Dear Loyal Fans

Mail has been pouring in, expressing concern over my absence.  Topping the list of reactions from readers is the following:  "Shape up, Fat Boy.  I want to hear more about this 100 year-old pot.  Does it actually improve with age, or is this just some more hype from you hippy California preverts?"


The fact is, I went away for some cooking lessons from my little sister and returned home with a virus cold.  DaddyDrinks will return.  Thank you all for continuing to check this blog.  Now, I have to go check my traps for meat and blow my "node."

The 100 Year Old Pot

Nobody knows the exact age or the origin of the pot.   It is pitted like ancient pewter, stained like my great-aunt Rosie’s store-bought teeth, and has roasted meat for at least four generations in my family.  Some said it was one of the few possessions brought to America by my grandmother’s mother, but I remember my mother saying it was a wedding gift to my grandmother when she married my granddad.  My uncle, the last of my mother’s generation, turned 102 last November.  Do the math.  The pot is older than dust.  


When my Grandma was a young bride, meat was smoked, canned, or dried.  There was no refrigeration.  There was ice for only as long as it withstood the summer heat in the icehouse.  By spring, the only meat that was safe to eat was twice-smoked German sausage and ham---except for meat that resided in vacuum-sealed glass jars and had been cooked, canned and stored in the fruit cellar.   Whether freshly killed or canned, when meat was cooked in my grandmother’s kitchen, it was either fried to a leathery consistency or was roasted---in the pot.  


Pheasants, mallard ducks, quail, grouse, sage hens (and something that I believe had been hunted to extinction by the time I was ten and deemed old enough to hunt with my granddad) ended up roasted to perfection in my grandma’s roasting pot.  Smoked hams, freshly butchered beef roasts, pork chops and ribs all came from the pot. I cannot remember a Sunday dinner that did not include something from the pot.  Some years before my grandma died, my mother became the caretaker of the pot.


It was my baby sister who first discovered the mystical powers of the pot.  Like my father, she was an inventor whose imagination knew no bounds.  She discovered that a marble, when dropped into the pot and forced to swirl around by swinging the pot with both hands, made a musical note.  Every marble had its own note.  Sometimes, two or three marbles at a time made music that caused our dog to howl and our mom to send us outside until dinner.  


On the weekend while we listened to the radio and, years later, watched television, popcorn popped over the open flames in our fireplace was tossed into the pot. Melted creamery butter would be poured over the top.  Fine-ground salt would be added, and the lid of the pot would be fit tightly into the groove that ran around the upper edge.  Thirty or forty shakes later, buttery salted popcorn would be passed around the room as our dog, Sandra, followed it and did amazing air-borne tricks, leaping to catch a piece of popcorn in flight.  We didn’t need video games or an iPhone to keep us entertained.  We had the radio, popcorn, Sandra and the pot.  


The next morning, my sister and I would run to the kitchen and fight over who would be first to run a small handful of popcorn around the bottom of the pot and scoop up the remaining butter.  Nothing, and I mean nothing, that ever emerged from the pot was as wonderful as the popcorn left from the night before that I shared with my sister (and Sandra, of course) as we stood on the cold kitchen floor in our bare feet.  


Over 35 years ago, after my wife and I stopped “living in sin” and got married, we visited my parents. As we packed the car to return home, my mother secretly added a set of silver flatware that had belonged to her mother – and the pot. The 100-something year old pot has been with us through many moves and now resides in our 130-year old house built by the daughter of a survivor of the Donner Party. 


For the first 20-plus years of pot ownership, I only used it to recreate the popcorn ritual. After I was suddenly thrown into culinary duties, I looked at the pot differently. If I was going to be a successful cook, I would need the guidance of my grandmother and her pot.  

From Russia with Love

The ride home was as silent as the grave I had just dug for myself.  I knew better than to remind my wife that it was Friday and technically her day to “be responsible for meals.”  


When she pulled into Jenny’s Giant Burger, I reached for my billfold and extracted a “twenty.”  My wife glared at me with those dark eyes that used to be such a turn-on.  I extracted another handful of unknown denominations.  It was going to be a two milkshake and double order of fries no-comment kind of night.  “Nudding for me,” I managed to say with seven tissues rolled up into my nose to stop the bleeding when I ran out of nose hair.  “I habba code cube take and Wodder Bread at hombe.”  


By 8:40 PM, her carbohydrate high had worn off, and she started turning off the lights in our living room.  “It’s going to be cold tonight,” she said as she headed up the stairs to where we stored our marital bed and the photo albums of when all we needed was love and a bottle of cheap wine to keep us warm.  “You might need an extra blanket down here.”  


Candi, Randi and Bambi, triplet friends of mine who were tenure-track assistant professors of Human Sexuality at Vassar, happened to be lounging in a private chat room on the Internet when I logged in.  As I explained what had happened to my well-conceived plan to win over to my side of the table our marriage counselor, either Candi or Bambi posted a small mpeg animation of tears flowing from the eyes of a young girl besieged by a huge pod of one-eyed dolphins.  “I know just what it’s like,” she said, “to be ready to make a point and find something stuck in your throat.” Before I could reply, my computer screen flashed a message that my Gold Card account had reached its credit limit.  


“What was it the therapist said,” I asked myself, “about new skills?” She had made it sound almost manly.  I reviewed in my mind the hundreds maybe thousands of times that I had pulled a flaming pot of oil off the stove – so to speak – to save my wife and my children from impending disaster.  But on this cold and lonely night, I was fresh out of answers.  


“Bong,” went my computer, signaling that I had mail.  


“dear sugarstick, do not attempt to reply to this message.  my manager will kill me or worst if he knew I write.  this thing of yours happen also to my grandson in America when his husband become tired of doing it all.  my grandson he buy what you call slow cooker.  he say it change his life.  don’t buy cheap.  and don’t come back to chatroom.  you know what I saying?   DasveedAnja, Bambi"

Daddy's Intervention

My wife and I arrived for our appointment with her chosen therapist about ten minutes early.  She picked up a magazine from the coffee table, and I went searching in vain for a copy of “Guns and Ammo” or “Saltwater Fishing Adventures.”  I settled for an old copy of “Newsweek” with part of the cover and most of the pages missing except for a feature story on Tom Cruise that was strewn with obscenities written in lipstick.  I wished I had been listening outside the door when the author of those colorful projections was inside airing her relationship challenges.    


I reviewed my mental list of reasons why gender role rules were essential to not only the solution to my pitiful situation but to the future of our children and their tolerance of mates who were raised by parents who still believed that we are all happiest when we live lives exactly as seen in millions of American homes every night on television—in the late Fifties and early Sixties.  


Ozzie never cooked.  Ward Cleaver was never forced against his will to seek help from a marriage counselor.  Jim and Margaret Anderson on “Father Knows Best” had served as role models for most of the residents of the White House for several decades, for crying out loud.  Well, except for when those damned Clintons bought their way into power.  But we all know the truth of that, and it has no place in the future of our America.  


I had no idea how the session would be conducted, but I had come prepared.  I had made a list of my feelings in case the therapist was brainwashed into the Carl Rogers’ school of non-directive counseling and unconditional positive regard.  I had tightly woven logical arguments prepared in case the E.G. Williamson’s “Tell ‘em the fuck what rational people do in situations like this” was her chosen therapeutic framework.  I even had a few dreams cooked up in case Madame Zelda, the psycho-therapist, went Freud on me.  


Most importantly, I had my iPod loaded with Hank Williams tunes---“Cold, Cold Heart,” “I Just Don’t Like this Kind of Livin’,” and “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy.”  


I don’t remember much about the first fifteen minutes.  My wife was fully explaining our “Situation.” Ho hum . . . I had heard all of it before.  When it was my turn to respond, I choked.  I mean I literally choked.  My breath mint had slipped down my throat   Most of our time was used up when I finally hacked up the little son of a bitch.  I managed to catch two phrases offered by the therapist:  “catastrophic life changes,” and “adopt a new set of skills.”  


I looked at my wife, and in her eyes I saw something that in our thirty years of marriage I had never seen before:  disappointment.  She was looking straight at me.  

No Kitchen for Old Men

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I had been somewhat resistant to the idea of taking over my wife’s connubial responsibilities in the kitchen.  And maybe there was a little more to this whole business of meal preparation than I had given my grandmothers, my mother, my first wife and my current wife credit for.  But, dammit, it wasn’t my fault.  These women had always made it look so easy.  And, besides, I could do things with a can of chili and an all-beef sausage that had made many a grown woman cry.  


These thoughts were flooding my mind as my wife and I sat down for what she called a “family conference.”  Strangely, most of our “family conferences” never involved the children.  They frequently were preceded by something I had done ---or had not done—and by lunches involving my wife and some of her like-minded women friends.  I immediately sensed a little tension in the air, but I quite honestly never expected her to immediately toss out the “C” word.  

My aversion to the “C” word started back in the early years of my first marriage.  The first few times I heard it used in reference to me, I found it quite stimulating.  As memory serves, it was my rather attractive professor of child and adolescent psychology who first threw out the idea.  Shortly after that, I heard it again from another professor and a graduate assistant who was on his way to a doctoral fellowship at Washington State University.  “You would make a great Counselor,” they assured me, “and we can see to it that you are offered a full fellowship—with pay.”  


I had always been a patient listener and my advice to others was, without exception, flawless.  Consequently, I found myself in graduate school, surrounded by other people who were preparing to dedicate their lives to the “C” word.  


In all honesty, I didn’t do too well that year.  I aced my courses, managed to also complete a major in sociology, and published my first article in a research journal.  But I didn’t take too well to sitting around in a circle of my peers while we opened ourselves up to group leaders whose primary goal was to make us cry.  I was there to learn how to hone my skills at telling fucked up people how to straighten themselves out.  The only way I made it through practicum was to secretly pull hair out of my nose, which produced the desired effect of causing tears to stream down my cheeks.  


And now, here I was, sitting in a “family discussion” and being told that I needed Counseling.  Before I could get a good grip on a wad of nose hair, my wife announced that we had an appointment to see a therapist the following day at four PM.  “Oh Hell yes,” I said to myself as the tears started rolling down my cheek.  “I can plead my obvious case, get gender role rules put back into place, and pick up dinner on the way home.”  I quickly checked to make certain that I had a goodly supply of nose hair.  All that training in the "C" word was about to pay off.  With interest.  

Mom's Beef Stew (Rated R)

WARNING:  This post is intended for mature audiences only.  Some viewers may find some of the language and content objectionable.  


Thanks to Mom, I had the next two days covered.  Dad never cared much for things like soup and stew for dinner, hearkening back to his days in the Army when all the shit that was left over from half-way edible meals got tossed into a pot and, depending on how mushy everything got, became soup or stew.  Mom, my little sister and I, on the other hand, loved Mom’s beef stew.  And now, thanks to Mom and the instructions on the back of a package of Beef Stew Seasoning, I was about to create my first “made from scratch” family dinner.  


I lined up all my ingredients:  stew meat, carrots, onions, celery, and all I needed for a little toot.  I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall.  It said “Four Forty Four.”  That had always been a magical number because our son was born at exactly 4:44 AM, and every time he and I were together in the car and the clock read “4:44,” we let out a cheer.  It happened more often than one might expect.  And today, the clock on the kitchen wall read exactly FOUR FORTY FOUR.  I poured a little toot, and downed it like a man.  “I love you, Mick Jagger.  I love you, Beef Stew mix.  I love you, Mom.”  


STEP ONE:  I knew that I had to trim the excess fat off the stew meat and cut it all into chunks that resembled the chunks that Mom always had in her beef stew --- and which Dad never quite trusted.  The one thing that my little sister and I both disliked about Mom’s beef stew was the fatty gristle that we found in about every third chunk of meat.  By the time we finished dinner, the rims of our plates were lined with pieces of gristle and anything that resembled a piece of mushroom.  I had long before convinced my sister that mushrooms were easily confused with toadstools and that we wouldn’t know that Mom had made a mistake until we were orphaned by a careless slip.  On more than one occasion, a can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup passed off as gravy had sent Mom away from the dinner table in tears as my little sister tried to make herself vomit into the kitchen sink.  


I trimmed the stew meat perfectly, had another little toot, and looked at the clock.  It read 5:19.  


STEP TWO:  “Dredge the beef chunks in flour and brown on all sides in two tablespoons of vegetable oil on medium-high heat.”  What the fuck was this…..?  What happened to throw everything in the pot and have a toot while it cooked?  I had seen Mom do it a million times.  I didn’t know “dredge.”  Fuck dredge.  I poured a toot and a little vegetable oil into a pot, cranked the burner up to “high,” and got ready to brown the shit out of the meat.  The music playing in the background came to a stop.  I had oil splattered everywhere, but, the meat was browned---somewhat crispy, actually.  Time: 5:46.  


STEP THREE:  “Bring meat and three and a half cups of water to a slow boil.  Add package of Lawry’s Beef Stew Seasoning and simmer for one hour.”  I began to feel a cramp rise up from somewhere between my scrotum and my tailbone.  Spastic colon!  I realized that I had never read beyond the ingredients until now.  An hour to slow-boil the beef chunks; another hour to simmer the chunks of carrot, onion and celery; a half hour to cook potatoes until tender.  That would make it close to 7:46 and given the number of toots, I didn’t have a prayer of making it beyond seven PM, my father’s “magic number.”  


STEP FOUR: “Honey,” I called to my wife.  “Let’s do Jenny’s Giant Burgers tonight.   Stew always tastes better the second day.”  

Playing with Fire

In effect, with her tomato soup and cheese sandwiches for Sunday dinner, my wife of thirty-some years had declared war not only on me, but on the entire male culture.  Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, had prepared me in this life for becoming “Yan Can Cook” or, even worse, the equivalent of Gloria Steinem’s perfect man.  


I had always followed the gender-rules passed down by my parents, my grandparents and countless generations of men and women who cherished “balance and harmony” in their marriages.  Although there was Uncle Jimmy who seemed happy in the performance of domestic duties, like Erica Jong said, in every family of normal people, you can always find one nut—or something to that effect. Most everybody regarded Jimmy as something of an anomaly. My father once said that he was adopted from someplace where it was still legal to marry farm animals.  


I called my mother who, thank the good Lord, held a firm stance in the balance and harmony camp.


“I need to know how to make pot roast, Mom” I pleaded. 


I could hear pots and pans rattling in the background and the voice of my father, “Do I have time for another toot before dinner?”  


My mother said, “Buy a package of Beef Stew Seasoning and follow the directions on the back.  That will keep you going for a couple of days.”  


In the background, I heard my father say,  “Huh?  Who are you talking to?  Is that Jimmy?”  


Before the line went dead, I heard Mom say, “Oh bullshit, Marvin.”   


Ah, I thought, that’s what Sunday Dinner is all about. Dad mixing drinks in between sessions at the table playing solitaire while Mom bustled around the kitchen putting the multi-component meal together.   Dad played a crucial role in the preparation of Sunday dinner: making sure Mom’s tumbler was never empty yet monitoring her intake to ensure her successful completion of the meal.  It was a delicate juggling act that usually left him exhausted by the end of the dinner and asleep on the sofa by 7 o’clock.


The next morning, I drove to the store and found a package of Lawry’s Beef Stew seasoning.  Following the directions on the back of the package, I headed to the meat counter where I found a pound of meat labeled ‘stew meat.’  Inside were chunks of meat that looked just like the chunks I remembered in Mom’s beef stew.  Some were a little big, but I knew how to use a knife to butcher.  My years when I used to be a man had taught me such essential life skills.  This was frigging simple. What was my wife’s problem? If she thought this was difficult, she needed hormone replacement therapy.  (I made a mental note to ask my obstetrician friend, divorced five times and working on number six.) 


Three carrots, one medium yellow onion, one bunch of celery and two large potatoes later, I was at the checkout counter.  Ten minutes in the grocery store, and I was covered for at least two days.  It was at that moment that I remembered my favorite part of Mom’s beef stew--- homemade biscuits.  I carefully backed my cart through the line of women who were stacked up behind me.  I heard one of them say, “Poor darling, I think his wife drinks.”  


Five minutes later, I was back in line again with Grand’s Home Style Biscuits.  Two of the women who had been behind me were still waiting in line. Each handed me recipes scribbled on scraps of paper.  One included her phone number.   


All the way home, I cranked up the audio in my four-wheel drive SUV, rolled down every window and sang along with mighty manly Mick and the Rolling Stones’ 

“…so don’t play with me ‘cause you’re playin’ with fire.”