Travel Notes: Summer Small Holding Strawberries

Original strawberries consumed without aid of camera, above is a reasonable approximation

“Omon is not a particularly common name, and perhaps not the best there is. It was my father’s idea. He worked in the police all his life and wanted me to be a policeman too.

“Listen to me, Ommy, ” he used to say when he’d been drinking. “If you join the police with a name like that… then if you join the Party…”

Although my father had occasionally shot at people, he wasn’t really vicious by nature;in his heart he was a cheerful and sympathetic man. He loved me a lot, and hoped that life would at least grant me the achievements it had denied him. What he really wanted was to get hold of a plot of land somewhere near Moscow and start growing beetroot and cucumbers on it, not so that he could sell them at the market or eat them (though that too), but so that he could strip to the waist, slice into the earth with his spade, and watch the red worms and the other underground life wriggling about, so that he could cart barrowloads of dung from one end of the holiday village to the other, stopping at other peoples gates to swap a few jokes. When he realized he would never get any of this, he began to hope that at least one of the Krivomazov brothers would lead a long and happy life…” – Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin

A couple of days ago I spent the night in Jonava, Lithuania,
in the apartment of a Artillerist who is seeing a cousin of mine. It was simple, clean, and with the windows opened or closed had a fresh, sort of dewy air that made sleep there seem almost holistic. In the morning, over an early breakfast, I had an offer that made my polite,  ritualized refusals appear at their most half hearted. My friend the corporal offered me a large plastic bag of fresh strawberries, grown on a little family plot 8 kilometers outside of town.

Those of you who have never experienced such a thing as fresh strawberries, picked and placed before you hours before,  that have had to make do with those odd, fibrous, bloated, cucumberous paleness that must be basted in sugar and then dipped in to whipped cream and fired into a pastry to extract even a modicum of taste are truly to be pitied. These strawberries, most no bigger then a large marble and the largest a little smaller then a golf ball, are deep red like rubies and taste like sunsets. Of course they do not last, already a few of them are beginning to mush. I will endeavor to eat these anyway however, it would almost be criminal to sacrifice the little fellows.

Lithuania  was the last country in Europe to convert to Christianity. Before that they worshipped gods of water and earth; lightning and fire. And the Summer equinox festivals here, adopted by Christians as st. John’s day,  sacrifices are made to Žemyna, god of the harvest,  whose common prayer is: ”the Earth, my mother, you have given me life, you feed me, you carry me and after death I will rest in you.”. Drive along the road, near any house there is a small vegetable garden. Where there are no houses you may find little patchworks of turned over earth. These are by in large apartment dwellers who keep these places to supplement their meals, but also I suspect for the satisfaction of churning earth and watching things rise up out of it.  Perhaps this respect for earth’s bounty, combined with a more recent memory of shortages under communism, bring these people the miles it takes to get out to their small holdings. I must say there is something about that dedication that makes the gift all the more satisfying.

Edwardian Supersize Me

As well fed as he is well dressed

Once a long while ago an American made a documentary about the effects of only eating fast food, this ended somewhat predictably with a high speed fattening and some near organ collapse. Sometime later, presumably,  an Englishman saw it, and then informed the  fine people at the BBC.  The civilizing effect of the British Broadcasting Corporation is evident in their new one off show, a year old now but new to me, Edwardian Supersize Me.  In the words of one of the participants….

“There can have been no better time for a chap like me to be alive. So what an enormous stroke of luck that the BBC were looking for someone to send back to that very era — to live, dress, exercise, eat and drink like an Edwardian man of means — to find out what it did to his girth, his arteries, his inner organs, his digestion, his mood, his very soul. Some guinea pigs might have been daunted by the prospect of four whopping meals a day, rivers of grog and hardly any fruit, vegetables or water for an entire week. But not I. “

(Tip of the Hat: Serious Eats)

More Bacon Madness

A few days ago I wrote about the growing chatter regarding bacon flavored spirits. For some reason I thought that the bacon oddities would cease, but no, everywhere I turn I find examples of people’s preternatural love for that pork product. Am I going mad? Is the coming of Bacon shaped Bandages and Bacon flavored Floss  a sign of the apocalypse,  or  are they harbingers of new Golden Age?

Update: There is also such a thing as a Bacon Wallet, we are clearly in strange times.

A Bacon Bean Bonanza

Some of our readers may be saying to themselves, “I heard of this wonderful salt bacon, where ever did it go,” or, more likely, “Did it just turn out so awful that you tearfully flung it into the sea and vowed never to speak of it again?” Luckily for all this was not the case.

After a week of careful draining, patting and the addition of more salt cure as needed, the bacon was pronounced ready for consumption. We were initially worried that, for lack of potassium nitrate, the meat would take on a unappetizing grey color. This did not really turn out to be the case, while the exterior had lost some of the pink verve it had when we first purchased it it still looked rather healthy, and the thick slices fried up with a very satisfying panoply of crimson strips.

A Spirited use of Breakfast Meats?

Something strange and unnatural has been happening in gastronomic realms, something that hopes to unite the fine flavors of bacon with the potency of alcohol. Thats right, Bacon infused liquor. Bacon bourbon is said to go nicely in an Old Fashioned, and bacon vodka appears easy enough to make.  That said, the results don’t sound too promising. ”It tastes like I’m having a stroke.”

Will Delicious Attack soon investigate this odd phenomenon, I’m not sure, the cost of failure, ruined booze and rancid bacon, seems high.

Historic Veteran’s Day Cocktail

   

In honor of Veteran’s Day, I thought that my inaugural post might explore the gritty favorite cocktail of one of America’s most accomplished Generals, George S. Patton. Known for his pair of ivory handled Colt .45 and his desire to “make the other poor bastard die for his country”, he also seems to have invented a wartime tipple of some unique power.

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Caption: In between killing Nazis, this man took the edge off by drinking whiskey out of oil cans.