Was I ever that young?!

It's been a long time between blog entries, I know. I've had the worst damned cold I can remember having for years. It dragged on for three weeks. It teased me by seeming to fade for a day or so, then surging back. Well, it seems to be gone now.

I've recently gotten involved in an e-mail correspondence with an old high school buddy. I had lost track of virtually everybody from high school, and I just got curious one day and rummaged around the web to see if I could find anybody. Much to my surprise, I ran across a woman who lived about ten miles from me. I remembered her, but I didn't know her that well. She put me in touch with the guy from my four years of French classes who maintains a class database and tries to keep everyone in touch. Our fourth year French class was the first year it was offered. there were only a few of us, and it was a very free form class. We kind of made up the curriculum together as we went along. We studied some ancient French literature, worked in the language lab, and even taught some second year French classes. It was cool. I was fluent once, but I've lost it now. Anyway, Rick has been hosting an annual barbecue for as many of the classmates as he could gather. I went Sunday and saw folks I haven't seen since 1962. It was a good time, and I'm sorry I waited so long to find these people. Stay in touch if you can.

Fungus is Among Us

Is this the beginning of the climate change? Has the Pacific Northwest moved this far east so fast? I don't know whether I have a persistent cold or newly developed mold allergy. I thought it was leaving, but now it's back! Yeah, the cold too. Toadstools have erupted among the weeds. Well, Friday and Saturday were ok. More gray, drizzle, and fog until Friday?

Breakfast on Friday at Taffy's Luncheonette in Newburyport with Laura Hallie was quite good. She liked the western omelet. Possibly the best she's had, said she. I agree....had it last week. Hash and eggs this time for me. The hash is homemade with lots of corned beef and just right potatoes and onion. Eggs were as ordered, and home fries very well done as I like them. Ordinary vittles, but well accomplished.

My American flag was showing its age. It was an inexpensive dyed cotton job, and it was five years old. I never flew it at night or during inclement weather, but it was beginning to fade and fray a little. I folded it correctly (I checked to be sure.) and brought it down to the Raymond V.F.W. to be properly destroyed. The new flag is nylon with sewed stripes and embroidered stars. It's much nicer and probably worth the expense. It wasn't cheap. It slides onto a plastic sleeve that swivels on the flagstaff so it doesn't wrap around in the wind. Of course, this meant a new white fiberglass flagstaff with a gold ball finial. The old staff was too skinny and now looked shabby. A new mount was now necessary to fit the larger diameter fiberglass staff. Ahh, the chain of unintended consequences! Now it was really not cheap. It looks nice anyway. It can be my Fourth of July celebration.

I found a nice little farmers' market at the Deerfield Fairgrounds (3-7 pm Fridays). I thought they might call it off this week. The sky was really hinky, and the wind was turning the trees inside out. The N.O.A.A. Station in Gray, Maine issued a severe thunderstorm warning. It never did rain on me until I got to the fairgrounds, and then it was only a shower. A little further north in Laconia they got drowned .... three to five inches of rain with hail. There were only a dozen or so stalls, but the people were really friendly, and they had some nice produce and preserves and crafts. I bought a maple cheese board and a jar of home canned green tomato pickle relish. The pickle relish is really good. It would be great on a grilled hot dog. There were burgers made with homegrown beef, and they were tasty. Several people had goat milk products. I passed on the soap. Couldn't get by the cheeses. There was a nice cheddar, a bleu, and fromage blanc. I bought some of the bleu and fromage blanc. The fromage blanc is very nice. It's rather tart but creamy tasting with a spreadable texture almost like cheesecake. It's a great substitute for cream cheese with much less fat and cholesterol. I chopped a few Manzanilla olives into it last night and let the melding happen. It was great on my bagel this morning. I will learn to make this. It's alleged to be easy.

I am a cheese freak. I'd thought about making cheese for a while. Daughter G got herself a pair of goats and made some chevre, then a woman I work with told me she wanted to make cheddar. Now I've tried an easy one. It was a lemon buttermilk fresh cheese made by heating milk, curdling it with buttermilk and lemon juice, and draining the whey off the curd. That was very easy, and it was good if bland. It was very milky with a little lemon tang. I added a little chopped fresh rosemary with a little salt and quite a bit of pepper. Good on the bagel, but not as good as the fromage blanc. There's a wealth of cheesemaking information on the web. I have a book by Rikki Carroll and Robert Carroll called Cheesemaking Made Easy. They sell supplies and give classes. Google it up. I bought their hard cheesemaking kit. I'm going to try the farmhouse cheddar soon. There aren't a lot of places to get good milk for cheese if you don't have your own livestock. Raw whole milk is generally recommended. I can get that locally, but it's prohibitively expensive ($5.49 a half gallon) . A gallon of milk makes about a pound of cheese. Pasteurized, homogenized milk can be made to work if necessary. Homogenizing is bad ... messes up the way the milkfat reacts. I stumbled onto a web site that said Trader Joe's sells pasteurized but not homogenized milk. I got some yesterday. Now I'm under the gun to make the cheese while the milk is fresh. Stay tuned.

I promised some blacksmithing stuff for this post. I don't have much. The metal stock at the smithy wasn't the right thickness for the wagon handle. I worked all day at the forge with one of the elder statesmen in the club. We cobbled up a handle that could be made to work, but it's not right, and there won't be pictures! We forged a spring loaded fuller that I need to finish by welding a post on it to fit the hardy hole in my anvil. Pictures when it's done. A fuller is a tool that flattens the stock to make it longer and/or wider. More blacksmithing later. It's past my bedtime.

Little Red Wagon

Well, here we are yet again mildewing in the gray damp. I think I'll throw the AC's into the windows tomorrow in hopes of encouraging the arrival of Summer.

I'm looking forward to this month's open forge day at the New England Blacksmith's smithy in Brentwood. I've belonged to the N.E. Blacksmiths for a while, and lately I've been able to be a little more active. I just joined the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America (ABANA). I have a long way to go before I consider myself a competent blacksmith let alone an artist, but these organizations are devoted to preserving and encouraging the craft and they provide a lot of support to anyone wanting to learn. Blacksmiths are a great group of people who go out of their way to help out and teach new blacksmiths. I'm fascinated by the way blacksmiths have been able to start with little more than a fire and some iron and produce basically all the tools of their trade as well as the history of making just about every iron object their community might need from hinges and latches to nails and horseshoes. I'd like to throw a photo of the smithy in here, but the ones I have contain people doing smithing. I don't want to put recognizable folks on the internet without their permission. I'll ask on Saturday and get some pictures of the smithy, anyway. I've got a little project this weekend that a co-worker asked me to try. Seems a not-to-be-named family member ran over the handle of an antique little red wagon and re-shaped it more or less irretrievably. When he first showed it to me, I thought he wanted me to repair it, but he agreed with me that it would probably be better to make a new one. I think I'll try to repair it as a welding exercise, but not until I've got the replacement in hand! The photo above is the before image. If it's not too embarrassing, I'll post an after picture this weekend.

Nice comments from the kids - thanks.

Foodie Father's Day

So JB, CB, and Laura took Dad out for breakfast for Father's Day. We went to Masa in the South End (439 Tremont Street), which JB has mentioned in a previous blog. I was impressed with the ambience and the professionalism of the waitstaff, but the brunch was outstanding. JB had the Huevos Rancheros which were very attractively presented after her fruit and granola first course. CB, Laura, and I had the Caramelized Plantain Empanada with Mexican Cinnamon Cream Cheese followed by the Santa Fe Benedict. The empanada was rich and delicious. The Benedict consisted of two perfectly poached and quenelle-shaped eggs each on top of a guacamole slathered biscuit all generously blanketed with green chile Hollandaise. This was accompanied by excellent Southwest home fries and a large portion of pico de gallo that was produced with serious knife skills from concassé tomatoes very precisely diced with peppers and red onions. Bottomless coffee was very good and attentively refilled by our pleasant and knowledgeable waitress. This meal was perfectly prepared and presented. Main courses about ten dollars; first courses about four dollars. Kudos to Masa. There will be return visits. There are two locations, Boston and Woburn. Check out the website, masarestaurant.com.

Further foodie excursion brought us to an amazing cheese monger, Formaggio Kitchen (formaggiokitchen.com), also in the South End at 268 Shawmut Ave. A second larger location is on Huron Ave. in Cambridge. The selection of cheeses is outstanding, and there are specialty foods, meats, and wines. The staff are knowledgeable, friendly and helpful. I couldn't resist a nice little (7 ounce) wheel of Toledo. This is a Portuguese cheese made from a mixture of cow, goat, and sheep milk and rubbed with mildly hot paprika. It's very rich, slightly sharp, with a texture like well-aged cheddar. It's only a little spicy. I love it! There will also be return visits to Formaggio. You can order online and there are classes and tastings already booked well ahead.

Next we meandered through the Museum of Fine Arts for a couple of hours. I hadn't been there in years. It's always an amazing place. You really need to see art in person.