(Clockwise, Upper Left to Right: Jon-without avec pommes frites and his zeppelin-sized humanely raised, hormone-free slow cooked thinly sliced Steamer Round of Beef on Kate Jansen kemmelweck roll, garnished with deep-fried olives, fresh-grated horseradish and caramelized onions. The usual suspects. Pommes Frites with gravy. The long bar. Photos Socotra).

Saturdays are hard- particularly the last one of the month, since Buffalo Night at Willow precedes it and the crowd is always large and raucous, awaiting those fabulous Beef on Weck sandwiches. We have the core group, of course- Mary and Jim, Jon-without and TLB, John-with the Admiral and his vivacious bride, and B-man and AM (always there for BoW night) and Jerry the Barrister and L&M who were photo-bombing the crap out of Antonio and Dante. There may have been a couple more I can’t properly recall. We had a minor riot and a great time.

(Sauteed Brussels Sprouts with bacon, Jerry the Barrister’s Beef on Weck, Larry the photobombed with Antonio and Dante; Boomer behind BoW and taters the bar. Draft beer is Lost Rhino).

Consequently, I am sitting here lost in the President’s weekly radio & internet address and the crash of a mighty airship.

I should be getting organized to get in the pool, get some exercise as soon as Kamil the lifeguard opens the gate and get on my way down to the farm. Instead, I was lost in the LZ-129 Hindenberg disaster due to an unfortunate metaphor by a friend, who apparently heard a report about the President’s campaign-style visit to Minneapolis on Friday. I don’t know about all that- something about traveling first class on the Zeppelin, but I always remember that Dad used to tell us about seeing the magnificent flying machine in stately transit to the landing facility nearby at Lakehurst Naval Air Station. Hindenburg’s sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin, flew a million accident-free miles before she was scrapped in 1940, and right up until the first blue flames began to lick out of the stern, Hindenburg didn’t have anyone hurt, either.

If only they had used helium instead of the highly combustible hydrogen to keep the ship aloft…well, maybe the President can salvage something out of this. I don’t know.

Metaphors aside, this morning I was eating some sautéed Brussels Sprouts and bacon I brought home from the restaurant before a last magnificent plunge in the cool waters. It was a delightful change of pace with the eggs, and in the mail came the recipe above. I would rather be cooking than thinking about the latest development in the scandal-de-jour. This one is not the crashed computers at EPA, which I think was Thursday (the IRS computer thing is so last Wednesday) but back to the VA scandal which had a stunning development released after everyone left town Friday night. This will surprise you- is actually worse than we thought.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors wrote a report that he had found “a corrosive culture” and inadequate resources contributed to the debacle, which I think used to be cited as the model for how the government efficiently apportions care. Nabors said maybe a thousand Vets died.

Who’d a thunk it? Hahaha.

So, it was a relief to see a note from Marlow down in Key West where things make complete sense. He saw it in one of the local mullet-wrappers and passed it along. It is a foolscap recipe from none other than Papa Hemingway, truly a hard-drinking man for all seasons. He called it “Wild West Variations on the theme of Ground Beef.” I don’t get a lot of recommendations from Nobel Laureates, except of course the President on Saturday morning. Here is something like what I tried last weekend at the farm:

Cooking is more fun than actually having to think, you know? All this stuff other stuff just makes my head hurt.

If you are interested, I will transcribe it for the Cloak and dagger Cookbook- which I swear I am going to get to one of these days.

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Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303