The move is complete - I guess. I’m in Oxford at any rate… But all my stuff is still sailing across the ocean as we speak.
I got to know my tiny pillow real well. (No, this is not me…)
The flight across the pond was calm and a good chance for me to catch up on some much-needed sleep, but it was the random meeting before the flight that was most unusual.
I was sending a last-minute text to a friend - one of my last chances to text in the US - when I heard a voice say, “Matt?…”
I looked up - as I usually do when I hear my name - and there was a face from the past looking back at me. Keith, a friend from my freshman dorm at college, was standing there, suitcase in hand. “Wow Keith! I haven’t seen you in years, what are you up to?”
“I’m going off on a business trip - you?”
“Moving to England.”
This was obviously not the answer he expected, but he had one for me in return.
“Wow! Are you on the 10 o’clock to London also?…”
“Why yes! Yes I am!”
If it were anything like this, I would fly first-class all the time…
So at least I had an old friend to hang out with to while away the time before my flight. For the record, the airport is a really empty place on the day after Thanksgiving… But there was more in store for me, as Keith and his boss were flying business class, so they were going to the Red Carpet Club.
This is where I had to reluctantly inform them that since I did not work for a bio-tech company, and rather was an out-of-work chef, I was naturally flying coach.
“No problem, you will come as my guest,” said Keith’s boss. And so we all went in together to drink away our wait in the quiet, comfortable lounge.
I had only been in one Red Carpet Club before, and this was in Bangkok. Indeed, this is a different way to fly for those of us who are not accustomed to it. The return to the “regular” lounge when our flight was boarding was quite the shock to my system. “Is this where I always hang out before flights?” I thought to myself. “With all these screaming kids and large families running around at full volume?”
Then I remembered, “Of course I do - it’s why I hate airports.”
Well, the rest of the flight was rather uneventful, and soon I was reunited with my lovely wife in London. But there is more story there that I will save for another time… In the meantime, I still have to track down Keith’s email so I can thank him for my time in the Red Carpet Club. The funny thing was, he and his boss disappeared after the flight, and I couldn’t find them no matter how hard I looked.
I’m still trying to figure out if I will be here or in England on the actual day of Thanksgiving. It’s looking I’ll be here for Thanksgiving, and then cruise out the day after. Which keeps in line with my desire to be in the states for Thanksgiving. And that reason comes from a story from my past…
(Wavy screen flashback)
Yes, the campus really is this beautiful.
After completing a semester at the University of Western Australia, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I was already on the other side of the world, and take a tour of some more of the continent. Since I had already spent 5 months in Perth (a city few people make it to, but more of you should!), I was free to tour the entire east coast of Australia – where all the cities that everyone else visits are located.
My tour took me to such familiar cities as Sydney and Melbourne, but it was in the city of Brisbane that I was to be spending that Thanksgiving.
Now to say money was tight for me at this point would be the understatement of the century. I was going from hostel to hostel and living off Ramen with vegetables. My daily expenses – for everything except lodging – were budgeted at roughly Aus$10/day. (That was about US$8 back then…) So even though I knew good food as a college student, there was no way I was partaking in it during this trip.
But Thanksgiving is something special. This was always a day of great food and family gathering at my grandmother’s house that I had always enjoyed. And in my family, Thanksgiving was a huge spread of food over multiple courses that usually led to debilitating food comas on the couch watching what remained of predictably bad football games. The predictable consistency of the event didn’t lead to monotony – it bred comfort.
Now with more X’s!
So on this special day (again Australia is yet another country that does not celebrate this holiday, go figure) I decided to treat myself to a special dinner of my own. I bought a pair of frozen turkey burritos at the local grocery store as well as two large bottles of Castlemaine’s “XXXX” beer. (A very popular brand in that region of Australia.) This would be my very own feast for back at the hostel. It would be my own way of joining my family in spirit who I knew would be sitting down to their own feast in a few more hours (once the sun made it to their side of the world…).
I returned to the hostel’s kitchen, and looking at the instructions on the wrapper of the burrito, it said to first preheat the oven to 180C (350F). No problem. Even without a culinary school degree in hand yet, this I could handle. But as I looked around the kitchen, I noticed that there was a missing piece of equipment in this kitchen to make that happen. There was no oven.
Have no fear, there were also microwave instructions! It was not the preferred method of cooking a frozen burrito, but hey, we globe trekkers take what we can get when we’re hostelling! So all I needed now was to find the microw… nope. No microwave either.
Shit.
In what may have been a precursor to my days of solving kitchen problems with what I had on hand, I decided the only course of action available to me was to heat these guys up in a sauté pan. They had those, and they had burners at least, so that was what had to happen.
Yum-O.
Well, the results were predictably depressing. The burritos came out burnt on the outside and frozen on the inside. Add to that the fact that frozen turkey burritos aren’t really all that good even when you do have access to a conventional oven, and this was quite simply the worst Thanksgiving dinner of all time. (At least the beer was good.)
I made a vow then and there in that hostel. I would always be home for Thanksgiving at my grandmother’s house for as long as she was around. The meal was just too good to miss, so I swore that never again would I miss her hosting a Thanksgiving dinner.
Well not everything involved in my international move is food-related. As I go around the house and clearing out items to pack or use up or so forth, I came across in the bathroom various and sundry bottles of bath gel samples from hotels, or that were given as gifts and not used and so forth. It was an astonishingly large collection when it was all set aside.
Yeah, kinda like this, only not all the same brand, all the bottles half full, and many more of them…
Well, anyone who has read this blog, or even remotely knows me, knows what I did here. I filled up the tub, poured in everything I had and fired up the jets. I was hoping for a result that could only be referred to as a “bubble fiesta”. Basically, I was looking for something like this:
But alas, the results were much less inspiring. All the oil and salt and whatnot seemed to have interacted in some way that resulted in only a thin sheen of bubbles on the surface. Well, not being one to let things go to waste, I took a bath in this magical concoction.
I let the jets work their magic, and I read a good part of my latest Saveur magazine. When I was done, I sent the presumably disappointing mixture down the drain. I toweled off, and headed into the bedroom, and couldn’t help but notice that something in the room smelled really great! I figured one of the Glade Plug-Ins had kicked on, but then I remembered I had taken them all out last week.
Looking around for the source of this great aroma, I was stumped. It wasn’t until I realized that the bouquet seemed to be following me around the house, that the smell was coming from me! I smelled fantastic!
And it was a perfume that lingered! I went outside and raked leaves for an hour, and came back inside, and I still smelled like a bunch of roses. I helped my neighbor move some stuff from his front lawn to his back lawn, and still the unmistakable smell of lavender followed me around. I had dinner with some good friends later that night, and had them confirm that indeed, I really did smell great!
Alas, the lingering smell of lilacs has finally worn off, but it was one heck of a run! Too bad I haven’t come up with nearly as cool an idea for all the hot chocolate powder I have found around my house.
No, I’m not making a turducken this year, seeing as how I will most likely be spending Thanksgiving in England this year. In one of the stranger coincidences in history, a holiday that celebrates the survival of a group of religious extremists running from persecution in England is actually NOT celebrated in England! Go figure…
But Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays even if it forces us all to remember in some small way that the American populace is descended from some of the most irritating and intolerant people in the history of the world. And the reason Thanksgiving holds a space as one of my favorites (just behind Flag Day) is this recipe. See, the turducken is the ultimate American recipe. It is a monument to both American ingenuity AND extreme gluttony at the same time!
One turducken - all seven of the deadly sins represented…
For the uninitiated, the “turducken” consists of a de-boned chicken jammed (without first being introduced properly) into a de-boned duck that is then forced (much against its will I’m sure) into a de-boned turkey. The resulting mess is then usually deep-fried and served with a side of angioplasty balloons.
As a chef, the only response I could come up with when I first heard about this several years ago was, “Holy shit! When can I make one?!?”
Alas, it looks like I will have to wait a few more years before I get the chance. If I were to make one of these in England and invite some of my new friends over to share it, I think they’d deport me on principle alone. Just look what they did to Scotland when they learned about haggis…
P.S. And for one of the funniest articles I have ever read on the subject of turduckens - or on anything really - please check out Francesco Marciuliano’s blog post “The Admittedly Incomplete History of the Turducken”. Just fabulous.
I sold my car yesterday. It wasn’t the sexiest car that ever graced God’s green earth, that’s for sure, but it was my first car, and so there’s certainly a special attachment I felt towards it.
I bought the lovely white 1998 Ford Escort right out of college back in August of 1998. New purchase price: $9,100. I was so proud of all the research I had done, and was so happy with my awesome new car. That is, until the entire transmission blew out at 1,200 miles. Turns out they forgot that new cars need transmission fluid in them, and the result was, well, predictable.
They of course replaced the entire transmission since it was under warranty, though they never called to apologize or offer me something for my trouble. As a result, even though I loved Blanco, this was the last Ford I will ever purchase…
The name “Blanco” of course means “white” in Spanish, and I picked it mainly so I didn’t have to have a name like one my wife was suggesting. Her thought was to name it “Marshie”, because after all, it kinda looked like a marshmallow. (Mind you, this was years before the Homestarrunner character came out… )
Blanco provided years of loyal service, and also had amazing fuel economy. By the end, I could reliably get over 40mpg on a mixed-use tank during the summertime. When the gas prices soared this past summer, I would wake up every morning and laugh at the people whining about how much it cost to fill up their H2’s on the local news. My monthly gas cost for the car was usually less than $60 at the worst of it.
So how to sell a car privately? I have never done this before seeing as how this was my first car. I decided to try Craigslist since there were a lot of cars there. I have to admit, I was not prepared for the flood of offers this resulted in. The problem was, most of the “offers” were just total crap. A small sample:
“Can I give you a call ? I live in Culpeper. thanks, D— 540-XXX-XXXX”
“Can I come by tonight? Thanks. d—-”
“please l just what to know maybe you still have the car if you still have it for sale please let me here back from you”
“I am interested in the car if you still have it can you send me directions to go and see the car today please thanks”
“hi i seen your ad for 98 ford give me a call at 571-XXX-XXXX ask for g— thank you”
It seems like it would hardly be fitting to sell Blanco to someone who has yet to figure out how to use the punctuation keys or spell-checker on their computer. But then I received this email:
“Hello,
I would love to come and see the car today. I am looking for a first car for my younger brother and this one looks great. Can you show the car today? Please call me at 703.XXX.XXXX.”
Wow. Punctuation. Spelling. A nice story that shows he is human. People of Craigslist, please take note of the above message! This is the one I replied to, even though he wasn’t even close to being the first person to respond. Here was a guy worthy of getting Blanco, so I wrote him right away.
Yeah baby!
Long story short, he loved the car, I showed him all the minor defects that I knew about - and told him the transmission story - and he was cool with it. And he paid cash as I stipulated was necessary. My exact phrasing: “I take cash, cash and also cash. Other forms of payment I accept are cash.” Selling price: $1,200.
As an aside, holding that much cash was darn cool.
Anyway, they took Blanco into the sunset, and gave a little honk as they drove off. I’m not one to get attached to material things, but seeing Blanco drive off not under my power was a weird thing to behold indeed. For the past decade it had always been me behind the wheel, and now for the first time someone else was at the helm.
And that first will be the last time I’ll ever see Blanco again.
So to give you an idea of what it takes to do an international move, allow me to run through the series of events for yesterday.
I awoke bright and early - around 6:30 to get things ready for the yard sale that I was having. I had separated most of the items I wanted to sell, and had placed an ad in the paper as well as on Criagslist. I also put up a bunch of bright neon yellow signs to guide people in the night before. As I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and checking my email, I couldn’t help but notice that there was some stranger wandering up my driveway. I poked my head out the door and asked him if I could help him, and he asked, “Are you still having that yard sale?”
As an aside here, let me send a message out to all the people who go to yard sales “professionally”.
*Ahem.*
You are all batshit insane!!
Thank you.
I began pulling the items out onto my lawn and as expected, not only did that guy return, but then half of Northern Virginia showed up as well. The selling was brisk, and I had a ton of junk move right out of my house. In return I got about $250 for all the stuff as well, and the rest I hauled off to charity.
My 1998 Ford Escort. Name: Blanco. First and only car I have ever owned. It’ll be sad to see her go.
But lest you think I was content with doing just one thing at a time, I also showed my house off to two prospective renters during the yard sale. And I took photos of my car which I then posted to Craigslist as well. (I’m hopefully selling that later today - more on that later.) Then came yard work, communicating with my property manager, and finally I packed myself and a bunch of friends into a car so we could head off to Annapolis for a birthday party of a good friend of mine. (Followed of course by the long drive home…)
When I finally climbed into bed, it was almost 1:30 AM. All this in the life of a retiree. I’m thinking I need to go back to work just for the rest…
Since we all love these stories to feed our collective sense of schadenfreude, I thought I would share one last one with you. It comes on the heels of my one last dinner I prepared for the good folks up at LifeStyle in Bedford. They host a weekly trattoria style dinner, which is usually great food and wonderful atmosphere, but this time I thought I would give it a whirl as their guest chef.
My dinner plan was as follows:
The look of a perfect panna cotta. Not the look of mine…
Anitpasto: Bruschetta with tangle of red and yellow roasted bell peppers with anchovies and capers on homemade baguettes. Primi: Creamy risotto with Italian sausage, oven-caramelized onions and fresh thyme. Secundi: Chicken roulade stuffed with rapini, golden raisins and Parmesan, glazed with rosemary/lavender honey on a bed of garlic polenta. Formaggio: A selection of house cheeses and accompaniments. (I let them plan this…) Dolci: Pomegranate Panna Cotta with grapefruit coulis and candied grapefruit peel.
All in all, a strong menu, which I thought would progress beautifully and provide texture, flavor and color contrasts that would be lovely. I had plenty of time to prepare it - in fact the day before I roasted the peppers, made the chicken roulades - no small feat seeing as how it involved de-boning three whole chickens, stuffing them, and tying them up - and made the panna cottas, and put them in the fridge to set.
I was so happy with myself about how smart I was to be so ahead of the game. The next morning I would come downstairs and make the fresh bread, and it would be smooth sailing for the dinner.
You can of course see where this is going…
Well I came down the next morning, and the peppers were marinating beautifully, the roulades were still, well, roulades, and to treat myself I thought I would have one of the many extra panna cottas I had made. I had made 24 of them, and since I don’t own 24 ramekins, I had done the genius solution of making them in muffin tins - which I have lots of. Well, I guess I should have read my own article on pan reactivity a little more closely because as soon as I took the panna cotta out of the first tin, I recognized that while the top was the beautiful dusty-rose color of a perfect pomegranate panna cotta, the side that had been touching the cup was completely gray.
Hoping maybe it was just this pan, I checked the others. Nope, all ruined. They tasted great, but looked like hell. I couldn’t serve them. And now I had just a few hours to make fresh bread from scratch and come up with a whole new dessert idea - and make it.
Quick, simple and delicious. Nobody would have ever known!
Well, since it was fall on the east coast, that means apples and pears are in season, so I went to my local produce stand, and bought a peck of fresh beautiful apples. With the help of my friends I peeled them, sliced them, and got them cooking down in a bourbon caramel sauce. I bought some vanilla ice cream at the store, and there we were: Fresh local apple parfaits with bourbon caramel sauce on vanilla ice cream. (Garnished of course with the pomegranate seeds I had planned to use for my original dessert…)
All in all the dinner itself went well. I overcooked the risotto a little, and the portioning of the polenta could have been better, but all in all people loved the food, and I felt that I was really just at home in this kitchen I had never worked in before. It’s amazing how far of come, and somewhat sad for me that in a way I’m now done with it.
I going to HAVE to find a way to keep up the cooking in England!
