A carnival of technology

Writing about beer (or wine) is a difficult task. Besides the concentration necessary to pin down just what you’re tasting, there’s a vocabulary involved to try to describe fermented wheats and grapes in terms of other foods, and that can get pretty confusing. That’s probably why I never bother to write anything down.

I bought three bottles of the Trader Joe’s 2006 Unibroue ale when it came out last autumn. I drank one then, did not write it down, and put the other two in my closet (I can’t do cool, but I can at least do dark) to maintain while the yeast does its thing. I chilled one of the bottles for a couple hours or so and am now drinking a glass from my Chimay goblet. I don’t really have the hang of the beer-tasting vocabulary, but here are some attempts at obversations of my now nearly year old beer:

• Smells hella flowery. But not that sharp kind of flowery you’d find while
  frolicing through Sound of Music meadows, but more a dark,
  wandering-through-the-forest sneaky kind of flowery, like honeysuckle and
  those little yellow things that grow on dead trees.
• Tastes sweet. Almost syrupy. Again makes me think of dark,
  smooth-tasting things. Let’s say apples and blueberries.
• Tastes boozy. This stuff was 9% ABV when bottled. I guess it’s probably
  more than that now. It still goes down easy as cherry wine, but there’s a
  little part of me that thinks as I process the taste, “huh, I guess that was
  alcohol.”

So, in conclusion, it tastes like sweet things, but not sharply so. There’s also that big yeast taste that Belgian-style ales have. The head is silky smooth and hanging on to the last. This is a mighty fine beer. I wonder how it’ll taste next year.

Creative Loafing, a local (not actually local) weekly rag and the best source for hooker ads (sidenote: I saw an ad for absinthe in the last issue I picked up. Absinthe is kind of funny in that it’s legal to possess or manufacture in the US, but you can’t sell it. I decided to visit the link for the hell of it, and they’re trying to market the stuff like it’s the new pot. It’s not legal to ship alcohol to Georgia, a fact not mentioned by the site which in itself gives it an air of head shop indirection, and the site charges like a hundred damn dollars for a bottle. I had absinthe once, and it’s really not all that special. It made me feel drunker than I probably should have given the quantity, but there were no visions of fairies or anything like that. I do kind of want one of those fancy slotted spoons, though.), held a beer festival this weekend. They kicked all the bums out of Woodruff park, set up a bunch of tents and a stage and tried to have a nice little shindig. I visited with the goal of trying a bunch of new beers, but I feel like I was in the minority in that I wasn’t there just to get drunk. It wasn’t very exciting as a party, but there were a bunch of different beers available.

I forgot my little notebook, so I had to depend on memory and text messages to myself in order to get a more permanent idea of what I was drinking. Despite my goals, I did feel pretty buzzed after the first hour or two of drinking sample-sized beers, so my memorization efforts didn’t last very long. Regardless, I did try some new things. The first thing I had, a Thomas Creek red ale, was horrible. It tasted like it had gone bad. Maybe the heat had some part in this, but I have no interest in trying their products again. The Terrapin imperial pilsner wasn’t that great, either, but it wasn’t terrible, and I’m a bit more forgiving to that brewery since I already know I love their rye ale and the Wake-and-Bake imperial stout. The Thomas Creek junk might have also still been in my cup at that point, since there was only a single plastic cup issued to each attendee, and I didn’t find the free water booth (Flo, I think, from the feet of the Smoky Mountains or some crap like that) until around the third beer. The Flying Dog beer I had was also kind of dull. I can’t remember which variety it was. I kind of suspect that they’re trying to make a name for themselves based on their fancy graphics over good beer, so I’m not terribly interested in revisiting them, either.

The first good beer I had was Dogfish Head’s Raison d’Etre. I had the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA at a bar one time, and I was very impressed by it. Though I find the idea of imperial ales interesting (probably that fascination with history again), adding more hops and alcohol so a beer can survive a trip across the ocean, I don’t generally like IPA’s. I do like imperial stouts, and I still remember the first time I bought a Samuel Smith imperial stout, shocked when I poured it into a snifter I bought for the occasion only to find that the dark color of the bottle wasn’t from the glass, but IPA’s just taste weird to me. It’s not the bitterness; they just taste too thick, like I’m drinking some kind of beer syrup. The Dogfish Head IPA, on the other hand, seemed perfectly balanced, like I had found the Blue Mountain of imperial pale ales. The Raison d’Etre, on the other hand, is made in a more Belgian style, and it’s pretty alright. It’s no Chimay or anything, but it was tasty. I might try to find it and drink it in a more appropriate glass someday.

I did have an IPA by Highland, a brewery in Asheville, which was ok. I keep thinking that my fear of IPA’s is unfounded, and though this one was decent, it didn’t do much to change my mind. After that I had a Dragon Stout, which is apparently made in Jamaica. I like stouts in general, and this was a pretty good one. It had a very strong cherry taste. I’ll have to try it away from the plastic cup to get a better idea of the smell.

I was really surprised by the variety of beers represented. I realize that Atlanta beers can’t run a festival, since that only gives you two bottling breweries plus Terrapin if you’re feeling generous, but it still seemed odd to see things like Guinness and Coopers there. I tried a lot of different new beers, avoiding the ones I was already familiar with, but nothing really stood out as something special. There were some non-beer things at the north end of the park. A Trader Vic’s stand sold me a Mai Tai for a dollar, which was pretty nice, some Louisiana-themed restaurant gave me three surprisingly spicy crawfish, and there was some stand I visited on my way out that gave me three different red wines, the driest of which I kind of liked. I wish I could remember the name. It was French, and it started with a “B.” The two bands I saw were unremarkable.

Since I figure that drinking and driving is probably a bad idea, I at least cut down the time I spent in a car by parking at Medical Center and smartaing my way in with a bus route in mind should I actually end up in an undriveable state. I felt I was sober enough to drive home, and when I arrived back at Medical Center I encountered a woman struggling with some luggage. I figure I ought to do a good deed every now and then if I’m going to be wearing a Boy Scout belt every day, so I offered to help carry some stuff. It turned out that she had no idea where she was. She was certain that she parked at Medical Center a couple weeks back when she began her trip, but the path she remembered taking only made sense if she parked in the St. Joseph’s deck or at Dunwoody, and, besides, Medical Center isn’t a long-term lot. After talking to a MARTA employee for a little while she decided to try searching the St. Joseph’s lot and insisted that I stop carrying her suitcase. I felt kind of bad for just leaving her like that. I hope she found her car.

I’ve been continuing my examination of the ways of cocktails, though I’ve been doing it out of order after that experience with the Campari. Besides, I don’t have most of the assorted perishable garnishes, and I don’t even have the right knives for making a lemon twist, and for some of these drinks the garnish is the most exciting part. I’ve decided that I’m ok with vermouth in martinis, and I don’t see the point of making them with vodka. I still haven’t tried any of the “After-dinner” class of drinks, mostly because those seem to require a whole new class of ingredients, and I’m running out of counter space.

One recurring ingredient that has given me some amount of confusion is “gomme syrup.” This has been the first difficulty I’ve found in trying to follow the stumbling, crooked path of my forefathers. The idea of mixing a drink with both sweeteners and bitters has been around for a couple hundred years, and most of the recipes on the IBA page are probably at least a hundred years old. Fashion has changed, and though most of the older drinks are familiar to bartenders—you don’t see many people ordering a Manhattan anymore, but you could probably get one if you asked nicely and not even have to explain what goes into it—some alterations have been made even to these old recipes to bring them more in line with what people actually drink these days. The Manhattan you may order, for instance, probably wouldn’t be made with rye, because who drinks rye anymore? Bars might not have that stuff just lying around.

As for gomme syrup, it’s a sugar syrup containing gum arabic as an emulsifier to keep the sugar from recrystallizing. Anything that may have once contained gomme syrup is probably going to use simple syrup, instead. I found some guy’s blag that explained gomme syrup as well as his attempt to make some. While simple syrup, being a super-saturated solution, tends to get some solid bits in it, gomme syrup is supposed to be smooth as candy, as well as a little thicker, giving drinks a silky texture and helping them go down that much easier. The problem is that no one makes it anymore as far as I can tell, so the only option is to get your hands on some gum arabic and make your own. Food-grade gum arabic isn’t particularly easy to find, either, but the aforementioned article suggests health food stores, and if I fail at that there’s some on the Internet. I think I have a new quest.

I’m not sure how well things will go at health food stores. I don’t like those places to begin with (they smell like hippie), and I guess the US has implemented some new trade sanctions against Sudan, the world’s largest gum arabic supplier, on account of that Darfur thing, and that might be the sort of cause that hippie shops rally behind. Maybe I’ll just go ahead and order some online.

I decided to try something different with food today: I tried to make pasta. I like making things from scratch, and I like pasta, so this seems like something that would ultimately go well. I don’t know the first thing about making pasta, though, so this attempt wasn’t everything I had ever hoped for.

In retrospect, I actually have a book about making pasta (thanks, mom), so I probably should have started there. Instead I just set out with an ingredient in mind, and the Internet suggested that I could put the basil I had into some fettucine noodles. I took a few photographs of the experience if you want to see my failure. My first problem was that the recipe I was using was completely useless. The dough was way too dry, so I ended up just adding another egg and some more flour and water until it seemed right. I don’t know what kind of consistency pasta dough is supposed to have, so I probably got it wrong. The dough I made was slightly damp and sticky and about right if I were making bread, but pasta dough probably ought to be a little drier. I’m not sure. The next mistake I made was making the noodles way too big. I think that the thickness problem could be partially solved by buying a rolling pin—I don’t have one so I just use an empty bottle, and that doesn’t have a lot of heft—but mostly I just need to be more patient. I ended up with some very large noodles that were impossible to cook.

Due to the aforementioned impatience, I also didn’t dry the noodles completely before cooking them. I gave them about an hour, so the noodles were still quite damp, and the end result was very doughy. I didn’t cook all of them, so I’m going to let the rest dry all the way and cook them later, but I suspect that thickness is my primary problem. The alfredo sauce, on the other hand, was delicious.

While I’m on the topic of food, I tried a new bread recipe this weekend. This one was recently published in the New York Times, and it’s unusual in that the dough requires no kneading. Instead, it’s allowed to rise slowly over the course of 18 hours or so. It came out ok, but I have a couple of complaints. The mistakes I made were using the wrong yeast (I didn’t have any instant yeast, but active dry seemed to work pretty well) and doing a bad job of baking the bread. The prescribed method is to use a heated, covered pot for about half an hour and then uncover it for the last stretch. The only thing I have of an appropriate size that can handle temperatures that high is my crock pot, and, either because it’s too wide or because I can’t cover it tightly, the crust ended up being a bit too hard. Other than that my only complaint is that the holes are a bit big, which is to be expected. I suspect this could be solved with a minute or two of kneading after the long rise.

I didn’t try to add any flavorings on my first try, so the result, though certainly ok, is pretty plain. As a bread I don’t find it very interesting, but as a technique I think it’s one worth remembering.

There will be bike stuff at the end for all of you eagerly awaiting my latest transportation tales. I know I am.

I don’t really know much about cocktails. I suppose cocktails are a proud American tradition, which usually means it’s something that grabs my fancy and becomes a misguided obsession, but for any number of reasons I just haven’t frequently crossed paths with this particular style of drink. The main reason is probably that cocktails were commonly used as a way to cover up the taste of bathtub gin during Prohibition, and I usually prefer to taste whatever spirits I might drink. Cocktails seem to me like a world of girl drinks and silly shots, and I’m trying, in the name of history and living in the past, to change my opinion on that.

Since I don’t know what I’m doing, I decided to just take the International Bartenders Association official list and start at the beginning. It’s split into four sections: apéritifs, dessert drinks, big drinks, and things that people might actually order at a bar every once in a while. I began with the first list, on which the Americano, a blend of Campari and sweet vermouth, is the first item, and that was probably a bad idea. Both ingredients are Italian, Italians came up with the idea of combining the two, and Italians are apparently insane. Maybe my primitive tastes just aren’t sufficiently refined to appreciate all of those crazy herbs and whatnot, and the fancy script “Bitter” on the bottle of Campari probably should have been a warning, but I just was not ready for that taste. It did not make me hungry, either. As far as bitters go, I think that Angostura has the better idea: put it in a bottle smaller than the label and suggest drops instead of ounces. I just don’t know what to think at all of vermouth. I guess I’ll be revisiting that idea once I get some cocktail glasses and start experimenting with martinis.

Besides my limited glass selection, I’ve also found a void to be filled in my bar tools, allowing me to buy yet another item that has a very specific purpose. I don’t have a muddler. I’ve attempted old fashioneds—again because of history or whatever and the delightful idea that everyone these days is doing it wrong—using the butt-end of a wooden spoon, but that doesn’t seem as fun or effective as it could be. I suspect a muddler would at least see more use than the fixed-cup spanner I bought for the bike last week.

As as bike stuff, my fancy new slick tires came, and they seem pretty sweet. This pair is 23mm wide, 2 narrower than my last pair, which doesn’t make a whole lot of difference as far as riding but made them a little easier to get on the rims. And they tell the world that I don’t need cosmetic tread patterns, which obviously makes me a cool dude.

My new tools also arrived, so I removed the bottom bracket from the Trek. One thing that didn’t occur to me while looking up prices on ebay is that all of those bottom brackets are of the cartridge style, whereas mine is open bearing. The thing’s probably worthless, but hey, new tools. After that I got sick of working on the bike, so I didn’t do anything as far as removing other parts or figuring out how much they’re worth. Maybe I’ll start on that during the week.

I’ve set off the smoke detector in my apartment(s) twice. The first time was in Smyrna, after I received a gift of three cast-iron skillets from my parents. The skillets hadn’t seen much use or care for several years, so I began by cleaning and reconditioning them. The idea with cast-iron cookware is to create a non-stick surface of burnt fat, so the purpose of conditioning it is to provide that initial layer, to char, blacken, soak and burn the various lipids into the pores of the metal and provide a layer above the iron for food to slide around and sometimes pick up the flavor of whatever was cooked before. That tale is detailed elsewhere, but the basic story is that I set the oven on fire.

Today I attempted a sourdough rye bread. My bread-fu is still pretty weak. The only bread I’d made before this that was even edible came from a recipe on the back of the flour bag. It was a whole wheat bread, and I guess it was ok. It wasn’t as good as something you can get at the store, but it was probably average for something baked by someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing. As for the rye bread, I don’t know. There are a lot of variables in making the sourdough, first of all, and I don’t have the experience to know how to adjust for them. I think my kneading technique could use some work. The rye dough was very dense, and I think it could have been mixed and kneaded better with an electric mixer, which I don’t have nor particularly want. The bread came out pretty thick, which is expected, but I don’t know that it rose enough. In all, it’s usable, but it could be a lot better.

One of the instructions in the recipe I used was to leave a pan full of water in the oven to steam it up while the bread bakes. I used one of my cast-iron skillets for this, and by the time the bread got going all of the fat and whatnot on the pan started to burn off and set off the smoke detector. I guess that was kind of a bad idea.

I’ve been baking a lot of bread lately. My first loaf was a disaster, but I think I’ve mastered the terrible secret and have been able to make some bread that was pretty alright. Baking bread has opened up some new problems. I needed a bread knife, of course, since it doesn’t come out of the oven sliced, and I needed to figure out where to get some yeast. Apparently it’s next to the flour in the store. It took me a while to figure that out. I figured it would be refrigerated, since it’s alive and all. I think my mom kept yeast in the fridge. That threw me off. I’d like to try a sourdough bread, though I’m not sure how I feel about letting things rot intentionally.

The bread is also exacerbating my problem of having too much homemade food around. I know I can freeze it, but I won’t; I don’t really want to go into it. I need to find a girlfriend to eat all the crap I cook. If any of you ladies out there like food, I’m available.

I bought my copy of Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s pretty thick. About this thick:

I’d like to think that I have some little bit of patience. I enjoy long movies. I even own copies of some bladder-busters like Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Hur. Sure, they have intermissions, and I can pause them, but they still constitute four-hour long thoughts that require a certain attention span in order to follow and appreciate them. I’ve read long collections of books, like Lord of the Rings and the Dune series, but the splits between those volumes seems to offer a sort of reprieve not available in single tomes. The longest single book I’ve ever read was actually V. 775 pages is a whole mess of pages. The great reading challenge starts on Tuesday.

My various attempts to read on the bus in the mornings have failed for a number of reasons, but I still try to get in some reading once in a while. Currently I’m working on Player Piano, Vonnegut’s first book, which I picked up after I heard of his death. I’ve read it before, and I figure that the day I can read that book without becoming totally depressed is the day I’ve completely stopped caring about humanity. It’s a pretty good book.

Apparently beets can make you piss red. I made some beet soup last night, and man, did I have a scare this morning.

I finally ditched that Peachtree Linux (popular in Scandinavia) thing and installed a Linux distribution that sees some maintenance once in a while. I installed Fedora core whatever’s latest, and it seems pretty alright. The music player is the main thing that’s been giving me trouble. I can’t seem to get tracks in playlists loaded in order even if the tracks have track number tags. I don’t get it, but I don’t care a whole lot, either.

I bake cookies sometimes. It seems kind of goofy on the surface—I’m worried sometimes about being too fat, and I can’t think of any situation where I’ve decided that a cookie is the key to my well-being—but I find baking an oddly relaxing experience, and chicks dig it. I don’t know crap about baking. I’m not going to be creating any new delightful pastries any time soon. Maybe it’s the mechanical actions of following a recipe that appeals to me. At any rate, I bake cookies sometimes, and the people at work who eat my leftovers seem to enjoy them a lot. Maybe there’s something about that homemade touch that makes things especially delicious in the face of mediocre skill. Maybe everyone’s just being polite.

This weekend I searched the interwebs for a new recipe, and I stumbled across one for madeleines. Madeleines are really more of a cake than a cookie, but they’re eaten like cookies, so that’s close enough for me. The only reason I even know what they are is from my knowledge of that seven-volume Proust novel I’ve read. I’m not really sure what to think of basing my culinary decisions off of literature. I’ve made Hemingway’s bloody marys before, which produced a wonderful combination of restorative and intoxicant, but I don’t think that this was a result of Hemingway’s skill as a writer so much as Hemingway’s skill as a drunk. With the madeleines I’m not even working with an author’s recommendations but rather choosing a recipe simply based on its coincidence with an idea I’ve never experienced. I’ve probably made better founded decisions.

The first difficulty in my new cookie/cake venture was that I needed a madeleine pan. To me the best kitchen tools serve very general purposes. Pots and spoons and knives and bowls all suit a task rather than a food. The cutting board I use for chopping onions is the same I’d use for cutting up a chicken. I cut a lot of things, so I use my cutting board for a lot of things. Moving down the spectrum of generality there are things like a garlic press, a tool that seems redundant given a knife and some patience, but one that can still fit a variety of meals if not a variety of purposes. Waffle irons also live near this stratum, though I can comfortably accept them since they make waffles possible, not easy, and waffles are delicious. At the bottom rungs are tools like melon ballers and cherry mashers, which I think no person should own. I do not own a waffle iron. I do have a garlic press, and now I have a pan that can bake small, scallop-shaped cakes and nothing else. I haven’t really come to terms with this.

The recipe I came across described madeleines with a lemon flavor, and it accomplished this by adding two teaspoons of grated lemon zest to the batter. Until today I had no damn clue what lemon zest was. I had vague memories of seeing “zest” in the grocery store, but after failing to find it in my shopping, I decided to ask the Internet. I had assumed that zest was some kind of brand name for some sort of flavoring, and maybe McCormick or whoever just didn’t pay enough for shelf space at this particular Publix. It turns out that zest is the outer peel of citrus, giving foods the peel’s flavor without the bitterness of that white junk underneath. Is this some kind of specialized knowledge, or did I just sleep through the class on ways to use citrus? Zest seems like such a ridiculous word. “Zest” should appear in advertisements for cleaning products, not cookie recipes. I don’t trust it. The Internet also told me about a special tool, a zester, which can be used to peel that outer shell off of a fruit. I did not buy a zester. I did just fine with a cheese grater.

The madeleines came out pretty nice once I figured out how much to fill the shell-shaped holes on my goofy new pan. I guess now all I need is some tea and some temps perdu.

Tomorrow morning I plan to create another batch of my crock-pot chicken chili blanco, whose fire is legendary. The recipe’s no secret—it’s actually one that came with the crock pot—but I always make a substitution of fresh peppers for the canned chilies recommended by the little white book, and I believe this is one of the secrets to deliciousness. There is some bit of masochist in me that loves that special heat from the fresh peppers, and it’s going to be awesome. I shopped today for my missing ingredients, mainly the beans and the peppers, at Whole Foods, and I have a couple of things to say about that experience.

Firstly, I don’t think that anyone actually knows the PLU for habanero peppers. I’m not even sure that there is one. This punchy little pepper carries what seems like a pretty hefty price tag compared to other vegetables, usually around $6/lb, but, when you consider that most of that weight is from the plastic bag, they don’t cost very much. Still, I’ve yet to see them actually rung up as what they are. I even had one cashier at Publix, a Mexican lady, comment that I was crazy for buying them while she rang them up as something else. The cashier at Whole Foods rang up my two or three peppers as .04 pounds of jalapeño, even after correctly registering the actual jalapeños I also bought. I think I may have inadvertently cheated Whole Foods out of a dime or so.

Secondly, I’m just not sure that I can agree with the Whole Foods philosophy on groceries. I shop there once in a while mostly because they’re nearby, but their attitude towards living might be more than I can take. Their stance on food is clear enough simply from the name—the current popular agricultural model is broken and can be remedied by an avoidance of artificial chemical treatments to crops and livestock—but I’ve mostly only viewed it as a place where people who like spending more money than usual on food are given that opportunity. They have a few mighty fine items there, and I suppose that not abusing antibiotics and growth hormones in beef and dairy cows is probably a good idea, so whatever. They’re a specialty food store with an underlying agenda that I can comfortably ignore. That agenda came out for me today, however, when I visited that other section of the store, the one with the hardwood floor and rows of various supplements and tonics.

I needed some more deodorant, and the only deodorant I’ve found to adequately overcome the powerful stink I create while on the bike is the long-lasting variety of Tom’s of Maine. I don’t care to drown myself in Aqua Velva or anything like that, so I’m fine with this solution. Tom’s of Maine is kind of a hippie brand, so I figured Whole Foods would probably carry it (which they do), but on the way to the deodorant aisle I noticed a sign for one of the categories nestled among the vitamins and natural shampoos that I found offensive enough to make me reconsider my Whole Foods patronage: homeopathics.

In most cases, I consider the use of “natural” or “organic” products to be a symptom of a righteous pretension with which I often disagree, but I’m ok with it. If you want your wheat and soy beans fertilized strictly with horse manure and seaweed and your shampoo made only from spring wather and plant squeezings, that’s alright; it’s not hurting anyone. If it tastes or works better, I’m all for it, too. I’m unable, however, to consider homeopathy on the same plane, since this is phony medicine and it really does hurt people if they expect it to cure anything outside of the healing powers of the placebo affect. Whole Foods’ sale of sugar pills and water under the label of medicine is something that I find deeply troubling. I don’t know if they do it out of greed (sugar pills and water are pretty cheap to produce, whether there’s some mystical dance attached to them or not) or a genuine belief in their validity, perhaps through the postmodern rejection of scientific evidence that has made them popular, but I don’t know that I can handle the knowledge that my organic onions are supporting a store that so openly espouses the validity of these fallacious remedies.

Q: How can you tell that you have an Irish boomerang?
A: It never comes back, but it won’t stop singing about it.

I’m not terribly interested in genealogy. I’m basically a European grab-bag, and my family is far enough removed from the old countries that I care more about where I am than whence I came. I’m American, and I’m just fine with that. However, I still feel that there’s something special about names, and my own patronymic line back to the other side of the Atlantic is easy enough to trace that I hold some interest in it.

My surname marks me as a descendant of Seaghdha, a man who was either a complete fabrication or a chieftain of Corcu Duibne sometime in the 7th century. He probably fought some Braveheart-style battles and stuff, and he may have looked something like this:

I find it funny that the Anglization of his name didn’t add any phonetic clarity by the usual English notions of it, but whatever; a few of those dark beers and the name comes out just fine. Being the descendant of some sort of ruler isn’t really anything terribly special—nearly anyone with blood ties to Ireland has some king of something or another in their family tree, and the density of Sheas in some parts seems to indicate that they weren’t shy about making kids—but it does impart some information relevant to the point that I’m avoiding: my ancestors were converted to Christianity well over a thousand years ago, maybe even some by the words and deeds of St. Patrick himself; my ancestors mostly ended up in County Kerry, as far south and west as you can go on the island without getting your feet wet, and sometime in the latter half of the 19th century John Shea, my great-great grandfather, left Cahircaveen and hopped on a ship to sail off to the new world.

St. Patrick is obviously a big deal to Ireland. He was born a Scot, but everyone gives him a pass on that one since he spent most of his life being Irish. As you almost certainly know, the day of St. Patrick’s feast was this past Saturday, and, agree with the church or not, preaching to an island of people ranging from apathetic to hostile takes some serious patience and huevos, and Ireland could certainly do worse for a patron. My own family becomes Irish enough this once a year, and I have fond memories of corned beef and cabbage and The Quiet Man playing on TBS whenever this day came around. We don’t treat it like a more serious holiday, like Thanksgiving or Christmas, but there’s still a certain level of ritual and reflection involved. Since leaving home I’ve celebrated the day myself by cooking the Americanized version of the traditional meal (thanks, Jews, for the corned beef) and playing some rowdy drinking songs on the stereo. I didn’t do any of that this year.

On early Saturday morn’, Xochitl (a coworker) and I got in a car and drove to Savannah. I don’t know what it is about Savannah that made it a St. Patrick’s location, but it is, and it’s one hell of a party. The only numbers I’ve seen made an a priori estimate of around 700,000 revelers, and I don’t think they were far off. I took some photos of the event if you’d like to see what I look like wearing a green plastic hat or are curious about Kat’s roommate’s cats. It didn’t show up in the pictures, but I also chose to rep’ the ATL (throw the peace sign up then upside down) and the emerald isle with a pimp-sized “ST. PAT’S” medallion from Walmart. I’m not a huge fan of crowds, since crowds are likely to puke on my shoes and act as an obstacle between me and more beer, but I had a great time in it. I can’t think of any other situation where it would be possible or appropriate to dive into the middle of a roving band of bagpipes and drums and start dancing. Many thanks to Kat for letting me crash at her place at the end of the night.

We lost Xochitl sometime in the night since she wanted to meet up with some of her friends and then join them back to Atlanta at some crazy early hour on Sunday. Once the crowded bars lost their appeal, Kat, John and I went back and watched The Quiet Man, perhaps the best cinematic expression of Irish-Americaness there ever was. I had great fun and went home on Sunday just in time to get caught in traffic starting around McDonough that may have been related to NASCAR.

I still have a bit of a craving for some corned beef, so I got to thinking once back home: there should be some serious post holiday sales going on about now. I went grocery shopping tonight for some corned beef and cabbage, and I plan to toss it in the crock pot tomorrow morning. I always have way too much, so if you feel like a St. Patrick’s meal a few days late, come on over tomorrow evening. I decided to start at Trader Joe’s just to see what they had, and what they had was corned beef for $4.79/lb and none of the appropriate vegetables. I felt like I’d been flipped off by a grocery store. Publix, thankfully, did not disappoint. I bought a Murphy & David corned beef brisket (spice pack included), a brand I’ve bought before and one that makes no effort to disguise its origins in a cold, heartless meat factory, soaking in brine and sodium nitrite while Rocky punches some cow carcasses in the background. I can appreciate that. Publix was selling it for $2.79/lb (regular price is close to four bucks). Cabbage was half price, and I also picked up a six pack of Smithwick’s discounted seventy cents (which probably only put it at the non-holiday price). Potatoes were regular price, but that wasn’t terribly surprising. I did the crock pot meal last year and it came out pretty nice, but I think I’ll try putting a piece or two of the cabbage under the meat this year to see how it comes out. It’s not quite the same as boiling everything until it all has a consistent flavor and texture, but it’s close enough, and it’s delicious. I can hardly wait.