JMGarciaIII

On April 25th, at +/-6am, after fighting Alzheimer's AND Parkinson's...my dad died. From a stroke. (A rather in-character thing.) It has been, among many other things, surreal. Given the fact he suffered from both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's his death was something frontmost in our minds, but we expected more of that long, slow decline. (Dementia-wise, we was 80% gone, so we still had some time to go in that department.) Earlier in my life, my dad and I didn't have an eye-to-eye relationship. Not something worthy of a book or film, but we had not-infrequent moments of friction. We had different personalities, and not always compatible ones. He had reached some rather lofty pinnacles on the strength of a forceful personality and it drove him crazy I didn't respond to that personality the way he expected me to. My sister was the one of us he "got" the best. He simply didn't know what to make of me half the time. I think it frustrated h...

Dear Internet, As a foodie, I'm faced with a certain dilemma. One the one hand I could stand to eat hunks of cow on a regular basis, yet my vanity isn't down with that and my sense of mortality seconds the motion. The solution is to "stretch" the beef component, so my tastebuds get to groove on all the beefy deliciousosity without needing to wrap myself outside a steak the size of a hubcap. So, here is one of my fave ways of doing just that. Beef Negamaki. Start with a fairly small portion of none-too-precious (any member of the "round" family) beef. Tenderness is not an issue, but deeply beefy flavor is . Wrap the beef in plastic. (Cheapskate that I am, I use the same wrap whence it came.) Whack it with a meat mallet. You want it as thin and flattened as possible without tearing. Once flattened, put trimmed scallion/green onion/spring onion/these things segments along the length. Roll up tight. You should be able to wrap twice around, otherwise u...

Being all Papist and stuff, we observe a fast on Ash Wednesday. Iberic tradition holds the fast to keep until after sunset (or, as it's called in Spain, "lunchtime") and even then, no meat or poultry need apply. So, I made one of TFBIM's faves, Black (i.e. Squid Ink) Spaghetti and Shrimp with Puttanesca Sauce. First you need garlic (I used 4 big cloves, you non-Mediterraneans'll probably wanna halve that), sliced as finely as your patience your allow. Several of you have emailed me asking what "as finely as your patience your allow" means. It means this: Take a small yellow onion, and chop it to the limits of your patience, also. Assemble the rest of the ingredients. Anchovy paste (I like Amore, and in this case I prefer the paste over the whole fillets, because these dissolve far better in a sauce), capers, squid in spaghetti, red pepper flakes. [Not pictured: Shrimp, & dried herbs (oregano, thyme & marjoram)] Oh, and also olives (I prefer...

After much effort, toil, angst, deliberation and frenetic Craigslist-surfing...I managed to get the very first component towards my (eventual) Tiki habitat. I managed to buy a bar and (I think) a pretty bloody nice one at that. It has only a couple of tiny dings and chips, but nothing that even someone as manually unskilled as I can't set right. Those teeny flaws aside, it's practically new. Below is the "overall view" of the beast. It weighs a TON...that slab o'granite top does not help and, even worse, makes it ridiculously top-heavy when all you have are one and a half men (me & Joey) to schlep it from the wifely minivan to the back room via the obstacle course of a hypercluttered garage, tall steps and rugged lawn terrain. Ona a dolly that was missing a wheel, and was wa-a-a-a-a-ay too small for the bar's footprint. So I had to stop every 10 feet, for Joey to shove an old sneaker where the missing wheel wasn't, so I could adjust the bar atop t...

Here is the RIGHT way to do this. Start by slicing pickles. NOT the sweet kind, and (ideally) not the ones that sit at room temperature. You need the crunch. I'spose you could get away with the pre-sliced ones, but I like my surface:mass ratio just so , and the Pickle Industrial Complex will not comply. Take Cuban bread, or Cuban rolls or, if you live in the provinces, something in the egg bread family (which turns this from a Cubano to a Medianoche , but whatever.) split them and mustardize them. The classic choice is plain ol' yellow mustard but I like the "deli" style mustard better. You do whatever you want. Then you lay down your pickle coverage. I love pickles, so I practically TILE the bloody thing. Over the pickles you'll need to place a layer of ham. Since I am an insufferable foodie, I use prosciutto (but not the hyper-fancy stuff). Either way, you want to make sure it's sliced so thin, as to be translucent. This allows you to plop it down in a wavy...

While there are four of us on the masthead of our joint blog and, ostensibly, four of us on the SWC Ruling Junta, in reality it's the lovely and gracious Karen and me plugging away merrily here. Since that blog is more news-and-commentary of a Jesuit nature than either of our "day blogs," it may be that casual readers would be confused -- even more so because Typepad doesn't allow for the "posted by" thingy to append a given blog entry -- as re. who's who. Therefore, as a public service, I offer you a simple way to tell us apart. Karen Joe Karen Joe Karen Joe Karen Joe Karen Joe Karen Joe Karen Joe There. Now you can tell us apart.