Fight 4 Taste

 I woke up Monday to learn that my friend Jim McLean died of COVID-19. Jim was a friend from the early 80s when I used to camp at lone Oak campgrounds in East Canaan Connecticut. I was close friends with his sister and he was close friends with my cousin Gary. His poor family is now having to carry on without him. Damn these people who have politicized a vaccine!  It’s been a hard week.  On Wednesday, we had to put our Bogey down. I just can’t believe he is gone. I hate this. He was so much more than a pet to our family. I need downtime now. Before the frenzied race to winter begins in the fall.  Tuesday. I really did not sleep last night. Tormented by the thoughts of Jim’s beautiful family having to move on without him. There appears to be an obstruction in my ability to write on this trip. It came so easily when we were at Killington. I dare say that some of the paragraphs written were some of the best stuff I have done. I will be patient though as I think it will ...

 It was a dark and cloudy Monday night in June in Vermont. The air cool but heavy with the threat of an evening thunderstorm. Birds singing all around me and yet in my head Ronnie Van Zandt singing over and over again in my head, play me a song Curtis Lowe. It was on this night that I decided to finally cook one of my favorite Korean dishes, LA Galbi. I understand that it is best cooked over a wood or wood charcoal fire. For this reason I decided to set up at the Weber Grill that’s been stored out in the backyard. This is not the best option For my usually very fluent cooking style. Many days and nights I can balance the outside deck grill and burner running inside to the kitchen to tend to food prep and other side dishes sautéing on the stove. There will be none of that tonight.  If it involves my grill out on my deck or my wok and pans on my stove my cutting boards my chef knives, I can move through that space like Jackie Chan almost with a rhythm. But tonight, here I am out...

 I like to hike. I also love my coffee. While I can get away with choking down instant coffee on the trail, there is nothing like freshly brewed coffee to make that experience so much more robust. In 2018 when the Crawford family was hiking the Appalachian Trail, Ben Crawford the dad, mentioned people that he saw using an Aeropress coffee maker and made the statement I feel like I’m missing out on something. Ben's words intrigued me and I had no choice but to buy one on Amazon. If you don’t know what an AeroPress is,  the best way to describe it is like a wide syringe that holds coffee grounds and water and after a rest time allows you to push the water out into your cup using the syringe plunger. I then took the aero press with me on a family canoe trip and impressed myself and others with this amazing coffee.  Three years have passed. Many pieces of hiking gear that I bought three years ago have not been used in quite some time. When it comes to cooking, this can be ver...

 

Thursday July 20, 2005 Tonight we ate dinner on the deck. I was eating crawfish, we had just told you that crawfish looked like little lobsters. You got this blank look on your face when you heard this until I told you that although they look like lobsters, they are different. A little while later you came back out onto the porch and pointed at the crawfish and told me, “very dumb. Very dumb food. Very dumb whoppers!” April 23, 2005 You have been able to say the letter F, but only if it was at the beginning of a word. So the word coffee was said like caukee. Tonight you started using F inside of a word.you said “coffee” I am going to miss “caukee”. December 2006 During a serious bout of the flu, Liam and I were watching and old episode of the Incredible Hulk show from he 70’s. After the show was over you said, “Daddy when I grow up I want to be an incredible hook and throw bad guys into wedding cakes and water. December 2006 You asked for the “Cannibal Dry Gingerale.” You also stopped ...

 2 to 3 days of darkness cover me. I know there is life beyond this cloud. But I can’t really see it. It’s like thinking of yourself in third person.  All I can say was in 1992 and 93 when I heard Neil Young play his harvest moon, I could hear “the end “in the words. But now I’m still in love with you I want to see you dance again because I’m still in love on this harvest Moon. Something in those words made me believe the world What is soon going to end. It didn’t. But the life I lived at the time did. But now it feels like the end once again. This is a strange feeling. I know what profound depression is. I miss you dad. I feel bad that I did not stay better in touch with you. There you have a phone right there at work. One call a week would be nice. This is a profound loss.   Timothy Leary died today. He was cremated and his ashes are being sent into outer space. Is this a first?. By the sounds of it he had an awakening as he could see over the fence.  Dad told...

Actually, I am mad about this. I am sitting at the starting line. The lights are ready to drop to green. Just as they drop from yellow to green, I don't stomp to the gas pedal, even though I know that under the hood, there's some serious stuff happening here. This is even more profound now. Opportunity, no matter how raw comes my way, and I hesitate. Raw is the only way I get it too. There is no shiney food truck ready to turn the key on and sell, sell,sell!  No just like the $50 Datsun 310GX that I drove for 3 years, that had it's whole right side warped from taking down a tree in the woods moving in excess of 60 mph. I loved it and peice by peice, I made that car seem to last for ever and I laughed at the car payment paying fools of the world. Like the 72 Valient Geri brought me to Port Aransas and gave me. It had been smashed from every angle possible. The front seat no longer existed, it was just the wire frame and springs, with 2couch cushions sitting on top of them. T...