Text 15344, 129 rader
Skriven 2011-09-04 14:24:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip report 822a
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US1289 BOS PHL 0530 0651 E90 3A

What I should have done, had I known I'd be hotelling it,
was to take the 0830 and get a nice sleep. Instead, the 0400
wakeup call was most unwelcome, and though it was nice that
the shuttle was right there, it was not nice that it was at
0430. Of course, I was the only person aboard.

Security was a little stacked up - there being flights out
at 0500, 0530, and 0600, but I got to the gate close to the
start of boarding. Ensconced myself in my seat and slept:
I was completely conked out for the duration of this flight,
total waste of a first-class seat. The flight came in on
time if not a little early, so I had 4, count'em, hours to
waste. I went to the United Club and discovered that
Yuengling is served on request in 10-oz, 12-oz, or 16-oz
glasses. I became familiar with these.

US4118 PHL IPT 1115 1207 DH8 4F

As frequently happens, this flight was half an hour late.
Billy and Annie had made lunch plans for us, and Annie's
brother Rob waited patiently for us at the Mulberry Street
Cafe, which was previously unknown to me. It's another
tavern that serves pretty good food - I got a half-pound
burger rare for $3.50, and it was exemplary. They make it
up on Yuengling, which is about the same price as the
burger but costs them 10% as much. The others got various
sandwiches, including what is said to be one of the best
(certainly it must have been one of the biggest) Philly
cheesesteaks in town.
---
We'll skip a few wholesome middle-American meals, most of
which involved beef in various forms such as steaks - blue
for me, rare for Billy, and medium for Annie. There was
one tasteoff between Nathan's hot dogs and organic ones
made at a local farm, which were way too lean (the meat
crumbled) and tasted mostly of coriander seed and vinegar.
Rob liked the organic ones; the rest of us preferred the
fattier, garlickier, more traditional Nathan's. But mostly
beef in all its glorious manifestations. But when we go
off beef, we go off big time.

Williamsport is blessed with a good fishmonger called
Helmrich. He gets mostly New England and Chesapeake stuff,
and it's about as fresh as you can get away from the shore.
One day, Annie came back triumphantly with six doz clams and
three large lobsters, so we had an enormous clam starter,
after which we steamed the lobsters over the clam juice -
just heavenly. Sadly, Annie threw out the liquid after
the meal, and my next day plan of lobster risotto went out
the window. The shellfish totally overpowered the Nieto
Senetiner Torrontes 09, a disappointingly weak and
unconcentrated wine, with attractive but faint melon and
tropical fruit but too scanty both in acid and richness.
===
When I'm in town, I get my quality time with Rob at the
Saturday farmers' market, which brings together a bunch of
Amish, some return-to-the-earth hippie types, and a few
young entrepreneurial sorts. Some interesting produce,
baked goods, lots of dairy things, farm-canned stuff; also
costume jewelry, knitted goods, etc. Sometimes there are
things to nosh on, but they serve mostly to advertise more
take-home wares - and are not cheap. We buy various short-
season veggies, sometimes meat, very big very fresh eggs,
and bread; the sweet pastries tend not to be nearly so good
as what Annie makes - or Panera for that matter. This time
we ran into our friends Dan and Barb and had a cup with them
(I don't generally drink coffee, so I had a cup of something
else) and then rushed back for a festive breakfast of
scrapple and eggs, which filled me up for the day - I really
love scrapple, even though it's essentially fried cornmeal
mush with minced pig head mixed in.

It is a pattern at this place that I have a meal of the
day, and then there's another meal of the day later, and
sometimes yet another later. Annie, after all, is the one
who once took me out for a big lunch with many beers and
immediately thereafter trucked me to the 72-oz steak
challenge, where I crashed and burned of course, eating
only half the steak and hardly any of the potato, salad,
and bread, which I wouldn't have been able to eat anyhow.
I would have done better had I gotten a rare steak rather
than the medium one that somehow came out. This was not at
the Big Texan, but rather one of its knockoffs, the
Firehouse (or was it Engine House) in Arizona.

So I was informed that this was the day for me to go out
to a pig roast run by Jeannette and Doug, friends of Annie
and Billy and whom I didn't actually know. Jeannette is a
famed redhead bombshell, Doug the local Beemer and Porsche
dealer. They have a sizable spread, by local standards, out
in Jersey Shore, and every year or two they host a big
shindig, where the rich rub elbows with the merely amusing.
Turns out Billy was feeling rocky, so Annie's brother Rob
took me out there (he'd bought his car from Doug).

A lovely property, wraparound porch, and, as Annie says,
you can see forever down the crick, i.e., a great view down
the valley. People bring tents and stay for days, eating off
a roast beast, playing games, and getting massively
intoxicated. Or so the rumor goes. We were there just for
the daytrip.

Turns out they didn't actually do the roasting this year -
apparently last time there had been a contretemps with the
roasting time, and they had had to chop up a giant pig and
finish it in batches in the oven; the cooking had been done
off premises and prepulled - it came in three varieties,
cajun-seasoned, rhubarb, and plain unlabeled (actually
finished with sweet peppers and quite good).

A couple kegs of Yuengling kept me busy, along with
substantial chunks out of a pan labeled "beef brisket
20 lbs." Of the Yuengling I poured many for myself and
many more for others; the brisket I stole the fatty bits
from for myself and the heck with everyone else.

As my tribute, instead of one of ten kinds of brownies
or five kinds of multibean salad or anything like that,
I brought a bottle of Lucid absinthe and gave a little
lecture-demonstration on the topic, one that contrary to
popular belief is not all that dear to my heart.

We left while there was still some daylight to get down
the hill by; the party of course was still in full swing.

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