Holidays, Out in the Garage

Christmas and New Years growing up was great as my brother and I didn’t have any sports or other activities to be dragged all over hell and half of Georgia for.  This time of year was all about family, celebrating the holidays and on occasion we got to see the two converge. Dad wasn’t much of a drinker but when he did have a drink you can bet it was most often in the safety and security of my uncle’s garage, away from the eyes of the women in the house but more importantly…my mother. Who upon seeing my father at the end of the night would declare, “your father is funny faced”.

There was certain etiquette in going to my Aunt Dodie and Uncle Gene’s house. But Christmas and new years were different, there was hardly a boring moment in the garage and there was always something happening that chances are, were not going to happen again anytime soon. Those things would usually start with a rather innocuous phrase such as “hey this schnapps tastes like mouthwash”, and end the next day with “I’m not sure why your uncle was crawling out the window…can you ask your mother to get me some Alka-Seltzer.” 

I remember the garage being full of uncles, cousins and friends all laying claim to the odd milk crate, cinder block, old car seat, lawn chair or other perch in which to sit on. It started out as a group of discussions on all things mechanical or home maintenance related. The odd beer was distributed to any and all newcomers who made their way into the garage and greetings were made quietly while a dissertation was being given on say, a 63 Chevy Impala Z11 427 ‘mystery motor’ or other such important things.

Then the offer “highball?” was made by my uncle. Then me, my brother and any cousins available would make our way inside to ferry drinks and what would be platters of finger foods back to the garage. The drinks were made by any number of the battalion of women in the house and were usually a combination of Canadian Whiskey and ginger ale or half n half. Initially drinks were freely poured, later in the night the women would begin to ask who each drink was for and formulate weaker drinks accordingly.

Somewhere between ten and eleven the merriment was in full swing and everything from men dancing in the snow of the driveway in their stocking feet to the passing and sipping of some clear liquid from a mason jar someone had brought back from a trip. The night usually ended with my mother driving us home and my brother and I being fortunate enough to ride in the front seat, while my father said funny things and laid across the back seat happy as could be.

As my brother and I got older there were girlfriends, wives and eventually children. Over the years the gatherings got smaller, times got busy and visits were further apart as my brother and I moved from the area. When I go back now I see a dark garage and imagine my father and uncles dancing and singing in a snowy driveway. It was the one time a year I got to see my father not be so serious with work, finances and family obligations weighing him down. I got to see him live a little.

So on this first anniversary of my blog and also my father’s birthday which was my inspiration for writing in the first place, I want to say thank you very much for reading my ADD riddled pieces of angst. I want you to remember that it’s okay to go out in the snow in stocking feet, and drink from an unmarked Mason jar from time to time. The Mayans were wrong, but eventually the end is going to come, and the last thing you want to have the answer to is why your uncle was crawling out the window. Live a little…Highball?! 

Sears, Change in a Bad Way

My first memory of Sears was when I was six. Walking into the store with my father when it was still more or less a catalog location on Maine Street in Keene, NH. I recall a man at the counter greeting and shaking hands with my father as soon as we walked in. My father presented the man with a broken Craftsman box wrench and before my father could explain what had happened to it, the man was returning with a wrench to replace it. “No explanation necessary Bill” was all the man said. That's how Sears used to do business. 

Problem:

My mother has a Kenmore gas oven that since day one, a monthly tightening of the bolts that hold the handle to the door must be performed. The door itself works perfectly and in fact there is so much spring tension that if you don’t hold onto the handle tight enough, it will nearly rip your arms out of their sockets and slam shut. It needs tightening so often that my mom keeps a screwdriver in a drawer next to the oven just for that purpose. One day about 6 weeks ago my mom called and said she thought the threads were stripped because it wouldn't tighten back up.

I went over the next day and took the handle off to see what the issue was. Here’s what I found…A metal bolt that has no more than four or five threads going into a plastic handle with plastic threads trying to hold back a door that has something on the order of 20 ft lbs of torque when it’s closing! Genius…a design fail. So I went online to see if I could get another handle and tried to find the part myself. It was difficult even using the model number of the actual stove.

So I called Sears Parts Direct, explained the problem and gave the woman the model number to see if she could pull the part number. “Yeah it doesn't work that way sir I need a different number”…I said I’m not at my mother’s, isn't it possible to cross reference from the model number?! “No.” So there’s nothing you can do? “No sir I’m sorry…anything else I can help you with? I guess not. So after some digging I was able to find the part online. For an injection molded plastic handle that weighs less than one pound they want to charge $63.93 thirteen dollars of which is shipping. For thirteen dollars I can overnight a hamster to Zurich!

I refuse to pay for a handle that was poorly engineered from the beginning. So I thought a faster way of bringing attention to my problem was through social media so I tweeted and within five minutes had a response and was told to direct message my contact info so they could remedy the situation within 24 hours… it has been 5 and a half weeks. 

I have sent multiple messages and tweets and in return I am told a multiple of conflicting stories about how the problem resolution is being handled. In short… their customer service not only sucks, but is non-existent. The only response I got was 2 days ago a phone call from their Round Rock Texas call center with no message left in my voice mail as to whom had called or a number or person I could call back.

I have a solution to the problem which has cost me less than 4 dollars and five minutes to install. But What I’d really like is to get a properly made handle from the people who are supposed to stand behind their products (one with metal threads or at least a metal shim not the cheap injection molded plastic one that is already an engineering fail) and an apology for such obvious and gross disregard for customer service. 

The ball is in your court Sears, are you going to keep me as a lifelong customer, or are you going to drop the ball...again. 

IT'S JUST BEER

Sitting at a bar waiting on a friend I was approached by the bartender and asked, “What can I get you?” I never give beer any serious thought as I like most anything, which is to say anything so long as it has alcohol in it. I don’t go crazy over what hemp beer is being tapped this week. I find it hard to get excited about anything hemp, and if I wanted to drink a shirt I prefer Egyptian cotton with a nice French cuff. Beer and wine are the new gateway drugs to one-upmanship and snobbery in the drinking world, much the same way kale chips and kohlrabi slaw is in the food world.

“Guinness,” and off he went to begin the ritual pour which I had been certified to do at Guinness while I was in Ireland. Truthfully, had I been allowed I would have forgone the ritual and did a keg stand while the crowd sang The Irish Rover. But beer folk are a funny lot and take these traditions seriously. To me beer should be comfortable and familiar. Beer snobs are like twenty year old sailors in a brothel on payday. They want to try everything but leave broke, empty, with some kind of rash, and never seem satisfied.

Settle down beer aficionados, I love beers of all provenance and styles. When I go to a chef friend’s place they don’t ask what kind of beer I’d like… they give me a beer and I drink it. I've never had a bad beer this way. I have had bad beer when left to my own devices, friends, bartenders pushing beers, and “buzz” about a beer being great. As with coffee, wine and cheese I like what I like, and the so called experts insist my choices are the result of ignorance or being dropped on my head at birth.

I've had so many beers that my liver shudders at the thought, and at one time in my mid twenties I could have driven a large nail to flush with said liver. I've had everything from Sam Adams’ Utopias to Schlitz, I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that if you have too many of any of them, you won’t notice a hint of apricot or how frothy the head is when you’re booting behind a dumpster at 2 am. So grab a beer you like. Grab one that helps you recall a favorite memory through taste, a place in time, a special event...

It was a warm fall afternoon on a patio overlooking a barren corn field at my aunt’s house. My father and uncle just got back from the farm where they helped bring in the last of the corn silage. They wore dusty white t-shirts and jeans that smelled of corn and diesel fuel. They looked like older versions of the 50’s era teens they once were. My aunt handed them both ice cold beers, and they both took mighty gulps to wash the day’s dust away.

I was nine, dad ruffled my hair then with a wink he handed me the beer and asked, “You want a sip?” My mother’s protest fading into the background I took a sip… a malted taste and icy carbonation I could feel, taste and smell all at once. Tipping it back again I started to chug. My uncle began to laugh his cackled laugh, and my father snatched the beer back while shaking his head and smiling his crooked smile. That was the only beer I ever shared with him. A rite of passage into adulthood usually reserved for your twenty-first birthday and I had done it at the age of nine, not knowing it would be the only time.

“Here it is” said the bartender startling me. I drink it in and in that first gulp I can taste for a brief second, that first beer I ever had. It’s not important that your beer was brewed using Icelandic glacier water, or that the hops are so rare that they are only grown in moonlight behind a man named Gunter’s house in Bavaria. What matters is that you like it. I’m certain that first beer my father shared with me was a mass produced can of ice cold crap to most beer folks. I’m equally certain that all these years and many beers later, it was the best beer I ever had.

Thanksgiving- Family Food Football...and Shopping?

Another Thanksgiving in the books as I finish putting away the last of the just cleaned dishes, and reach for a bottle of red nearly gone after having given much enjoyment to family and friends. I look back on Thanksgivings past and think of all the time spent in the kitchen preparing the family meal in the company of all those that came before me, and now I prepare it with those to follow. I think of all the family and time spent with them because it was Thanksgiving and that’s what it was about. To me that’s what it will always be about and I’m sure my cousin Bob would agree, right Bob? Bob?! Oh, looks like Bob went shopping.

I’ve always heard that Thanksgiving was the one holiday that corporations couldn’t figure out how to commercialize and until this year it was pretty much true, unless you consider 80 odd million in turkey sales a triumph for corporate America. To put that in perspective last year the US spent over two billion on Christmas cards. That’s a lot of money for awful writing or even more awful electronic cards with dogs barking carols. Good news looks like this year there’s an opportunity to sell even more of these thanks to some stores that decided families suck and profits rule. Good call corporate America!

So who were these fine folks who decided that none of their employees deserved to be with their families and should instead be in the salt mines of Greed Central Inc.? I’m sure they are so very proud of what they’ve done so I thought they deserved to not only have their company name out there… but their personal names as well…  Aeropostale CEO Thomas P Johnson, Banana Republic President Jack Calhoun, Big Lots CEO Steven F Fishman, Family Dollar CEO Howard R Levine, Gap Inc CEO Glenn K Murphy, Kenneth Cole CEO Paul Blum (soon to be gone), Kmart CEO  Louis D'Ambrosio , Old Navy  President Stefan Larsson, Sears CEO Louis D'Ambrosio, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz , Target CEO Gregg W. Steinhafel, Toys'R'Us CEO Gerald L. Storch , and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey…Let me be the first to tell you all from the very bottom of my heart I truly believe you are a blithering bunch of incompetent asshats, and if Caesar were alive today he would have you all chained to an oar.

There were others but these were the biggies. Walgreens and CVS I’m gonna cut them a break only because they have pharmacies and I consider people needing meds pretty important. What I don’t consider important are shelves full of dollar goods, a store devoted to toys or Sears selling snow blowers whose tires won’t hold air and won’t start after only three hours of use… more about that on Twitter Mr D’Ambrosio. Whole Foods really?! What made you honestly believe you needed to be open? Did you think people couldn’t live a day without organic short grain brown rice or the macrobiotic salad bar or were you just in for the money grab as well? 

The fact that these people not only made personal decisions to stay open, but they made decisions that affected the Thanksgiving holiday for tens of thousands of people. This is not only disgraceful but it’s downright cruel and leads me to ask these so called Presidents and CEO’s how many of them spent the day with their families? I don't mean you had to make your way to the office for a phone call I mean you spent the entire day away from your family and got a twenty minute break to eat your meal you selfish bastards.I’d personally like to know. 

In a work environment that has few full time jobs and scarce benefits leads me to believe these so called leaders decided to be open on Thanksgiving because what were these workers going to do...say no?! I personally believe someone needs to wake up the gimp to give these shit-bricks what they gave their employees. A good bending at the waist. Employees if you want to stick your time cards up there I'd understand. Oh and just so we are clear, I'm not buying the "I'm accountable to the stockholder" bullshit. Unless that stockholder wants to make their way down to their local Toys R Us and deal with grown adults fighting over the last Tickle me Elmo doll...Which oddly has a lot more meaning this year.

As for you America, I’m pretty disappointed there wasn't an outcry or outrage from anyone that said hey you know what…Enough of this crap! Surely we can have two holidays (counting Christmas) a year free from corporations. Only one store that I noticed had the guts to stand up and say enough is enough and that was P.C. Richard & Son and went so far as to say other stores that open on Thanksgiving have no respect for their employees or family values. I’d say that’s about right and thanks for doing the right thing PC Richard & Son. Hey I’m about as far from virtuous as one gets but for one day a year you should be able to hang with Uncle Raphael, and I can pretend to stand my cousin Bob… even though he is double dipping in the clam dip. 

Seacoast Food, the Truth.

I’ve lived in the Portsmouth, NH area now for about four years and a majority of that time I have been traveling to other areas of the country for work, and eating out non-stop. So when I come home I spend most of my eating time at home in the comfort of my own kitchen. Being a former chef it’s hard to beat the food cost, quality and drink prices at home. 

When I did decide to venture out to eat I’d check local reviews and “Best Of” lists. I was assured each and every time that I’d receive a great meal at a great price from great people giving great service as if I’d be going to Mister Rogers Restaurant with Elmo as my server! Sadly, on several occasions I’d come away wondering if I had been to the wrong place.

Within the past six months I’ve started talking to a lot of cooks and chefs in the area. With my limited experience of local restaurants I would ask these cooks if I had gone to these places on a bad day, or inquire about restaurants I wanted to try based on reviews and write-ups I’ve read, I mean can they all be “great”? I was met with eye rolling and laughter…”Haven’t you heard?! There’s no such thing as a bad restaurant or bad review on the seacoast!” I don’t understand, I’ve had bad meals and at least one of the local/regional reviewers has had a bad meal as well.

What followed from these cooks was in a word…Disturbing. Theories from the cooks/chefs went from “It has to do with advertising dollars/ It’s a money grab” to “A poor review from a critic would destroy them, the critic or restaurant” to “It’s too small of a town” and “it’s considered bad taste and it may hurt…feelings.” This may come as a shock to you kind and gentle people but my response to hurt feelings and poor taste as a result of a poor but honest review can be summed up in two words, tough shit.

Warm fuzzy reviews are not only a disservice to the cooks and restaurant owners, but to you and the local economy as well. A chef who is an owner put their name, money, personal life and reputation on the line. They need feedback good bad or indifferent to gauge whether their product is good or not. Smiling and nodding like the village idiot when what you really want to do is vomit on the chef’s clogs doesn’t help the chef improve.

Even if the chef isn’t an owner they still deserve the truth which in theory will benefit you with a better end product. Don’t worry about hurting their feelings. Somewhere along the line as a young cook, they made something that prompted their chef and mentor to compare their food to something lower than whale shit. They are a tough breed of people who are used to dealing with things going wrong and fixing them, that’s what makes a great cook. A cook that can’t handle adversity or criticism is a shoemaker.

The restaurant owner of a bad restaurant, reading how “great” the restaurant is will make them question why else could the bottom line be so damned bad? They need honest feedback, they already have friends who kiss their ass and smile… they don’t need another. A restaurateur armed with good honest information will be able to make a better decision regarding menu, personnel changes or just plain pulling the plug on an operation gone pear shaped.

Tourists: Yup, the rumor is that the seacoast gets its share of tourists. When I go to a strange little hamlet for some R&R I check out local reviews, blogs, and “Best Of” articles to discern where I’m going to eat. If the reviews, articles and “best of” pieces are skewed popularity contests or fluff, and the places in reality suck… I’m going to write that town off as a culinary wasteland. This in turn is going to hurt local businesses because if there’s nothing good to eat why would you stay there?

I’m not saying we need to do bad reviews for the sake of doing bad reviews like Pete Wells of the New York Times did to Guy Fieri’s Restaurant in NY. If a place is that bad maybe just leave them alone and don’t say anything about them…ever. When it comes to a Restaurant that has a good concept, chef and staff just missing the mark…let them know about it like Brian Aldrich of @SeacoastBevLab did this week in his review of The Thirsty Moose. It was smart, honest, on the mark and, it was about damn time!

So heads up cooks I’m going to be out there eating…a lot. You cooks asked for it because as one put it “We deserve more than vanilla reviews.” I’m not looking to run anybody over, but if a restaurant or its food is not being delivered as advertised I’ll let you know. This upcoming spring I’ll be giving you a Top Five Restaurants of the Seacoast list that you can take to the bank and a Top Five “Up and Coming” List as well. The chefs and restaurateurs deserve it, the tourists deserve it, local businesses deserve it and seacoast…YOU DESERVE IT!