10_0313 | st. pat's...

For most, Saint Patrick’s Day is about waking up at the crack of dawn to the sound of fiddles and uilleann bagpipes, polishing off the day’s first Guinness in the shower before a breakfast of green eggs, ham, corned beef hash, and that Irish mainstay, coffee loaded with whiskey.  The rest of the day reads like an alcoholic’s vacation: beer, booze, and more of the same.  For me, the holiday means two things: Guinness beef stew and corned beef and cabbage.  This year I will be making both for the holiday dinner.  Instead of providing a recipe after-the-fact—too late for you to make your own celebration dinner, I thought I’d post one in time for you to make your own.  Here goes:

Guinness Beef Stew

1 lb well-marbled beef stew meat

8 oz Guinness Extra Stout

¼ c olive oil

4 large russet potatoes, chopped into 1” pieces

3 large carrots, chopped

4 ribs of celery, chopped

1 large yellow onion, chopped

4-6 prunes, pitted

½ c sweet peas

6 c beef stock

3 sprigs fresh thyme

2 tbsp tomato paste

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 bay leaves

5 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp oregano

½ tsp rosemary

1 tsp fresh parsley, minced

1 can crescent roll pastry

salt and pepper

½ c flour

2 tsp cornstarch

1 c warm water

1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet or saucier over medium high heat.  Season the beef with salt and pepper, dredge in the flour and then add to the skillet.  Be sure to work in small batches so the beef will sear instead of steam.  Cook beef until browned on all sides, about 5 minutes.  Repeat until all the beef is browned.

2. Add garlic to the skillet and lightly brown, about one minute. 

3. In a slow cooker, layer potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion on the bottom.  Add, thyme, prunes, bay leaves, Worchestershire, beef and garlic, oregano, rosemary, parsley, beef stock, Guinness, and tomato paste. 

4. Cook for 8 hours on low heat.

5. Add peas and preheat oven to 350.

6. Add cornstarch to warm water, mixing thoroughly.  When the cornstarch is completely dissolved, add to the beef stew and let cook for 10 more minutes until thick.

7. Ladle servings into oven safe single-serving ramekins. Place an un-rolled square of crescent roll pastry on top of each ramekin.  Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

8. Remove from oven, let cool for 5 minutes.  Serve.

10_0310 | fortissimo...

It’s funny how music can store memories.  A certain tune, a particular drum beat, or a defining chord can be a stronger vault than Fort Knox.  Somewhere in between the syncopation, rhythm, chords, and melodies there lay the memories of people, places, events.  Sometimes they are very vivid and specific, others just vague feelings.  Perhaps it’s a recollection of the first time you heard the song, or a time in your life when the song was popular to you [“OhmyGod! This is like, totally our song!].  It could be an apt soundtrack for a particular event, or some lyrics that got you through a difficult time.  Either way, music is a unique and stronger memorial than most anything else.

The living room is barely lit.  LEDs from the bar cast ethereal shadows across the room.  Everything seems a shade of gray or black: charcoal walls give way to black furniture which give way to gunmetal carpet.  I sip from my beer as the stereo behind me strains through the distorted angst of the Deftones’ first album.  As if queuing up my memories like a movie’s fanfare, those first few chords prep my brain for the ensuing onslaught of memory.  They are dark, confused, angry, and frustrated angst-filled memories.  I am back at my friend’s house.  It feels dark, foreign, uncomfortable.  Something about it keeps me from feeling like I completely belong.  The Deftones come tinny and trebeled from the small boom-box on the table between the twin beds.  It’s a new sound, completely unheard of to me.  The heavy distortion and powerful mournful vocals connect somewhere deep with this moment: it is real, raw, heartfelt, emotional.  The music seems to reflect that moment.  Feelings of anger, frustration, and loneliness permeated my being.  Even now, more than a decade later, those same feelings seem to poke their ghostly head out and sneer at me.  How could it be that here, alone in my dark apartment, half a generation away, I am still transported back to the seventh grade? 

How do these tunes get tied to our memory?  How does a song become the soundtrack for our recollections?  For me, most are the result of repeated listening during a similar circumstance, as with the event described above.  It was not uncommon that I would stay over at Kevin’s and he would play Deftones before he fell asleep.  Under similar circumstances, Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head brings me back to the cold and dark desolation that is third year studio at three in the morning.  The album is a solid 53 minutes of mellow lullaby-esque monotony, perfect for drowning out my fellow sleep-deprived borderline insane classmates during an early morning snooze on an up-turned cubicle divider.  But obviously, repeated listening under the same circumstances would fuse these memories and emotions to the sounds of those albums.  What of singular events?  How do single songs and very specific experiences get tied to one another? Tenacious D’s Wonderboy will forever bring back the vigorous, top-of-our-lungs sing-a-long at a party in my high school buddy’s downstairs: the system was anchored securely at ‘alert the neighborhood’ and ‘shake loose the pictures on the walls’ levels of bass, treble, and volume as half a dozen crazed teenagers, arms over shoulders, sang along as loud as each could.  Was it the song that made this occasion?  Perhaps.  Without it, we wouldn’t have been jauntily dancing around the room screaming out lyrics.  It is likely that any beloved song would have sufficed.  However, it was our shared love for the song that made that moment so great, so pure. 

Not all songs have good memories tied to them.  Indeed there are some that stir up negative emotions, sad events, or moments of depression.  The emotions roused by the Deftones album described above are not positive ones.  By all means they are uncomfortable and a little painful.  They represent a time in my life that was dark, confusing, and frustrating.  Does that keep me from listening to the album?  Not at all.  It is and will likely remain one of my favorite albums.  Perhaps it is the connection to these emotions that draws me back, more so than the music itself.  Perhaps this is why some people have musical guilty pleasures, such as an uncharacteristically effeminate or butch pop song, a droll and antiquated baroque chamber tune, or a heart-pounding electronic dancehall rager.  Either way, I am intrigued by this connection of music and memory.  What songs bring you back?

10_0301 | organics…

In a previous post I had mentioned that I would talk more about organic foods [“the greening of andrew…” January 22, 2010].  Before you groan under the implications of yet another boring sustainability-themed blog, don’t.  Scratch that—groan away.  This is as near to the "tree-hugging hippie crap" as it will get.  After all, we all know that “sustainability” and “climate change” is just the fear-mongering construct of the liberal Prius-driving democrats and Birkenstock wearing sissies. 

Anyway, back to making love to nature.  As promised:

Organic is better. Always.

There.  Whew, glad that’s over.  Now, on to some pictures I took.

Longfellow Bridge. Boston, MA.  (Untouched). 2006

Graffitti. Boston, MA. (Untouched) 2006

Self Portrait. Boston, MA. 2006

Stata Center, MIT.  Cambridge, MA. 2006

Stata Center, MIT. Cambridge, MA. 2006