Week 25 - Andrew - Barbecue

Monday

Ok. People coming over on Sunday. I’m going to make ribs. I have people over, this is going to be great. So I’ll get the ribs, and simmer them for two hours, take them out when the meat is tender - brush them with sauce and stick them on the grill. That’s how I half heard they make it in Chicago. Let me Google it quickly to check temperatures and cooking times.

Tuesday

Yesterday’s Googling threw up some interesting ideas. If i simmer the ribs, all i’m really doing is making stock, and taking the flavour out of the meat. I should be cooking them low and slow. Slow-roasting in the oven. Simmering the ribs is for chumps and cheap Chicago restaurants. That’s a shame, I thought that restaurant was quite good - really enjoyed those ribs. Anyway, the slow roasting is the best bet. I’ll just grab some barbecue sauce from the shops. I wonder if there are any recommendations online.

Wednesday

You guys - do you know about barbecue sauce? There are a lot of barbecue sauces. Did you know there are very different types of barbecue? The most popular types are Memphis, Kansas City and South Carolina. One is dry, one is sugary and one is vinegary. Which type is Chef BBQ sauce? That’s all they had in Tesco? Which is the right one to have? Vinegary? That doesn’t sound nice! Let me quickly check the internet to see what will work best.

Thursday

OK. Only amateurs use store bought barbecue sauce. The bbq forum i was reading last night went into some detail on this subject. I need to get some liquid smoke on the way home from work. I’m not sure i’ve ever seen that. Also - molasses. What is a molass? do they come in a bag? I’ll see if I can pick them up online

Friday

WHAT WAS I THINKING? Liquid Smoke? Also slow roasting? Am I trying to punish my guests for coming over? Amazingribs.org (it’s a non-profit) steered me right. Thankfully, I can fix this easily. I just need a smoker. I can smoke some chillis today, and then start smoking the ribs at 2am on Sunday morning. I’ll have a look online to see if there is anything else.

Saturday

I have not slept in 36 hours. I have ordered a smoker from Amazon. I paid extra for 24 hour delivery. Homebase do not have mesquite. Smoking with any other type of wood is a waste of good pork. That’s what the forums have told me. I also can’t find fresh chipotle chilli peppers. I have to brine my ribs. Do you know what brining is? I do. It’s keeping it in a bag of salt water. for hours. Which is different from my original plan by virtue of temperature. Once I brine it, I have to rub spices into it! THAT’S A THING! I’m going to quickly make sure I have the spice rub. Jesus. That’s twelve hours brining, an hour to trim & do the rub,  then six hours cooking, then an hours resting. Am I in the future?

Sunday

Fuck it. Burgers. I'll see if there's a good recipe online.

Week 25 - Laura - Barbecue

I know barbecuing is a slow process, but the time it takes to cook the food at Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Texas is nothing compared to the wait for it.

Austinites seem to be cool with (barbe)queuing for what I’ve been told is the best eatery of its kind in Texas, America or perhaps even the world. For five days I watched the line for the restaurant that opens from 11am until 2pm form from about 7.30am. Legendary it might be, but despite it having a reputation for the best brisket in the city, I just couldn’t make myself join that queue.

Franklin Barbecue is on East 11th Street in Austin, a seven minute walk from where I stayed on San Bernard Street.

Or a 15 minute round trip, with one minute in the middle spent marvelling at the hardliners happy to set up camp - even on workdays -  in the hope of being one of the lucky ones who actually get to eat, albeit a few hours down the line.

A two minute walk away we found Hillside Farmacy.

I was immediately drawn to its seating options, in that it had some available. Its decor (with some lovely original pharmacy cabinets - a nod to its past days as a neighbourhood pharmacy) was great. It had a variety of delicious mixed drinks, served in on trend jam jars, and a happy hour that lasted for two hours every day. It had what I like to think of as a Goldilocks menu - with neither too much nor too little on it, it was just right. Open from 9am until 10pm on some days, and 11pm on others, everything from breakfast to a late, lazy dinner was an option, and we ate there maybe three times during our five day stay in Austin.

I’m a big fan of restaurants. Once the food is good I’m happy with everything from a cheap Chinese to a Michelin star menu. The pleasant surroundings, the great food I’ve had nothing to do with preparing, the fact that the delicious food is brought to me after no more effort on my part than choosing it from the menu...what’s not to love?

Queuing for it, that’s what. Eating out for me is a treat. Queuing, on the other hand, is not. I queued for my school lunch. I’ve given up queuing to buy tickets. Lots of diners these days seem to be happy to accept, even embrace, queuing as part of the restaurant experience.

I might be missing out on some great food, but bringing a deck chair and snacks just to make it to the restaurant door? I'd sooner buy a smoker and give brisket a go myself.

Week 24 - Andy - Trains

Age 4: In one of my earliest memories, i am terrified of the noise from the diesel engines in Heuston Station.

Age 6: Santa brings me a clockwork Thomas the tank engine. The tracks are difficult to put together. When fully built, the track is an oval. This takes me forever to build, and the fun of running Thomas in an endless oval is limited.

Age 7: We move to Paris. I spend a summer carrying my brother’s buggy up and down the stairs of the Metro. I am expert at navigating the metro map. The smell of the metro in summer will stay with me for my life. Other children will associate the smell of the seaside, or of baking with their childhood. I will carry the smell of diesel, stale air and urine. The memories will be no less loving and pleasant.

Age 8: For Christmas, I receive an electric train set. This has junctions, and a road crossing. The barriers of the road crossing raise and lower automatically as the train passes. The train comes with a cargo load reflecting France’s active heavy manufacturing sector. There are no trains of this scale in Ireland.

Age 10: We have moved back to Ireland. There are no stations near us. The electric train set is broken.

Age 12: I am going to secondary school. I take the train from the recently opened Castleknock station to Connolly station in the morning. There is a sweetshop beside the ticket office. An 8 square bar of Dairy milk is 35p. I am a fat adult. I believe it is linked to the number of 35ps I was able to gather at this age.

Age 15: A friend and I take the Dart to the other side of the city. We are going out with two best friends. We travel to Dun Laoghaire, and watch Romeo and Juliet in one of their parents basements. I smoke John Player Blue cigarettes, and so do they.

Age 16: I am in a folk group. We take the train to Cork the day of the Omagh Bombings. We are travelling to a church-organised music camp. We are rowdy, and are sneaking warm cans of Budweiser. My friend is playing the Wolfe Tones, loud. A man tells us to shut up. We haven’t heard about the bombings, and we’re taken aback by his tone. We tell him to fuck off.

Age 18: I take the train to DCU on the first day of college. I spend the journey picking the CD I want to have in my Discman  in case someone asks. I settle on ‘Grace’ by Jeff Buckley. No one asks. It’s still a solid selection.

Age 20: At Clontarf Road dart station, I strike up a conversation with a colleague from my tech support job. We become very close friends, and remain so to this day. I cannot remember any of what we talked about that day, although I remember we waited there longer than it would have taken to walk to town.

Age 22: I am commuting daily by train to the centre of town, where I am doing a masters in DIT. It’s Christmas, and I have bought an iPod. I am financially independent, thanks to a stock grant. I am enjoying my masters. This is my first taste of adulthood.

Age 23: I travel around the world with friends. We spend 6 days on a train, travelling from Moscow to Beijing. Laura describes this in more detail. I have seen a lot of birch trees, and drank a lot of cheap vodka.

Age 24: I take a Dart to a recruitment event in Ballsbridge. This is for a large international management consultancy. On the train, I take out my tongue piercing. I will never replace it. I put it in my suit jacket pocket. This feels like crossing a threshold.

Age 28: My office is next to the train station. I drive to the train station. I walk less than 100 steps in a day. I get into my car at the end of the day, and spend five minutes visualising myself step-by-step leaving work. I am fat and unhappy.

Age 30: I am on the Caltrain, from Palo Alto to San Francisco. I am alone, and lost in the world. I hate the job that has brought me here, and I cannot go back. I will go back, and eventually my role will change.

Age 31: My wife lives three and a half minutes walk from Tooting Broadway tube station. When I stay with her, I leave her shared house at 7:50. I generally get a seat, and read my book, or stare at posters for Musicals we won’t go to.

Age 32: It takes me 15 minutes by train to get into town. Every morning, I walk across the Samuel Beckett bridge. The sun shines on the water, and reflects the start of each day. One morning, I have to write a Thing a Week about ‘something that annoys you’. I cannot think of anything.

Week 24 - Laura - Trains

If there’s one piece of advice I would've appreciated on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 27, 2005, it would have been this: ‘Just buy the Stolichnaya’.

If I could have had a second piece, maybe it could have been the gentle reminder: ‘Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.’ Or, perchance my vodka-addled brain wasn't up to figuring out how to apply that statement to my life for the next few days: ‘Drink the Stolichnaya slowly, and over time’.

If the advice Gods were on a roll, or had a three-for-the-price-of-two deal going, ‘Faraway hills are greener’ would have completed the line-up nicely. Or, translated to fit the occasion: ‘That carton of interesting-looking juice probably won’t be the best option on closer inspection. Just get orange juice.’.

The advice Gods weren't on duty that afternoon though.

Nope, it was just me, stocking up in a Moscow back-street equivalent of an off-licence for a four night journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Irkutsk.

My eventual purchases were: bags of Lay’s crisps in a variety of flavours, a couple of large cartons of the aforementioned interesting-looking juice and vodka that cost about 50c less than Stolichnaya in a bottle that looked not unlike Tesco’s own brand version.

The crisps were a solid buy.

The Trans-Siberian was one of the more exotic parts of the itinerary during my year of bumbling around the world. It’s also one of the more exotic places I've ever vomited.

We set off from Moscow on the evening of Tuesday, September 27, 2005, and arrived in Irkutsk at about 9.30am the following Saturday morning.

The in-between bit went a little like this:

Tuesday evening: Find assigned train cabin. Choose one of top two bunks in assigned cabin. (Who’s ever to know how sturdy bunk-beds are? Better to squash than be squashed if it comes to it.) Change into pyjamas (and remain in them until Irkutsk). Meet the pravodnitsa - a woman something akin to my boarding school matron or house person, who basically minds you while you’re on the train but who is also a little bit scary. Find out where you can access hot water on board. (In boarding school this was also very important. Mostly for cooking noodles late at night. Did I have noodles on the train? I don’t think so. Nonetheless, sourcing hot water was paramount as I remember.) Spend some time watching Russia fly by the train window. Have a drink with my three travel buddies to welcome ourselves on board the renowned Trans-Siberian. Have a drink with our cabin neighbours - Erik and Viggo from Sweden and Luuk and Lars from Holland* - to welcome them on board the renowned Trans-Siberian. Find out Viggo enjoys dressing up as a Smurf in his spare time. Each to his own. Have another drink. Indulge Erik by playing ‘Love Bomb’ so he can tell my travel buddy he fancies her, without saying so out straight. Have another drink. Listen while Luuk and Lars explain that they are actually pirates. Fair enough. Have another drink. Get told off for talking too loudly by the pravodnitsa. Have another drink. Say goodnight to Erik, Viggo, Luuk and Lars after the pravodnitsa insists on them going to their own cabin. Have another drink. Get told to go to sleep by the pravodnitsa. Doze off. Dream the train floor is actually made of slats, which rotate on hinges if needed to allow access to the train tracks below. Use this very useful feature to vomit onto train tracks, thanks to cheap vodka and weird juice mixer overload**. Wake up immediately. Notice that, contrary to expectations, the floor is in fact securely in place, and now has a puddle of vomit on it. Further notice that travel buddy sleeping on lower bunk has been hit by some, eh, friendly fire. Notice third travel buddy has managed to vomit exactly the capacity of his ceramic travel mug. Strip bed, using unaffected part of sheets to ineffectively mop up vomit puddle. Desperately try to find somewhere to clean/stash vomit-y sheets, without attracting the attention of pravodnitsa. Give up, put vomit-y sheets in corner at end of bed. Go to sleep.

Wednesday: Swear off vodka. Apologise to bunkmake. Brush teeth. Enjoy baby wipe shower. Watch Russia rush by out the window. Eat crisps. Nap. Get off train at stop in the middle of nowhere to stretch legs and buy bread rolls (for crisp sandwiches) from babushka. Play ‘Love Bomb’ again. Sleep.

Thursday: Same as Wednesday.

Friday: Same as Thursday.

Saturday: Change out of pyjamas. Arrive in Irkutsk at 9.30am local time, 4.30am Moscow time. Feel no surprise at having lost five hours of my life. Travel to Listvyanka, on the edge of Lake Baikal. Check into new, stationary, digs. Go to local pub for drink. Choose not to drink vodka. Or tropical juice.

*names have been changed to protect identities

** Ok, the juice probably had nothing to do with it.

Week 23 - Andy - Tea for two

Four years ago, almost to the day, I started my new job. I wore new shoes, a nice shirt, and my good jumper. I was hired as a manager, with nine direct reports. Caffeinated and ready, I strode across the marble floors, and through the gleaming offices. I was a member of the knowledge economy – an up and comer. Ireland's young and educated workforce. A leader at the very cutting edge of business and marketing.

Three years and nine months ago, I made endless pairs of cups of tea, steeling myself for the next hellish one-to-one meeting. Every morning, in the shower, I wrote the number of days until I could convincingly leave in the mist on the door. I girded myself to come in at each turn. I made a cup of tea before each meeting, holding onto the thin paper cup to feel the heat of the water.

Two years and six months ago, I sat in a taxi from one part of California to another. The journey took an hour and fifteen minutes. During this journey, I was absolutely confident that I would be fired within two weeks. I was unable to do this job. Daily, I went into work, and alternated between anger and heavy, tired sadness. My team were disenfranchised, and I dreaded talking to them. Next to me, a cheerful and relaxed German sipped coffee and did his own non-managerial job confidently and well.

Two years and one month ago, I sat in a pub in a foreign city with my boss, and we talked about what could change. I told him I wanted to be a cheerful and relaxed and German. He understood – I'll be forever grateful for this. Shortly afterwards, I took a holiday, and came back to a different role. I stopped managing my team, and joined them. Within three months, I was taking meetings in a foreign city, deliriously happy, and drunk on cheap wine.

One year ago exactly, I spent a month in California, learning a set of skills that are unique in my role. This year, I have found what it is like to enjoy my job. I work directly with people I admire, and I hope that sitting next to me, someone wants to be a cheerful and relaxed Irishman.

Week 23 - Laura - tea for two

If I see another bourbon cream I'm going to throw it at someone. Probably Myrtle. Not until I’ve dunked it in my milky, tepid tea though. There’ll be more mess that way.

It’s exactly 3.30pm, and, right on cue, here’s Myrtle, singing as she clip-clops down the hall of Mount Pleasant Home for the Elderly with our tea and biscuits. “Just tea for two, and two for tea, just me for you and you for me,” she’s warbling, tunelessly.

Myrtle is my designated do-gooder. That’s not her official title, of course. She volunteers with the local group of Friends of the Elderly. Last month they started coming in here for afternoon tea. “It’ll be nice to have a bit of company,” Lena, the nurse-in-charge said. For them, maybe. For us, or certainly for me, it’s about as enjoyable as the chiropody appointments we have arranged on our behalf every month.

Like Gay Byrne used to say, there’s one for everyone in the audience. In this case that means there’s one whole do-gooder for everyone here who’s up to having tea in the afternoon. I’m almost envious of the ones who can’t make it out of their rooms any more to be honest. I've been driven to praying for a bout of dysentery these past few days; it’d certainly make for a pleasant change.

Honest to God, if I’d known I was going to end my days in Mount Pleasant Home for the Elderly - an antonym if I ever heard one - I would've lived a lot faster and, if luck had it, died a lot younger.

‘Your home from home,’ it’s called in the brochures. The poor folk who work in marketing must come from some really woeful homes if that’s true. Mount Pleasant? I can think of at least half a dozen more suitable names for this kip. Mount Boring maybe. Mount Give Up on Life Here. Mount Counting the Days Until Death. Mount Give Me Strength (Because You’ll Need It). Mount You Don’t Have to Get Dressed If You Don’t Feel Up to It - Just Wear Your Smelly Dressing Gown and Slippers. Even just Mount Unpleasant, if only to keep the cost of changing the signs on the front gate and door down.

I used to like a bit of afternoon tea in the past. Mostly just to balance out the usual debauchery that was my life then though. If they let us get up to a bit of divilment in here and upped their tea game to a few eclairs and fancy sandwiches I’d probably still like it. But God, this daily ordeal with Myrtle...give me strength.

I can tell you already what we’ll talk about. Why is it younger people presume older people’s interests stretch as far as who’s dead and not much more? I’ll get the rundown on the latest obituaries. That’ll be followed by a little silence, to give Myrtle a chance to rustle up a list of other riveting conversation topics, before we press on to talk about the youth of today, how the evenings are really closing in and what the local Tidy Towns/Neighbourhood Watch/Parents Against Crime group are up to now.

“Elenora, my dear, how are you?” Myrtle asks now, echoing tens of others just like her as they begin their bland interrogation of their assigned oldies.

“Fine, thanks Myrtle,” I reply, giving in once more and playing along with this charade of being friends.

Let’s get this over with for another day. You never know, I might be so lucky as to die in my sleep tonight.

Week 22 - Laura - perfection

A piece to follow this one and this one.

“Perfection (5, 8, 6),” the clue we’d found in Noni’s precious sewing kit in the top drawer of the antique desk she kept her sewing machine on said.

I had to admit, I was a bit flummoxed. As long as I’d known her, Noni had championed imperfection and had made a dedicated effort to avoid perfection in everything she did. I remember her laughingly telling me that often that required almost no effort at all on her part. She used to defend any particularly shoddy results hilariously. Even though she wasn't sure she even believed in God, when a project turned out exceptionally badly she’d say God was the only one who created perfect things and that as a mark of respect humans shouldn't try to do the same. “Nobody argues with God,” she used to giggle. Other times she’d loosely paraphrase Aristotle, saying whatever she’d created had "attained its purpose" and was therefore perfect even though it didn't look it.

“I think I might know,” a strangely nervous-sounding Gina said quietly from the corner of the room. No longer brash, Noni’s sister seemed a little lost in a world of long-buried memories.

“Go on,” I encouraged. “I'm stumped, so any suggestions are welcome.”

“When we were girls, we both learned the basics of cooking and baking from our own mother,” Gina began, still looking off into the middle distance, like she was trying to focus on something just out of reach. “Noni was brilliant with the savoury recipes. She used to make the best quiche. And the brown bread she used to make to go with it, oh, it was bread the rest of us could only dream of making.

“I took more to the sweet stuff,” she continued. “You probably could have guessed that from looking at my figure though. I think I went up about two dress sizes once I discovered my love for baking, and I've kept them and added a few more since.

“Anyway, from when Noni was about 13 and I was about 11, we had this tradition. Any time there was a birthday in the house, Noni would make a special quiche for tea and I would make a Victoria sponge birthday cake for after. I can still hear her. ‘Gina, your Victoria sponge is perfection itself,’ she used to always say.

“I can’t believe I even remembered that,” Gina said, coming out of her world of memories somewhat. “It’s been so long since I even thought of when we were young, and I haven’t made a Victoria sponge or any other kind of cake in years.”

“'Gina’s Victoria Sponge' fits,” Birdie said, “and I’d bet my bingo book on you being right.”

“Just tell me if it’s a waste of time, but I’d like to try my hand at making a sponge right now,” Gina said, looking around the group for approval. “It really doesn't take long, and if you like I could tell you what Noni was like growing up while I'm doing it.”

“More Noni stories and cake besides,” Faye cackled. “I think the way forward is clear.”