Wouldn’t This Taste Good? A Crocked-Up Success!

If you like Hungarian food,
They have a goulash which is very good.
Allan Sheman, Hungarian Goulash #5, 1963

Sometimes you still have to love the Internet.

Our daughter Laury has been telling us for years how she uses her slow-cooker to make easy, tasty, dinners. Back-in-the-day when Barb and I were working long hours we would occasionally cook supper in a crockpot; the concept of coming home to a simmering stew being very enticing. But lifestyles changed–and the lure of local restaurants became irresistible. Our crockpot usage evaporated.

Then came the last 7 months. Like all of you, we have been eating 99.9% of our dinners at home and getting more and more bored with our menus. Last week Laury’s words finally sunk in.

I decided to make my crockpot favorite, Hungarian Goulash. We found a slow cooker in the very back of the highest kitchen cabinet and then began the hunt for our crockpot cookbook. It wasn’t on our cookbook shelf, it wasn’t on any other bookshelf. It was not here, it was not there, we could not find it anywhere.

I did the modern-day thing and looked up “crockpot recipes for goulash” online. I found a dozen and chose one to make. Went to Woodman’s, bought the few ingredients, threw ’em all in the pot, and later that night we were eating tender, juicy, goulash. The only problem–what should have been a spicy stew was bland as library paste. Barb and I started reminiscing about the old recipe. Wasn’t there brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce? And how much paprika?

Following dinner, I had a new mission. I was going to find a copy of that old crockery cookbook, the one with the recipe we loved. I did a Google search for “crockpot cookbooks from the 1970’s” and got a hit! Someone had listed the very same book I wanted on Mercari, a selling website I had never heard of before now. For only 6 bucks!

I signed up, put in my credit card, ordered, and dreamt of goulash. Until the next morning when I received a message from the site. The seller had canceled the sale. SH*T! I went back to my search and found another seller of the same cookbook on the Mercari site, this time for $9.

Wondering if Mercari has a monopoly on outdated cookbooks I offered the same $6 as I had the first time and waited. Success! The seller accepted my offer. Messages from the site confirmed the cookbook was being sent and yesterday, it arrived, as evocative of 1975 as a cookbook could be. I tore through the recipes, and there, on page 47, was my recipe for Hungarian Goulash, loaded with brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and just the right amount of paprika. The only thing missing was the smudgy ketchup thumbprint I remember leaving on my original copy of the book.

I won’t make the goulash this week. I’ll wait for a cold wintery day when a smoky stew will be most appreciated. Want to join us for dinner–virtually of course!

Kudos to old Eugene Field School friend and baseball buddy Gary Shulman, the first person to correctly answer the “Layla, Learning to Fly, Closer to Home” trilogy trivia question. The common denominator? All have bird tweets. Way to go Gary–I always knew you were for the birds!

Less than a week to go. VOTE

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I haven’t cooked that special dish yet. I’ll probably wait for a snowy wintery day when a warm stew will be most welcome. Care to join us for dinner–remotely of course!

Kudos to old Field School friend Gary Shulman, the only person to solve the “Layla, Learning to Fly, Closer to Home” trilogy challenge. The common denominator? All have bird tweets. Way to go, Gary!

Less than a week to go. VOTE.

Boomer Rock and Roll Trivia — Can YOU Answer the Question of the Day?

What do these three songs have in common?

It’s Sunday. No politics for me today.

A long time ago, i.e. before Covid, I could get my dose of rock’n’roll trivia listening to and participating in the “Three for Free” audio quiz from Lin Brehmer and Mary Dixon in the pre-dawn hours on WXRT. Those challenges are gone, with Mary now on WBEZ, and our best friend in the world Lin spinning the disks on 93.1 at a more civilized midday time. But my rock’n’roll mind never rests. As you will see…

After breakfast this morning (but well before my weekly dose of Meet the Press) you would have found me in the basement exercise room, grinding away on the elliptical. As per my usual routine, I was plugged into the Pandora app, listening to my self-curated radio station. Decades features rock bands from the ’60s right on to today–from the Beatles’ “Love Me Do” to Bruce Springsteen’s brand-new “Letter to You,” with lots of Floyd (Pink), Dan (Steely), and Straits (Dire) in between.

I warmed up with U2’s “The Sweetest Thing” and then got my heart pumping with “Layla” by Clapton’s Derek and the Dominoes, followed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with “Learning to Fly.” “That’s cool,” I recognized. “Those last two songs have something unusual in common.”

Letting my mind roam as I continued my workout, I came up with two more songs with the same unique characteristic. One of those two is “Closer to Home (I’m Your Captain)” by the Michigandering Grand Funk Railroad. The other…well if I told you the other this question would be much too easy!

So now it’s your turn. What do “Layla,” “Learning to Fly,” and “Closer to Home” have in common? I know “Layla” and “Closer to Home” both are two-part songs, but “Fly” doesn’t fit into that pattern. And it doesn’t have to do with how many people are in the band, or who they are. But there is something that ties these 3 songs together.

If you know, send me a note at les.raff@post.com. You can leave a comment, but don’t give away the answer. And enjoy your Sunday.

Vote November 3rd.

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Trump Supporters: Drop and Give Me 10…if you can!

Can you tell me 10 things Trump and Pence have accomplished? Photo Courtesy Chicago Tribune.

To my friends, former friends, frenemies, colleagues, and the voting public at large:

Just give me 10. 10 things that Donald Trump has accomplished in just under 4 years as President. Not four things you like about him. I don’t care that you think he says what he means, or that he doesn’t take any BS. Those are just personality traits.

No, I want you to stop what you are doing for a moment, stop sharing those pictures of American flags that you think make you a better patriot than me, or circulating bizarre and ridiculous conspiracy theories, and instead, give me a list of ten actual accomplishments of 45 months of Trump ascendency. And while you are at it, tell me why you like those accomplishments. Be specific, be factual, be credible.

What things don’t count as an accomplishment to me? Holding big rallies — that’s just entertainment. Attacking opposition politicians, other world leaders, and almost any female of power? Being a bully is a flaw, not an achievement. Trashing the Biden family while your family reaps millions from your presidency–that’s chutzpah, not progress. And falling in love with Kim Jong-un? Dennis Rodman’s been there, done that, first.

So please, give me 10 things the man has actually done! That’s less than 3 a year. Surely you can come up with them. If you think his biggest accomplishment is a few hundred miles of wall, fine, put that at the top of your list. If you think it is appointing judges you like, list that–but only once–you don’t get to list it separately for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

Surely though, you can do better in your support of the man. After all, you must be able to show at least ten things that have advanced our country during the tenure of the caricature you so strongly, vociferously, unwaveringly, support.

If not–why would you vote for this man?

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Knives, A Puff Of Smoke, and Me. What Could Go Wrong?

John Belushi would have made an excellent neuropathologist!

(Rated SG for Slightly Gross)

Do you remember Friday afternoons when you were a kid in school? The teacher’s voice would drone on and on. The minute hand on the wall clock would move slower and slower. Time would freeze.

You kept staring out the window, at the shining sun, at the park at the end of the block. You couldn’t wait to get outside and play some ball. Or snow was on the other side of the glass — and you were looking forward to an evening with friends at Alpine Mountain to practice some downhill ski runs. In any case, it sure was rough waiting those last few minutes.

No matter how bad you thought you had it on those long-past Friday afternoons, you most likely have nothing to compare to my Fridays in the early 1980s when I was a Resident in Pathology at a teaching hospital just outside Chicago. Because every Friday, at precisely 3:30, was brain-cutting time!

No, that’s not a clever nickname for some devilish oral Q and A the attendings would throw at us, nor was it a dastardly written exam. On Friday afternoons we would literally slice our way through the previous week’s autopsy brains.

I’ve written about autopsies before. But not the secret of brain-cutting. A brain removed at autopsy is a squishy mess. It’s the consistency of that disgusting lemon Jello mold that has been sitting under the hot sun since 11 am at your 4th of July picnic. Trying to examine it fresh is brain salad surgery.

So to prevent brain meltdown at autopsy, the fresh brain is carefully dissected from the cranial cavity (we won’t discuss how you open that up,) wrapped in gauze, and suspended on a network of strings in a large bucket of formalin for at least a week. Put THAT on your bucket list.

But eventually, we had to look at those brains. So every Friday afternoons Dr. D, our visiting samurai neuropathologist, would join the residents in the autopsy suite. One by one the brains from the previous week’s post-mortems, now solid enough to be cut, would be set before him. Though each had been soaking in running water for several hours in preparation for his attention, the formalin odor was still overpowering to the assembled residents. But the miasma didn’t seem to bother the Master.

Brandishing a long, glistening, and oh-so-sharp two-foot-long stainless steel knife he would approach each brain and go chop-chop-chop. He would then bow slightly and present us with thin slices of sashimied brain laid out in precise rows on a cafeteria tray. With the tip of his blade, he would point out the abnormalities–the tumors, the infarcts, the paleness of the substantia nigra in Parkinson’s Disease. He guided me through the pink blush of increased vessels in Moyamoya Disease, a rare vascular disease whose name — “puff of smoke” in Japanese — memorialized the appearance of increased blood vessels in an angiogram.

Dr. D had seen it all and explained it all.

Our residents may not have been happy to be in that autopsy suite late on a Friday afternoon. Maybe the good neuropathologist didn’t want to be there either. So many other places we all could have been. But no matter how much we hated it, we learned our neuropathology — at the point of a sword.

But it is a shame that I never did learn how to ski!

Use your very functional brain–VOTE!

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Trump Endorses Universal Health Care Plan

Satire

“I want to get for you what I got and I’m going to make it free. You’re not going to pay for it. ” With those words in yesterday’s Twitter video, President Donald Trump tacked a new direction as he at last revealed his health plan for America.

Mitch McConnell, in a follow-up interview, confirmed the President’s announcement.

“Yes, we want to destroy ObamaCare, that hideous piece of legislation that those evil Democrats rammed through our throats during their illegal administration of the worst eight years of this great nation’s history. Obamacare is a mess, loaded with premium payments and pre-pays and copays and deductibles.

President Trump’s plan is simple and straightforward. You need healthcare? Go to your doctor and you will get it for free. Need drugs? Go to your pharmacy and get them for free. Need an abortion? Go to Canada and rot in hell.”

When asked how the country could afford this plan, McConnell stated that Trump had been given a method direct from God. This was confirmed in last night’s Vice-Presidential Debate when VP Mike Pence interrupted Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to say “Our plan to pay for America’s wonderful healthcare is as clear as the fly on my hair which I believe is another message from God.”

When it was pointed out to Speaker McConnell that the plan sounded like a socialist-style European healthcare plan, McConnell objected, stating only the liberal fake-news industry would make that comparison. Sean Hannity also refuted the idea that this was universal healthcare, relaying that it was God’s desire and therefore a capitalist endeavor.

Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Human Services did not return numerous telephone call requests for further information. An email request was returned with an “Out of the Office until November 4th” automatic response.

Chuck Schumer, Democratic Senator from New York, was overheard telling a staffer about Trump “The guy is meshugh, what more can I say?”

Vote November 3rd.

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What A Wonderful World

I see trees of green
Red roses too
Bob Thiele and George David Weiss

A perfect fall day, just before lunch. Last year I would have left the laboratory and driven to the fitness center where my running gear–shoes and shorts, water bottle and hat–were stashed. I would have popped in my earphones, dialed up a Pandora playlist, and charged through 3 miles, mind consumed with pace and breathing and knees. Back to the fitness center, a quick shower, and an afternoon of prostate slides.

But that was last year, and this of course is not. COVID has zapped the fitness center and seems to have zapped much of my energy as well. My runs this year have been rarer than real birthday parties, and even using my home elliptical has felt like a burden. But today I felt good, the sun was shining and I decided to go for a walk.

And how nice it was to talk a walk in the quiet residential neighborhood just a block south of the lab. Without headphones clogging my ears, without being concerned about how fast or how far I could go, I was able to look around and enjoy the world before me.

Things I might normally not notice; the man and his son, helmets pulled low over their faces, pedaling their bikes in the street, playing hooky from their virtual career and virtual classroom; the woman teaching her virtual classroom from a card table in her garage; the cardboard boxes stacked next to recycling bins pointing to homeowners who have succumbed to Amazon Fever.

A man walks his dog; a maintenance man uses a propane tank for fuel as he fiddles with a structure in the park. The grass is green, the sky a pure blue with gently floating wisps of white clouds. For a moment there is no COVID, there are no politics–the bitterness and hatred have been banished by the light and colors of the fall.

If I was running I wouldn’t slow down to even see the roses, today I want to stop and smell them. No, it won’t change the world, but sometimes we don’t have to.

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We Need to Laugh. Or at Least Crack a Smile

Who needs a good laugh? I know I do. The last few months feel like the end of the world (as we know it) but predictions of gloom and doom will only get you so far. We are humans. Sometimes we have to let off steam.

What has made you giggle or guffaw through the years? What are you streaming that has put a smile on your face?

Here are five sitcoms from each of the seven decades of television. This being an election year (sorry, I forgot that this is supposed to be a cheerful post) why don’t you pick your favorite…or add your own. Send me an email (les.raff@post.com) or add a comment. Let’s all figure out what we can laugh at.

1950’s

Father Knows Best
The Honeymooners
I Love Lucy
Our Miss Brooks
December Bride

1960’s

The Andy Griffith Show
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Get Smart
Gilligan’s Island

1970’s

All in the Family
The Bob Newhart Show
The Mary Typer Moore Show
The Jeffersons
M*A*S*H

1980’s

Cheers
The Cosby Show
Family Ties
The Golden Girls
Newhart

1990’s

Frazier
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Friends
The Nanny
Seinfeld

2000’s

Arrested Development
Curb Your Enthusiasm
How I Met Your Mother
The Office
Scrubs

2010’s

Modern Family
Parks and Recreation
Schitt’s Creek
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmitt
Veep

Vote early and vote often. We don’t mind…

November 3–Vote just once.

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The Car Wreck That Was Last Tuesday’s Debate

The debate was like a two care pileup of aging vehicles.

I have been conflicted.

Should I post about last Tuesday’s debate between President Trump and Vice-President Biden, or should I let more informed and more politically savvy writers carry the load? Barb was surprised that I didn’t have my two cents in print yesterday, and I am still not sure what I can say today.

Barb and I sat in our comfy chairs Tuesday night, the cat on the ottoman in between, watching our habitual news station, NBC. Not CNBC or MSNBC, just plain old NBC. We watched every minute, absolutely incredulous. We weren’t silent, but we managed to keep our outbursts to a minimum. I hurled out one “Asshole” at Trump’s “Pocahontas” reference, but other than that, I pretty much sat there taking it.

And when the hallucinatory experience was over, when the talking heads at the debate podia were replaced by the shaking, visibly shaken, heads at NBC Studio, I realized that I was drenched in sweat, as soaked as if I had run a 10K rather than sitting in my own home office. My body had responded — in fear, in anger, in frustration, even as my brain tried to process what we had just watched.

I feel like I have been in a humongous gaper’s block. America drives by the accident slowly, turning our collective heads to stare at the two-car wreckage in the other lane; one of the involved drivers calmly talking on his cell phone while the other screams at the highway patrol officer, gesticulating wildly, foam coming from his mouth.

Two days later I don’t feel much better. My Facebook account is filled with “Riden’ with Biden” messages, but I still have a couple of Trump loyalists on my Friends list. I keep them around to see what poison is being posted in the effort to Keep America Great. I no longer respond–what would be the point?–but I fact check their claims, just to make sure I am looking at both sides. And then I realize that for someone with my values, there is only one side.

So get out the tow trucks. Get this wreck off the road. And go out and vote. Because this really matters.

photo credit: george.bremer I’m sensing a theme here… via photopin (license)

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