Friday Bullets For The First Of August

Can you believe it’s August already? Can you believe the decade is almost over? This is crazy. Who sped up the clock? August is a month that is quite remarkable for standing for not much. Has anything remarkable happened in August? Here is a list of things that happened on this date. Hey, in 860 the Peace of Koblenz was signed by Charles the Bare, Louis the German and Lotharius II. Why didn’t I think of Lotharius when I was naming the boy?

  • I have written about Manny many times. I will write about him no more, however, as Manny is now a player for the Dodgers. Jason Bay, however, is a player for the Red Sox. I trust back bacon sandwiches and maple syrup laced cocktails are the order of the day where you are today.
  • I don’t cross pollinate the beer blog posts over here but this is a great example of DadLit.
  • Lawless? Would this be the same colonial French who in the 1680s took the leaders of the Iroquois nation invited to meet in Kingston, caged them and sent them to be galley slaves?
  • I like it when Harper stays away from policy and just taunts. He is better at mean than bright.
  • I hate the new Google little icon. I’ve looked at the damn lower case purple “g” for, what, a couple of months now and I swear it’s the stupidest logo I have ever seen. I’d ask them why they did swtiched from the old “g” but
  • A great primer on the rainbow pitch.

Well, that is enough for today. What do you want from me? Find a TV set to watch the Sox v. Oakland today. Watch Jason Bay get a standing ovation and then watch him quietly play great baseball.

None

My Last 24 Hours

I was within a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7 for around 18 hours not counting the drive to and from Toronto. It was very much like spending 18 hours within a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7. The oddest thing was getting out of the hotel room to go to where I was speaking to the conference only to learn that the conference was at another hotel. I know the strip malls and industrial parks of the area within more than a couple hundred yards of highway 400 and highway 7 very well now. I am enriched.

The Red Sox Make My Life Better

Not that things are bad but if it weren’t for the Red Sox I wouldn’t have met the nice people from Albany attending a wedding at our hotel’s bar on Saturday night. I wouldn’t have been able to watch them checking the scores inning by inning as they dashed in, a little less stable from their free bar each time they popped around the corner and a little more happy when they were told how the lead was stretching over the Indians. Last night it was quieter, drifting in the dark, listening to Joe Castiglione‘s squeaky twang of a voice shout with excitement when Lofton was held up at third:

But Lugo was rescued by one of Cleveland’s mistakes, a mistake by Skinner. Franklin Gutiérrez slapped a grounder over third base and off the photographer’s box along the left-field line. The ball caromed into shallow left field, where Manny Ramírez ambled after it. Skinner waved Lofton around third, but after Lofton reached the base, Skinner put up his hands and stopped him. Ramírez was still a few steps away from the ball. Skinner actually tried to wave Lofton home again, but it was too late. Lofton, who stared at Skinner, was anchored to third.

So noting, The New York Times seems a little snarky this morning, implying somehow that such things are cheap, perhaps suggesting that to comeback in this way is not to come back against the Yankees. Tell that to the man from Albany who I suspect, again but a little hungover this time, pumped his fist and shouted “YES!!”

Travelling South With My Simmering Economic Rage

I am not really helping things. But you know I have been driving into the US on a regular basis for years. Yet still I intend to shop.

Canada’s loonie has been at or above par with the American dollar for weeks, which has sparked outrage among shoppers frustrated by the fact goods still cost substantially more in Canada than comparable items in the U.S. Fuelled by the strong currency, 3.5 million Canadians travelled to the U.S. in August, Statistics Canada said this week. The Canadian dollar closed at US$1.0355 on Friday, the highest level in 33 years.

If we have outrage, I think we also need a list of our demands. I want cheaper hamburger helper. I never buy it but it is one of those things that is 79 cents in the US and 2.29 here. And..ummm…better slow cooked meats, that goes without saying. Next – cheaper tees and hoodies. Have you seen a Steve and Barry’s or even a decent Champs? Cheaper hoodies with better stuff on them. I can’t find anything with a reference to CFL teams or, say, Saskatoon or even Moncton but if I drive into northern New York, plenty of cool stuff. And cheap furniture stores that sell stuff that looks like it wasn’t built with the crap they build rental apartment kitchen cupboards with. Did I mention slow cooked meat…ok…yup…

Baltimore Pit Beef For Christmas


Highlight of the last bit of 2007 (and have you realized that we are 3/4s though the first decade of the 21st century?) is going to be a trip to Baltimore. I got invited last Christmas to write a chapter of a book called Beer and Philosophy and now we are invited to the book launch.

Being a 20 watt bulb in the brightly lit world that is beer writing has a few perks and none is so perkier [Ed.: wow, did that came out wrong!] than the genial clan of more senior writers who will answer important questions like the one I posed to Lew Bryson about where to find the best BBQ in Baltimore:

The thing you want in Bawlmer is pit beef, a sinfully delish pile of rare, juicy beef piled high on a roll. There are several of these joints out on Pulaski Highway (like in this catty review: I liked Chaps, so there, nyah. I understand Big Al’s is closed now…sigh. More at this Chowhound link which also makes reference to the Double T local chain of diners (WELL worth your time for breakfast, my friend) and while some of them are not in the most savory of locations, the beef is nothing but. Pit beef is kinda like spiedies in that for some odd reason it’s never really traveled, but is definitely worshipful in situ.

Fabulous. Having already, in 2007, checked the wonderful western NY sandwich called a “weck” off my list of local US foods, the prospect of pit beef adds another layer of glowing orange to my vision of the next Yule. I found a great article from 2000 in the New York Times that further elaborates the concept:

Pit beef is Baltimore’s version of barbecue: beef grilled crusty on the outside, rare and juicy inside and heaped high on a sandwich. Several things make it distinctive in the realm of American barbecue. For starters, pit beef is grilled, not smoked, so it lacks the heavy hickory or mesquite flavor characteristic of Texas- or Kansas City-style barbecue. It is also ideally served rare, which would be unthinkable for a Texas-style brisket. Baltimore pit bosses use top round, not brisket, and to make this flavorful but tough cut of beef tender, they shave it paper-thin on a meat slicer.

Then there’s the bread: the proper way to serve pit beef is on a kaiser roll or, more distinctively, on rye bread. The caraway seeds in the rye reflect the Eastern European ancestry of many Baltimoreans in this part of town and add an aromatic, earthy flavor to the beef. Finally, there is the sauce. No ketchup, brown sugar and liquid smoke, as you would find in Kansas City. No Texas-style chili hellfire or piquant vinegar sauces in the style of North Carolina. The proper condiment for Baltimore pit beef is horseradish sauce — as much as you can bear without crying. And speaking of crying, you need slices of crisp, pungent white onion to make the sandwich complete.

This is all so excellent. One of my gripes as a Canadian is that there are few actual local foods. We can speak of Quebec cuisine (whether lowly comforting poutine or the selection of game that you do not get in English speaking Canada) and we can think of the seafood of Atlantic Canada but these are entire ranges of food based on local resources. A phenomenon at far too high a level. No, what I love about traveling in the US is that local thing on a bun that is made only in that neighbourhood or those couple of counties: Rochester’s garbage plate or the various regional BBQs of the Carolina, the pinnacle of one of which Lew encountered this week. Where is our Fat Boy fish sandwich with a wild blueberry frappe? Our humble hot or our bap and square? Where is our Chocolate Boston – which I have learned is made even more over the top at Purity Dairy by placing an entire sundae on top of a milk shake?

A Kick In The Teeth

Amongst all the insane middle-of-the-night thunder and lightning – again – I turned on the radio and heard that the Yankees were tied at six in the 6th inning in Detroit…because, due to rain delay, they only started at 11 pm and finished in extra innings around 3:30 am. Smile and back to sleep.

I wake to find the Yankees lost. The Yaa-aaa-aaa-aaa-kees lost. Which means they are 6.5 back as the Sox swept the Sox in a double header on the road for the first time since the time of the dinosaurs and grass that looks like tiny little palm trees.

And so off to find a growler of mild in old Galt.

Important BBQ Knowledge

Via NYCO, and just for the record, this post is very important not because of its critique of the Dino BBQ but because of its identification of three more worthy WNY BBQ joints to explore:

But there I was, chewing on a rib as Harleys rumbled up and parked next to my outdoor table, thinking: Buffalo barbecue is this good. There might not be one place that’s as conspicuously a real, fun joint, but I’ll take the ribs at Suzy-Qs and Kentucky Greg’s or the brisket at One Eyed Jack’s over what the Dinosaur served me.

Buffalo Pundit provides more geographical and qualitative detail: “Tonawanda’s Suzy Q’s ribs (amazing), Lockport’s One Eyed Jack’s brisket (tender & smoky), and Cheektowaga’s Kentucky Greg’s ribs (quite excellent).” I can’t believe I was just in Lockport and my homing devices failed to alert me to a BBQ joint called “One Eyed Jack’s”.

Note in comments to BP: Sticky Lips BBQ on Culver, etc.