The Artist Drinks: Compari, A Drink You Won’t Have to Share
I have started drinking Compari a bit more lately because I've been watching the first season of Mad Men. It's a fantastic show about Madison Avenue ad men in the 60s. The show has really gone for historical accuracy, and so everyone drinks like fish. It blows my mind the amount people used to drink. I got excited by the ridiculousness of seeing people having 10 drinks a day and so I started emulating them. I've gone from having 4 drinks a week to having 5 drinks a week. Don't tell my mom...
My aunt Sara got me drinking Compari about a year and a half ago. It's an Italian bitters with a uniquely herbal taste. Often considered an aperitif, I prefer it as a digestif. Something to sip slowly into the night. Actually, we should be using the words aperitivo and digestivo because Compari is Italian. If I am going to be snobbish with my drinks, why limit my snobbery to the French tongue? I'm not a failed polyglot for nothing.
Here's what's great about Compari: it is an acquired taste. I've grown to really enjoy the medicinally herbal taste that it leaves in my mouth, sort of like a Ricola without the sugar, but none of my beer-drinking friends like it at all. I can be all sassy, "Hey guys, want to try my favorite drink?", and they never say yes twice. I come off as generous to my Pabst drinking buddies, but don't have to share my expensive Compari.
I like it straight up on the rocks, but if you're working your way into the taste of it, try 1 part Compari with 2 parts Seltzer. Cheers!
The Artist Forages: Blueberry Picking – A Gay Old Time
I've been meaning to write about blueberry picking for a while, but never got around to it for whatever reason. The blueberries have been in season in North Carolina for around a month now, and I've been lucky enough to get out to the farms 4 different times. There are two organic blueberry farms within a thirty minute drive of me, so I've really been taking advantage of their proximity. Blueberries are really important to get organic when you can because they have such thin and sensitive skins that they absorb whatever pesticides are sprayed onto them. I'm not sure what pesticides really do to our bodies, but I do know that it's nothing like the comic books. They definitely don't give us superpowers and an impetus to help get kittens out of trees. More likely it's cancer or an impending sense of doom.
I should probably mention at this point that I eat frozen blueberries for breakfast almost every day. They're fantastic with granola and yogurt or shredded wheat and milk. I also eat them a few times a month in pancakes. Blueberries are amazingly nutritious for us humans and they seems to grow all across the states. They're always listed as a superfood in those asinine "healthy foods you should be eating" lists that are regularly on the front page of Yahoo or in the NYTimes. (Those lists always have foods that aren't grown in the US and/or are ridiculously expensive. Açaí palm, anyone?)
There's a huge catch 22 with blueberries for me. They make me feel healthy and I'm sort of hooked on them as a staple for breakfast, but organic blueberries are super expensive and I'm a poor singer. For the past year I've been buying frozen organic Maine blueberries from Whole Foods (the only place I can find organic) at around $3.60 for a dinky 10oz bag. I'm no mathlete, but if I'm eating two bags per week for 50 weeks, that's over 360 dollars. How stupid is that? That's more than my groceries cost for an entire month.
So how do I rationalize the consumption of large amounts of organic blueberries on a poor man's budget? I pick my own! In two hours of foraging, I can pick a gallon of blueberries, and it only costs me $10. Let's do a little more math. A gallon weighs 8.35 pounds, so there are 133.6 ounces in a gallon. Divide that by 10, and you have 13.36 10oz bags. Multiplied by $3.60 (the cost of a Whole Foods 10 oz bag), you have $48.09 or what the $10 worth of blueberries would have cost me at the store. That comes out to $74 for a year's worth of blueberries. Awesome, right? Of course my math could be wrong, but I like those numbers.
Wait! The Gay Old Time! Let me tell you, blueberry picking is a gay old time. I bought a big blue bonnet from the garden section at Target. It protects my pasty Irish skin from the sun and since I'm huge it looks fantastic (What's better than a 6'6" guy in a big floppy hat? I'm like Hagrid or something). It's easy to get lost in the rows of blueberry bushes looking for that one perfectly juicy berry and before you know it, your bucket is full. It also gives you a newfound respect for migrant farm workers who spend 12 hours a day doing what you're tired of doing after 2.
I have a kite, anyone have a generator?
This is sort of awesome. It's always intriguing to see how people are finding creative ways to harness natural energies.
I have to wonder though, have these people ever actually flown a kite? The things don't exactly stay up indefinitely. Maybe they have a bunch of kids working for them to get the things airborne.
A Bukowski Thought
ART
as the
spirit
wanes
the
form
appears.
--Bukowski
Huh. I guess I could use some more waning.
Would this exist if I were reading a book?
Probably. Maybe.
So the most emailed article on the NYTimes deserves some discussion. (Give it a gander) I'm not sure how to interpret this piece. I can come at it from both sides. I read a book about every week and a half, but I also spend about 4 hours a day putzing around on the internet. I get tons of info from the web, but I think that generally I can chalk the time spent reading it to a predisposition for addiction rather than a choice. (I almost failed my junior year of high school because I got addicted to Counter-Strike. If that was my heroin, checking Digg 5 times a day must be my methadone... It certainly implies some measure of self-control, right?) Too, the stuff I read online doesn't seem to stick as well as book readin'. It's sort of in one ear, out the other. Except no one is talking to me, and I'm sitting alone staring into a bright light.
If I could step back from the computer, I would. Books are a better escape, but far less accessible. It takes a concerted effort to read a book, especially after spending time online. Hell, I have a hard time reading the newspaper in print. I can't seem to switch from article to article fast enough, and I get bored. Talk about concentration issues.
Articles like this one are great for stroking the ego. Take this for example, "it is unrealistic to expect all children to read 'To Kill a Mockingbird' or 'Pride and Prejudice' for fun". I might agree, but I've definitely read both of those books for fun (I definitely didn't read them when they were assigned for class though). It's a tough world out there; having the ability to read books for pleasure must give me some sort of competitive advantage, right? I sure hope so.
I mention all of this because youthful reading, to me, is preparation for creating art. It forces you to think and thought begets art. How your art manifests itself is a conscious choice. If you don't think about what you are trying to create before inspiration hits you, you're left with a racing heart and no way of expressing it.
Is Local Food A Trend?
So, there's another local food article in the times today. It seems like they have one at least every other week, probably more often than that. I guess it's generally a good thing if it raises public awareness of local food, but this emphasis on eating local as fashionable worries me. Trends are a passing thing, and the New York elite seem to be a capricious bunch. I'm sure they're good people, you know, salt of the earth and whatnot, but what happens when the local food "trend" fades? Will the small scale farmers and local distributors be hung out to dry?
I think the whole locavore business is here to stay, but it is definitely not yet entrenched as a way of life. Fortunately for the movement, oil prices will continue to rise (contrary to what some presidential candidates are saying) and local food will become relatively more affordable for the working classes.
Sangria Wine???
I was at Target today, 'cause, you know, I like to hang out there. They have these wine cubes (read: boxed wine) which I really like. I have a pretty good palate for beer, but I have no idea when it comes to wine. I can drink just about any wine (as long as it's red) and enjoy it. What's great about boxed wine is that it's cheap and it doesn't go bad too quickly. The Target cubes are about 16 dollars and carry the equivalent of 4 standard wine bottles. It's no 2 buck chuck, but it does the job. Another added bonus is that boxed wine is really a bag of wine in a box, i.e. instant Bota Bag, handy for parties and dreary family gatherings!
Here's a picture of a cube in action on my fridge...
Anyway, I was at Target today walking past the wine section when what do I see? A big display at the end of the row of red and white sangria wine cubes. Does this seem kind of silly? Sangria is a cinch to make and there's no such thing as sangria wine - it's just whatever cheap wine you have around. Granted, boxed wine is the perfect low end stuff to make sangria, but at least when you make sangria with boxed Merlot, you know you're drinking Merlot...
On a side note, Target is marketing wine juice boxes under the same wine cube label. Amazing, right? I think I want to take this to work when I brown bag it. It'd be the best lunch ever....
Check it:
What I had for Dinner
I don't want this site to be another blog about "what I had for dinner". That whole vein seems rather silly ‘cause, in the long run, who really cares? However, I do have broader ideas about food that I think are important to share.
Eating local food is important for me. It is a priority, more so than eating organically. I prefer to eat organic, but it is cost prohibitive for a poor artist. Eating locally, if well planned, is very affordable. I want to touch on this further, probably Thursday when I talk about blueberry picking.
There seems to be a bourgeoning segment of the organic consumer which eats organic on an instinctual level. They know it's better for them and they can afford it, so they buy it, but they really put very little thought into what it is to eat healthy. I've lately been trying to think beyond organic. I want to figure out a personal approach (or even philosophy) towards food. I know that I want to eat locally whenever possible, I feel healthier when I do, but why is that? I don't think that it is psychosomatic. Obviously it is fresher, but that is a superficial answer. I think the real reason is that when I eat local food, I am eating seasonally. I can't buy local watermelon in March.
Everything elemental in life comes in cycles. Tides, tree leaves, trendy jean designs - all of it is cyclical by nature. Historically humans ate whatever was readily available. They probably didn't understand nutrition like we do, but I can't think of a food that was around 150 years ago which is bad for you. Hell, I'd take lard over Crisco any day.
So how do we eat seasonally? I don't think it should be a strict thing. I'm going to grow lettuce in my closet in the non-summer seasons. But generally, eating seasonally means going heavy on produce in the spring/summer/autumn months, and heavy on meat, cheese and bread in the winter. Only in recent years have we been able to get great apples from New Zealand in February. This might be a nice treat occasionally, but the environmental cost should keep it an occasional treat for anyone with a conscious.
Like I said, I don't want this site to be another blog about "what I had for dinner", but seriously, check out my dinner. It was totally seasonal. 3 plums, 20 red cherries and ½ of a honeydew melon. How awesome is that? Hydrating, delicious, and no cooking on a 90 degree day. You can't do better than that.
Ploughshares
I've been reading Crane's The Red Badge of Courage and a line from the end got me thinking on the discussion from yesterday. It goes: "So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath, his soul changed. He came from hot-ploughshares to prospects of clover tranquilly and it was as if hot-ploughshares were not. Scars faded as flowers."
The ploughshares bit is obviously referring to the bible (Isaiah 2:4), but the part that struck me is, "Scars faded as flowers". It gives me hope. Hope that the pandemic in Africa will be properly combated as the scars of white-black interaction's history fades.
Mushy, right?
This Beats Medieval Times, Hands Down
Take a Gander
I've been toying with going somewhere interesting for dinner on my birthday, but now I think that I'll end up being disappointed. The best we have in the states is Medieval Times, and while it is a gas, it's basically dinner theatre in the round...with horses.
They've one upped us in Japan. Look at this edible body. I'm sure that it doesn't taste good, (blood sauce anyone?) but who cares. How often will you get to eat a dough body with consumable organs? It even is served on a wheeled gurney.
The funniest thing here is that they've created a body with enough detail to require blurring the naughty bits in the photo. Fantastic. Ah, to be young and Japanese.