A Tale of Two Eggs

Growing up, I was very lucky to have all four of my grandparents throughout my entire childhood.¹  I was also lucky in that both my grandmothers cooked, although they had very different styles.  Which is not surprising, as they were very different people.

My father’s mother was born poor and seemed to have a fierce sort of pride in it.  She considered herself salt of the earth, and was very proud of being humble.  Her cooking came from her North Carolina farm upbringing.  There was lots of ham and chicken and corn and butterbeans and biscuits and collards and mashed potatoes and potato salad and boiled potatoes and, for special occasions, all of the above all at once.  Barbecue meant pulled pork, old hambones were dropped into anything boiling, be it potatoes, cabbage, or soup, and bacon grease was used to fry everything, from corn to cornbread to grilled cheese.

On the other hand, my mother’s mother was born poor and seemed determined to never be poor again.  She married for money (twice, I believe) and did her utmost to avoid work (at which she mostly succeeded).  The vast majority of her housework was done by the maid, but she did her own cooking.  She made steak and steak fries, spaghetti and meatballs,² and chicken tetrazzini.  When she wanted a snack she would spread soft bleu cheese or Braunschweiger on saltines.

As you can imagine, Sunday dinner was radically different depending on which set of grandparents we were visiting on any given week.  For the most part I gave the edge to the paternal side, not being impressed by fancy food, but honestly I was a very picky eater and didn’t eat that much of what I was served no matter who was cooking it.  Still, I had my favorites in either place, and, being the eldest grandchild on both sides, I often influenced them to emulate each other to some degree.³  But there wasn’t a huge amount of overlap in terms of dishes.

The one I remember most distinctly is scrambled eggs.

My maternal grandmother cracked her eggs in a bowl, added milk, whisked them to within an inch of their lives, then cooked them low and slow in a saucepan with butter and not much else in the way of seasoning.  When they were done, they were light, and fluffy, and buttery, and I hated them.  Breakfast at her house meant Fruit Loops.  After a while she wouldn’t even bother to make me eggs at all.

My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, took a gigantic cast iron skillet and cranked up the heat until a flicked drop of water would dance around the pan for a few seconds before vaporizing.  Then she fried up an entire pound of bacon.  Then she cracked a dozen eggs directly into the pan, with the bacon grease still in it (obviously), peppered them enough to make the devil’s eyes water, and then essentially fried them while beating them with a fork, till they were good and scrambled.  Her eggs were spotted with brown—often nearly black—crust, and greasy, and so firm you might call them rubbery ... and they were delicious.  I would eat the bacon because it seemed expected of me, but honestly I didn’t care anything about it.  Bacon existed to create grease, and bacon grease existed to scramble eggs in.  And bacon grease—and salt, and pepper—were all the eggs needed.  No butter, no namby-pamby milk ... just eggs: chewy, and tasting of bacon.

After I went away to college, I can’t remember my grandmother making eggs for me any more.  Of course, by the time I was a teenager, I was regularly sleeping through breakfast, especially on weekends.  For many years—probably over a decade—I never even ate breakfast.  I would get up late and proceed directly to lunch.

I lost my grandmother on my father’s side just before I turned 30 ... although she was the youngest of my four grandparents, she was the second to go.  She had always been overweight, but otherwise relatively healthy, so it was completely unexpected.  She died in her sleep, apparently peacefully.

Of course I missed a lot of things about my grandmother, as I did about all my grandparents after they passed away.  I didn’t even think about missing the eggs so much for another ten years or so.  This was about the time that eggs became healthy for you again,⁴ and eating breakfast had somehow become an essential part of losing weight.  And I suddenly began to develop a craving for my grandmother’s eggs.

Of course my first attempts were disastrous.  First of all, I was not going to cook a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs, and I rapidly discovered that even two strips of bacon could easily overwhelm 2, 3, or even 4 eggs.  Maybe I was getting old, but I just couldn’t handle the quantity of bacon grease my grandmother used to use, and it probably wasn’t very good for me anyway.  I also can’t scramble my eggs in the pan.  I’m just no good at it.  I need to pre-scramble them before pouring them in.  I’m also pretty sure I’m not using as much pepper as she used to.  But overall, after fiddling with my prepartion methodology for the past decade, I’ve gotten to a point where I’m happy with it.  It’s not “just like Grandma used to make,” but it retains enough of the character to satiate my nostalgia, and I probably couldn’t handle her eggs these days anyway.  I’m old and fat now, and less grease-resistant.

I eat eggs about 3 times a week.  I generally make 4 at a time, as I only get to eat them on those days when I can sleep in, so it’s sort of a brunch meal.⁵  Here’s how I make them, in case you ever want to try it yourself.

First, you need some bacon grease.  If you actually like eating bacon, then lucky you.  Otherwise perhaps you can do what I do, which is convince The Mother to cook a package of bacon, give me the grease, then put the cooked bacon in the fridge and make sandwiches out of it later.⁶  I put the grease in a small glass jar which we keep in the fridge.

You’ll also need ghee.  Using only bacon grease isn’t particularly good for you, and besides: the taste will overwhelm the eggs.  You can use butter—I did, for years—but it doesn’t stand up to the high heat as well as ghee.  Plus ghee is supposedly better for you.  Although butter also magically became good for you again recently.  So who can say.

Other than that, you just need salt, pepper, and eggs.  I like sea salt, peppercorns which I grind myself on the medium setting, and jumbo cage-free/organic eggs.  I buy brown, but honestly there’s no difference in taste between the egg colors.  You’ll also need a decent pan: it doesn’t have to be a cast-iron skillet, but that might be nice if you have one.  I just use a regular old small pan.  Other “hardware” (as Alton Brown would say) is a glass, a butter knife, and spatula or non-metal serving fork.

Put the pan on medium-high heat and add a dollop of ghee and a dollop of bacon grease.  “Dollop” here is an intentionally vague measurement; once melted, the grease shouldn’t even cover the bottom of the pan.  It doesn’t take much.  You’ll get a feel for how much is too much after a few tries.

Crack your eggs into the glass and add a large pinch of salt per two eggs (or a small pinch for one), and 3 grinds of pepper per egg.  You can put the salt in first if you like,⁷ but don’t add the pepper first, or you’ll end up with one giant clump of pepper somewhere in the middle of your eggs.⁸  I also like to let the pepper sit for a minute or so before stirring up the eggs (with the butter knife); if you stir it right away, it won’t clump as bad as it would if you had added it before the eggs, but it still isn’t pleasant.⁹  Take advantage of this time to spread your ghee and bacon grease around the pan with the spatula or fork.

Now just sit back and wait for a bit.  I generally use this time to make myself a glass of tea.  But whatever floats your boat.  What you’re waiting to see are the first barest wisps of smoke from the grease.  Once you see that, stir your eggs quickly but thoroughly, then pour them in.  Your pan should be plenty hot, and your eggs will start to bubble.  Rinse your glass out: that allows a few seconds for your eggs to firm up on the bottom.  Now use the spatula to stir the eggs.  (If you chose the serving fork route, you may find the tines can do a better job here.)  You want to pull the edges of the eggs toward the center, which keeps the edges from getting dried out and burnt.  And you just basically want to swirl everything around a lot.  As your eggs start to change from liquid to solid, start doing more of a flipping motion.  The goal here is to get the wet stuff to the bottom of the pan and the dry stuff on top.  Once you either see your first browning, or the eggs stop looking “wet” (whichever comes first), turn the heat off and grab a bowl from the cabinet, if you haven’t already.  Keep stirring and flipping, with the length of time being dependent on how done you like your eggs.  I’ve come to like mine a bit softer and less burnt than my grandmother did.  But they still taste like scrambled up fried eggs, which is what I’m shooting for.  Once you achieve the consistency you’re looking for, dump them in the bowl and hit that pan with some hot water to remove the bits of egg from it.  I don’t know about your dishwasher, but there’s only two things mine won’t get off dishes: rice, and dried egg.

And there you have it: the perfect scrambled eggs.  Well, my other grandmother wouldn’t say so, and I bet there’s a lot of you out there reading this that wouldn’t think so either.  But give it a try sometime: at the very least, they may be different from what you’re used to, and different is always good.  For me, they embody a little slice of my grandmother.  I think about her every time I make them.  And that’s a pretty fine breakfast.

__________

1 I lost the first a few months before my 18th birthday.

2 In fact, her recipe is what we still use today; when my kids ask for “spaghetti,” they mean they want my grandmother’s sauce, and for the most part could care less what you put it on.

3 By the end of my childhood, their mashed potatoes were indistinguishable.  At this point, I can’t even remember which of them changed to match the other.

4 This is still contested, of course.  As is all food wisdom.

5 Plus usually I have to share them with my daughter.  She can really put a hurting on some eggs, even though she’s only 3.

6 Also good for crumbling into bacon bits and putting on salad.

7 I always do, personally.  But that’s mainly because after I crack the eggs, I generally have egg on my hands.  So I either have to reach into the salt cellar with eggy hands, or with wet hands after rinsing them off.  Either way gets yucky.

8 Trust me on this.  I speak from experience.

9 I’m sure there’s some scientific explanation for why letting the pepper sit on top of the eggs for a bit makes it clump less, but I confess I have no idea what that is.

Perl blog post #42

Today I’m starting a new Perl series over on my Other Blog.  It’s about a date module I’m fiddling around with.  If you’re not a Perl person, it may not mean much to you, but then again you may find it somewhat entertaining even without speaking all the jargon.  Or maybe not.  But you’ll never know unless you try.

Unlike with my last long-ass Perl series, I do not plan to do an installment on this one every week.  So it’s entirely possible that there may be something worth reading here next week.  But you might not want to hold your breath.

Smooth as Whispercats I

"Copper and Snow"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

There was a roughly 5-year period—say, from the release of “Oh Girl” by Boy Meets Girl in 1985 until the release of “Driving” by Everything but the Girl in 1990—when alternative music was ... well, not dominated, really, but at least vigorously populated ... by an odd type of soft-focus pop that owed a large debt to smooth jazz.  To call it actual “smooth jazz” would be a misnomer, but then again many would argue that to call smooth jazz actual “jazz” is also a misnomer.  It’s hard to say exactly where this came from.  It’s certainly true that rock saxophone was undergoing a serious change, from the peppier fills such as Andy Hamilton’s on “Rio” by Duran Duran in 1982 to the more introspective lines such as those played by Michael Brecker in “Your Latest Trick” by Dire Straits in 1985.¹  But it’s not like smooth jazz was ever mega-popular, worthy of being emulated due to its legion of adoring fans.

And yet ... alternative grew a strong smooth jazz component in that 5-year period.  There was Sting’s breakout solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, the astonishing success of Double’s “Captain of Her Heart,” which hit #16 in the US and rose all the way to #8 in the UK (which is pretty strong for a supposedly alternative track), and a seemingly endless procession of purveyors of the style: Boy Meets Girl, Scarlett & Black, Johnny Hates Jazz, the Go-Betweens, Everything but the Girl, Level 42, the Cutting Crew, Swing Out Sister, the Blow Monkeys, Hipsway, and Aztec Camera, and that’s not even including those who merely dabbled in the form, such as ABC and the aforementioned Dire Straits.²

Some of the folks I list above are identified as “sophisti-pop” by Wikipedia or AllMusic.  Honestly, I tend to think of sophisti-pop as being represented by the Style Council, or Spandau Ballet—neither of which I particularly care for—and indeed both those bands are listed on the Wikipedia page I just linked to.  But it also lists several bands that I don’t feel fit the smooth-jazz-inflected mold at all, such as Scritti Politti, whose strong reggae tinge makes me want to link them to the Escape Club; ABC, who is pure synth-pop; and the Blue Nile, who lean far more towards lounge than jazz.³  That page also leaves out what I consider to be two big names from my list: Boy Meets Girl and Everything But the Girl.  Still, there’s no denying that sophisti-pop is strongly tied to the particular sound I’m highlighting in this mix.

Some of these bands were essentially one-hit wonders: for instance, “You Don’t Know” by Scarlett & Black is a great song that we hear towards the end of this volume, but Scarlett and Black is a fairly crappy album overall.  Likewise, the insanely good “Captain of Her Heart,” which opens this volume, is a marvel; Blue, on the other hand, is barely adequate.  But then again, some of these albums are just amazing, such as Turn Back the Clock by Johnny Hates Jazz, in which nearly every song is a winner.  In fact, it was relistening to “Shattered Dreams”—which I’ve chosen for the closer here—at some point a few years ago which inspired me to start developing my own mix of these smooth-jazz-inspired tracks.  These songs are all on the slower side—sort of soft-focus, as I said up above—but not really downbeat.  They’re often romantic, but not generally sappy.⁴  They’re ... well, they’re smooth, and they do often whisper their messages in your ear.  Where the “cats” bit comes from I can’t rightly say, unless I was perhaps subconsciously inspired by “The Love Cats.”

That little 5-year stint from the late eighties is certainly well-represented here: besides the 3 tracks already mentioned, we have “Moon Over Bourbon Street” by Sting, my favorite Level 42 tune “Lessons in Love,” the best ever Go-Betweens track “Love Goes On!”, the Cutting Crew’s mostly unknown “Any Colour,” Aztec Camera’s “Stray,” from the album of the same name, and of course the big hit (for an alternative track, anyway) “Oh Girl” by Boy Meets Girl.  Great tunes all, but we’ll need to expand beyond that narrow timeslice to make a truly interesting mix.

The easiest direction to expand in is Norah Jones.  Despite being Ravi Shankar’s daughter,⁵ Jones is primarily known for a jazzy, soulful style that certainly blends beautifully into this mix.  I was mightily impressed with Come Away with Me, and we see two tracks off it here, and we can expect to hear more from Norah on future volumes.  Her voice is angelic, and fits perfectly here.

And let’s not forget Everything But the Girl, who give us “Missing,” kicking off our center stretch.  EBtG didn’t fade away like most of their smooth-jazz-inflected compatriots, and this track is from 1994, when they were still keeping it smooth.  And this is truly one of the great tracks of this subgenre: probably the second best EBtG track ever, in fact.⁶

And, as always, I like to see the good peeps over at Magnatune represented.  In this case, we’ll hear a vocal track from cellist Jami Sieber, off her 1998 album Second Sight, and then one from really obscure band⁷ the West Exit, from their really quite good debut, Nocturne.  Sieber’s track here is atypical of her normal work, which is often a bit darker.  Whereas the West Exit was made for this mix, straight up.  “Calico” is the soundtrack for being on a balcony at night, overlooking a city where the lights from traffic become pastel smears of color, and a gentle breeze blows by ...

Note that we close with our mix starter, “Shattered Dreams.” It was the big hit by Johnny Hates Jazz, who are often thought of as one-hit-wonders for this very song (if they’re thought of at all).  It’s a fantastic track and a great closer, but we’ll be seeing more from these English gents in future volumes.

Smooth as Whispercats I
[ Copper and Snow ]

“The Captain of Her Heart” by Double, off Blue
“Moon Over Bourbon Street” by Sting, off The Dream of the Blue Turtles
“Don't Know Why” by Norah Jones, off Come Away with Me
“Tree of Love” by Jami Sieber, off Second Sight
“The Key” by Kristin Hersh, off Strings [EP]
“Stray” by Aztec Camera, off Stray
“How You Kill Me” by KT Tunstall, off Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon
“Missing” by Everything but the Girl, off Amplified Heart
“Barely Breathing” by Duncan Sheik, off Duncan Sheik
“Lessons in Love” by Level 42, off Running in the Family
“Love Goes On!” by Go-Betweens, off 16 Lovers Lane
“Any Colour” by Cutting Crew, off Broadcast
“Come Away with Me” by Norah Jones, off Come Away with Me
“Violet” by Seal, off Seal
“Calico” by the West Exit, off Nocturne
“You Don't Know” by Scarlett & Black, off Scarlett and Black
“Oh Girl” by Boy Meets Girl, off Boy Meets Girl
“Shattered Dreams” by Johnny Hates Jazz, off Turn Back the Clock

Total:  18 tracks,  79:33

In terms of the less likely candidates that fill out this volume, we have the lovely tune “The Key” by Kristin Hersh.  Although Hersh is most well-known for being one of the driving forces behind Throwing Muses, she’s done some impressive solo work as well, and “The Key” (off her EP Strings) is my favorite.  It also provides the volume name: as I’m sure you know, copper and snow make a dusky blue boy.

Bookcasing “Missing” we have a pretty track from KT Tunstall (although not off Tiger Suit, which is usually my go-to source for Tunstall tunes), and the moderately popular “Barely Breathing,” the song that made Duncan Sheik a one-hit-wonder.  The former is a quiet, unassuming tune that you’ve likely never heard.  The latter is a breathy, smooth pop gem that you may have heard so much you got sick of it.  But give it another chance: it’s really quite lovely.

And, finally, I broke one of my own rules by including the 8-minute “Violet,” by Seal.  Rarely do I use such a long track, except perhaps on the instrumental mixes.  Also, I’m not actually a huge Seal fan.  But I own Seal, because it contains the awesome “Crazy,” and there are a few other tracks I also like, including this one.  It features some loungy piano work, some intriguing samples, and some mellow yet otherworldly synth programming.  It’s long, but it’s breezy and cool and very smooth, and that’s what this mix is all about.

Next time, we’ll get real.  Or, rather ... surreal.

Smooth as Whispercats II ⇒

__________

1 In fact, we’ll see “Your Latest Trick” on volume II.

2 And, yes, between this volume and the next, we’ll hear from all of those folks.

3 Which is to say, we’ll see the Blue Nile on Moonside by Riverlight before we see them here.

4 “Sappy” being in the eye of the beholder, of course.  Your mileage may vary.

5 I know, right?

6 You can bet we’ll be hearing the first best on the next volume.

7 Recall my definition of “really obscure band.”

Smokelit Flashback III

"Sniff Me Out Like I Was Tanqueray"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

You know, I mentioned at some point¹ that Smokelit Flashback was my longest mix.  Given that, it’s time to return to those waters and pick up where we left off after Smokelit Flashback I and Smokelit Flashback II.  Which, you may recall, featured a lot of cuts from 5 different albums.²

The primary problem with overfeaturing a few albums in a volume of a mix like this is the lack of variety.  But no less of a problem is that you can overmine your material.  I currently have 5 volumes of Smokelit Flashback, and enough material for at least two more, but the Lemon Jelly and the Naomi are all on the first two volumes, and only a single Portishead track remains.  It’s “Sour Times,” from their debut Dummy.³  And it’s a classic, don’t get me wrong.  I just wish I’d saved a bit more Portishead for these later volumes.

Also returning is Falling You.  They’re back again (of course) with a track off one of their later albums, Faith.  In general, the later Falling You albums aren’t as good as the earlier ones, but you still find gems on them, such as this one.  But, strangely, these two tracks—the one from Portishead and the one from Falling You—represent the only two returning artists.  By this point in the mix, I needed new blood.

Happily, my programmer friend⁴ had yet more wonders to introduce me to: in this case it was the first 3 albums⁵ from Belgian group Hooverphonic.  Hooverphonic is another of those bands that’s hard to classify: they’re a bit dream pop, and a bit ambient, but mostly trip-hop, and, like Portishead, a perfect fit for this mix.  I’ve managed to restrain myself though, so you’ll only find two tracks of theirs here.  But, like Falling You, expect to see them on just about every Smokelit volume from here on out.

My other big discovery is Thievery Corporation, who are mostly electro-world, somewhat like Transglobal Underground, but where TU is at the club end of that sub-subgenre, Thievery Corporation exists firmly at the trip-hop end.  They’re from DC, where I lived for many years, and my discovery of them is somewhat bizarre.  The Mother used to be the bookkeeper for the Capital Yacht Club, and some member there had a free copy of Thievery Corporation’s 2002 classic⁶ The Richest Man in Babylon.  Or maybe they had a bunch of free copies; I never got the full story.  Anyway, one way or another, someone offered The Mother a copy, she brought it home to me (she never said, but she probably listened to it once and said “here’s some weird shit he’ll enjoy”) and the rest is history.  Thievery Corp has a beautiful sound that works perfectly for this mix, as well as a few others.⁷  They’re giving us two tracks on this volume: one is our opener, and the other is right in our centerpiece, between the second Hooverphonic track and the Falling You track.

Other fairly obvious candidates include my discoveries of three male/female duos: Mono, a cool trip-hop London duo with only one album (but it’s a great one), Dahlia, a duo from Portland whose style is sort of half trip-hop, half darkwave, and Goldfrapp, another pair of Brits whose elcectic style encompasses dream, trip-hop, electronica, and even a bit of disco and downtempo.  Mono and Dahlia I think I discovered via some sort of “if you like that, you’ll like this” links; Goldfrapp I distinctly remember hearing on Morning Becomes Eclectic.  Each of the three contribute a track here, and you can be sure we’ll be hearing from each in future volumes.

For a slightly harder edge, I start to drift into a bit of acid house territory by closing out this volume with the Chemical Brothers followed by Massive Attack.  For the former, Dig Your Own Hole is probably one of the first electronica albums I ever bought, primarily on the strength of “Block Rockin’ Beats” (although that’s definitely not the best track on that album, as it turns out).  For the latter, I first heard “Paradise Circus” (the very track I use here) when I watched BBC show Luther, starring Idris Elba.

Our bridges come from Banyan, who we remember from Smokelit Flashback I, and one of the Ian Devaney instrumentals off the Swing soundtrack, which we saw on a few volumes of Salsatic Vibrato.

Smokelit Flashback III
[ Sniff Me Out Like I Was Tanqueray ]

“Until the Morning” by Thievery Corporation, off The Richest Man in Babylon
“Leave Me Alone” by Natalie Imbruglia, off Left of the Middle
“One Way Ride” by Hooverphonic, off Blue Wonder Power Milk
“Angel” by Artemis, off Gravity
“Lovely Head” by Goldfrapp, off Felt Mountain
“Sour Times” by Portishead, off Dummy
“You Know I'm No Good” by Amy Winehouse, off Back to Black
“Armageddon” by Dahlia, off Emotion Cycles
“Mad about You” by Hooverphonic, off The Magnificent Tree
“Omid (Hope)” by Thievery Corporation, off The Richest Man in Babylon
“Milk and Honey” by Falling You, off Faith
“Martin's Theme [reprise]” by Ian Devaney, off Swing [Soundtrack]
“Little Black Mess” by Shivaree, off Who's Got Trouble?
“Life in Mono” by Mono, off Formica Blues
“Cactus Soil” by Banyan, off Anytime at All
“Where Do I Begin” by the Chemical Brothers, off Dig Your Own Hole
“Paradise Circus” by Massive Attack, off Heligoland

Total:  17 tracks,  73:41

For the remainder, we have a few surprising and perhaps some not so surprising choices.  Natalie Imbruglia gives us the #2 track here; Imbruglia is perhaps best known for “Torn,” and that’s certainly the reason I first picked up the insanely good Left of the Middle.  But let me tell you a secret: “Torn” is the worst song on that album.  Which doesn’t mean “Torn” is bad; on the contrary, “Torn” is a pretty decent song, for what it is.  It’s just that the remainder of the album is so much better.  “Leave Me Alone” isn’t typical, but it works very well here.⁸  Then we have Artemis, another Magnatune artist.⁹  Generally when it comes to Artemis, I prefer Undone, but Gravity (whence cometh “Angel,” the track we use here) is nice too.

Our volume namer is the classic Amy Winehouse tune “You Know I’m No Good.” Most of Winehouse’s work doesn’t fit here at all, but there’s just something about this one track that works perfectly on this mix.  Finally we have a track from Shivaree, who’s been called everything from alt-country to “jazzy” to “torchy.” I currently have 5 of their songs in various mixes, and only two are slotted for the same mix (and one song is currently in two completely different mixes because I can’t decide where it goes).  I’m pretty sure I also discovered them through a “similar artists” type link, but exactly who they were similar to I can’t now imagine.  “Little Black Mess” is a loungy track that has some Moonside by Riverlight tendencies,¹⁰ but still retains enough of the smokey bar and slightly trippy combo that makes it a perfect fit here.

Next time, we’ll mix it till it’s smooth.

⇐ Smokelit Flashback II

Smokelit Flashback IV ⇒

__________

1 Specifically, when I was introducing Salsatic Vibrato.

2 Specifically, Portishead, LemonJelly.KY, Lost Horizons, Everyone Loves You, and Pappelallee.

3 Yes, Dummy precedes Portishead.  Go figure.

4 The same one who introduced me to Lemon Jelly, Naomi, and Transglobal Underground.

5 That is, A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular, Blue Wonder Power Milk, and The Magnificent Tree.

6 And, in my opinion, still their best.

7 For instance, we’ve seen them on Paradoxically Sized World, and we’ll see them figure prominently on another mix we’ll come to in the fullness of time.

8 And is slightly reminiscent somehow of “Pity” by the Creatures, which we used on volume I.  Perhaps it’s just the vibraphone.  Although I think the instrument on “Pity” is actually a xylophone.  But you know what I mean.

9 I told the story of how I discovered Magnatune in Rose-Coloured Brainpan.

10 For what it’s worth, that’s the mix currently containing two different Shivaree tracks.

decided lack of improvement

Believe it or not, this week’s shittiness is vying with last week’s shittiness for all-time shittiest shit.  Sickness (including a record-breaking barf incident in the 1AM hour), a melted down sandbox which kept me from catching up on the work I was behind on due to last week, which prompted a marathon stay-at-work-until-nearly-midnight session late in the week, followed promptly by a last-minute production bug on Friday, which was even further complicated by some boneheaded idiocy on my part stemming from the fact that I have two completely different co-workers named “Steve,” a pool pump which may or may not be on the fritz, and even that was further complicated by a running dispute with my home warranty company ... well, let’s just say I’ve had better weeks, and, as for two-week periods, I’d say I’ve had several hundred: almost certainly more than a thousand, even.  Add to that that we’re sliding into our Virgo birthday season, with this weekend being all about The Mother— I just finished putting a cake into the oven, and, if you know me, you know how extremely unlikely that is— as much as I hate to miss two weeks in a row, hopefully you can forgive me for making you wait one more week to get whatever bizarre fix you’re getting out of this blog.  I don’t promise anything awesome, of course ... but, then, I never do.

oh the horror ...

Shitty week.  Lots of drama with electricity and things burning and large amounts of money spent unexpectedly.  At this point I’m behind on work, behind on family obligations, and just generally behind on life.  Perhaps next week I can unclench long enough to tell you the story of this week.  But right now I think I’m better off not thinking about it.  So you’ll have to find something else to amuse yourselves today.  Sorry.

An Open Letter to Wil Wheaton

Let me just start by saying that I don’t typically write letters to celebrities.  In fact, I never have before.  But today I guess I just can’t help myself.

My first exposure to Wil Wheaton was, like most of the world, via Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  And, like most of the world, I found him vaguely annoying—Crusher, that is, not Wheaton.  In fact, I was never annoyed at Wheaton; I just didn’t like the character that much.  Of course, some people totally hated the character, and some even blamed Wheaton for it, but I was never that invested.

Partially that may be due to my general feelings about TNG.  Now, I certainly can’t deny being a fan of Star Trek, but I also can’t claim the title of Trekkie.¹  I enjoyed the original Star Trek, although I was very young when it first aired.  In fact, like The Wild Wild West,² I suspect that most of my memories of Star Trek are actually of reruns.  Certainly I wasn’t old enough to be able to judge the show criticially; I just liked it, cheesy science and overly dramatic plots and all.  But TNG just never grabbed me.  I liked certain things about it—Commander Data is cool, Worf is cool, Geordi is very cool, and I always had a bit of a crush on Dr. Crusher—but I was always lukewarm at best on Troi and Riker, and of course my afore-mentioned annoyance with Wesley.  But it was actually Picard I really disliked.  Again, nothing against Patrick Stewart, who I think is an amazing actor.  I just found Picard unlikable, almost by design.  I always suspected that I was supposed to like him despite his gruff exterior, but the problem was that he seemed to have a gruff interior as well.

So TNG may possibly be my least favorite Star Trek: I was deeply into Deep Space Nine for a long while, and I even stuck with Voyager long after it became mediocre at best.³  Of course, there was Enterprise, which I didn’t even last out the first season of, so I suppose TNG is better than that.  But primarily what I mean to say is that I really can’t blame Wheaton for my less-than-warm reception of TNG, or even for my less-than-warm reception of Wesley Crusher.

And I know this for sure because TNG actually wasn’t my first exposure to Wheaton: that would be Stand By Me.⁴  And I think Stand By Me is a fucking brilliant movie.  Look at the cast: Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, Kiefer Sutherland ... all those folks became famous later, and that’s because they’re all extremely talented.⁵  I’m not sure why I didn’t remember that Wheaton was pretty much the star of Stand By Me at the time I first saw him in TNG—I didn’t make that connection until years later, when I rewatched the movie—but perhaps it’s because Wheaton just had so much more to work with in Gideon and Evan’s screenplay than in the Star Trek shows.  Either way, that movie is proof positive to me that Wheaton isn’t responsible for however I feel about Crusher.

The next time I can remember being aware of Wheaton as a person was during my career at online retailer ThinkGeek.  Back in those days (which weren’t the early days of the company, but certainly before it reached the height of its popularity), Wheaton was a regular customer.  I never corresponded with him personally, but I read a lot of his emails.  We used to pass them around, in fact, whenever anyone got one.  Because Wil Wheaton is, apparently, in person, a really cool guy.  Who knew, right?  Well, that was my thought at first.  But my co-workers assured me that Wheaton was, in our world, far more famous than just that kid actor from that show once.  He was a regular Internet celebrity.  A blogger from before blogging was cool, a user of Linux from when using Linux required a fair amount of effort, a gamer from the early days of gaming culture, an actor who ran his own website instead of having other people do it for him.  So I checked out his website, and I was impressed.  You can still go there and read his blog and whatnot, although the thing that impressed me the most, his original FAQ, isn’t linked from his homepage any longer.  Perhaps he’s trying to disown it, or maybe he just doesn’t want to have to keep it current.  He hasn’t taken it down entirely, so that’s something.  But it was this FAQ that made me think, wow, this is a very cool guy.  A geeky, nerdy sort of guy, but a very down-to-earth, straight-up, plain-spoken, cool guy nonetheless.  Being a bit of a nerdy geek myself, perhaps I just have different standards of coolness.  But go read that FAQ for yourself and see if you don’t agree with me (outdated or not).  In all my travels across the web I have only come across one other actor’s website that was remotely in the same ballpark of cool as Wil Wheaton’s.⁶

So now I had another, completely different view on who this Wheaton character was.  And that was good enough for many years: he was mainly a fellow technogeek—one with a bigger soapbox than I had, true, but a fellow geek nonetheless—who still showed up on my TV screen every now and again, like when I spotted him in a guest role on an episode of Criminal Minds, or in his very cool recurring role in Eureka.⁷  And then my perspective on Wheaton was blown away yet again.

I’ll fully admit to watching @midnight solely because it happened to be coming on after Stephen Colbert, and maybe also because I’d seen a couple of episodes of Talking Dead and thought Chris Hardwick was pretty funny.  But after a while I got sort of hooked on it, and now I watch it regularly.  Last year, I sat down to a show which featured Matt Mira, Jonah Ray ... and Wil Wheaton.  Now, perhaps you don’t know those other two fellows, but let me tell you: they’re both professional comedians.  Not super-famous, perhaps, but they do this for a living.  And I’m thinking, Wheaton’s a cool guy and all, but he doesn’t have a chance in this crowd.  They’re gonna destroy him.  He’ll be the first one out.

But he wasn’t.

He didn’t win of course ... not that first time.  But he dominated in terms of points, and came in second to Mira ... on that episode in March.  Then second again to Aisha Tyler in July (no shame in getting beaten by that comedy great), and in December he actually won, defeating Kevin Pereira and Brooke Van Poppelin.  Because, you know what?  Wil Wheaton is fucking hilarious.  I was blown away ... admittedly, I’m not saying he’s a comedy genius or anything—Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy need not be looking over their shoulders—but perhaps it was just that I had such low expectations of him, and he exceeded those expectations by so much.  Of the 5 people he played against,⁸ he was easily funnier than 4 of them.⁹  And I knew he could be funny from reading things on his web site, but there’s a huge gulf between being funny when you have days to prepare a post and being funny when you have seconds to come up with a joke.  And yet he could do both.  Wow.

Now fast forward to this year, when I finally got around to queueing up an audiobook recommendation I got from a coworker months and months ago: Redshirts, by John Scalzi.  About this book I have but one thing to say:  Oh.  My.  God.  I mean, it was incredible.  It started out sorta awesome, then it got even more awesome, and it stayed awesome until the end ... and then it got better.  I can’t go into more detail than that; you’re just going to have to go out and get it for yourself.

Now, part of this is undoubtedly the fact that this Scalzi fellow, who I’d never heard of before, is a pretty damn good writer.  The plot is really interesting, especially to a more-than-casual-if-not-up-to-Trekkie-level Star Trek fan.  And, considering it’s essentialy a one-joke premise, it’s amazing that he can hold your interest throughout the whole story.  Probably it has to do with his characters, who feel very real despite the fact that they’re specifically designed to be cardboard stereotypes ... but then that’s part of the fun of this premise, and Scalzi definitely plays with that dichotomy in a smart and funny way.

But a huge part of why I enjoyed this audiobook so much is that it was read by Wil Wheaton.  And here, again, is another skill for which I was unprepared.  Reading aloud is a highly underrated skill, and not all audiobooks are well done.  Sometimes even the author reading his or her own work isn’t that great, because writing and reading aloud are two different things.  Sometimes the reader is an accomplished actor and it still isn’t that great, because acting and reading aloud are two different skills.  Reading aloud is, in fact, not easy, as pretty much any parent can tell you.  Wil Wheaton is, apparently, quite good at it.  Again: who knew?  I’m sure his familiarity with the subject matter (as the title implies, the story owes a lot to early Star Trek episodes) helps.  I bet he could easily put himself in the place of many of the characters just by remembering experiences he’d had on set.  But it’s much more than that.  Wheaton has a finely honed sense of sarcasm that serves him very well for this reading, and his comedy skills are not wasted either.  Though I am known to shout at audiobook characters, telling them how stupid they are (the same way many people like to yell at the screen during a movie), I rarely laugh out loud.  Generally a chuckle is as far as I’ll go.  But Wheaton (and Scalzi, to be fair) made me laugh several times during the nearly 8 hours of this presentation.  I was truly (and once again) blown away by how good Wheaton was, in a whole new context.

So, look: I’m not saying Wil Wheaton is now my all-time favorite famous (or semi-famous) person or anything.  There are plenty of folks out there that I admire and respect even more than him: Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Joss Whedon, J.K. Rowling, Larry Wall, Samuel L. Jackson, Jon Stewart, Kevin Smith, and Dave Grohl, just to name a few, and not even considering people who are no longer alive.  But today, soon after finishing listening to his voice for the past few weeks, I’m thinking about Wil Wheaton, and how amazing he is.  And, just in case you didn’t know, I wanted to share that with you.  And, on the off chance that he sees this one day, I want him to know that there’s someone out there who appreciates the wide diversity of his talent.  Which I’m sure he knew already, but I say that’s something that you can always hear more of.  I think it’s nice to be appreciated, and I like appreciating others.  Especially when they’re so deserving.

So thank you Wil Wheaton, for all you do.  And I hope I keep seeing you pop up in unlikely places and impressing me with new talents for many more years to come.

__________

1 I understand that such folks actually prefer to be called “Trekkers,” but I wouldn’t know for sure.  As I say, I’m not one.

2 Another show that I have an inordinate and somewhat nostalgic fondness for.

3 Although between Orange Is the New Black and the audiobook version of NOS4A2, I’m rapidly gaining a newfound appreciation for Kate Mulgrew.

4 Actually, IMDB informs me that my real first exposure to Wil Wheaton was The Secret of Nimh.  But I think I can be forgiven for not recognizing him from that.

5 Yes, even Feldman.  He may have had some issues in his personal life, but that doesn’t change his talent.

6 That one being Bruce Campbell’s.  But his site now is all slick and devoid of personality like all other actors’ sites.  Happily, the Internet is forever, so to see what I found attractive back in the day, you can just check out The Wayback Machine’s copy.  In particular, check out a few of the articles in his “Babblings” section to see why I also found him to be down-to-earth, cool guy.  Well, back then anyway.  (He may still be, for all I know.  It’s just impossible to tell from the personality-free monstrosity that’s up there now.  No, I won’t link you to it.  Google it yourself.)

7 Glancing at IMDB today, I see that I probably should have recognized his voice from several animated shows I watched, like Legion of Super Heroes and Batman: The Brave and the Bold.  But, honestly, I never noticed that was him.

8 Kevin Pereira shared two of his appearances.

9 As I said, it’s tough to beat Aisha Tyler.

HipHop Bottlerocket I

"Saddle Up Your Salamander"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

What I refer to as the “pre-modern mixes” were primarily developed in college.  In those days, I was often making mixes for parties, so the majority of them were upbeat.  Many of these mixes are lost to the ether, and even those that aren’t completely lost are physically gone.  This was before digital playlists, remember, so the only artifact of their existence was an actual cassette somewhere, and they’re all long gone as far as I know.¹  But some of them I listened to over and over again so much that they sort of burned into my brain, and those I’ve attempted to recreate using the new format.

This is one such mix.  In this case, the “HipHop” in the name doesn’t mean literal hip-hop music; it just connotes something with a good beat you can dance to.  And the “Bottlerocket” part, as you might guess, just means that these are tracks that I found exciting, adrenline-inspiring, like watching fireworks.  This first volume is, I believe, a pretty faithful recreation of the original, although not complete.²  But the ones that are here are all from the original, and I think they’re all in the right order, even.³

Because this mix was made in the 90s, there’s nothing here newer than that, which means it may have a bit of a nostalgic feel for you, especially if you’re younger than I.  But I still think you’ll find the tunes here pretty kickin’.  Not super-dancy, like disco or techno or anything like that, and not super-hard, like metal or industrial or thrash.  Just good party tunes: tracks that make you happy, make you want to move, perhaps make you want to be drinking a frosty beer or a mixed drink badly concocted by an inexperienced bartender.⁴  Future volumes of this mix, if there are any,⁵ will keep this same vibe, only without the strong 90s callback going on.

There are no repeated artists here at all, so we can’t say that any particular artists dominate this mix.  Still, there are a few that we should be utterly unsurprised to find here.  The Pixies, for instance: Bossanova isn’t my favorite album of theirs,⁶ but “Dig for Fire” is still a classic tune.  Likewise, what party mix would be complete without an appearance from Jane’s Addiction?  In this case, it’s “Ain’t No Right” off their insanely good Ritual de lo Habitual.⁷  And, speaking of performers from the inaugural Lollapalooza tour,⁸ there’s also a track from Living Colour here.  “Love Rears Its Ugly Head” is one of the few great tracks off Time’s Up, their follow-up to the much better Vivid.  And of course we have an appearance from Fishbone’s “Bonin’ in the Boneyard,” which is one of my all-time favorite tracks ever, and the only song immune to my never-reuse-a-track-in-more-than-one-mix rule.⁹

Other folks that probably ought not surprise are Faith No More, with “From Out of Nowhere” (probably because I was getting tired of “Epic” and realized that The Real Thing had so much more to offer), and Midnight Oil, with “Surfing with a Spoon,” which is easily the best song off their first three albums combined.  Oh, and “Sometime to Return,” back in the days when Soul Asylum used to rock.  (The baroque lyrics of this tune, by the way, give us our volume title.)  And my all-time favorite Ramones tune, “I Wanna Be Sedated.”¹⁰  I first heard the Ramones in my freshman year in college when I met a guy from New Jersey, and that was literally all he listened to.  He had every one of their albums and nothing else.  I never quite got into them as much as he did, of course, but I got an early-ish¹¹ education in all things Ramone.

From there it gets either more obscure or more surprising (or both).  Concrete Blonde I was introduced to by good friend who almost became my roommate but then didn’t.¹²  I immediately fell in love with Free (still one of my all-time favorite albums) and eagerly snapped up Bloodletting when it came out.  It wasn’t as good, to be sure, but it still had some great tracks, such as “The Beast,” which we see here.  Another friend¹³ was a big pot smoker who introduced me to a huge variety of music, from Black Uhuru to NWA to Metallica to Bad Brains.¹⁴  Now, I never got into Bad Brains that much, but there was another, similar band: hardcore thrash alternating with reggae, only perhaps not as harsh as Bad Brains.  This band was 24-7 Spyz, and their minor hit “Grandma Dynamite” immediately grabbed me.¹⁵  But the one I included here was “Social Plague,” which almost as good and slightly less thrashy.  And, speaking of thrashy, I threw in a Sonic Youth tune off what I consider to be their best album: Goo.  I know many people prefer Daydream Nation, but I just find Goo more consistent and more accessible.  Sonic Youth isn’t particularly obscure, and this particular track of theirs was a fairly big hit on the alt-rock charts.  “Kool Thing” is somehow both smooth and rockin’ at the same time, and has a guest spot from Chuck D.¹⁶

Then you have the tunes from bands you might not have expected: Guadalcanal Diary, with their Athens-bred jangle-pop which is sibling to REM, but still very distinct from it, and They Might Be Giants, known for quirky folk-infused alterna-pop which eventually led them to a successful carrer in children’s music.  When it comes to GD, Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man is my clear favorite, but Flip-Flop has one thing going for it: ”... Vista,” which I find insanely catchy and irresistible.  On the other hand, all of TMBG’s first three albums are excellent, and any number of tunes would have worked here.  But their amazing reworking of 1953’s “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”—much faster and catchier than the original—is the one I wanted to highlight for this mix.

Perhaps the two most unlikely tracks here are the two that introduce what would be side 2 of the original cassette version: Ice-T’s “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” and Junior Reid’s version of “Eleanor Rigby.” Rap and reggae are two genres that I’m not a huge fan of, but there are some artists and albums that I like, and these two tracks are emblematic of the first rap album I ever bought and the first reggae album I ever bought.  Ice-T is easily my favorite rap artist, and The Iceberg is one of the few rap albums that I enjoy pretty much every track on.  “The Girl Tried to Kill Me” is not only a great tune, but funny as hell.  Likewise, One Blood is the only reggae album I ever heard that I enjoyed all the way through.  If you’re a reggae fan, I probably don’t have to tell you that Reid is the guy who stepped into Black Uhuru after original singer Michael Rose left.¹⁷  One Blood contains a lot of great songs, but his version of the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” is pretty awesome, in my opinion.¹⁸  Somehow these two tracks always seemed to flow into each other really well to me, despite their very diverse styles.

HipHop Bottlerocket I
[ Saddle Up Your Salamander ]

“Dig for Fire” by Pixies, off Bossanova
“The Beast” by Concrete Blonde, off Bloodletting
“Love Rears Its Ugly Head” by Living Colour, off Time's Up
“... Vista” by Guadalcanal Diary, off Flip-Flop
“Social Plague” by 24-7 Spyz, off Harder Than You
“Kool Thing” by Sonic Youth, off Goo
“Doctor Jeep” by the Sisters of Mercy, off Vision Thing
“UV Ray” by the Jesus and Mary Chain, off Automatic
“Free World” by Kirsty MacColl, off Kite
“Ain't No Right” by Jane's Addiction, off Ritual de lo Habitual
“I Wanna Be Sedated” by Ramones, off Anthology: Hey Ho, Let's Go! [Compilation]
“Last Cigarette” by Dramarama, off Stuck in Wonderamaland
“Surfing with a Spoon” by Midnight Oil, off Midnight Oil
“Eleanor Rigby” by Junior Reid, off One Blood
“The Girl Tried to Kill Me” by Ice-T, off The Iceberg: Freedom of Speech ... Just Watch What You Say
“From Out of Nowhere” by Faith No More, off The Real Thing
“Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” by They Might Be Giants, off Flood
“Sometime To Return” by Soul Asylum, off Hang Time
“Bonin' in the Boneyard” by Fishbone, off Truth and Soul
“Pictures of Matchstick Men” by Camper Van Beethoven, off Key Lime Pie

Total:  20 tracks,  77:22

Rounding this set are a few more potentially unlikely tracks.  In the middle, we have a 3-track stretch that kicks off with the Sisters of Mercy, who are primarily a goth band.  Their best album is undoubtedly Floodland, but that’s a darker, more atmospheric affair.  Their next album, Vision Thing, is not as consistently good, but far more upbeat, and “Doctor Jeep” is one of its highlights.  Then we have “UV Ray” by the Jesus and Mary Chain.  J&MC’s “style” runs the gamut from slow, almost-goth numbers, to sweet pop melodies, to the occasional wall-of-noise thrashy pseudo-punk tune.  “UV Ray” is in that latter camp, and was always my favorite tune off Automatic.  And finally Kirsty MacColl, who we’ve heard from before,¹⁹ with the most upbeat track off Kite, “Free World.” I first heard that song on WHFS,²⁰ and I bought the album soon after.  Good call, since it’s contributed 3 tracks to theses mixes.²¹

After the Ramones, winding down to what was the end of side 1 on the original cassette version, I throw in my favorite all-time Dramarama song, “Last Cigarette.” I know many folks prefer “Anything, Anything,” especially here in my now-native LA,²² but there’s something about “Last Cigarette” that just strikes a chord with me.  Perhaps because I was a smoker for many years and I can fully relate: “last cigarette, last cigarette, one before I go to bed ... I know it’s killing me ...” If you’re not familiar with Dramarama, seek them out.  We’ll see them again on other mixes.²³

Finally, we close out this volume with Camper Van Beethoven’s remake of “Pictures of Matchstick Men” by Status Quo.  The original was a lovely piece of psychedelic pop from 1967, but I like the Camper Van version even better.  I just think the violin adds a whole new dimension to it.  CVB, of course, is often thought of as “the first band of that guy from Cracker,” but I always liked them better than Cracker.  Camper Van could throw in a little country twang, but they always knew where to draw the line.  Cracker wasn’t always so discerning.

Anyway, hopefully you dig this mix volume as much as I do.  Make sure to crank it up.  Next time around, we’ll circle back around to the beginning.

__________

1 Although, who knows? maybe I’ll stumble across a few while unpacking a box one day.

2 The original, of course, would have been on a 90-minute cassette, which would be too long for a volume in the modern mix age (meaning it wouldn’t fit on most recordable CDs).  So I couldn’t include all the songs here, even if I could remember them all.  Which I can’t.

3 Which would mean that either the only ones I can’t remember are at the end, or else I’m fooling myself about having the transitions right.  But I’m happy enough with the results.

4 At our college parties, that was most often me.

5 Which there likely will be, someday.  I have some nebulous thoughts for more tracks, but haven’t started to organize a volume II as of yet.

6 That would undoubtedly be Tromp le Monde.

7 The album version of this includes a somewhat bizarre spoken-word introduction from Perry Farrell that I’ve often been told I should leave off.  But I always leave it attached to the track.  I kinda dig it.

8 Which I attended, I’m proud to say.

9 Which means you’re likely to see it again on another mix one day.  In the fullness of time.

10 See, they’re not all from the 90s.

11 1984, to be precise.

12 Which was fairly unusual, as I’ve had approximately 10 times more people actually become a roommate than almost become one.

13 An actual roommmate this time.

14 Also Adrian Belew, for some weird reason.  Also the first person to play me Digital Underground, and De La Soul, and Cypress Hill, and local band Hearsay.  He was a great guy with exquisite taste in music.

15 And thus we shall see that track on another mix, in the fullness of time.

16 The original version of this volume featured “Mary-Christ” instead of “Kool Thing.” However, the former track had to be snatched to be featured on a different mix.

17 And, if you’re not, I probably do.  So I just did.

18 I can’t remember for sure, but I probably was exposed to both these albums by that same roommate who introduced me to 24-7 Spyz.

19 Both on Rose-Coloured Brainpan and Tenderhearted Nightshade.

20 Check out Salsatic Vibrato if you want to listen to me wax nostalgic about the glory days of WHFS.

21 So far.

22 Although Dramarama was conceived and delivered in New Jersey, LA is where they achieved what little fame they managed, on the strength of that very track, and they soon relocated here.

23 And have in fact already seen them once before, on Rose-Coloured Brainpan.

Saladosity, Part 6: Picking Nuts

[This is the sixth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


Obviously produce is the most important thing you need to shop for to make a great salad, but it’s not the only thing.  There are several other categories of groceries to stock up on.  Today we’re going to talk about nuts and seeds and dried fruit.  In my local Trader Joe’s,¹ all these items are on the same aisle, so it feels natural to me to put them together.  Your store my be laid out differently, of course.  But look at it this way: these also constitute everything you need to make trail mix.  So there’s another common thread.

Nuts

There are some sort of nuts in nearly every salad I make: four out of the six salads I want to show you how to make have nuts in them.  Besides, you can’t make trail mix without nuts, and trail mix is an excellent snack to try to replace your potato chip and cookie cravings with.  So we’re going to need some nuts.

In general, I prefer dry-roasted nuts to raw.  I just think there’s more depth of flavor in a dry-roasted nut.  So, where possible, I get the roasted nuts.  In my grocery store, that means the only raw nuts I buy are walnuts, because I can’t find them roasted.  And I’m not going to do it myself.  I’d happily pay extra for dry-roasted walnuts if I could find them, but actually going to the trouble of roasting them myself is way too much effort.  Remember: we want to keep things simple so that we’ll be more likely to eat salad.

Next comes the question of salt.  Most of the nuts at my store come in 3 varieties of saltiness: “full salt,” “half salt,” and no salt.  Half salt just means half the salt of the full salt variety, which is however much salt they felt like putting on, so on the one hand it means nothing, but I still prefer that over the full salt for most types of nuts.  I rarely buy the completely unsalted unless I don’t have a choice (with one exception).

When it comes to flavorings other than salt, though, I just say no.  I don’t want wasabi almonds, or candied pecans, or what-have-you.  Partialy because a lot of times those types of things contain ingredients that defeat my nutritional goals (e.g. corn starch, added sugar, MSG, etc).  But also because I just want to taste the nuts.  They’re yummy.  I don’t think they need a lot of dressing up.²

Finally, there’s the organic question again.  With nuts, I’m not as adamant about the organic thing.  I just don’t find as much taste differential with nuts as I do with produce.  With fresh fruit and vegetables, I can really tell the difference between organic and non-organic.  With nuts, I can’t.  It’s just that simple.  Also, organic nuts are harder to come by, and often, unlike with the produce, significantly more expensive than the non-organic varieties.  But do what you feel is right for you.

Now let’s talk about the specific nuts we’re going to need.

Pistachios.  I have come to love pistachios more than all other nuts combined.  I can just eat them by the handful, and I never get tired of them.  Pistachios are the only type of nut that I actually prefer unsalted (but still dry-roasted, of course).  We’ll see pistachios in two of our salad recipes.

Cashews.  A lot of people really love cashews.  I’m a bit cooler on them.  I like them well enough, but I get tired of them easily, and too many will overwhelm a taste profile, in my view.  I buy dry-roasted, “half salt.”  I stopped buying whole cashews, though, because they’re more expensive, for some reason.  Pieces are just fine for salad purposes.

Pecans.  I never liked pecans as a kid.  Now I adore them.  Almost as much as pistachios.  I buy dry-roasted, “full salt” (because I can’t get “half salt”), “halves and pieces.”

Walnuts.  Man, I wish I could find dry-roasted walnuts.  I think I would really like them a lot better than raw walnuts.  Still, raw walnuts are pretty good, and indispensible for one of our salads.  I buy raw, unsalted (again, no choice), pieces.  In the case of walnuts, I might even be willing to pay more for pieces, because whole walnuts are too damn big.  But generally pieces is all I see anyway.

Almonds.  Almonds are completely optional: we’re not actually going to need almonds for any of our salads.  But almonds are super-tasty, and, if you’re also going to try making some trail mix, you’ll want almonds for sure.  I buy dry-roasted, “half salt.”

Seeds

Some folks like sesame seeds or sunflower seeds in their salads.  I’m not going to recommend those though.  What you will need in this category are pepitas, also known as dry-roasted pumpkin seeds, shelled and salted.  A bag will last you roughly forever, but that’s okay because they don’t appear to go bad ... at least not bad enough to need to throw out.  If you keep them around too long, they get a little “flat,” and you probably won’t want to eat them out-of-hand (assuming you enjoyed eating them out-of-hand in the first place, which I personally don’t).  But for purposes of our dressing, that won’t impact the taste significantly.

Dried Fruit

Again, dried fruit is not only great for salads, but also awesome for trail mix purposes.  To my way of thinking, trail mix is all about the perfect mix of salty and sweet, and if you’re trying to avoid anything with added sugar, you pretty much have to get your sweet from fruit.  Also, dried fruit (like nuts) lasts quite a long time, so you can stock up and not have to worry about it for a while.

Plantain chips.  A plantain is some sort of miracle fruit.  When ripe, you can use them much like bananas, and, if you’ve ever had plantains at a restaurant serving Caribbean fare (i.e. plátanos), they were most likely sweet and sticky and vaguely reminded you of bananas.  Which is fine.  But where the plantain really shines in my view is when they’re unripe, when you can treat them pretty much like potatoes.  You can make tostones out of them, which are sort of like french fries in taste (although not in shape), you can mash them up like mashed potatoes, and, best of all, you can make chips out of them.  A bag of fried plantain chips is just as good as a bag of potato chips, and (unfortunately) just as addicitive.  I used to buy those, but I don’t any more.³  Now I buy the roasted plantain chips, which are not as good for eating out-of-hand ... but still pretty decent.  You can dip them in guacamole, for instance, and there’s another excellent healthy snack for you.  Or you can crush them up and sprinkle them on your salad to give it an extra layer of crunch, which is what we’re going to do with them.  Trader Joe’s sells them in 6 ounce bags, and my family goes through them 2 to 4 a week.

Raisins.  There’s no point in talking about dried fruit without talking about the king of dried fruit, the raisin.  I actually like to buy organic here—unlike with the nuts, I think I can tell the difference taste-wise, and they’re just not that much more expensive.  The particular kind I’m buying happens to be Thompson raisins, but I don’t know how significant that is in the long run.

Dried cranberries.  Now here is the first place we’re going to “cheat” a little bit from my nutritional goals, because as far as I know it is physically impossible to find dried cranberries that don’t have added sugar.  I’m willing to cheat a bit for this particular salad, though.⁴  Besides, who would want to eat unsweetened cranberries?  Bleaugh.  I buy organic, preferably sweetened with organic sugar.

Optional dried fruit.  We won’t need any more types of dried fruit for the particular salads I’m going to show you, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop here.  If you happen to be shopping at Trader Joe’s too, there are two other types that I heartily recommend: berry medley, and golden berry blend.  You can use these for trail mix, as I do, or experiment with making your own types of salads.  (Just remember that dried fruit can contain quite a chunk of sugar, so keep it light.)  Berry medley is dried cherries, dried blueberries, and dried strawberries.  This is my all-time favorite dried fruit for trail mixes, even though dried strawberries can sometimes be too big for eating out of hand (i.e. a handful of trail mix that includes one of the bigger dried strawberries by necessity doesn’t contain much else).  Golden berry blend is golden raisins, dried cranberries (with no added sugar!), and, again, dried cherries and blueberries.  Also good for trail mix.

On the other hand, if you’re just looking for dried fruit to eat out of hand, I’d recommend dried figs.  Pair them with brie (in particular, Trader Joe’s brie bites).  Yum.

Storage

Remember to keep your nuts and seeds out of direct sunlight: sunlight breaks down their natural oils and makes them go “rancid.”  Rancid nuts aren’t particularly bad for you;⁵ they just taste disgusting (very similar to stale potato chips or tortilla chips).  So keep ’em in a cool dark place.  Ditto on the dried fruit, which I keep in our “chocolate fridge.”  We have a tiny little fridge that was designed to be something you’d take to your office, but it’s so wimpy that it can’t really keep things as cold as you’d want for a real refrigerator.  But it’s perfect for chocolate, which needs to be kept cool but not too cold.  So I just toss the dried fruit in there as well.  But you can use any cool dark place; wherever you put your potatoes and/or onions is likely good.  Just make sure they stay well sealed to keep them from soaking up unwanted flavors (e.g. onions)

Stored properly, nuts, seeds, and dried fruit will last an insanely long time.  Not that that’s going to be an issue.⁶



Next time around, we’ll do even more shopping.  Up next: meat and cheese.

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1 Which is, you may recall, where I get nearly all my groceries.

2 And, if they do, I’d prefer to do the dressing myself.

3 Besides, I could only find them at Whole Foods, and who can afford that?

4 And, honestly, the dressing will have added sweetener too.  So we were going to be cheating either way.

5 Unless you eat a whole lot of them.  Of course, some sources will tell you that they’re bad for you even in small quantities.  More conflicting nutritional information.  Big surprise.

6 Well, except for the pepitas.  I use ⅓ cup of pepitas perhaps every 2 weeks or so, and the smallest container I can find is a 1 pound bag.  So those hang around for quite a while.  But everything else never has much of a chance to go bad.