TheLindsayist

Sometimes I can be pedantic.

Last evening, when news of the water disruption spread rapidly across Twitter, a song [for many, the song] by the Standells came to the mind of many, the one about the dirty water and such. Then, we learned not to brush our teeth with the tap water – others remembered that pop star Ke$ha recommends brushing those pearly whites with a brown liquor. As if there were no such thing as Twitter search, once every few moments, someone would blurt out one reference or the other, asking if anyone had thought to do so yet. Which they had. But that’s okay. Let’s make it a contest. Which pop culture reference more effective infiltrated the collective tweeting of those east of Weston?

The results of my lazy, unscientific polling across mostly the #aquapocalypse & #h2omg hashtags return the following, as of 3 PM Sunday:

Number of Boston-area tweeple loving that dirty water: 60
Number who follow Ke$ha’s advice to brush using a bottle of Jack: 44

Congratulations, Standells.

Zing

Got a new guitar strap for tomorrow’s show. Ripping off Neko Case from when I last saw her at Berklee. Here’s what I had in mind.

Guitar store clerks usually drive me up the wall. They tend to annoy, customer’s gender notwithstanding, though I probably like to cry sexism just so I can feel vigilant as a female musician.

But tonight he just said, “Nice choice.”

Proud to be provincial

With great skepticism do I receive the contention that Bostonians must, by nature, complain about everything. We are, they say, miserable, stubborn people whose folding chairs will be pried from our cold dead hands in the parking spots we defend all winter. I’ve watched a few people stay a few years and then move to usually Brooklyn (runner-up: Portland, OR), blaming Boston for everything wrong with their lives and decreeing some borough the Big Rock Candy Mountain. Arriving there, and then complaining about all the same things. Perhaps it’s not me – maybe it’s you?

I’ll be here a decade next September, and by now I’ve amassed a pretty long list of reasons why I find Boston a great place to live. In addition to my affection for green space and attentive city services, Boston has struck me as resource-rich, goals attainable here. Patient, creative friends helped me not so long ago kick off a series of roller disco parties, and I had the pleasure of spending the past several months helping reelect a socially- and environmentally-forward mayor. I can’t walk five feet in my Hyde Square neighborhood without running into some delightful person I know on the way to one of dozens of nearly perfect local businesses, and the music scene has been friendly to the fledgling throes of my first-ever band. If I’m making Boston sound like Sesame Street, well, cut me some slack: I live in JP.

So, I’m happy here, and I resent the suggestions that living here means that I’m cowardly or complacent. I’ve heard these things. I know what I have, and I like it. With that in mind, I wrote the following song, which we’ve been playing out a bit and will have recorded soon enough. It captures my pride, and also what I intend to be a bit of playful curmudgeonliness, which is to say, ‘don’t let the door hit you,’ etc etc. And I can’t operate on the paucity of sleep I once could. This also heralds a new phase for Thick Shakes, one in which we play more than three notes per person. I think it’s a good move for everyone.

Writing about this here probably spares you the awkward between-song stage banter, by the way, not that the song is subtle by any means and requires a preface. More bands should blog, then.

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Go Back to New York

I took a walk around Central Park
but baby, I’m still in the dark
’cause we also have the Law Olmstead
and I’ll be living here til I’m dead

Nothing’s quite as big
Nothing’s quite as cool
I can’t teach you anything you didn’t learn at school

Go back to New York (x3)

You still complain about the traffic snarls
but now you whine across the Hudson not the Charles
[x2; I need to write a second couplet here]

[bridge & chorus]

Daddy’s money always got you far
that’s why you worry ’bout the hours at the bar
But I still gotta earn what’s mine
Why don’t you go to bed on time?

Nothing’s quite as big
Nothing’s quite as cool
I can’t teach you anything you didn’t learn at NYU

Go back to New York [many times to end]

Farewell, Crackers.

Crackers, my family’s schnauzer, died this morning. I’m glad he was a schnauzer, because it gave him a really good suit for his old man tendencies. The shaggy brow and mustache gave him the permanent affect of a rudely-awoken shop-owner. He was an ardent homebody. He’d fight you on walks heading away from the house only until he realized he was on the return loop, at which point he’d take off like a rocket. Like most dogs of his piglet-like physique, his jaunts elicited smiles from those he passed. I’m no fussy dog-owner, but he looked really terrific in a sweater. While my aunt babysat him one weekend, he escaped. A state trooper found him trotting back in the direction of our house on the Thurber’s Avenue curve of 95 South around 3 am, a miserable place to be a driver, let alone a schnauzer.

Some fairly ingenious kidney surgery gave him a few more years not too long ago thanks to our beloved longtime family vet, Dr. Dan Simpson. But, Crackers was old, with rapidly degrading health to the detriment of his comfort. My folks made him an appointment to go in peace this morning, but he didn’t make it through the night. He passed where he always preferred to be, at home, about an hour before he’d have left the house. RIP, little buddy.

Kitchen sink carbonara and the Subjects

We played last night at the Middle East in Cambridge, which was a pleasure every which way. Even despite Tim’s cut finger opening up onstage, splattering blood all across his already red and white guitar. I found it so distracting, I started the next song in a completely wrong key.

The Subjects also played, a terrific band on tour from New York that you can hear here. Not only did they play a set that left us all quite giddy, they are delightful gentlemen and gracious guests. When we found our late-night Chinese food plans thwarted [no 24-hour Peking ravioli in JP, alas], we all agreed homemade pasta did in fact sound better than take-out pizza. Turns out they’re enthusiastic, adventurous eaters. I had dough all over my hands so I didn’t take pictures, but they did, so maybe I’ll add some later. Over reports of cross-country BBQ comparisons, we ate the following, a what’s-in-the-crisper variation on pasta carbonara.

Mark Bittman’s egg pasta recipe, recounted here from memory i.e.

2 cups flour
3 eggs
Pinch salt, water as needed

Flour in a bowl, make a well in the middle with a spoon, crack an egg into that and with a fork, start whisking the egg so it incorporates flour as it mixes. At some point in this process, add the salt. When it’s too dry to manipulate, crack another egg and repeat until all three eggs have incorporated all the flour. Ball up the dough and knead it for about a minute until it is smooth and pliable, and add a little water if it’s too dry. Split the dough into four balls. Roll out as you like – we use a little metal crank pasta machine – and drop in boiling, salted, oiled water for about two minutes until it’s tender.

Kitchen Sink Carbonara

Couple ounces pancetta, chopped
Half a red onion, diced
Big clove of garlic
One Chinese eggplant, chopped
2 eggs
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp olive oil

In a skillet, sauté pancetta until crisp and mostly rendered. Add onion, sauté until soft and sweet, about 4 minutes. Sliver garlic and add to skillet. Add eggplant and fry until tender but browned. In a bowl, whisk eggs and cheese. Cook pasta; drain, but do not rinse, and reserve about ¾ cup of the cooking water. Return the pasta to the pot with the reserved cooking water; toss with the fried eggplant mixture. Pour egg mixture over the pasta and toss to coat. The heat of the pasta will cook the egg. If the pasta is too dry, drizzle with a bit more olive oil. Grate extra cheese to taste, and finish with freshly ground black pepper. Sleep a few hours, wake up and make brunch.

Yo, dawg

We have a pepper and carrot surplus at the moment, so I’ve been finding ways to integrate them into everything. See: carrot macaroni and cheese, a well-intentioned stab at introducing Vitamin A to the comfort food staple. The recipe I used was all wrong – melting cheese over pasta and calling it macaroni and cheese is for junk food amateurs, and adding oranges to carrots is the way to make babies eat vegetables. I’m perfectly happy eating my veggies even when they don’t taste like candy; I don’t even LIKE most candy. And, I certainly don’t have to disguise them in my m&c; but, without the carrots, I’d be unlikely to make that dish, so I gave it a try.

I ditched the juice in favor of savory seasoning by way of garlic and mustard powder, and built a classic bechamel before adding the carrot puree; also, added a bread crumb topping. The result left me with a curious, grainy sauce that seemed to miss the point of both lovely Granby carrots and cheddar mac & cheese, but as a side dish to my roast, it was fine.

I’m taking a moment to spend more time on the internet tonight to mention that I’ve been spending too much time on the internet. See, tonight, I went back to the carrot-and-pepper crisper this time for stuffed peppers [ground turkey, not unlike what I did to the zucchini previously]. And as I chopped a little red pepper to add to the filling, I found myself thinking, “Yo, dawg. We heard you like peppers, so we put a pepper in your pepper so you could…”

Red Fire Farm Vegetable Freak Show

After a season of vegetables from the crate, a recent trip to the supermarket seemed like the real freak show: waxed, symmetrical, genetically modified perfect produce. Last weekend’s tomato festival hosted their own version, where eggplants had sprouted arms and squashes sported tentacles. I’d like to imagine this is the product of the hottest, rainiest part of summer, but this is probably just what happens when your vegetables aren’t fertilized with Rogaine or whatever they are using these days.

Careful not to get vertigo; I took this with my phone.

Tomatina West

Red Fire Farm’s Tomato Festival was Saturday. No splashing in pureed tomatoes, but the intermittent downpours made certain it was still a sloppy time. Rusty Belle from Amherst covered “Cry to Me” by Solomon Burke, one of my favorite songs, just as the sky opened up and the crowd rushed under the tent with them. Tim and I huddled under our umbrella with a slice of grilled pizza.

Stuffed Zucchini

What we might have here is a new entry into the “look who got a farmshare and is now writing painfully obvious recipes from the contents.” You know – we have some basil, some okra, some corn and some peppers, and then suddenly there’s a recipe for basil okra corn and pepper salad – just toss with vinaigrette! – and aren’t we clever? Well, that’s what you’re going to get here. This was supposed to include tomatoes but they’d spoiled, so you’ll never know, and I think the only reason the filling does not employ Parmesan is that it was 10:00 and I was loopy. Now that you’ve been warned:

3 zucchini, sliced in halves lengthwise, stubs removed and innards scooped out, chopped and reserved

1 tbsp olive oil

1 carrot, finely chopped

1 white onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp thyme leaves

1/2 lb. ground turkey; I used a mix of white and dark meat

1/4 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 tsp salt

ground black pepper to taste

1 egg, beaten

Oven 400

Heat oil in a deep saucepan; saute onions until sweet and soft, just under ten minutes; add carrots and do the same until tender, then add garlic and salt. Add ground turkey, chopping up a bit with your spatula and browning the meat until it’s done and a bit more flavorful. Add wine, simmer another five minutes. Remove from heat.

In a separate, heat-resistant bowl, mix bread crumbs and egg to a paste, and add meat-vegetable mixture, tossing well to combine.

Salt and pepper the inside of your zucchini canoes, drizzle with olive oil and spoon in filling. Cover with foil and insert into oven. Bake 20 minutes, then remove foil for the final ten. By this point, your filling should have crisped and your zucchini will be tender.

Mom: make this slaw.

This is another variation of the cabbage/peach/pine nut version I posted earlier, or the one with the roasted matchsticked beets. This one is completely raw, and Tim ate a quart of it yesterday.

Lunch and dinner and lunch and lunch

2-3 carrots, peeled

3-4 beets, peeled

2 hakurai turnips [if you want]

1 small head red cabbage

1 bunch scallions, coarsely chopped

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp soy sauce

1 tbsp agave nectar or honey

salt and pepper to taste

In food processor, shred carrots, beets, turnips and cabbage to slaw texture, and toss in a big bowl with scallions. Add dressing, toss to coat, adjust to taste.

This makes a big whopping pile of blazingly fuschia slaw. The other night, we had this with polenta and shrimp prepared like this.