coogansbluf's Open Salon Blog

Kaiser Bill Is Dead It's Safe To Come Out Now

Sun, 6 Nov 2011 11:11:05 -0500

This Friday, November 11, 2011 we will celebrate the 93rd anniversary of the end of the First World War. Four years of completely senseless slaughter that toppled centuries old European Empires, nearly wiped out an entire generation of young men and ultimately paved the way for Adolf Hitler and WW II. The United States was a late entry into the war, President Wilson waited until April 1917 before declaring war on Germany. Even so the USA suffered tens of thousands of casualties and the nature of the country was changed forever.

One holdover from the war that still affects us today is Daylight Savings Time. It was originally enacted by congress to aid factory workers who worked long hours and otherwise would have to make their way home in the dark . It was also meant to save coal for the war effort which Great Britain had been doing since 1916. After the war the law just sort of stuck although from time to time it would be repealed and then re-enacted. With the coming of the Second World War it was changed to "War Time" to give it more of a sense of urgency.

Several years ago during the Bush administration the republican controlled congress extended daylight savings time from its traditional April to October time frame to March to November. Since members of congress only work an average of ten hours per week, obviously their work week won't be affected but for the rest of us working slobs,it stings. I really think enough is enough.

I am old now and as an old fellow I am a creature of habit. I hate that Sunday in March when we "spring forward" but I am almost as discombobulated by the "fall back" Sunday in November. Forget that extra hour of sleep BS, I wake up when my body tells me to wake up. What's more, it takes me a week or more to adjust and it's a tough week because I have to get up and go to work, get my kids up and get them off to school and speaking of kids, they are as affected as I am. Espicially in the spring and espicially my daughter who as I've said in previous posts is not a morning person. She is more of a wake me on Wednesday person.

Me and my little family are not alone in this, millions of people walk around bleary eyed for days twice every year as congress gets its jollies messing with our internal clocks. It's their semi-annual holiday from taking from the rich and giving to the rich so I guess even they need a day off now and again.

All the same, enough! The war has been over for almost one hundred years and the evil Kaiser Bill has been dead almost that long. The latest studies show that the energy saving are small to none and the cost to my internal clock and the internal clock of millions is enormous. Stop the madness, write your member of congress and inform them of the demise of the Kaiser and tell them to roll back the fall back and stomp out the spring forward. After all, we won, the the victor goes the spoils.

Sailing Into Uncharted Waters

Sat, 5 Nov 2011 12:11:39 -0400

I have done it countless times. I have walked to the door, turned and called out, "I'm going to the store, anyone need anything?" Usually they call back, soda, candy, chips or some other kind of empty value junk food they know I hate buying and can ill afford. "Well mom always gets it for us!" Most of the time I will come back with something on the list to show them I am not the world's worst single father.

This trip though my daughter yelled out, "I need tampons!" I froze halfway out the door and asked her to please repeat because I thought she'd just asked me to buy her tampons. "YES I ASKED FOR TAMPONS! WHAT ARE YOU, DEAF?" Well yes as it turns out I am getting a bit hard of hearing as I progress in years and I also have a deep seated aversion to anything I classify as "chick shit". I ask the princess why she can't have her mother pick them up? "BECAUSE I NEED THEM NOW! GOD, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" I explain to my little love who I used to bounce on my knee that tampons are not my department and if she had ever needed a new remote control or scorebook, I'm her man. Chick shit though, I have managed to avoid through a couple of wives and daddy's little girl's life as a "woman" thus far. Her mother once asked me to pick her up some pantyhose while I was at the store. I told her I'd be happy to so long as she was willing to grab me a copy of Hustler and a new infielder's glove next time she was out.

I couldn't take that route with my daughter so I tried to plead ignorance. "Listen baby, I don't know which ones to buy, why don't you get dressed and come with me?" She came storming out of her room with a small box and thrust it in my face. "Here! Is this so hard?" She hissed. She was holding a small black box that looked like a tiny version of a candied popcorn snack we used to buy when I was about her age called Screaming Yellow Zonkers. (I had a friend who used to say they were like Cracker Jacks that hadn't been rolled around on the floor.) This little box thugh didn't have no stinkin' toffee popcorn. I pleaded with her, tried to explain my position on avoiding the feminine product asile at all costs but she would have none of it. " JUST GET ME THE STUPID TAMPONS OR YOU'LL HAVE A BIGGER PROBLEM ON YOUR HANDS!"

So here I was staring at an array of female sanitary products and wondering why in the hell anyone would need so much variety for what is basically a wad of cotton on a string. I'm now feeling a bit light headed though I manage to find the little black boxes but wait! There are little symbols on them and she didn't tell me which one she wanted so I decide to be bold and make a command decision, I grab the super-duper extra protection tampons because who can't use a bit of extra protection, right? I get home and hand them over like a little kid turning in his big science project. "Here you go sweetie! Look what daddy got for you!"

"WHAT? SUPER? WHAT DO YOU THINK I AM? HOW COULD YOU BUY ME SUPER?" I told her that it's all the same to me and I tried to explain to her about chick shit but apparently buying the wrong tampon is akin to using the C-word. If Oliver Hardy had done this to Mae Bush there would be a rain of pots and pans flying through the air but all my daughter had at hand was her scorn which was enough. I slunk out of the room like a whipped cur. I tried to settle down on the couch to watch a little bit of baseball which was nearly over for the season and that is enough to leave me feeling empty and depressed until spring and now I have this to contend with as well. I have sailed in to the uncharted waters of chick shit and I have sunk. This may have something to do with my failed marriages but I'll have to contemplate that at a later time. I have a month to contemplate my failure and hope she will not wait until the last minute and call on me again. I now know those waters but they are dangerous and I am without a compass.

25 (Final) Reasons Why Baseball's Better Than Football

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:10:59 -0400

1) Willie Mays 1,000 Watt smile

2) The 2011 World Series

3) Tommy John Surgery

4) Watching Ron Washington hopping around in the dugout is a hell of a lot more fun than watching some guy with a clipboard in a headset scream at a guy up in a booth somewhere.

5) Albert Pujols

6) One of these days Teddy will win, unlike the Cubs

7) Daniel Snyder owns the Redskins, 'nuff said

8) They have great stuff at minor league baseball games like bat races. At minor league football games, oh wait there is no minor league football.

9) They have Arena Football which they play after they've cleaned up from the tractor pull.

10) The Hot Stove League

11) Stephen Strassburg

12) In football you have nicknames like The Steel Curtain and The Orange Crush. In baseball you have the Daffiness Boys and the Idiots.

13) The Bad News Bears (the original, not the crappy remake)

14) Red Barber, Mel Allen, Russ Hodges, Vin Sculley, Bob Prince, Ernie Harwell, Jack Brickhouse, Bob Wolff, Dizzy Dean, Gordon McLendon, Bob Prince, Chuck Thompson, Phil Rizzuto, Jon Miller, Joe Nuxhall, Harry and Skip Caray, Bob Euker

15) You can still get a seat at the ballpark for $5

16) Brian Wilson's beard

17) Hall of Fame inductees not required to wear mustard colored double knit sport coats.

18) Fans not required to travel cross country to watch championship game

19) Walk up music

20) The hot foot

21) The Cape Cod League

22) The (unwritten) Code

23) Gives George Will and I something to talk about

24) Jackie Robinson

25) The moment when a game is on the line and a pitcher strikes out a batter to end the inning and then walks off the field like nothing has happened while everyone else is going crazy

From A Tiny Acorn...

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:10:47 -0400

It was almost forty-two years ago that I attended my first large protest march in DC. The November 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was only a stones throw away from Freedom Plaza where the Occupy DC people were set up. I dragged my twelve year old son off the couch and onto Metro telling him stories about being tear gassed and chased by riot police when I was only a few years older than he was now. He's so jaded by video games that he was actually hoping to see a line of S.W.A.T. cops roping down the Willard Hotel.

We got off Metro at Federal Triangle and walked over to Freedom Plaza on bright and warm Sunday afternoon. The protesters had been on the plaza since Thursday and were permitted to be there until 6:00 that evening. The Taste of DC was going on and the entire plaza was surrounded by food tents and my son was immediately ready to abondon his radical beginnings to go to the moon bounce.

The plaza itself was very sedate, maybe two hundred people scattered around the large space. A handful of tents set up around the perimeter and lots of handmade signs both on stakes and scattered on the ground. A stage set up at one end with a large copy of the Constitution as a backdrop but no one speaking. We walked around, spoke to some people in the few booths set up and took some pamphlets. We sat down for awhile hoping something would materialize until a woman came by and told us there was another group at McPherson Square and apparently there was a lot of "action" going on over there. So back onto Metro we went and rode the two stops back to McPherson and headed over to the square.

Unfortunately the only action we found there was a bunch of homeless guys hanging around on the benches in the park. By this point my little boy was getting hungry and ready to support corporate America, the 99% be damned. "Is there a McDonalds anywhere around here?" I told him that McDonalds wouldn't open up in a neighborhood like this since it virtually shuts down on the weekend. "Well can we go back to Arlington then?" I told him we could but there was food at home he could eat. His introduction to left wing politics would have to wait for another day.

That evening I heard that the protesters were going to refuse to leave the Plaza and later the city had granted them an extended permit. I'm planning on going back and I'll be taking my son, hopefully his sister and maybe even their older brother. In the past ten years my retirement savings have all but disappeared. I struggle every week to put food on the table and pay my bills despite working six days a week. I drive a ten year old car, buy my clothes off ebay and haven't been on a real vacation in years. I will most likely work until the day I die. I am the 99% so don't tell me I don't have a clear idea what I'm protesting about.

A Professional Chef's Five Favorite Cookbooks

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:10:12 -0400

I have been working in foodservice in one capacity or another now for more than forty years. I washed dishes, bussed tables, flipped burgers and tended bar. I've worked in fine French Country Inns and Irish Pubs and even did a stint in a topless bar. Over the years I have amassed a large collection of cookbooks and out of all of them these are my top five, my desert island cookbooks...

Alice Waters - The Art of Simple Foods. I think this is a wonderful book, simple recipes as the title implies, delicious results and don't we all need more simplicity in our lives? The recipe for Roast Pork is one of the best things I have ever eaten. I sometimes find Alice Waters kind of hard to take but I have to say, I love this book and use it often.

Wolfgang Puck - Modern French Cooking For The American Kitchen. Before he became a TV star and pizza maker, Wolfgang Puck was in the forefront of modernizing cooking methods. I received this book as a gift twenty-five years ago and it changed the way I cooked both at home and at work.

Yes, the Joy of Cooking. For years before the internet if I could not find a recipe anywhere else I could almost always find it in Joy. Still packs a punch for the number of recipes for cookies, pies and cakes alone. I still have the old edition my mom gave me and break it out several times a year at holidays during baking season

Artisan Baking Across America - Maggie Glezer. I cook for a living but I bake bread for joy and this is one of the best bread books I've ever had. Not a ton of recipes but those it does have are excellent, easy to follow and the results are fantastic. Full of great pictures and resources.

When I was a young man first out of chef school and and working in the Washington, DC area, there was nothing I loved more than real Mexican food. Unfortunately there were very few places where you could actually get good Mexican food (or pizza, bagels, real Italian food and don't even mention Bialys). Diana Kennedy, the foremost authority on the regional cuisines of Mexico first released the The Cuisines of Mexico in 1972 and anyone who has eaten beyond Old El Paso will recognize that this is serious food. Be prepared to get your kitchen dirty and eat food better tha anything you've eaten anywhere outside of the barrio. A big plus these days is most of the ingredients are now available in your local market. When I first started using this book I used to have to buy some of the spices and chiles mail order.

It's tough to choose just five out of all the books I've collected over the years. I will give a couple of honorable mentions; Pork & Sons, a recent big, beautiful book of French pork recipes full of wonderful text and pictures and as a chef I have to mention the Repertoire de la Cuisine, a classic French cookbook by Louis Saulnier for chef's first released in 1914. It is probably the most bare bones cookbook you will ever encounter. Basic ingredients and method but a treasure trove of classic French recipes from the Golden Age by one of Escoffier's protegees.

I've had many books fall out of favor with me over the years, cooking has changed drastically over the course of my career. When I started chef school up in Hyde Park the basic text book, The Professional Chef had recipes for Baked Hamburger Loaf and Cream of Tomato Soup. The newest edition looks like a coffee table book. Every time I move I almost invariably donate a box full of cookbooks to the library. I'm also sure there are plenty of cooks who will read this and say, "Feh!" but it's my list and I'm sticking with it.

Happy cooking.