Above average home cook, published humorist, endurance athlete, former ex-pat, recovering attorney, doting husband, dedicated dad, non-Italian speaking Italian-American, and endearingly lousy ukulele player. It’s all true. It’s all Sal. This website (www.saldetraglia.com) is my outlet to inform and entertain, on both the personal and professional fronts.
I’ve never understood why nobody in Spain makes or sells pies.
Adding to my confusion is the fact that the good people of France–a nation that borders Spain to the north–will dump just about anything into a pie shell, bake it and snarf it.
Having meditated on this curiosity for nearly eight years, I can only assume that the Spanish don’t bake pies because they’re using all of their pie plates to make paella.
Determined to lead the Spanish populace by example, I bought two Pyrex glass pie plates during my last trip to Chicago and brought them back here. My assumption, however, was that they would sit unused in my cabinet until such time as I moved back to the US or my home was burgled by a Frenchman–whichever came first.
But then I got a call from my neighbors yesterday suggesting that my daughter and I join them to pick wild blackberries.
Whoa! I saw an opportunity. Having recently picked MacIntosh apples with friends in Michigan, I was feeling quite in touch with my inner Grizzly Adams. Plus, I knew that six cups of blackberries would be enough to make a blackberry pie. So Pumpkin and I accepted the offer.
Little did I know, however, that picking six cups of blackberries is a task requiring six hours’ labor and two pints of blood loss.
But we did, in fact, return with six cups of blackberries and today set about baking a pie–the first pie that either my daughter or I had ever attempted.
Now, I consider myself a pretty above average cook–especially when the menu is heavily skewed in the direction of dead animals. But baking has always been the weakest link in my armour. And today’s project was a fitting example.
I used the pie crust recipe of a Polish-American grandmother whose baking skills I can vouch for–from third helpings of first hand experience. She makes a pretty mean czernina, as well.
But, unfortunately, her recipe was for one layer of pie crust and I needed two.
Simple enough, one would assume. Just double it.
Yes…but for me, doubling a recipe is a form of math. And for a lawyer who really wanted to be a gym teacher, math of any kind is fraught with danger.
And so it was that in the process of doubling this kindly Polish-American grandmother’s cherished pie crust recipe, I remembered to double most of the ingredients–but not quite all of them. And to make matters worse, the ingredient that I forgot to double was milk.
Our end product was a gorgeous, gooey, deep-purple berry filling encased in…a sand castle.
Oh well. As I’ve so often told my niece and nephew, you have to screw up a recipe three times before getting it right. I’ve got two more shots at this pie crust before I’ll get it right.
And when I finally get it right, who knows? Maybe I’ll just dump a bunch of czernina into it, bake it and snarf it.
I’ve just returned from a six week stay in Chicago—which seems like a lot, but passed uncomfortably quickly.
Half the time was spent trying to keep-up with my four year old daughter and her insatiable appetite for play. The other half was spent working at Acme Low Carb Tongue Depressors, Inc.’s corporate headquarters—an experience that has me seeing putty-colored fabric walls in my sleep.
The six week stint was low on blog-worthy experiences. That is, unless you are one of the few who have a fondness for reading about shopping excursions to Target and Borders, or my endless hours spent vegetating in my parent’s Jacuzzi.
But there were two outings that are long-overdue for describing here on the VTB. Why? Because they involved other bloggers.
BREAKFAST WITH THE NERD:
Pam the Nerdy and I have enjoyed a Master Po/Grasshopper-type relationship for nearly two years. It is the evangelical Pam to whom I attribute my newly found, all-consuming passion for the ukulele.
Nerd was attending a women’s-only blogger convention in downtown Chicago during the weekend of my arrival.
We met in her hotel lobby at 8am on a Saturday—a proposed meeting time that I had assumed was a joke. It wasn’t—and I was naïve to think otherwise. After all, she lives in Seattle—the birthplace and headquarters of Starbuck’s Coffee. Presumably the caffeine content of the city’s water supply is on par with its fluoride content.
Nerd—like her blog—was great, quirky fun. We skipped across the street to a breakfast joint—where I ate blueberry and cashew pancakes, she ate a heap of eggs and mushrooms covered with cheese, and the rest of the patrons stared perplexedly at the ukulele that was the centerpiece of our table.
Yes, I brought my ukulele. My brand-spankin’ new, lava black, Flea ukulele. I had, for months, felt that it was time to upgrade Felix—who served me well as a starter uke, but alas…lacked the warm tone for which I yearned.
Nerd wholeheartedly recommended a Flea. She has one. Then again, she has about 29 ukes lying around her house. But she seemed especially bullish on the Flea. So I bought one. A black one. It rocks! It matches my shirt.
Nerd claims to be an introvert; and I, most definitely, am one. Yet we chatted non-stop for three hours.
We finished breakfast and commenced crossing the street back to her hotel. It was at that point when she stopped in mid-traffic, grabbed my left earlobe, twisted it until I dropped to a knee and—with crinkled brow—growled, “You WILL play your Flea for me.”
Minutes later, we found two cushy chairs in an abandoned corner of the hotel basement—where I made a good-faith effort to wrap quivering fingers around The Beatles’ “In My Life” and Joe Brown’s “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” It was the first time I had played in front of a live audience—albeit an audience of one.
Perhaps fearing a nervous breakdown, Nerd said something complimentary, grabbed the Flea and launched into a medley of tunes that included “The Rainbow Connection.”
She plays very well. I’d expect nothing less from my Master Po.
* * * * *
[Next installment… “Q with the Finns and Michael.”]
No time to write lately. My energies have been consumed with landscaping. Here are the results thusfar. Again…I know that most of you don’t care about my yard. I’m really posting this for my parents and some friends.
This is the front yard, which I landscaped and planted in April. My-oh-my, how my little sprouts have grown.
BTW…that’s an almond tree in the foreground and an olive tree in the background.
Same front yard from the other direction.
This is the side yard. I did the lay-out this weekend. Ahem…ALL weekend. I’ll spread dark-gray pebbles (same as those in the front yard) over the landscape fabric next month. I’ll plant various drought-resistance aromatic bushes (lavender, thyme, rosemary, santolina and sage…same as in the front yard) next Spring.
BTW…that’s a fig tree.
Same side yard, from the other direction.
This is the far corner where my two side yards meet. I’ve ear-marked this large hunk of dirt as my daughter’s vegetable garden–in the hope that by growing her own vegetables, she might actually eat vegetables.
I refer to that patio space in the foreground as “The BBQ Lounge.” BTW…that’s not a UFO sitting in The BBQ Lounge. It’s a good ol’ American firepit–bought at a Chicago-area KMart and hand-carried across the Atlantic Ocean.
And finally…my other side yard. This is a Weber Grill’s-eye view.
In case you’re wondering why I don’t have a blade of grass in my yard, that’s a good question. The entire yard used to be grass, but it would die like clockwork each May-October. The Iberian sun has a real mean streak.
That’s why I opted for this desert rockscape instead. It’s low maintenance and (IMO) looks kinda good. So if anyone wants to buy my house, the price just rose considerably this weekend.
And now…would somebody please give me a back and neck massage?
My Ricola-chawing, leiderhosen-wearing, perpetually-yodelling friend, Canadian-Swiss, tagged me on a meme recently. She also tagged Tiiiiina, TBFs and Michael.
Memes are always good fodder for easy, gratuitous blog meat…especially at the fingertips of a currently less-than-motivated blogger. So, here goes.
6 WEIRD THINGS THAT I DO WHILE GETTING READY TO SLEEP OR WHILE SLEEPING.
1. My pre-bedtime, metrosexual routine: Wash hands; remove contact lenses; wash face; brush teeth; floss teeth (it’s important, folks!); wipe-down face with an astringent (preferably Aqua-Glycolic, but normally Clean ‘n Clear); spot-treatment using AcneFree (because it has very little benzoyle peroxide and thus won’t bleach my pillowcases). Yes…as you might’ve gathered, I have pretty oily skin.
2. For most of my life, I slept on my stomach. Over time, however, this proved to be murder on my neck. So with a considerable amount of effort, I trained myself–about fifteen years ago–to fall asleep on my back each night. To this day, however, I’ve almost never wake-up in the morning on my back.
3. I don’t snore. I don’t thrash-around. I almost never need night-time wee-wee breaks. I just don’t. Wee-wee breaks were, for some reason, a source of fixation for the others who were tagged on the meme. I felt obligated to make some mention of it myself.
4. Falling asleep usually isn’t a problem–mainly because of the excessive quantities of exercise that I get each day. During times of stress, however, waking up at 2-4am (and staying awake) is a frequently a problem.
5. Without an alarm clock, I’ll wake-up between 7am and 8:30am. No later. This is true regardless of how late I stayed up the night before. To me, there are few feelings as utterly miserable as sleeping late in the morning. The day is wasted, and the mind and body feel like they’re swimming in glue for the remainder of the day. Total, complete misery. Ick! Makes me shudder just thinking about it. I don’t know how 99.999% of the Spanish population can do it.
6. I’ve more or less trained myself to realize when I’m dreaming that I am, in fact, dreaming. I can’t always do it, but it happens often enough. It’s called “lucid dreaming”–i.e., knowing that you are dreaming and controlling what happens in those dreams. Lemme tell you…it’s fun!
BONUS FACTOID: Somewhere out there in cyberspace is another blog that I write. It’s an anonymous blog. It’s pretty much a download of the bizarre dreams that I’ve had–written in as much detail as I can remember, and written asap after waking-up. I haven’t been terribly diligent with its upkeep. But there’s enough material in there to be pretty interesting. Beside me, only one other person in the world knows where that blog is located and has read it. Only one.
[At the urging of a good friend, I’ve been persuaded to re-create this post.]
Doing my part to assure both the continued solvency of Iberia Airlines and the continued tenacity of global warming, I stuffed a disintegrating passport into my back pocket and–for the second time in three weeks–returned to Chicago.
What can I say? I have to get my “Malcolm in the Middle” fix somehow.
But watching television in a language that I can actually understand wasn’t my goal for this trip. At least, it wasn’t my main goal.
No…I had a more important mission. Specifically, to taste, savor, digest–and hopefully not regurgitate–as much midwestern US kitsch as would be humanly (if not humanely) possible.
Mission accomplished! As you’ll soon see.
And, so…with that background in mind, I am pleased to present to my long-suffering, oft-neglected readers…SAL’S KITSCH-O-LICIOUS TOUR ’07.
But first, a little something to put us all in the mood!
MY FLIGHT OVER: A BRUSH WITH GREATNESS.
I knew that my Kitsch-o-licious Tour would be a smashing success, and I knew it before I even left Madrid.
How so? Because as I walked down the airplane aisle in search of seat 27D, I noticed that my seatmate was a slumping, disshevelled dude who looked like the fruit of a coital coupling between Will Ferrell and Hellboy.
I gingerly lowered myself into the seat–hoping not to disturb him. And also hoping that the undercover air marshals were both nearby and fully-caffeinated.
But as it turned out, I had nothing to fear. My seatmate wasn’t Satan’s spawn. He was this man:
Santa Fe artist and documentary film-maker Adam Jonas Horowitz.
And what makes Adam great? Well, Adam is the artist that created this:
Fridgehenge (aka, Stonefridge)!
Perhaps you’ve heard of it. About a decade ago, Adam swaggered over to a Santa Fe landfill and built a Stonehenge reproduction made entirely of discarded refrigerators.
Loved and hated in equal parts, Fridgehenge has been the subject of a decade-long battle of wills between Adam and the artists community vs. Santa Fe’s Sanitation Department and other humorless tight-asses.
Adam was the most fascinating seatmate I’ve had. He chatted half the flight away, talking about the documentary that he is filming for PBS (currently in the editing stage, it’s about US weapons testing in the Marshall Islands)…talking about why he looked as frightening as he did (he had been partying in Morocco and hadn’t slept for three days)…and making an omnious prediction.
His prediction was that Santa Fe officials would take advantage of his extended absence by whacking Fridgehenge once and for all–and then, blaming it on the weather.
LET THE TOUR BEGIN! FIRST STOP ON THE TOUR: SMOKIN’ JAC’S.
We all were introduced to Smokin’ Jac’s BBQ Shack in THIS post.
Remember? Smokin’ Jac is the man that car-jacked the Partridge Family, stole their bus, sawed the ass off of it and bolted a smoker the size of Pennsylvania to its floorboard.
He then finds a cozy-looking parking lot, parks the bus, fires-up the smoker and slings Q to passers-by until his inventory is depleted or the local health inspector leaps from the bushes–whichever occurs first.
With the aid of a local intermediary, I made contact with Smokin’ Jac a week earlier…and he confirmed that he would be peddlin’ Q throughout the entire weekend of my visit.
Well…Smokin’ Jac was either a liar, or narcoleptic, or had just completed a course in Spanish Business Practices.
Why? Because when I arrived at his bus–licking my chops and pining for a little “rib tips, chix and ore”–the only thing smoking was a well-tattooed woman in a tube top standing in the adjoining parking lot.
Still, a legend is a legend–even if that legend was lying dead in a ditch at that very moment. So I decided that I should, at least, seize the opportunity for an impromptu photo-op in front of the legend’s arsenal.
NEXT STOP: DOGGIE DRIVE-THRU.
My mourning at the loss of Smokin’ Jac didn’t last long. In fact, it lasted only long enough for me to turn my head to the right.
That’s when I saw a sight that cranked the kitsch-o-meter up another notch. Doggie Drive-thru!
I’m sure you’ll agree that there are few things as dangerous as driving around with a hungry dog in the backseat of your Toyota Prius. What if he tries to eat your head at 65 mph?
But the good citizens of this sleepy midwestern town need not worry about Bowser’s rolling blood lust. That’s because Doggie Drive-thru sells a wide assortment of baked-goods to sate your famished pooch. And best of all, you can buy them without leaving the air-conditioned comfort of your car or–God forbid–making use of those archaic, outdated appendages that medical experts refer to as “legs.”
Doggie Drive-thru even sells “holistic food.” It says so right on the shack. That’s good, because you never know when the aforementioned Bowser might have a taste for Free-range Alpo or gluten-free Milk Bone Dog Biscuits.
And for those of you wondering…MSG will be withheld upon request.
HOOKED ON LUNKER’S:
Lunker’s is a sporting goods superstore. It’s definition of “sport,” however, is rather narrow–being limited only to those in which wildlife flesh is pierced with hooks or projectiles.
Lunker’s is enormous. It is as big as that government warehouse in the last scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”–only much more well-stocked. Who would’ve thunk that garter belts come in camouflage?!
Hidden in various nooks and crannies of the store are glass pens holding a wide array of fierce beasts. In one corner, there is a live adult alligator. In another is a tank full of piranhas. And in another is…oh my God!…that well-tattooed woman in the tube top!
But there were two aspects of Lunker’s that really got my juices a-flowin’.
One was this:
That’s right! An 8,000 lbs. fiberglass large-mouthed bass smashing through a brick wall. Believe me, folks…this picture doesn’t do it justice. Let’s sit silently for a moment and bathe in the understated brilliance of this elegant masterpiece.
[Solemn pause.]
I wonder how many midwestern husbands have caught a frying pan to the skull for a firing-off a pearl of wit like, “Look, hon! His mouth is almost as big as yours! Yuk, yuk…THUNNNNNNNG!!!”
The other was this:
The Angler’s Inn! A totally kitsch-o-licious restaurant located smack-dab in the middle of Lunker’s.
It’s decor is…let’s just say, “eclectic.” Imagine an “Ernest Hemingway meets Nanook of the North meets Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island” motif.
The entire ceiling is packed with hanging Christmas lights, to give the joint a “dining al fresco under the stars” feel. But then, those Christmas lights are peppered with tiki dolls. And on a far wall is a stuffed moose head.
Each booth has its own fish tank. A different type of fish in each tank. Below the fish tank of my booth was an autographed picture of a barely-pubescent Cassius Clay.
Let me tell you about the food. Which, I should mention, wasn’t half bad.
The Angler’s Inn has a menu that offers….well, just about everything. I had the buffalo burger. I almost chose the elk burger, but the waitress wouldn’t commit as to its gaminess. I’m told that the ostrich burger tastes just like ostrich.
It also offers frog legs…perch…walleye…blue gill…alligator.
But it doesn’t stop there! The Angler’s Inn serves Mexican food. And Greek gyros. And Italian beef. And sushi.
Sushi!
The Angler’s Inn’s signature dish is “Boom Boom Shrimp”–although I decided against this specialty because I feared that “Boom Boom” referred to its morning-after effect on the human colon.
So…by now you’re probably thinking, “Fridgehenge, Smokin’ Jac, Doggie Drive-thru and Lunker’s. There’s no way that Sal can top that.”
Well, guess what? I can!
THE PIECE DE RESISTANCE: MODIFIED LAWN MOWER RACING.
Check it out! There are guys out there who spend their free time suping-up lawn mowers and racing them on weekends. And there are guys like me who pay money to watch them.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Jeez! What could be more boring than watching a bunch of middle-aged men sputter around a track on a lawn mower?”
Oh…how wrong you are. Because these are not just lawn mowers. They’re MODIFIED lawn mowers. As one of the drivers proudly told me in the pits, “These babies can hit 40 mph on the straight-aways.”
40 mph, my friends! This ain’t your father’s lawn mower.
Just check-out the looks of intense concentration on the drivers’ faces. Or…maybe it’s not concentration. Maybe it’s the Boom Boom Shrimp.
I am tempted to poke fun at this “sport,” but I won’t. And I won’t for two reasons.
First, this group of racers–and everyone else sitting in the bleachers–were about the friendliest, most genuine people you’d ever meet. It’s ironic, because you’d expect a modified lawn mower race to be precisely the type of venue where you’d be beaten and left for dead just for something like…oh, I dunno…having the only car in the parking lot that was made in Japan.
But nothing of the sort! I’d bring my daughter to the races without hesitation.
The second reason for not mocking it is that…well, to be honest…I really got into it. It was damn exciting, and a helluva lotta fun.
My new-found love for this sport notwithstanding, I won’t deny the fact that modified lawn mower racing is, more or less, the Holy Grail of kitsch.
Thank God that I could be a part of it, and God bless America!
But that’s not all! The races had yet-another surprise in store. A pot luck lunch!
For $4 dollars a head, it was all you could eat. $3 a head if you brought a dish to pass. Pictured above is what I ate. A hot dog, a hamburger, a Ramen noodle salad, some black beans and corn taco salad, and…as promised…Hamburger Helper Stroganoff.
Bocuse certainly wouldn’t approve, but it did taste kinda like stroganoff.
Not pictured above (because I inhaled it in the blink of an eye) is dessert: Rice Crispy Treats, and some magically–not to mention, surprisingly–delicious Lucky Charms Treats.
IN CLOSING:
Let this post be a lesson to all you pretentious foreigners who claim that the US has no culture.
The US has tons of culture! But finding that culture is a bit like finding slugs before a rainstorm. You sometimes need to turn-over rocks and poke-around in places where you might not normally care to poke.
Hey! How about song? One that really captures the essence of Sal’s Kitsch-o-licious Tour ’07!
What’s the big deal about hemidemisemiquavers? Nothing, except that I used this word several times in my “Sal Comes Up for Air” post and only one of you noticed. I guess the rest of you use the term “hemidemisemiquaver” conversationally on a daily basis. Sorry…my bad.
And now for yet-another teaser!
I just returned from Chicago this morning (yes…that’s twice in three weeks) and will soon provide all the details on…”Sal’s Kitch-o-licious Tour ’07.”
I won’t spoil the surprises, but I will tell you that the story involves 40 mph lawn mowers, Hamburger Helper and a large-mouthed bass smashing through a brick wall.
