AND TEN POUNDS OF PORK SHOULDER

Without intending to, a friend reminded me of a farewell party at a local dive a number of years ago. A wake, memorial service, and final goodbye. Please bring something to eat, we'll provide the songs and liquor. So I made two huge pots of chile verde, the style with no tomatillos. Not the first food to arrive, definitely the first food to disappear. Because I was fussing with the furniture I delayed having a bowl, and when I turned around it was all gone.

New Mexico chile verde is perfect comfort food.

My friend recently posted a link to a chile colorado (red chile meat stew) recipe in Bon Appetit. Which, with very minor tweaks, is also comfort food. As is Birria, a long-simmered Mexican dish. The proper bachelor should have all three preparations in his repertoire.
Actually, he or she should have an entire cookbook in his repertoire.
Because both social life and loneliness require food.

Many people are so handicapped that they can't even make coffee well.


Anyhow, the point is that there are things that add richness to living, and good food and drink must be among them. Our ancestors during the fifties of the last century only half understood that, which is why many of them combined canned food and jello in strange ways and washed it down with a three martini lunch. It was a generation of he-men, both genders, and had tastes formed in the crucible of advertising. The sixties and seventies were NOT significantly better (carbonated beverages used in marinades?), and the all-American peasantry couldn't find outer space on a map they were that innocent.

The only good things to come out of that era were pennicilin for the clap, crocodile green wide lapels, and the nuclear bomb. All three of which were in the typical Sears or Mervyn's catalogue for the prairie housekeeper to purchase.

Obviously I wasn't awake then.


A man who was, dropped by my work the other day and left his pipes and ashtray, to be disposed of as we saw fit. I don't even know what he looks like, as I was occupied with something else at the time.

I cleaned up this one, because it was an interesting shape and felt good in the hand. Haven't smoked it yet. Probably will before the end of the month. Sometimes people just give up their pipes after several years of not smoking, the passion has gone.
The maker of the pipe above is believed to have been active before and up till the nineteen eighties, but almost nothing is known about him. The pipe is stamped "made in Belgium".
Old briar, with a grain pattern on the other side that looks cancerous.
It's an interesting piece. It was fun to work with


Both the pipe and the former smoker are a mystery.
There is a sort of seventies look to it.
Rainy weather, northern city.
College boy.

TOBACCO INDEX


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