"Everyone needs a tagline. And I guess yours is cappuccino?"
That's what my boss said to me as I pulled out my cappuccino shirt and laughed about my recent purchase.
"You really do love it, don't you?" She added.
Still laughing I told her that I had also created business cards with a cappuccino image on them.
"It really is your tagline."
And then another co-worker chimed in.
"Why do you love it so much?"
That answer is easy. But it requires a story: It starts with falling in love with coffee.
Last year, a few weeks before Christmas, a gnarly mole on my shoulder was deemed ‘highly suspicious’ by my dermatologist. Although the biopsy results weren’t in yet, I prepared for the worst. Death. Just two months shy
of my fortieth birthday a growth the size of a peanut was going to take me out –
rob the world of all I had to offer it, and rob me of the third season of Jersey
Shore. With death imminent I needed to get
my affairs in order. There was a lot to do: sort out my will and testament;
cancel my Netflix membership; and, most importantly, guarantee a good turnout
at my funeral.
The funeral part was tricky – trouble was I’d been a bit snippy all year. Annoyed some people. Burned some bridges. If I didn't make amends quickly there was a good chance I was getting buried with just the gravediggers in attendance. In need of a quick way to redeem myself with everyone I had pissed off, I decided to send out Christmas cards. I’d never done it before, but a joyful holiday greeting featuring a jolly Santa and his elves wrapping glittery presents seemed the perfect way to remind everyone of my wonderfulness. Cards, address book and pen in hand, I dipped in to a new sushi restaurant in the neighborhood to grab lunch and pen my final correspondence to loved ones.
Hi, I'm Dave and I'm a shellfishaholic. My wife wants me to stop
writing about shellfish because they aren't everyone's cup of tea. But
I can't resist the temptation. When we were in Boston recently, the one
restaurant I had to visit was the Union Oyster House.
While Michael and Michelle rested at the hotel, I snuck away and
happily indulged in a dozen oysters and a bowl of clam chowder.
Today
at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, Carlsbad Aquafarm had fresh
oysters, clams, mussels, and live abalone. I wanted to buy everything.
I showed some restraint. I only bought the oysters and clams.
A
nice thing about shellfish is they keep in the refrigerator for several
days as long as you follow a couple of suggestions. Oysters need to be
stacked in a bowl with the rounded part of the shell down, so the
oyster sits in its own liquid. Clams will drown if they're submerged in
water. Save a plastic basket
that comes with strawberries. Cut it in half, put it on the bottom of a
bowl and the clams on top. That will keep the clams above any water
they spit out while they're waiting in the refrigerator.
There’s no denying it – I am a pork-man through and through. Though I am not one of these 20 or 30 something dudes with a pig’s head tattooed on his forearm who from time to time is adoringly featured on Food Network, pigs and me go way, way back. Though I am a Jew, blade-cut pork chops, pickled pigs feet, Canadian bacon, rolled pork butt, breakfast sausage and the piece du resistance of my childhood – spare ribs (usually slathered in Duk Sauce – a sugary, vaguely fruity tasting, thin jelly with chunks of plums and something I later learned was ginger, that came in a tall jar with a label featuring a racist caricature of a smiling buck-toothed Chinese man wearing a coolie hat and sporting a queue [the Chinese government abolished the queue in 1911 but it seemingly persisted on labels of Duk Sauce at least through the early 1970’s]) were a staple of my New York childhood.
I carried on my affair with pigs when I went to the pork bastion, North Carolina, for law school. One Saturday in the fall of 1974, I was invited to a ‘pig pickin’ in Chatham County, outside of Chapel Hill. I arrived early in the day, fascinated by the prospect of actually witnessing the roasting of a whole hog – a feat that had fascinated me since my mother told me the story about how the Chinese created roast pork.
This past January, something hot and sexy began creeping its way through the chilly winter snows in Idyllwild, California. Locals were struck with the highly contagious Caseymania, which is like Beatlemania but without the screaming hysterical teenage girls. Well, not in Idyllwild, at least. But to inhabitants of this tiny mountain town, it was close to the same thing.
The median age of the town’s 4,000 inhabitants is 47.2, so hysterical screaming might have been at a minimum, but instead, this all-American town offered up enduring and low-key pride. Casey Abrams is the town’s boy, they own him, they love him and they support him. Even now that he’s been “voted off”, their hope springs eternal.
“He gets to tour, bound to make upwards of a hundred-fifty thou,” you hear an old-timer say with the cantankerous certainty of a gold prospector. Poor Casey never stood a chance. He had three big strikes against him in the TV-blurred minds of the American Idol voters (them being tweenage girls).
Strike 1: He’s funny-looking.
Strike 2: He’s a ginger.
Strike 3: He’s undeniably talented.