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Winter’s chokehold on March (and April) will finally loosen this weekend (don’t plant yet!). Unsurprisingly, I failed to find Spring in upstate New York or Canada last month. In my wool socks, I went looking for other things; solitude, focus, inspiration. I found one of them in the strangest place. After two days of soundless contemplation in my borrowed woodland cottage … I scared up my first song in four years. It came to me while staring into the refrigerator.

Today’s 2-Minute Tale
These days, I miss butter more than people. It’s been 94 days since I’ve had butter (or chocolate, cheese, olive oil, alcohol … almost everything that lights up the neocortex when food is pleasure, not need). That kind of denial will do things to a person, like make you reevaluate if humans are superior to a solid emulsion of fat globules, air, and water. I’m of a mind that’s all humans are anyway.

Meals and music to be made, I’m always churning, but with no time and too many distractions. I tucked into my upstate hideaway, armed with a full cooler and empty notebooks. My mind oven was definitely preheated to save me time later, but my artistic chicken was not yet defrosted. The real chicken was, though. Mix equal parts miso paste, soy sauce, and maple syrup.

God, I love food. I am devoted follower of food. I've worshipped a single peanut butter cup for hours. I've inhaled a large McDonald’s French fry, my salty psalm for a bad day. I’ve partaken in small plates of every offering from one New Orleans restaurant. The tongues of taco street food, the against-all-odds inland all-you-can-eat sushi, the bliss in a boiled hot dog – all the profane and the profound – all revelatory. I’m a fair cook at best, but my appreciation is devout. 

I got home just in time to host Passover. Appropriately, one of the only foods I'd be able to eat was the “bread of affliction,” just without the butter that makes it enjoyable. Again, appropriate. 

Even with food processors available, some little traditional voice inside compels me to make the charoset (the apples, walnuts, cinnamon, and wine representing the mortar used in building Egyptian temples) in a wooden bowl, rocking the curved blade back and forth exactly as I did when it was my childhood chore. I set the table for 12 people, and came up short on one thing.

I texted my mother, asking if she had any more of the traditional silver coasters we always used to neatly hold the droplets of wine spilled to represent the 10 plagues. She couldn’t find any. We tried to figure out what they were even called to order them.

Huh. Turns out they're vintage disposable aluminum ashtrays.

We always assumed they were some special “Jewy” thing because of the star. We're as dense as Bubbie's matzo balls. 

Which Bubbie? Nope … we'll never tell.

                                                      * * *

I deserve some kind of prize for going about life in this hellscape timeline without so much as a half-sip of beer or a Hershey kiss. Gallbladder surgery is now only two weeks away, and I’ll be gigging all the way there … (and one week later, I hope). The bottle of wine I was tipped in January waits with a note: For when this is all over. Months later, that hits different … and I wonder what “all over” I’ll be drinking to after all.

Staring into the limited fridge and then out the window into a seemingly limitless forest, one thought followed the other:

I won’t make it a week on what’s in the fridge.

If it ended now, it’s so beautiful here; It could’ve been worse.

And there it was, on a silver platter; the average Joe is more terrified 
to burn their PTO than powerful men are to set the world on fire.

**Special thanks to Matt Nakoa, who let me steal his house for weeks 
while he was off writing a musical. This song was written on 
his lefty guitar, left in the living room (which is why the 
cutaway up top looks a little odd!). Matt can play it the “right” way 
when we share a show at Godfrey Daniels next month.
It's a hodge-podge video/audio take, but my guess is it'll satisfy.**

 PS: Want to share this meal? Copy/paste/share the “view in browser” link at 
the top right of this email. Send the whole entry, not just the hidden video.

MEANWHILE …

IT'S ALL IN THE CALENDAR.
 

Write me. Add me to your mailing list. Eat a cheeseburger for me.
 

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