there Michelle grabbed it and piled them into a previously unknown space in our 457 square-foot condo.

My blood pressure was still off the charts as we finished, and as we got back in the van to return it in its less than pristine condition, my love reminded me again that it was OK, everything would be all right.  God she’s great.

As we drove back to Braintree, every little bump, which would have been smoothly absorbed by the Audi, brought more silicon-based cacophony.  Michelle, a senior insurance claims investigator, said this sort of thing happens all the time with rental equipment, since people have rarely driven such vehicles, and all we’d have to do is pay the deductible.  Sure enough, when we returned the van and told the guy at the counter with the long pony-tail, he was equally blasé and appreciative of our honesty; he noted a fair percentage of renters who damage equipment simply park and dash.  Michelle whipped out her credit card and handled the deductible charge, and suggested we go to her parents’ place —  two minutes away — to relax before heading home.

She recounted the story of my bad day to her folks, who were sympathetic and kept saying “poor man!”  Her mother had been incredibly helpful and generous — both of them have — and so I had sent a dozen pink roses that morning to her mom, who couldn’t get a smile off her face.  Herb brought me a small, restorative bourbon.

On the way back, we stopped at a grocery store we like, where I bought my Sugar Doodle a couple bottles of New Zealand sauvignon blanc, her favorite wine, and a steak for me.  We eat mostly fish and chicken, and she is dead-set about fitting into her wedding gown, but I needed a nice piece of dead cow, which helped me, after a couple martinis, to forget the worst day I’ve had in a while.

Parenting, and a Little Golf

You are the parents of young kids or teenagers. You want to know if you are good parents or not. One question: do you regularly allow your kids to go out unsupervised very late at night? Then you are bad parents.

It’s that simple.

I don’t care if you live in the UK or the US or in Russia. Through your indifference or diffidence or just incompetence, you are not doing your kids any favors, and you are making the world a worse place. Congratulations.

Recently I read about a shopping mall in Maryland, the Boulevard at the Capital Centre – and yes, I agree, the name gushes pretentiousness – which has decided to start a new program next month, which will ban anyone 16 and younger after 9 pm, if they are without adult supervision. (Here’s the article.)

The move follows recent disturbing trends in teenage violence across the US and the UK, and mimics policies in place in other American malls, such as the country’s largest, the Mall of America in Minneapolis. As can be expected, teenagers, reacting to any diminution, real or perceived, in their freedom to do anything, anywhere, anytime, are against the policy.

Sierra Gillian, 17, and showing the wisdom and maturity of someone ten years younger, called the initiative “dumb.” She then goes on to unleash a powerful tautology: “If something is going to happen, it’s going to happen.” Wow.

Why can’t kids understand that such restrictions, limits or controls are for their own good? Oh, yeah, it’s because they’re kids; they don’t understand because they are not yet adults.

In the May 4th Sunday Times Magazine was an article about the spoiled children of Moscow’s new batch of billionaires. Every licentious dish is on the menu, every hedonistic appetite is satiated. And they’re still teenagers. One young man is celebrating his 17th birthday. It’s 3 am on a Friday, and the scene is the Rai, a nightclub popular with Moscow’s young and very wealthy. Drinks, drugs, and chauffeured Hummers take the place of family time and salubrious role models.

One rare voice of reason is heard from a wealthy Moscow mother: “I have no doubt that many rich kids will either be in rehab or addicted to a shrink by the time they reach their mid-twenties. I do all I can to make sure mine won’t; ultimately the parents are to blame.”

Boris Arkhipov, a professor of child psychology, says of kids who are spoiled by parents who lavish money and presents on them instead of time and parental influence, “Discipline for many is a problem. They don’t accept authority.”

Closer to home, nearly every weekend night, very late at night, and by this I mean from about 2 am to much later, I hear out my Edinburgh flat window very young voices. Not very young as in young adults in their twenties or thirties; no, I mean kids younger than 15 or 16, and often sounding closer to twelve. What are they doing out that late? Why on earth do their parents allow that? And why do these kids sound as if they are drunk?

I’ve spent enough time bartending to know the sound of someone who has had a trigger amount to drink. You know what I mean by trigger, don’t you? It’s that point when speech begins to slur, and people become repetitive and either jolly and giggly, or they go in the other direction and become argumentative and surly. These latter types can quickly turn violent.

There is nothing at all wrong with my sounding like a curmudgeon and complaining about how things aren’t now like they were back when I was a kid. When I was young, we were told “no”. We were punished if we did something wrong, which is how it ought to be. We were controlled and did what we were told. We were given chores and taught the importance of work, and we were taught how to behave. ‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ were assiduously drilled into us, and we were respectful to adults. That’s a key point there, that we were respectful. We grew to understand that there was a certain amount of deference owed to adults: they knew things, they had been places, they had gone through various kinds of war, and they could do things we couldn’t.

I regularly read in the UK papers how groups of violent teenagers and young kids, often drunk, roam the streets and attack and sometimes murder hapless adults. How could things have possibly gotten so bad? It’s the fault of the parents.

As I think back to when I was a kid growing into a teenager, my younger brother and I were raised in a strict household. It was strict but there was also a very generous amount of love and time spent with the whole family. Older and wiser now, it strikes me that parenting, good parenting, is very difficult. It involves a great deal of work, patience and time. It also requires the parent to place a greater priority on being a parent than being a friend, and also requires the mom and dad to learn how to say “no”.

Kids will offer up their best acting learned from watching movies, and use the oldest and least compelling arguments, such as “But all my friends do…” Weak parents, the kinds that don’t care how their kids turn out, won’t marshal the strength to tell them ‘no’. The kids turn to Plan B, C and D, and scream, cry and plead; sure a parent can be lenient and say ‘yes’ now and then as a reward for good behavior, but most of the time, when your kids want to do things that they shouldn’t, like go out with their friends late at night, they need to be told “no”. It’s like any other exercise: it gets easier the more you do it.

There are far too many parents who are happy to let the TV be the babysitter. There are far too many parents who would rather let their 12 and 13-year old boys run around Edinburgh late at night, evidently after drinking cheap cider, than be brave enough to tell them “no”.

Originally I was going to finish with an impassioned section exhorting parents to get their kids — boys and girls — to play golf. I was going to tell how my dad taught me and encouraged me, and how he helped me to learn some of the important lessons golf teaches. Lessons like the primacy of being honest, playing by the rules, and being respectful of others. But I won’t. I won’t go to all that trouble because I’m going to go play golf right now, after I send my mom and dad an email and tell them I love them.

Plum’s Golf Omnibus

Reading and writing are two of my favorite things. I have been reading voraciously for many years, but am very new to blogging. (So, apparently, is this spell-checker, which inexplicably does not recognize “blogs” or “blogging”.) One of the things I like about being here is that it feels as if I am part of a community of readers: readers are attracted to blogs. And one of the rewards of reading blogs is the opportunity to encounter something new. Today I’d like to talk about one of my favorite writers, P.G. Wodehouse. If you have not read any of his work yet, you should give him a try. (Or read one of my stories; see below.) His first name is Pelham, a name that is perhaps a bit unfortunate, and not what I would name my son. If you say it quickly you come up with his nickname, Plum. His last name is not pronounced like you would think, because it’s pronounced, “would – house”.

Anyway, Wodehouse was a gifted comic writer who wrote nearly a hundred books, many of which are novels and the rest collections of short stories, plus many plays and musicals. Now, don’t screw up your face in disgust at the thought of musicals; it’s his novels and short stories I want to tell you about. In my hand today is his prized collection of golf short stories, The Golf Omnibus. You should run out and buy this 467-page collection boasting 31 short stories, and I’ll tell you why. Plum was crazy about golf, as am I, and loved to play when he could, but on rainy, dismal days like it is today in Edinburgh, he would happily read or write about golf.

An important note is required here to further explain what is meant by ‘golf short story’. These little jewels, averaging about fifteen pages, are primarily about people, but set against a backdrop of the greatest game. People fall in love, form lasting friendships, leave the office early to play golf, and steal your girl; there are lovable and deplorable people in these stories, just like people you know. There is something in each story that will appeal to anyone who likes to read; I bet, and I taught statistics for over ten years, that you will enjoy these stories even if you don’t play golf.

All the stories contain characters who love the game, and some play thirty-six holes a day, but not everyone is a golfer. And the most important themes are those you would find in other short story collections; it’s just that much of the action takes place on golf courses, in clubhouse bars, locker rooms and pro shops. A central character is The Oldest Member, a lovable old geezer who has been around forever. He’s the guy who was a member of the country club back when the protagonists’ grandfathers were members. A charming fact is that since The Oldest Member — and we never hear his real name — has been around for so long, he has most likely changed the diapers of the younger characters, which allows him such great intimacy with them, that they confide in him. I think that at certain ages we have trouble talking to our parents about sensitive subjects; in my turbulent teens I was able to open up to my best friend’s parents next door, because I felt I could talk to them about things that were somehow too uncomfortable to discuss with my mom & dad.

A typical plot line consists in a couple of young golfers who are romantically involved. Something happens to upset the relationship; a new seductress arrives on the scene, or something occurs to disrupt their happiness. One of the lovers will come looking for advice from the wise Oldest Member, who is most likely in his rocking chair on the porch of the club, where he can look out on the course and watch people play. Young people, being in a hurry, want a short answer, but as The Oldest Member comes from the teach-them-how-to-fish school, his method is to tell them a story like it was a parable.

The one seeking advice too late realizes the wise one is about to launch into one of his fables, and tries to duck out. But by then The Oldest Member has grabbed the unenlightened one by the wrist and is guiding him or her to the chair next to him. What then follows is a story within a story, and soon the reader can do nothing but smile and watch it all unfold. Much of the charm of the stories is in the warmth and humor of the narrative, and the dialog, which both crackles with realism, and soothes like an old sweater. And another part of the fun is guessing how the story will end, because The Oldest Member always does a good job of providing insight into the human condition, and it’s this knowledge that gently shoves the couple back to a happy conclusion. It’s great stuff, and the stories and novels are perfect for rainy day reads, again and again.

The photo above is of Wodehouse at age 23, and he has a relatively small smile. On the back cover of The Golf Omnibus is a photo of him at around age 90. He has the biggest smile you could imagine, perhaps a sign that writing golf stories leads to a long and happy life. I hope so.

If I may indulge in a bit of shameless self-promotion, since this is my blog, please read my golf short story on this site, A Niblick in Time; it’s my homage to Wodehouse. I hope you like it. Thanks for stopping by, and keep your head down.