The Real Charlie

Sierra Nevada Torpedo - Lost and Found

Just a short post tonight, I am really trying to get this blog alive again so I am aiming to increase posting volume even if the posts are short and not entirely incisive.

When we were visiting Washington DC in April I picked up a six pack of Sierra Nevada Torpedo as my hotel room beer for the visit (as in the beer I drank in the hotel room in the evening after the kids went to bed and we were stuck in for the night.) Wow. Crisp, complex hop flavor, bitter but not astringent, just delicious. Subsequently, I was utterly unable to find any Sierra Nevada Torpedo in Boston. Ever. Not even a bottle.

On Saturday I was delighted to find the beer in stock at Marty's in Newton. I grabbed several six packs. The beer manager looked at me, somewhat balefully. "You're cleaning me out," he said, reporting that these six packs were hard to get in stock in any quantity. He promised more in the near future.

If you are of an ale-drinking inclination I recommend Sierra Nevada Torpedo highly. And if you ever drank a beer that you'd like to drink again, and haven't been able to find, you might want to follow my lead and keep looking at one of your favorite local purveyors, or several of them.

A Month Without A Post?

No, I can't let that happen. So an update about my thinking in terms of investing right now. I am still holding a lot of cash and even more "near cash" in the form of 3-6 month FDIC insured CDs, spread out at a few different banks. I have maintained my exposure to the municipal bond market through a relatively short duration (5 year-ish) managed account, which gave me a scare last fall and subsequently rebounded nicely. I am concerned about a lot of state and local finance issues, so I am taking the popular advice and staying national, with only about 15% of my muni bonds in Massachusetts. So Alaska, Maine, Virginia - keep your books in order!

And I still have some equity exposure - 10% in my taxable accounts, much more in the retirement accounts. I'd add to it if I felt better about whether we are at the bottom or not. I easily could see this market testing the lows of November and then running down another 10-15% in the next few months. After that the road back will be fairly long, fairly slow and full of opportunities to make some money investing in good companies, and also to lose tons of money. And Uncle Sam's hand will rest more heavily on everyone, mostly for ill, and will eventually reach deeper into our pockets, which is always for ill, in this closet libertarian's book.

Meanwhile, we are weathering things well enough in this house, thank God, to allow us to enjoy some interesting meals out lately. I heartily recommend Rincon Limeno in East Boston for excellent Peruvian food (try the ceviche, the roast chicken and anything fried) and Jojo Taipei in Allston (Three Cups Tofu, Sour Cabbage and the Taiwanese Noodles, which Roxanne inhaled). On the beer front, both Publick House Provisions in Washington Square, Brookline and Wine Gallery on Route 9 in Brookline, near Brookline High, are worthy of your patronage. Very different vibes and selections - your domestic micro six pack needs will be met with a smile at Wine Gallery, while the very hip PHP is the only place in town that I know of to consitently carry De Koninck - the true king of beers.

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!