Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

My friend Theresa tipped me off to the beer link in the previous post. Hi, T-Dawg.

# Dan Shaughnessy checks in today with a particularly poor column about the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers. I’m a Celtics fan, and I can’t stand the Lakers, but even I don’t think they deserve the petulant hit job Mr. Shaughnessy perpetrates here. It just strikes me as sort of immature to whine that the Lakers are sore winners; the fact is, they’ve won four championships this decade, and their coach has the most championships ever. These are undeniable truths! This column also manages to combine two of the most pernicious loser excuses: the ol’ “things would have been different if X had been healthy” and the “this championship isn’t legit because the winner didn’t have to go through Y.” What would have happened if Garnett had been healthy? What if Lebrons teammates actually showed up? What if ants wore hats? We’ll get ‘em next year, Dan! Keep your chin up!

# Also in the Globe, here’s another story about Todd and Jason Alstrom, the heroes behind BeerAdvocate.com. The occasion is this weekend’s American Craft Beer Festival, which your favorite blogger will be attending. Expect a post. I’ll be bringing my notebook!

# Here’s a pretty good explanation, care of Slate, of the allure of the Real World/Road Rules Challenge, whose most recent season wrapped up last week. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun understand that the Challenge is appointment television for me. It can’t be overstated how much I love this show!

Thank heavens my TV, which was out of commission for a week and a half, is back and better than ever, because I just caught Rocky IV on the ol’ channel guide.

And what luck, I picked up the movie just in time for one of the all-time great rock-anthem-montage scenes.

That’s “No Easy Way Out,” sung by Robert Tepper.

This would all be well and good, but it enters tremendous territory when you Wikipedia Mr. Tepper and find out where he’s from.

That’s right, precious reader. The singer of one of the pantheon pump-up songs is from the heart of all things hardcore: Bayonne, New Jersey! That’s right!

For the second time in the short life of this blog, I’ve found myself the recipient of a coconut from a friend. This time, the coconut was a gift from my buddy Miles (of Now Is Not the Rhyme fame), who just returned from a trip to Hawaii. The last time I got a coconut, I smashed it on my porch. Since I no longer have access to the porch, or the blog on which I recorded the smash, you’ll have to take my word for it.

This time around, I decided that since I don’t like anything even remotely coconut related, I ought to just make a pina colada; at least it has booze in it, right? And since I was using fresh coconut, I should use fresh pineapple, right? Of course I should!

Look at this cuddly guy

Well, as it turns out, making a pina colada isn’t as easy as shaking out the juice inside the coconut, and adding some rum and pineapple juice. First of all, there’s the matter of cracking the coconut open.

Not a recommended method

Last time around, I could just smash this fruity rock on the ground, but this time I had to actually capture all the juice and whatnot. I hope the old man downstairs didn’t mind me pounding a coconut with a hammer in a metal pot on the floor. Woops.

As I said, it’s not as easy as just pouring out the juice inside the coconut, like in the cartoons. No, there’s a whole complicated process, which I found here. The smashing was fun enough, but then I had to like, work with the meat of the coconut, which I find to be gross. This recipe for coconut milk asks me to peel the brown skin off the pieces of cocomeat, using my vegetable peeler. Which would be great, if my peeler was made out of effing corundum. However, it’s just plain old steel, so I had to throw the cocomeat chunks, brown skin and all, into the blender. Which proceeded to not blend too good. But oh well. (Did I forget to tell you that I had to throw this thing in the oven? Sup with that?)

What will protect you now, coconut meat?

So then I had to put the cocomeat into a clean cloth, soak it in warm water, and then squeeze the juice out. Which leads me to the most pressing question of the night. There are entire economies built on the pina colada. Are they all chopping up bits of coconut meat and soaking them in warm water and squeezing them through cheesecloth (to say nothing of draining all that pineapple puree through a coffee filter)? If so, a tip of the cap. Because it’s a pain in the ass!

See you in hell, gratings

So I’m sitting here, with my bare hands, wringing away at this mound of moist, tepid coconut shavings. All of that squeezing only left me with like, three quarters of a cup of sweet, sweet coconut milk. Tell me that doesn’t look appetizing.

Feel free to say no

And after all that (I apologize for not taking a picture of all the dishes I wound up dirtying. Suffice it to say, it’s a big pile), after traipsing about the West End getting this fresh pineapple, after cracking open this coconut that traveled all the way from the great state of Hawaii, after all of the chopping and grating and squeezing, after all of that concern for the best, freshest ingredients, I had the decency to only have half a handle of Ron Romero Imported Rum in the closet. For those of you unfamiliar with Senor Romero, just know that his rum comes in a plastic bottle. Mm mm good.

Not worth it!

The end product was actually really good. Creamy, not too much ice, sweet, not too much rum. I would have been profoundly satisfied, had it not been the most arduous task I’ve ever performed in the kitchen. And I just made a strawberry rhubarb pie!

So the Globe this weekend ran a list of the top 100 New England books, and by that they mean books about the region, or books written by New England writers. I clicked on the link on boston.com, ready to mock all the provincial literary choices collected therein, but I have to say, it’s a pretty solid list. I was anticipating a few generous reaches (John Dos Passos went to Harvard, and the USA trilogy is, ostensibly, at least a little bit about New England, technically, right?), but it doesn’t appear that the rules needed to be bent too much to get a good list going. It’s also funny when you can see Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel and The Call of Cthulhu on the same best-of list.

They also have a fun little interactive feature where you can check off books on the list that you’ve already read, or would like to read. You’ll be proud to hear, treasured reader, that I was able to check off 17 books from the list, which doesn’t sound like a lot, especially coming from an allegedly voracious reader like myself, but consider that I more than tripled-up the average of 5 books by the 1,300 odd folks who have gone through the list at press time. A lot of those people are probably actual New Englanders! And they probably all loaded up on the kids’ books. (EVERYBODY has read Charlotte’s Web. Who’s got The Trumpet of the Swan under their belts, eh?)

I was pleasantly surprised by how I’ve read all of these books, too. There were enough selections that I read in high school (The Scarlet Letter, The Catcher in the Rye, Our Town, etc.), but only one that I’d read in college (The Rise of Silas Lapham). A whopping three were books that my book club read (Little Children, The Emperor’s Children, and my go-to book recommendation, The Secret History). I read The Last Hurrah purely because I felt like it. And, full disclosure, I haven’t actually completed Common Ground or On the Road, but I have every intention to, so I felt not problem with checking them off.

Yay books!

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun understand that I’m a pie guy. I love baking pies. Cakes and tarts, not so much, but a pie? Ooh la la creme. I started off back in the day with a lemon meringue pie recipe that I got from the back of a box of corn starch, then moved on to key lime (delicious, but squeezing those tiny buggers is a hassle), apple, and blueberry pies. For whatever reason, though, I always saw strawberry rhubarb as the granddaddy of them all. Maybe it was the mystery. After all, how come you never see any recipes for plain strawberry pie? What the hell is a rhubarb, anyway? Questions abound, and the only way to answer them was to bake one of these pies myself.

Fortunately, a coworker informed me last week that not only does he grow rhubarb in his garden, but he hates the stuff and I could have as much as I want. Ding ding ding!

This, apparently, is rhubarb

When I’m trying out a new recipe, I don’t mess around too much sifting through the toobz trying to find the best one; if there’s a problem with a recipe, I’ll fix it next time. So I wound up with the first Google result for “strawberry rhubarb pie,” from Simply Recipes.

I have no idea what makes rhubarb good or not good. It was crisp, a little stringy, and green on the inside. Is that bad? Shrug. It has a fresh, springy scent, a little reminiscent of sassafras, but no too much! When you eat it fresh, it has the vaguest essence of something that’s edible, but you certainly wouldn’t go out of your way to snack on this tough, sour stuff. It allegedly tastes good when you cook it, though. Who am I to argue?

In a delightful turn of serendipity, I happened to get the best batch of strawberries I’ve ever bought at Haymarket. These things were firm, sweet, and big. I counted my blessings as I chopped these bad boys up, glad that I wouldn’t have to blow ten bucks on strawberries at the supermarket.

My crappy webcam isn't doing these berries any justice

The recipe is pretty straightforward. (Although I ain’t never put “quick-cooking tapioca” in anything, and it was kind of weird, because the box asked me to shake it before using. Huh?) I was a little confused by the proportion of rhubarb to strawberries that it called for, so I went ahead and overdid it on the strawberries. And one cup of sugar! Sweet fancy Moses!

Precious reader, you know I’m not a boastful guy. And you also know that I would never, ever lie to you. So when I say that this strawberry rhubarb pie is the single greatest thing I’ve ever made in my entire life, you know that’s coming straight from the heart.

Mmm. Pie

It was like a flavor explosion. Like there was a party in my mouth, and not only was everyone invited, but they also brought money for beer. As can be expected, the strawberry flavor didn’t dominate, but the rhubarb definitely didn’t taste the same as the fresh stuff I had tried earlier. It was goopy, but everything had a nice, soft consistency. The pie was very sweet (it can’t be helped, what with a cup full of sugar), but the rhubarb definitely lent it a tartness that caused me to pucker up as I was finishing each bite. How dynamic! I can’t shut up about it.

And the best part is, there’s room for improvement. I didn’t peel the rhubarb, which I might next time, since there was a bit of stringiness in a few bites. I used orange zest this time, but who knows if lemon or lime would work too. The goopiness was fine, but maybe more tapioca would keep things together better next time. And I’m a notoriously lazy top-crust-on-putter, so if I actually try next time, the pie can LOOK better.

All in all, though, I couldn’t be more pleased with this effort. Of course now, I’m going to bed with a stomachache. Woops.

So the other day, the Cleveland Racist Mascots, I mean, Indians, won a game against the Kansas City Royals when a bottom-of-the-10th-inning hit with runners on first and second by Shin-Soo Choo hit one of the many seagulls hanging out in shallow center field, putting the immediate kibosh on any sort of play at the plate, and Cleveland won in walk-off fashion as Mark DeRosa scored from second amid the confusion. Watch the video!

This would all be a quirky, albeit heartbreaking for Royals fans, little baseball story if not for the fact that it happened in Cleveland where, a year and a half ago, the Yankees infamously lost a game after reliever Joba Chamberlain was attacked by a plague of locusts. When is Major League Baseball going to step in?! What sort of menagerie are the Indians running over there? Calling down all manner of beasts to smite your opponents isn’t in the spirit of baseball, and it’s got to stop. I mean, look at this clip from last month, when the Devil Rays visited Cleveland. It’s unacceptable!

Quick, let me buy some time!

# This is an article by Official Friend of DD&U Kevin Armstrong, a writer at Sports Illustrated. (For real! I have actual like, writer friends.) It’s about the golden age of sportswriting in Boston, when greats like Ray Fitzgerald, Will Mcdonough, Leigh Montville, Peter Gammons, and Bob Ryan were all regulars on the Boston Globe sports pages. Even if you’re not at all familiar with late-70’s Boston sports journalism (which I’m definitely not), read the whole. There’s a sepia-toned, old-school quality to Kevin’s piece that’s really enjoyable. We came up together on The Heights (the Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College), he the sports editor and I the news editor, and it was always apparent that he was going to do what he was doing then for a pro outfit someday. He’s a student of sportswriting, and sports and writing to boot. This is all to say that you’re in good hands with him. Enjoy!

# Something this crazy has got to be true!

# I find this to be incredible. The MBTA is floating the idea of raising fares on the T 15 or 20 percent, and at the same time, some plutocrat is paying $300,000 for an outdoor, uncovered parking spot. Amazing! What a world we live in!

Why was I able to see my breath on the walk home this evening? It’s June! ! ! !

Is there anything more disappointing than noticing a nice-looking, happy, clearly-going-on-a-college-tour family on the B line, only to see them get off at bu Central?