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United States, North Carolina, Carrboro, English, Paul, Male, 56-60, All Music, All Food.

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Sunday, March 13, 2005

Something Is Missing   I bought the multiple Grammiated Ray Charles CD, Genius Love Company, this week. I didn’t listen until Liz came over today and as his familiar voice wafted through the room in accompaniment to my dicing and chopping, something seemed wrong. A tune or two more, same thing, then I suddenly blurted out, “He knew he was dying.”   Brother Ray always had a twinge of the melancholy in his voice and that is what made him great, but this wasn’t that. Melancholy has a bit of fight in it, but this entire CD reeked of resignation.   “He sounds old,” Liz replied. I disagreed. No, not just old, playing out the string, maybe a last chance to record with some old friends, but his soul had already left us.   It disturbed me enough that I put on some of my Ray Charles favorites. Just Between Us, with a Gladys Knight duet, “I Wish I’d Never Loved You At All.” God, what a thing to say to a person. Even the coldest hearted lover wishing you dead would hear those words – and both Ray and Gladys take it to the event horizon where time slows and every note becomes an eternity. Not all pain, some humor too, Brother Ray exchanging sly double entendres with Lou Rawls on the classic Barker/Lee/Jones “Save The Bones For Henry Jones (‘cause Henry Don’t Eat No Meat),” for example. There’s a Milt Jackson vibes solo to kick that vegan meal right into 5-star Michelin territory.   A couple more CDs, My World and Would You Believe. These later CDs did not sell very well but the total soul of Ray Charles is in every demiquaver. Not a single cut would be recognized by the androids who screamed out for him to sing “America” or “Georgia,” but the intensity was there. Ray could be the ultimate stage nigger. He usually complied with audience wishes despite the “other side” projected in the movie. He’d give an “Aw, shucks” grin and get that shit out the way for the people who paid for him to be their jukebox, but he always found his way back to the music he loved at the moment.   Genius Loves Company is a bad CD. I wish he'd never made it at all. If you enjoyed seeing Hubert Humphrey appearing bubbly before the Senate when cancer had emaciated him to 98 pounds you might enjoy it, but it will break your heart if you loved Brother Ray. Sure, it won a kajillion Grammies, lifetime achievements, hall of fame, granite block in the courthouse, hearty laurels, blah-blah-blah, but it is not really Ray Charles. It is the ghost of a man who made this CD for reasons only he could understand and his sense of perfection had to tell him it was substandard. That’s not necessarily bad, maybe he did it to say goodbye to us, his fans. I’m here for you now, but I’m going away, movin' on, suitcases already packed, standin’ here wonderin’  will a matchbox hold my clothes. Hello Sam, hello Otis, hello Marvin. Bye, y’all.     11:33:28 PM    comment []

Here is the soup and attendant mess.   10:38:43 PM    comment []

The peppers and onion are sautéed in the bacon fat. Before they go into the black beans (which have been through a hot soak and 2 ½ hours of cooking by this time). A bit of cumin, coriander, oregano, and chopped garlic are stilled im. Oh, and the kicker - a pinch of cloves.     10:36:35 PM    comment []

Here’s the mise en place for the black bean soup sidekick for the Cubano. Red pepper, green pepper, jalapeno (the recipe called for “½ jalapeno” but there ain’t no such thing in this house, especially since the recipe also called for 8 cloves of garlic that showed up too late for the snapshot), and onion. The lime juice is added near the end of cooking. The sour cream, bacon, and chopped cilantro (also not pictured) are garnishes. The butter, a close friend of the garlic, snuck into the picture and wasn’t used in this recipe.   10:31:40 PM    comment []

Cubano with tostones.   This sandwich is the whole reason for last week’s pork roast. I dress the buns with a mixture of cheap mustard, mayonnaise, and horseradish. Then there’s a layer of Swiss cheese that acts like glue when ithe sandwich gets heated up in the panini grill. A slice of kosher dill caps off the ham and pork. The tostones are unripe plantain, sliced and soaked in water with garlic and salt for an hour. Then, like French fries, they undergo a two step deep fry. You squish them between the frying cycles. The taste is somewhere between a banana and a squash.     10:16:44 PM    comment []

Why would anyone make a grape bag? For the "complicated" and "lengthy" sourdough starter detailed in Cooks' Illustrated. The natural yeast from the grape skin supposedly increases the odds of getting a starter that's truly sour over the method of capturing whatever yeasts are floating around your place. We'll see. I'm using bottled water to make sure it's sterile.   1:14:40 PM    comment []

You might wonder why I took a picture of grapes sitting on cheese cloth. Well, it looks nice. I can almost see the Madonna in there. Wonder if there will be unwanted pilgrimages to my place?   1:08:58 PM    comment []