One reason I'm happy living in lower Michigan

Lake Michigan protects me from this.

He that hath no beard is less than a man

BEATRICE
Too curst is more than curst: I shall lessen God's
sending that way; for it is said, 'God sends a curst
cow short horns;' but to a cow too curst he sends none.
LEONATO
So, by being too curst, God will send you no horns.
BEATRICE
Just, if he send me no husband; for the which
blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and
evening. Lord, I could not endure a husband with a
beard on his face: I had rather lie in the woollen.
LEONATO
You may light on a husband that hath no beard.
BEATRICE
What should I do with him? dress him in my apparel
and make him my waiting-gentlewoman? He that hath a
beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no
beard is less than a man: and he that is more than
a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a
man, I am not for him: therefore, I will even take
sixpence in earnest of the bear-ward, and lead his
apes into hell.

-- Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene I.

Tommy Ramone was a mensch

From the Tyler Evans interview with Tommy Ramone in 2012, here:

Mickey Leigh announced that Joey Ramone’s second posthumous album …Ya Know? is coming out at the end of May. I couldn’t help but notice that you’re not one of the producers on the record.

It’s just so heart wrenchingly sad that Joey’s not around. I didn’t think I was up to it. It was just too heart-breaking. It would have just been emotionally so hard for me, because working on a record, the way I work; I get very into it, very intense. I just found it overwhelming, ya know?

Did you get a chance to talk to all of the guys before they passed?

Oh yeah. I talked to them all the time, especially Johnny and Joey. Dee Dee I didn’t, Dee Dee was fine, ya know? What happened with Dee Dee was really freaky. Joey was sick and Johnny was sick, and I talked to them … sad times, very sad times. Those guys are with me all the time, which is why it would have been so hard to work on that record.

If you don’t mind me asking, what do you miss the most about them?

It’s like family, ya know? It’s an emotional thing, they’re always with me. They’re just so much a part of my life that it’s like missing a part of you, a big part of you. Just their personalities, it was so intense really, the relationships. In a sense, they’re always there. It just surrounds me all the time.

What a rotten day: Tommy Ramone has died

The last of the original four.

"[The Ramones] gave everything they could in every show. They weren't the type to phone it in, if you see what I mean."

-- Tommy Ramone, 2007

What I got for Father's Day

I'm grinnin'.

Joey Ramone: We never wanted to play rap or some crap like that

See him say it, here, just make sure to dial it back to the beginning. He says it beginning at about 2:15 or so.

Siegfried says "Nein, Nein 99"

Here! (Now busted. Sorry about that, chief.)

Get Smart: The Mysterious Dr. T (Season 3, Episode 13, 1967).

Why you should laugh everyday

If you don't have funny you don't have money, because laughter is the currency of life.

Basil Pesto Update: The Easiest And Best Method I've Found Yet To Make It, The Frozen Way

OK, this is the beginning of May and I've just run out of basil for pesto . . .  from last year.

We grew basil like crazy last season, harvested it and froze it whole in freezer bags as it came due in order to keep up with it instead of trying to make it all into pesto right away. It was a good strategy because we accumulated enough to get us through April. I think the previous year I ran out by Christmas. If you do it this way, the primary benefit is you can eke out more production from your plants by constantly harvesting. Otherwise they go to seed before you know it and they are done.

The routine of making basil pesto this way with frozen leaves every two weeks or so right through the fall, winter and spring had more than this extra production benefit from the plants, however.

For one thing, I was constantly using the freshest olive oil, instead of freezing the oil in the prepared product for long periods.

Two, I didn't have to buy a bunch of little containers which took up a lot of space and were difficult to keep organized in the bowels of the freezer. I simply relied on a smaller number of containers and reused them throughout the season, conveniently stored in a single freezer bag. The basil leaves once frozen in freezer bags store easily by themselves in those bags grouped altogether in a single, larger plastic bag, like a grocery bag.

Three, I had less waste and clean up hassle on a regular basis because at the end of making the pesto, say each fortnight, the hard to clean up leftovers in the blender simply were blended with tomato sauce for my once or twice a week fish pie recipe. If you don't make that you could do the same thing for fresh tomato-basil soup. So I tried to time my pesto-making with fish pie night to speed things along, minimize waste and wasted motion.

And four, extra virgin olive oil doesn't like to be manipulated too much. If it gets hot it breaks down quickly. By using frozen pesto leaves, the whole mixture remains cold in the blender. And when it is done blending it looks almost like a gelato and pours out more neatly cold, minimizing spills.

So here's how you do it.

Add your nuts, salt and pepper, chopped garlic and grated cheese to the bottom of the blender. Then add your crushed basil leaves on top of all that. I simply take the freezer bag full of basil leaves and slam it on the counter a few times to make them easy to pour into a Pyrex measure (and more numerous, hah!). Finally, I add all the olive oil on top of the leaves, letting the measuring cup drain out fully on top of them while I clean up after myself. Then you blend until thoroughly emulsified, perhaps a minute or two. And that's it.

Pesto, presto!   

You don't "shush" here!

You don't "shush" here!  I "shush" here!

Shush!

-- Siegfried in Get Smart, "Rub-a-dub-dub: Three spies in a sub" (Season 2, episode 9: 11-12-1966)

Yes, we have no bananas . . .

That's no banana . . .

. . . we have no bananas today.

The UK Independent reports here on a fungus which threatens to devastate worldwide Cavendish banana production, a major food source for hundreds of millions of people, including smoothie lovers everywhere:

Since it emerged in the 1950s as the replacement for another banana variety ravaged by an earlier form of Panama disease, Cavendish has helped make bananas the most valuable fruit crop in the world, dominated by large multinational growing companies such as Fyffes, Chiquita and Dole.

But the crop – and many other banana varieties – have no defence against TR4, which can live for 30 years or more in the soil and reduces the core of the banana plant to a blackened mush.

Well, There Go The Last Of The Romas . . . Thanks To The Cat

I made the last batch of tomato sauce last week from the last of the previous season's Romas, and dontcha know Mr. Pal here decided to get too friendly with a skunk last night so instead of enjoying the sauce ourselves . . . he got a special bath in it.

The experts say it's a myth that tomato sauce works on skunk, but since it was a little difficult to keep Pal in the sink long enough to really find out, I'm not going to say the experts really know since Pal does smell a little better today, though not acceptably better. It's going to be a long week, I think.

Vangelis: What I'm Listening To Now

In the "tyranny of Greece over Germany", winter is finally getting a proper beating tonight in Michigan so I am enjoying a little light Vangelis over dinner. It transports you to a warmer, more relaxed place which you have been missing for too long but suddenly remember viscerally. This album charted in Europe most popular in Ungarn, followed by Oesterreich, in 1996. Romantics all.

What Do You Call A Country That Eats A Lot Of Seaweed?

A Kombunation.

Bdum bum.

Fix It Again Tony: FIAT Buys Used Car Company

Sympathy for Lido Anthony Iacocca?

FIAT: Found.In.A.Tree.

Eat Lentils Today To Bring Good Luck For The New Year

So say the Italians, according to this story:

We all get another chance in the new year — clean slate, new resolutions. For a little extra push of luck there are culinary superstitions from cultures all over the world. ... Legumes of any kind bring good luck because they resemble coins and, therefore, wealth. ... Italians eat lentils and sausage to bring in the new year. The lentils play the same role as black-eyed peas and the sausages, sliced crosswise, resemble coins. The pork — specifically the fat — signifies abundance.

I was making Lentil Soup from The Silver Palate Cookbook, somewhat modified, when I learned of the superstition (great minds think alike):

8 cups homemade chicken stock

1.5 cups organic green lentils, washed

2 small bay leaves and 2 matching-sized pieces of Parmesan rind (I save these in the freezer)

6 oz. uncured bacon, diced

1 medium organic onion, diced

3 organic carrots, peeled and diced

3 large cloves homegrown garlic, diced

1 tsp. dried thyme leaves

1/4 tsp. celery seed

1/4 tsp. Folgate lavender buds

1. Wash the lentils, drain, and boil gently for 45 minutes in the chicken stock in a covered large soup pot along with the bay leaves and Parmesan rinds, which add a unique creaminess.

2. Meanwhile prepare the bacon and saute in a dutch oven, stirring frequently until crisp over less than medium heat. Reserve for serving.

3. Dice the vegetables as the bacon finishes and sweat them for 20 minutes covered in the bacon fat of the dutch oven over less than medium heat. I add the carrots first, then the onions carefully on top and sweat together for 10 minutes, then I stir and sweat five minutes more, and then I add the garlic on top without stirring for the last five minutes.

4. Add the vegetables to the stock and lentils, which by now should be done. Also add the seasonings, which I grind ahead of time in my coffee grinder very briefly. Simmer for 15 minutes. Remove the bay leaves and the Parmesan rinds, if you can find them.

5. Serve with reserved bacon dice, and season with salt and pepper to taste with some buttered, toasted bread or an English Muffin.

Good luck!

h/t Monica

Man On Ledge Reluctantly Chooses Turkey Bacon Sandwich With Fries Over Suicide

Hey! Turkey and bacon works for me.

He wanted to live!

Story here:

An officer trained in crisis-intervention began talking to the man, who said he was hungry. Police then procured French fries and a turkey and bacon sandwich from the nearby Hotel deLuxe. The man apparently wasn't overwhelmed when presented with the sandwich. Hull said, “I think at one point he said he wanted a cheeseburger, but beggars can’t be choosers." Police were eventually able to convince the would-be jumper to walk away from the ledge and eat. 

Hatchet Jack's Last Will And Testament: Best Ever Non-Speaking Part In A Movie?

"I, Hatchet Jack, being of sound mind and broke legs, do leaveth my rifle to the next thing who finds it, Lord hope he be a white man. It is a good rifle, and kilt the bear that kilt me. Anyway, I am dead. Sincerley, Hatchet Jack."

-- Jeremiah Johnson, 1972

Anton Ego Is Dead: Peter O'Toole's Alter (1932-2013)

Interesting insight from film critic Robbie Collin, here:

One of my own favourites came in a film in which we never saw him: the Pixar animation Ratatouille, in which he played Anton Ego, a seemingly unpleasable food critic whose heart is finally melted by a perfectly prepared portion of the French dish.

“The world is often unkind to new talent; new creations,” he says in the film’s closing scenes. “The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new: an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source.”

I’ll admit I shed a tear when I first heard O’Toole speak those lines, and yet the words are delivered with such simplicity you can scarcely detect a scrap of the actor’s craft in them. What’s the trick? Acknowledging each emotion without sinking into it. Navigating the script like a seasoned traveller. And above all, not minding that it hurts.