Food And Beverage

You Gotta Have Fun: A Cannoli Story

Yeah, Another Blogger158 Comments

My wife Sandy and I go out to dinner most Friday and Saturday nights. We’ve been doing this for years, and know that we’re fortunate as hell to be able to indulge ourselves in this way. The majority of those meals take place in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, which isn’t surprising, since we reside in those burbs. And once or twice each month we head into Philadelphia, a city with many fine aspects, including a pulsating restaurant scene that, like the universe, keeps expanding. Each of our Philly visits includes dining in a restaurant or pub. The abundance of good eateries is one of the reasons why I’m a major fan of The City Of Brotherly Love.

Sandy and I consider dining out to be a form of entertainment. It’s fun. Two Fridays ago (November 7th), in the burbs, we chowed down at a restaurant we’ve been to a lot: Anthony’s Coal-Fired Pizza. The Italian salad we ordered was A-OK, and the pizza that followed it earned, on my scale, a 6.8 out of 10. That’s pretty high praise from me, because I’m a pizza snob.

The salad and pizza filled us up quite nicely. There was no room for dessert, certainly not for cannoli, a not-on-the-light-side Italian pastry, which Sandy, almost in passing, mentioned was on the dessert menu. Cannoli — crispy, tubular shells of dough stuffed with one variation or another of a ricotta cheese filling — can be scrumptious. When the word cannoli left Sandy’s mouth, my mind lit up, and I found myself reliving a sublime gastronomic experience. Namely, the cannoli I’d swooned over a year or so previously, for they were perfection, at Little Nonna’s, an Italian restaurant in downtown Philly that’s hard to get into unless you’ve reserved a table at least several days in advance. I hadn’t eaten any cannoli since then. But the signs were clear. It was imperative that I interact with Little Nonna’s cannoli again. And soon. Damn soon. The next night, in fact, would be ideal.

Thus, as we were preparing to pay the bill, I said to Sandy that, when we got home, I was going to see if Little Nonna’s, by some miracle, had a table available for the following evening. The odds were low, but miracles, I hear, have been known to occur. The cannoli gods were with me. Back at the house, I couldn’t believe my eyes when Litte Nonna’s online reservation service offered a table for 7:00 PM on Saturday. I nabbed it. Cannoli, here I come!

Little Nonna’s
Little Nonna’s

We arrived at Little Nonna’s from a Philadelphia movie theater, where we’d seen Blue Moon, a literate and really good drama about Lorenz Hart, the brilliant but troubled lyricist whose songwriting partner was the composer Richard Rodgers. Little Nonna’s is a cool place. Dimly lit, casual and full of life. Sandy and I enjoyed the heck out of the salad we shared. Ditto for our entrees. The chefs there know what they’re doing.

Cannoli at Little Nonna’s

One hour into the meal, the long-anticipated moment was at hand, as a plate holding two cannoli was placed before us. They were a vision and also deelish. The hazelnut bits, chocolate sauce and powdered sugar saw to that. But were the cannoli fully as good as those on the previous occasion? You better believe it! My idea to revisit Little Nonna’s was one of the best I’d had in a long while.

As we all know all too well, our lives zoom by. That’s why it’s important to have fun on at least a fairly regular basis. Anything less than that means we’re not in the best of shape. If I hadn’t followed through on my goofy cannoli-related impulse, I’d have missed out on a fun-filled mini adventure. Which would have been a shame. For most of my adult life, I’ve been a frequent fun-pursuer and a usually successful fun-attainer. I have no plans to change.

A Paean To Beer

Yeah, Another Blogger135 Comments

A week ago, my wife was readying to drive to one of our local supermarkets, Acme, it being the only one she knows of that carries a cold cereal she’s partial to and was out of (Kashi Organic Warm Cinnamon).

“Want to come along and check out their beers?” Sandy asked me. Well, sure. I was running low on beer, and Acme’s beer section is very good. More important, though, was the fact, unbeknownst to Sandy, that the notion to write a story about beer had been sloshing around sloppily in my head for a few days. Clearly, then, it was no coincidence that Sandy had invited me to accompany her. By which I mean the beer gods, ensconced in an immense tavern somewhere up above, were telling me, through Sandy, what they expected me to do: They wanted me to pull my thoughts together and pen a paean to beer. Or else, probably.

So, off I went to Acme with my wife, where we replenished our respective stocks of beer and cereal. And several hours later I sat my aged ass down at my computer and got to work on this story.

The beers in my house before I went to Acme supermarket.
The beers I bought at Acme supermarket.

I’ve been drinking beer all of my adult life. It’s the only form of alcoholic beverage I’m into. I don’t like hard liquor at all. And even though I enjoy a bit of wine now and then, it hasn’t captured me enough to become a regular part of my diet.

On the other hand, I absolutely adore good beer. That statement, however, didn’t apply to me until 1994, during Sandy’s and my honeymoon. Before then, I’d downed plenty of brews, mostly American-made lagers such as Budweiser and Miller, without giving them much thought. I liked them, but I certainly wasn’t in love.

All of that changed on Martha’s Vineyard, the Massachusetts island where we honeymooned. There, at restaurants whose beer offerings were broader than what I was accustomed to, I began to realize that beers more flavorful and robust than Budweiser and its kin existed, that beer came in many styles besides lagers, and that brews from other countries were available for purchase in the States, my native land. Those revelations have made my life significantly better than it otherwise would have been.

There are so many beers out there. Lots of them, the so-called craft beers, are from smallish breweries of recent or fairly recent vintage. (The craft beer revolution took off in earnest during the 1980s, centered in Britain, the USA, Belgium and a few other nations.) Conversely, quite a few European brews have roots that extend back centuries, some to the Middle Ages. Ever since my honeymoon I’ve been on a non-stop quest to sample a goodly number of products from the categories I just mentioned. I haven’t been thrilled by every beer, but the majority have hit the spot just fine.

When much younger, I commonly knocked back several or more beers at one sitting. What guy in his 20s and 30s hasn’t? It’s the thing to do. In any event, for reasons I’m uncertain of, my beer consumption slowed down around 1990, though it’s gone up slightly over the last few years. These days I drink five beers per week, on average. That’s less than one per day. I’m fairly confident that this level of consumption has done me, and will do me, no harm. As always, though, time will tell.

But I make up for my relatively limited intake of beer by thinking about beer a whole lot. Right now, for example, I’m anticipating, with relish, the beer I’ll imbibe with dinner tonight. Which one shall it be? I have ten different beers in the house to choose from at the moment, including a pilsner, a saison, an amber ale and two pale ales.

Perhaps J.A.W.N., a pale ale, will be the selection. A creation of Neshaminy Creek Brewing Company, it is one of my all-time favorite brews. (You can learn more about the Philadelphia slang word jawn by clicking here.) J.A.W.N. is boldly bitter, as all pale ales should be. And its flavor and aroma, earthy with distant hints of peaches and pears, make me say to myself, “holy f*cking shit, this beer is perfection,” every time I take a swig.

I could go on and on about beer. However, I feel I’ve said enough, and damn well have geeked-out enough. Hopefully, I’ve placated the beer gods. I’d hate to get on their bad side. If that were to happen, they’d probably take J.A.W.N., and who knows how many other good brews, away from me. Therefore, over and out!

Europe 2024, Part Two: Brussels

Yeah, Another Blogger145 Comments

In my previous opus I mentioned that the Brussels leg of our recent trip to Europe didn’t turn out anywhere near as wonderfully as my wife Sandy and I had expected. But, shit, that’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Life ain’t perfect, that’s for damn sure. Though I’d do anything but complain if it were.

We fully were expecting to dig Brussels, the capital of Belgium, a lot. Advance research had indicated to me there were quite a few museums, parks and neighborhoods worth investigating, and that the chances were good that we’d attend one or two concerts during the four full days of our stay.

Alas, we attended no concerts and didn’t see all that much of the city. Basically, we were thrown off our game. The bad cold that Sandy came down with had plenty to do with that. It bummed both of us out. And the on-and-off rain showers we encountered on several days were not exactly spirits-boosters.

A view of Grand Place.
A street in the old section of Brussels.

In the end, then, our explorations were limited substantially to the old, tourist-thronged, cobblestone-streets section of Brussels, whose hub is Grand Place, an imposing plaza. That old section looks similar to how it did long, long ago, and at times we had fun taking in the sights there. On one of its many narrow streets sits Choco Story museum, a place we’d put near the top of our things-we-want-to-see-in-Brussels list. So, after paying the admission fees, we embarked on a self-guided tour of the museum’s galleries.

Choco Story’s unpretentious layout appealed to me. Its exhibits explain the history of chocolate, a product first developed and enjoyed, as a beverage, by the Mayans and Aztecs. Solid chocolate, a European creation, made its appearance in the 1800s. I found all of this pretty interesting. And I became especially interested when I reached the end of the exhibits. For, lo and behold, I noticed a sign that said a chocolate-making demonstration was about to begin in the room just beyond the sign. Sandy and I wasted little time in sitting down on a bench in that room. Moments later, a chocolatier walked in.

The chocolatier at work.

Speaking in heavily French-accented English — though French, Dutch and German are Belgium’s official languages, I imagine he used English for the benefit of the museum’s largely non-Belgian clientele — the gentleman explained to the 20 or so folks in the audience the processes required to produce solid chocolates. Temperature control plays a big part. And, while talking a mile a minute with wit and confidence, he demonstrated each step of the operation. Voila! At the end of the show everyone lined up and grabbed a praline (the pralines he offered to us had been prepared earlier, to allow them to solidify properly). Belgium is famed for its chocolates. And, I’m pleased to say, the chocolatier’s creations didn’t let his nation down.

Choco Story wasn’t the best of the two museums we visited in Brussels, as it turned out. Not even close. That honor belongs to Musical Instruments Museum, commonly known as MIM. What a place! And not in the old part of town, either. I’d never seen anything like it. From the moment I began touring the premises, I was certain I was in a truly great museum.

Musical Instruments Museum.

Hundreds and hundreds — thousands? — of instruments fill MIM’s several floors of gallery space. They come from every corner of Planet Earth. Most, it seemed to me, date from the 16th to 20th centuries. And two are from 14,000 or more years ago: pierced animal bones used as whistles by our ancient relatives.

MIM’s cornucopia is meant to please more than our eyes. Our ears are blessed at the museum too, because recorded music performed on a goodly percentage of the instruments can be heard by entering designated code numbers on the headset device given to each museum visitor. Simply put, I was blown away. I listened to saxophone pieces, harmonica pieces, sitar pieces, you-name-it pieces. MIM, on its own, is not reason enough to pay a visit to Brussels. But it almost is.

I hate to be remiss. Which is why I’m going to mention one other aspect of the Brussels vacation that agreed with me well. I’m a bit of a beer geek. And, through reading, I’ve known for years that Belgium produces fine beers, most of which (save for beers made by Leffe, Stella Artois and a couple of other breweries) do not find their way to the USA, the nation I call home.

I’m happy to report that I downed delicious brews in Brussels, each of which I’d never heard of before. The majority of them entered my system at Bier Central, a cozy, handsome tavern whose food is very good. More to the point, its beer selection is out of this world. 366 beers, all of them from Belgium! If you’re a beer lover and ever find yourself in Bier Central, I recommend trying, among others, Floreffe Dubbel (made by Brasserie Lefebvre). It put a contented smile on my frigging face.

In conclusion, I regret not seeing more of Brussels than I did, and never getting a feel for the city. I had a good enough time there, though, to consider the visit a reasonably enjoyable one. And, here in the States, I’m now going to make it my mission to try and find some elusive Belgian beers. Cheers, skoal, bottoms up!

A Peachy Story

Yeah, Another Blogger173 Comments

For most of my life I’ve enjoyed summer. I’ve spent many hours outdoors in the hot season, frolicking under the Sun or soaking up its potent rays while lying on a blanket or chaise lounge.

Alas, somewhere along the line, perhaps about 10 years ago, my good feelings about summer took a sharp turn southward. Since then, I’ve mostly stayed indoors in summer when the Sun is high in the sky, my body no longer happy to be exposed to temperatures above 85°F (29°C) and to an unrelentingly bright ball of fire. Now deep into my senior-citizenhood, I melt like ice cream under those conditions. Which doesn’t fit the definition of having fun in the summertime.

A week and a half or so ago, though, a northward shift occurred. I have no idea how long this positive outlook on summer will remain in place. In any event, it’s fascinating to me that the change occurred at all.

My favorite fruit, peaches, prompted my new attitude. There I was in early June at a local supermarket, buying this and that, when I remembered that peaches had come into season in parts of the USA and would be for sale in the store. Moments later I picked out a couple of peaches. They’d been shipped from the state of Georgia, one of the peach hubs of America, to Pennsylvania, where I reside and was grocery shopping.

One of those peaches took two days to ripen, the other took three. The waits were worth it. The peaches blew my mind when they entered my mouth, so luscious were they. Their sweetness was exemplary, their texture a dream. In love with the fruit, I realized that peaches galore would be available for the next two or three months. In other words, throughout the summer. And, at that moment, I found myself regarding summer, which officially began in my hemisphere on the 20th of June, in a good light. “You know,” I said to myself, “summer offers more than the opportunities to sweat like a f*cking pig and to come close to passing out from the heat. Neil, you’ve forgotten that summer has its upsides too.”

Yes, I’m in a much better frame of mind about summer than I’ve been in a long time, despite the crazy heat that has Pennsylvania and much of the rest of the world in its grip. And I have more than peaches to thank for that, because what I’m expecting to be enjoyable getaways are on the horizon. Sandy and I will be at a family reunion this summer for a few days. The locale? A village beside a beautiful lake in rural upstate New York. And we’ll also spend time with friends at their beach house in Delaware.

Now, I’m going to stay in the shade, or indoors, a good bit at those gatherings. I’m not about to forget what high heat and glaring Sun can do to me. However, I fully intend to have fun while there. And if that happens, I figure there’s a chance I’ll also approach the remainder of summer 2024, and subsequent summers, lightheartedly, like I used to do.

I can think of no better way to end this essay than to include a song from Eat A Peach, the album released in 1972 by one of the greatest rock groups of all time, The Allman Brothers Band. Fittingly, they were based in Georgia. And, I’d guess, they consumed more than their fair share of peaches. I’ll leave you with Stand Back, one of the Allman songs you don’t hear all too often. Power-packed and gritty, it almost makes me want to go outside and dance madly while engulfed by high temps and intense sunlight. I said almost.

A TV Series, A Confectionery, A Song

Yeah, Another Blogger136 Comments

“Neil, how come you usually write about things you enjoy, rather than about those that, in your opinion, bite the big one?” I asked myself the other day.

“Well,” I answered, “I’ve ripped into people I loathe. Trump and Putin, primarily. And I’ve discussed situations that worry me or piss me off. But there’s no denying that my natural orientation is to comment about aspects of life that ring my bell.”

“I understand,” I replied. “There’s no reason right now for you to mess with your natural orientation. So, let’s take a look at some of your recent bell-ringers. And, maybe, your readers then will tell you what they’ve been into of late. Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong!”

Okay! First up is a miniseries my wife and I watched two months ago: Escape At Dannemora, seven episodes in length and available on Paramount+ and elsewhere. It had been on our to-be-viewed list for a couple of years. Fortunately, we finally got around to it. It bowled us over. I place Escape in the pantheon of miniseries I’ve encountered, along with The Queen’s Gambit, Anxious People, The Investigation, Godless and a handful of others.

Escape At Dannemora came out in 2018, three years after the true events from which it draws its inspiration. Set in the town of Dannemora, in rural upstate New York, the show aims its beam at David Sweat and Richard Matt, convicted murderers imprisoned in Dannemora’s Clinton Correctional Facility, and at the married prison employee (Joyce Mitchell) who became emotionally and sexually involved with them. Ultimately, Mitchell helped them escape from jail.

Escape At Dannemora is not a docuseries. Anything but. All, or nearly all of its dialogue is imagined. After all, it’s not as though conversations between Sweat, Matt, Mitchell and the story’s other principals were recorded. And what dialogue! Completely realistic. No artificial ingredients. I’d never heard of the scriptwriters (Brett Johnson, Michael Tolkin, Jerry Stahl), to whom I now publicly tip my hat. As I do to Paul Dano (Sweat), Benicio del Toro (Matt) and Patricia Arquette (Mitchell), the actors who employed the scripted words to create characters as nuanced as French pastries. Ben Stiller directed the production with economy and precision. As couldn’t be more obvious, I highly recommend this show.

My dad loved halva, a moist, semi-sweet treat that, as I learned from doing a bit of research for this piece, originated well over a thousand years ago in Persia (present-day Iran). Unlike him, I wasn’t infatuated with the product, but ate it now and then while growing up. Halva disappeared from my diet, though, when I was in my 20s, maybe earlier, for reasons I’m not sure about. Possibly my obsessions with pizza and Cheez-It crackers left no room for halva, a product that isn’t easily found in stores in my country (the USA), and which the majority of the world’s population likely never heard of.

And probably I’d never have had halva again were it not for my pals Cindy and Gene, who bestowed sesame-based halva, the variety I am familiar with, upon me and my wife Sandy twice in the last several months (there are other types of halva in addition to sesame-based, as the Wikipedia article, the link to which is in the above paragraph, explains).

“This a weird gift,” I thought to myself when I saw what Cindy and Gene had presented to us on the first occasion. Man, how wrong I was!  Halva was the perfect gift. That wouldn’t have been the case with the too-dense halva made by the Joyva company, the brand I knew in my youth. But the halva they’d chosen, from the Seed + Mill firm, is incredible. Its sesame paste is perfectly balanced with chocolate and salt. And the texture, light and slightly granular, is wonderful. Hallelujah, I’ve been blessed!

And finally: Some songs have the power to bring you up short and make you say, “Holy shit, this is fantastic!” I Want To Know, by the quite obscure rhythm-and-blues group the Gay Poppers, did such to me two weeks ago when the tune burst forth from SiriusXM Radio’s Carolina Shag channel.

I Want To Know came out in 1960, and the Gay Poppers were from North Carolina, USA. Not much else about the song or about the group can I find online. Except that the recording at some point became popular in parts of the dance-club world. It makes me want to dance, because its beat won’t quit, and because the Gay Poppers’ vocal prowess damn well is off the charts. Without further ado . . .

A Nice Day

Yeah, Another Blogger158 Comments

Twelve days ago, after paying our bill at Barbuzzo, a restaurant in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, my wife and I exited the establishment and then walked a few blocks to Jefferson Station. There, we caught a train that returned us to our suburban town. Halfway between Barbuzzo and the station I said to Sandy, “This was a nice day.” I wasn’t the least bit surprised when she said she had been thinking the same thing.

Yup, our worries and woes were in hiding during the five and a half hours we spent in Philadelphia that Thursday, first at The Philadelphia Flower Show and then at Barbuzzo. I don’t know, maybe I’d been sprinkled with a heavy dose of magic dust before leaving home in the early afternoon, because I was cool, calm and collected in Philly, as relaxed as when I’m drifting off to sleep. Even the substantial crowd at the flower show didn’t bother me in the least. “Hell,” I said to myself, “everyone here has just as much right as I do to get up close and personal with the exhibits.” What? I, whose nerves often are easily jangled, actually felt that way? I did. I sure would love to be in such an at-ease frame of mind far more than I normally am. Will the transformation occur before my time expires on Planet Earth? Well, “miracles” are known to happen. But I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve been living in or near Philadelphia since the mid-1970s, but for decades never paid any attention to The Philadelphia Flower Show, a famed annual event. In 2016, though, almost on a whim, Sandy and I decided to go. I liked the experience, and now have attended five times. This year’s production, which ran for nine days, was as sweet as summer fruit, despite being held in a non-descript hall large enough to accommodate a number of jumbo jets.

Each year’s flower show has a theme, 2024’s being United By Flowers. I’m all for unity and, like just about everyone, am pro-flowers. So, I couldn’t go wrong. Excellent flowers were almost everywhere in the exhibits area. Ditto for other forms of flora. Sandy and I spent two and a half hours admiring the many installations, doubling back at times to re-examine the five or six that had particularly wowed us. We spent an additional 30 minutes wandering around the vendors section, where more products than you could shake a stick at — and not just horticultural items — were for sale.

Besides the beauty and creativity on display, was there anything else about the show I liked? Affirmative. I admired the diversity of people in attendance. They ranged in age from those that hadn’t yet reached their first birthday to old f*ckers such as me. A wide range of races and cultures were on the scene. And numerous folks with mobility issues didn’t let the enormity of the hall keep them away. Wheelchairs, motorized scooters and canes abounded.

Around 5:00 PM, Sandy and I heard dinner’s call. So, we bade farewell to the flower show and made our way to 13th Street. Philadelphia’s restaurant scene is amazingly strong, and a four-block-long section of 13th Street is one of the prime destinations for restaurant goers. We couldn’t get into Darling Jack’s Tavern, our first choice. But 50 feet away was Barbuzzo, an Italian eatery we’d passed many times but had never frequented. In we went. The place was mobbed, dimly lit and looked cozy. Could they accommodate us? Sure, but only at the chef’s counter, where two stools apparently had been waiting to greet our rear ends.

Happy with our perches, we watched meals being cooked five feet away from us, in pans sitting atop the burners of a stove as solid as an army tank. The burners’ flames, and those from the nearby wood-fueled pizza oven, kept us good and warm. I kept glancing at the oven, whose fury fascinated me. Its portrait was the only photo I took in the restaurant.

We kept things simple at Barbuzzo, whose menu ranges wide, opting for a salad, a Margherita pizza, beer and wine. Everything was delicious. And, before we knew it, it was time to head home.

At 8:06 PM, we arrived at Jefferson Station, giving us very little time to catch the 8:10 train. If we missed it, we would have had to wait an hour for the next one. F*ck that! But we didn’t miss it. Moving quickly through the waiting area and down the stairs, we reached the train platform just as the 8:10 was pulling in. Nice.

A Cheer For Beer

Yeah, Another Blogger170 Comments

In June 2015, two months into my blogging career, I composed a paean to beer, and I’ve returned to the subject several times since then. I have my friend Cindy to thank for setting the present story in motion. Here’s why: I mentioned to her recently that, for quite a while, I’d been taking photos at home of beers, alongside their frequently snazzy cans and bottles. And that I’d been sending some of the photos (via email with a subject line reading Tonight’s beer) to a rotating selection of relatives and friends. Those folks included Cindy’s husband Gene. Cindy didn’t say that she thought this was a pretty ridiculous thing to do, as well it might be. Nope, her immediate response was, “You should write a story about that.”

Well, I mulled over her idea for a number of days, finally deciding to wax rhapsodic about beer once again. And so, I headed to my smart phone’s photo archives. There I discovered that my first documentation of a beer purchase occurred in November 2020, and that approximately 80 more beers/cans/bottles subsequently have posed for me. None of the pictures are wonderful examples of the art of photography, that’s for damn sure, nearly all of them having been snapped clumsily in my kitchen or dining room. But what the hell. They are what they are.

Despite their pedestrianism, one thing for certain is that they make me want to down a cold brew right now. I won’t, however, because it’s mid-afternoon as I type these opening paragraphs, and I drink (almost) only at night. And only five beers per week, to boot. Shit, you better believe that I’d like to be able to drink a whole lot more than that, but I’m a geezer with a sensitive system. I know my limits. Maybe that’s why I truly savor just about every quaff that goes down my aged hatch.

In the USA, where I live, the beer world started to turn into a wonderland in the early 1990s. That’s when small breweries began popping up like mad all over the States, producing styles of beer commonly known to some parts of the world, but unfamiliar to the vast majority of American beer drinkers (including me), who downed only Budweiser, Miller and other mild lagers. Around that time, also, beers from other countries began finding their way into my nation more plentifully than before. Lo and behold, I gradually learned about stouts, porters, pale ales, wheat beers and Oktoberfests, to name a few, plus lagers that put Bud and Miller to shame. With hundreds upon hundreds of American breweries each producing their takes on assorted beer varieties and sometimes developing new styles, and with varied beers arriving from overseas, a beer renaissance was under way on my side of the pond.

Over time I’ve become a beer geek. A devotee of most types of beer, I’m amazed by the deliciousness almost always awaiting me at taverns, restaurants and beer stores. And I enjoy few things better than seeking out beers that I’ve never had before, in bottles and cans and on tap. I think of this ongoing quest as a treasure hunt. It thrills and delights me. I’m not kidding when I say that the beer revolution, still going very strong in the USA, has been one of my favorite developments of the last several decades. It has made my life better.

And I can’t seem to restrain my excitement. Thus, since starting the photography project innocently over two years ago, I grab a picture of nearly every store-bought beer that’s new to me when I open its can or bottle (for instance, Iron Hill Brewery’s version of Oktoberfest, which I discovered recently). I also immortalize beers that have held, and continue to hold, a special place in my heart and mouth. Anchor Steam Beer, proudly brewed in San Francisco since 1896, though I didn’t find out about it till almost 100 years later, is a prime example of that.

What’s more, I feel compelled to share my enthusiasm. The dozens and dozens of my beer pix that have landed in a bunch of individuals’ inboxes attest to that. Do any of these people want my pictures? Do they think I’m batty to send them? Who knows? Who cares? The bottom line is that delicious beers deserve to be acknowledged and saluted. To which I add . . . olé!

Here’s Some Of What I Liked In August. What Rang Your Bell?

Yeah, Another Blogger159 Comments

Yup, August has come and gone. And in a few blinks of an eye, 2023 will have arrived. Zoom! I tell you, there’s no doubt that time flies at accelerating rates the older we get. And being genuinely old, I ain’t happy about that. To say the least. I don’t know how many grains of sand remain in the upper part of my hourglass. But, whatever the number, a shitload more would suit me just fine.

Anyway, there’s nothing I can do about it. So, to steer my mind away from the above paragraph’s depressing direction, let me mention some things that brought a smile to my crinkled face during the month that waved goodbye to us a handful of days ago.

First up are peaches and corn on the cob, without which life wouldn’t be as sweet. It being summer here in the USA, the harvesting season for those fine forms of produce, my wife Sandy and I would have been fools not to indulge in them during August.

I’ve loved peaches for nearly all of my life. I think, though, that their deliciousness began to make truly deep impressions upon me somewhere in my 40s. Man, what a treat it is to bite into a peach. A good peach, that is, not one of the mealy ones that have become more commonplace in recent years. Such beautiful flavor, as luxurious as you could hope for. And a texture, in the happy zone between soft and firm, that was made to seduce. I had some real good peaches in August. And tossed aside a couple of very sub-par examples too. You win some, you lose some. In any case, the peach season in the States hasn’t all that much longer to go, a damn shame.

Likewise, fresh corn’s availability already has peaked. Last month, getting while the getting was good, Sandy and I chomped down on boiled ears of corn at dinnertime three or four times. We gave them a thumbs-up. Helpful public servant that I am, I’d like to give you a tip for dressing corn on the cob: Peel back the paper a bit on a stick of butter, then rub the exposed butter all over the corn while twirling the cob. This method is much better than attempting to place pats of butter on the corn with a knife. Those pats, as we know, usually end up skidding all over the f*cking place. I’ve already accepted your thanks in advance!

Now it’s time to talk about television series, a media format that has pleased the hell out of me since the start of the pandemic. Hungry for entertainment, I began watching series in earnest at that time, something I hadn’t done in years. Sandy has been my viewing companion. And, even though Covid’s roar has lessened, we haven’t slackened our pace, for during August we devoured two limited series (We Own This City and the scripted version of The Staircase, not the documentary by that name) and one season each of multi-season productions (Capitani and Never Have I Ever). The first three that I mentioned are very much worth watching, but they are grim. Ergo, I’ll limit my commentary to the sole smile-inducing series among August’s fare.

Never Have I Ever, a thoughtful comedy on Netflix, tells the tale of Devi Vishwakumar, an Indian-American public high school student in California. Devi, smart as a whip but fairly low in the self-confidence department, isn’t one of the cool, popular girls at school. She has a loving family, fortunately, and several trusted, loyal girlfriends. Thus, her situation overall is quite decent, despite the cruel fact that the death of her father, during her freshman year, was a blow that tests her mightily.

There have been three seasons of Never Have I Ever so far. Sandy and I have watched them all, polishing off the latest run in August. During season three’s ten episodes, Devi loses a boyfriend, attempts to land a new beau, contemplates losing her virginity, and completes her junior year of high school with top grades. And her pals are no slouches in the busy-lives department either. Wow! There’s a lot going on in this show. Cleverly too, partly because of the sarcastic, sometimes-exasperated voice-over narration by, if you can believe it, John McEnroe. He’s the former tennis champ who was known for his verbal outbursts on the court as much as for the beauty of his game. McEnroe does a great job, adding volleys of whams and bams to a coming-of-age story that’s handled with insight and care.

With that, I’ll toss a tennis ball into your half of the court. What rang your bell last month, food-wise, entertainment-wise, nature-wise, anything-at-all-wise?

Cold Fingers, Cold Beer

Yeah, Another Blogger143 Comments

Holy shit, being a writer can be numbing! That’s what I discovered a week and a half ago when I strolled around my neighborhood as darkness was settling in. Earlier that day my region had received its first snowfall of the winter (I live in a town near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Dedicated journalist that I occasionally am, I decided to see how the powdery white stuff looked in moonlight, and to document my walk in words and with photos.

Well, it took me only a minute to realize that I wasn’t in a winter wonderland. Yeah, there were several inches of snow on the ground, but the effect was much less charming than I’d thought it would be. And what I’d been hoping especially to see — softly glowing snow clinging to tree branches — was virtually nowhere to be found. The day’s steady breezes had emptied the trees.

There were some worthy scenes, however. For instance, a number of households had not yet taken down their Christmas lights, so I stopped to admire those displays. And, 20 minutes into my walk, I watched a few kids sledding down the hilly front lawn of an apartment building. They were having fun. But you know what? I wasn’t! And that’s because my f*cking fingers were freezing!

Sure, I wore gloves during most of the walk. But I had to take them off every time I decided to snap a photo. Otherwise, there was no way I could have aimed my phone’s camera properly and pressed its button. Thus, my hands were exposed intermittently to 25°F (-4°C) air.

That shouldn’t have been enough to cause my fingers to become comatose. But somehow it damn well was. So, after being on the streets for almost half an hour, I knew I needed to get inside. Picking up my pace, I strode to my block. In front of my next-door neighbor’s home though, I chose, like a fool, to torture myself a little more by photographing the Moon, which was peeking through a tangle of tree branches. Then I walked the remaining 50 feet to my house, where I struggled to muster enough finger coordination to insert the front door key into its designated opening. Ten seconds later, finally, success! In I went.

Yup, having cold fingers sucks. Big time. On the other hand, having cold beers is a pleasure. In fact, it’s one of my greatest pleasures. I’d be in mourning if beer disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Though I’d enjoyed beer for many years (mainly mainstream lagers, such as Budweiser), my appreciation of the beverage rose to a higher level when, in my late 40s, I discovered that there were far more styles of beer on the market than I’d realized, and that the quality of many of them was steps above what I’d been used to. I have the craft beer revolution to thank for all of that. It began in the 1980s and really took off during the following decade, which is when I fell under its spell. Today, the revolution is at a high point. I mean, so many breweries worldwide produce primo beers.

Some of my pals.

Stouts, porters, pilsners, India pale ales (IPAs), and on and on . . . I pretty much like ’em all. And I look forward to downing one of them with dinner most evenings. I’m salivating right now, thinking about which brew I’ll have tonight. A quick look into the frig tells me my choice likely will be the Dogfish Head brewery’s 60 Minute IPA, an aromatic and seriously bitter quaff that’s refreshing as hell. I tell you, in these times of climate change, COVID, authoritarianism and racism, to name but a few problems bedeviling humankind, it’s wonderful to have something to look forward to.

The time has come to wrap things up. I’ll do so with songs that mesh, title-wise anyway, with this narrative. First up is Cold Fingers, by the late great Tony Joe White. Much of his music, Cold Fingers included, sounds primordial, as though it was born in our planet’s bowels. Tony Joe was something else. And then there’s Blake Shelton, a country music star and a pretty talented cat. Generally I’m not a big fan of today’s country music, overblown as much of it is. Though Blake’s Straight Outta Cold Beer leans in that direction, it tells a realistic story and packs a wallop. I like it.

Thanks for reading, girls and boys. Feel free to comment. Here are the songs:

A Movie, Dinner, And A Walk On Darkened Streets

Yeah, Another Blogger113 Comments

There we were last month (we being my wife Sandy and myself) in Ambler, Pennsylvania for a late-afternoon movie followed by an early-evening dinner. Ambler, a cute town in the Philadelphia burbs, suits us just fine. We’ve dropped in dozens and dozens of times over the years because its Ambler Theater, an art house cinema, books plenty of films that we want to see, and eateries galore are strung along its blocks. Yeah, Ambler is right up our artsy and gastronomical alleys.

A scene from The Alpinist

Well, the movie, a documentary about Marc-André LeClerc, a publicity-shy mountaineer, is damn good. It’s called The Alpinist (alpinists attack mountains with gusto, rather than using the more traditional methodical approach). Dinner, indoors at Gypsy Blu, a venue with enough variety on its menu to please the curmudgeons among us, hit the spot too. I had a beer and an eggplant parm sandwich, Sandy a glass of wine and a turkey burger. I bow down to the junk-food gods for the addictive house-made chips that came with each plate.

Butler Avenue, which is Ambler’s main drag

What awaited us after dinner was a walk around town in the dark, something I’d suggested doing before we’d departed for Ambler. When we exited Gypsy Blu, though, Sandy almost at once recognized that she wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the evening’s chilly, and falling, temperatures. So, she headed back to our car and waited there. I wasn’t exactly bundled up either. However, being a man’s man, in my dreams if nowhere else, I forged ahead.

Butler Avenue
A view from a side street

Now, it’s not as though I never go for walks at night. I ring up 20 or thereabouts nocturnal strolls each year, I suppose. That Friday night in Ambler, however, seemed on the special side to me. The town’s main drag, Butler Avenue, on which most of the restaurants and bistros are found, took on the aura of a movie set, the darkness atmospherically softened here and there by restaurant and store lighting, street lamps and headlights. The movie set extended into the couple of side streets that I visited, where the wattage was even lower than on Butler. Gliding upon Ambler’s sidewalks, I felt as if I were the star of the scenes, an unobtrusive observer of the evening’s goings-on.

Butler Avenue
Butler Avenue

Unlike the side streets, Butler Ave. was buzzing. A whole lot of people were seated at the tables that, as a result of the pandemic, the town’s authorities had allowed restaurants to set up on sidewalks and in alleys. And most of the establishments were doing good business at their indoor tables too. The outdoor-diners’ energy was palpable, impossible not to absorb. My strides increased as I drank it in. Man, after a while I almost was floating. For sure, starring in a movie agreed with me. Watch out Hollywood! This wrinkled, age-spotted f*cker has his mind set on conquering you.

Getting back to a movie that actually is in distribution, I’ll say a bit more about The Alpinist, but only a bit, as having too much advance information about this flick isn’t a good idea, in my opinion, for anyone thinking of watching it. Here’s my main thought about The Alpinist: successfully scaling the unimaginably daunting structures that Leclerc is photographed tackling, especially the snow-and-ice-wrapped bad boys, is completely beyond belief!

Yet, of course, Leclerc was born to pull off one superhuman feat after another. Is there anything to be learned from his exploits? One truth, I think, is that, throughout history, nerves that are stronger than steel, and focus and talents that are totally off the charts, have been distributed to only a relative few.

The Alpinist possibly is in a theater near you. And, undoubtedly, it will make its way to a TV network or streaming service one day fairly soon. This movie blew my mind. It likely would blow yours too.

(Please don’t be shy about adding your comments. I thank you.)