Monday, March 18, 2024

Monday, Monday

 Back home. Except it doesn't feel like home yet. Had a very nice time, especially enjoyed all the seafood and music we were able to take it. Had the best calamari I have ever had. Lots of walking-didn't gain any weight despite eating like crazy. We had 20/21 sunny days. It was 61 every day. Perfect walking weather. La Jolla is beautiful.


Reading Wednesday's Child, which I think I read before. It's early in his series. Watched Paris Murders pretty much exclusively. Awfully violent but the detectives are interesting. Also watched DOG HOUSE UK Season 5. Although I have never owned a dog, I find them fun to watch.


So what is new on your front?

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Short Story Wednesday

 (from 2013) (And long before the movie, PIG)

"Michigan Man’s Tastes Get Him Into Trouble"
by Patti Abbott


Daniel was not a gastronome at birth, but it wasn’t long before the word was applicable. Stories detailing incidents of his superior palate as a toddler were numerous. He learned his skills at the side of the finest cook he’d ever met—his mother. 

“Too much rosemary?” she’d ask him before serving the holiday dinner. 

The aroma of roasted poultry was intoxicating to her young son, even if the chicken was a tad over-infused with garlic. She held the fork out, having stolen the smallest tidbit from the underside of a breast. 


“More lemon. And a pinch more marjoram.”


“Brilliant,” she said, after tasting it.


Daniel’s early reading matter was the work of James Beard, and by twelve, he’d successfully replicated Beards’ recipes. He taught himself French to study the work of Escoffier, the author of Le Guide Culinaire, and inventor of the five mother sauces. Daniel aspired to the title bestowed on his mentor: roi des cuisiners et cuisinier des rois.(king of the chefs and chef of the kings). 

This was unlikely however since he rarely cooked for anyone other than himself. 


Eventually Daniel came on the idea of using the finest ingredients available to create a contemporary version of the five sauces. Quelle drole to confine oneself to ingredients as prosaic as butter, garlic and cheese. He would turn Escoffier’s codification on its ear. 

The first four sauces were unparalleled successes. His fruit sauce featured Dansuke watermelons and Yubari cantaloupes, the world’s most expensive melons. A curry was composed of Devon crab, Beluga caviar, Scottish lobster, and quail eggs. A topping composed of caviar and goji berries made his eyes roll with pleasure, and his penultimate sauce, a dessert concoction, used 28 different imported cocoas, some formulated personally for him by chocolatiers.

His final sauce would use white truffles, available only a few months each year. The best were found in Italy, and especially in Alba. Traditionally the truffles had been ferreted out by pigs that, mysteriously, had the nose for it. But pigs also had the inclination to gobble down the white gold, sometimes destroying the entire yield. So pigs had mostly been replaced by dogs that were satisfied to feast on pedestrian treats rather than the truffles. 

“I should like to go along,” Daniel told the importer at the Eastern Market in Detroit. 

“To the airport to pick up your shipment?” 

“To Roccafluvione.” 

This was the town in the Le Marche region his supplier identified as a viable source.


“You mean to the marketplace there?”


Daniel drew an impatient breath. “No. I want to hunt them myself. I should like to smell the earth, to inhale the scent I’ve read about since childhood.” He paused. “And I want to hunt with pigs rather than the dogs. I have a preference for traditional methods.”  

He’d waited a long time for this day and he’d be damned it some mutt was going to tarnish the image of striding amidst the oak trees, pig in hand.

“It’s mostly forbidden,” said his importer. “You’ll have to make special arrangements.”

“I’m prepared to do whatever it takes.” 


Daniel opened his wallet. And eventually his bank account.


And so it was on a dark October day that Daniel and his guide, Bruno, and the Marco, the pig, set out into the hills.


“No one knows you are here?”

Daniel shook his head. 

“You must never speak of this excursion to anyone. Normally I’d ask you to wear a blindfold,” his guide said in excellent English. “But I doubt you will make a second trip.”

“No,” Daniel agreed. “This will be my only outing. Truthfully I am not fond of fungi. They tend to disagree with me, in fact.” His stomach was already rumbling.

“Then why this trip? We have perfected the shipment of truffles, you know.” 

Daniel explained his lifelong desire to hunt for the truffles that would complete his final sauce.


The man nodded knowingly. “I detest red wine. Yet I always drink a glass or two at my local tavern. The owner makes a point of giving me the best red wine in the house because of my profession,” he said, waving his arm around. “I know it’s good, but I’d much prefer beer.”

The pig, trudged on, only occasionally giving a half-hearted snort. He was very large and far uglier than Daniel had imagined.


“You will know you are amongst the truffles when we arrive. It will remind you of locker rooms back in school. Feet, sweat, testosterone, earth.” Bruno drew a breath and his chest expanded. “Marco has the area’s finest sense of smell. Much better than those damned dogs.”


Daniel smiled.


“So you’re going to eat only enough to see that this sauce is up to snuff, and then never touch them again,” Bruno said, after a while.


“That’s about the size of it,” Daniel said. “Just enough to ascertain I have met my objective.”


The oak trees towered above them, the forest growing denser as they walked. At last, Bruno glanced at Daniel, indicating with his eyes that the rope had been tugged by the eager pig. Using the stout stick, he made Marco back away. The three of them stopped. A nice stand of oaks towered over a pirate’s bounty of the white gold. 


The odor was overpowering, and Daniel suddenly felt light-headed. Perhaps it was not just eating fungi that made him ill: it could also be the smell. Without warning, he plunged headlong into the swell of truffles. 

The pig, angry at this unexpected blanketing of his greatest joy, jerked loose of the rope, immediately gobbling away at both Daniel and the truffles. Within seconds, a piece of Daniel and a piece of the white truffles co-mingled. A piece of leg, a piece of thigh. And so it went.


Bruno stood dumbfounded, trying to decide what to do. There was little choice, he thought, looking at the earth beneath him. Knowing the trouble this affair would cause, he and his pig, beaten hard with a stick, ran all the way home.


Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Short Story Wednesday: "Scab Painting" Yoka Ogawa


 https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/scab-painting

 

This is one I would have expected by Murakami. Twins are born. One is initially smaller but over time becomes the larger twin. This larger twin collects newspaper articles on imposters and is an expert at removing scabs. His sibling indulges this activity until he is grown and no longer has scabs. The brother then learns how to hurt himself enough to produced scabs. Over time, he fashions artwork from his scabs and when he dies his sibling presents them to the mourners as tokens.  

Perhaps the flash fiction length produces stories like this that are more an idea than a story. I am not even entirely sure of the sex of the more normal twin. The writer never says they are both boys but in fact, refers to this twin as a tomboy. Or maybe I missed the reference. An odd one indeed.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Short Story Wednesday: "My Cheesecake-Shaped Poverty" Haroki Murakami


 https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/my-cheesecake-shaped-poverty-haruki-murakami

 Kevin, my grandson, has been reading Murakami in school. He even had to write a story in the style of Murakami. I would love to read it. I often wonder if they ever read the writers we read fifty years ago. It seems not. Certainly they are rarely white male authors.

This is a very ordinary story for a writer known for his unusual stories. A young and very poor couple rent a house on a triangle-shaped property well outside of the city. The reason for the very low rent is that trains pass by incessantly day and night. They cannot hear each other speak. They live here for two years.  This has to be a true story because I see no other reason Murakami would write it. I guess it's just to point out what poverty forces on people. Although most young couples lived a version of this.