On Craig Claiborne and Cooking for New Year's Day

It's New Year's Eve, and my thoughts turn invariably to Craig Claiborne.

 In my twenties and thirties, I spent many years as a restaurant cook and chef. I've cooked fine dining Italian, fine dining French, Greek, fancy American, casual American, and high volume Fusion. When people find out that I've live a previous life as a chef, they always ask me what my favorite dish is to cook. Difficult question -- as I most often like to cook what I most like to eat...which is a lot.

 But every year, come the end of December, I do find myself getting psyched up to cook one of my most favorite meals: New Year's Day Hoppin' John with Collard Greens, and Braised Country-Style Pork Ribs. But I could never have come to love this meal as much as I do without the recipes of Craig Claiborne from his bible, Southern Cooking. Most especially, as a southerner and as an lover of written words, I love the prose he uses to describe the dishes of this quintessentially Southern meal. So, I'd like to share with you his words-- his recollections "of the sights and smells of home cooking."

 HOPPIN' JOHN
Black-eye or black-eyed peas seem to figure ubiquitously on Southern tables, and Yankee visitors seem to look at them askance. They are not necessarily country fare, as many people claim them to be. They appear on the table of rich and poor, the educated and the uneducated alike, and are eaten with equal enthusiasm. They are the basis of a dish known as Hoppin' John, the origin of which name no one seems to be able to explain. The dish is made with either black-eyed peas or cow peas and rice, and it is certainly one of the most traditional of Southern dishes. It is served in many Southern homes on New Year’s Day to bring all those assembled good luck throughout the year. Claiborne grew up in Sunflower, Mississippi, where during the Depression -- his families finances ruined -- his mother opened up their large home as a boarding house. Many of the dishes he lovingly describes in this cookbook were first learned at the side of a big stove, where he "was allowed to break off crisp bits of the outer coating of the chicken as it came hot from the skillet."

MIXED SOUTHERN GREENS
The standard item of soul food that appearedd almost daily at my mother's table were one form of greens or another, always cooked with pieces of pork, sometimes salted, sometimes smoked. The greens were of a common garden variety, such as mustard greens, collard greens, and turnip greens. These would be put on to boil with a great quantity of water and salt and allowed to cook for hours. Once cooked, the liquid is much treasured by Southern palates. It is called "pot likker," and you sip it like soup with corn bread. If yo want to get fancy, you can always make cornmeal dumplings to float on top of the cooking liquid.

 And he does, thank heavens, address that age old question Cornbread: what is the one, true way to make it?

There are more recipes for corn bread than there are magnolia trees in the South. 

Happy New Year's!! For more on Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking:

http://books.google.com/books?id=cwDT7hzUjBgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Craig+Claiborne%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bsLDUovkJsWpkAeMqIC4Dg&ved=0CEkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Advent day 1

On Advent, hope, and expectation

Nine years ago, after the deaths of my mother and father a year apart from each other, I was in a little bit of a spiritual crisis.  Interestingly, maybe oddly, I took a lot of comfort in choral music, medieval chants and polyphony.  I also took a lot of comfort in meditating, and would sometimes drive to a monastery in Conyers, Georgia, and just-- well-- sit. Meditation particularly interested me as it related to specific liturgical seasons like Advent and Easter--seasons that were definitely proving difficult to enjoy.  Growing up in a large Roman Catholic family, the season of Advent was a particularly big deal in our house. We always had an Advent wreath on the dining room table, and I got to do the selected readings each week when we lit each candle. Also, each day I got to look forward to opening a window of my Advent Calendar, hoping that there was a treat inside.

So, a little bit adrift nine years ago, I took a deeper look at the readings and lessons of Advent, hoping that they would give me some assistance in getting out of my spiritual funk.  Well, they definitely provided me with some comfort and guidance -- though I must confess to still being a spiritual wanderer.  All that being said, here's the take away: regardless of your own faith life, I hope these readings and my meditations on some of them can provide you with some company (or at least some interesting scenery) in your own faith journey during this season of Advent -- or whenever you might need them through the year.

The Man Who Fell in Love with Neko Case

Seeing as how she has a new disc out, I thought I'd share some lines inspired by Neko Case -- from a few years back....


The Man Who Fell In Love with Neko Case


What thoughts I have of you tonight, Neko Case,
all because I walked past a half shuttered farmhouse
with its scraggly forsythia and bottle-thrown windows.
I heard your seraphic high notes in the distance,
stuck in a canyon at dusk with nothing but sagebrush and tears
to scare away the coyotes.
I imagined you shirtless and brazen at the microphone,
smoldering looks to the ushers and the college boy in row 12,
asking about their nightmares and if they love their mothers.
Your hair lights up the darkness –
a pile of glowing embers from some burned down cottage.


In the concert hall, Garth meditates on his Lowrey,
channeling Bessie Griffin like a teleprompter.
And you, Richard Manuel, what brings you here
to the sound stage? Was it you who passed along your muse
to her fifteen-year-old runaway soul?
Where will you take me, Neko, after the show?
Will we walk to the airport and watch the planes take off?
Will we touch each telephone pole, one after the other?
Or, will we run all the way back to Tacoma,
looking for battered front porches and empty swing sets
with rusted chains?


--Michael McIntyre

October, 2008

On Georgia's Withdrawal from PARCC

Last week, the state of Georgia decided to formally withdraw from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) consortium. Here is Georgia Education Superintendent John Barge's explanation for the decision.  Link:  Barge's Explanation
In a nutshell: PARCC costs too much, and we can come up with stuff that's just as good.

My response to his explanation:
This is as unacceptable an explanation as we could possibly have hoped for. Georgia spends a measly $18.00 per student for assessments, and the state won't increase this for PARCC, let alone to a level that is on par with other states like Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania. We can't afford $30 million dollars for students for their DIRECT benefit, but we can afford $300 million dollars to dig out Savannah harbor with our fingers crossed that students as well as the rest of Georgia may hopefully one day benefit from its trickle-down largesse.

It is very tiresome when political leaders continually say, "You're just going to have to trust us on this. We know what's best" -- particularly on an issue like education, where Georgia has languished for GENERATIONS! Two years ago, you all agreed that PARCC and RTTTop were the golden ticket, even though you knew then that it was going to be expensive. But now you say that Georgia was only in the consortium just to see what was going on -- camel's nose under the tent, in other words -- and then we sneak away! How noble!! Great lesson for the kids: "You don't have to expend any effort, kids. Just copy from your neighbor's test!!"

You say, Mr. Barge, that our forthcoming tests will be just as good, just as rigorous as PARCC -- but, students won't have to spend as long being tested, and the in-house system won't cost as much. HUH?!?! How are you going to square the circle on that one in a reliable and valid manner???

I think the real reason is that you have burned your political bridges with the GOP (charter schools kerfuffle), and they've made you drink the kool-aid on this one, or they're going to show you the door come next election cycle. As for the Governor, he has to get rid of an issue that is so volatile with the Tea Party wing because he has a guy up in Dalton who can stir up trouble for him with the base and make him spend more money in the primary than he would otherwise like to. He needs this CCS/PARCC issue to go away, just like his junk yard.

I just hope that for your penance they don't make you go down to Savannah and help dig out the river with a little plastic shovel.

Per pupil spending on Assessment systems (go to pg. 9)
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2012/11/29%20cost%20of%20assessment%20chingos/11_assessment_chingos_final.pdf (go to page 9)

My Dog Harry

My dog Harry

loves it when -- on the back porch,

listening with me to the crickets --  

I slide him slivers of cheddar

from my paper plate.  He sits,

peering through the screened-in darkness,

and searches for backyard varmints

or wayward interloping cats.

My dog Harry

sits with me on the couch --

A Person of Interest flickering

in the colorblind distance --

and rests his chin upon my thigh,

heaving great sighs from time to time,

thoughts of squirrels perhaps,

or the collie at the dog park.

My dog Harry

lies on the carpet,

equidistant

from me at my desk

and where the children sleep

in their beds.  

I do not need a yardstick.

My dog Harry

wags his tail gale force

when he sees the red leash,

and leaps onto my legs

for his harness.  

He walks with me full gallop

and pees on every vertical surface --

bushes especially,

and our neighbors’ unsuspecting mailboxes.

--Michael McIntyre

Dacula, April 2013

What Happened to Sears?

ALMOST LIKE THE CABLE GUY
Saturday, 2/2/13, first arrival window was 10-1...changed to 1-3....showed up at 3:30, disheveled and exhausted looking. I later found out that he'd been non-stop for a month and a half, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week -- and he looked it. I genuinely felt sorry for him, as he was working alone, for what appeared to be (surely) a 2-man-job.We had to leave the house at 6:30, so he came by the next day to finish. 4 hours into the job on Sunday, he realizes that the belt drive shaft will not fit in our garage, as there is a drop down header which supports the bonus room above the garage. I would think that the salesperson who came out the previous week realllly should have caught that little detail. The install technician said that he did not know if Sears would be able to make the opener work at all. A phone call technician later said that they might have to take the door down and refund our money.

ONE WEEK LATER 

So, for this week we've been manhandling the garage door (even though he did not put a handle on it), and today a tech called to say they'd be out on Saturday, February 16 to see if they can fix the door. Frankly, I'm ready to call Overhead Door (who installed the previous door, which lasted for 14 years) because they evidently did not have any problems with the support beam running the width of the garage. They simply used a shorter,screw drive shaft. I don't know why Sears cannot accomplish this task.


AH, FOR YESTERYEAR
When I was young, it was always a big impressive deal when the Sears technicians would drive up your driveway in their shiny panel van. This time,not so much, sadly. Our technician arrived in his own beat-to-death pick-up truck with supplies and tools just thrown into the bed and spilling over its sides. It is sad that corporations have worked themselves into this corner: chasing profit margin means gaining operational inefficiencies, which all too often means hiring straight commission sales people to get the job, and then utilizing one person to do a job that 10 years ago would have been done by two installers. Of course, we consumers -- constantly chasing the cheapest deal in town -- have largely enabled corporations in this self-destructive behavior. See Circuit City....see K-Mart.....