Odds and Ends

Mrs. M. Dove and her children are doing fine, thank you. I knew you were wondering, so I decided I should show you the latest family portrait. As usual, Mr. Dove was out collecting whatever it is that doves consider The Bacon, or he'd have sat, too.

This has been a morning just for me, interjected with one obligation, to get a DVD of the MRI I had done on my hip a couple of weeks ago to show to the orthopedist I'll be seeing on Thursday. I looked at the pictures and I trust they will make more sense to the doctor's trained eye than to mine.

It's still too hot to do anything outside, but inside beckons and my indolence will end after lunch. We have weekend visitors coming and the house must be presentable, so I'll be picking up a duster and a broom. Since the house has been closed for the past week or so, it isn't overloaded with dust, so the job should not be overly taxing. (Of course, there's always the kitchen, that busy place with all its footprints and grease spatters. That'll take a little elbow grease...a word to the wise based on personal experience: never buy a shiny black cooktop. It shows every speck of dust and the tinest drop of whatever may have boiled over. I didn't understand the multitude of sins made invisible by a baked-on white porcelain finish until I decided to get fancy with a black one. Never again.)

The weekend visitors due here are Steve's sister and her husband, who will be passing through on their way to visit their daughter, an officer with the Air Force who is about to be moblilzed. I'm using the occasion to get my own sister here for a rare visit. On Friday, the weather having cooled considerably, we'll have a dinner for the in-law siblings on the deck. I'm looking forward to it.

It's not only my sister's visit that will be a rare occasion: the entire get-together will be a one-off affair. My sister lives not far away, but her life, with four grown daughters and their own family dramas, seems to be in a constant state of upheaval. (I don't know how she puts up with it, but she does, cheerfully.) It's hard to make long-term plans with her, such as booking her for a dinner. Scheduling visits is further complicated by the fact that we are in town ourselves only every other weekend during the summer. And Steve's sister and her husband live in Florida and get through DC very seldom. When I saw the opportunity to get everyone together, I grabbed it.

And now I must face the music and ask the vacuum cleaner for a dance.

A Quick Howdy

Just popping in with a short post on a foreshortened day. We got away from Delaware earlier than usual this morning, which turned out to be a mistake because we hit DC at rush hour. When we finally pulled into home, the power had been off for several hours and didn't return until around noon. That gave both of us excuses for doing outdoor chores, since whatever needed to be done inside needed electricity. So I'm starting my after-the-beach chores late and just sliding in this little visit.

I wanted to show you the picture above. Those are the three dozen crabs I caught between Thursday and Saturday evenings--all of them good sized, and some mosters. I took the picture Sunday morning just before I sat down to pick them. Three hours of sit-still work, literally, sitting in one position, bent over your fingers as they pick the meat from all those crevices. It kills your back. (Or at least, mine isn't fond of it!) The payoff, of course, is the deliciousness that awaits. These 36 crabs yielded two pounds of meat. That's a lot. I divided the bounty into two one-pound packages and froze them in brine. One pound will make crabcakes for us and our friends Michele and John, who will be visiting us from Ohio in two weeks.

And that's where the "yum" comes in, and why the picking is worth the work.

More tomorrow.

FOOD FRIDAY!

GRILLED CHUCK STEAK WITH ASIAN MARINADE

It was quite a shock to arrive in Delaware yesterday evening to be greeted by early spring-like temperatures after leaving a steaming hot, summery Washington. We had left the city in shorts, tanktops and sandals and had to put on jeans and sweatshirts when we got here. The heat wave now gripping DC isn't due here until tomorrow. The same flash of violent weather Wednesday we experienced at home did occur here, a 45-minute storm during which the strongest wind gust was clocked at 62 mph. The front page of the local paper features a photo of a funnel cloud over Lewes (NOAA says ther was no tornado, however). A couple of local businesses on the Coastal Highway lost their storefronts and an inland trailer park suffered damage. Here, we see small gullies created by swiftly-running rivulets of rainwater towards the Prong, but no wind damage at all. There isn't even the usual mess of twigs to clean up.

With a warming trend upon us, I feel it in my bones that the crabs should be running well this weekend. We put traps out last night. If we get a good catch, I'll post a picture. There may be crabcakes in our future yet!

On to the subject at hand.

Why another grilled beef recipe? What's different about this one is that I use chuck. The piece is a bit large to be considered a steak; at 3 1/2 pounds it would work as a pot roast, but I grill it. I conceived the idea many years ago when I found myself unsatisfied with the bland dryness and uniform texture of London Broil, which is really a round steak cut thick, and with the ridiculous price of flank steak. I knew chuck had good marbling and chewiness to it, so I decided to experiment with grilling a cut meant for the braising pan as if it were a steak. We liked it from the start and I've been using chuck ever since as my standard grilled beef, even for company.

The marinade is also my own evolution of various recipes I'd seen and tried. The molasses and brown sugar are my innovations, giving depth to the Asian sweetness, a contrast to the salt of the soy sauce, and deep carmelization over the coals. Note: try to use Angus beef if it is in your area. The flavor is much better.

Marinade:
1/2 cup dark soy sauce
1/2 cup Chinese rice wine or sherry
1/4 cup molasses

1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seed oil
1 TB minced fresh ginger, or to taste
1 TB minced fresh garlic, or to taste

1 3- to 3 1/2-pound Angus chuck roast

Combine marinade ingredients and pour all but 1/4 cup into a ziploc bag. Add beef and turn so it is completely covered with marinade. Marinate at least 4 hours, or, best, overnight.

About an hour before grilling, remove beef from marinade and let rest on a rack to air dry and to bring beef to room temperature. Discard used marinade.

Prepare grill. Directly over coals, sear meat, uncovered, 7 1/2 minutes per side, or until the meat has a brown, crunchy surface. After searing, lift grill, with meat still in place, and rotate so the meat is opposite the heat source. Cover grill and continue cooking over indirect heat for 20 minutes. Turn meat and cook, still covered, another 10 minutes. At this cooking time, the meat will be uniformly pink, as pictured. (If you prefer your beef more well done, you know what to do.)

Remove meat from grill to a rack and let rest 10 minutes. Slice 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick at an angle. The meat will be chewy, but not tough. Drizzle slices with reserved marinade.

Stormy Weather

Seems like everybody is mad at Washington, D. C. these days. Even Mother Nature got her licks in last night with a line of enormous thunderstorms that brought gale-force winds, horizontal rain, and hail. One person near here in the Virginia suburbs was killed as he sat in his car and a tree fell on it. Whenever a storm like this comes through, I wonder if our old maple tree in the back is going to survive once again or fall, either tearing up the deck or obliterating the roof. So far, so good, but a limb from our next door neighbor's tree did fall into our yard, in a safe place, thank goodness.

My walk this morning was an obstacle course in places where downed trees or major trunks thereof were blocking the way. I heard generators in various spots along my route, supplying electrical power where the grid had failed. Schools are closed because they are without power. (Even in good weather, we've been having more flickering and brown-outs here recently than at any time in my memory, as demand for power reaches the limit of the local company to provide it.) Comcast, our connection with the world, has been hit recently with breaks in its own cables as well as general power outages. Losing all Comcast service had been unheard of for years until very recently, and such a loss is worse than a mere nuisance. When Comcast and its TV, internet and phone services go, a lifeline goes with them, and a cell phone becomes a necessity rather than a mere convenience.

For now everything is normal in our little pocket of the metropolis, after a Comcast outage last night. This morning I turned on the air conditioning for the first time this year, anticipating high humidity with temperatures in the 90s while we are away. I must cut the grass today if it ever dries out; otherwise we will be faced with a hay field when we return on Monday.

À demain, chers liseurs.

Summer is on the way

I feel surrounded by beauty this morning, in spite of the fact that the actual day outside is no great shakes. We had rain off and on last night. Today promises to be gray and humid, with more rain in the afternoon. A sullen sun takes an occasional peek through the haze, but appears to prefer to hide its brilliance. It appears that our unusally long, cool springtime is finally bowing out to make room for the sticky, hot temperatures that are a hallmark of summer for this area.

But look who has taken up residence in a flower hanging on the front porch. I am in love with mourning doves. Their tawny coat looks lush enough to get lost in. Their innocent stare dares you to think there's not a sentient soul behind it. They trust. They pair so openly and warmly. Their cooing adds a quieting back note to any day. Instead of careering frantically through space searching for food, they perch calmly above the feeder to await the sunflower seed. They are models of serenity and patience. And we are honored with the presence of a family on our premises.

This morning is uncluttered enough to allow me the time to savor my music. I think everything I have deserves to be shared here--there's always an audience for even the most wide-ranging styles--but I enjoyed finding music that was just right for the mood of this day. Today is hump day for most of you office folk, and for Steve and me, it's the last day before we head for our other life on the water. In either case, there is cause for optimism. And even if you have no place special to go and you don't work, welcome change is coming anyway. I always wondered before I retired how I would know it was the weekend. Well, now I can say you just know. The rhythms are different, sometimes busier, sometimes more relaxed, but those two days remain distinct from the rest of the week. So most of us are headed shortly for a welcome change in routine.

The ongoing concerns of our life remain. Job, retirement possibilities, real estate--all these situations stay unchanged for the moment. We still await the results of that company job Steve interviewed for several weeks ago. Questions can nag, doubts can gnaw, sleep can be lost. The hardest life lesson for me is not to sweat what I can't control. I seem always to be re-learning it. It's these plentiful, peaceful moments that make me grateful for the here and now.

Say It Ain't So! Bo Diddly's Left The Building

Bo Diddly and his "Say Man" represent one of the earliest steps I took into my own world, away from the racially ignorant attitudes my parents expected to pass on to me. "Say Man" came out in 1959. My 13-year-old's reaction right off was, "This is funny and it has a great beat. I like it!" My parents loved good music and good humor, but I knew they'd just call this "trash" because of the race of the performer. So "Say Man" was a hidden childhood pleasure for me, but it was hidden in plain sight, that's for sure. It was a Top-40, mainstream hit. We white, urban kids were on to something new and great, thanks to radio stations that weren't afraid to mix things up and show us the good stuff.

The times, they really were a-changin'. Thank you, Bo Diddly.

MP3 File

Write while I can....

Blogger has been down all morning. I was well prepared, had my morning all planned around a 10:30 hole for a doctor appointment, but life, as they say, got in the way. At around 9 o'clock I figured out I wasn't going to have time to post anything, so I decided to hop in the car and do my errands. That brought me back here at 10:15, just in time to empty the car and rush back out to meet the doctor. I got there right on time....only to wait a half-hour for him to see me! Oh, he apologized, and later on I heard something about his being at a nursing home, so God knows what unexpected professional duties this rheumatologist was performing to make him so late. But it's still galling to break your butt to keep up your end of the bargain only to have the butt-breaking not reciprocated. In the end, he only spent ten minutes with me anyway, just long enough for me to tell him the pain in my elbows is gone thanks to the medicine he gave me, and to ask for more of it. Won't be seeing him for another three months.

Blogger was still down when I got back from the doctor, so I had lunch. While I ate, I decided to play a show I had recorded a few weeks ago and never got around to watching, a Frank Sinatra special on Turner Classic Movies. It was one of those "Man And His Music" specials he did back in the 1960s, and what a show it was. He had Antonio Carlos Jobim and Ella Fitzgerald with him in this 1967 production and they were worth the price of the Comcast subscription. Jobim and his bossa nova were the hottest things on the musical horizon at that moment, and Sinatra did four numbers with Jobim accompanying him on the guitar, just lovely. (These were obviously companion pieces to the album and and Jobim had just put out, but there was no overt plugging.)

And Ella! What a treasure, and how lucky I was to share the planet with such a creature for just a few years. She and Sinatra do a version of "The Lady Is A Tramp" that just about burns the house down. We do have our own musical thrills now, yes, but we will never again see the particular combination of energy and talent preserved on that show. I plan to put it on a DVD, so if anybody would like me to copy it and send it to you, just say the word and it's yours.

We are being blessed with unseasonably gorgeous weather these days--I hate to rub it in on you poor souls who are suffering one rainy day after another. We, too, had a record-setting May for rain, but we are having an exceedingly pleasant respite at the moment. The humidity is low and the temperatures are in the 70s. This can't last forever, and there is heavy landscaping work outside with my name on it. It's time for me to go and dirty my hands.