I am officially twenty-seven years old now, recovering from an evening's festivities, and preparing to have a nice, quiet dinner with friends

In Iain Pears' book The Dream of Scipio, a main character at just such a dinner notes (I quote liberally):

"I will merely point out to you that all of this- food, wine, and even cognac- are nothing in comparison to what they permit, which is the easy and unrestrained exercise of friendship manifested through conversation. We have been sitting here now for near three hours in perfect amity, as we have known each other for many years- many decades in a few cases. We have managed, I am glad to say, not to talk of the war, as this last supper- my imagery again, I apologize- is to celebrate civilization, not to mourn its passing. We have talked here of literature, I believe. Some of you I heard discussing the performance of Tosca cancelled last week, taking consolation at having seen Furtwangler conduct it in Milan three years ago. One person I heard complaining about the way Cezanne is now considered a good painter. My friend Julien, who owns a Cezanne, was polite and restrained...'

"'Such refinement, gentlemen! Such delicacy of address, such sophistication of tastes. But not, for me, the essence of civilization. No; instead I heard the goddess brush her soft lips over my ear when I heard my friend over there lean across the table and ask whether it was true that a mutual acquaintance had separated from his wife.'

'Gossip? You say. Idle chitchat? Yes gentlemen, Men in trenches, men starving, men in chains, do not have the leisure to gossip. Gossip is the product of spare time, of surplus and of comfort. Gossip is the creation of civilization, and the product of friendship. For when my friend here made his inquiry he passed on the information necessary to keep the delicate fabric of friendship together....'

'I fear, my friends, we will not have much time to gossip in the future, and we will be too far apart to have anyone to gossip about. So, with this meal, I must declare civilization closed...and turn ourselves into beasts to survive what awaits us..'" (140-141)

I would extend this idea to encompass such minor celebrations as birthdays. Birthdays, focused as they are upon one person, are in essence a wasteful occupation of time and energy, time and energy produced by the work of civilization, and which describe the apogee of the idleness that civilization makes possible. We therefore take birthdays for granted, partially because we do not see the great machinery that allows us to celebrate the birth of one person, and partially because we take for granted our ability to live another year.

However, this is my argument for the intentional celebration of birthdays. The ripple of good wishes, of festivity, and of friendship that flows to one person during their birthday is, as Pears points out, the very stuff of civilization. Birthdays maintain our acquaintances, re-connect us with old friends, and allow us to indulge in frivolity of all sorts. I would say that far from taking them for granted, we should allow them to be precisely what they are: the marking of days for a mortal person, the reestablishment of community in the face of the inevitable, and an idle occasion. Instead of disregarding them, we should hold them as important rites that we are privileged to enjoy, in the full knowledge of the stuff that allows us to celebrate them in the first place.

Thank you all for your good wishes and blessings on this, my birthday. I am a very lucky man to be able to celebrate it with you, and I hope I shall be able to for many more.

I bid you peace, dear friends.

MATC: Revenge of the Conference

I have a draft of a presentation for MATC that does not, in fact, totally suck. Just in case anyone out there cares, I am in a far better mood about this particular facet of my life right now. Here is my presentation so far...

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

However, let it be known that I am still tired of Boston's lack of snow. Not only is it not snowing, but it will likely rain tonight. I would like to rephrase this for emphasis: Boston will have rain in mid-February. What the deuce is that about?

On another, more upbeat note, I made a killer vegetable lasagna last night. San Marzano tomatoes, whole milk ricotta (is there any other sort?), and lots of garlic. Comforting, but not heavy, nutritious, but still very tasty. I also threw in fresh spinach, roasted peppers, and fennel. Delicious.

Now, I'm off to read, read, read....

Rock Band + Beer - MATC Presentation = Fun

I think this is it. I have lost command of the syntactical and stylistic forms that make up the writing of the English language. My presentation for this conference is, really unnecessarily, stressing me out. I have seven minutes. Just seven. Surely I can cover that, right? Well, if today proves anything, it has proved the futility of writing. Because, you see, the paper I'm writing is shite.

Anyway, in that same vein, I would like to herald in the Valentine's Day season with this uplifting cartoon.

Now, I'm going to go and play Rock Band. Thanks for your attention.

Back on the Chain Gang...

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I've been busy with the whole graduate school phenomenon. I've also been busy eating and drinking, obviously, so let's hear the good news first, shall we?

Just had the chef's tasting at Ten Tables, a fine little restaurant in Cambridge. This intimate and elegant setup has a few more than ten tables, and the quarters are rather tight for the ones they do have, but the place wins points for out-of-the-way charm. I must admit that I was slightly disappointed that many of my 'tastings' came straight off the menu, but I can't fault the kitchen on execution. I started with a French lentil soup with house-made chorizo, proceeded to a frisee salad (I can't figure out how to add the appropriate accent, but I want you to know that I know that it needs one) with sauteed (again with the accent) baby mushrooms and pigs-ear jelly, pork-cheeks with roasted baby vegetables, and finally a sticky toffee pudding.

The lentil soup was such that I would like to eat it on any frigid evening, and the smoky flavors of the chorizo complemented it perfectly. The earthy mushrooms, paired with the crunchy salad and the richness of the jelly (which was, not surprisingly, extraordinarily delicious) made for a balanced plate. My only concern here was that the dish lacked some needed acidity. Pork cheeks were fall-apart tender, though the vegetables seemed like a bit of a throwaway. By the time I reached the pudding, I was quite full, though I did eat enough to find that it was everything sticky toffee pudding should be. So the tasting was well worth it, even if it did not surprise as much as I had hoped. Take your next date here, and you won't be disappointed.

I've mentioned Gargoyles before as the best place I've found for a martini, but now I can thoroughly recommend the food. I ate a roasted shrimp carbonara with liquid nitrogen peas, a hamburger with horseradish cheddar, and a bite of my friend's Salmon Wellington. All of these are delicious, but there is practically no purpose to the nitrogen peas besides the exoticism. I didn't notice them adding anything but a bit of texture to the dish.

In any case, the food on the bar menu is excellent, as is the bartender, but I must admit that a pass through the dining room (we were seated in the bar area) made the place seem a bit oppressive for a formal dinner. Too much fabric, too little light. I like to able to see my food, and I prefer no-nonsense, convivial environments. You can eat from the dinner menu by the bar, and you can face some windows. I'd stick to that.

For my birthday (yes, my birthday is coming!) I'll be headed to a diamond in the rough in West Medford recommended to me by Laurence Senelick, one of my professors at Tufts. The place is called Bistro 5, and it looks promising. I'll let you know about this one later.

Now, how is the graduate school part going? Well, the class I am teaching (Introduction to Acting) seems to be going well. My students are motivated and smart, with the added plus that they are willing to work with the concepts without getting easily frustrated (the ultimate trap for young actors). The class in Non-Western Performance I am taking is very interesting. At the moment, I'm still warming up to it, but I anticipate it getting more fun once we get into Indian and Balinese performance. My thesis has paralyzed me completely, and I haven't even been able to start writing.

Additionally, I'm trying hard to keep my spirits up through this, the worst part of the winter, and the most difficult part of thesis writing: the beginning. My thought is that, if I keep eating good things, perhaps I will be able to conjure the inspiration and motivation to continue? Who knows...Anyway, that's all for this post. Now...about that thesis....

HullaBalloo!

Back in Boston, freezing my knickers off and biding my time until May. I ate a lot of good food in Greensboro, it is certain. Actually, it has gotten to the point where I've started stealing menus from restaurants so I can remember what I had, and therefore, blog about the food.

So, I did that for a dinner I had at Maria's in Greensboro, just a few days before I left, and I wish I had done it for The Wooden Nickel in Hillsborough, NC. Maria's has been in business for a long time, quietly delivering good food off of my radar the entire time I've lived in the city. I went in for lunch, and while there was invited to a 5 course wine dinner made by one of my favorite chefs at Liberty Oak. For an exceedingly affordable $25, I got shrimp won-tons with a homemade sweet and sour sauce, steamed mussels in a curry broth, duck confit with fig chutney, and tea-brined pork loin with sweet-potato polenta. All of this specially paired with wines that, unfortunately, I cannot remember well. The pairings, oddly, were done by an old friend of mine who used to work at the wine shop that I used to work at. Such is the world of food/wine.

Now, The Wooden Nickel is in Hillsborough, a farming community in the middle-of-nowhere NC. This place is a hub of delicious food, and this unassuming little pub has a good share of it. Here, you can have something that I have just discovered is totally delicious: battered and fried banana peppers with ranch dressing. You can also have burgers from free-range grass-fed cows that were raised about a mile away from the restaurant, as well as bison burgers of the same ilk. You can undoubtedly taste the difference in the meat. Top that off with some delicious beer from my folks at Foothills Brewery , and you have a fine meal. My fellow blogger and delicious-food maker Amy at Earthbound Kitchen used to work down here on a farm, which is why I've been coming down to visit.

One more word on beer, because I've found a brewery worth raving about. Aviator Brewery in little Fuquay Varina, NC (just outside Raleigh, and yes, I've already made the appropriate jokes) makes several delicious options worth writing home about. My favorites were the Frostnipper and the King Rat Stout. Big, delicious beers with clean hoppy flavors and malty, creamy, coffee finishes. The brewery is not messing around about the name: it really is in an airplane hangar that used to house the owner's biplane. They seem to be doing well, and are creating an underground stir in the beer-world of the Triad area. They do a good tasting/tour at their brewery on the weekends.

Also, my personal nostalgic beer of choice, the famed Red Oak beer is now being bottled in the Triad area, and can be found in many specialty grocery stores and wine/beer stores. This beer comes in several varieties, but the standard lager is what you can get in the bottle. This stuff is brewed according to the Munich Purity Law, and you can tell by the clean, nutty flavors of this wonderful micro-brew.

Now that I'm back in Boston, I'll start reviewing Boston eateries, brews, and bars again. However, it was good to be reminded that home has some fantastic eats. I'm not ashamed of the culinary possibilities of Greensboro and its surrounds, and it could easily stand up to Boston's metropolitan area any day of the week.

Here's to eating more in the New Year!!

New Year...

They said that I'd vanished. They said that I'd never come back. They were wrong. So, maybe I got a little carried away with the whole concept of a 'break' from work by buying a Playstation 3 and spending 40 hours playing Dragon Age: Origins. That doesn't make me a bad person, it just indicates the extent to which I was traumatized by last semester.

In fact, as I get closer to my departure date, I am finding myself extremely unwilling to go back. My body and mind are rebelling against the very idea of returning to a place with some of the most awful weather that I have ever experienced, of writing my Masters thesis, of teaching a class, of conferences. I just hate all of it right now, and want to stay here with my college friends, eat good food, and drink good beer.

Ugh. Well, I'll have to go back and face the music again soon...but I have a week yet! I'll close with one of my favorite phrases in German.

Was tun, wenn's brennt? Brennen lassen! (what to do in case of fire? Let it burn!)

The Tasting...

I almost forgot! I have yet to regale you with tales of my chef's tasting. It was everything I wanted it to be. Here's a look at the menu:

Course 1: Tomato Borscht with Sour Cream and Chives

Course 2: Fried Chicken Livers and Hominy with a traditional Ragu

Course 3: Quail Breast, Creamed Spinach, Citrus-Tarragon Sauce

Course 4: Ostrich, Asian-style Slaw

Course 5: Dry-Aged Ribeye, Sautéed Green Beans, Cippolini Onions, Bordelaise

Course 6: Elk, lightly fried artichoke, mint/coriander/fennel sauce (Moroccan)

Course 7: Goat cheese, homemade apple butter, crostini

Course 8: Homemade carrot cake with cream-cheese icing

My only complaint was with the chicken livers. Not sure about those in general. On the whole, a little lackluster on the creativity, but all cooked well. Excellently fresh, local ingredients. Good service. No corking fee, and was asked whether I wanted my wine decanted: both good signs. We sat at the restaurant's titled table, Table 16, which was a lovely table situated beside a window. This is designed, of course, to be the restaurant's best table.

On the whole, I score the restaurant a 9 out of 10, and I imagine I will be able to give it a 10 on my next visit.

Tasting notes on the Carruades de Lafite, 2002: Ripe, elegant, New-World style fruit. Medium body, with flavor profile that included crayon, slate, pencil-shaving, blackberry. Drinks well, and better after decanting.