tim merritt [dot] net

R.W. Apple writes about John Rowley in The Oyster Is His World, and reading it, for a moment, I wished it was mine too. John Rowley has made a career and a calling of advocating for and raving about oysters, and to me, that’s one of those “Dang, that’s a great job!” jobs. Ah well.

Oysters – I love them. I love them to the point of becoming stupid about them at times. I love them smoked – the first way I could eat them as a boy in land-locked Atlanta despite oyster-loving parents – and in stews and fried. I especially love them on the half-shell. And yes, I chew them. Slo-o-owly and lovingly.

I find that I have not read much of the literary oyster canon (see this list of suggested oyster books on CuisineNet). I have however read one of the most important and enjoyable books of any type, M.F.K. Fisher’s Consider the Oyster.
It’s a superb little book, and if you don’t know Fisher’s writing, a very good introduction to her. Just be advised, you’ll be hungry.

In searching for a bookstore link to the book, I came across several sites that refer to her and her books (including CuisineNet, linked above) and several were also thoughtful writers about food and hunger and human appetites. More on food blogs another time.

Oyster photo: Ron Wurzer for The New York Times.

[Update: Just after posting this, I found the site of the MFK Fisher Foundation, sponsored by Les Dames d’Escoffier International, which includes tributes and information about her work.]

I really look forward to a trip to Affordable Europe. I hope these links will still work when we’re doing our planning. I hope the price of jet fuel doesn’t keep going up. I hope Delta will still honor frequent flier miles for trips to Europe. I just keep hoping.

... and others have gardening thrust upon them.

Ellen had grown some herbs for a few years outside the back deck, and last year wanted to plant sunflowers across the back of the yard. And I thought I’d grow a few tomato plants, as neighbors on either side have large gardens and often share their extras with us. Before I knew it, Bob – a veteran gardener who has his own homemade garden shed for housing his tiller, other tools, fertilizers, and other arcana for coaxing goodness from the ground – helped me (unasked, but much appreciated) deeply till my little plot, and gave me some tomato plants, sticks for staking them, and advice. I turned some manure into the soil, planted Bob’s plants (and some geraniums to ward off tomato-eating vermin), watered them when I remembered, and for my intermittent attention we got a total of three or four edible tomatoes. That’s it. Better luck next year.

Well, it’s next year. I’d spoken a little to Bob over the hedge about our vague plans – a larger garden for more tomato plants and other vegetables, a larger flower bed for Ellen, and when the tiller was back from the shop he’d help till again. Saturday, Ellen and I went to a plant sale presented by the Georgia Native Plant Society and bought some plants we hope will take.

Tonight as we were just finishing supper, he brought his tiller around the big hedge and knocked on our back door. He dug up the old plot and an area as big again, and tilled Ellen’s flower bed. We’re set for rain in the next day or so, and Friday I’m off, so I plan to add some more fertilizer – probably manure again – and plant the garden. Wish us luck.

As promised yesterday, Argentina On Two Steaks A Day, from painter and programmer Maciej Ceglowski’s Idle Words blog (“brevity is for the weak”), via Making Light, one of the net’s uberblogs. I’ll use the same pull-quote they did, which opens the piece:

The classic beginner’s mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day.

Mmmmm. Hungry now.

Lawn rhymes with yawn. I love the look of a nice expanse of trimmed green, but I also love even more the look of a field full of wildflowers or tall grass, and I love most having anything else to do with my time than care for my little mini-pasture. Yet there are the not illegitimate expectations of my neighbors. I do have a responsibility to them. I owe them a neat, trimmed, relatively weed-controlled patch adjacent to theirs, for reasons aesthetic and related to real estate values. It’s part of the system we signed up for when we moved in.

Which means that today I will spread on the lawn a weed-and-feed chemical in order to kill weeds and fertilize the grass, sending as well who-knows-what into the ground water via the large drainage culvert the county saw fit to put on this lot when it was carved out of some farmer’s fields some decades ago. (On top of that is the weekly belching of unfiltered and unregulated exhaust from the riding mower we share with our neighbors Debbie and Stu.)

I really, really do not want to do all this, for these selfish and environmental reasons. I’m going to anyway, though; I want to see what happens to the lawn, if it makes a substantial difference to the weed/grass ratio, and to see how I feel afterwards. We’ll see if the importance of “curb appeal” when it comes time to move in the future (i.e., “greed”) overcomes my indolence and environmental awareness.

I love this kind of article. Matt and Ted Lee explain how and why to roast entire bone-in legs of lamb, untrimmed beef brisket, whole fresh hams. I love well roasted meat. My family has historically roasted whole bone-in legs of lamb, with lots of garlic. This Sunday we’re having a southern-style ham, already smoked, and slow-roasted with a basting of Dr. Pepper. Oooh, pretty good, let me tell you.

A little later, I’ll post a link to a guide to surviving in Argentina on two steaks a day. Believe it.