The Genius of Psychic Sandwich

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rupert jee

Rupert Jee (from the Hello Deli website)

Allow me to be frank, dear reader. I haven’t been doing much cooking lately. I could make excuses, but I won’t bore you with them, and truthfully, it probably has to do more with summer torpor than anything else. But don’t think that food has not been on my mind. You know what I have been doing a lot of lately? Scouring the internet for clips of Psychic Sandwich.

This weird obsession started a few weeks ago when I heard a very brief radio clip in which a guy talks about why he loves David Letterman. His argument, as I remember it, was something about how it was worth Dave looking bored and basically phoning it in a lot of the time because every once in a while you end up with a moment of pure comic genius. And then he referenced this bit, entitled “How Many Guys in Spider-Man Suits Can Fit into Jamba Juice?” It’s worth watching:

I really like this clip, but even as I watched it, somewhere in the back of my mind the words “Pyschic Sandwich” repeated like a mantra. I haven’t even watched The Late Show for decades, but those two words kept surfacing with the clarity of those chimes they ring in meditation class. For those of you who don’t remember, in the mid-90s, Dave had a repeating comedy bit in which he would send an “intuitive” named Deborah Lynn into the Hello Deli and, blindfolded, she would try to divine what kind of sandwich Rupert Jee had just prepared. Though she was earnest to the point of seeming borderline autistic, she never once guessed correctly. And twenty years later, the words Psychic Sandwich floated back to me through the mists of time. Continue reading →

Bottled Sunshine: a Summer Beer Sampler

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Southern Tier's Hop Sun: the last & best beer we try...coincidence?

Last summer we discussed a variety of styles typically put out as summer beers. This year it’s time to get down to brass tacks (whatever that means!) and sample some breweries’ summer offerings.

We pick the first beer to try because its label was the most summery: Brooklyn Summer Ale. Its initial sharp bite brings you right out into a sunny summer afternoon picnic before it smooths out and takes you to a shady place. In fact, these exact words float through my head as part of the Pixie’s hit, Gigantic. Though an ale, the beer is pilsner-esque with that taste in the back of the mouth that borders on skunky. Must not be too bad though, because I quickly forget to taste it and instead debate the relative creepiness-level of this song: like, is the singer a voyeur or envious or both? And then admit that, man, it took me a long time to get that whole “hunk of love” line.

Up next is Victory’s Summer Love — far from a beer you’d get at a baseball game, despite the game-themed label. The perfect juxtaposition to Brooklyn, its bright sunny taste began smooth and ended dry. Reminiscent of a good pinot grigio. Suddenly and inexplicably I’m watching Liam Lynch’s This Town Sucks which I immediately recognize as my own teenage anthem to summertime doldrums. I think I quite like this beer and ponder what a difference a little Summer Love would have made to my seventeenth summer. Continue reading →

Wilco, Newports, and Hoboken’s Finest

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I have this on a shirt from a show I attended in 1998. That's right, baby, the "Being There" tour. Jay Bennet played fiddle while hanging by his knees from the HVAC.

Broadening PitchKnives’ scope from comestibles to ingestibles, allow me to recount last Friday night at the Americanarama Music Festival in Hoboken, New Jersey.

The overwhelming takeaway from the evening was a trio of rock n roll reiterations and a surprise:

1)    My Morning Jacket is the weirdest, mightiest, stadium-sized ROCK! band alive.
2)    Wilco is an unstoppable, deeply organic live act that covers a sweeping stylistic range in realizing some of the very best songs of the last 20 years.
3)     Bob Dylan can deliver a much better performance than you might expect.

That these are the takeaways is a testament to what the bands accomplished.

Because approximately 90 seconds into My Morning Jacket’s set, the crowd two feet in front of us scattered apart to reveal two men, each roughly twenty-five pounds over weight and with a bronze badge swinging from a chain around his neck, slamming a college-aged kid in loafers into the grass.  My first thought was of festival security and the fact that they weren’t interested in what I took out of my backpack and jammed into my pockets, only that I leave the empty backpack in the trash.  The Boston Marathon was on my mind.

But it immediately became clear that Hoboken’s Finest had, at the instant the kid broke out a dime bag to roll a joint, tackled his ass, twisted his limbs around, pressed his face into the ground, and cuffed him.  Why bother, after all, with something like, “Sorry, buddy, you’re busted; you’re under arrest; let’s go” when you can save your breath and rough up the threat to society?  The kid had no chance to run.  He didn’t even know what hit him.  Continue reading →

The Union Square Farmers Market Nightmarket: Very Pretty, Pretty Pricey

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Last week, the Union Square Farmer’s Market, one of the biggest and best in the city, put on its first nightmarket, billed in a lavender promotional jpeg as “A Midsummer Night’s Green Market.”  The farmers stayed twice as long as they usually do, there was beer and music, and a handful of area restaurants turned out to dish out.

So we turned out, too.  We were psyched.

It ended up a bit of a very crowded catwalk of very good looking food.

We tried Telepan’s blueberry crescent and fried eggplant with ratatouille, both of which were pretty, decent, unspectacular.  Each of these guys were four bucks.

 

Next up was the peach turnover from Union Square Café, which was not only infinitely superior to its blueberry cousin but pretty damn delicious.  Once you accept the fact that any turnover stuffed with corn syrup gloop masquerading as fruit is an offense to all that is good and noble in the world, you are left with a turnover’s pastry as its defining feature.  The Café’s was fantastic: delicately crispy on the top, firm and flaky elsewhere.  Cost: six bucks. Continue reading →

Farmer Dwight’s Blue Ribbon Cabbages

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cabbage manOnce farming gets into a family’s blood, it sticks there obstinately. My great-grandparents owned a farm in southern Ohio. My grandfather, the original urban gardener, inspired new city ordinances in Cleveland with his tendency to grow corn in his small front lawn. And my father, though he worked as a financial consultant for most of my lifetime, was always nipping over to the empty lot next to our house to coax something out of the ground and to wage epic battles against the deer that were huge fans of his work.

That’s why I wasn’t really surprised to receive this photo last week, of my father proudly displaying one of his largest cabbages to date. (The photo, by the way, is no optical illusion; these suckers really are larger than his head.)

When I asked Farmer Dwight to share his cabbage wisdom with the world, here are the tips he gave me:

  1. Pick a variety that will grow large heads. (You don’t want to be out of the game before you even start, people.)
  2. Plant early, in April, before it gets too warm. (Frost? Bah! He spits in the face of frost.)
  3. Pray that the varmints don’t eat the plants before they get a good start. (If your prayers go unanswered, you can also see Jason’s post from last week about warding off cabbage worms.) Continue reading →

Cabbage Worms Begone: A Safe, Organic Critter Repellent to Save your Crops

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My broccoli and cauliflower plants were getting hammered by some critter that skulks forward in the dead of night and goes to town on their leaves.  This happened last year to my Brussels sprouts, taking out one of four plants before I found an organic pest repellent.

There are a number of things you can do to minimize pest damage to your garden without spraying on pesticides that you’ll subsequently have to eat.  Marigolds, of course, are excellent to keeping damaging bug punks away.  Mint and lemongrass plants are as well.

But those guys are significantly suggestions.  Last year, to perform triage on the Brussels, I discovered Neem oil.

The Neem plant is indigenous to India and has a variety of Ayurvedic uses.  It will also keep everything from the Japanese beetle to the cabbage worm away from your crops.  The bottle I shown above cost me about fifteen bucks.  To use it, you mix half a tablespoon in a pint and a half of water in a spray bottle, add a little biodegradable dish soap (as an emulsifier), shake, and shoot.

It works like a charm, and it’s not harmful to mammals, birds, earthworms, lady bugs, etc.  Continue reading →

Funny T-Shirts & Beer Festivals: Two of My Favorite Things

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Four hours and, like, 50 samples later...

There is always a time-lapse between the beginning of a beer festival and the point when people react to my T-shirt; that is, people have to have enough samples in their bellies before they’re willing to point at my chest and say, “Huh. That’s funny.” The shirt appears to be designed after an Arm & Hammer box, but instead of the usual logo the arm holds a gun and the seal reads, “Armed & Hammered.” In that I have arms, by this late point in the afternoon at the beer festival my T-shirt had a perfectly truthful statement. And yes, those are two unhappily sober policemen behind me, perhaps wishing we weren’t all so goddamn goofy and nonviolent.

"I'm a Cleveland Fan"

Last Saturday I went to what was billed as the World Beer Festival, though in reality it was primarily US breweries, heavy on the Ohio-end of things. But that’s fine by me, given that Ohio makes some pretty rockin’ beer.  It took place on the harbor in Cleveland under tents, inside a huge open warehouse, and beneath a brilliantly blue sky. Its proximity to the lake made it easily the coolest location I’d ever been to for a beer fest. The first funny T-shirt — spotted walking in before we even arrived at the entrance — epitomized the city and its love/hate relationship with sports and its reputation for rampant alcoholism. I laughed, but maybe just because I’m an Ohioan. (Click on the images to see them larger.)

Everything's better in stick figure

This is the next funny shirt I saw, while standing behind the guy in line for the ever-amazing Rockmill Brewery stand. I hadn’t had enough beer yet to tell him I thought it was funny, so Ben and I snickered behind his back and snuck a picture while he pretended not to notice us. If it had been later in the day I would have said “HA!” and pointed, but as it was I thought I should probably be feeling somewhat uncomfortable. Continue reading →

Quotable Vegetables Puzzle

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vegetablequotesIn all the plant kingdom, no food inspires more words of wisdom than garlic. Or so it seemed, at least, as I went searching for questions for our latest food puzzle. Everyone from Cervantes (“Do not eat garlic or onions; for their smell will reveal that you are a peasant.”) to William Shatner (“Stop and smell the garlic! That’s all you have to do.”) has been willing to offer up an opinion on the humble bulb, and a few have even extended their commentary to include other vegetables. Can you identify which vegetable has been removed from each of the quotes below? (Hint: The answer to none of these is garlic, and no vegetable is repeated.)

  1. “_____ is nothing but cabbage with a college education.” –Mark Twain
  2. “The day is coming when a single _____, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” –Paul Cezanne
  3. “For every _____ full of weevils, God supplies a blind grocer.” –Arabic proverb
  4. “When General Lee took possession of Chambersburg on his way to Gettysburg, we happened to be a member of the Committee representing the town. Among the first things he demanded for his army was twenty-five barrels of _____.”—Editor of ‘The Guardian’ (1869)
  5. “We kids feared many things in those days – werewolves, dentists, North Koreans, Sunday School – but they all paled in comparison with _____.” –Dave Barry
  6. “A man taking _____ from a woman will love her always.” –Sir Thomas Moore
  7. “My boy, the ‘quenelles de sole’ were splendid, but the _____ were poor. You should shake the pan gently, all the time, like this.” –Marie-Antoine Carême (Supposedly his last words, spoken to a favorite pupil, January 12, 1833)
  8. “A cooked _____ is like a cooked oyster: ruined.” –Andre Simon
  9. The ____ is “one of the earth’s monstrosities.” –Pliny
  10. “The _____ is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. ____ are deadly serious.” –Tom Robbins
  11. “Fatherhood is telling your daughter that Michael Jackson loves all his fans, but has special feelings for the ones who eat _____.” –Bill Cosby (1986)
  12. “My idea of heaven is a great big _____ and someone to share it with.” –Oprah Winfrey

Don’t click continue reading until you’re ready to see the answers!

Continue reading →

Compost Tea & John Rambo’s Cracker Head

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Permaculture, the school of garden design that maximizes outputs while minimizing human and environmental inputs, turned me on a while ago to the idea of compost tea.  This isn’t tea to drink, but rather to be drunk by your plants.  They dig it.  It’s known as a foliant feeder, meaning it juices up your leaves.  Since leaves are the main sites of food production for most plants, healthier leaves translates into heartier plants.

To make the tea, you simply tie up a wad of compost in an old rag or T-shirt (yes, that’s an old pair of boxer briefs), drop it in a watering can, and let it steep in the sun for two or three days like a tea bag.  Shake things up occasionally, too.

(You can see that, having a watering can with a rather small fill hole at the top, I instead steeped the compost tea bag in a giant plastic bear.  This bear once held animal crackers.  Since then, it has been used to transport soil for various Concrete Jungle experiments.  Basically, I dig Continue reading →

Food for the End-of-Weekend Blues

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wagon wheels!Weekends are supposed to be relaxing, so the rumor goes. But come Sunday night, after the hiking, carousing, drinking, sunbathing, running, picnicking, sweating and entertaining with which many of us fill our summer weekends (several times over on long weekends), I don’t think it’s unusual to feel exhausted. That is how I found myself at my local Mr. Melon store on Sunday afternoon, staring into space and trailing zombie-like through the aisles, loath to cook anything, but feeling sharp pains in my stomach and wallet at the thought of eating takeout food one more time.

I had walked in with a vague plan of making a pasta dish that I like, but the asparagus was looking limp, the only walnuts I could find were in enormous tubs and neither Jason nor I could remember if there was any pesto left in the freezer. So I gave up on that one. I think, really, the only thing to do when you find yourself in this situation is to grab the items that kindle a tiny joy in your tired heart, which is how I ended up walking to the register with 1) Brussels sprouts and 2) rotelle pasta (or if you prefer—and believe me, I prefer—wagon wheels). Seriously, try to find a more cheerful pasta shape. That’s right. You can’t.

I am certain that you, dear reader, are just as capable of this sort of improvisation as I am, but I’ll post the recipe I came up with, just in case it comes in handy some muggy Sunday evening. The veggies make it fresh and light enough for summer, but the bleu cheese gives it a creamy decadence that will send you into a deep end-of-weekend slumber.

Bleu Wagon Wheels Continue reading →