family


28
Nov 24

Happy Thanksgiving

My mother said there was no need to spend all day making a meal that we’d eat for just a few minutes, when we could just visit and enjoy the day together, instead. And this reasonable idea worked for everyone. Since I knew we were taking her to the Malaysian restaurant — now on the short list for a James Beard award, by the way — and I saw that they were offering a Thanksgiving carryout dinner, we thought we’d give it a try. It was a good choice.

Our takeaway Thanksgiving dinner was tasty this evening. The only thing that went wrong were the re-heating directions, which underestimated the amount of time a de-boned, stuffed duck needed to reach the appropriate temperature after sitting overnight at 38 degrees. But we managed. And this version of the classic Chinese Eight Treasure Duck was tasty. The leek and herb stuffing made the whole thing. I would enjoy this again.

We also had a kale with pomegranate tahini dressing, Wagyu fat mashed potatoes with duck gravy, and a surprisingly tasty root vegetable tart.

For dessert, my lovely bride made a peach crumble, from our own peach tree.

Even in our small group of three, we enjoyed a family continuity. We sat at the dining room table that my grandparents bought for my mother, which has since been handed down to me. Above us there was a picture of my great-grandparents’ home, framed from some of the wood salvaged from that old place. Behind me sat some of the other small lived things that have made up the memories of our lives. Not just mine, or even my mother’s, but also some of the items that have come to The Yankee over the years.

This weekend we’ll mark 18 months in our new home, which means, for me, 18 months of introspection about the details of homes and the lives lived in them. This is our second Thanksgiving here. Last year we hosted my in-laws. And so now we’re having our second Thanksgiving guest. Two successful Thanksgivings. And this, repetition and pleasant memories, are how traditions form.

I think about that a lot in this house, which raised a family of five for two decades before the previous owners’ children flew from the nest. They’re everywhere in this house, of course, and they should be. And now, slowly, then suddenly, so are we.

I have no idea, of course, about how that family marks Thanksgiving. Being sentimental, I wish I did know. Incorporation is how traditions grow. But whatever those people do, I hope they’ve had a fine time doing it this week, as well. And I hope you have had a fine time in keeping your traditions, as well.

Even when the menu changes, when the locations move, or the guest list is altered, traditions can continue. Traditions are intentional. Traditions are in the spirit of things.


27
Nov 24

Thanksgiving Eve

Our god-nephews (just go with it) have a light like this in their bedroom. Last Christmas they were of the age where they wanted to give you a tour of their room and all of their treasures. I had the privilege of meeting many of their action figures and see several of their creative projects. But this light stole the show. And so, as a joke, I ordered one for Christmas last year.

Ours has made a life for itself in the living room. I’ve recently discovered that you can program it to turn on and off at specific times. And, of course, you can control the colors through your phone. (Because what light doesn’t need an app?)

I think these were two of the better color schemes I saw recently.

My mother flew in yesterday for Thanksgiving. I picked her up at the airport, and we have enjoyed our visit so far. She ran some errands with my lovely bride this morning. I spent a little time finishing up the week’s grading. I even got ahead of things and wrote a few notes for classes next week. Also, I had a Zoom call with a student, as well. It has been a productive day.

This evening we went across the river and had Malaysian food. We met a friend there for dinner a few weeks ago and, just a bite or two in, I thought she would like this, so we’re back. And we ordered all of the same things. And she enjoyed it immensely, because it is good stuff.

When at Kampar, try the Nasi Lemak.

Essentially a fragrant, flavorful, magical packet of Malaysian awesomeness! Coconut cream-soaked rice topped with sambal, roasted peanuts, crispy anchovies and hard-boiled egg, all neatly wrapped in a fresh banana leaf.

Then get:

Achat
Spicy Nyonya pickled vegetables. Ange’s aunt’s recipe!

Rendang Daging
Braised beef in spices and coconut cream (our rendang is slow-cooked for at least 6 hours for the best flavor).

Ayam Goreng Berempah
Spice marinated fried chicken with sambal tomato.

We visited a cidery after dinner and just had ourselves a nice little evening in a quiet and empty Philadelphia. Everyone had gone somewhere for the holidays, it seems.

We enjoyed Kampar so much that we ordered their takeout Thanksgiving meal for tomorrow. No cooking, a new flavor profile, they even provided reheating directions. What could go wrong?

Nothing. Nothing can go wrong.

Happy Thanksgiving!


26
Nov 24

This week may be brief

I’ve gotten 58 miles on the bike the last two days, which may be the last mild weather days we’ll have for a while. Yesterday’s ride was fine, I won’t write sonnets about it, but it was a good ride. Today’s was not good, and so I am wandering around hoping it warms up, just a bit, because there’s no way that can be the last outdoor ride of the year.

The views were worth it.

My mother flew in this afternoon. I went to the airport to pick her up and everything. She’s here for a nice quite Thanksgiving visit, and I also have plenty of school work to do, as well. So things might be light around here for the next few days.

You’ll understand.


24
Sep 24

Keens

My in-laws had this steakhouse in Manhattan that they went to for years and years. It was quite the classy old New York charm. One of those places that was hard to get into. But the in-laws knew a guy, and so they could walk in like stars. They took me there once or twice, and I was glad for it. But the place closed — landlords, man — and then re-opened in some form elsewhere for a few years, but it wasn’t the same, so my father-in-law found himself a new place.

It was two years ago, as far as I know, that they found a new place to call their steakhouse in the city. I’m not sure how they came upon it, but my lovely bride took her parents in for a show and they went to this place. They raved about it. Insisted I had to come with them into the city to go to this place. Full of history, and also the food.

Keens traces its roots back to the 19th century, when the owner’s first joint, a theater man, turned it into a hot spot for the players who trod the boards, and the people who made the plays happen. Many of the walls in the old rambling building are filled with quirky headshots of actors and actresses, most of them forgotten by all but the true connoisseurs. The real item, though, is this.

(Click to embiggen in a new tab.)

That’s supposedly Abraham Lincoln’s playbill. Ford’s Theatre, 1865, the night he was assassinated. The story goes that someone found it after he was shot and picked it up. It passed through a few hands and when Keens took on what is essentially its current form just after the turn of the century, someone found it on the property.

So the second floor has the Lincoln room, and this wall has been devoted to the theme. Here’s an undated article that most likely over-romanticizes the story.

There are framed photos of Lincoln, an image of John Wilkes Booth, a quality reproduction of Booth’s mother that he kept, an 1862 playbill of a show Booth was headlining in Boston. And then there’s this poster, dated six days after Lincoln’s murder and six days before Boston Corbett killed Booth.

Another feature are these pipes. Keens says they have the largest collection of churchwarden pipes in the world. The story in the menu says they once were ordering 50,000 of them every three years. Apparently there was a sort of coat-check style system, and some people left their pipes there. And here are some of the famous ones.

Ted Turner, Stephen King, John Kennedy, Michael Jackson, Jackie Mason, Joseph Heller, Redd Foxx, Arthur Ashe and more have pipes in that case. That one sits right by the door. This one is by the host stand, it’s obviously from a different era.

Please excuse the glare, but in that case the pipe warden placed the spit covered clay pipes of people like Babe Ruth, Will Rogers, Albert Einsten, J.P. Morgan, and many others.

A closer look at Teddy Roosevelt’s pipe. The tradition here started in the early 20th century, so that’s presidential spit on a hard clay pipe that was imported from the Netherlands.

Once upon a time pipe smoking was considered beneficial for dissipating “evil homourse of the brain,” so naturally this was a big thing. The pipes have these thin stems, so they were too fragile to carry, hence the storage and, presumably, the regular big orders the place put in.

I’m guessing MacArthur might have brought and left his own. Looks a bit more ornate, and fits the personality.

Keens’ site says the membership roster of the Pipe Club contained more than 90,000 names. That’s a lot of smoke! And here’s another presidential pipe.

I assume this is the former vice president Adlai Stevenson, not Stevenson II, who was a senator and UN ambassador.

There’s a display case with some signed pipes just thrown in it. No mounts, no labels, just chaotic. This is for a lesser tier of Pipe Club members, I guess. Regular folks pipes?

Just stored on the ceiling. In every possible space.

It’s a steakhouse, but the menu says “legendary mutton.” And when the first woman won the legal right to go into this place in 1905, she sat down and ordered the mutton. She’d been waiting on that. It’s also the first item on the menu. I got that. I was not disappointed.

I was, in fact, too full for the giant desserts, which were giant and delicious.

I’d visit Keens again — that meal was delicious! — but you’re buying.


6
Aug 24

Still not good with the seeds

Every English teacher you ever knew, every English professor you ever met, was always working on that one book. Or they would tell you about their book. Or they had it in them. It was the book of their childhood. Every autobiography was going to have long and beautifully intricate passages about the chrysanthemums in bloom, and their time romping with their friends and the little sisters and cousins of their lives.

It was always so silly because there would inevitably be a metaphor, but the metaphors were interchangeable and, often, not that good. You need a certain something to pull that off, and most people that spend a lot of time in the classroom, or grading papers, don’t have the opportunities to cultivate that certain something. So it all came down, finally, to a lament.

But those flowers were always there, and it was that loss of childhood, the flowers flaring, beautiful, and then fading, like so many bad lectures, and Moby Dick essays before them now

The only person that could write about it well, without it becoming a parody of himself, was when Willie Morris wrote about the jonquils blooming in his native Mississippi. He missed them from New York, where he was finding himself conflicted about so many things in the world changing around him, and he in it. He wrote about the smell of the jonquils, almost every year he was gone. And in most of his work after he went home, they didn’t seem to appear as much. You can use a metaphor up; Morris knew that, and that’s why it worked for him.

I always laughed at the cliché, but now I get it.

One of my lasting memories, he wrote in his best Robert Redford voice, is walking out back to the garden my grandfather kept. He would hold an old dull kitchen knife in his hand. It had a silver handle. Solid but light. It was, I think, the boning knife, that long thin one. He carried a salt shaker in his back pocket. It was a dull white plastic. A little beaten up. Probably it had been around for forever. I followed him as he stepped confidently over ground he’d trodden for decades. And out there, in the hot, bright summer sun, he’d find a great, big, ripe watermelon. He’d pull it from the vine and walk with me over to the edge of his row crops and, there, he delivered to me the secret indulgence of sun-warmed watermelon.

For a long time after he died, I wouldn’t eat watermelon. And then, for a while, I only did when someone brought it out, and only a little, to be polite, and I felt bad about the whole thing. It felt disrespectful.

But now, I do eat some watermelon. It comes with a weird mixture of that same great regret.

And there is also a maudlin nostalgia beneath the rind, the sadly sweet memory in the sweet flesh. I can’t not think about all of that. I thought about it when I cut this one up yesterday. It was a small melon, we got it from a local farm as part of a weekly produce box. I thought about it when I ate part of it yesterday, and again when I had some more today. I will think of it when I finish the thing off tomorrow.

I’ve always thought I was learning the incredibly valuable lesson that fruit was the best when it was still warm from the sun. Putting watermelon in the fridge is an awful act. I thought about setting it outside for a while and eating it the proper way, I thought I’ve never had before, but that really would have been stepping out. This is the thing I have difficulty reconciling. Maybe that’s what grandparents are trying to pass to us. Maybe, a grandparent’s lesson is really about what we can prize about what we had. Maybe it was something about those little yellow flowers on the vine, and the metaphor they hold, briefly, within. Or that salt shaker.

On today’s ride, I set out alone and, ultimately, turned in another slow one. I went through some of the nearby pasture lands and some of the row crops. I pedaled by the winery, turned left toward the gas station and then left again toward the park.

Past some sheep, on a beautifully paved road that has some nice curves into an old neighborhood that leads into the town. Through the town, and out the other side, I wound my way down to the inconvenience center and beyond.

It was that time of day, on a dramatically cloudy day, when you have to plan your route, and be ready to adjust it, based on the light. So I rode on two new roads out that way, watching the light, confident in my bike’s lights — one on the seat post and one blinking through my jersey pocket — and in the three mile downhill back to town. After that, it’s easy, through the town in just under a mile, and then four miles of open roads, and a reasonable bike lane, back to the house.

There’s one spot, in between two hills, and under a dense canopy of trees, that felt dark. But after that, it all opened back up to the same, even, gray light we’d had most of the day. It was 8:30, and I still had time to pick up the day’s peaches.

So many peaches. We’ve only just begun.

Please come get some peaches. If you do, I’ll promise to not torture you with literary allusions.