The Real Charlie

Live Free Or Die

Had an interesting trip up to Rochester, New Hampshire on Friday night. We were heading up to see a show at artstream, where Abby's work was exhibited last year. Shortly after leaving here we hit massive traffic jams, very stressful for me at the end of a not-so-hot work week. We then had 30 minutes of smooth sailing, followed by forty minutes of white knuckle driving in a massive electrical storm, with some of the heaviest rain I've ever seen. Ever. Got to the gallery, had a glass of wine, and met the artists Lisa Congdon and Lisa Solomon - this picture is of your humble servant shaking hands with Lisa Solomon, and Lisa Congdon is standing in the background:

The patterned dress that you can glimpse under my arm is Abby, who I must say looked adorable on Friday night, as she so often does.

Always suckers for a new piece of artwork, we bought "Realgar" by Lisa Solomon:

Realgar is a mineral, a natural ore form of cyanide. I remember it will from my geology days. This piece has Arabic text, skulls and is mixed media. And orange. How can it not be awesome? I predict a fight to keep it out of Roxanne's room, as it has so many of her favorite things. Between the color and the "skullies," we might not win this one.

After seeing the show we drove to Portsmouth and had good food and awesome beer at Portsmouth Brewery, followed by a long drive home in yet another electrical storm. The rest of the weekend was fun but comparatively uneventful.

Poopa and Total Return

Happy New Year, reading public. I've been doing some cooking the past few days from "Aromas of Aleppo ," a beautiful and very usable new cookbook from the fabulously named Poopa Dweck. Abby and I've made a couple of deserts, a green bean dish, a great baked kibbeh, a beef and rice stew and a few other things. The recipes work, the ingredients are accessible (aside from a few spices I picked up at the local Arabic market, but they have most of them at Whole Foods too) and the book is full of interesting facts and stories about the Syrian Jewish community. If you cook, especially if you cook kosher, I recommend it highly.

I am still waiting for year-end data on my overall investment returns, but my individual equities and etfs were a pretty mixed bag, redeemed in part because I hold a lot of dividend paying securities with cushions the blow when capital returns are low and down. I had eight double digit total return gainers: Apache (62.6%), the EEM emerging market etf (33.4%), the EWC Canada etf (28.4%), Exxon Mobil (24.1%), Verizon (21.7%), Microsoft (20.6%), the Reaves "UTG" Utility Fund (12.9%) and the IJK MidCap Growth etf (12%). I had five big losers: Sysco (-13.0%), Cognex (-14%), Bank of America (-18.2%), the ICF REIT etf (-19%) and Barclays, which I bought last January, down 28% since I picked it up.

Verizon is one of my larger positions, so that was great, but Bank of America is a larger holding as well, so that hurt, even though I had sold some of it early in the year. I was pleased to get out of Home Depot and Comcast with single digit gains, as they tanked later in the year. Cognex has been a poor performer for me for a few years, but is a very small position that I may yet hold onto. I like Barclays longer term and may yet add some more to my position. BofA is a longterm core holding for me. The Sysco I might dump at some point, I am up long term on it but am no longer especially excited about the stock or the company. I am looking at all sorts of interesting new ideas - vehicles, managers and allocation schemes -  for 2008, and I'll keep you posted.

As far as resolutions go, see this post from last year? Delete the desk cleaning (I am better on that), make it "10 pounds or so" and keep the rest, all under the header of "Don't Be Lazy, Glassenberg." Sigh. 

Pretzelmania

It took all of Friday, but I recovered from my traumatic day on Thursday. My plow guy came Thursday night at 10, just in time for me to get my car off the street before the town plow entombed me. On Friday I learned that Abby's car had been towed, bailed it out and arranged for it to be repaired, discovered that, in fact, it was right where Abby left it, got it towed for real, fixed (new alternator and battery) and returned. I thanked the people at Lower Falls Wine Co. for saving my family and took Roxanne to the doctor with a nasty rash (antibiotic allergy). A busy day, and I missed work to accomplish it all.

Today, it #$@&^ing snowed again. So we stayed home this time and I needed a project. I decided to bake pretzels from scratch based on a recipe in the October 2007 issue of Beer Advocate magazine. I used Blue Point Brewing's "Hoptical Illusion" as the beer in the recipe. It looked like it wasn't going to work - the dough didn't rise very much - but I stuck with it, got some help rolling and knotting the pretzels from Abby, parboiled the pretzels in water with baking soda in it and baked them. To my surprise, they were huge, puffy and delicious. Both Stella and Roxanne (still covered in a rash, thank you very much) loved them. Baking is a mystery to me, I have to tell you, but these results were worth the angst:

If you have a beer drinker in your circle of gift recipients this holiday season, I recommend a subscription to Beer Advocate. Reviews, interviews, recipes, snark - all good things and enough pictures of tasty beer to make you thirsty.

Whiskey Collins

I was going to blog about the disgusting and boring speaker I heard today, Roxanne's terrible behavior (she bit her sister and favored us with a huge tantrum at dinner time) or the lousy weather. But instead, I'll turn to drink!

Charlie's Recipe for Whiskey Collins

Ingredients (serves two, or knocks down one):

8 ounces Canadian whiskey (I prefer VO, Seagram's 7 or Canadian Club) plus 1 ounce per glass
8 ounces tap water
2 packets "Bar-Tender" brand powdered Collins mix
ice cubes
one or two tall glasses
seltzer

1) pour the whiskey and tap water into a shaker.
2) add both packets of Collins mix, cover and shake vigorously.
3) let the shaker rest, meanwhile fill the tall glass(es) halfway with ice cubes.
4) pour the shaker into the glasses (or pour half into one glass, and save the rest for later).
5) add seltzer until the glass is about 75% full, then add another dash of whiskey (about a ounce).
6) stir and drink. I never garnish, but you could add a maraschino cherry or something like that if you have a sweet tooth.

L'chaim, na zdrovia, etc.

Dinner Tonight: 1 for 2

I cooked our dinner tonight, which while well within my capabilities is not something that I get to do too often. I was one for two on the dishes. Being a man, I had to grill, so I put some Pearl's Kountry Klub All Beef hot dogs on the grill, served them on mushy "New England" style buns (also grilled) and served them up with spicy mustard, "hot" chili relish (more sweet than hot), some green relish and a little Chicago-style flourish, celery salt. Very tasty.

Earlier in the day we bought some beautiful pea pod tendrils at the Super 88 in Allston (if you were there, you may have heard our screaming toddler). We love these when we eat out so I cooked them up at home with some garlic, stir fried in a big pan and then left to steam a little bit. Sadly, they were stringy, tough and bitter, nearly inedible (although aforementioned toddler gamely tried a few bites). Does anyone out in blogland know why they turned out so badly, or know how to cook them properly?

Highlights of the holiday weekend included a nice visit with my folks, my girls being adorable in my mom's kiddie pools, the weather and rubbing my father's nose in the travails of the Yankees (the Connecticut Yankees vs. Red Sox schism runs straight through my family). Lowlights included the toddler's tantrums and weird sun rash and having to make a shiva call today on an associate from work who lost his mother very suddenly. It made me thankful that my folks are still around to bug me.

Framingham Date Night

Had a nice date with Abby in Framingham on Friday night. We had dinner at Brazzille in Framingham. Tasty grilled meats and buffet, all you can eat and very nice people. The place is new and they are still working out some bugs in the service, but the nucleus of something great is there. I understand that the gorgeous and bright (even on a rainy night) room used to be a super rough biker bar painted entirely black inside and out!

After dinner to went to Pao Brasil bakery, a short drive away, and bought a nice assortment of tasties -  a coconut cake, a flan and some sort of chocolate thing. Very sweet, huge portions and super cheap. The bakery had a steady stream of customers, all Brazilian, buying sweets and savories. Downtown Framingham is full of these little Brazilian bakeries, and given some of the garbage that people in Wellesley buy at the grocery store as pastry, they should all be a lot busier with out of town business.

We ended the evening with the mandatory stop at the Barnes & Noble in Natick for some browsing (we prefer the independent Wellesley Booksmith, but it was close to their closing time and Abby needed to pop into "Old Navies," as Roxanne calls it). I am looking for and not finding a good history of World War II in Burma focusing on the military rather than the political aspects of that theater. If anyone out there in blogland has any thoughts, please share them.

Chometz!

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us with Your Mitzvot...

I really do love being Jewish, and I can't conceive of serving God any other way than by doing all that I can to be the best Jew that I can be. But Passover is a real trial. Matzah gets the best of me after about two days, and I really miss my beer. So tonight it was over. A large pizza with green pepper, onion and sausage (very treif, I know) and a 22 ounce bottle of Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye. On all other nights we may eat chometz or matzah, tonight only... CHOMETZ! Roxanne was excited for her pizza and her ginger snaps. All is well.

Sunday Sampler

I am at home right now, Stella is fitfully napping (not a deep sleeper, that girl) and Roxanne is singing like a drunken sailor in her bed, which ends when in her dozing off or my going in her room telling her to doze off. Abby and her sister Rachel are out thrifting in Allston. So I'll post a few items, none worthy of a full post but all of interest, to me at least.

Why I'm Glad Roxanne Can't Read Yet: We were driving in Brookline around 9:30 this morning, on our way to deliver Passover meals in the projects in Brighton (Roxanne was a good helper and a big hit with the old Russian ladies, as always). We passed a big sign on the side of the road that read "MORE SEX = MORE BABIES." I was sort of taken aback (by the bluntness of the sign and not its obvious message) until I noticed the "hipsters" with cameras across the street. Student film season is upon us. Roxanne was, thankfully, oblivious.

Little Steps Forward: Speaking of my children, congrats to Stella, proud owner of her first pair of real shoes. I now have three women in my house for whom I buy shoes. Conveniently, I am also due for a raise soon, and I still can sell that extra kidney.

The Taste Test: Had some fun with my sister-in-law Rachel last night. I poured two beers and let her try them and pick which one she wanted to drink with dinner. One was a pale, light kellerbier, that was secretly very malty and bitter. The other was a very dark looking brown ale, sweet and balanced but looking for all the world like a porter. "I won't like that dark one," she claimed. Guess who drank the "dark one"?

Vote Early, Vote Often: Abby is nominated for a Softie Award for her "Golden Winged Bird." Please, oh please, vote in the twelve categories and pick the bird in the "Animal" category. The voting booth is here. If you're from Chicago, please get your dead relatives to pitch in as well. If you're from Florida, don't accidentally vote for Pat Buchanan as Best Bear/Bunny. Go Shnabigail!

Boss Watch Case

For many years my father had a collage by my cousin Rick in his office. I looked at it maybe a million times, and it eventually found its way into my possession and onto the wall of my home. It is a collage of various late 19th and early 20th century ephemera - photos, advertisements, old magazines pages (my father was a periodical wholesaler) and the like. Among the items is a an advertisement, stamped "Henry Kohn Jeweler, Asylum Street Hartford," from the Boss Watch Case Company, featuring th following bit of poetry in the form of a dialog:

Father, is that the electric light of which I've often heard?
Oh no, my son, tis the boss watch case, and much to be preferred.
Can our sailors see it in the night, will it guide their movements well?
T'will guide our sailors' movements right, and those that jewelers sell.

This is a similar specimen, customized for a different jeweler:

I am proud to say that I have taught my nearly three year old Roxanne the entire poem, and we perform it, to Abby's chagrin, constantly. I play the young lad, she the old salt. Sure, she is unclear as to what a "watch case" is. But she is a heck of straight man. Roxanne had her third birthday party today and held up well, except for her usual cake-related angst. She is more of person and less of a little baby every day. She can be very tough and very mean sometimes, but I do love her so much. Either we think a lot like, or I have the mind of a three year old. Or a combination.

On an unrelated note, I have a serious hankering for an Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Fastenbier, a smoked Lent beer from Germany that is rarely seen in the states. I had some last year at the Publick House in Brookline, but have not seen it this year. Being the Jew I am, I even double checked to make sure that Lent is on right now. It is. Has anyone in the Boston area seen this delectable smoky beer this year, on tap or in the bottle?   Learn more about this beer here and let me know if you can track any down.

The Never Ending Quest for Tasties

My girls both made rather feeble attempts at napping today -  Stella got in maybe an hour or so, Roxanne chatted with herself (and dragged two puzzles and three books into bed, then hid the puzzle pieces under her pillow in a perfect straight line). I designed a new Excle-based ledger for Abby to use for tracking her burgeoning soft toy empire. No nap for me, either. Once they were up and tended to, I announced that I desired a visit to one of the Indian grocery stores in Waltham. So, lacking a better idea, off we went.

It ended up being a successful expedition. We visited Patel Brothers, which I guess is part of chain, but is well organized, well lit and very clean. We bought some spices and a variety of "ooh, let's try this" items, including bhel puri mix (very tasty once we added all the spicy green sauce), frozen uppama (eh, tasted like the frozen cream of wheat that it was), cashew ice cream and saffron ice cream (I am starting to realize that I dislike saffron), some nice and cheap cucumbers and tomatoes and, oddly, fresh turmeric root. This looked like ginger on the outside, looked like carrot on the inside and tasted, like a cross between ginger and, well, turmeric. The man working at the store assured us that it is both a tasty "salad" and healthy, while another shopper chimed in that it was good for high blood pressure, coughs and diabetes. It is the sort of food that one eats and then figures is either very healthful or deathly poisonous. I ate some around 6:30 and I am still here, a bit dizzy but alive (and I blame the dizzy on  the frozen VO sours I made for Abby and me to enjoy, to my father's classic recipe).

So a nice afternoon. I get to enjoy part of my day off taking Roxanne to the dentist tomorrow, then going to the gym, and then finally wrapping up all but the last few bits of my taxes. I swear, though, I'm cramming a nap in one of these days.