In the latest episode of the podcast, I talk about running into someone from work in an unlikely place. It blew my mind a little. I’d like to know about the crazy places you’ve encountered people you know. While traveling, perhaps? I remember when I was a kid we’d always see people from Dunbar in Myrtle Beach. I guess it’s not that weird since it was the accepted vacation spot of the greater Charleston metropolitan area. But it amazed me, nonetheless, seeing those folks WAY out of context. What do you have on this one? Use the comments section.
And here’s the description for the new podcast episode, along with the fancy listenin’ engine. Or whatever.
In this one, I tell you about the adventure we got ourselves into while returning Dusty the Bellringer on Saturday, how I ran into someone from work in a highly unlikely place, the update(?!) I received about my Ancestry DNA results, and how I could almost certainly be hypnotized. Then I play a message left on the hotline all the way from Scotland. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for listening!
I’m cooking a big pot o’ beans as I type this. Like a granny! Hey, all I know is… they’re delicious and make the house smell fantastic. As I threatened last time, I’m trying to take my lunch to work now, and this is Day Two of the experiment. I’ve had it with the food situation there and need to take matters into my own hands. So, today I’m going to take a big bowl of so-called white beans (navy beans? great northerns?), a ham sandwich, and some other odds and ends. It requires some prep, but I won’t be out there driving to the world’s worst McDonald’s tonight, or visiting the bum-spangled Burger King. Which will save me some money and lower my daily sodium intake by roughly a million… watts? Hey, I never said I was a scientist.
For the record, I made a previous mess o’ beans on Sunday, but everybody ate them in short order. They were great! I put a big smoky ham hock in there, and it was nothing short of delicious. Not to mention filling. And it costs something like two dollars! Sure, I might be farting down cubicle walls by 9 pm, but only others will suffer.
I don’t want to go on and on about it, but I think beans are a forgotten food item in 2019. They’re great! Very underrated. Who’s with me?! …Hello?
A few days ago Ancestry sent me an email saying my DNA results have been “updated.” They mentioned this early in the process, that the science is always evolving and being refined or somesuch. And I might receive updated info. In any case, here’s how it looks now. Previously it was 64% England, Wales & Northwestern Europe, and 36% Ireland & Scotland. So, the England part was increased, and the Ireland/Scotland hunk was split off with some Viking. Huh. Maybe my Mom is right… it’s all a bunch of crap?
Finally, I listened to the penultimate album by the mighty Ass Ponys while writing this update, which is called Some Stupid With A Flare Gun. I love all things Ass Ponys, as well as Chuck Cleaver’s later and current band Wussy. But I especially like his earlier band’s final two albums, created after being dropped by a major label. Many groups don’t survive such a thing, but they rebounded with their best work. Great, great stuff! The last album is called Lohio and might even be better than this one. It’s hard to say, ’cause they’re both masterpieces.
I hope you guys enjoyed this quickie. Please don’t forget to tell us about your coincidental encounters in far-flung locales, and I’d also be interested to know what you believe are grossly underrated foods. Tell us all about it in the comments.
And I’ll see you again soon!
Have a great one.
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Some Stupid With A Flare Gun = line from Smoke On The Water
Years, maybe even decades ago, a radio station had people calling in with their “Misheard Lyrics” stories. A guy got on the line and said he always thought the words to “Smoke on the Water” were “Slow Cousin Walter”. I damn near ran off the road laughing. To this day, I still sing the misheard lyrics.
Zdenek Spicka made pot of Czech beans,
Burned the gambling house down,
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky,
It died with an awful sound.
jtb
Black eyed peas are a grossly underrated food. Also, I like seeing other people use the word ‘penultimate’.
Years back, we did a family Disney Cruise from Florida, during New Hampshire school vacation week. Our town police chief (who we were friendly with) was on the same cruise. It seemed quite odd, until I realized it was probably the only Disney cruise that departed and returned within that particular week. Fortunately, we made some small talk along the lines of “funny seeing you here!”, parted ways, and never saw him again.
Bum-spangled!
Don’t know why this landed here…
1) 1 bag of Hurst 15 bean soup. Soak overnight in water.
2) prepare according to directions except use 1/2 vegetable stock and 1/2 chicken stock (recipe calls for 6 cups of liquid, stock comes in 4 cup boxes, so i use 8 cups)
3) buy 1 lb of ham steak (better: use ham and bones left over from Easter or other Ham Holiday), finely dice, add early on in the cooking.
Make some cornbread, serve with chopped scallions, lime wedges, Kerrygold butter for the cornbread.
Mmmmmm.
ProTip: do not huck it all into a crock pot and turn it all to mush. I did that for years and feel like an idiot now that I’m cooking my beans properly.
On our way to Florida vacation when I was in junior high, stopped in SC for a night’s stay in a motel. Hanging out at the pool, and one of my friends shows up. How? We had a good time until I got stung in the finger by a bee, but that wasn’t her fault and I do not hold it against her in the least.
Beans are great – much respect for them if we are restricting the discussion to the starchy type beans and not he green and green-adjacent types. Oh, they’re OK, but unless cooked ‘southern style’ are no match for the heartier varieties.
Underrated foods – fresh pasta, laughing cow cheese, real oatmeal (cooked in a crockpot overnight with brown sugar, apples, cinnamon? Even better than on the stove), toast and butter.
Hi, my favourite porridge addition is honey with a splash of ‘cooking whisky’ (cheap scotch). It’s great Try it!
I am eating toast and butter (the real stuff) as we speak!
People don’t cook beans here (its Heinz, or nothing!) so if someone could send me a link to a good recipe I’d be ‘much obliged’!
I remember bumping into a couple who were from the same street while on holiday on a Greek island. It was weird. It was in a restaurant and I said ‘hey! You’re from Dundee!’ they said ‘yes we are we thought we recognised you’, but that was pretty much it. We didn’t talk back home, and we didn’t talk in Greece!
Jeff, FYI Scotland and Ireland have gotten on really well for millenia. England is another story……
I would like a recipe too!
Here is the most recent iteration of my recipe for white beans and ham. https://pastebin.com/a3wgPDFc. Apologies for the whimsical system of measurements.
Thanks!
My cousin just rec’d updated DNA results too. Apparently she is no longer Polish. But her sister and Dad are? I’m not sure if I trust the results
A couple of summers ago I was grocery shopping at a Wegman’s here in northern Virginia, and I saw a guy wearing a T shirt from Abbot’s Lobster in the Rough. That’s in the very small town where my grandfather grew up, and it’s hundreds of miles from here.
At a client site, I encountered a guy I knew from college who I hadn’t seen in about 30 years.
Last summer I was riding the DC metro (i.e. “excuse for a subway system”) and saw a friend of mine through the window in the next car. On a separate occasion of metro riding, I ran into a guy who cooks at my local watering hole.
And beans: yes, the perfect cold weather food. Ian, I can offer two key things about bean cookery. Use dried beans, not canned. Brine them overnight before making the bean dish (improves their texture and flavor). The other thing is to use some sort of pork product that’s mostly bone; like a ham bone or hamhocks or some such, and simmer it long enough to extract gelatin. This will give the dish body and mouthfeel.
Man, now I have to make some “white beans and ham.”
And by the damnedest coincidence, I have a good friend who is from Dundee. Been in the US for 25 years or so.
There is a chance I’ll know them! Ian Coleman, 50, Kirkton High School, Ascot Bar.
I was coming out of the movies on Guam and ran into my next door neighbor from junior high.
neck bones make the best bean soup.
Neck bones – good call.
I made a batch today (Sat.) using neck bones. Wow, this is fabulously gelatinous. I’ll be using them from now on, although the hocks still give nice fat content. I expect a combination is in order.
There is a chance I’ll know them! Ian Coleman, 50, Kirkton High School, Ascot Bar.
During a railroad strike, I had to find alternative ways to get to work and one was driving to the Bronx and taking the subway into Manhattan. I was standing and a young lady was sitting in front of me and yells out “You’re A (insert my last name)” SHe was the younger sister of a girl I went to school with but hand’t seen in a good 10 years.
You are all making me hungry and I can’t join the party because I’m allergic to beans. Sniff… I’ll be back.. something’s caught in my eye.
At select Dollar Tree’s you can find Larry the Cable Guy’s biscuits and gravy. Good stuff! I am sure Larry is in the kitchen supervising the production.
On last week’s blog comments, or maybe the week before that, Limey noted that Americans are remiss in withholding broad choices of crisp (potato chip) flavours from the general public, because we only have like 79 flavours of chips and should have more. I don’t know whether he was counting Lay’s Southern Biscuits and Gravy Flavored Potato Chips, but here they are along with a review. I was going to report on detailed taste tests of Larry the Cable Guy’s Biscuits and Gravy Microwave Breakfast stuff, but I started retching part way through the detailed description, so chips will have to do. I’m just beginning to understand why all those rednecks were shooting the shit out of each other on the fine series Justified. Raylan was wise to stick with vanilla ice cream and Bourbon whiskey.
http://www.shittyfoodblog.com/biscuits-gravy-flavored-chips/
John
My family saw three people we knew when we were visiting NYC last summer.
The first was an insurance agent I know in our town. When we landed at LaGuardia he was in the concourse waiting to board a plane for home.
My youngest saw her best-friend-from-junior-high’s family in Times Square.
My oldest saw one of her college professors walking down the street in Manhattan as we on the shuttle back to the airport.
Everyone’s your friend in New York City
And everything looks beautiful when you’re young and pretty
The streets are paved with diamonds and there’s just so much to see
But the best thing about New York City is you and me
The radio doesn’t get around to playing as much punk pop (much less cuddlecore) as our systems need these days. But 25 years ago, Lisa Marr and Cub exploded onto the Vancouver punk scene and had a nice three or four year run, issuing some EPs and four albums.
John Linnell and John Flansburgh were driving through rural eastern Washington in the middle of the night in late 1994 on tour, nursing their band van from Portland to Boise, and heard Cub playing New York City on a radio station in Vancouver B.C. They found a phone booth and called the station to ask who was singing that terrific song. TMBG ended up covering the song on their next album, Factory Showroom (1996), only screwing up one lyric (they wrote them down as they heard them on the radio) hilariously.
Cub actually got a few bucks from their label (Mint) to go to NYC for a couple of days and shoot a low budget video of New York City. Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9GOyvE9Q88
When I heard the story of people meeting in the City on station C1-NRB, this song and this story jumped 25 years of space and time and started playing on my brain’s decrepit juke box. Glad it still sort of works.
John
What a good, fun, sweet song. I’m glad the Johns covered it, because otherwise I never would have heard it.
Nice back-story. I’ve always liked that song as well. Both the Cub and TMBG versions.
Did the rest of the Rocky stories ever get published? What about the Bill stories?
I’ve got a couple…
Ran into a guy I knew in high school in a parking lot on Charleston Naval Station. He was on a ship that was just ‘visiting’, and was tied-up to the next pier over from my ship.
Used to work for a company that had an office outside of Munich, and I had been over there to work several times. During one trip, I traveled with a colleague to an IBM facility in Sindelfingen (outside of Stuttgart). A year or so later, that colleague was visiting me in Austin for a few days, and we went to an outlet mall so his girlfriend could buy some jeans for her brother (she was British). We ran into a guy in the Levi’s outlet store that worked at IBM Sindelfingen. Freaked me out.
Now that we’ve heard from John Locke, I’ll bet all the money in my left pocket that we hear from Rousseau, Kant or Voltaire or even Hume before we hear from Jeff. But I have a tabula rasa about it.
This message is sponsored by the Alliance of Unemployed Philosophy Majors.
jtb