Yeast is yeast

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I don't bake bread often enough. It takes time, and I tend to be in a rush and begrudge the process the time it needs. But it's fun, and the result is very pleasant.

 

I was sick the other day, so I stayed home from work. I found myself craving some nice white toast. All we had in the house was brown bread. All right, I thought; I'll put a couple of loaves of white bread down to rise, and they should be ready by early afternoon.

 

My yeast was dead.

 

There is a process, you see, called “proofing the yeast.” You put the yeast in warm water with a little sugar, and you watch it come to life; it foams and bubbles and develops a faint yeasty brewery/bakery smell.

 

Mine just sat there. The water smudged and clouded, but no frothy yeasty bubbles were forthcoming. I finally dumped the whole sorry bowl of slime down the drain, and settled for brown toast.

 

Yeast is a wonderful organism. It's everywhere. We bake with it, and brew with it, and pickle with it. It surely made its debut that day ten thousand years ago when Bap son of Ungaga forgot his bowl of barley water on the windowsill. A few spores of free-range yeast got into it, and it fermented, and: kapow!

 

I stalked the wild yeast monster a few years ago myself. I left a jar of flour and water and sugar open for a day or two, and then I capped it and let it work. The stuff in the jar foamed like a science experiment for days and days. By the time I threw it away, there were at least two inches of evil-looking yellowish alcohol at the bottom of the mixture. Any bread baked with that stuff would have tasted like tennis shoes marinated in Jack Daniels and Pine-Sol.

 

I'm not man enough to tangle with feral yeast.

 

 

Fleischmann's Yeast, tame and docile, in its modest yellow packet, is perfectly okay with me from now on.

 

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Sunday blog: "I Love My Dog" by Cat Stevens

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My friend Ardy, bless her heart, lent me Cat Stevens's “Tea for the Tillerman” when we were both in high school. I listened to it probably fifty times before giving it back to her. I was hooked.

 

 

I bought “Tillerman” and “Teaser and the Firecat” right away, and “Catch Bull at Four” when it came out. Then I went back and got “Mona Bone Jakon,” which came out before “Tillerman.”

 

 

Stevens has reinvented himself several times. He was Orthodox, then Buddhist, then Baha'i, and now he's a Muslim. (He's Yusuf Islam nowadays.)

 

He is one of my favorite modern musicians.

 

Let's hear “I Love My Dog” one more time.

 

  
Download now or listen on posterous

Cat_Stevens_-_I_Love_My_Dog.mp3 (4504 KB)

 

 

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The he-man sport of rugby

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I knew nothing of rugby until Partner and I went to Ireland in 2007. We quickly discovered the little betting parlors that crowd every Irish streetcorner. Partner busied himself with dog racing, but I was fascinated by the Rugby World Cup betting sheet, which was the size of a tablecloth and allowed you to bet on everything, including number of teeth knocked out during a game. Without really knowing what I was doing, I put a bet down on the opening game of the series: the Namibian team would beat the Irish team. I also bet that the first goal in the game would be scored by the captain of the Irish team.

 

I lost my first bet and won my second. Net gain: forty euros on a two-euro bet.

 

I began to pay attention to rugby at that point, and I liked what I saw. First of all, rugby players are enormous. Second of all, they do not wear padded Halloween outfits like American football players; they wear thin cotton shorts and tight shirts, and they look terrific. Third, the rules of rugby are entertainingly incomprehensible. It’s like American football played as a mixed martial art; they just keep beating each other up until one team has lost too much blood to continue. In one game in the late 1990s, the Irish team won the game by picking up the guy with the ball and throwing him headfirst like a javelin into the scoring area. The Sunday Irish Times had a whole special section explaining how the game worked; I read it twice and was still baffled.

 

And rugby players are characters. There's Gareth Thomas, the only openly gay man in professional team sports in the entire world. There's Lawrence Dallaglio, the huge beautiful deadly English player who makes my heart quiver whenever I look at him. There's Sebastien Chabal, l'Homme des Cavernes, the Caveman. There's Zinedine Zidane, the French player who headbutted another player so hard that I could feel it three hundred miles away.

 

But, in the end, it's all about watching thirty buffalo-sized men huffing and snorting at each other, with murder in their big angry beautiful bloodshot eyes.

 

And that's entertainment.

 

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RuPaul's Drag Race

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I get a huge kick out of drag. It's not my thing personally; if I did drag I'd look like an alcoholic overage version of Nancy Kulp as Miss Jane Hathaway from “The Beverly Hillbillies.” But I admire the drag artists who do it; it takes courage to do it at all, and it takes skill to do it well.

 

 

Logo TV, bless its gay little heart, is currently bringing us another season of “RuPaul's Drag Race.” On one level it's just another reality-show competition. On another level it's wonderful. Drag has always been about performance and competition. Cattiness and rivalry are endemic to the drag community, so there's no need for the producers to inject drama into the show; the players bring it with them. And there's little or no real malice or bad feeling here. New York Magazine this week noted that this is just about the only reality-show competition with likeable contestants. The judges don’t pull any punches, but they don't mock the contestants; they mostly point out presentation flaws. They do it wittily and pointedly, but – hey – that’s part of the drag scene. If your dress isn't hemmed correctly, if your wig isn't right: hey, girl, watch out!

 

I used to think that drag was bad advertising for the gay community. It implied that we weren't serious. I've come to realize that the drag community is sort of like our Knights of Columbus lodge. Drag queens, and the Knights of Columbus, put on parades and socials; they host charity bingo events; they get to wear bizarrely colorful outfits and gigantic feathered hats.

 

In both cases, it's performance art about being openly and proudly different in a hostile and indifferent world.

 

As Lady Bunny, a guest judge at last year’s “Drag U.”, said so memorably: “Honey, I always envied my older sister when I was a kid. And now here I am, famous, and my sister's in a mental institution. So that just goes to show you.”

 

Amen, sister.

 

 

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The Rite

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Partner and I saw “The Rite” last weekend. Ho hum. It's a melange of every demonic possession / exorcism movie ever made - mostly “The Exorcist,” of course, but bits of many others, up to and including “Paranormal Activity.”

 

 

Partner and I were mostly interested in seeing Anthony Hopkins. The previews implied that he gets possessed, so I assumed he would be doing his glassy-eyed flesh-eating lunatic routine, and I will pay seven and a half dollars to see that any day of the week.

 

We were not disappointed. When the demon takes him, Anthony rolls his eyes and uses his sepulchral Hannibal Lecter voice and slams people around the room.

 

But he doesn't do enough of it. The movie's pretty dull when he's not flouncing around in full possession mode.

 

The plot is unsatisfying. The movie is full of unnecessary scenes, and plot detours that lead nowhere, and bizarrely tilted aerial shots. The main character is a young guy who goes to seminary school, but who lacks faith; he goes through Dramatic and Affecting Scenes and Traumatic Flashbacks, and there is a surprise ending which is frankly not much of a surprise. In fact, it ends in exactly the same way as “The Trouble With Angels” with Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell, except that “The Trouble With Angels” is a lot more fun.

 

And there's a wee problem with the reasoning behind the whole exorcism business. We are told that, if the devil's real, God must be real too. (I’m not sure why this has to be true. Is the opposite also true? Are God and the Devil a boxed set? Can you say “Manicheanism”?) Apparently, if you don't believe in them – both of them – bad things happen. On the other hand, Hopkins explains early in the movie that the Devil prefers that you not believe in him. Later in the movie, however, the Devil (who turns out – aha! - to be real!) does everything but cartwheels and skywriting to establish his own existence.

 

Doesn't that seem screwy to you?

 

Eh, well. This is a movie that will be quickly forgotten.

 

At least the popcorn was okay.

 

 

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Malta

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I spent a week in Malta back in 1987. Malta is a big rock sticking out of the water just south of Sicily.  It supports a few farmers, a few fishermen, and lots and lots of tourism.

 

 

I flew there from Tunis, on a small plane. We were flying low enough that I could see the ripples on the surface of the Mediterranean. Then, suddenly, there was Malta, a huge black cliff looming out of the blue water. There were cows grazing on the edge of the cliff. I could see the cows. I could see the spots on the cows. Oh my god! Too low! Too low!

 

 

Malta is a strange crossroads between Europe and North Africa. The Maltese language is mostly Arabic, with a lot of Italian vocabulary and tons of English borrowings (it was an British colony for a long time). I speak both Italian and Arabic (and some English), so Maltese was surprisingly transparent to me. One evening in a restaurant, a loud tourist woman complained to the waiter that her steak wasn't properly cooked, and she wanted a freshly cooked one. The waiter smiled, told her (in English) that everything would be taken care of, and said to another waiter (in Maltese): “This cow in the red dress would like a new steak.”

 

 

I nearly choked on my mixed greens.

 

 

Malta is littered with prehistoric remains. There is an underground cave full of strange carvings, accessible through a back door in a bakery in Paola, near the capital. The entire island is paved with Neolithic standing stones and circles and monuments. Thousands of years ago Malta was home to a breed of tiny elephants, whose bones are still found in caves and riverbeds. I remember looking at their delicate little skulls in a museum and thinking: Poor things.

 

 

I stayed in a pleasant cheerful place called the Hotel Plevna.  After dinner I'd go down to the lounge and read the Times of Malta. There was always a frail old lady there, no matter when I got there. She napped a lot. Once she farted in her sleep, which I found both amusing and endearing.  And one evening I heard her talking to a British guest about dinner, in a very high-pitched tone: “When I eat cauliflower it must be piping hot! With a nice cheese sauce!”   Someone later told me that the old lady was the widow of the former Greek ambassador, and a part-owner of the hotel.

 

 

It was twenty-four years ago, and she'd be well over a hundred now, if she were still alive.

 

 

I choose to believe that she's still there.

 

 

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Travel is so broadening

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Partner and I both like to travel, but not in the same way. Partner likes thinking about it, fantasizing about it, planning it. I loathe all of the foregoing. I'm a nervous person, and I'm never completely comfortable until I arrive at my destination. But we work it out somehow.

 

We get away for small trips from time to time: Boston, New York, Cape Cod, the Berkshires. We've gone to Ireland once, and to the Northwest several times (there's a Williams family reunion every summer, and it's kind of a hoot to see all the cousins, and Partner, bless him, puts up with it). The Northwest is very pretty: mountains, forests, ocean. But it's not my home anymore.  I love going, but it's a bittersweet trip for me.

 

Once in a while we go to northern New England. I'm partial to Vermont, especially Burlington: it's hippyish and small and cheerful, and Lake Champlain is beautiful, and none of the buildings are taller than a couple of stories. New Hampshire's okay, but it feels like a northward continuation of Massachusetts. Maine looks just the way it does in the tourist brochures.

 

But now retirement is looming, and (as I said) Partner likes to plan ahead. “Where do you want to go when we retire?” he keeps asking me.

 

 

I know what he wants me to say. He wants me to say Hawaii, Florida, Key West, Palm Springs, Palm Beach. He likes warmth and sun and SPF 1000.

 

I prefer unusual destinations. I also like screwing with people. “Mali,” I say. “Timbuktu. It's nice and sunny there, so you should like that. Besides, I always regretted that I never went to Timbuktu when I was in Africa.”

 

“They kidnap people there,” he says. “And then they eat them. Forget it.”

 

 

“Senegal,” I say.

 

“Malaria. Schistosomiasis.”

 

“Central Asia.”

 

“You've already been there. Also political unrest. Also bubonic plague.”

 

“Laos,” I say evilly. “Bolivia. Chad.”

 

“Never in a million years.”

 

So you see our fix.

 

Naturally I will get my way. But it will take time, and guile.

 

(I hope he doesn't read this.)

 

 

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Eating guts

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My father raised his own beef cattle, on a small scale. He'd buy one or two calves at a time, raise them to maturity, then have them slaughtered and butchered. We knew a butcher who'd take care of the whole operation – slaughtering, cutting up, grinding, wrapping – in return for a quarter of the entire animal. A small cow yields at least a couple of hundred pounds of meat (usually more), so there was plenty to go around, and our basement freezer was always full of steaks and roasts and hamburger.

 

Once, the butcher left a bucket on the back steps after the deed was done: liver, kidneys, oxtail, heart, et cetera. The tongue was lying on top, and there is nothing bigger or slimier-looking than a raw cow's tongue. “The neighbors can have 'em,” my mother said. “We don't eat guts.”

 

Well, times change. I discovered in adulthood that I have a taste for liver: it's rich and interesting. Partner, who does not share my enthusiasm, refers to it as “the cow's carburetor,” and reminds me from time to time that it's just a big meaty filter. That may well be. It's still pretty tasty.

 

A British friend in Morocco prepared kidneys for me more than once, and they're pretty savory too, though (after all) they're just filters too. I love the flavor of tongue, but the texture is a little gelatinous. (There used to be a restaurant in Tunis that did tongue in aspic as an appetizer; it was very pleasant, and I never had to worry about sharing it with anyone, once I explained what it was.) Oxtail's good, though gluey. Heart has a nice flavor, but I can't help noticing all those little veins. In Tunisia, I often ordered an egg-and-hot-peppers dish called ojja; I never really asked what was in it, so it wasn't until much later that I realized brains are a main ingredient.

 

 

And then there are all the other organs.

 

Once, in a restaurant in the Tunis medina, I was having lunch with my friend Ahmed, who was moaning as usual about his job, his love life, etc. He ordered fish, I ordered kamounia. Kamounia is a stew usually incorporating liver, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, etc.

 

But it doesn't have to be liver.

 

The waiter brought our dishes to the table. Ahmed kept talking while dissecting his fish (which was, as always, served whole). I glanced down at my plate and saw – well, a large whitish sphere.

 

Now what organ could that be?

 

Ahmed didn't notice. He just kept talking and sawing away at his fish. I thought about it for a long time. I'd always wondered what the organ in question tasted like.

 

So what the hell? I ate it.

 

 

Flavor: nothing special. Texture: a little spongy.

 

Just in case you were wondering.

 

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Sunday blog: Pee-wee Herman and Andy Samberg do shots!

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Here is a SNL Digital Short for anyone who likes any of the following:

• Pee-wee Herman;
• Andy Samberg;
• Anderson Cooper;
• Doing shots.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/snl-digital-short-andy-samberg-and-pee-wee

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Tunisia

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Tunisia has been going through interesting times lately. I lived and worked there for a couple of years back in the 1980s, and I still keep in touch with some of the Tunisians I knew and worked with. They're all okay so far; they're posting on a daily basis on Facebook, and I wish my Arabic were better, because the videos and news stories are pretty interesting. I wish them, and all Tunisians, a prosperous and happy future.

 

I was there during the last few years of the presidency of Habib Bourguiba, the original President of the Tunisian Republic, le Combattant supreme. He was then in his eighties and very frail, but the country was stable and open (lots of coming and going to Europe; decent relations with most of the rest of the Arab world, with the exception of Libya – but in those days, no one got along with Libya; a broad and very effective educational system, which emphasized secondary education). It was, as we said in our office communications, “the crossroads of the Arab world.”

 

 

I lived in the old city, about two blocks from the Casbah. We were within hollering distance of two of the most famous and most beautiful of Tunis's mosques, the Zeitouna and the Youssef Dey. Both had real muezzins who intoned the call to prayer five times a day (most mosques use recordings), but the muezzins in those two mosques managed it so they never faced one another as they circled their parapets. Sometimes we'd go up to our rooftop at sunset to listen to the muezzins and watch the lights come on all over the city.

 

 

I shared the medina apartment with a number of different people, all women. The elderly landlord was baffled by this, but refused to admit it. Naturally he deferred to me as the head of the household. All of my female housemates were referred to, politely, as “Madame.”

 

There was a good restaurant not far from the Zeitouna mosque, on one of the roofed streets in the Medina. During Ramadan (when you can't eat while the sun is in the sky), we'd get a table around fifteen minutes before sundown and order harira, the thick wholesome traditional Ramadan soup. They'd serve it about five minutes before sundown. We (and all of the other diners in the restaurant) would toy with our spoons. Finally, faintly, we could hear the muezzin begin the sunset call from the Zeitouna mosque. After a minute or so, a little boy stationed down at the end of the street would frantically wave his arms, signalling to us that the call was completed, and we'd pick up our spoons and begin to eat.

 

 

My apartment had a very small balcony facing north. From there, we could see the summer thunderstorms lining up over the Mediterranean. They never came inland, but we saw the lightning flickering from the clouds at night.

 

 

One day in winter, there was a little sleet mixed in with the rain, and one of my Tunisian officemates turned to me as we watched the weather from the office window and asked: “Is this what snow is like?”

 

 

Toward the end of my time there, two of my friends drove me to an undisclosed destination. It turned out to be the very tip of Cap Blanc, the northernmost point of Africa, overlooking the Mediterranean. We watched the sun go down from there.

 

 

It was very beautiful.

 

 

Here's hoping for a peaceful and happy outcome to the Jasmine Revolution.

 

 

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