Poached Trout

http://blogs.kqed.org/essentialpepin/2011/09/19/poached-trout-in-vegetable-broth/

The other day, I got two brown trout from Chip. He had cleaned and frozen them, and, knowing Chip, they can safely be considered fresh.

We used to have a trout feast now and then in Switzerland. There was a fish farm near Sargans and that was not a far drive from Zurich, where I lived with our parents, and it definitely was not far from St. Gallen, where we lived all four of us when I was working in Switzerland back in the first four years of the 70’s.

Trout was always considered a delicacy. It has such a tender, sweet taste, and the only way it should be eaten is fresh (!) and poached. Pan fry and grilling and all other methods just toughen the meat and take the taste out of the fish and you never know what you eat. Some recipes will just try to put some taste back into it but they never succeed. They simply want to cater to those habitual fryers. You'll agree with me once you had 'truite bleu', or 'Forelle blau'. This name, French and German, means 'blue trout' which I have never heard used here in the states. The name comes from the fact that the skin of the freshly caught rainbow trout takes on a soft blue hue when it is poached. But it must be fresh! Wherein lies the problem for us.

Anyway, there were the three brown trouts Chip had caught one recent morning at the Harriman Reservoir down near the Whitingham water lock (where the water enters the pipe to the powerhouse). The first one I tried grilling - more for speed than expecting good taste and only I can be blamed for the relative disappointment. I grilled it in lemon butter and while the taste was not bad at all, the texture was totally wrong. I served it with stir fried peppers, yellow, green, red and orange, and a fresh spinach salad with Catalina dressing, of course. I also served some St. Michelle Gewürztraminer. As far as it goes, it was not a smash, but it was good.

So, for the next round, I planned my preferred poaching. The link above gets where I was while I prepared the meal. Since I usually have not much luck by cutting recipes down to 'serves one' I decided to serve four, the original recipe. After all, I had the fish for the four filets Pépin is asking for.

Let me tell you: Jacques Pépin tells you to serve the meal on a soup plate. That's OK, but choose a soup plate with a low rim, because you'll want to lick the plate. The four servings are so small, the little bit of fat you cannot show at all;) I did use only one potato instead of the two, which is prolly why the serving looks more like an appetizer than a meal. But then, we wanted trout, not spuds. Right?

Because I did not find anyone game to come and join me on short notice - that's because we all gallop through life instead of taking it at a comfortable canter - I wound up with four plates. And I ate two servings, and licked both plates. If you are alone, you can do that, even though - in my case I heard Mims call out her sharp 'Richard', which always meant that I had shocked her in one way or another. Quite a shake-up, if you think you are alone.

I used a South African Chenin Blanc in the recipe, to keep me from suffering in the kitchen, to stay with me for dinner.

This wine was produced by MAN Vintners in 2011. They give their address as Paarl, In the South African Republic. If you search for that on Google World, you see what an obviously blessed wart of our world this is. I won't give you all that talk of berries an fruit and oak and stuff. This wine is good! Balanced, pleasing bouquet, not overly dry and by no means sweet. Just beautiful. 

I send you this a a monument of a memorable dinner.

With love, and never fading wishes to share some of all this with you,

Isa 

Evening

The sun is setting. The sky is a beautiful azure blue, tinting to yellow and pink at the eastern horizon. Clouds are drifting slowly, sharply defined in white and black and all tones between by the sun, which is from our view already below the horizon. The cows are out on the pasture. Jason has opened another strip of unmowed grass and they are all crowding the new fence line. Slowly, this line is moved up the hill and soon will reach the fixed fence line up by our house. All is still. Once it is dark, the air outside wil vibrate with the calls of the croakers in the pond.
The 'Chipsters' have just left. We had Market Basket Pasta Salad mixed with hot Italian sausage, and fresh spinach with Catalina Dressing, Grüner Veltliner and Paisano, and lively talk and a good time.
Tomorrow, to my great surprise, the 'Dougs' will come for another evening of BBQ pizza - stuff heaped on factory made pies by Mama Mary. They are not bad at all. On the fire, they turn nice and crispy by the time the cheese on top starts bubbling.
After that, I think I should plan to get Winnie and Poo over here. Then Tiido and Anni, the super liberals. Gotta keep the talk away from social policies and politics! By that time, my social pool will be exhausted and I will probably start a fresh round. The DePalos will lead. With Italian and Allemanic genes, liveliness is assured.
I closed all windows. It is getting seriously chilly outside. The forecast calls for 32 degrees as the low for the coming night. In the house, the temp barely reaches the upper sixties. One does get hardened up here! How am going to take the balmy weather of the NC winter?

Protect the criminal!

When we got up in arms against Iraq, the talk about chemical weapons soon became the chief theme. There were the attacks by Sadam's forces on the Kurds and it was basically understood that in these attacks chemical weapons were used by the Iraqis. Nothing affirmative was done by the the West in response, except voicing regret over the loss of thousands of civilian lives. Other than 'humanitarian reasons', the second Bush war, as it sometimes was named, had one of the main objectives to capture Sadat himself and to find these chemical weapon arsenals and to finally prove that he actually had them, and their use against the Kurds was 'very probable' and the danger of their use against the US and UN troops was considered very likely as a last defense once the noose around the Iraqi troops tightened. Of course we never found this evidence and had to live with these traces of egg in our faces. By some 'sources' it was implied that we had been making war against an upright and honest leader of one of the world's nations. We became the bad guys.
Technology that came into use during this second war against Sadam was amazing, even in its reduced form in which it was presented to the public. Among other tools used was satellite communication and high altitude radar surveillance and troops were directed by their commanders sitting in front of computer screens fed by GPS systems, displaying the location of every vehicle and sometimes every soldier. In connection with other information about the enemy's position, they conducted their campaigns pretty much like playing a war game on the computer. So we were told.
Soon new reports about the imminent collaps of the Iraqi defense were heard. Also, it was reported that columns of trucks were observed moving east through the desert of Iraq towards the Syrian border. Speculation was heard that these transports were carrying the very chemicals the West was expecting to find in Iraq. No action was allowed. International law and bunches of other liberal arguments were used to justify the allied inactivity to stop these transports.
We now have to face the reality: Sadam, for whatever reasons he had, did not wish to use these weapons, and, realizing that his cause was lost, sent his arsenal to his brothers in Syria. We knew that, did we not? But we denied it or simply never again mentioned it. Now in the civil war in Syria we have to face up to the fact: Syria does have chemical wheapost. And the 'most likely' used them in an attack by the dictatorial regime against its native opposition. The UN, which has sent 'experts' to 'investigate' the 'truth' of these reports (of the use of chemical weapons against civilians) continues to 'investigate'.
I was a young boy when I overheard talk about the split tongue of the Nazi regime which eventually, with the aid of Chamberlain's umbrella diplomacy ended in WWII. And again, we watch the modern Chamberlains in action. Buckle up!

Evening

Evening

Last evening, sitting on the deck, I heard the bellowing of a cow down below. She was hidden from my sight by the dam of the pond. Some of her companions browsed in the grass, visible from where I sat. After a while, the bellowing stopped; Morse's farm was richer by one calf.

This evening - the same scene. The herd is browsing in a section of the pasture down towards the wood line, opened by Jason just today. I miss the ringing of the bells cows wear in Switzerland. There is nothing more expressive of peace than the soft clanging of the bells around a grazing herd's necks in the evening. The bellowing has stopped. Another calf is born.

The sky is covered with a grey haze, slowly turning pink in the setting sun. A gentle breeze rustles the leaves of the linden tree next to me. And sporadically the croakers holler up from the pond. Else, all is quiet. The low, constant roar I hear is but the rushing of my own blood.

There are trees that show unmistakable signs of fall in the woods. Some tree tops are brown. It cannot be the result of drought, as we claim in other years. this summer we had was so wet as to worry the farmers. Steve Morse must have lost tons of hay and much of what was gathered was of low quality because the seeds remained on the stalk too long before cutting was possible. On the side of the road leading down to the school there is a young maple fully dressed in the beauty of fall colors: red, yellow, some green leaves remain. The tree next to it, a mature, tall maple, it still fully green. Prosaic Chip's answer to my remark is a laconic 'bugs'. I look at him. He repeats 'bugs'. If he is right, it seems to me, the woods around here will not survive many years. This is just the end of August. Yet another four weeks before the end of summer. 

But the moment, today, tonight, are full of miracles.

Harvest

Ever since Karl left, and also left his very fruit production behind for me, I had progressively decreasing harvest in the berry patch. So, in order to increase my haul, I left the bushes alone for the last five days. They are loaded with green berries, our nights are cool, so I thought I give them a bit more time tha rad them daily.

Yesterday, I went to pick again, like I said, after five days, and carried a big bucket to hold the expected bounty. Below is a picture of what there was to harvest. What is going on? I at last remembered my observations from last year and, indeed, there was this tell-tale double track of some heavy animal coming from the woods to the pond in a straight line, broad legged and with inward turned front paws. The tracks are not photogenic, else I would send you a picture. But it seams the bear is back and eating my breakfast under cover of the night.

I tried to get this picture on the blog, but could not. I signed up to 'g+' and got the app. I found many pictures there, all of those shots from Ema and my trips that were not even taken with the iPad or the iPhone, but practically none of the recent shots taken with one or the other of the two. I wish I could figure out what makes these systems work? Does anybody know?

------------------

Laurie's Editorial Note:
I received this as an email, with photo attached. 
I cut and pasted the content of the email into this blog post. 
As for the photo, I told it to "download" to my computer when I opened the email. 
I saved a jpg copy on my desktop. 
I chose the little "add photo" block on the taskbar within Blogger.  (It is next to the word "Link" just slightly left of center.) 
When it asked me to select files, I chose "from desktop" over on the top of the menu on the left sidebar, then selected the jpg I had saved and told it to import selected. 
Voila!  The photo appeared above. 
By clicking directly on it, you can change the size, the position, whether text wraps around it or leaves it alone, etc.
Hope that helps!

Old man sailing

You an'me, we sweat an' strain,
Body all achin' an' racket wid pain,
Tote dat barge!

Lif' dat bale!

For two days now, 'my body's all aching' . . . But at long last I did get my boat in the water. She floated! The sails went up, I cast off the dock lines.

The outing was planned for Monday, but early morning there were thick clouds in front of the rising sun and no wind. Sailing with no wind - well. After weeks working on a system to get that mast up by myself and then working on this messed up rigging that she brought with her, I wanted to see her and feel her in her element. But without wind - well . . . So, I postponed my departure from home for the lake and somewhere around nine or a bit later I saw some leaves shake in the trees and decided to try it anyway. Got to the lake about ten and worked with this mast raising system and got the boat ready to launch by about noon. 

The launch was a first for me. I had never before practiced to back that trailer, but eventually I got it down into the water. That ramp on the Harriman reservoir is so flat, I wound up with my car standing in water with all four wheels, the exhaust bubbling under water before I got that boat to float. I set sail and cast off in a nice breeze a little later, heading south towards the dam. The wind was fresh and the boat felt fine. Cruising comfortably before the wind, she was very sensitive to the rudder and felt properly trimmed, keeping on course even when I let the tiller go.

About two miles down, the lake takes a turn and I drifted into chaos. Either the light air we had so far had died that moment, or it was belt back by the surrounding hills. When there was a puff, it came unpredictably from any direction of the wind rose. The sails hung from the mast, flopping back and forth and the boom swing overhead you would not have dared raise your head from between your shoulders. It is kind of frustrating to see swarms of  kayaks pass you while you are fighting to catch every breath heaven sends you. And there were many, many Kayaks. I really felt in the wrong company. The vision of a yacht slicing the waves majestically under full sail remains a dream under such conditions and is replaced by a vision of laundry hanging from a pole.

After a long time of fruitless maneuvering I gave up on reaching the dam and turned back. As soon as I turned the bend of the lake where this mess had started, I caught wind. The turbulence on the water then was on account of the hills. The breeze had freshened to about seven or eight mph and made for nice runs, tacking up to the north. With every stronger puff the boat luffed determinedly and one had to give constant attention to tiller and the control of the sails. The kayaks were on their way back up also, hugging the shore line and it so happened that at every point where I intended to tack, there were some of them. This lake is a bit narrow with the wind coming straight down through the valley. Thus, I had only a few hundred yards of straight sailing before I had to get out of my seat, switch to the other side and reset the sails. Also, the wind kept turning about ninety degrees and just when I got all settler after the turn it would shift ant instead of coming hard on the bow it would hit square into the side and the boat would leap forward with sudden speed and heel, at one point some thirty degrees, at which point the water is rushing past the gunnals. Action was uninterupted. But she kept moving along and after each heel righted herself proudly.

Eventually I got to the northern end of the lake. No big kayak traffic there. I had space to take the sails down and get my electric motor started and cruise back down that half mile or so to the dock. Maneuvering the boat to the dock with that motor was a joy. fortunately, the dock lies in a protected area and I had not to fight strong wind with its mere 3 HP. I got packed up and ready to head home just before total sunset.

About half way home, the trailer hitch released and the trailer reared up on my tail gate and the boat came through the rear window with a sound like a canon shot and in the rear view mirror the bow of the boat inside the car  looked as if the great white shark was rearing up behind me.

I was able to unhook the trailer, but it was too heavy for me to get the nose wheel down so I drove home and went looking for Chip. It was a little after eight and he was in bed already, getting ready for his early rise for work the next morning. Brenda talked to me through their house door and Chip woke up and heard us and came out to see what was up and then got dressed and we headed back to the trailer. Checking everything in the beam of his flashlight, we found no damage to boat, trailer or hitch. I had put no pin in the lock because in the dark I could not find the hole and so I put my fate at his mercy. That was my mistake. But we hooked up to my car again and drove home. The abrupt stop the trailer made had caused the boat slip forward some four inches into the nose cradle and that was enough of a weight shift to give me real positive tongue weight and the boat followed the car like a well trained dog. Before the rig was bouncing around like an unbroken bronco and you could feel the jerking in the steering wheel. with the boat in the position where it settles naturally when it is pulled out of the water, it sits behind the nose cradle and leaves a tongue weight of next to none to perhaps 50 pounds. The next day I spent getting quotes for repair. Then I negotiated with the insurance agent in Goldsboro. Now I am hoping to get things rolling and the rear end repaired before the rain starts again. We have yet a few days of dry weather in the forecast.

But my physical reaction to that day on a sail boat? I am aching from the soles of my feet to base of my skull. Every muscle hurts, every joint feels like it was overworked, and I'm dragging through the day like a grandpa under the weight of a hundred or more years of his life.

But it was beautiful. For the time being, I got my fill. Four to five hours set-up and take-down is in no relation to perhaps four hours or fewer hours of sailing. But it was, all in all, a very good day. I am very much looking forward to haul this boat down to the coast of NC and have it rigged and ready to spend whole days on the water and in the winds that we often have down there.

Sailing

Sailing has been on my mind ever since I learned it as a kid in Senior High. The way this came about is a story in itself.

A school friend, Heinz, and I, in preparation of the approaching summer vacation of somewhere around 1951, developed plans to take our two paddle boats from Basel in Switzerland to Marseille on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in France. You can follow the proposed route on a good map: our starting point was on the Rhine, just upriver from Basel, where  Heinz's parent owned a house. From there, we were to to follow the Rhine north, or downriver, to a point north of Basel where a canal crosses over to the west to connect with the river Doubs. On the map, this is by the town called Niffer, in France. We would follow tfirst this canal and then the Doubs south to its juncture with the Rhone, coming out of the lake Geneva in Switzerland and following the course of that river to Marseilles. It looks like a tremendous stretch to do if you consider that our summer vacation in Switzerland is just four weeks! But we allowed for the possibility to hitch rides with freight barges wherever the going was heavy and slow and there was no doubt in anybody's mind that the thing was doable. Our return home wast to be by train, another option that would not normally enter a native American's mind as feasible for a couple of teenagers.

I shipped my boat - a two-seater Klepper - by train from Zurich to Basel and further preparations were to be made at Heinz's house. The weather was somewhat upset. It would rain, and then the sun would break through for a few hours and we allowed some time for this to settle and enjoyed our time at the starting point. Then the rain began to get serious. We waited days, and more days, and it did not cease. One day, the news reported that the situation on the Rhine had become serious and all shipping was stopped.

You must envision the Rhine not as a placid waterway for pleasure boating and rafting and such amusements. It is a serious means of carrying goods between the sea shore through Holland and Germany and up to Switzerland. North of Basel, some substantial rivers contribute to the size of the Rhine and make traffic with deep draft boats and commercial shipping possible. Indeed, the rhine is rated the busiest shipping route in the world. Thus, when the traffic on this major artery of European Life was shut down, it meant that the situation was, indeed, serious.

We waited some days in the hope that things would clear up and then came a cal from my mother. In an newspaper ad she had discovered the Swiss Sailing School on the lake of Thun, west of the Swiss capital Bern. And she proposed that we could spend our time there more profitably than waiting at the shores of the Rhine for the waters to recede. We accepted happily. Time was running short for our original plan and we had no wish to perform a race against the calendar and wind up with only half the adventure behind us.

We loaded our camping gear on the train together with Heinz's bicycle, my mother shipped my bike to Thun; sailing was exclusively on our minds.

We set up camp on the lake shore, pedaled around the south end of the lake and registered and already on the following day we started our lessons. We liked it enough to stay two weeks, in which time we rose to the level of  'midshipmen'. At that point, Heinz packed up and went home and I staid on for another week and got to 'captain', ten, through active racing during the last week of vacation I achieved the highest grade, 'regatta sailer'. When I left, the school invited me to come back and help teaching. My parents were about to move from Zurich to Bern and I gladly accepted that invitation. Thus, I spent the next two summers on the lake of Thun, sharpening my skills in teaching and almost weekly races, and when school was on I would sometimes play hooky and pedal from Bern to the lake and go sailing. the distance was just a little over twenty miles from the school in the city to the docks at the lake and with sailing on my mind, what distance would have kept me?

On the lake of Thun, I got my 'time before the mast' on a 35 and a 45 design, both gaff rigged and like all boats back then completely mad of wood. That word 'design' signifies that the class designation was derived from a mathematical formula. The designer takes data, such as sail area, draft, displacement, beam etc. into a pot, studs it well and out come designations such as 5.5, 12, 35, 45, and so forth. The 35 was my favorite. She had been named Najade, a variation of the Greek Naida, which means water nymph, and that is what she was. A sleek little boat of about 25 feet, with a small cabin and plenty of sail to thrill the most demanding sailor, even in light winds, and with those heavy cotton sails that were in use back then. While I was there, talk began to sell the boat and I was the first to enter my bid. I was turned down! Rot had begun to show in the keel and the directors of the school said they would not sell this boat 'to one of their own'. The was a whole fleet of Pirates with which we sailed almost weekly regattas in summer, and there was that 45 design which was our major school ship for beginners' classes. The jewel of the fleet was a 12 meter design. It had been brought up from the Mediterranean Sea and converted for the use of the school. That was before the days of the 12 meter yachts used in the America's Cup. It was outfitted as a comfortable touring boat but also a very good racer. It usually went out with a crew of eight, but four could handle it in moderate winds. It's cabin was roomy and comfortable. During my vacation weeks on the lake with the school, I lived on that boat, a concession from the school because I gave my time for free. Another concession was that I could pick any boat for my private cruising unless it was scheduled for school activities or I was scheduled to take students out. In this way, I spent every summer vacation day from early morning to the evening hours on the water - two seasons of total bliss. My mother was very supportive, too. She picked up a newspaper add for a Star boat for sale on the Lake of Constance and she and I drove there to investigate. It was 'just what I always wanted, and, as a matter of fact, I had sailed on it as crew during a regatta series some time ago. I got on the boat, a wooden beauty, and eventually crawled under the fore deck where I found why the owner wanted to sell: rot in the wooden beam. That glimmer of a dream too was over. 

The next years brought college and some loss of the freedom I had enjoyed in the prior years. However, I did find entry into a sailing school in Zurich, where I attended college, so on some weekends I taught, and dating back to the days of the lake of Thun I had enough connections in the sailing world to always have more invitations than I could accept to crew in this or another regatta almost every weekend. 

The end of college brought all of my sailing to a halt. My first job, and then three years later my emigration to the US did not leave much time to even think about sailing.

When I settled in New York and later met Tiiu, I tried to interest her in my hobby, but after a couple of outings on Long Island Sound she announced with grave determination: Rich, I'll follow you anywhere, as long as the ground under my feet is solid and level.

That was the end of sailing for me for fifty years. The longing never stopped. But the alternative, to make Tiiu a sailer's widow, was no alternative to me

Well, towards the end of my 50 years exclusion from the sailing world I began to itch for getting my hand again on a tiller and the mainsail sheets. I started looking at ads everywhere I could find them and scoured Craigs lists up and down the coast. Some offers I went to look at, many I passed over, but I found that sail boats were not expensive after they had acquired some age. With Kaarin living at the North Carolina Coast, my dream was to keep the boat down there and when we went visiting we all could go for a cruise for a few hours and Tiiu could come with us or would not left alone at the shore. But the search dragged on and several interesting opportunities had to be abandoned for one reason or another.

At last, this summer of 2013, I hit the bait. I bought a 22 foot MacGregor in New Hampshire. I did not much research, but the idea was to get a boat ready to sail, bring it to the Harriman Reservoir by Wilmington in Vermont, and anchor it for the summer in the cove where the local sailing club moored their boats.

I found the boat on Craigs List, went to look at it, found it clean and apparently well kept, and bought it. Mr. B had never sailed it. He had bought it the year before from Mr. A, tried to put it in the water once but found that he had left some essential components at home and had to back with a dry boat. Shortly after that he was hospitalized for multiple bypass surgery and when he came home he decided that he would no longer be able to handle the boat. There are no lakes close and convenient where that boat was located, so I bought it sitting on its trailer and on his say-so that it was good to go. I towed it home and started to work on it. I wanted to be able to step the mast alone in my driveway before I took the boat down to the public boat launch. 

On first try, I decided that the method Mr. A supposedly had developed and used was totally impractical. He built an A-frame with two 10' 2x4 which were supposed to be resting on the safety line posts and the mast would be raised by a come-along using two single blocks, or pulleys. It was not a one-man job to handle this rig. I decided to design and build my own. The first actual attempt to raise the mast came on second iteration of my rig. It ended with a crash. Fortunately there were no injuries nor any damage. But the mast had come out of the cradle and the theory behind the design was proven feasible.

I started to do some research on the web and found that many sailers had taken the same approach to raise their masts. These boats, like the MacGregor 22 are called trailer boats because they can be hauled around on trailers, having a retractable keel. There are many of those all over the nation, many similar designs, all with the same idea and it is just a puzzle to me why there are no ready made, proven mast raising systems on the market. Of course, if you never sail one of those boats alone, you don't need one. The mas can be raised and lowered by two strong men.

That's s exactly what happened. Iivo came visiting with his family and he and Philip stepped that mast in no time. The boat was still in the driveway because I wanted to see it first rigged up completely. I'm glad we did it this way.

The boat had a jib furler which, when we got the mast up, proved to have never been fitted right. Besides, the rigid sections of the system broke at some of the intersections and I believe the thing would never have worked anyway. There were other things wrong with the standing and running gear. Mr. A apparently wanted to improve the boat, but obviously lacking the background and/or capabilities and means made a mess of it.

We took the mast down. Philip was not of the party and we had another crash. I am no longer a strong man. But nobody got hurt and there was no damage done, the mast came down in a somewhat soft landing.

Nevertheless, we decided we would take her sailing. We hooked up and also loaded Iivo's trailer with some essential water fun stuff in case not all of would fit on the boat and took off to the Wilmington launch. About halfway there, the trailer axle on the boat broke. Obviously it had seen much salt water and corrosion had given it what saltwater does to iron. So we had to have the whole rig towed off and waited for the new axel and by that time, Iivo's vacation was already over. We'll have to plan on a cruise on the Chesapeake Bay, come fall and I migrate south again. 

When Iivo's family left, I went back to work on my mast raising system. Yesterday, exactly eight weeks after I brought her home, I had the mast up and rigged somewhat properly. There is more detail work to be done, but I feel like she is ready to sail now.

I wanted to re-name her Najade, but she is no water nymph. She is plump and has a square stern, more like a motorboat than a sleek sailer. I will get her to the water first, after I took the mast down again, of course, and put her through a full days's testing if she will stand for it and then, perhaps, a new name will crop out of her character.

Heimweh

Every afternoon at four o'clock the CD starts playing. I recently loaded Richard Tauber's disk Volkslieder and the first song is Die Lorelei - Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten. . . .
It tells about a Maiden sitting on a mountain and combing her golden hair and singing a song that lets the skipper on the Rhine below forget all about himself and his boat crashes on the rocks.
It is a tale like Homer's Odyssey, the Sirens, and many other folk tales - always beautiful women luring honest working men to their doom through their enchanting music, singing, or playing the harp, or the flute. I don't know about the Sirens, though; they were part bird, part beautiful women. On the whole not very attractive. They live on the rocky shore of Italy near Sicily, probably still, just as the Lorelei is still singing on top of the mountain on the shores of the Rhine; some say she sits on a rock in the middle of the Rhinenear Bingen, a fast flowing stretch of the river where many wrecks have occurred. It does not matter: she sings, men try to reach her, they drown.
Then there is a the mermaid that sits on a rock in Copenhagen's harbor. And then there are all the stories of seamen actually seing mermaids and some ill-meaning individuals claiming that they mistook the sea cows on the Florida coast to be mermaids. I woudn't. Even after months and months at sea, crossing the Atlantic in a wooden boat in the company of coarse men and no charm anywhere.
All these stories have but one thing in common: hard-working men, defying the elements alone, longing for the comfort of woman's arms, even if it means their death.
I got to change that CD!

Reading

It is funny how memories come back. It was in my second year at college. I was a member of the film club. Every Thursday we met late in the evening to watch what we now call Ciné Noir. The title of this particular strip was 'Mephisto' and it was about some artists (in Montmartre, of course), and a motorcycle gang clad in black leathers on big brutes of bikes and they ran down all the bad guys. That's the way one was claimed for hell. The main character, in one scene, was sitting in a cafė and apparently was waiting for someone. To pass the time, he picked up a magazine from a table next to his chair. The cover was blank, except for the name of the magazine: La Nue. He leafed through it, page for page, obviously very interested in the contents of this publication. The camera swung around to look over his shoulder and one realized the the whole magazine consisted of blank pages. La Nue!
There was more content to this movie, obviously, than white magazine pages. It would not have kept its place in my memory without any. However, if you look at today's magazines, how many can claim to have improved blank pages with the contents they print?

There is a fly on my roast.

I guess it is the title that got you, Ha! But I won't keep you in suspense, for long. It is Saturday and it follows another bad night that knocked the juice out of me. There is not much left to do anything useful with this day. I got up at four this morning and read. By about seven, I decided I should start the day. There were eggs and bacon and stewed tomatoes for breakfast and I even made a small pot of coffee, which I appear to have forsaken during the past weeks (?) since Kaarin left. Then I went back to reading. From Jane Austen I propagated to Agatha Christie. Her first book was a turn-down. 'Secret Adversary' is a kiddy tale about a couple of brash, but supposedly smart youngsters bringing a bunch of criminals to heel. Well, perhaps I am getting ossified by now and I don't like brash kids who think they are smarter than we are and eventually turn out to actually be just that. Knowing what we know, i. e. experience demands a bit of respect, and deserves it, does it not?

Well the next Agatha was the Mysterious Affair of Styles and that is much better. My old friend Hercule Poirot is making his reappearance, though he is now apparently sidelined because of 'the war' and he is found in a small town in England. Somewhere near London, of course, but the only role London plays is to be the scene of the final trial and the main characters 'taking a house there' a la Jane Austen's nobility and Mr. Poirot finally getting the real culprit whose identity surprises everybody. Nice plot, nicely told.

But I am stingy: when it comes to electronic books, I don't want to pay a penny and right off the bat I have no line on more Agatha. So my next one is F. Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor. Nice switch is it not? Inquisitors are also looking out to bring culprits to court, and to make them face their well deserved punishment. Only they act within a very different environment than Agatha does. Less worldly, I guess.

Anyway, by the time I finished the Mysterious Affair I got hungry and cooked a late lunch / early dinner. I coated a top round with Grey Poupon mustard, sprinkled some salt over it and covered it with sweet onion slice - the wide part that you get when you slice large flat onions. I got my grill to about 400 to 450 degrees, dumped a fist full of apple wood chips into the bottom pan, and put the roast on the perforated veggie sheet. Setting the timer for 50 minutes, I the sliced the rest of the onion into about quarter inch slices, sprinkled a little salt and drizzled some sesame oil and soy sauce and about ten minutes before the roast was supposed to come off the fire I put them on the grill next to it. On the kitchen stove, I did a pan of Rösti. If you do 't know what that is, but are truly curious, you must ask me (schwizerbueb@gmail.com). You can also google that, but they tell you how it really is done, not the bachelor-type easy and quick way.

When the roast was finished and had sat its time on the cutting board I sliced a couple of slices and served them with the Rösti and onions and a glass of Paisano. Wonderful! There are no overwhelming or exciting tastes. Everything germanically constrained, mild, subdued, whatever. But the whole combination of flavors came through so satisfyingly, I am now on my third glass of Paisano.

What is Paisano? Well, it is a Gallo jug wine and has been around as long as I can remember. In the 'early' days, i. e. early 1960, the called it Chianti. Perhaps the emerging laws of the European Union put a halt to the naming of products that have a territorial  claim, such as Chianti (Tuscany), Camembert (France), etc. In any case, Gallo's Chianti disappeared and Paisano came in and it is the most satisfying jug wine I know. Did you know that it won the first prize at the Boston Wine Exhibition back in the late 1990’s? The judges, all gold tresses wine critics, selected it from among all entries on the basis of what came from unlabeled bottles. It must have been a riot! The cheapest of all wines on site being judged the best.

I'm getting carried away. The fly? Oh yes, the roast had a streak of fat and I cut it out and set it aside. That's where I saw the fly. There is only one in the house. It Isa true house fly.