Reward for Capture

Here's a list of my possessions which are currently lost. If you're feeling charitable, please cross your fingers and say a prayer that I find them *shortly*. I hear St. Anthony's a pretty good advocate for those who have misplaced things: Some of these are rapidly moving into St. Jude territory, though!

in order of disappearance:
last year's Christmas present from Pete
my phone charger
my primary set of keys
my phone

also (for the record):
my intellectual uberconfidence
my undyingly sweet and kind nature

Please be on the lookout for any or all of these!

Coleman Doesn't Disappoint

Yes, it's Barbra writing about food again. I think I'm inspired by my "bff" bottlebee's gastronomic forays. And when I told him about this meal he said, oh yeah blog *that*. Think I'll handle this one in chronological order. Since I was under the weather (and since I generally do much of the commuting to maintain the long-distance thang), my sweetie did yeoman's service to make sure I had a great birthday. He drove a two-hour-plus one-way trip, spent eight and a half hours in the fine commonwealth of Pennsylvania with me, then drove the two-plus hours back to Atlantic Highlands. And we had fun in between. We visited at the house, smushed up close during "I Am Legend" at Oaks, Pa. (3.5/5 stars -- worth seeing) and then headed to Coleman for an early birthday dinner. I've wanted to hit that establishment since it opened. It stands as part of a conference center created on the site of the old Strassburger Mansion. The developers of the Normandy Farm Conference Center, which sits at the junction of Route 202 and Morris Road in Whitpain Township, Pa., did a beautiful job finding a new purpose for the old house by incorporating it into the posh little resort property. Until recently, I didn't know a thing about Jim Coleman, the chef who oversees the restaurant (and for whom it was, not surprisingly, named). For those others who are as ignorant as I, he hosts "The Chef's Table" on Philadelphia public radio, and is committed to using organic, artisanal and farm ingredients. I just knew his restaurant looked promising from the get-go. describe room, describe meal, close it out

Preparing for the Perfect Game

Before a recent Giants home victory, we served Manila clams as the first course of our tailgate picnic in the Giants Stadium parking lot. Clams are the perfect tailgate food — just fire up the grill, throw on the clams, and they’ll be ready before the first beer is gone.

For those who don’t know: The clams are alive; keep them on ice. Don’t use any that are cracked or already open. Put them on the grill, and when the shells open up, they’re ready to eat. It helps to have forks or picks available for your guests to remove the meat. The broth may be sipped right from the shell. I like to melt butter to dip the clams in just before eating. I don’t bother to clarify the butter; I just put a teaspoonful or so into small stainless cups, one for each guest, and put them on the grill to melt the butter. My cups have plastic lids, so any leftover butter won’t spill on the way home to the dishwasher.

Small clams are the best. I like littlenecks, but they’re getting expensive. Wild Edibles had manila clams—small and sweet—for $10.99/lb. There were about 30 manila clams to the pound. A half dozen per person is good for an appetizer course.

Away in a Manger: The Martha Stewart Story

Don't know if this little kernel of information makes me like the domestic diva more. A ceramacist, you say? I've long fancied myself a chip carver and whittler, but I've never gotten so much as the basic JMJ done for the nativity scene I'd like to carve.

I'm wondering if she'll market a mass-produced version of her creche.

Next Year In Washington Crossing?

Bottlebee was on the banks of the Delaware for the annual NJ/PA Christmas tradition. I'm glad I was safe and warm inside -- although this child of Valley Forge may try to make it another year.

the ghost of Christmas greetings past

Basil Pesto

It’s been a warm autumn so far, but the days of the basil plant are numbered.

Basil is always the first plant in the garden to die of cold—it doesn’t have to be an actual frost, just a cool night in the 30s, and every basil plant will turn black, withered and useless. So when I run out of home-grown tomatoes to enjoy with the basil, I pull my remaining basil plants. I dry some of the leaves, crumble them and keep them in a tin in my spice cabinet. Sometimes I put a teaspoonful of chopped fresh leaves in each chamber of an ice cube tray, fill it with water and store the ice cubes in zipper bags in the freezer. The basil turns black (just as it would out in the cold in the garden), but it still tastes good, and the ice cubes can be added as needed to season soups and stews. I make the rest of the harvest into pesto base.

I’m not sure where I got this pesto recipe. It’s probably from a newer edition of The Joy of Cooking. I found it on a slip of paper in my own handwriting stuck into my older edition of Joy. To the work bowl of a food processor, add two cups of fresh basil leaves, 2 peeled cloves of garlic, 1/3 cup pine nuts, and ½ cup of grated Parmesan cheese. Pulse until it forms a paste. Then, with the motor running, slowly pour ½ cup of good olive oil through the feed tube.

When I’m making basil pesto in bulk at the end of the growing season, I leave out the nuts and cheese and freeze the paste in a zipper bag. I thaw the pesto base on the day of use, add the nuts and cheese, and buzz it all up together one more time in the food processor.

My food processor will make one triple batch of pesto base at a time. I’ve also made this recipe using a blender. The owner of a gourmet kitchen store (the same man who gave me the tip about freezing basil in ice cube trays) told me that pesto isn’t right unless it’s pounded in a mortar by hand (he said this as I was buying a mortar and pestle from him). If your taste is refined enough that you insist on manually ground pesto, feel free to adapt the recipe for mortar and pestle. But with the food processor, I can make a year’s supply of pesto base within an hour of pulling the plants, and I can’t tell the difference.

Apparently, even the sanctity of the bond between mother and newborn child isn't sacred to those who would spy: Check out this surveillance photo.

Our West Norriton Little League has won Pennsylvania's East Regional title for 10- to 11-year-olds, and is going for the state championship!!

More parkland news from my hometown ... also, it's worth noting that digging has already begun for improvements to the less polished of West Norriton's two Burnside Avenue baseball diamonds ... and, finally, an interesting firsthand piece on Philadelphia's cheesesteak wars.

(Note: As a suburbanite, I am slightly agnostic when it comes to cheesesteak allegiances. I would have wanted to like Jim's on South Street because that was my old 'hood downtown, but I just can't get behind wiz. I plead mercy on the Pat's vs. Gino's controversy -- they're both delicious. As for Tony Luke's, well, I will admit they make the best pork sandwich I've ever tasted; however, I do not buy their rights to represent cheesesteaks to the world. I like my hoagies from Lou's, my cheesesteaks from Pudge's II or Del's and my pizza from Charlie's. And I gotta go to Rick's before they're drummed out of town, I suppose.)

This is what happened to my first grade school. (Scroll down to the other environmental news section.) Burnside Elementary School had a fabulous playground, delicious tomato soup, memorably good teachers (a special shout out to Mrs. Kulp) and, apparently, an asbestos problem. Did I mention that it was walking distance from my home -- if I kept up with the bigger kids. It still looks a bit empty without the old brick building and the old tennis courts are a wee bit unkempt. But, all in all, I'd file this report under "good news."

I have yet to weigh them or dig into them, but I can say that my textbooks for two community college courses this Fall are heavy lifting at least physically. I'm hoping they're solid, but not overwhelming intellectually.

Please take a second to check out these vacationing Cape Bretoners from L'Arche who are grabbing Manhattan by the horns during their four-night stay. They bring a new face to the old image of a road trip. God help them! (And may He get them back home safely.)

We lost Ingmar Bergman and Tom Snyder. And it's a cloudy day. Blech!!!

I remember staying up as a fourth grader (after having saved up for a small black-and-white TV) watching Python on public TV, then Carson and Snyder on Philadelphia's Channel Three. And then watching Channel Three on Saturday nights when Dan Akroyd would occasionally tweak Snyder brilliantly with his parodies.

I'm tempted to roll over and pretend I didn't just hear the news.

P.S. Where, oh where, has Bottlebee gone? Well, actually, he's gone on a very short trip to Chicago with his better half. I've heard he's done research on an NYC-area taqueria and on natural peanut butter making. I look forward to his return, and may post some food stuff of my own in the meantime.

Please. Far be it from me (or anyone!) to defend every word that comes out of the mouth of Bill O'Reilly. But I, through no fault of my own, have been on the fang-bite end of a harassment campaign by MoveOn.org, and I must say I find it amazing that each of the Democrats who purport to be strong enough to be the leader of the world's flagship democracy would be controlled by such rabid bullies.

FWIW

Also, the challenging world in which Fatah is one of the good guys and Hamas denies a quid pro quo for Johnston's release. The distinctions between terrorism and conventional warfare get foggy sometimes. While that's a challenge to nations that would espouse policies like those justified by the Bush Doctrine (the U.S. included), one cannot discount the existence of nexus of terror in the face of groups like the Army of Islam.

The BBC's Alan Johnston has been freed.

Last night this time I was lying awake after hearing a lengthy public debate about fish guts. When I say lengthy, I mean it was clocked by hours not minutes. Approximately two of them.

Atlantic Highlands is trying to make its vibrant marina -- home to Seastreak ferry service to Manhattan, commercial and recreational fisherman, sailors and motor-boaters and a couple of eateries -- a "clean marina." The Clean Marina Program is a federal/state partnership that established best management practices and guidelines for all aspects of marina management, which you'd already know if you read that somewhat hefty link. In many marinas, fish may be a small part of the operation. But here in Atlantic Highlands it's a big one, and two camps have emerged: Old-school fisherman say appropriate dumping of fish heads and guts in the water is part of the "circle of life," while beach-goers and marina mavens find floating and landed fish bits unacceptable. Two proposals were raised and, so far, rejected as part of the local enabling legislation -- piercing the eyes and bladders so fish sink, and bagging fish detritus and giving it a burial in a nearby dumpster. As part of the marathon public hearing Wednesday night members of the public suggested manual grinders feeding into the water, machine grinders and composting. Apparently research has been done into contracting fish-grinding out, and it's been found to be rather costly.

Two bottom lines here. (One) I don't know which of the alternatives mentioned would be best for the environment and best for the marina. The beaches and docks here are beautiful -- they are all the more beautiful when nothing but the rare fishkill and some driftwood and shells wash ashore. At the same time, it is entirely possible that some of fishermen's ways may be beneficial to ocean life: It is in their best interests to preserve the fish stocks out there, too. Perhaps a nearby research facility or university can shed some light on the matter without holding clean marina measures up for too long. (Two) All concerned have to consider the fact that the Clean Marina Program is about more than fish, and that its passage is expected to be both an environmental and fiscal boon, as the "incentive-driven" program's home page describes. If it's desirable, then Atlantic Highlands should do it properly -- and do it soon.

Woodruff this evening on ABC's World News Tonight began a series on Iraqi refugees. Interesting and, of course, sad.

So this is what Bob Woodruff's been up to. I was wondering about him.

You've got a friend in Pennsylvania?

Well, it seems a large number of Nova Scotians -- and Canadians in general -- do. Me.

I have discovered I currently have more friends in Halifax than I do in my hometown. This is heartening because rarely is Canada -- and Nova Scotia in particular -- far from mind. It's disturbing because, well, it makes me realize I have to get off my duff and start doing more around here. Sure, I've tried to remain politically in touch both in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Basic political volunteering, small jobs, discussion, and the rubber-chicken circuit tie me to a cadre of decent folk in the Mid-Atlantic states. That's not enough. I've done volunteer training in literacy and spoken-word book production, and have yet to volunteer.

Plus, I want to chat more with the neighbors and get better about looking up and keeping up old friendships. As Brownie Scouts we sang, "Make new friends/But keep the old/One is silver and the other's gold." Here's to riches!

On a somewhat contrary side note, enough people have now told me to write a book that I'm starting to think I could do it, and starting to consider the possibility that I should.

Expect slow progress, since I haven't even been able to keep up my blog.

Oh, and I've been informed by the kind gentleman who papered up a food post in this space that his goal is to give us one item a month. If I had known this, I could have more effectively supported his goal! That being said, I expect I'll enjoy his next installment. I'm sure you will too. As for me, I'm committing to a minimum of a posting a week -- more if I can. Watch this space.

Where the "mainstream media" (MSM) and the bloggers manage to meet. Believe it or not, it's not just in the magnificent worldview of Peggy "if-I-couldn't-be-myself-I'd-wanna-be-her" Noonan!

It's Sunshine Week. And, no, that's not a reference to the weather -- although it's temperate and on the sunny side where I am right now.

The media, citizens' advocacy groups and others join together once a year to highlight our country's right-to-know legislation and promote open and accountable public government. As pointed out on the Web site of the Asbury Park Press, a fine New Jersey newspaper aquired by Gannett back in the 90s, a devotion to open government can prove costly. Governmental agencies can charge fees for releasing records, the legal costs of court challenges to denials of information can add up quickly, and current legal precedent makes it unlikely that successful claimants will recover court costs. And this is pure speculation on my part, but I'm sure some citizens have been branded as cranks by their community, if not the authorities, for using the freedom of information mechanisms and for asking questions.

At the very minimum, citizens can show their elected representatives they care -- and that they're watching -- by showing up to meetings even when they don't have an issue on the agenda. They can also keeping track of agendas and official Internet postings on community topics. And, of course, they can ask questions, politely and in a clear voice.

Enjoy the sunshine, literal and figurative, and enjoy the freedom that our society offers.

I'm going to step on my new team member's toes, and express my opinion that there is nothing finer to eat on St. Patrick's Day than corned beef and cabbage. And that the best, simplest recipe I've ever seen for perfection in that department is in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Look for its "New England boiled dinner."

Some restuarants on the East coast, most notably Kildare's in my Pennsylvania 'hood, are offering green eggs and ham. Skip the gimmicks, the green beer, even skip the Guinness (just for one day). It's a good meal and a happy home most Irishmen are looking for!

I’ve been invited to contribute to this blog, with food and recipes my suggested topic. I do enjoy eating and don’t at all mind cooking, but I don’t have any recipes of my own, really. I get mine from Epicurious, or from one of the very few cookbooks I own, or my wife clips them from magazines. I may alter them to suit the ingredients available to me, or, more likely, shrink them by a factor of two, three or four. Most of my meals are made for two, although we occasionally entertain guests.

With all that in mind, let me present for your consideration a meal I made to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day. We opted for a home-cooked Valentine’s supper to spare us the expense of going out – and, since I had the day off, the deal was that I would select the menu, shop, and prepare the meal to be ready when my wife came home from work.

An interesting recipe on Epicurious caught my eye: Rosemary Lamb Chops with Swiss Chard and Balsamic Syrup. I went to the Pennington Market for most of the ingredients. It has an excellent butcher shop, but the lamb I bought came vacuum-wrapped from a NJ source: Catelli Brothers French Rack Lamb Chops, 1.02 lb @ $19.99/lb = $20.40. This was an entire frenched rack, suitable for the fanciest of recipes. The store didn’t have any individual chops, but it was no problem for me to cut the chops apart myself. I also bought the red onion and chard there. The garlic came from my garden — some is starting to sprout, but it’s still ok. (It probably won’t last till the new crop is ready.) The rosemary came from two potted plants I keep under a shop light in my cellar. The rest of the ingredients we had in the pantry.

I made the balsamic syrup first, reducing the vinegar with rosemary and peppercorns to one-third its original volume and putting it through a sieve. We don’t have a microwave oven at the moment, so I warmed up the syrup at serving time with a mini bain-marie: I put boiling water in a tea cup and put the small ceramic bowl full of syrup on top, and brought it to the table.

I cut up all the vegetables in advance and sweated the onion and garlic with some olive oil. When my wife came home from work, I broiled the lamb chops with garlic, salt, and pepper in the oven, turning them once; it took about eight minutes. While the meat broiled, I wilted the chard in the onion and garlic. I probably used more water than the one tablespoon called for in the recipe, and I used a lid on the skillet. For once, everything was done cooking at the same time. I supplemented the recipe with some butternut squash (a family favorite), and my wife, without a hint of what would be on our table, brought home a perfect accompaniment: a 187 mL bottle of Casalnova prosecco, $5 at our neighborhood liquor store. And 187 mL was plenty of bubbly considering the dessert I’d prepared.

My wife loves things like chard and butternut; she thinks they promote health and longevity, and I hope she’s right. This was the first time I made chard that tasted good. We used the same recipe the next night with the other half of the bunch. The balsamic syrup recipe really brought to life the cheap vinegar we buy by the quart at BJ’s.

Now for dessert: The other day I saw on television NYC restaurateur Bobby Flay pour an entire bottle of Moet into a tray and put it in a freezer for his Champagne Granita. Great idea, but I can’t afford to do that with the good stuff. I went to the liquor store looking for something a little cheaper, maybe a half bottle. Instead, I found 750 mL bottles of Andre California champagne on sale for $3.34. At that price, how could I go wrong? I followed Mr. Flay’s recipe, adding lemon juice to the wine and scraping every half hour. After three hours in the freezer, it was ready to eat. The result was superb — certainly better than drinking that stuff. I served it plain, without the berries. My wife wants to try using rose water in place of lemon juice next time.

The meal was a major success. It was easy to prepare, fairly inexpensive, and it tasted great. Everything met with my wife’s enthusiastic approval, which made me feel good. I would encourage anyone with a bare minimum of cooking skill to use these recipes for a special dinner to impress a loved one.

The story of wonder-anchor Bob Woodruff got deeper for me after he woke up from his IED-induced coma, although I'll admit to being reduced to sobs by the sheer mechanics of the attack. I have long admired those who maintained their dignity through humbling situations -- and losing the ability to think, to speak and to perceive is an identity-stripping situation for someone who surely must identify himself, in a fundamental way, as a journalist.

It was sweet and painful to see Woodruff play learning games with his children ... diffusing tension by singing about his rehabilitation work while dancing with his wife ... talking with a young serviceman who also has severe restriction of his field of vision about having one good set of eyes between them.

As my friends no doubt know, I bumped my head some years back hard enough to crush my C-7 and, despite testing that assures me I'm still oh-so-brilliant, I can feel the loss of function. And I feel my own frustration. I admire Woodruff's ability to maintain his equanimity while being filmed at less than peak performance, and I admire his ability to admit that he is still not fully firing on all 12 cylinders. Part of me feels inadequate, like a slacker or a whiner, for not just standing up and doing what he is now doing. The fact of the matter is that it didn't go so well for me when I took the same robust approach, and my traditionally overexuberant confidence level diminished substantially as a result.

I worry, too, that Woodruff is pushing himself too hard for the sake of his recovery, the sake of a crucially important story and for the sake of other noble goals which I can only project onto him. I try not to play the celebrity game. I try to realize that those in the spotlight are every bit as human as the people I meet on the street every day, and that fame gives no one a right to guide my life. But we can't help but pick out both the cautionary tales and the role models in the media.

I cannot help but adopt Bob Woodruff as -- at the very least -- a mascot as I continue to insist that I will not only survive the challenges of life, but that I'll also succeed at thriving.

[This may lower my street cred, but, believe it or not, it was Latin pop superstar Gloria Estafan who was a role model for me when I first broke my neck. A tour bus accident had broken her back around the same time, and she came out of the experience with such strength and grace, releasing a musical work (Mi Tierra) of depth and beauty as she did. She helped me motivate to keep my mind and body active and to get back as quickly as I could to good, hard, productive work.]

I've already sweated for one journalist, a colleague and penpal, when he was embedded some years back in the Iraqi engagement. I've had the privilege of fullfilling a promise to buy a New Jersey Reservist a beer when he finished his tour. I also offered to buy -- and ship -- a dress to the guy who was getting the nickname "Klinger" for his devotion to getting back home to his kids at the end of his civilian commitment there. I was a footnote at one of many media gatherings that celebrated the spirit of writer and editor Michael Kelly after he was killed in theater. Let's just say sometimes I delude myself into thinking that it might have been less exhausting to have gone ahead and enlisted.

And I do drag around this sad little bag of guilt for identifying with the "signature injury" of this miltary action without ever having served. Whatever closed head trauma I suffered is nothing compared to the violent percussions and concussions these men and women have.

Yet despite a staggering catalog of objects that were imbedded in and travelling through his body, our favorite embed talks about each near miss as a miracle. And he has been deflecting death and disability at every turn. I want to cultivate his ability to touch base with the positive, to recognize the luck that lets him see his loved ones and lets him return to his life's work. We are lucky to be able to listen to his stories again, and we are luckier that his story right now entwines with the lives of our veterans.

----

On other, lighter note: As soon as my buddy can set up his account, we'll see a posting from him -- a romantic meal field tested on St. Valentine's Day but suitable for wooing your sweetie whenever the mood strikes. And don't let the fact that he splurged on some cheap bubbly fool you. This guy knows how to eat and drink. I wouldn't call him a role model in that respect, but more of the kind of guy you'd love to have hosting (or attending) your dinner party, at home or out on the town.

Enjoy.

----

I have plans to enrich the above post with a few links. Until then, gentlemen, start your search engines ...

For all those who actually like a blog to have content: Looks like we may have something new.

A friend has consented to post occasional recipes, restaurant recommendations -- and maybe even occasional day trips -- right here.

His invitation to join the blog is still pending, but he'll be a great addition when he gets here.

Watch this space, as they say!