The wife’s family collects other people’s traditions. They’re not German, but they hide a pickle ornament in their Christmas tree and make the kids look for it on Christmas morning. And they’re not Danish, but they always make ebelskivers for breakfast on the morning after Christmas. The wife has carried on these adopted traditions, but we’re pretty flexible about when we make the ebelskivers. Anytime between Christmas and New Years works for us.
As I’ve mentioned before, my family makes gifts for one another each Christmas. This year, I decided to make book safes for the guys.
I wasn’t planning to make meatloaf, much less blog about it, but the wife forced my hand when I caught her putting ketchup on the shepherd’s pie I made over the weekend. Since that’s a sacrilege in my book, I decided to make her a real meatloaf that she could defile however she pleased. Ironically, the meatloaf I made was so delicious that she raved about the taste and balked at the notion of masking the flavor with a sugary condiment.
We had dinner with friends earlier this week and the hostess made shepherd’s pie. I haven’t eaten it in years and was reminded how much I enjoyed it. Since it’s a faux pas to go back for a third helping, I decided to just make my own version of the dish over the weekend.
As I’ve mentioned before, two cats got grandfathered into my marriage. I’m actually allergic to them. Crew is eleven years old and Jasmine is seven. In all of the years they’ve been alive, they’ve never killed anything (*). Crew is too fat and lazy and Jasmine is a little slow, if you know what I mean. One time, when we lived in DC, Crew brought a dying bird into our apartment. But I’m pretty sure it had West Nile Virus and had already fallen from the sky. Imagine our surprise when on a Saturday afternoon in the Spring of 2010, as the wife and I were casually watching a movie in the den, Jasmine walked in with something in her mouth.
It’s been sixteen years since Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3 was released. Although several near-anthologies of Dylan’s work have been released in Great Britain and the US over that time (both in stereo and original mono), we all know that Dylan is always willing to wrap the same offering in a new package and charge willing fans whatever he wants for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if a fourth installment in the Greatest Hits series was released whenever Dylan takes a well-deserved break from his never-ending world tour.
Bob Dylan is known for spreading compilations over two CDs even though the music would fit on one. That’s so the consumer will perceive more value and justify the high cost. Knowing that, I would offer seventeen songs across two CDs with additional bonus tracks of older material to entice fans to buy early/online. I think this track list would make a good “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits 4″ album covering the material he’s released since 1994.
After our hefty investment in Christmas supplies last year, the wife and I decided to get a real tree again this year.
One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs is the original recording of Born In Time, an outtake from the vaunted Oh Mercy sessions. As Wikipedia notes:
Two more outtakes, “Born In Time” and “God Knows”, were set aside and later re-written and re-recorded for Dylan’s next album, Under the Red Sky. Versions of both songs from the Oh Mercy sessions were also included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs. “The Oh Mercy outtake of ‘Born In Time’ was one of those Dylan performances that so surrendered itself to the moment that to decry the lyrical slips would be to mock sincerity itself,” wrote an enamored Heylin.
The stripped-down bootleg of Born In Time is a classic. Though the audio quality is pretty poor, the depth of emotion in Dylan’s voice soars above the scratches and hisses on the tape. The later version of the song that appeared on Under The Red Sky was a soulless iteration. It’s almost comical in comparison. Dylan tried to rectify his error by releasing an earlier recording of the song on Tell Tale Signs: the Bootleg Series Vol. 8. It came pretty close to capturing the passion of the original, but it’s just not the same. Because there are several versions of the song floating around, including Eric Clapton’s decent cover, it can be hard to track down a proper set of lyrics for the original recording. The words differ from the lyrics on Bob Dylan’s official website, so I thought I’d post them here for posterity.
In my old age, I’ve become a huge fan of vinegar. I don’t know how it happened, but I love anything with that unique sour taste. As a result, I’ve grown to really like the vinegar-based barbecue sauces that are so prevalent in the Carolinas.
I’ve been experimenting with ribs for the past few months. I’ve been trying to recreate the ribs they serve at Charlie Vergos’ Rendezvous in Memphis, and I think I’ve pretty much nailed it.
