I ask, you tell & vice versa

Thanks to all for a great 1st week of TodaysFrase.  To celebrate, let me share some comments/suggestions that visitors sent by email during the past few days.

KP, a longtime Pelecanos fan, urged me to stick with The Night Gardener.  I'm glad that I did.  The final few chapters were really worth the wait.  I also like the way the Washington, DC based plot moves back and forth between today and 1985 (that's because TodaysFrase actually lived in DC in 1985!  This seems like a good time to confide that TF almost always moves in the direction of omens when they present themselves.  I also save highly positive fortune cookies).

KP says that her favorite Pelecanos novels are the Stefanos books (I'm not quite sure what that means, but it sounds good):  Down By the River; A Firing Offence; and Nick's Trip.  Thanks for the suggestions, KP.  I hope that other TF-ers will recommend favorite books too.  KP, did you try The Vanished Child yet?

MAFFIE confided that my love of Aveeno's SPF 70 sunblock could seem to some people to be a little over-the-top.  MAFFIE, I must respectfully disagree here.  After all, I once got an incredibly painful sunburn on the upper half of my fourth toe on my left foot -- just because I managed to overlook it when reapplying suntan lotion (that was back in the day when 15 was about as high as anyone went).  Now, I always pay special attention to my toes and I urge others to do the same.

That said, I take MAFFIE's point.  In my effort to be relevant to as many TF-ers as possible, let me mention that, on somewhat cloudy days, I switch to Neutrogena's 30 Body Mist Sunblock SPF 30.  But I'm always a little nervous when I go that route.

Finally, thanks to all TF-ers who sent in recipe ideas.  More more more!

Close encounters of the annoying kind

Three painful hours on a Hampton Jitney traveling from Manhattan to Montauk.  The guy across the aisle caught my attention about 5 minutes after I got on the bus, when I heard him tell the teenage girl sitting next to him, "I'm going to leave you alone now" -- for the third time. The rest of the ride went something like this:

(Girl ignores him.)  Guy:  Do you always answer questions in monosyllables?

(girl ignores him) Guy:  I'm a national writer for the internet.  You've got to give me something to work with.

(girl ignores him) Guy:  You're so British.  And I don't mean that in a good way.

(Bus attendant comes down the aisle to sell tickets).  Guy:  Are you a Ruskie?

Ditto, ditto, ditto.  More obnoxious and annoying comments.  By this point, I have started taking notes on everything he says so that I don't feel compelled to hurl myself out of the bus window.

Guy (turning his loathsome attention to Todaysfrase herself):  You write so small.  You must be a writer.  You don't live on 80th and 3rd, do you?

Todaysfrase:  You're right.  I don't.

Guy:  I thought you were a world famous writer who lives two floors above me.

Ditto, ditto, ditto.  Cell phone calls.  More annoying comments.   The only relief was two strange trips that this man made to the bathroom, one right after the other.  Silence for approximately 15 minutes. 

Suddenly he turned his attention back to the teenage girl.  Guy:  Did you see the movie "The Queen?  (silence - the rest of us were probably all asking ourselves, Where the hell did that come from?).  

Guy:  Do you like your book?  (silence)  What is your book?  (silence)  All right.  I won't bother you.

(He makes the last in a string of about 15 cell phone calls).  Guy:  Hello.  Is the Outback restaurant open tonight? Who's the bartender?  Ralph?  Good. (General eye-rolling throughout the bus, as we find someone else to feel sorry for, instead of ourselves).  

The loathsome one then turns his attention back to Todaysfrase.

Guy:  How close do you live to the Village?

Todaysfrase:  What village?  (Was he wondering if I was a different world-famous writer  -- from Greenwich Village, this time?)

Guy:  Oh.  You're not getting off in Southampton?  I was going to make you an offer you couldn't refused.  (silence) Of course, you might have refused.

Here's a simple question for all of you:  Where are you most vulnerable to a close encounter of the annoying kind -- and why?

My relatively obscure but most favorite mystery

Yes, all mystery lovers have them.  I'm so completely attached to this book that it's the one mystery I never loan to anyone, because I'm afraid that even my friends or relatives won't give it back to me.  And I just like having it around.

"The Vanished Child", by Sarah Smith.  If you haven't read it, stop whatever you're doing and buy this book.  Now.  It's perfect.  She's a great stylist (actually, I read another book by her that I didn't really like, so maybe it's just the case that this was the one mystery she was meant to write).  The mystery is really suspenseful.  It's easy to get hooked on the main characters, even the unpleasant ones.  There's even a very moving love story attached.  

Don't trust me (yet)?  Here are the opening lines from the first page, and I hope you'll agree that they're absolutely irresistible:

"The Baron Alexander von Reisden went mad after his young wife died, and in five years he had not gotten himself sane.  His friends were concerned about him.  He had tried suicide once, early on, and had not succeeded; this was encouraging in a man who was usually both well-prepared and lucky..."

What's your own favorite, least-well-known mystery?  Please share.

Cook This

Great side dish - endless possible variations.  Prepare fresh brussel sprouts (cut off the bottoms, then halve them and flake off as many of the leaves, or whatever you call them, as possible); saute the halves/leaves in olive oil and Kosher salt until very well done (yes, Kosher salt, olive oil, and charred vegetables are major themes in my cooking).  Add this to wild rice (cooked in either water or vegetable broth).  Top with toasted pecans.  

I'm not sure how much wild rice is costing these days because I've been working my way through a large box for a while now.  But if it's pricey, I think this would work just as well with brown rice or a mixture of wild and brown.  My favorites are brown basmati or Whole Foods' organic short grain brown rice.  Also, even though I said pecans, I think it would also be great with toasted almonds or walnuts.  I also think that adding dried cranberries or cherries would be terrific.  

Other brussel sprout recipes?  Thanks for sending them along.

Enjoy.

GK "30"

Although I begin by paying homage to "The Wire" ("30" being the name of the final episode of the final season of this great TV show), I'm actually reporting the end of my commitment to "Generation Kill" (which shares the same creators as "The Wire" but has left me completely and utterly cold).  

It's hard for me to walk away from anything with David Simon and Ed Burns attached to it (from afar, I even like Nina Noble, who is apparently their executive producer for life, even though I don't exactly know what she does).  But after two mediocre episodes, I want my Sunday nights back.

Does anyone out there disagree?  I'm not attached to any of the characters (except the somewhat over-the-top Marine who's played by the same actor who played Ziggy during The Wire's second, magnificent season -- he's talented and really eats up the camera in every scene that he's in -- but, to be honest, maybe I only like him because of Ziggy).  And as a longtime journalist, I completely loathe the embedded reporter who apparently went on to write the book that "Generation Kill" is based on (does being embedded really mean that he doesn't do anything other than scribble on a notepad, grin, and occasionally roll his eyes or mouth a "wow"?  He's making me wish that Judith Miller would ride in on a tank, just to stir things up a little bit).  

This is a disappointment.  But, fortunately, The Wire's 5th season will go on DVD in a few weeks and I'll really be able to throw myself into that instead.  Is anybody else watching anything good this summer?

The clock and the pocketbook

Back in the day, before the economy started tanking, I never had much doubt about what I would prefer to save when it came to time and money.  But as prices keep rising, I'm rethinking those priorities ... at least when I can figure out how to do that.

After all, it's easier said than done, right?  Today, I went shopping at CVS where I saved big bucks on sales of Aveeno suntan lotion (I'm hooked on the SPF 70 spray) and Listerine (which was great since you can practically go bankrupt in the  pursuit of dental hygiene).  Then I filled up my 2001 Subaru with gas at $4.33 a gallon, which felt like the biggest bargain on the planet, since I haven't seen a price that low for more than a month.  

What a day.  I felt great.  But because I was racing around like a maniac, I took a short cut to get the shopping done, which involved driving over a toll bridge ($2.75).    By the time I got home, I realized that, mathematically speaking, I'd blown it, yet again.   Probably I would have been better off skipping the drugstore sale, buying gas in the neighborhood, avoiding the toll, saving mileage and time (or maybe this would have taken more time -- and it might have ended up costing more in some other way).  And, after all, do I even deserve to feel pleased with myself about the CVS sale when I didn't bite the bullet and buy CVS suntan lotion?

How do people make these kind of calculations? And learn from their experiences in a way that actually might make a difference, moving forward?

Mysteries and other mysteries

At the moment, I'm immersed in George Pelecanos's "The Night Gardener," which I am liking, but not loving anywhere near as much as I expected, given how fabulous his scripts were for "The Wire" (my true obsession of all obsessions).  That said, I am hoping for the best, given the pages of over-the-top blurbs and reviews for this book and some of his others.  Plus, I like the Washington, D.C. setting.

The problem may be that "Gardener" is following one of the great reads of my lifetime:  Peter Matthiessen's "Shadow Country."  I would recommend this book to anyone with a pulse and the willingness to stick with 892 pages of a completely haunting character profile and a really effective, looping and relooping stylistic approach.    Any recommendations of other Matthiessen novels or nonfiction to read????

Here's the real mystery:  How can a book be so good that after reading all those pages I went back and re-read the first 250 or so again, because I'd learned so much by the end that I felt compelled to revisit the beginning?  I'm in awe.

I've always loved Daniel Auteuil

Since this is a new blog, it seems important to make the point quickly:  I'm not all about cans of tuna fish.  So I'd like to mention my Daniel Auteuil obsession.  Aside from Jeff Bridges, he may be my favorite actor.  He's got incredible range and I've never seen a movie with him in it that was anything less than great.

Last night, I watched Un Coeur en Hiver, which I couldn't recommend more strongly.  It's a very moving story of the relationship between a kind of genius violin-maker (actually, a violin repair-person, but I don't think the distinction is worth dwelling on here), his business partner, and a beautiful violinist, who's the smoldering type.  Autueil is his usual brilliant, complex self.   Just watching what he does with his eyes is worth an hour and 41 minutes.  (If you like classical music, that's an added plus.)  I'd put this at the top of your netflix list.

Two other great, very different Auteuil movies that I recommend:  Apres Vous (very funny) and Cache (especially good if you like mysteries, which I really do -- a theme that I plan to return to with great regularity).   Actually, I might put Cache at the top of netflix, with Un Coeur in the number two spot.  By the time you see both of them, you'll be obsessed too. 

Anyone else have an Autueil movie to recommend?  Or another French actor/actress that you're really crazy about?

Tuna fish, anyone?

I like tuna fish.  Eating it has made me feel happy since I was a little kid, especially when it was mixed with mayonnaise and served on white bread, hopefully with a bag of potato chips on the side, and washed down with a glass of chocolate milk.  I try to resist urges like this these days, but still love to cook with (canned) tuna, which, after all, is about as cheap as you can get and doesn't have all those mercury problems that you have to worry about with fresh tuna.  I especially like to make Salade Nicoise with it (my secret ingredient is rice, instead of potatoes) or tuna with chick peas, charred red peppers, red onions, radishes, olive oil and kosher salt.

Here's what I recommend: Tonno Genova, solid light tuna in olive oil.   It's great and, if you're lucky, you can find it for $1.89 a can (usually at Fairway on the Upper West Side - I also found it recently at Cromer's in Montauk, where I bought out the entire supply because everything in Montauk is so expensive and I figured they'd sell out fast anyway).  Don't go crazy and buy it for more than $2.50 a can - just wait and look around.  If you've ever seen it for less than $1.89, let me know.

Today, I'm looking for:  A recipe for pasta with tuna and tomato sauce.  I once ate this at Penne's, which is a really nice restaurant in Philadelphia near U. of Penn.  The sauce was very light (practically more olive oil than tomato) and the pasta was whole wheat.  I've tried some recipes that sound similar in cookbooks but can't find anything that I like.  Any ideas?