Hello my friends
I'm very happy you are visiting!
Hello my friends
I'm very happy you are visiting!
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Friday, March 22, 2019
Phagophobia.
The fear of swallowing, including pills.
My cure: Oysterettes.
Three ‘e’s. Three ‘t’s.
And you don’t need a prescription to buy a box.
Now I don’t boast of having the illness.
I take eight pills a day, all at the same time.
I put them on my fingers, pop them, and with a single swallow of water, ingest them all.
But just before I sleep I take a single 3mg dose of melatonin.
With a swig of water.
The problem? About half the time that miniscule guy sticks in my throat.
Sometimes I’m not sure if I’ve swallowed he pill or not but I still retain the sensation that it’s stuck.
Bothersome.
Until I got the idea of, drumroll please, Oysterettes.
Now I pop an Oysterette in my mouth along with the tiny pill and crunch them both into very tiny pieces which my saliva turns into a mush which I swallow with a swig of water.
Not a problem since.
Phagophobia I give you Oysterettes.
Cooking a goose follows the same idiom as the basic roast chicken with perhaps a little less cooking time, like 3 minutes per pound.
Despite being a fowl, goose can be categorized as a dark meat tending to red.
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Postings Count, Weather Brief, and Dinner
Friday, March 22, 2019
My 344rd consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
Time is 12.01am.
On Friday Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 48* with a feels-like temperature of 43* with rain.
Dinner of Roast Goose, slow-roast, of course. Looking forward to a dinner, with company, of perhaps my favorite meat.
Spring here and feeling like it.
Yayy!
Nasty surprises are most unwelcome.
Tick Tock. In clock language:
Enjoy today.
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Tick Tock : Marking Calendars and Deep Weather
After 344 posts we’re at the 6.88% mark of my commitment, the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.
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Question of the Day:
What is an oyster cracker?
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Love your notes.
Contact me at existentialautotrip@hotmail.com
This from Colleen Getty, writer and organizer of Room to Write.
Hi Dom,
I haven't send you a "Hello" in a bit so I thought I would send word and you'd be happy to know that I am roasting a chicken for dinner tonight!:) It truly is the cheapest and most delicious meal that enables a family of 6 to eat like kings and queens for about $6---then I always crank at least one (usually two) more meals out of it when I stick the carcass in a pot of water after we eat and boil. In the winter, I just stick it in the "walk-in" fridge (Translate: back porch) where it is cold until the next day when I can slowly heat it up and start the soup-making process. (Chef secret ingredient in chicken soup: dried tarragon--if you've never tried it--try it, you'll be surprised!:)
So, after the can of greens, a few potatoes, rice or noodles and a couple of onions and celery stalks--we usually are able to get 3 meals out of one chicken for less then $10--and since soup is so easily shared with our mothers--they usually reap the benefits of a few bowls of soup too!
Happy Cooking Dom!! And, Happy belated St. Patrick's Day:)
Cheers,
Colleen:)
Web Meister responds: Delighted to hear from you, my dear. As always, you have my admiration for your energy in raising a young family, cooking for the group, and overseeing numerous writing endeavors.
Thanks for passing on your recent experience with the economies of a chicken dinner.
"Where's that damn monkey?" the poodle says.
"I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"
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Chuckle of the Day
A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her poodle along for company.
One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long, discovers that he's lost.
Wandering about, he notices a hungry-looking leopard heading rapidly in his direction.
The poodle thinks, "Oh, oh!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat.
Just as the leopard is about to leap, the poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?"
Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees.
"Whew!", says the leopard, "That was close! That poodle nearly had me!"
Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard.
The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard.
The leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back so you can watch me chew that poodle to bits!"
Now, the poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?", but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and waits until they get just close enough to hear.
"Where's that damn monkey?" the poodle says. "I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard!"
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Occasional Notes
by Howard Dinin
Provence has a special place for me in my cafe chronicles. It was there I learned to relax, not because of the coffee, but because of what it’s easiest to call the vibe. It is a distillation, if not a concentration – like a good brew of a superlative bean and fresh pure mountain water – of the general quality of life in that part of the world. I would admit to the by now rather tattered quality of the stereotype, were it not for one thing. It’s true, at least to the extent that I’ve lived it for 30 years.
I would say, there isn’t any other place just like this place anywhere near this place, so this must be the place, but I happen to know there’s another cafe to the left around the corner, and if you go straight up the street in the background, there’s another about a half-block away, and then three more another half-block further.
The point is, you pick your spot. Literally. Find a chair in the sun (this is early January, about 11 in the morning) and sit down. Someone will be around eventually to take your order. An expresso is less than a euro-fifty. And it comes with a glass of water, sugar, and a cookie.
See the stacked chairs? They’ll stay that way until about the first market day near Pentecost, usually in May, when the crowds begin to form.
It was that long ago that I discovered that even winter is not what we expect in the northeast. Even at the higher elevations of the village I stumbled upon and grew to love, even to the extent of plopping down well over a quarter of a million dollars just to claim a patch – a small one – of it.
What I’m talking about here is not the life of leisure, but the lack of frenzy. You experience it even in the cities, at least in winter. And even in the posh cafés, the ones with pedigree, like Les Deux Garçons in Aix-en-Provence, shown here on a January morning. There is no greater degree of relaxation here than at the Grand Café du Cours (my favorite hang; see above), but it may be a bit more historic.
Les Deux Garçons has been in Aix, the city of Cezanne’s birth and lifelong residence, for over 225 years. It’s a good bet the artist spent the odd moment of contemplation at one of those tables… the family business was right across the street (you can see the billboard in the right of the photo).
So why should I expect the perfectly ordinary act of going to a place dedicated to doling out cups of coffee to be any different? Because, like the remnants of sun enmeshed even in the chill air of a hibernal morning in late December, there is a bit of the spirit of a more measured, a much better paced, way of life in every single moment spent there. I mean, as long as you confine yourself to the still relatively intact rural confines of small otherwise seemingly nondescript villages that collect in interlocking circles of commerce in the foothills of the French Alps. It’s the region known as the Haut Var.
The virtue of wintering, and, truth be told, springing and even autumnizing, in the rural hamlets of the Haut Var is the sparsity of the native population. Unencumbered by the hordes of tourists that begin to arrive about six weeks after Easter from other parts of France, from other parts of Europe, the native way of life, which is encapsulated in the concept, not so much of mañana as of “soon enough” comes to the fore.
One of many notebooks I’ve accumulated over the years. This one from 2009, about two years before the photo at the beginning of the post of the Grand Café du Cours, where many of those notebooks were my companions. Always in ink, usually a fountain pen. Don’t ever delude yourself into imagining someday there’ll be wifi. That’s one reason for the pen and ink.
Another reason is, a laptop is not exactly harmonious with the spirit of dolce far niente, if you have any hope of catching it…
And it’s always waiting for you, even in the rain, ‘cause there’s an awning, down at the café.
And as I say, it pervades. Even – if not especially – down to the small tables of the local cafe.
Oyster Crackers
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Answer to the Question of the Day:
What is an oysterette?
Oyster crackers are small, salted crackers, typically rounds about 0.6 in (15 mm) in diameter, although a slightly smaller hexagonal variety is also prevalent.
They are often served with oyster stew.
They are similar in ingredients and flavor to saltine crackers.
The Westminster Cracker Company of Rutland, Vermont, has been making oyster crackers since 1828.
However, a counterclaim is that Adam Exton is credited with inventing the oyster cracker.
An old ad.
Adam Exton, a baker in Trenton, New Jersey, emigrated to America from Lancashire, England, in 1842.
In Trenton, Exton opened a cake and cracker bakery with his brother-in-law, Richard Aspden, in 1846.
Although Aspden died the following year, Exton continued with the bakery (the "Exton Cracker Bakery" or "Adam Exton & Co.").
He invented a machine that rolled and docked pastry and solved the sanitary problems of hand-rolling crackers.
The history of the oyster cracker was related by Exton's nephew, also named Adam Exton, in the Trenton Evening Times newspaper on May 31, 1917:
Even a cracker has a history. The past, present and future of the little disc of baked dough with "Exton" stamped across the face of it was discussed by Rotarian Adam Exton, of the Exton Cracker Company, at the weekly meeting of Trenton Rotary Club held this afternoon at Hildebrecht's... Manufacture of the Exton oyster cracker was started in Trenton, in the same location now occupied by the company's factory of Center Street, in 1847. Adam Exton, uncle of the speaker, was the originator of the oyster cracker. At the outset the factory had an output of 100 pounds of crackers a day, 36 of them to a pound, making a daily capacity of 3,600 crackers.
I love stealing those little packets of oyster crackers.
Great snacks.
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Good Morning on this Friday, the Twenty-second of March.
Today we talked about Oysterettes as a boost to swallowing pills.
We talked about the weather and calendar.
We posted a poodle and leopard chuckle.
We posted a letter from Colleen Getty of Room to Write.
We posted another of the brilliant series from Howard Dinin’s texts and images of cafes.
And, finally, we shared some information on oysterettes.
And now? Gotta go.
Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?
See you soon.
Your Love