Lend Me Your Ears

Cod Oven-baked With Herbs

     Have you ever kissed a cod on the lips? Me neither. As a matter of fact the thought of doing so had never even occurred to me until I read an article in The New Yorker magazine (March 27, 2017, page 19) entitled “Plane People:”      “On September 11, 2001, after flights were rerouted to their nearest airports, thirty-eight jets suddenly landed in Gander, Newfoundland, stranding some seven thousand passengers for up to five days in a town with only five hundred hotel rooms.”      The residents of Gander rose to the…

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Scrimp For The Luxuries

“Never scrimp on the luxuries; the necessities will take care of themselves” is a quote by Elaine Fried (wife of Willem de Kooning). I think a better piece of advice for us might be to scrimp for the luxuries. Luxuries transcend the ordinary, and for most of us a luxury is just that, a luxury. A little indulgence from time to time makes all of our hard work worthwhile. It’s a special invitation we extend to ourselves to enjoy the unique and the nonessential, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be…

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“A Taste Like Having A Circus In My Mouth”

In a Seinfeld episode entitled “The Doodle,” Kramer described the taste and sensation of biting into a Mackinaw peach in the following way, “It’s like having a circus in my mouth.” I think we’ve all experienced this. If it was a food we were acquainted with, then we had the anticipation of that first taste that was forthcoming. If it was a food we hadn’t experienced before, then the element of surprise was the essence. In either case, if the sensation was “over the top,” then we probably have experienced...

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The Seven Questions Of Socrates

   What is virtue?      What is moderation?      What is justice?      What is good?      What is courage?      What is piety?      What is for dinner?

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Love Songs and Oreo Cookies

You Do Something To Me is a great song. When I sing it, its heartfelt lyrics have the ability to actually transcend the awful quality of my voice. It’s always been my love song to my wife. It was written by Cole Porter in 1929. It’s been recorded by numerous artists who have crooned this song to the “objects of their affection” many times in movies and on television. As I said, it’s a great song, and they just don’t write songs like this anymore. You can imagine my surprise...

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Let’s Talk Pork

     And no, this topic has absolutely nothing to do with wasteful government spending. Our topic does have everything to do with the preparation of what’s been called “the other white meat.”      It seems to me the majority of the really bad meals I’ve eaten over the course of my life have involved pork. I’ve choked down uninteresting, unpalatable, and barely digestible roasts, loins that couldn’t be saved no matter how much sauce was ladled over them, and chops that could have been better used as shingles nailed to the…

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