Fuck Christmas, Fuck it in the Face

This may seem like a brash and downright vulgar thing to say about the holiday on which our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was born, but I feel that it is the only way to truly express how much I love Christmas. I would totally fuck it in the face. I know that Christmas doesn’t really have a face, and that if it did it probably would look a lot like Santa but I’m willing to overlook these facts. Honestly I’d fuck Christmas in whatever orifice was open to me. Mistletoe or not Christmas is gonna get so royally fucked this year it’s not even funny.

My wife agrees and is totally down. We are going to run a holiday train on Christmas and totally fuck its junk up. When you see Christmas in the morning and it’s kinda walking weird, maybe looking a little sore, that was me and my wife. We were the ones who fucked Christmas so hard.

I love you Christmas, you dirty little whore. I know you only come once a year so I’m gonna make you come like you’ve never come before. You can be as loud as you want, you can scratch, you can claw, you can even pull my hair I don’t care. This year it’s all about you Christmas. We can try anything you want. You don’t even have to come down the chimney like you usually do.

All right, seriously though, I do really love Christmas. And I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone’s sensibilities with all this x-rated Christmas talk. I guess in a way I’m trying to make a point. Christmas seems to have gone so far off the tracks that you very well might find it starring in some seedy face fucking porno. I mean, am I wrong? Hasn’t Christmas just become some sort of orgy of consumerism? Hasn’t the whole point of the holiday become some kind of macro-economic guilt trip aimed at herding us into the stores so that we can “rescue” our economy? Buy, buy, buy. Save, save, save. Now, now, now. You know you want it! Yeah, that’s right, give it to me, ew baby, ew baby, yeah, like that, with the charge card, yeah, I can feel it getting bigger, max it out, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Disgusting isn’t it? Well, I for one am just tired of it. It doesn’t get me off anymore. The catalogue porn, the window shopping, the mall, all the plastic Christmas cheer, it’s all a big turn off. I mean if I’m going to be forced into fucking Christmas I’m sure as hell not gonna do it in public. I’m not about humiliating the holiday. I’d want to go some place quiet, put on some mood music, maybe a little jingle bells or noel, maybe Chris G.’s album This Christmas Let’s Get Messed Up, turn down the lights and take things at a slower pace. I’d want it to be tender and meaningful. None of this impersonal wham, bam, thank you ma’am shit that the cheer mongers seem to be pushing. Just another one night stand. Get drunk and fuck something, anything, it doesn’t matter, you won’t remember it in the morning anyway. That’s just not how I roll. I don’t want to regret having sex with Christmas. I don’t want Christmas to regret it either. I want to wake up in the morning and be proud that I invited it over. Hell, I want to make it breakfast. I want to call it again.

But how do we get back to this kind of relationship with Christmas? How do we repair years of abuse and neglect, how do we make Christmas feel special again, pure and virginal? Well for starters we can stop using Christmas as an excuse to slake our perverted little desires to own more shit. Stop buying so much stuff people! I know they say that if we put away our credit cards we’ll wreck the economy. That we have to buy stuff because it’s part of our genetic make-up. And that if we don’t get people presents we’ll look like a cheapskate and a humbug. Well I say fuck what people say. Buying stuff is not the answer to a quality Christmas holiday.

I don’t really know what the answer is. I’m not a Christmas guru, an oracle, a trend setter or anything else, but what I do know is what works for me. This is how I make sweet love to Christmas. First of all I try not to kill too much shit getting my holiday nut. For example my wife and I went to this tree farm in the county and bought this live tree.

I know what you’re thinking, but despite the fact that it looks straight out of the Peanuts’ Christmas Special this tree is gonna be around a lot longer than any of us. We figure it will live in the house till spring, so as not to screw up its equilibrium with a sudden temperature change, and then we’ll keep it on the deck until next year when we’ll have it for our tree again. Cat has named it and everything. She calls it Frosty, but I think it should be called Sharpie, or Prickly, or something like that because this is the pokiest damn tree I’ve ever come across. Maybe it’s because it’s so young that its needles are so sharp, kind of like kittens and puppies, but twice now Frosty has drawn blood.

Honestly we don’t know too much about keeping a Sitka Spruce as an indoor pet but we did a little interweb investigation and it doesn’t seem too hard. It’s not recommended that you keep a tree like this one inside for more than a few days, but we’re going to go against that rule as long as Frosty doesn’t seem to be suffering. I’ve placed his pot inside a bucket that’s got a little water in the bottom so that he can drink what he needs. And I’ve chosen not to put any lights on him because the added warmth would be bad for his needles and his overall well being.

Instead I’ve painstakingly threaded a bunch of popcorn together to make a garland to drape over his branches. I used about three or four tablespoons vegetable oil, about a half a cup of popcorn, and popped it all on the stove top in an eight quart pot with a lid. If you’re going to use popcorn for decorative purposes don’t put any butter or salt on it. I let the popcorn cool for several hours then took this old sewing kit I got from some hotel and went to work. I never really noticed before how much individual popcorn kernels resemble octopus but it’s pretty uncanny. Here’s a random gift idea. If you have any Filipino friends or relatives get them a fresh octopus. They’ll be your friend forever I promise.

For gifts this year I’m giving homemade blackberry jam, homebrew, spicy pickled green tomatoes and a few little bottles of booze and some lottery tickets.

Cat spent three days putting together this massive batch of green curry for her gifts, grinding all the ingredients in a mortar. She’s going to get some “real” presents from me too, mostly functional and sensible things, but for the most part my family is just getting food. I don’t know if that makes me seem cheap or if it makes me seem thrifty and thoughtful. I don’t really care. If they don’t want the stuff then I’ll be glad to take it back. In fact I had real difficulty saving these jars of jam (I picked the blackberries after I returned from the Bay), and I’m having trouble parting with them now. No matter how I feel about this stuff I already know what kind of response I’ll get. It’ll be sort of like all the canned salmon and smoked salmon I’ve been giving my parents and brothers all these years. The jars will end up in their cupboard collecting dust, or in my Mom’s case in the back of the fridge with all those tiny forgotten bottles of horseradish sauce. My Mom is paranoid about botulism so she would never store something I’d canned myself in the cupboard where it belongs. She’d rather put it in her refrigerator where it looks like a bomb went off. I’ve cleaned out her fridge on a number of occasions and found food so old that it had grown its own personality. I’ve given up trying to rectify the matter though. I’ve tried to tell her that she should look in the fridge before she goes to the store but that’s a concept she just can’t understand. As a consequence there’s a lot of redundancy, a lot of spoilage and a lot of MIA’s. When Cat and I visit, my Mom goes shopping like she’s going to be feeding the fifth battalion for a month. We’re bombarded by snacking suggestions. Flanked by cookies and surrounded by dips and cheeses. Our meals are like a military parade. One dish after another hits the table in its own fancy bowl or plate, until an assembly the size the Red Army is lying there just challenging you to concur it. I don’t really know who wins these battles but there isn’t any quarter given because there isn’t anywhere in the fridge to put the leftovers.

I’m kind of off track here but it’s been that kind of day. My older brother is sitting across from me now holding forth on how global warming is bullshit, my Dad is tinkering with his new flatscreen tv, Cat is knitting her Christmas stocking. My little brother is trying to drink all the Wild Turkey before any of us get any, and my Mom is slaving away in the kitchen nowhere near emancipation. My older brother suggested that I wrap this up by quoting the last paragraph of It’s a Wonderful Life, but I think Cat’s suggestion is much better. She wanted me to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and remind everyone that every time a bell rings an Angel gets fucked in the face.

Merry Christmas everyone. When I sober up I’ll try and add some recipes for the jam and spicy green tomatoes. I’ll also explain how I think my sauerkraut when horribly, horribly wrong.

Now for the booze.

That's Not How My Mom Does It

We were fortunate this Thanksgiving to have several of our friends and family travel great distances to be with us for the holiday. One particular couple, Sarah and James, travelled from Northern California to visit our home and join us for the repast. I have known these two for as long as I’ve known my wife, and in fact have to give Sarah a lot of credit for getting us together. Well, I guess Evan Williams deserves recognition too, but the lion’s share definitely has to go to Sarah for her skillful application of his spirits.

Sarah and my wife have been friends for a long time. They lived together in Santa Cruz, California, both enjoying a carefree life of breathing fire, skinny dipping and all around hell raising. They have both walked the entire Appalachian Trail, Sarah doing the trip with James, and Cat, my wife, doing the journey solo a year later. I’m not sure how they decided on fishing together in Alaska but somehow by the grace of god they showed up one night on the beaches of Humpy Pointe to be part of a set netting crew that I’d been working on for ten years.


It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Going into that season I had been under the impression that I was ending a chapter in my life. My tenure as a salmon fisherman was coming to an end. I’d just started crabbing in the Bering Sea and my services were required for tendering in the Bay. Somehow I’d weaseled out of that summer’s detail to fulfill a commitment I’d made to my old boss and a desire I’d had to end my career there at an even decade. I had no idea what was about to hit me, no frame of reference that could have prepared me for the kind of female force that was about to descend on our tiny beach community. I got an inkling the morning after Sarah and Cat arrived, when I heard rumors that after reaching camp late that night they’d immediately stripped naked and ran into the Inlet. Naturally my first question was, why the fuck didn’t anyone wake me up? But then a more sober feeling came over me. As the foreman of the crew I was going to have to deal with these women. I had to be professional. I was their boss.

It really is funny how things work out sometimes. For one glorious summer I was the one giving orders. Now I’m the one receiving them. Honestly I don’t know if my wife ever took me too seriously as her boss. I know Sarah didn’t. She was the cook on the site and immediately took the position that she didn’t have to answer to anyone but the head honcho. I don’t know where she got that idea but it turned out to be right. Apparently ten seconds as the cook outweighs ten years as a fish choking grunt! I’d been the cook on several boats by that time too but had never started any assignment with that kind of presumption. I preferred to slowly work my way into a feeling a haughty contempt for the other fishermen. I liked to feel that I was on solid ground, that I could keep up with them on deck and cook the food that sustained them. Only then did I feel I could be as big of a dictator as I wanted. The same went for working in a restaurant. I felt out the place first. I didn’t just jump right in and start abusing the servers without first finding out who wrote legible tickets and who was capable of turning in their appetizer and dinner orders in a timely fashion.

I don’t know, maybe it was something about Sarah’s nature. She’d never cooked professionally before but she certainly had the aura of a tyrannical chef. She drew lines in the galley across which no one was allowed to cross, she scolded people for overtaxing the cookie jar and for wasting food, she stomped her feet and hollered directions like she was commanding a pack of dogs. I was thankful in a way for her strong management of the galley even though I was a little bitter about being treated like a three year old in what amounted to my own home. I tolerated it mostly because I didn’t know how to handle it otherwise and it was just one less aspect of the day to day operation that I didn’t have to personally oversea. Besides that she turned out to be a tremendous cook and a very funny and kind person provided you stayed out of her way.

Often times, while I had Cat, James and the other crew members out slaving away mending nets I would amble into the cook shack to look in on what was for dinner. I have always had a lot of ideas on how things ought to be done and so despite my better judgment I would offer Sarah unsolicited advice on how certain dishes should be prepared. I was never really aware that I was doing it until it was too late. Sarah would turn this hawkish look on me and squint her eyes like she was trying to figure out how best to rip out my throat if I said another word. It was at those moments that I realized just how limited my prerogative as foreman really was. It was much later that I discovered that my unwelcome advice had become kind of a joke between Sarah and Cat. As it turns out I was using the phrase, “that’s not how my Mom does it,” maybe a little more frequently than a grown man ought to.

At the risk of impugning my own manhood I have to confess that I am sort of a mama’s boy. My Mom was a stay-at-home-mom so I found myself under her governance most of the time. Far from doting on my Mother or being at her beck and call I spent my childhood in loving fear of her temper and in quiet awe of her energy and varied skills. I was genuinely interested in some of the things she taught me, like how to cook and sew, but was marshaled in a lot of other tasks, like weeding in the garden and vacuuming the house, that left me wishing she’d be hit by a bus.

Like most boys I had mixed feelings about my Mother’s influence over me. She never tried to force my brothers and I to play with dolls or anything but I did have an Easy Bake Oven growing up and I was encouraged to participate in the kitchen. I don’t know exactly how I got interested in cooking. The Easy Bake Oven was a big part of it I guess, the kind of science-like mixing of ingredients, the application of fire (what turned out to be a 60 watt light bulb) and of course the tasty baked goods that resulted. But even that came after a much more organic experiment I had undertaken in the street one hot summer day in July when I was about five.

My older brother and I were both in a pyrotechnic phase of our development, demonstrating our primordial powers over nature and trying perhaps to discover some distance from our Mother’s apron strings. We’d been disciplined a couple of times already for playing with matches so we’d sought other ways of harnessing fire by following our Father’s suggestions that it could be caused by rubbing two sticks together or by focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass. My older brother was always pretty analytical and also very bossy so I didn’t get too much pleasure from these attempts. We came close to causing fire several times but somehow I was always to blame for it not working out. I wasn’t rubbing the sticks together vigorously enough, or I’d stood in his light at a critical point in combustion. I’d just about lost all excitement for these experiments when on that hot summer day I’d overheard my Dad comparing the weather to when he was a boy, saying that “It got so hot when I was a kid that we actually fried an egg on the street.”

For the next hour I begged my Mom for an egg so that I could see for myself if it really worked. I’d never cooked anything before but I’d watched my Mom cook eggs on several occasions and I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of how it was done. First I would need a spatula and something to butter the street with. Then I would need salt and pepper and a plate to put the egg on once it was done. I can’t say my Mom wasn’t impressed by my knowledge of egg preparation but she wasn’t about to surrender any of these things to me just so that I could “make a mess in the street.” I promised on all things holy, crossed my heart and hoped to die that I wouldn't make a mess. I told her that I had every intention of eating my egg once it was done. I had big plans for that egg. I was going to put it between two pieces of white bread with mayonnaise and have it for lunch. This last part I think was what convinced her that I was serious. Not only was I going to cook something but I was going to combine it with other ingredients in a kind of rudimentary recipe, one, in fact, that she’d prepared for me before. I was showing real initiative, and, with my final suggestion that I might add some of that red stuff, like on the deviled eggs, signs of a natural flare for cooking.

When I reached the street and announced to the neighbor kids that I was about to make cooking history some sneered in disbelief and others gathered around with great enthusiasm. With an egg in one hand and a daring idea I had separated myself from the rest of the children on my block. For a brief moment I had become a minor celebrity. I was both exhilarated by the attention, and terrified by it. Suddenly I realized that I had to perform. I had an egg and an idea but no practical skills. I’d never cracked an egg before. I’d never deposited it on a surface without breaking the yolk. And that’s when it hit me; through all the jeering and yelling I could see a clear image of my Mom performing this task. Her motions were deliberate but effortless, a reflex from years of cracking eggs, a flawless, elegant transaction between a hard surface and a delicate object.

Cracking that egg and laying it on the street with such perfection was my first great triumph as a cook. Watching it sit there, raw and unresponsive, as the children lost interest and moved on to other games was my first great defeat. I don’t remember what happened to that egg once I realized it was never going to cook. Maybe a dog ate it, or maybe I’d cleaned it up like I’d promised. What I do know is that from that experience I can sort of trace my development as a cook. I know now how much I’ve relied on my Mother’s techniques over the years. They are the foundation for my confidence as a chef. And even though we no longer cook similarly (she is a disciple of recipes and I’m a scratch cook) I still have a tendency to relate certain foods to her masterful preparation of them. I know that it is sort of ridiculous to maintain that my Mom makes the best Caesar Salad on the planet, or the best Cheesecake, but I will never eat these foods again without comparing them to her achievements.

I suppose it is natural for a man to have a strong connection to the food his mother prepares. It is, besides gestation, birth and nursing, the most physical relationship and bond he’ll have with her for the rest of his life. This is perhaps why comfort food is so important. It is a reminder of our ancestry, and a genuine connection to our origin. It might also explain why a man might complain if a dish is not prepared like his mother made it.

Food is part of our individual identity, and Thanksgiving, more than any other holiday, is an expression of that identity. Personally I’m not totally married to the old traditions. Mine and my wife’s first Thanksgiving together consisted of Rib-eye steak and King crab legs. But when it came to this year’s giant gathering I tried to please all of our guest’s sensibilities. Turkey for the traditionalists. Oyster dressing for my Dad. Cranberry Sauce with Orange Zest, compliments of my Mother-in-law, and apples in the stuffing for my wife’s side of the family. Crab cakes and King Salmon because we’re fishermen and because seafood has always defined mine and my wife’s relationship. And our friends Craig and Kari (Craig is also a Humpy Pointe alum) brought a delicious Green bean casserole to round out the feast.

It was an added treat to have Sarah there to try some of my Mom’s and our family’s traditional offerings. It was also nice because when the question of gravy came up Sarah was able to step in and spell my Mother, who’s been suffering from a fractured tibia. I have to confess, Sarah does make gravy just like my Mom. That was certainly one thing I never griped about back on the beach.

I want to thank everyone for coming to our house this Fall and for all the wine and treats you brought us. We’ll do it again some time. I want to thank Sarah and James for the beautiful Hubbard Squash they left us (it’s about 15-20 pounds). I almost feel like it’s part of the family. It’s gonna be hard to carve it up some day but I plan on eventually featuring it in this blog.

I want to leave you all with a recipe compliments of my Mom.

Snow Pea Salad (part of our traditional Thanksgiving fare)

1 bag of frozen petit peas (12 to 16oz.)
Equal amount snow peas, raw and julienned
1 can sliced water chestnuts, slivered
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 small bottle Kraft Coleslaw dressing
4 -6 slices maple flavored bacon, crisped and crumbled
1 small package hazelnuts or filberts, roasted and crushed

Set oven to bake at 300° F, place nuts on baking pan and bake 20 minutes.
Cook bacon over medium heat until it is browned on both sides, place on paper towel or used grocery bag to drain grease.
In a small microwave safe bowl microwave frozen peas for 5 minutes on medium to high heat depending on the power of your microwave. If you don’t have a microwave set the peas out a couple hours ahead of time to thaw.
Julienne the snow peas, sliver the water chestnuts, and chop the green onions widthwise.
In a large bowl mix the petit peas, snow peas, green onions, water chestnuts and desired amount of Coleslaw dressing (my Mom uses about 2/3 cup).
Over the top crumble the bacon and the crushed hazelnuts.

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Balls

After ten days of company, fourteen guests for thanksgiving, numerous cases of beer, bottles of wine, of booze, and three different illnesses I have to say without the least bit of irony that I’d rather be sorting Opies.

I know that probably won’t mean much to those of you who have never had the pleasure but let me just say for the record that there is nothing, I mean nothing, in my experience that is more painful, more hopeless, more soul crushing, mind numbing, melancholy and self hateful than sorting Opies.

For the last couple of days I’ve been beating my head against the wall trying to shake loose some way of describing exactly what that experience is like but have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to render in a concise enough form to appear on this blog. To accurately describe its horrors would take an effort like Dante’s Inferno, or Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night. I unfortunately am not in command of those types of literary powers. I’m a fisherman and a cook. A man of simple expressions simply expressed. I mean, I may know how it feels to get kicked in the balls, all guys do right, but I’m not the guy who’s going to be able to finally communicate to a woman what that sensation is really like. And that’s sort of the position I’m in here with this sorting Opies reference. I don’t know how to communicate how bad it really is to somebody who’s never had the experience themselves. I mean, I could say that being at the sorting table is like being Sisyphus, that every time you think you’ve got the table cleared of one mountain of crab another nightmarish peak takes its place and the climb begins again. Or I might want to compare the experience to having back surgery without anesthesia. Or due to the table guy’s proximity to the shit shoot (a hole that opens to the sea where we eject all the small crab and rotten bait) it might be likened to being water boarded with vomit and tiny throwing stars. Whatever comparison I make it will undoubtedly sound like an exaggeration to those who have never been there. Kind of like when my wife has “play” kicked me in the nuts while we’re horsing around and just stands there laughing in disbelief as I writhe on the ground. “Oh come on honey, it can’t hurt that bad, I barely touched you.”

It does hurt that bad, and that’s why it always kind of surprised me that during Opilio season, during these grueling marathons of self-abuse, we would always joke that there was nothing in the world we’d rather be doing than sorting Opies. I don’t know if this was some strange brand of reverse psychology or just another aspect of the masochism that led us all inexorably to this particular profession, but the objects most often targeted in these lampoons were the best, most cherished thoughts of our lives on land. It seems that somehow by pretending to favor sorting Opies over, say, having sex with our wives or girlfriends gave us a kind of criminal pleasure, made us forget for a moment how miserable and inhuman we’d become. We knew it was wrong, that this subversion was like saying you’d rather be out stabbing kittens or mutilating yourself with a ball peen hammer, but we couldn’t help it. That was the sort of thing that passed as humor when you’d crossed over into the dark side of Opilio season. It was best just to embrace it. You could always rid yourself of these notions once you returned to civilization. After all they were ridiculous, weren’t they? How could any sane person favor sorting Opies over sex, or booze, or a turkey dinner?

With my prospects of ever embarking on another Opie season fading from view I guess I never imagined I’d hear myself uttering such an absurdity again. But after this last week, this long terrifying week of thanksgiving and its aftermath I have realized that there are some things worse than sorting Opies. Not far worse, but worse enough. Worse enough to make me nostalgic for the Bering Sea in February. Worse enough that I actually kind of miss those fucking little sea spiders we know as Snow Crab.

I guess things wouldn’t have been all that bad if I hadn’t started out the whole ordeal with a severe cold. I missed the god damn Marine Expo because of that cold and then bam, before I even had a chance to convalesce my in-laws were on top of me and then more company, and then more. I felt dog piled. I mean, each of these folks separately and in small doses would have probably had a medicinal effect on me, but all at once it was like poison. My mind and body were overwhelmed. I had this huge meal to cook, all these arrangements to attend to, socializing, schmoozing, boozing and all without losing the one thing I am most apt to lose while in the kitchen, my temper.


My wife was a real trooper. She knew I was being a prick but graciously gave me space and let me rush around the kitchen like I was saving pictures from a house fire. She and several other guests kept offering to help but as I was undertaking a well thought out plan I kept not-so-gently rebuffing them. My wife has always had a problem with my domineering nature in the kitchen. My mouth has never worked all that well while I’m in the middle of something time sensitive and complicated. It used to drive her up the wall when we worked together on a skiff set-netting for Salmon and something would go wrong and there was only a few seconds to fix the problem before things got irreparably worse and I’d just snatch whatever it was out of her hands and take over. She accused me of being a bad teacher because I hadn’t explained to her what to do while it was happening. I’ve never learned verbally, and as a consequence I don’t think I should be expected to teach that way. Watch what I do. Do what I do. Then you’ll be able to do it yourself. Until then, stay the fuck out of my way!

Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. So I pissed my wife off this Thanksgiving. I’m sorry honey but it was necessary. Despite the bad blood between us the meal came off fantastically. The bird was beautiful. The fish was cooked just right. The crab cakes, though they seemed burnt at first, were crisp and delicious, and all the sides, the hors d’oeuvres, the relish, and gravy (which I will admit I stepped aside on because I have never had the aptitude) were all well timed and perfect.

Once the cooking was done and I announced to our guests that they could proceed to the kitchen to serve themselves buffet style I sank down on our velvet couch and felt like weeping. My Mom happened to be sitting close by and she looked back at me and said with a laugh in her voice, “It’s not as easy as it looks, huh?” I have to admit I felt a tremendous connection to my Mother at that moment, I was choked up, I wanted to fall to my knees and kiss her hand, to praise her for all those countless times she’d pulled together that exact feat. It’s not that easy, not that easy at all. Finally I’d been kicked in my Thanksgiving balls like she’d been kicked for all those years.

I know that prior to the meal a Thanksgiving toast was raised in my honor and that I in turn gave a toast to our guests, but the real dedication I think should have gone to my Mother, and to all Mothers for their tireless service and sacrifice during the holiday seasons. I’m happy to know that even though my Mom brought two hors d’oeuvres, a pea salad and dozens of cranberry muffins, she finally got to sit during a Thanksgiving gathering and actually enjoy the company. I guess that’s what I’m most thankful for this Thanksgiving.

Next on my list would have to be the fact that no one but me ate any of the left over Oyster dressing on Friday.

I knew going into this that it was only a matter of time before the cruel irony of naming myself The Deadliest Chef came back to haunt me, and that really, as a fishermen, it was foolish of me to tempt fate by slapping it so cavalierly in the face. I’m just glad that of all the nightmares I’ve been having about the consequences of this action the one least destructive to those around me was the one that actually struck. And I guess the fact that it was shellfish was a suiting punishment. But why dear god did it have to be on Friday? Wasn’t the crippling hang-over enough. Hadn’t I suffered bravely through my illness and in-laws? Now to smite me with such cruel disproportion! I just don’t know what to say.

All personal suffering aside I guess I should at least give you a word of warning. If you ever make oyster dressing (it’s the one in the blue ceramic dish) for god sakes refrigerate it immediately after it’s served. Don’t let it sit out half the afternoon and then the whole evening while you pick at the other leftovers. Don’t put it off so you can retire to the deck to smoke cigars, drink wine and scotch whiskey. Don’t ignore this smorgasbord of bacteria while you go gallivanting off to the store for more booze and smokes and lottery tickets. And for god sakes don’t break out the tequila and open some champagne before, as an afterthought, stoned out of your mind, you start cobbling together Tupperware to put away these crusty remains. If you’re going to do all that you need to just say fuck everything with fish or raw egg in it. Believe me you can’t trust your wife, who doesn’t even eat shellfish, when she says it’ll all be fine, that germs make you stronger. Remember she’s as drunk as you are and that even though she holds a Washington State food handlers card that does not make her a fucking Health inspector.

On the other hand, if you’re one of those people who harbors a great deal of gorger’s remorse after a huge feast you might just want to puke and shit yourself silly for two days following the holiday. I guarantee that on the Red Tide Diet Plan you will lose all those unwanted pounds. You won’t even want to eat solid food for several days afterwards. You’ll go back to work looking trim and pale, the envy of the office. While you’re co-workers are boring new holes in the end of their belts you’ll be delirious, floating out of your chair, your spirit lifting you as it tries to escape your body. It may not be the safest way to lose weight, but if it doesn’t kill you it certainly is effective.

On a closing note I have to say that despite e. coli, and in-laws, and lingering guests I have not thrown in the towel. In fact, given enough distance from the actual event I’ll probably tell people that it was fun. We fishermen are sick like that. No matter what misery we may face or how bad we piss and moan about it, we’re more than likely going to say we enjoyed the experience and would do it again once it’s over. I can’t figure it. And maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should just be glad that come November next year I’ll be sending out those invitations all over again, ready and willing to face another massacre.

Bring on those Opies. I’m ready.

T minus 2

I've finally got a minute to myself so I'm going to try and get a blog off before I'm surrounded by distractions again. This is gonna be quick and dirty so pay attention. With two days left before touchdown we've got to seriously start thinking about prep work. Believe me, your thanksgiving will be a lot more enjoyable if you don't have to get up at 4 am to cook pies, or make the cranberry sauce, or god help you, thaw out the turkey.

My first suggestion to you is to make a menu and from that menu generate a grocery list. You probably should have done that already, like on Sunday when I made mine, but if you haven't it's not too late, it's just going to mean shopping with a bunch of crazy, annoying shitheads that are going to want all the same things that you're at the store to get. Oh well, next year you'll know better.

I know going to the store super early may present some storage problems but if you're not at a latitude below 38 degrees you should be able to keep a lot of things unrefrigerated for a few days in your garage or basement. Be sure that you don't have a pest problem first though because nothing destroys a Thanksgiving meal quite like rats.

As you can see here I've got some of my produce and a few cheeses (parm, cream cheese and goat cheese) chilling in this box on top of our beverage fridge. We don't usually have this fridge plugged in but now seemed like a good time so it could handle any jello or cranberry set-up or keep the beer extra cold. My garage is about 52 degrees Fahrenheit so it's plenty cold to keep veggies, cheese and eggs. And the beer stays tolerably cold too.

Next thing you're going to want to do is start thawing out your meats. Thawing should be done slowly so I recommend pulling that bird out of the freezer and setting it up somewhere in the garage for a day. If it's being stubborn after that, or if you're like me and freak out about things not being ready when you are then you can bring it into the house to thaw on Wednesday.

I've got a lot of things on my plate. We're having this massive King that my wife caught in Bristol Bay this summer, a 14 pound turkey and I'm going to turn those crab legs into Maryland style crab cakes.

Funny story about the fish. While my wife was bleeding this one, she shoves her hand down their throats and rips out the gill plate, it came back to life and latched on to her wrist ripping her glove and puncturing the skin. Naturally she screamed and half jokingly started yelling "It's got me, it's got me!" This in turn spooked the skipper and caused him to throw the boat in reverse and run clean over their own net. With a shackle and a half of gear still in the water and no way to get the line out of the prop they had to round-haul the rest of the net. It was choppy that day and they were over a mud flat or sand bar or some damn thing and the whole works started twisting up like a great big cork, line, mesh and fish sausage. Justified or not the entire fiasco and ensuing misery of disentangling the giant pile of shit, not to mention having to go dry in order to cut the line out of the wheel was blamed on my wife and her altercation with this King. Call it revenge, call it just desserts but we are going to eat that son of a bitch this Thanksgiving.

So far this is about as far as I've gotten on my preparations. Apart from organizing the menu and cutting bread cubes for the stuffing several days ago I've also made a short list of things to get done today and tomorrow, checking each of them off my master list as I go. I've actually moved the crab upstairs so that it'll thaw by tonight and I can pick it this evening. I'm also planning to make a couple of my hors doeuvres today, stuffed mushrooms and stuffed cherry tomatoes. I'll roast some garlic and make a cayenne aioli for the oyster shooters, and I'll cure some jello for our Cowboy and Indian jello center pieces, and I'll make dinner for six. Unfortunately I'm not going to have time to blog this in real time but I'm planning a retrospective for after the holiday.

One thing I am ahead of the curve on that I'll just go through quickly here are my pies. These can be a real pain in the ass the day of or the day before so I went ahead last week and made my shells for the pumpkin pies and made my blackberry pie.

There's not much to a pie shell but there seems to be a lot of equipment necessary for making one. To mix the dough you don't need one of these fancy pastry cutters but can use two butter knives or a fork. The rolling pin is kind of essential but the scraper you can do without (it's more for clean up than anything). The spatula is totally unnecessary, in fact I don't even know why it's there, I put it away without even even using it.

For our purposes I'm just going to give you the recipe for a two-crust ten inch pie shell. I made this recipe twice, once for the blackberry pie and once for the three nine inch shells I made for the pumpkin pies. I try and stay away from doubling this sort of thing because shit can go horribly wrong with pie pastry and let me just tell you once you've messed it up there's hardly any chance you're going to correct it. Remember what I said about recipes being a guideline, well when it comes to baking the reverse is true. Stick to the recipe. Cooking is an art. Baking is a science.

Two Crust 10-inch Pie Shell

1 cup shortening

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

6 to 7 tablespoons cold water

In a large mixing bowl place shortening, flour and salt. Cut together with knives, fork or whatever. When it gets sort of crumbly start adding the water. Continue cutting until about the fourth tablespoon of water. Once you've reached this point you can just use your hand. It may be a little sticky so put you hand in flour before you begin. Kneed until consistent but not smooth. Separate dough into desired number of pieces.

Taking each section separately ball them up in your hand until fairly smooth. The dough shouldn't be sticking to your hands when you're through so if it is put more flour on you hands and work it a little more. I don't recommend trying to back peddle by adding more flour and mixing it up again. This doesn't seem to work and things just tend to get more fucked up. Just try to deal with the dough the way it is. Use more flour on the counter or on you board, keep flouring your rolling pin and hands.

Take the balls and flatten them on a well floured surface. You can do some shaping with your hands at this point but don't get carried away that's what the rolling pin is for. Roll the dough out flat making smooth and even motions from the center out toward the edges. Pause occasionally to re-flour your pin. If it sticks to the rolling pin in mid-stroke you'll end up with a tear and you don't want that. Once you've got the desired shape, check against the size of the pie plate, flour the flattened dough evenly and begin to roll it up. It took me a while to learn this trick. I used to try and lift the whole thing off the surface and place it on the tin. Usually you'd end up with a torn pastry. This is much easier and less of a headache.
Once it's rolled up just lift it up, place it on the edge of the pie plate and roll it into place. Total Baby Shit (in other words, a piece of cake).

For the pie filling you can do just about anything. Personally for pumpkin pies I like to use the canned stuff and the recipe on the side. I've found that rendering your own pumpkins down to pies isn't all that it's cracked up to be. It's time consuming and to me just doesn't taste right. Maybe it's how I was raised. My Mom, her Mom, and probably her Mom's Mom have all used Libby brand canned pumpkin. Even the recipes they've handed down from generation to generation are just the ones off the side of the can. Is it brand loyalty, or is it just good shit, I don't know. Whatever it is you gotta go with what you're comfortable with. That's what Thanksgiving is all about, comfort food.

The blackberry pie was a little different. We actually picked these back in late August and stuck them in the freezer. That's kind of another tradition. I've been picking blackberries for as long as I can remember so it would be anathema to me to use some store bought brand. It sounds like a contradiction, but again, that's just how i was raised.

After thawing the berries I drained them in a sieve. There is a lot of juice and the berries are pretty soggy so you might want to hold back a couple cups frozen to put on the bottom of the shell. This helps absorb some of the shock of having all those wet berries soaking through the bottom of the pastry. I also put a generous amount of tapioca on the bottom of the shell to suck up the juice that comes out during baking. You can skip this step if tapioca grosses you out, but you're pie shell won't likely be as crispy when you're done cooking it. Along with the tapioca I put in some sugar. These are late berries so you shouldn't need too much. Earlier berries are tarter so you might want to up the sugar but it's all up to your personal taste. Once I've got the base down I put in the berries, sprinkle on a little more tapioca and sugar and then close up the pie. Use your thumb and forefinger to pinch together the edges. Take a fork and poke some holes in the top crust so steam can escape during baking. Wrap in cellophane and store in freezer. I'll be taking my blackberry pie out to thaw tomorrow. It doesn't have to be entirely thawed before baking but it helps to be close. The pumpkin pies I'll be baking tomorrow night. The blackberry probably the day of after the turkey comes out of the oven.

All right, that's all I got. Now I gotta get to work. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Always remember the seven P's, Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

I know what you're thinking but nobody ever said that fishermen were math wizards.

Let the Countdown Begin

Four days remaining until Thanksgiving. Four days where I will have to organize the meal, shop for the ingredients, prepare what I can in advance, entertain guests, play host to my wife's parents, and write this frigging blog. I must be crazy, or will be by the time this is all over. On top of it all I've been procrastinating. I've got a bunch of stuff waiting to go on this site but haven't had the energy or desire to do it. I have stuff about pumpkins and pumpkin seeds, about pies and sauerkraut, and there was the Marine Expo we were supposed to attend yesterday but didn't. I came down with something in the eleventh hour and we had to cancel. I'm kind of glad in a way. It was too much driving, we weren't really in the market to buy anything, and I was afraid that the only thing I'd accomplish by touring all that gear and mixing with all those fishermen would be the aggravation of my already acute case of sea-sickness (not the pukey kind, but a deep and melancholy longing for the sea, like homesickness, only worse because it entails the loss of wages as well).

I'm not sure what happened to me. Whether this gross feeling I'm experiencing is the result of some bug I caught or simply the penalty I'm paying for being a feckless drunkard. I hardly ever get sick, especially now that the only person I see on a regular basis is my wife, so I have to say I'm a little surprised and disappointed with my body for letting me down at this critical time. I can't afford to be sick right now. On a fishing boat it wouldn't matter. I'd still be expected to go out on deck and pull my weight with the rest of the crew. I wouldn't be pitied or coddled or hovered over with hot liquids and cool towels. No naked woman would arrive bedside with a plate of nachos and a pot of tea asking me if there was anything else she could do for me (I have to admit, my wife is pretty awesome). No, I would be shamed into sucking it up. I would be miserable and feverish and doped up on every kind of cold medicine you could imagine, but I'd get the job done. I wouldn't leave deck unless I lost consciousness or died.

I remember one Opilio season I was sick for the whole first trip. I coughed so hard that I couldn't get to sleep despite my severe fatigue. We were only averaging about four or five hours of rest each day, so each time I lay down I was kind of panicked to fall asleep, I'd curse at myself, I'd grumble and fume, I guzzled packet after packet of Thera-Flu, I tried holding in my coughs, determined to use my will power to cure myself. None of it worked. I didn't sleep a wink for four straight days. Finally I just gave up. I went to the galley to do some extra prep work, cleaned up the floors and range tops. I sat in the mess area and read magazines and talked to whoever was dumb enough not to be in bed. Then on the fifth day, while I was sitting in the dark at the galley table, feverish and exhausted, sleep crept over me and I finally got some rest. When I woke up, sitting there in my sweat pants and nothing else, the Fish and Game observer, Sarah, was standing over me. Then the Chief appeared, and some of the other crew. It was time to gear up and begin again. I was bewildered and felt lost but managed somehow to follow the lead of the other guys and make my way into my gear and out on deck.

For the rest of the day I never heard the end of it. First the Chief would come up to me as I was running the hydros and insinuate something. Then later I'd see him and the deck boss giggling over by the sorting table. In the forepeak between strings they'd grill me about my relationship with the Observer. Were Sarah and I doing it? What was I doing half-naked in the mess with her? Had we violated the galley table? Did the carpet match the drapes? And didn't I know she was married?

Sarah wasn't half bad so I was kind of flattered by the idea. Even so, I tried strenuously to deny everything, explaining that I'd fallen asleep that way in a fever, but I really didn't have the energy to answer the range of accusations they'd flung at me. Besides they were having way too much fun with the idea to let me off that easy.

That night at dinner when the incident was brought up in front of our skipper they gained all the rest of the ammunition they needed when Sarah made some off handed comment about how she wished she would have had some dollar bills to throw at me that morning. That pretty much sealed the deal. I spent the rest of the trip being hounded by my crew mates, alternately being plied for details and indicted for adultery. In all honesty though the teasing kind of helped. I felt revived, less certain of immanent collapse and death. And my coughing grew less and less severe. I no longer haunted the galley at night but slept soundly in my own bunk. By the end of the trip I hardly remembered that I'd been ill at all. I wasn't allowed to forget about Sarah. Even though she'd left the boat for another assignment I was still razzed mercilessly about our imagined fling. Was I gonna miss her? How did I feel about the crew on the Aleutian Douche taking turns on her. On and on.

In retrospect I guess it shouldn't be that difficult to get through this week. Opies and family visits are both terrifying and monotonous propositions, but something I've learned about the two is that if you keep your head down and don't take things too seriously they will both be over before you know it. You may have a few bruises to show for it, both physical and mental, but all things heal over time.

That said, I need to get down to business before our company arrives. I need to get this blog back up to speed or I'll never get it done while the in-laws are here. Part of being unemployed is the assumption that you are capable and willing of playing tour guide while your wife is at work. I guess I'll manage, but truth be told I'd rather just fart around the house, drink beer and watch netflix.

Down to brass tax. I'm sure that by now most of you have already carved your pumpkins, roasted the seeds and thrown away the rotting husks. I wish I could have been there to give you my two cents worth but as I've already said I've been way too busy practicing my inertia to pull off any timely posts. Unfortunately all I can offer is a kind of retrospective.

We've all done this before so I'm sorry if this seems sort of asinine but I'm gonna just go through it step by step for the sake of my own faulty thought process.

1. Cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin. I like to use a victorinox (or vicki). It's a serrated knife commonly found on fishing boats around the world. This particular one is a favorite of crab fishermen because of it's thicker blade and tougher handle. The wimpier red handled ones are fine for some fisheries but they have a tendency to snap off, sending a sharp metal object flying through the air in a random direction. (I've seen people stabbed by these missiles, not fun.)

2. Scoop out the guts and separate the seeds. Most of this can be done with your hands but I find a spoon and a sieve are useful. Whatever you do don't fall for those gimmicky carving kits that they sell at the super market. Those things are usually shoddily put together and don't work as well as they're advertised.

3. If possible you should compost the guts and the excess meat from the pumpkin. And for that matter you should compost the pumpkin once it rots and all the other vegetable waste from your kitchen. I just read an embarrassing fact about landfill in this country. Apparently 17 percent of our garbage is made up of compostable material. That might not sound bad until you find out that in South Korea they recycle 97 percent of their food waste either as compost or as feed for livestock. Get with it America, we're getting beat by the Koreans for chrissakes!

4. Brine the seeds overnight. I don't exactly measure the salt I use in this brine so I can't give you an exact amount. I rinse the seeds once or twice, then fill the bowl with water enough to cover (the seeds actually float so don't go overboard with the water). Then I pour salt in to the tune of about one and a half tablespoons. Mix up the concoction then let sit covered (a plate works great) for 12 to 48 hours. One day is optimum but if you're in a rush to have seeds 12 hours will do fine, or if you're just forgetful or preoccupied you can leave them for two, sometimes three days with out any ill effects.

5. Drain seeds in sieve. Coat with oil and sprinkle with salt. Spread the seeds on a ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. I usually set the timer for ten to twelve minutes, take the seeds our and mix them around before baking them for the rest of the time. This helps to keep them from burning near the edge of the pan. I also went a little crazy this year and tried spicing the seeds in different ways. I tried a rosemary thyme and garlic recipe and one with chili powder and cumin. I liked the latter a lot better. I also had an idea for teriyaki ginger seeds but I didn't get around to that one. We ran out of seeds.

While we're kind of on the subject of brining let me just quickly describe the process of making sauerkraut. I know that sauerkraut is not the first thing that comes to mind when we think Thanksgiving, but it is a part of our traditional New Year's Day meal (Pork roast, potato dumplings and sauerkraut, which should be cooked with a liberty dime if you have one. Be careful not to eat the dime) so it's high time you got it going or it will never be ready in time.

1. First thing you'll need is a bucket. I'm sure you fishermen out there will be tempted to use one of those blue five gallon oil buckets that are constantly overrunning your engine room and forepeak but I'd try to resist this temptation. You want something food grade for this experiment. You can use a pot too, but it's recommended that you use something with a ceramic coating or stainless steel. Never use Aluminum. It tends to make the brine murky and unappetizing.

2. The rest of the process is pretty simple. Surprisingly simple in fact. Get yourself about three to four large heads of cabbage. Quarter and cut out the core. Your knife is going to have to be pretty sharp for the rest of this so make sure you keep your steel handy, and be prepared to have a little bit of a sore wrist. I liken the shredding of the cabbage to cutting bait. It's tedious and has to be somewhat exact and by the end of it you're suffering from a slight case of tendinitis. If you're lucky enough to have a food processor (or a bait chopper)you can use that, but don't turn it into coleslaw. We're looking for long thin shreds here not confetti.

3. For about twenty pounds of cabbage you'll need approximately 3/4 cups pickling salt. I used Morton's coarse Kosher salt. It's good for just about anything, including Passover. As you shred your cabbage you're going to want to toss about a head and a half with a quarter cup salt. Make sure you get it nice and mixed in before you put it in the bucket. Once it's in the bucket use the palm of your hand and smash it down a little. Don't get crazy though, you don't want to totally mash the fibers in the cabbage. Firm but gentle is a standard rule with cooking, unless of course you're beating the hell out of a tough piece of meat.

4. Once you've got it all shredded, salted and pressed down there should be a layer of brine water formed on the cabbage. This water will help keep contaminants out of your kraut as it cures. To keep this layer of liquid above your cabbage you should put a plate snuggly down on top of it, and place a jar filled with water on top of that.

5. This concoction is going to be with you for the next five weeks so it's important to find someplace warm to put it where it won't be in the way or in any danger of being spilled. I put a towel over top of mine and secured that with a piece of line. You could use a bungee cord, electrical tape, whatever, just don't put the lid back on the bucket. The kraut has to breath. And it has to be at a temperature of 64-70 degrees. I'm storing mine in the laundry room next to the heater and water heater. This is where my bottled homebrew lives. It's warm and out of the way. Just be sure not to let any lint get into your kraut. That would be gross and devastating. No way to bring in the New Year.

6. A quick note on caraway seeds. I like my kraut with caraway but I am uncertain when to put them into the mixture. I've decided to let the kraut cure first and then to add them when I cook it and can it. More on that later.

Last of all I want to talk about pumpkins again. I kind of got real fancy with my pumpkin design this year because one, I don't get to carve too often because I'm usually fishing, two because I figured it would be a good way to promote my new blog during the holidays, and last but not least because I was pretty bored and a little drunk. Here's what I did.

1. Once it was all hollowed out and the seeds were taken care of I drew a design on the face of it. I tried to use some of the features of the pumpkin in the placement. Like I used this dimple on the right for the eye of my sea monster. I wanted to try and get the whole thing on to one side but as The Deadliest Chef is kind of long it sort of wrapped around. The turkey was kind of an after thought. Just goes to show you how much I'd been procrastinating. Thanksgiving was only two and a half weeks away when I did this.

2. Using some rudimentary carving tools left over from the days when I was an art student I went to work on the hull and carved my design in full relief. This took some time and a lot of patience but luckily I had plenty of beer and loud music to keep me going. For starters I traced all the lines with a flat blade. Then I took the skinnier of the two lathes and went around all the designs. Once that was done I took the thicker one and shaved off all the excess skin.

This was my result. Unfortunately the whole design couldn't be photographed at once but I can assure you it's all there.

I want to close by adding a short follow up to my last piece on Better Homes and Gardens. I don't know if you noticed but they had a lot of suggestions on how to use pumpkins for your holiday decorations but very few suggestions on what to do with those pumpkins once they went south. I'd like to leave you with a few ideas. First of all you should compost your pumpkin. This is pretty easy. Throw it in the bin and whack it with a hoe a couple dozen times till it's good and chopped up. If you're feeling especially destructive you can liven up this composting process by dropping your pumpkin off your deck and watching it splat. It's kind of messy but you can easily shovel it from there into the compost bin. A sledge hammer is also a fun way of mashing it in preparation for composting. If you've ever watched Gallagher you know what I'm talking about. If you're sort of a pyro you can always blow up your pumpkin with an M-80 or some other illegal firework but I don't recommend this because it makes a hell of a mess and it leaves powder burns which could adversely effect your compost. Personally, I kind of toyed with the idea of shooting my pumpkin.

But I thought, what with the city ordinances and the possible damage to the deck, that it would be better just to drop it onto the pavement below. Maybe next year I'll take my pumpkin out into the woods and retire it properly.

Ok, I've just gotten word that the inlaws are coming round the mountain. I've gotta go. If I don't get anything up before Thanksgiving I'd like to wish you and yours the very best. Good Luck and have a safe trip.

Rag of the Month Club

Better Homes and Gardens, October 2009

Because of my fishing experience on the Bering Sea, the Pacific Coast and various other water’s around the Gulf of Alaska and North Pacific people tend to regard me as somewhat fearless. Whether or not I deserve this praise is something I often struggle with. Are these heedless advances into the frothy, frozen sea really the result of some inborn courage? Or are they simply the hold-over of some hillbilly gene I carry, the kind of inbred stupidity that makes a person want to hang upside down from power lines or visit the zoo so they can run buck naked through the gorilla habitat? Honestly I couldn’t tell you where my desire to go to sea comes from. A lot of people I think mistakenly feel that this urge is due to the possession of some sort of exceptional anatomy. For example my fishing exploits are most often attributed to the belief that I have a gigantic pair of testicles. Some have compared them with grape fruit, others have said they must be like bowling balls, but whatever their nature they were certainly very large and very heavy and very full of whatever stuff it is that makes you do seemingly crazy things without much second thought.

I must say I’m flattered by these estimations, but I’m also concerned that I will never be able to live up to their legend. I’m afraid that someone with balls as big as church bells wouldn’t fair to well on a fishing boat. First of all the head is way too small to be squeezing prodigious body parts into and secondly, besides possibly providing additional floatation - do balls float? I don’t take many baths so I wouldn’t know - they would more or less get in the way of everything you were expected to do.

So let me dispel the myth right now. My balls are not enormous. But having said that, I would also like to note that my balls are not at the point of vanishing either. Part of the reason I brought all this testicle talk up was to address some concerns that were recently brought to my attention. While telling an old fishing buddy of mine about my plans to critique and review a series of popular cooking and homemaking magazines for this web site he suggested that my immersion in such female oriented material might in some way threaten my manhood. I think his exacts words were, “You’d better be careful or you might just grow a vagina.”

I have to confess that this was not the first time a fellow colleague of mine had accused me of having a vagina or being on the point of growing one. My abilities as a cook and my penchant for nit-picking and nagging about little annoyances in the galley had earned me a reputation as kind of a bitch. This didn’t however extend to my performance on deck. I wasn’t seen as a “pussy” by virtue of deficiencies in my work habits or willingness to get things done under less than perfect conditions. It was simply a way of teasing me and breaking the monotony on deck by speculating about what time of the month it was or how many fingers I could fit inside myself. I even encouraged this crude joke by suggesting that growing a vagina wouldn’t be all that bad as long as it grew somewhere on my body where I could still fuck it.

This was too much for even my crew members to take. It was loud on deck and as a consequence most of them only heard the first part of my statement. All I can remember is the look on our Chief’s face as he ran past me at the sorting table. Horror, confusion, possibly faint sexual arousal. I tried to reiterate the fact that this growth would only be for my own pleasure, that by having a vagina on my elbow, say, I’d be able to stay out at sea forever.

It was no use though, the damage had been done. They all immediately began to speculate about the possible uses I’d put my new vagina to. Could I get myself pregnant? Would I let my wife have a go at me with a strap-on? Would I share this boon with the bait boys? It was terrible and sick, and I felt embarrassed and under attack, but ultimately I didn’t let it get to me. I realized it was all in good fun. I knew that no matter how shocking or twisted this vein of comedy and abuse became that it was at the very least taking our minds off of the slavery and pain of Opilio season.

I guess I don’t expect you to fully appreciate the currency of something like that. It’s hard to understand that I didn’t and still don’t begrudge the crew for using me as a punching bag. They knew I could take it and that I would be a good sport, that I wasn’t going to go crying to the skipper or lose my shit and slit their throats while they slept. Being part of a crew is difficult sometimes. It takes courage and patience. You discover things about people that you might not want to know. But if you’re tough, and if you can see through the bullshit, then you might just learn something.

So I guess what I’m saying is, try to look past your preconceptions. Can’t a fisherman read and discuss Better Homes and Garden, O magazine or Weight Watchers without being labeled some kind of transsexual? I know it’s gonna sounds sexist, but don’t you think we ought to know what their feeding the women in this country. Just from spending one afternoon pouring over Better Homes has really made me question my decision to return to domestic life. Believe me being at sea is a lot safer. And more sane.

Let’s just start with the ads. They are the reason this magazine is printed in the first place so we might as well pay some attention to them. More or less the whole rag is simply a vehicle for selling shit. It’s like a catalog without the stiff order form in the center. A visual tableaux of consumer suggestions. A blotter of criminal excess and gross opulence.

I bet you didn’t know that they made filet mignon flavored dog treats. Or that our cat’s can have tiny single serving appetizers before dinner, and that our freakish little dog Martians, the Labra-terri-colli-doodle that weighs like an ounce and is riddled with so many genetic defects it looks like a retarded rat, can be covered by a pet health insurance plan. In fact there are numerous advertisements directed at pet owners. Fancy foods and environmentally friendly kitty litter. It’s scary. Billions of people on this planet live on less than two dollars a day and yet we’re supposed to shit ourselves with pride every time our lap dog sneezes or makes a stinker. Or we’re supposed to believe that by using Yesterday’s News brand cat litter we’re somehow contributing to the greater good, that, get this, Purina will reward us for being a “do gooder” by planting a fucking tree in our honor.

What kind of horrible disconnect is going on here? Is Better Homes trying to tell us something by accepting these sponsors, by allowing this crass and insulting ad speak? 6000 years of civilization and we’re supposed to think the best we can do is Splenda or an air freshener that knows when we’re taking a dump and can dispense its perfume accordingly.



Yeah, I’ll say it again. You bastards that stay on land are the brave ones. Out at sea things are simple. Life is understandable. We’re not sitting around worrying how the hell we’re going to decorate for the holidays, or wondering if our kitchen makes the grade, or if our base boards match our wall paint. I did find the article on the color orange interesting. Better Homes is much ado about color, but on the subject of orange at least I’ll have to admit they’re right, it is pretty hip, and looks good with about everything. I’m a big fan of orange rain gear for example, and orange buoys, and for that matter orange life boats aren’t bad either. They recommended pairing your oranges with colors like hot pink and robin’s egg blue, but I think your best bet, in a survival situation, is to go with silver reflector tape. Or if you can afford it some sort of strobe or parachute flare. Whatever you do don’t shoot the flares in the house though. Not even as a joke. Not even if you’re sure it will add the final touches to sprucing up that fall makeover you’ve just completed in the living room.



I have to confess, I’m more of a food guy than a design guy. All that feng shui stuff has never really appealed to me that much so the bulk of Better Homes is kind of lost on me. Gardening’s not my forte either, least not when the aim is anything other than producing food. It’s funny because I was looking at the magazine the better part of Saturday morning and it kind of got me thinking about decorating for this big Thanksgiving feast we’re going to have this year. I was on the phone with my Mom trying to discourage her from bringing a whole bunch of crap to the party, she wanted to bring these ceramic jack-o-lanterns for centerpieces and some runners and candles and a bunch of other stuff, and my wife just cringed when she heard me telling her that we would probably just round up some leaves from the backyard and decorate that way. I’d seen a whole bunch of garbage like that in the Better Homes that morning and thought that it would be easy and cheap, and that when we were done with it all we could just fling it off the porch and wouldn’t have to worry about it piling up in the garage like so much of our other useless crap.



My wife had other ideas. She thought centerpieces were kind of stupid to begin with and that we were going to have so much god damn food already that we wouldn’t have enough room left on the table to be strewing around glass pumpkins or piles of compost. I tried to explain to her that I had it on good authority that this was in fact how sophisticated people decorated their houses for the holidays, but she countered by saying that “while we’re at it maybe we could track in some festive Fall mud and scatter around some downed branches from last week’s wind storm.”

I knew right then that this Better Homes and Gardens crap was going to my head. Who did these people think they were anyways? Did they really expect us to believe that they lived these immaculate, seasonally color-coded lives in a perpetual state of family bliss and gastronomical ecstasy? Their houses were like stage sets, their kitchens gleaming new like they’d just been broken out of a box. Everything was just so; stylized, explained, functional and trendy. No one lives like that. Least not people who aren’t afflicted with some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. And even then they’d have to be an entire family of obsessive compulsives because otherwise they’d continually be having shit fits when someone put the Dijon back where the stone ground mustard was supposed to go.

What Better Homes and Garden is really dealing in here isn’t reality at all but a kind of pornography. They aren’t necessarily trying to waken any sexual desires for the furniture or food in their magazine, or the pets for that matter, but are playing heavily on a kind of pornographic style of presentation. The photographs are what they are selling us. The cover shot, the designs, the food, the cute kids and adorable pets, all of it merely a means of seducing the “reader” into buying the magazine. I’ve already compared Better Homes to a catalogue and that’s what it is, but buying the things inside the magazine is really only secondary to the promise of the magazine itself. Realistically not many of us will try to recreate or even incorporate their design ideas into our everyday living. We may pluck a few items from their pages, but it will be a timid and uncertain exercise in “living better”. Mostly we’ll just sit around and leaf through the magazine, get our jollies off of pipe dreams and eye candy.

I suppose there are things to learn from Better Homes and Garden; how to plant mums and bulbs, how to organize your freezer (or upgrade to one with self-organizing features), how to decorate and entertain, but really there’s not much content. The subjects are shallow and the pages are crowded with pictures and editorial flourishes. Aside from the recipes in the back there isn’t much substance to this 278 page behemoth. I didn’t get an actual count but I would guess that at least half of it is ads. And the recipes don’t even start till the last quarter of the magazine. And then we’re only talking about maybe twenty pages in all.

I picked out a few things I’m going to try here at home and report back on. There were a couple of pumpkin recipes, a rice pudding and a black bean bake, and there was this kale and goat cheese frittata that looked pretty good. The other recipes seemed solid too but with thanksgiving coming up and the Marine Expo and the in-laws arriving this weekend I just don’t have the time to mess with them. Besides I don’t cook with recipes that often. Like I said before, recipes should be used as guidelines. Food, like language, like life, like the sea, like a lot of things is constantly transforming, it’s an expression, a mood, a living thing. Once a recipe is perfected it seems, to me at least, to lose some of its character.

It’s important not to stagnate, not to let ourselves be railroaded into false expressions and soulless recreations.


On a scale of one to ten, one being landfill and ten being something I'd save as a reference, I think I'd have to give Better Homes and Garden a three.