Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

That is all.

I think it’s hilarious that the commercial for Nick Varano’s Famous Deli features a kid that doesn’t have enough money for a sandwich. Hey Nick, maybe if you didn’t charge extortionary rates for your sandwiches, you wouldn’t have to accept toys as payment from street urchins!

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that The Awl, a blog about culture, TV, news, science, sports, and whatnot, is one of my favorite websites. It’s just a lot of fun! They’ve been doing a series of recipes from various contributors called “The Real American Thanksgiving Cookbook,” featuring offbeat or family recipes for Thanksgiving food. So I thought, what the hell, maybe I’ll give this a shot and submit something, never in a million years thinking that the editors of the site, who are actual real professional editors, would ever think of running something I wrote.

But what do you know? Here’s my recipe for easy lemon meringue pie! I’m obviously beyond thrilled to be up there. I write stuff here on the blog because I like it, and I get to write in a style and about subject matter that I pick. For other people to say “this is something that we like and is good enough to go on our site” is really a feather in the cap, and gives me a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling as I depart to hop on a bus for the interminable Thanksgiving commute down to Jersey. I’m bustin’ over here! Bustin’!

That's right!

Take a look at that photo right there. That’s the receipt from my grocery trip this afternoon. See the total? Your eyes are most definitely not deceiving you, dearest reader: that’s $32 ON THE NOSEY! And it’s not like I bought 32 $1 cans of tuna or something. This was a standard grocery trip. Some items for dinner for the week, supplies for lunch, a couple bottles of club soda, and a Snapple, because I was thirsty. And I hit $32 exactly!

Could you do that if you tried? I was buying A LOT of items by weight. Cold cuts. Bananas. Apples. Grapes. Tomatoes. Imagine how many things have to right in order to hit an even dollar amount. If there were a deal on spaghetti sauce, I would have bought two jars instead of one. If the plum tomatoes weren’t so small, I would have bought two instead of three. If I went shopping yesterday instead of today, I would have bought five bananas instead of four. The permutations are nearly endless! Log your amazement in comments.

This tastes at least an order of magnitude better than it looks.

So yesterday, I came into possession of a food processor (finally) and a big pile of basil from my produce source at the office. Consequently, I made some pesto. You can look at a bowl of it to the left. (I probably could have taken a pic of the actual finished product on some pasta, but, whatevs.) It turned out pretty good! I don’t have a ton to say about the matter, except that I’m really looking forward to playing with this food processor (pureed soups! daiquiris!), and if there are any girls reading who are interested in a very vulnerable, very available guy who cooks, well, talk to me down in the comments.

I spent the weekend in sunny Luddington, Michigan, at the wedding of my dear friend Michelle and her new husband Rob. (You’ll remember Michelle as the gal who is responsible for your favorite blog’s name. Without her, you’d probably be reading my second name choice, timmysblogismorepowerfulthangalactusthelivingtribunalandthemadtitanthanoscombined.net.) It was a delightful weekend. Since I’m not really great at expressing mushy feelings of gratitude and joy, I’ll let it suffice to say that I have them and will instead give you my thoughts on some of the extraneous, though still noteworthy, elements of the trip.

# Firstly, the beer. As soon I showed up, I tried an IPA brewed by the Jamesport Brewing Company, which operates a great brewpub in downtown Luddington. It was very tasty! Although probably not so tasty that I can remember its charms four days later. So oh well?

What I DO remember is the beer on tap at the wedding: Oberon, a summer beer produced by Bell’s Brewery down in Kalamazoo. This stuff was great: a little heftier than your usual wheat beer, with a slight orange taste at the front of your mouth, a little bit of spice in the back, and a sunshiney essence in every sip. I can’t stop raving about this stuff. (I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that this excellent beer AND America’s Greatest Hero, Derek Jeter, hail from the same town. Just saying!) It’s distributed primarily in the Midwest, unfortunately, although Nick, the Official Philadelphia Correspondent of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, reports that he’s seen a sixer of it at the store down the block from him. Lucky guy!

# On occasion since I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve presented you with a few great ideas in action. Here is perhaps the greatest one I’ve ever come across.

It was an outdoor wedding, so there was a fancy trailer hitched out back with a men’s room and a ladies’ room. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know I have the bladder of an infant, so it wasn’t long before I was in there, making use of the facilities. Once I was done, I go to reach for the flush, but there was no handle. Hmm? I look around, and I see that attached to the bottom of the toilet is a pedal. A foot-flush pedal. So I pressed it, the toilet flushed, and I was good to go.

The question is, why doesn’t every toilet in every public place have one of these!
The entire bathroom microbe safety system is predicated on two hopes: that people don’t whiz all over themselves, and that everyone washes their hands. This obviously isn’t too much to ask, but people routinely fail on either, or both, counts. What the foot pedal does is eliminate one of the major grossness vectors: if everyone is pressing with their feet, their hands are free to not be engrossened by a flushing handle. The handle on the door to the bathroom is still and issue, but you have to admit, eliminating any contact your hands have with any part of the toilet is a big plus! Let’s get these installed in every bar in town!

# Have you ever heard a song, but for the life of you, you couldn’t figure out the name? Maybe it’s on a commercial or in a movie, and you don’t have an opportunity to find out what the title is. I’ve had one for years. I remember seeing one of those TV-order oldies compilations one time that included it, but I never caught the title. Then I would hear it in some random movie, and it would bug the hell out of me. Infuriating.

I’m at my table, enjoying some appetizers, and the awesome country music band that Michelle’s folks found performed my song. I’m thrilled, obviously. Once they’re done, the singer asks “Does anyone know the name of that song?” And immediately, I hear someone say “‘Sleepwalk,’ by Santo and Johnny.” Yes! That’s it! Give it a listen, and you’ll immediately recognize it.

# I took some pictures, also, which I wanted to include in this post. Of the IPA I mentioned earlier. Of Lake Michigan (you can’t see the Wisconsin side from the Michigan side! It’s a lake!) Of a sign from a Tea Party Republican Congressional candidate. Of the Luddington High School wrestling team t-shirt I bought at a fundraiser. But Wordpress isn’t letting me put them in this post! Your loss!

Anyway, congratulations, Michelle and Rob, and thanks for a great weekend! (They’re two of my precious readers, so I know they’ll see this. That’s part of the bargain, guys: if you feed me steaks and beer, you’ll get a post about your wedding. I do what I can.)

Frosty goodness

I got some strawberries on the cheap last week, and as is my wont, I immediately threw them in the freezer. Tonight, I found myself in the mood for a strawberry smoothie, but alas, I didn’t have any milk. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that once the idea of a frozen beverage gets in my head, there’s no getting it out, so Plan B was daiquiris. Fortunately, I did happen to have some rum (and the good stuff, too, unlike the last time I whimsically decided to make a summery tropical bev), and all the other citrus- and simple syrup–related accouterments necessary for strawberry daiquiris.

However, comma, I couldn’t settle on a recipe. One called for fresh strawberries. Another called for lemon juice, or lime juice, or both. One called for sugar, and another for simple syrup. So I just kinda winged in. The results were mixed. (Get it? It’s a mixed drink, mixed in a blender? Get it?) One lesson we can all agree on is that there’s such a thing as too much rum. Oh well.

I was making dinner tonight (cherry tomatoes and parmesan over fettuccine), and once I got the olive oil out of the cupboard, I started singing “EVOO Woman” to the tune of the Electric Light Orchestra song of the almost same name. Hopefully it’ll stay in your head as long as it’s been in mine.

This weekend, your favorite blogger attended the American Craft Beer Festival at the Seaport World Trade Center here in sunny Boston, Massachusetts. I’m a professional writer, but I’m struggling to come up with the words to describe the childlike joy that fills my heart every time I walk through those convention center doors and see 86 craft brewers pouring more than 400 different beers. It’s enough to make you believe that there just might be a providential force benevolently watching over us, dedicated to helping us achieve happiness in this existence.

Every year, I print out this master list of all the brewers and beers, and try to highlight the ones that I absolutely must try. For whatever reason, I completely forgot to do that this year, so I was flying blind. Every year, I also promise myself that I’ll take notes and blog about the experience, and every year I fail to get it done. Not this time! Using a streamlined, no-frills approach of using simple annotations on my handy Beer Fest guide, I was able to create a bare-bones record of my experience. I won’t lie: the tasting cup is tiny, but you can sip as many different beers as you want in three and a half hours, so my note taking um, suffered as the day progressed. But let’s take a walk through and see if I can’t tell you a little bit about my day and some of the excellent beers I tasted.

Stay pretty? Not a problem, postcard.

# The toast of last year’s fest was the relatively new Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project, a brewer based out of Cambridge (although they don’t have an actual brewery, so they’re not quite based anywhere). In fact, by the time I made it to their booth last year, they were all out of beer. This time around, I made sure I went to them first. I’ve had their Jack D’Or American saison before, so I tried the Fluffy White Rabbits, which is described as a “hoppy Belgian triple” (get it?) I scribbled down “light, hoppy, sweet,” but for the life of me, I can’t recall anything else about it. Chalk that up to it being the first beer I had. The good news is, I wouldn’t have bothered to write anything down if it sucked.

# The craft beer industry is the craft beer industry because none of these breweries can even touch the big guys like Anheuser Busch–InBev and MillerCoors. The Boston Beer Company, maker of Sam Adams, is the largest American-owned brewery, and they famously tout in ads how small (something like 1 percent?) their share of total beer sales in America. All this being said, there are still some big guns in the craft beer community: Brooklyn Brewery, San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company, Boston’s Harpoon Brewery, Delaware’s Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Vermont’s Magic Hat Brewing Company, and California’s Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, to name a few.

These are breweries that, honestly, have nothing to prove. They’re the prime movers of the industry, and some of the most reliably innovative brewers out there. That said, some stood out and some lagged behind on Saturday. Brooklyn offered a virtuoso lineup of brews: I started off with a taste of the Brooklyn Summer, an English “light dinner ale” which, out of the tap, is my second favorite beer ever. I immediately got back into line to taste the Sorachi ale, a dry-hopped saison. (A saison, also know as farmhouse ale, is described by the good fellows at Beer Advocate as “a very complex style; many are very fruity in the aroma and flavor. Look for earthy yeast tones, mild to moderate tartness. Lots of spice and with a medium bitterness. They tend to be semi-dry with many only having touch of sweetness.”) This one failed to disappoint; if you know Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun, you know I appreciated the extra touch of hops. I also had a sip of their Dark Matter, a brown ale aged in whiskey barrels. Just think this, with an actual whiskey aftertaste. Delish!

# Harpoon was a sponsor of the event, so they got a prime location with additional taps. Good, because if the Brooklyn Summer is my second favorite beer, then the Harpoon IPA is Numero Uno. (I rhapsodized about this nectar back when I thought I was leaving Boston forever.) This time around, I sampled their 100 Barrel Series offering, Pott’s Landbier, an easy, not-too-hoppy not-too-malty session lager that was vaguely reminiscent of another of Harpoon’s 100 Barrel beers, the kellerbier, a truly tasty style that for the life of me, I can never find anywhere.

# I was a little disappointed with Stone. These guys make notoriously hoppy (and delicious) beers liek Arrogant Bastard and Ruination. When I said up top that there are brewers that don’t have anything to prove, the corollary is that they can take some risks. And the corollary there is that some risks blow up in your face! Stone’s booth featured their cask-conditioned IPA, each dry-hopped with a different variety of hops—Centennial, Chinook, Amarillo, Nugget, and Columbus. It was an interesting experience, tasting how different types of hops affect the taste of a beer you’re already familiar with. However, not every type was a hit, and being cask-conditioned ales at a beer fest, the brews came out kind of tepid. Other people can disagree, but I find that my beer tastes better cold. It was sad, because looking at the Stone offerings in the guide, I was really looking forward to having my hair blown back. It was not.

# I’m not a great food/taste writer. I just have a hard time describing how things smell and taste. Things taste the way they taste. What do you want from me! I say all of this because I really liked the Shipyard Summer Ale, an American pal. But the best way I could describe it was that it had a feety, socky taste. In a good way! Anyone that’s ever eaten a piece of cheese knows what I’m talking about.

# Every time you go to one of these beer festivals, you run the risk of discovering a completely new style that you never knew you liked, but thereafter can’t live without. I got a taste for the aforementioned saison style at last year’s beer fest. This year, the honor went to a style that I had never even heard of: the black IPA. Apparently, in the beer community, there’s a bit of a controversy as to whether the black IPA represents a new style or simply a fad. (I’m apt to agree with the Idaho Statesman’s take.) The fact remains, though, that the stuff is tasty. I tried two types of black IPA on Saturday: one from Clown Shoes, which is actually contract-brewed out of Mercury Brewing in Ipswich, and one from Blue Hills Brewery in Canton. The virtue of the black IPA (or Cascadian Dark Ale, as a vocal faction of beer enthusiasts want to call it) is that it combines the malty taste of a stout, with the light body and hoppy character of an IPA. The Blue Hills iteration leaned in the IPA direction, while the Clown Shoes leaned toward the stout. Both were excellent. I’m very much looking forward to more examples of this delectable brew trickling eastward.

There’s a bunch more beers that I tried and loved, but this post is getting a little long. If there’s a demand for more insight, let me know in comments.

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that this isn’t a “Let me tell you about what I did today” kind of blog. But let me tell you what I did yesterday.

It was an exceptionally pleasant day here in the Hub of the Universe, and since I had the day off for Great Friday, me and sweet, sweet Alice went out for a little ride. I took the bike path through the Southwest Corridor Park all the way down to the Arnold Arboretum. (Which, for all of my readers in Boston, is a treasure, and you should all visit.) Anyway, I hopped off for a bit to check out the scenery. I walked off the road and heard something scurry out of the gutter. I look down, only to see an effing SNAKE! A wild snake! In the middle of Boston! So I’m chasing this serpent through the grass, and I almost stepped on ANOTHER SNAKE! The place was awash with this scaly devils. My little guy eventually stopped near a tree, and I was able to snap this picture:

See? See?

It’s only a tiny little garter snake, but still! A snake, in the foreboding urban hellhole! How cool is that?

On another note, I wound up riding like, 19 miles through Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and my legs were KILLING me. But it was fine, because I had the day off, and it was gorgeous out.

And it’s even more gorgeous today! I’m about to head out for some drinky-poos with my pals, but I thought I would pass this along. It’s the writers for the Morning News, talking about their favorite outdoor drinks. In that spirit, I suppose I’ll reminisce. The god’s honest truth is that I don’t really have a favorite outdoor drink: I find the idea that beautiful weather can be combined with alcohol to be one of the more miraculous concepts ever conceived, so I’m profoundly grateful for any mojito, pina colada, or Natty Ice. I do have some wonderful memories of liming it up with some cold Coronas, but if I had to choose a go-to outdoor bev, it would have to be a gin and tonic. And not one of those wimpy ones they give you at the club. I’m talking a pint glass, with like four ice cubes, and about six glugs (as in “glug-glug-glug-glug-glug-glug”) of Sapphire. Mm mm good. Feel free to leave your favorites in comments.