Osso Turko (turkey thighs cooked in the manner of osso bucco)

serves four

Braising dish or deep paella pan with a domed lid, preferably about 13” in diameter

2 Large turkey thighs (to really do it right, have the butcher use a meat saw to cut the thighs in two, transversely, that is, so there’s half the thigh bone in each half; you would end up with four halves this way), at least 1-1/4 lbs each, preferably a bit more [make sure they use a saw; poultry bones splinter… your guests will be crunching on tiny slivers of turkey bone thinking they’ve broken a tooth or a crown]

1 28-oz can of San Marzano whole tomatoes, grown and packed in Italy (use others, like from the U.S., but most of them are bland, unappetizing, and will make this dish taste a little less swell; they are increasingly cultivated in other countries; San Marzano is a variety of plum tomato, originating in the commune of San Marzano in the Campania region of Italy; the best of this variety comes from this region)

1 cup, more or less, robust red wine (I use an Australian Shiraz, though any syrah will do; or a Mourvedre, a Sangiovese, a chianti, a pinot noir, a Cahors Malbec)

1 – 1-1/2 cups beef stock [stock, not broth]

1/4 cup Marsala (dry) wine (or any fortified “dry” wine, even tawny porto)

1/2 large fresh fennel bulb, finely chopped

2 large stalks celery, finely chopped

1 medium to large yellow onion, finely chopped

3-4 whole cloves of garlic (or even more if you like garlic) skinned, with the green shoot removed from within the cloves, finely chopped

Sea salt

Whole black pepper in a good grinder

1 Tablespoon of very good cocoa powder (not processed, not cocoa “mix,” but pure cocoa)

Fish sauce (Vietnamese, Thai, or your favorite)

3-4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (I shouldn’t have to say this, but use French or Italian olive oil; they’re better), plus a little extra

12 ounces dried pappardelle pasta (preferably imported from Italy; god luck finding pappardelle made in this country, unless it’s fresh made)

kosher salt

Rub the turkey thighs with olive oil so each one (or each half of one) is completely coated. Try not to disturb the skin on the turkey. Grind some black pepper coarsely on both surfaces of each thigh, and sprinkle both surfaces with a little sea salt.

In the braising dish with a domed lid or the equivalent, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium-high flame.

When the oil is hot, and not smoking, place the turkey pieces skin-side down in the hot oil. Allow to brown well (kind of a deep mahogany) and turn to brown the other side equally. Set aside the turkey when done.

While the turkey is browning (it should take at least four minutes to a side, if the flame is adjusted properly, and you haven’t burned it by that point), drain the can of tomatoes into a bowl, preserving the tomato juice/puree, discard the remnants of basil leaves in which they are traditionally packed, and getting the tomatoes themselves as free of liquid as you can.

Add another tablespoon or so of olive oil to the hot pan, after removing the turkey pieces to a plate or platter.

When the added oil is heated, add all the chopped aromatics (garlic, onion, fennel, celery) and mix well, coating every bit, in the pan. It should all be sizzling in about a minute or two. Turn down the heat to medium-low or low, and cover the pan.

Let the aromatics sweat until limp and translucent.

While sweating the aromatics, chop the tomatoes coarsely (not anywhere as fine as the aromatics).

Remove the cover and stir the aromatics, and then add all the chopped tomatoes. Mix everything to disperse the tomatoes, and recover over the same heat. Allow the tomatoes to sweat for maybe three to five minutes.

Remove the cover, and there should be a fair amount of water, released from the tomatoes and other aromatics. Turn up the heat to medium-high or even high, if you’re prepared to be vigilant, and stir the aromatics occasionally (every half-minute or so) until the water is almost all boiled off, and the aromatics have formed a thick jelly.

Turn down the heat to medium-low, and add each turkey piece, skin-side up to the pan, trying to avoid having the pieces touch (they shouldn’t in a 13″ pan). Spoon the aromatics that are not under the turkey on top of each piece of turkey, distributing it evenly, and coating each piece completely with the aromatics.

Pour the tomato juice you drained into the pan.

Add the Marsala (or other fortified) wine.

Turn up the heat to medium-high.

Add the wine, trying to distribute it evenly without pouring it directly on the turkey.

Sprinkle the cocoa evenly over the liquid, but not the turkey. Stir carefully into the liquid.

Sprinkle a shot or two of fish sauce in — no more than a 1/4 teaspoon or so. This stuff is killer salty, in addition to being a ready source of umame, which is why I say put it in.

Now add as much stock as is needed to bring the level of the liquid in the pan about half-way up the height of the turkey pieces. Stir the liquid so it’s well blended, stirring carefully so as not to disturb the turkey or the aromatics coating the pieces.

When the liquid has begun to boil, turn down heat to a simmer, or slightly less. Re-cover the pan.

Check in two or three minutes to make sure the liquid is barely simmering.

Periodically (no longer than every 15-20 minutes) uncover the pan and spoon the pan juices over each piece of turkey carefully, not disturbing the aromatics covering each piece).

Halfway into the cooking, at least an hour or so (this is more by way of “feel” or intuition; braising is inexact, and you will be a way from being able to tell if the meat is tenderizing sufficiently), turn over each piece of turkey with tongs, and recover with aromatics piled on each piece.

Cook for at least two or two and-a-half hours, the longer the better. Test for doneness, but sticking the tine of a carving fork or a metal barbecue skewer into the turkey. It should enter the flesh and be withdrawn with not very much effort (in short, it should be very very tender). Have tongs at the ready to hold the meat down while you extract the fork (if needed; and if so, the meat isn’t tender enough)

Start a large stockpot of water for the pasta on a high flame to reach boiling.

Scrape the coatings off each piece of turkey, and remove the turkey with tongs to a heated platter. Set aside.

Turn the heat to high.

Reduce the liquid and aromatics in the pan, stirring regularly, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan, until they are a very thick sauce, the liquid should be the consistency of heavy cream or maple syrup draining off the spoon.

[You may also add the extra step of setting the turkey aside on a heated platter and covering loosely with a “tent” of aluminum foil. Strain the sauce filled with aromatics through a very fine sieve. Use a wooden spoon gently to force all the liquid out of the solids. Don’t try to crush the solids to get out every drop of liquid. You can press on the pulp. You’ll get it with practice. This extra step produces a more unctuous, almost soigné version of this still very meaty robust sauce.]

Place the turkey back in the pan with the sauce, turn down the heat, and spoon the sauce over the turkey. Re-cover and set the flame to the lowest setting possible, or simply turn off the flame.

When the pasta water is boiling, add a palm-full of kosher salt to the pot (sea salt is OK also, but it’s more expensive). Add the pappardelle noodles to the pot and stir and cook to direction. Imported dried pasta should cook to al dente firmness in about four minutes.

When the pasta is ready, turn the flame on under the turkey (if you have turned it off) to lowest setting, just to regain any heat lost, and keep the cover covered.

Drain the pasta and distribute to four plates.

Serve the turkey on top of the pasta, and spoon an ample amount of sauce over the turkey and pasta on each plate. If you have not had your butcher cut the thighs in two as suggested, the meat should be so tender that you can serve it out of the pan, cutting each thigh in two using the edge of a large cooking spoon. Two of the lucky diners will get the piece with the bone to gnaw on.

Bon appétit.

[Note: you can enrich this recipe and the flavor even further, by adding dried porcini mushrooms that have been revived in hot beef stock and a little wine for about a half hour; do this when you start the recipe; add the mushrooms and their liquid (about 1 to 1-1/2 ounces of dried mushrooms in about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of stock and a little wine) at the same time you add the wine and the beef stock to the pan as braising liquid; you should still maintain the “no higher than half way up the sides of the turkey pieces” rule, so just add less beef stock.]

©2008, Howard Dinin. All rights reserved.

by

This is not the pear in question. This is, for one thing, not a comice pear. Indeed, strictly speaking, this is not a pear at all.

I have just eaten a perfectly ripe comice pear. It sat on the cutting board on top of a utility cart full of cooking implements and wine. It was there for about five days now.

It is my lunch.

I divided it using one of those metal nine or eleven bladed rings that cut the fruit in slices and at the same time core it.

As I ate it, I concentrated less and less on what I was thinking. What I was thinking was probably either inconsequential or anxiety-provoking anyway. I concentrated instead on the experience of eating each section of this juicy, but not dripping, fruit.

If it were possible to make candy that tastes like that pear, it would give whoever did so the chance to know in one very tiny way what’s it like to be a god. It only seems simple for a moment.

Happy now?

by

That’s my response to one of the guests I’ve just fed, often a good friend, very often a woman. Whether it’s in my own home, or at the home of a friend, where I’ve been enlisted to cook, sometimes the whole meal, sometimes part of it, often to consult on the ministrations of the host or hostess.

Maybe if I were Marcella Hazan, they'd listen. She had this to say, in an opinion piece just posted on the New York Times web site, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/opinion/29hazan.html

Cambridge is so, well, Cambridge, that it has three Whole Foods Markets, serving a city (and some surrounding towns) with a population of only around 100,000 people, and amply studded with nearby Shaw’s, Star Market (owned by Shaw’s), Foodmaster, and several other chain food market outlets.

The Whole Foods nearest me, on River Street, just a few hundred yards from the bridge that takes you to Cambridge from Boston, which I came to know quite well, for location of goods, etc. recently underwent a massive renovation. They remodeled the store, enlarging merchandising areas, and rearranging departments significantly. The greatest change was the amount of space they gave to prepared foods, especially hot foods, sitting in grand, freestanding stations, with dozens of dishes every day kept at serving temperature in bains marie.

They added an appetizer bar to the cheese and wine section, selling various savories, olives, and spreads, like tapenade and its variants, for $9.99 a pound.

All this, as I quickly discovered, at the expense of a significantly diminished inventory of varied SKUs. Favorite raw and dried, and especially bulk (as in "whole") foods, grains, legumes, flours, meals, etc., all these foods began disappearing months ago, as the store slowly and then more rapidly made its transition into, essentially, a glorified cafeteria. There has always been seating, mainly booths, at the front of the store, and these areas are always full of diners at lunch and dinner time. I suspect, however, that most of the prepared foods (they now have a pizza bar, where they are constantly turning out large oval pizzas in a stone oven designed to produce results that simulate a wood-fired brick oven. They sell the pizza by weight, reheating it in the oven if you like) go home with the customers, for a hurried meal, or a spread for grazing by various itinerant members of the household.

I've already lectured at least one assistant "team-leader" (they have no one called "manager" at these Whole Foods stores) saying there are still some of us who actually cook, you know? From scratch?

They are always sympathetic, but tell me that their observations passed along are essentially worthless.

I'd say the game is up, when one of the country's largest and most successful purveyors of the goodness of "whole foods" — well, duh, it's in the name, it's the brand guys — capitulates to the demands of a market that grows increasingly less self-sufficient, never mind the corrosive effects on our sense of family cohesion, community, and the meaning of friendship and the bond of closeness.

Give it up Chef Marcella. You're too late.

by

I have been struck (I probably deserve to be struck many times for current, and certainly for past, transgressions), by two things among many observations I have had to make in the last four or five weeks. It is in that time that I effected a major alteration in my routine, at least temporarily, by subscribing (paying actual cash money, or the equivalent) to not one, but two on-line dating services. Should it become germane or salient to what I have to say at any time I will name one or the other of them. In the meantime, I assume at this point that my experiences are typical, irrespective of the specific virtual venue. Individual details may cause them to differ, but largely as a result of the actual narrowness of target marketing of the service.

There may also be certain self-selecting differences as a result, insofar as one site vs. another might show an apparent variable demonstration of one aspect of behavior linked to the specific affinity or sense of identity associated with that site. My hypothesis: one site may call for people to join who feel a particularly strong affinity (ethnic, behavioral, cultural or intellectual propensities, hobbies etc.) and that affinity may carry with it certain expected behaviors. In practical terms, my experience has been that female participants on one site are much more likely to initiate a correspondence than on the other.

On the other hand, this latter less assertive-minded service would appear to have a very large and compendious membership and therefore a larger database of possible stated fantasies (wishes, hopes, desires, ideals, dreams, etc.) the member would declare as a desirable trait in a potential mate, and, also, of course, a larger number in any one demographic segment, women or men of a specific age range, than rival, more targeted services. They operate in a larger tent.

There are arguments for joining either type of group, and so, of course, I joined both. This was a major mistake, but the nature of that mistake is a subject for another time. The positive aspect of this error in judgment is that I briefly intensified, or amplified, the overall experience, and I was also exposed to (in almost all polite senses) a very much larger number of candidates for my attention than I might have with either one alone. My conclusions about the most striking phenomenon I observed are the subject of what I have to say here.

By no accident, the preponderance of the women I “met” (which I put in quotation marks, because I met, face-to-face, a very small fraction of the women I contacted, either on my own initiative, or because I elected to respond to their overture to me), were more or less local and more or less within five years of my age. And the ones I met in person, were but a very much smaller fraction still of the overall number of women brought to my attention one way or another, and these covered a range of ages. A very wide ranges of ages.

At the highest level of “screening,” these services allow a user at any time to know and to view not only the basic identifiers, like age, geographic location, and photo, if there is one, but the entire profile, of any individual member who has elected one way or another to linger over a view of the entire profile of that user. In short, if they looked at you and decided to take a closer look, you know it, and you can look at them. The ultimate in reciprocal voluntary vetting (using tainted data, as every narrator is suspect; these services all make clear in disclaimers that you cannot avoid seeing that they do not do “background checks” on anyone, so it’s caveat lector).

In this case, the entirety of the membership, paid or unpaid, may view my profile, including photos, carefully selected, as well as written personal characteristics and thoughts or feelings about myself, carefully crafted, plus the usual lists of “traits” drawn mainly from a list of choices, otherwise inalterable, that appear in drop-down menus for “multiple-choice” factual facets of one’s being. There are as well “short answer essays,” for example, last books read, or music preferred, or favorite places. Some sites make it simply a laundry list of various aspects of what is presumed to be personality. “I am considered by others to be…,” or “I consider myself to be….” Adventure is a major theme and "life as an adventure" a major taxonomic category for a great many members, at least among the women. At first I began to think they were all Lara Croft in their minds.

One factor that becomes paramount among members of a “certain age” (yes, this is that famous age, or age spread, if you don’t mind my use of this possible pejorative; we rarely want to speak of anything that is “spread,” or “spreading” — it only seems as if aging is spreading, the fact is we tend to clump ourselves by age), that is, adults in the ages between 50s and 60s, plus-or-minus, with a larger than 3% margin of invention, er, error, is precisely and honestly how old you are. As opposed to say, how old you are in your head, how old you appear, how old you’re taken for, how old society determines is superannuated, or over the hill, how old you are when you really must take a position on this whole life after death thing.

I am 62 years old, for about three more months. In what is very rapidly becoming six months, I will have been made a widower by the death of my wife. I have no reason to lie about these facts of my life, though I needn’t broadcast the specific temporal details, and certainly not my state-of-mind, emotional state, etc. I do not see this as a lie by omission. Marital status is one of the very few items that everyone sees if they are shown, or seek, or accidentally scroll past your basic listing: photo (if you’ve posted one), age, marital status, gender of user and gender sought. I have never, in fact, lied about my age. I have been accused of it, usually by someone I always suspect of being ingratiating (or perhaps of an overly pitying disposition) who declares their amazement and the certainty that I am lying in the upward direction. Of course I am, dude. Society places such reverence in old age (anyone over 45). It’s an ironic situation to be in, in all events, as it was my, the boomer, generation, which made popular and universal the notion that no one over 30 is to be trusted. We were off by almost 30 years.

I have also, I hasten to add, never lied about my marital status or whether I have children. These seem, as a matter of course, things people don’t lie about in general. So it’s not a particular mark of self-esteem. Finally, if asked, I have never lied about how recently (in relative terms) my late wife breathed her last. Not that that isn’t top of mind to some. A number of women whom I’ve spoken to in real time, either on the phone or in person, have asked about how recently Linda died, and other salient questions concerning her death, my involvement, etc. soon after the conversation began. I think they were either trying to make some assessment, using whatever skills they have, of my actual emotional “availability,” or merely were making some measure against what they understood somehow or other as some behavioral or emotional yardstick (straight out of the school of prescriptive thinking: if it’s the third month, you must be angry). Everyone a social worker (actually there's a remarkably high incidence of people in the behavioral health professions… so one must always be prepared to be under scrutiny, even if you seem not to be).

However, age falls into another category altogether, especially for us boomers, who are neither the “greatest generation,” nor the most obtuse, or the most post-modern, but we are the generation that will never say die, or, presumably, ever go gentle into that good night.

After five weeks on these dating services, having observed hundreds of photos (most of them inept snapshot quality, though a very few are clearly of professional quality or the equivalent, these surprisingly being of women who obviously want to show themselves, but honestly, to their best advantage, and not, as one might suspect, or anticipate, in order to use the significant technological advances in photo editing software to mask their stage of maturity) I can make certain general observations. The most blatant treatments or methods in obscuring the appearance (which is not the putative objective in terms of participant expectation — we’re supposed to attract one another; not keep each other at arm’s length for as long as possible while somehow conniving to move on to the next step: actually of meeting) are the Vaseline-on-the-lens gauzy, luminescent, “ready for my close-up C.B.” method, which obscures all detail or makes you think you’ve forgotten your reading glasses, and in the process, eradicated wrinkles, crepe-like skin, flaccidity, and the “what are those? Oh, you know what they’re called, there under your chin, where your neck used to be, etc.?” or there’s the “here I am from a distance” method, which mainly reveals that you are most likely to be recognized as female even by victims of myopia, and that you have hair — this is always a much better focused photograph usually showing a great deal of detail of the surrounding landscape — though we are by no means in the realm of the environmental portrait. The more creative individuals actually place themselves in surroundings that are, in themselves, interesting to observe (and associate in one’s mind with the individual under scrutiny), and I’m not talking about beaches or blatantly tropical venues — these are sui generis: I’m almost tempted to say that every woman out there loves the beach (especially walks thereon, either at sunrise or sunset), anything having to do with water, including merely gazing out upon vast expanses, and they also not only love dogs, but have at least one. Many “portraits” include a pet.

The less blatant strategy is simply to use out-of-date snaps from a time that you could be shown to much better advantage — many women (I may appear to be singling out women; I simply cannot account for what men do, as I haven’t seen any profiles of any males; I have no reason to think they don’t act in the same self-deluded way, if not worse) hedge here, by including some disclaimer in their grand essay, “About Me,” that the photos shown are current. This can be a very elastic adjective: “current” seems to mean anywhere from, “within the past year” to “taken no earlier than the last decade of the previous century.” I think it’s safe to say that anyone who has had a nominally ordinary existence within the confines of society, as opposed, say, within the confines of an eight-by-eleven foot one-room shack in the foothills of the Allegheny mountains since the age of six, sequestered from anyone over the age of 25, and who has normal brain function and studied basic arithmetic, will discover a sense of cognitive dissonance when observing photos of an adult female, claiming to be, let’s say, 59 years of age, and yet who looks remarkably and refreshingly as if she were still in her 40s, if not her 30s. One woman alternated, cleverly, contemporaneous full color photos of herself with sepia photos of what must have been herself at a very young age, in the first full flush of womanhood, late teens or early 20s, the embodiment of that great adjective (which men invariably believe is somehow salacious in meaning), “nubile.”

I can understand the desire for appearing to be much younger than one actually is. Some people, men and women, are endowed with the genetic makeup that brings this about. Linda, my late wife, was regularly taken for a much younger woman, even after suffering the ravages of several years of cancer and its treatment. Indeed, her appearance, especially when we first met and courted, and then co-habited, caused me no end of chagrin. No doubt as I have a tendency to appear far more decrepit than I actually am, despite what I said above; some people, I suppose are simply cruel, in order to be kind — these days I am regularly taken for 63, sometimes even 64 — and she was regularly taken for 28, even when she was 42, as she was when she moved in with me (a mere 46 myself), I was accused of the most scurrilous motives regularly (and, strangely, more by men than women; so I think jealousy was a major factor). However these are the rare and fortunate exceptions. It’s also possible, looking backward, that until they found out the truth about Linda’s chronological age in fact, these women, pleasant and smiling and friendly as always, were in reality seething.

At some point, and this might as well be it, I might as well make the usual observations about the more narcissistic traits of my generation, the baby boomer generation, and its cult of youth. I doubt we are, or have been, any worse than any previous generation in regard to the apparently very human trait of somehow mentally fixing our sensibilities for life somewhere around the age of majority. My mother, at the age of 87, admitted to being a perpetual 19 in her head (and hence being startled often when looking into a mirror at the ancient creature staring back at her), and this is, I admit, about the age I am probably fixed at myself.

However this may or may not be true of human nature, it is certainly true of boomer nature that we have institutionalized a kind of mass denial. For the longest time, this allowed us to imagine that we were capable of not only great things, but of almost anything, including the impossible — ours was the generation of great potentiality. I have only two words to say in the face of that: George Bush. And hasn’t the most repeated thing you’ve heard lately about the man who is still our President, and will be for another 72 days or so, been along the lines of how these eight years have “aged” the poor man?

Ours is not a generation that takes kindly to aging, or to admitting it. Which is the other thing that is true of boomers, and that is, somehow, that we will age, but we will never get old. For in age, old age in particular, is not only the inevitability of death — and at least five or six per cent of us will concede that we are, in fact, mortal; goddam-it — but the inevitability that age will overtake us, and the skin will wrinkle and sag, and the hair will turn grey and then white, assuming we keep any significant percentage of it, and our muscles will lose their tone, and our limbs will lose their, well, limber.

The great anodyne is doing it all together. And intimacy of the sort we still manage to nurture and preserve among ourselves as couples and close friends brings with it a kind of softness of vision (not of the correctable sort) that transcends reality, or perhaps magically allows us to see the individual for who they may appear to be to all others at this very moment in real time, while also seeing them as we have always seen them in our mind’s eye (never needing vision correction, as memory is always 20-20, even when it is wrong or inventing things), from the moment we met them, and certainly from the moment we fell in love.

However the combination of age and strangeness is a cruel formulation.

And being alone, or, that is, without a mate, at just about any age beyond 50, I’d say, makes everyone suffering this condition strange. There is no escaping it. It doesn’t matter how well tuned in you are to your own condition of mind. It doesn’t matter how “well-adjusted” you are. When you have no mutual (or reciprocal) love interest you are lonely, and loneliness makes you strange.

It makes you do things you otherwise do not approve of, in others especially. It certainly makes a great many women who put themselves out there simply lie.

They lie about their ages. They lie about the evidence of their ages. They lie about the contradictions inherent in anything greater than the most perfunctory analysis of the facts they present for appraisal. They lie in the face of physical evidence. They lie in the face of adherence to truth as one of the values they espouse in life. They lie to men who say they hate lying (or, to put it positively, who say they prize truth and honesty above almost all other virtues as the foundation for what is essential in a long term relationship — LTR for short — and that is, trust).

Two excuses are given, if the subject even comes up as the basis for further discussion once you are past that very brief, sometimes off-handed moment — and, in my experience, with no indication that the perpetrator, that is, the liar, has any sense of the conversational diversity and richness to be effected by a little syncopation, for example, by slipping into a discussion about politicians that they are not really 58 (or 52), but 61 (or 62), and seeing if they can get a rise, or hoping they won't and they will have already so charmed their would-be suitor that he simply no longer cares — when they admit to their profoundly minor transgression.

It has been always, in my experience, handled en passant. My instincts have told me that the best way to behave, that is, for me to behave, is entirely passively, that is, as a listener, or if you prefer, a receptacle. There is no point in having an entire encounter hinge on my reaction to being informed that the human sitting opposite me has lied to me, about anything, before learning anything of any consequence regarding our suitability to one another, that is, what used to be called our compatibility. Therefore, I have been mum, certainly with the women who have admitted to the prevarication, not to mention any others who may have misrepresented this inalienable, very specific and incontrovertible fact about themselves. In two very specific instances, by some exquisitely similar timing, the admission as to age, off-the-cuff, off-handed in one instance, and in an appropriate conversational context on the other, came well into the same point of our first meeting, which involved sitting down to dine. Ensemble.

I’m not so preoccupied with the specific matter, though I am with truth-telling in all regards, that I distract myself with my feelings on the matter, as soon as it is apparent that there is an issue. It’s always an issue for me. I simply prefer the truth. And the fact is, despite the requirement that we state an age preference for our sought-after dates or matches, call these couplings, or what you will, I really don’t care about someone’s age. I will either be attracted to them or not.

In addition to whatever attraction (which I guarantee will be more likely the more comely the object of my desire; and facing facts, as it’s as true of men as of women, there is more comeliness of a certain species-perpetuating variety among the younger members of our society — there’s a reason for this, but this is no place for a discussion about biology or genetics, especially as I’m discussing ethics). Whatever my attitude, or that of any other man, or at least putting this aspect of the argument aside for just a moment, it is clear that women of a certain age must face the question of age with far more gravity than the world is willing to admit openly.

A very good friend, a long long time veteran of having to seek connections, or matches, or whatever it is we are to call the liaisons that we manage to make: proto-friendships (but these women aren’t interested in making friends; they want a mate), contacts, possibles… I can’t conjecture actually and the language has not revealed itself as yet, in any event this long time friend makes no bones about lying about her age, insofar as she posts it on-line along with photos she swears are not only recent, but in all but one case, shot within the past year, which I know not to be the case. She says among the first things she brings up is the small adjustment in reporting her age that is required in the face of the truth.

The actual age is not important in this or any other case. The adjustment is only slight, say three or four years. Yet it must be made, according to my friend, because of, well now this is interesting. It’s because of the men. Because of us, the other, because, when you get right down to it, because of me!

Men want younger women, and put down age ranges that, if the system as it’s explained by the vendors offering these on-line services is accurately and faithfully adhered to, would exclude women outside that age range from their attention.

I put down, at first, for reasons that I had very calculatedly worked out, ages based purely on marketing principles I would have applied were I my own client and I had been asked to consult on the matter. There’s nothing wrong with stating a preference surely. When I first joined the larger of the dating services, I put down a range of 39 to 58 years of age. The only assumption I made is that I would rarely, so much so I figured the rareness would be never, discover any genuine interest expressed by a woman who was 39 or anywhere close to that age. Not in me, a 62 year-old widower, with silver gray hair (quite an abundance of it, and accompanied by an appearance of “cuteness,” as in youthful — for a 62 year-old widower — and insofar as I understood the cuteness factors, I made sure they were emphasized by the photos that were all shot by myself, except one, the main one, which was shot by someone else as I gazed lovingly at her, directly at the lens; I will say no more, other than, given that I am not obese, or even remotely fat, I made sure the photos indicated this. I only described myself in words, from a list that included “athletic and toned, or fit,” and “slender,” as “about average.”

I have since changed that desired female age range to something I think significantly realistic, in terms of reasonable expectations on my part, especially at the margins, of from 46 to 62 years. I’m 62, I should be willing at least to consider women my age, or why should I expect anyone to consider me. In all honesty I should simply make it from the earliest age they permit you (probably 18) to the eldest, like 80. The fact is, aside from what I stated above, that I really am not hung up on the specific age, I believe whatever I say will be ignored not only by the women in the database themselves, but by the computer as well. And I have been proven correct empirically by my experiences over the past five weeks. In that time almost 1200 women have looked at the photos of me along with my profile; I can’t tell if they perused these, or simply glanced quickly at them. I have been solicited for my interest in starting a conversation, or correspondence, call it what you will, by maybe 150 women, and in turn I have expressed my interest in about three dozen women. I have had matches suggested to me by both services, and the suggestions continue to come in on a regular basis. In no case did I feel that some woman was excluded from my attention or consideration because of her age, not excluded by herself, not excluded by the service.

I have had overtures, one way or another, from women from 22 to over 70 years of age.

How can I possibly take the matter of age seriously as a barrier to entry?

Therefore I assume the presumptive reasoning by women who say they’re 58 when they’re really 61, or 47, when they are patently significantly north of that age (I don’t find out, if I’m not told, because I don’t ask; I in fact think it’s rude and ungentlemanly, though I wouldn’t mind at all being asked anything about my stated age) is that they are stating a wish or expressing a denial. In either case, my sense of this is only reinforced if the reason volunteered is that it’s me, that is, it’s the men, who want someone young and gorgeous hanging on their arm, and by formally stating their fantasies or wish-fulfillment conditions. There is no denying that some men, certainly with enough money, status, or power to attract them, are not denied them. But I also doubt these men actually enroll on an on-line dating service, at least not of this ilk.

My question of my friend, described above, and of one woman I met who admitted to being older than she has stated in her profile — she informed me as if I had at my finger tips all of the facts from her dossier; I was confused when she announced her age, as I had no reason to think otherwise, or that this was a declaration, presumably redundant, that her statement of age was not redundant of previously published information, but an adjustment — was, “Why would you want to go out with a man who would not consider even meeting you, never mind going out with you, with the possibility, however strong or weak, that it might be the start of something big, simply because he didn’t like how old you, in fact, are, and cannot be other than?”

No answer.

I understand lies are perpetrated all the time, all around the earth, every second. They are perpetrated for reasons of expedience, necessity, self-protection, the protection of innocent parties, to spare feelings the evocation of which might be worse as a matter of ethics than having committed an ethical breach by virtue of lying.

We’d all like to follow the guideline that if you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said. I try to live that way, and mostly I succeed. I also have trouble with copying music from whatever source and giving away copies, even if I have paid for the original, and I always pay. I have trouble pirating software, or not paying for shareware. I have trouble being confronted about that which I might have gone out of my way to avoid entering the ken of my confronter. But I always speak the truth, and figure I’ll deal with the consequences.

I’m not a confessional sort, and it’s probably difficult extracting certain information from me because, for one, the desire to do no one any harm supersedes this strange antipathy for being lied to, and preference for truth.

(the song of King Gama in "Princess Ida," Gilbert & Sullivan)

I’m sure I’m no ascetic; I’m as pleasant as can be;
You’ll always find me ready with a crushing repartee,
I’ve an irritating chuckle, I’ve a celebrated sneer,
I’ve an entertaining snigger, I’ve a fascinating leer.
To everybody’s prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman’s age in half a minute – and I do.
But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet everybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
And I can’t think why!

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I was told very early on in the process of grieving the death of my wife that were I fortunate (this is not the word that was used; indeed, it was presented to me as neutral fact) to live in, say, Newton, Massachusetts, there would already be a pile of casserole dishes piled on my front door step.

And sure enough, while browsing through a relatively new cookbook I had gotten last spring (it was the source of one of the last new dishes I made for Linda, to add to a quite vast repertoire of dining favorites we had accumulated, because it was a great hit), called Bake Until Bubbly, was a certain recipe. That is, it’s a cookbook only of casseroles, a later accompaniment, as a volume, to the vastly more interesting (to me) book of Real Stews, by the same author, Clifford Wright. Mr. Wright is otherwise a quite scholarly food historian and has written several other books, some of mammoth proportions, commensurate with the subject, and full, alongside the voluminous scholarly notes, of recipes that allow the modern cook to replicate dishes whose provenance goes back centuries.

The recipe in question, Widower’s Casserole, goes back only to the retirement community that is home to the 87-year-old mother of the author, whose friend supplied the recipe that Mr. Wright adopted. It seems, says Trudy, that the widows supply this casserole, vying for who will be first. The recipe is an extravaganza of saturated fats, consisting mainly of four chicken breasts, 3/4 of a pound of mushrooms, pureed to become a suave thickener for the cup of cream and the cup of sour cream that round out the recipe. He notes it is full of meat, as it is meat that these Depression-Era widowers crave. Not to mention the extent to which a demise from coronary artery disease can be hastened with such a diet. But I bet it’s nice and rich.

In any event, it’s probably now four or five months after this observation was made to me. So far, not one casserole. I have even been on two (count ‘em) online dating services for well over a month now.

No casseroles.

I have not cooked anything for any new friends or acquaintances, even though my reputation comes before me as a cook of some great skill. I should know, because I’ve been pushing it in front of me for the last five weeks. However I have not done so sufficiently convincingly to have engineered a dinner at my own house, prepared by these hands.

I suspect that such a move would have a certain connotation, a semiotic value, in some protocol. I am positive there’s a protocol, but I’m damned if I know, beyond certain basic guidelines I’ve mapped out for myself, and seem to derive from what I’d like to call common sense, but to be honest, I’d have to call truthfully only my instincts as to what is right, based on my experience to this point in my life.

Be honest at all times.

Offer no gratuitous information. When your opinion is desired, it will be requested.

Have a point of view. This is not in contradistinction to the point above. The point above is derived from etiquette. This point is derived from the several facts: we speak in order to exchange either information or express our feelings on various matters: from something as innocuous as politics (couples have made it or broken up over political differences; why? is what I want to know), to something as important as what you did today. To have no point of view is to say, you are oblivious. At our age, you have a choice. You choose just how much silence you want to withstand.

If you have nothing to say, say nothing.

If you think you have nothing to say, see if there’s anything on your mind that wouldn’t be inappropriate to relate. If there is, and it wouldn’t, say it.

Make no promises you can’t keep.

Be on time.

Smile.

Look at her while she speaks, and actually, well, this is hard to explain, but, listen.

Don’t talk yourself out of any internal conclusions you reach in the presence of this woman, and remember them for later.

Don’t allow too much time to pass before making contact again. If what feels like too much time has elapsed, insofar as common manners allow, apologize sincerely, unless you don’t, in which case, why are you bothering?

Try to avoid merely ignoring people

If you do provide an answer, let your instincts be your guide. If a brief, succinct, thanks but no thanks will be sufficient, do that. Otherwise, provide a long, detailed answer to every question, matter, issue, or problem you can, without getting emotional or personal, and assume that will be sufficient. If it isn’t, and you hear further, you’re not the problem (repeat that to yourself, “you’re not the problem.”)

Make clear the pace at which you feel you must allow things to progress, or try to have a hand in allowing, and if there’s a reason, give it.

So this is the protocol I have followed for five weeks.

Still, no casseroles.

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She is remarkably insensitive, or stupider than anyone has as yet imagined.

It’s one thing to create historical context as part of a counter-argument about not allowing the campaign to drag on too long. It’s perfectly legitimate to do so, and indeed, older voters with at least two or three brain cells left to rub together, and the three or four dozen students of history left in our country I should think are not particularly concerned about the length of the campaign. As long as it isn’t carried into the convention, where it truly threatens to be divisive for the Democratic Party and corrosive of their chances, a longer campaign is the way it goes sometimes.

However, tacking on the remark about Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in June of 1968, after his victory in the California primary, was gratuitous, no more clarifying of her position, and, like certain other of the ways during the campaign this year that she has elected to express herself on specific sensitive subjects, it suggests that Hillary Clinton is either truly malicious, or that we should have concerns about her judgment and "experience." Clearly the 35 years of public service she flaunts with every opportunity have not been sufficient to learn the lessons of not sticking your foot in your mouth or in a bucket of shit any less often than her opponent. In fact, it seems a habit of expression with her. Barack Obama seems at least able to learn from his infelicities of language, and adapt and correct.

I’m afraid, late in the game as it is, that Hillary Clinton is merely expressing, perhaps despite herself, an alarming level of desperation or an inability to think on her feet, hitherto unremarked, or both.

I don’t think we need a leader whose passions, or even whose innate compassion, or whatever other incapacitating perfectly human traits regularly and predictably lead them to expressive gaffes in public of destructive potentiality. We already have the king (for perpetuity) of linguistic ineptitude in the White House. I don’t think we now want, immediately to follow, a queen.

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One of the few if not only virtues of the diminished frequency with which we are able to visit France these days is that incremental changes, not to mention larger ones, are that much more noticeable. Today I was in Aups early enough to check if one of the two or three International Herald Tribunes they get was still in the rack. It wasn’t.

I can’t be too disappointed. For one, I am obliged to arrive in town earlier than the 9am arrival I managed this morning if I want a shot at the IHT. Second, of course, it’s only in the last six or seven years that I could expect even to see the IHT in the local Maison de la Presse. That they get so few copies is evidence of the  still very small number of Americans in the region, or at least that even smaller minority that manages to bestir itself to buy up one of the non-reserved copies of the paper. Were I here more often, my cadging one of the rare objects might even inspire them to start to reserve, and that would inspire Mme. Maison Presse to order more copies, which in turn, slowly slowly, might inspire a common wisdom that there are, well, more Americans dans le pays (in country). And who knows what butterfly in Szechuan province flapping its wings effects that might engender.

However, back to reality. Today, there were no IHTs and there were the usual suspects of a wide selection of British newspapers (not to mention those of the other major Indo-European languages represented in the original cadre of CE nations, dominated by the Germans, but with papers in Spanish, Italian, etc.). The only temptation ever for me is the good old pink (as in pink newsprint—politically it’s slightly to the right of the Wall Street Journal I think) Financial Times. But it wasn’t tempting enough today. I hadn’t checked any French news, except the local variety, since we arrived a week ago, so I grabbed a Le Monde and got on line for the cash register.

While standing there, minding my own business (which no one around here particularly minds anyway), I noticed something to my horror that I had never seen before in these precincts. Paperback novels in English. This is very bad news.

And I’m not talking Dickens either. Not Trollope, not Eliot (George, that is), not even James or Wharton. No classics, but Barbara Cartland wannabes. Women’s romantic novels. Not that there’s anything wrong with all this. However, what’s wrong, in my not so humble, curmudgeonly opinion, is that the classically canny French shopkeepers of Aups should signify that a market—never before catered to—has reached a critical mass and must be catered to.

This is the latest sign in a series of signs that have emerged over the last 15 years of another British invasion, here in the south, whereas prior to this such incursions have been constrained and kept within the bounds of certain towns, small in number. I had thought all this was under control. Cotignac is for the British. Aups is for the French and, well, me and Linda, and a select group of friends who come and go, talking of Michelangelo, maybe Cézanne, but definitely not the sisterhood of Barbara Cartland. Next I expect to see Oprah Recommends! stickers on certain titles.

And what’s so terrible about the Brits? Well, for one, they’re British. If I want British, there’s London and the rest of Old Blighty to visit. Not to suggest I am feeling any great urgency, now that I think about it, as we haven’t been there since 1993. And frankly, it’s cheaper to get to London than to Nice. And when we want British, our friend Hilary comes to visit. But all Brits aren’t like Hilary, which is the problem.

I don’t want to walk into a café and hear English predominating the general buzz of conversation. For that, I can stay in Cambridge. Well, to be perfectly honest, I can’t stay in Cambridge, because in Cambridge the prevailing dialect is as likely to be Parisian, or Farsi, or Dutch, anything but English. So much for being cosmopolitan.

But Aups is not cosmopolitan. Call me an Anglophobe, a reactionary, a misanthrope… But do it in French. I came here, I bought here, because it’s French, goddamnit. The French government goes to a lot of trouble to keep it that way. Sort of like a whole country of Old Williamsburg brand assurance. Authenticity. Protected land. No building, No developments (well, except for the mayor of the village’s cronies). Winding roads that are just, but only just two cars wide. No allowance for people who have to shift gears with their left hand. If you know what I mean.

I prefer buying packaged goods that have instructions for use in every language BUT English.

It’s a kind of chauvinism by proxy with me. England for the English. France for anyone but the English.

Not coincidentally, the Telegraph (a British newspaper that seems to have found its niche catering to English ex-pats) reports just today that, mirabile dictu, the greatest number of Brits ever, or close to ever, some 2 million of them, now live outside the environs of the UK. Jesus. They must have been swarming all over France (instead of restricting themselves to the Dordogne and Cotignac) for years, and I took no notice.

Why is this so serious? Why my hysteria? I mean, aside from the aforementioned reasons of preserving my calm state of mind (achievable nowhere else but here) by not hearing English diphthongs and other anomalous linguistic propensities?

Well, the chief reason goes by the name of Peter Mayle, who probably single-handedly, more than any other English-speaking (and more importantly, English-writing) person since Tobias Smollett who is, after all, dead these 200+ years, is responsible for causing irredeemably large numbers of people, also English-speaking, to have an overweening interest in Provence. As is generally well-known, he wrote a book, called A Year in Provence, which was unjustifiably popular, and made him obscenely large amounts of money (and also gained him the hatred, and vindictive recompense, from more or less every inhabitant of the previously unknown, unnoticed, and peaceful little village in the Vaucluse which he had the ill wisdom and misfortune to name in said famous book). He has written a great many books since, some allegedly non-fictional, like the first, and some fiction, and all largely indistinguishable as such, because, like most former ad men, he made a lot of things up, and figured his opinion and imagination counted for equal weight with truth. Well, as they say in Lancashire, received wisdom is a penny the pound-weight (they probably say no such thing; I made that up, but see? I admit it; he admits dick, and furthermore he tells a lot of fibs and untruths, and makes it all sound like ice cream, which he makes you think the horses deposit in France right on the streets from their patoots. With spoons. So who wouldn’t, if they were British, want to be in France, mucking everything up, and making the rest of the world think this is a good thing?

It’s a bad thing.

And furthermore, the fact is, as I can assert with certitude after 20 years of study, there really is not all that much difference between us and the French, and it’s really not all worth all the money it costs to be here, not to mention how much it costs to get here just to be here. Not that it costs the Brits all that much with Ryan Air and all, which exacerbates the situation, which is basically this. You get enough Brits (or Yanks, or Poles, or Lithuanians, or Turks or whoever the hell else the French are justifiably frightened out of their wits will clog the streets and roads and take up all the property and jobs and will jolly well screw up what’s been a basically very good thing since Jesus was a pup—the Greeks were here first, you see, then the Romans, and both of which had the good sense to leave it all well enough alone and not try to make it anything but what it is, which is French), and when you get enough Brits (Yanks, Poles, etc. ad nauseam) it might as well jolly well be some shire or woodsy glen you can just pop on over to see like it’s easy as Bob’s your uncle.

All of which is by way of preface to say, I’ve written my own damn book, which is called Same Difference / Life in France: Peter Mayle Got Some of It Right. And well, he got a shit load of it wrong, which is my point, and if I can make my point, despite him (in fact, cleverly leveraging him and his much greater fame and name recognition), I too will make a few bucks, pay off the mortgage on our little house in Provence, and no one will molest me, because I have no cavil with the French. I want them to be them, and me to be me, and we’ll all just get along, like Rodney King.

So here’s the book:

I’m preparing the proofs for final production, and then I’ll have a challenge called, "getting it published." But watch this space for more news, and if you’d like to make sure you’ll get the latest info about the book, how to obtain an advance copy and all other associated subjects, drop me a line, and you’ll go on the mailing list (actually you must do this, or I can’t by rights, by law, and by moral obligation send you anything, not by email) click here and you’ll go to the bertha Website, and scroll down to the "subscribe" box

OK?

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My generation (I was born at, to use the much more recent expression, the bleeding edge of the baby boom) demonstrated its arrogance and hypertrophied sense of its own importance young.

We started, back in the 60s, by occupying the President’s office (of Columbia University), and we will go out, it seems, with the dubious achievement of having occupied the President’s office (by dint of the same blustering, bullying, law-breaking bellicosity), aka the White House. It would appear that Hillary Clinton, so tantalizingly close to fantasy-fulfillment, yet so constrained and thwarted by the forces we have seen so little of in the 40 year interim—the forces of the hopes and enthusiasm and renewing energy of the generations just behind—is determined to effect a similar occupation.

Nevertheless, she seems bent on exercising the same spoiling (and spoiled) defiance that has characterized the administration of her confrère, George Walker Bush. His behavior, of course, has earned him the enmity of a record majority of Americans, across all generations, from the alter kackers who bore us, to the children just preparing to cast their first ballots. It has earned him, and America, the anxiety, antipathy, and contemptuous envy of the whole world.

Here’s what I fear. Even as she eschews the politics of brazen autocracy that colors the Bush tenure, Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to want to occupy the nomination of the Democratic Party in very much the same fashion he attained office—and it is probably not the ironic coincidence the media loves to babble about, that the state of Florida and its raggle-taggle constituency of misinformed, ignorant, racist elderly Jews, plus the politically powerful reactionary Cuban exiles that have had Florida politics in thrall for those 40 years I mentioned, that will play a significant role, if she gets her way.

The result, I predict, will be this, that the rejuvenation of American politics, and of good old-fashioned idealistic self-sacrificing American moral leadership, will be still-born. This is assuming Barack Obama, who seems to have all but attained, by right, and by law, the nomination Hillary Clinton still so desperately seeks, loses that nomination in some backroom arm-twisting swindle—carried out, paradoxically, right in front of our eyes. If she wrests the nomination somehow, despite the now widespread common wisdom, the concessions of the punditry, the professionals, and even the unnamed campaign advisors on her own side speaking in anonymity, that she has lost it, she will lose something else. Worse, it is America, and the world that will lose, and what it will lose is the fervor and idealism of not one, but two generations of America following—possibly, in some respects, the last best hope of the planet, given their potential influence, and given the potentialities their influence represent for righting all the wrongs we have perpetrated on the world, and inspired others in the world to enact, for the last 40 years.

Our generation, my generation, is kaput. William Jefferson Clinton, so full of promise and hope, and so full of compromising amoral self-indulgence, and George Walker Bush, of whom the less said the better—so challenging to the most vivid of sane imaginations is his character and behavior that it threatens one’s emotional stability to consider them—were the best we could do. And sadly, it was hardly close to enough. Hillary Rodham Clinton, using the tired tactics and strategies of politics as usual, of cynicism, and tough talk in the guise of realpolitik, of manipulation, and role-playing, of mask wearing, shape shifting, and playing the fears and anxieties of the public (rather than its hopes and finer aspirations) will, if she does nothing else, alienate those younger generations. Possibly she will assist in the realization of the final dissolution of American moral hegemony. The 20th century, the so-called American Century, will have indeed been our last.

I shudder to think of the implications. Though avowedly liberal, or centrist, or whatever she calls herself, Hillary Clinton, I’m afraid, is as much a pawn, a tool, and a player, in the grand game of American corporatized government. She is as much in the pocket of enterprise as any politician since Abraham Lincoln. And it is not grit, or courage, or stupidity, God knows, that impels her. It is the very same hubris, the curse of Western Civilization that the ancient Greeks dramatized and poeticized by way of warning, that put swaggering punks in the offices of President Grayson Kirk of Columbia University, and much later, in 2000, in the President’s office that belongs, in fact, to the people of the United States of America.

God help us if either Hillary Rodham Clinton or John Sidney McCain ends up sitting in that Oval Office, by whatever means, at the moment unimaginable except in a mood of outrage or abject submission.

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It was January 11, at 5:41pm, CET, which would have made it 11:41 in the morning on a Friday in the United States, that I wrote an email message to the professional chefs forum I belong to, and with whom I exchange, likely, the greatest number of messages online. I’ve long since accepted that my friends have forsaken email for other less taxing (on time, on time) forms of communication. This is a very roundabout way of saying, my friends don’t exactly stay in close touch, except one or two, whom I love like life itself.

Anyway in the course of the message, which was extremely brief, brevity being unusual for me, and in a mock tone of some derisory pose: irony, sarcasm, insincerity in one of its more sophisticated forms, I added at the very end, "Women rule./That’s why John McCain will be our next President."

I make no claim on prescience. More importantly, and this is an immodest source of pride, I don’t spend great amounts of time thinking about political matters. I read nowhere nearly enough I’m sure, but sufficient to have a sense of where people stand and what they represent. I spend no time at all, if I can help it, watching debates. I’ve heard it all before, if not from the same lips, then from other lips, and I don’t accept that it’s all so subtle that I am depriving myself of opportunities to see either displays of above-average wit or the gaffe that will sink a campaign. Indeed, the debates long since have proven, to me at least, that they are contests of avoiding the brink while appearing to come closest to it. Hence nothing of substance gets said, and I could care less how people come across on television. And I don’t care what the true weight of the factor of other Americans perceptions because of a television appearance (I am forbearing the urge to say "performance"). The United States electorate has had ample opportunity to prove during the 41 years, soon to be 42, that I have been eligible to vote, that they are not particularly intelligent, nor particularly stupid.

Just significant fractions of them go one way or the other.

I was in France when I wrote that off-handed remark, which seemed not only obvious, if spontaneous on my part, but more importantly was a good laugh line on which to exit. Though I didn’t mean it as a joke. Except of the rueful variety. We make little enough of the continued power of rue and ruth (as in ruthless… there is certainly a dearth of ruth among certain groups of individuals in the world) in our emotional lives. I suspect it is because it is, in fact, all too painful to deliberately remain conscious of the political state of the world, and the behavior of what we are told incessantly are the world’s leaders. Some are OK, I suppose, but this is the world we’re talking about. Big enough that, even though we’re hurling through space at a speed of 40,000 miles per hour along some vector, and twirling with an angular velocity of over 1000 miles per hour, we’re completely insensate of the motion. Big enough that we’re not extremely anxious that the planet now finds six billion souls inhabiting its surface. Is this the best we can do?

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