QUESTIONS about Comfort Food


About.com listed the top 25 comfort foods, each linked to an appropriate recipe either traditional or updated.

Here’s my take on each:
• Apple Pie – I like; maybe with vanilla ice cream, it’s comfort food,
• Baked Beans – not a huge fan. Hated as a kid, will eat now. No.
• Banana Pudding – more likely vanilla pudding with sliced bananas in it
• Beef Stew – maybe
• Brisket Pot Roast – probably
• Chicken & Dumplings -possibly, though haven’t had in years
• Chicken Pot Pie – eh, it’s OK, but not comfort food.
• Chicken Soup – no. Mushroom soup, yes.
• Chili – I like chili, but never thought of as comfort food.
• Chocolate Chip Cookies – there was this local brand called Freihoffer’s which made the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. Either they’ve changed the formula or my taste buds have changed, but they just don’t do it for me anymore.
• Corn on the Cob – like it, not comfort food
• Fried Chicken – comfort food
• Gelatin – I only eat when I’m sick, so comfort food
• Green Bean Casserole – not a big fan
• Hot Dogs – not really. Saturday lunch or the ballpark.
• Ice Cream – sometimes
• Macaroni & Cheese – almost always, especially baked, the way my wife makes it. My daughter won’t even touch the stuff with the dayglo cheese powder.
• Mashed Potatoes – can be, depending on the mood
• Meatloaf – mash potatoes with meatloaf – now THAT’S comfort food
• Potato Salad – no. I eat it, but does not meet the level of pleasure necessary.
• Pumpkin Pie – no. I like it fine, but doesn’t quite get there
• Shepherd’s Pie – I didn’t even know what this was until about 15 years ago when, with the help of my girlfriend (now wife), I made it for 40 people I can see how it could be comfort food, but I always associate it with stressing over g=feeding a large number of folks.
• Spaghetti – no, and I do like spaghetti.
• Tomato Soup – not fond of tomato soup. Actively HATED Campbell’s tomato soup as a child, haven’t tried it since.
• Tuna Casserole – probably.

I suppose it’s definitional – it’s the stuff I like to eat when I’m sick or melancholy.

1. How would you rate the foods on this list as comfort foods?
2. What else wouuld you consider comfort food. Can’t think of anything else except Oreos with milk.

ROG

ROG

Do You Believe In Thaumaturgy?

My friend, the Hoffinator, wrote: “The headline I read included the phrase, ‘the thaumaturgic abilities of professors…’ I was curious, so I looked it up. Thaumaturgy is the performance of miracles. See if you can work it into a conversation…..”
Thus:
thaumaturgy [THAW-muh-tuhr-jee]-noun
The performance of miracles or magi.
thaumaturgic [thaw-muh-TUR-jik]–adjective
1. pertaining to a thaumaturge or to thaumaturgy.
2. having the powers of a thaumaturge.
thaumaturge [THAW-muh-turj]–noun
a worker of wonders or miracles; magician.
Also, thaumaturgist.
Interesting word. But it got me thinking that if pop songs replaced the word magic and its variants with thaumaturgy and ITS variants, it would make for some terrible scansion:

Black Thaumaturgic Woman by Santana

Thaumaturgic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf

Do You Believe In Thaumaturgy by the Lovin’ Spoonful

My Baby Must Be a Thaumaturge by the Marvelettes -hmm, actually that work, scansion-wise

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Emotionally intelligent signage
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The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community.
-Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895
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DIY Dryer Sheets
Mix one part liquid softener to four parts water and place in an old spray bottle. Spray some on a dedicated washcloth and toss in the dryer along with the clothes. One bottle of liquid fabric softener lasts a very long time.
Here’s the website that has a lot of other good tips.
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Mark Evanier linked to the opening of a mid-1960s TV show called Branded, starring Chuck Connors (“The Rifleman”). My sisters and I used to play “Branded”. We’d sing the theme together and take turns being the commander breaking the “sword” over our knees. (Usually it was a stick, but we also used to rip this piece of thin cardboard that used to be on the hangers when they came back from the dry cleaners.) And yes, I still know the song by heart.
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Cool pics of the universe

ROG

ROG

Overheard cellphones

All of these events happened in January 2009.

I’m riding the bus when I hear this person behind me, evidently on a cellphone, start a conversation with “Yo, b***””. Now, I’m not one to judge how others treat their friends, but that was, in a public setting, distracting. More disturbing, though, was this person’s apparent vendetta against some 3rd party. Apparently, the person on the other line said something conciliatory re: said 3rd party, but my caller said, “When I hate someone, I really HATE ’em!”

Then the 2nd party mentions the 3rd party’s mother. 1st party: “Oh, someone should just SHOOT HER!” I discovered that the 1st party, who turned out to be male (but with a higher-pitched voice, which threw me on my identification) was 1) from out of town and 2) going to go to the military recruiting station. I realized that if this person did not notice the building, I wouldn’t tell him. Alas, he did find it.

You should understand that, as a librarian and as a Christian, I always try to help someone when I can. I was walking by another person who was standing in the 200 block of Washington Avenue, but told someone on her cellphone (a friend or a cab) that she was on the 200 block of Central Avenue. It was an easy mistake; this particular block is across the street from the FIRST block of Central Avenue. So I interrupted the caller and corrected her; she was very appreciative.

The would-be recruit, though, I would have let ride past his stop until he was miles away. I realized that this person, so filled with hate, and proud of it, I didn’t really want in the U.S. military. I was surprised that I could develop such an antipathy for someone whose face I never saw until he deboarded the bus. I wonder how good the psychological testing is for those entering military service?

Oh, and speaking of cellphones: I was crossing the street and this woman, I thought, was calling to me. No, she was on one of those hands-free devices, and when I turned around, she looked at me as though I were crazy. I have long thought that if EVERYONE had one of those instruments, we could all going around talking, with no one would know if we were talking to others or just to ourselves, and no one would know who really WAS crazy. ROG

ROG

C is for Cash

I felt that Johnny Cash was one of those characters that kept drifting in and out of my awareness. As a child, I was vaguely aware of him from his later 1950s like I Walk the Line (#17 pop, #6 country) and the even bigger pop hit Guess Things Happen That way (#11 pop, #8 country). 1963’s Ring of Fire was also a crossover hit.

Johnny Cash went through some commercially desolate years due in no small part to his drug use. Then in 1968, now clean, he decided to do a concert in Folsom Prison, California in January, which was released as an album in May of that year. Despite less than enthusiastic support of his record company, Columbia, the album became a big country hit. More surprisingly, it also became a crossover hit, getting up #13 on the pop charts. Jann Wenner, from a relatively new periodical called Rolling Stone, touted the album, which undoubtedly helped fuel its rise. Even more successful was his album At San Quentin, which spawned the #2 pop hit, A Boy Named Sue, penned by Shel Silverstein.

This led to Johnny getting a primetime show on ABC-TV for a couple years, featuring a wide range of artists including Louis Armstrong, Neil Diamond, Arlo Guthrie, Merle Haggard, Joni Mitchell, Odetta, Minnie Pearl, Pete Seeger, and many more.

Of course, even success has its downside. Contrary to the legend about one of his signature songs, Johnny Cash had taken a Gordon Jenkins tune called Crescent City Blues and changed it to Folsom Prison Blues.

He told Sun Records what he’d done, and eventually Jenkins, who said he had no problem with it. The version in 1955 was a relatively minor hit but the 1968 live version on Columbia was massive, and Jenkins (apparently pushed by his publisher) sued Cash and received a settlement. There is an album called Johnny Cash: Roots and Branches; you can hear 30 seconds of Crescent City Blues here; you can also read an analysis of Folsom Prison’s most iconic line, “I shot a man in Reno” here. Somehow, this ripoff of an existing song didn’t bother me as much as others, especially given the fact that John had ‘fessed up.

Johnny Cash, Live at San Quentin – Folsom Prison Blues
LINK

John continued with an up-and-down profile. He’d show up in supergroups such as the Highwaymen (Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson) in 1985 or the Class of ’55 (Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison) in 1986; I have the latter on something called vinyl, BTW. But it wasn’t until a friend of mine sent me American Recording, the 1994 first album he performed produced by rock/hip hop producer Rick Rubin. The sparse sound was a revelation and I rediscovered Johnny Cash in that series of American albums: Unchained, Solitary Man, and The Man Comes Around, plus the posthumous A Hundred Highways and a boxed set. The defining song in his later years, of course was the Nine Inch Nails song Hurt.

Justin Timberlake, who beat out Johnny for a video award, said publicly that John should have one for Hurt and later conceived the posthumous video for God’s Gonna Cut You Down.

Johnny Cash died September 12, 2003, just months after his beloved wife, June Carter Cash passed away.
ROG

ROG

The Day The Music Died

I feel as though I “knew” Buddy Holly. I’ve owned and listened to his songs by him and the Crickets


LINK
and also through the cover versions by the Beatles (Words of Love), Linda Ronstadt and lots of others. Little wonder that Paul McCartney snatched up the rights to Buddy’s songs. I also saw the The Buddy Holly Story with Gary Busey in the lead.

I felt as though I was familiar with Richie Valens,


LINK

between the Los Lobos cover of La Bamba and the movie La Bamba with Lou Diamond Phillips.

I have little feel, though, for The Big Bopper. I know that his son had him exhumed under some bizarre paranoid theory that the Big Bopper survived the plane crash but was shot and killed going for help. But other than the one slightly randy hit Chantilly Lace, he’s a mystery.

Of course today mars the 50th anniversary of the deaths of these three musicians in an Iowa plane crash. I was alive but too young to remember the event first hand.

At the end of my 35-year high school reunion, someone had everyone stand around to sing. I had no idea what it’d be. Turned out to be American Pie, which I thought was kind of weird, in as much as it came out after we all graduated. Some people knew some parts, misremembered others. Here are the lyrics, along with one interpretation of same, not all of which I ascribe to. And here’s Don McLean singing it. I saw him in the late 1970s – I’m thinking in Dutchess County, NY, around Poughkeepsie – and of course he HAD to perform it. I wonder if he ever tires of it?
LINK.

ROG

ROG
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