Curtis Mayfield

Whitefish salad time

My wife Leslie is quite the shopper, she finds the great stuff and deals all the time. 

She was at a local market last week and found two packages of smoked whitefish at giveaway prices.

Hot damn! $3.99. She stole it!

It was on a closeout sale endcap. I wish she had bought all seven packages. Wonder if any are left?

Whitefish is a delicious and traditional fare for our ashkenazim tribe.  It has always been a pricey treat!

It just so happens that the Lake Superior whitefish coregonus clupeaformis, not to be confused with the quite lesser Lake America whitefish, was very similar to the prized whitefish that could be found in the cold freshwater lakes of our ancestral homelands of Poland and the Ukraine. 

It became a major part of the Jewish American tradition, especially around special holidays like Yom Kippur.

The fish is found in deep icy waters, usually at a depth of 200' or more.

"The humble, silvery-brown fish has quietly sustained people in the Great Lakes for thousands of years — and continues to. Early Native Americans would make a powder of smoked Great Lakes Whitefish for use in stew, soups, and fish pies; they would also mix the powder with fresh blueberries. The Ojibwe word for Great Lakes whitefish is Atikamig."

Early explorers were introduced to the whitefish and lauded it as a great food source. Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac wrote, circa 1695: “Moreover, better fish can not be eaten, and they are bathed and nourished in the purest water, the clearest and the most pellucid you could see anywhere. That is the most delicate fish of the lakes.” (quote from The Indians of the Western Great Lakes 1615-1760 by Vernon Kinietz, University of Michigan Press, 1940).

The fish is brined and smoked until it gets a golden color. It is usually then made into a yummy salad. 

In New York you find it at places like my favorite Barney Greengrass, the Sturgeon King and Russ and Daughters. In Los Angeles I have found the best whitefish at Nate and Al's delicatessen.

I love the stuff and rarely find it around here. My friend Scott tells me that Acme smokes their fish in Canarsie. I read somewhere that most whitefish, sable and chub is still smoked in New York. Thank you, Brooklyn.

I decided to make a salad today.

There are various recipes, some use horseradish. I went pretty basic, followed Acme's own recipe, which calls for a hint of dijon mustard.

Mine is now chilling in the fridge for an hour at which time it will go on a sesame bagel from Albertsons, which are actually pretty good. Maybe a slice of tomato.

Here is my recipe:

7 oz. Acme Whitefish - Be cautious to remove all the tiny pin bones when breaking it apart with your fingers. Go over it a second time to make sure. They can ruin a great knosh.

Whisk up a 1/3 cup mayo
2 tablespoons sour cream
hint of dijon mustard
1 minced celery stalk
1/2 teaspoon fresh dill, chopped
juice from half a lemon
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest

The recipe called for white pepper, couldn't find ours, used black instead. Called for fresh parsley, I shook in a dash of dried. It is already salty, do not add salt! Give it a good mix with a fork, cover it with saran and let it chill for an hour.

Will let you know how it turns out!

Verdict? Yes! And note the underlying cream cheese layer which I forgot to mention...

Hop Joint

I love Mississippi John Hurt. 

I think he was as good an acoustic delta blues player as anybody. He played so sweetly and lyrically. 

I never got to see him live unfortunately but have listened to a lot of his work. 

I did get to see Elizabeth Cotton, Lightning Hopkins and Fred McDowell as well as well as a lot of other luminaries so I consider myself very fortunate. 

He may have been the best.

Hurt was the son of slaves and had an interesting bio.

I once asked Jorma why he emulated Rev. Gary Davis rather than Hurt and he said that he thought that Davis was more multi dimensional.

And on one level at least I think he was. 

Not musically but topically. 

Hurt wrote a lot about heaven and Jesus and not so much about the other stuff and some times you can only take so much bible banging. 

Life has its ups and downs.

When I heard this song the other day I took notice. Hurt writing about a hop joint, looking for his stray woman. 

 Cool.

Knee Job

 

The doctor was quite frank. "For many people joint replacement is a close call. Yours is not a close call. You have no space between your patella and tibia. Your patella has scalloped into the lower portion."

I had a major knee injury in 1979 which caused major tears to meniscus, anterior cruciate and medial collateral. Was in a cast for six months. Had an arthroscope a couple years later to clean things up. 

The upshot is that I have been bone on bone for over four decades and the arthritis is starting to make things unbearable. I have had a terrible limp for the last three months, can't continue like this. Might have been triggered by chemo, I think the neuropathy in my right foot has.

He gave me a cortisone shot and a handout on recovery instructions.

So I am trying to schedule a surgery for early December. It is a three month recuperation and so will probably wipe out two important shows in late February unless I am a miracle healer. I do cycle through things pretty quickly but the doctor says I can screw around with this rehab or risk serious future problems.

I foresee all kinds of problems, not the least of which is the fact that I live in a two story home and am not sure how I will swing three months out of commission and a dwindling bank account. And I start back on chemo Tuesday.

Will figure it out.

I do the rock

 

I am not sure when we actually met the late Tim Curry but it was a long time ago. Leslie says the Rose Bowl but I think it was maybe in Burbank. One of our early shows.

All I remember is that Leslie and he had an impromptu duet from Rocky Horror his solo album that cracked everybody up, including Tim.

Later we would see him in Santa Fe from time to time.

Super nice guy, great actor.

Will be missed in our house, even more than Dolly Parton.

Iggy

Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters

One of the toughest things to do for me when I am on the road is finding suitable parking to load in and out of shows, especially in more urban areas. It can be a serious pain.

In places like Santa Fe, I am forced to park my large van blocks away up at the Bishop's Lodge parking lot, which requires a very long walk down a hill on my very bad knee.

Many times I have to park near the courthouse or Post Office and I have received tickets before when I was not able to leave my booth and feed the meter.

I was fumbling for change last month to do just that when a man in a gray Sprinter asked me if I knew about the Park Mobile App?

He said it would be the answer to all my parking problems. I quickly went to the appstore and downloaded it.

He was right.

Park Mobile quickly zoomed in on my meter, it has every meter in the entire nation in its database I think. I paid for what I thought I would need and entered the show to do business.

It gives you a running countdown on time and I extended from my booth, a quick Applepay double tap.

I'm definitely a luddite but this app is worth its weight in gold. Has already helped me immensely. And you end up with a handy readout of parking expenditures for your taxes later.

I wish that I had known about this app ages ago.

Dolly Parton

Two left feet

So I get a text from Wagman today, something is wrong, only getting a ten day old cached copy of your blast. 

Settle down Steve, everything is okay, the reason you are seeing that is that I actually have not written for ten days. 

Truth be told, I have been extremely busy. 

Sorry.

Actually I haven't taken a day off in about three months,  

So let's look at the wayback machine. 

I stopped chemo in early July, knowing I would not be able to function in Santa Barbara, Albuquerque and Santa Fe if I was still throwing up every day in the trashcan.

Shows went well, I end up getting home last Wednesday afternoon but get a call Thursday, the client I flew to Jackson Hole in the Lear Jet with has sold her lodge and needs an emergency content inventory appraisal.

Like right now.

I have to drive up to her digs in Los Angeles, spend two days forensic accounting and then an additional five days preparing a report, which shipped out Sunday. Painstaking work but financially rewarding. Stayed in Joseph and Linda's beautiful Casita for a night. She made a lovely chilean sea bass. 

Unbelievable flurry, would have crushed a lesser man. 

But now I am home, totally whipped.

Leslie said that we had visitors over the weekend while I was gone. A raccoon stopped by one night with two cubs. Next night she came back to our upper porch with five of them, she said they were awfully cute although our cats didn't necessarily think so.

Sunday was Leslie's birthday and she wanted to go out to soak in the hot springs. We booked a new place for us, the Onsen, a Japanese spa. 112° out there, should be lovely. 

We leave Sunday afternoon and as we are getting on the 15 north I hear a thump, which is followed by four beeps from my dashboard and then a tire light signal.

We drove to the Sinclair Gas in Temecula and I put money in the air machine before realizing that it had no tire fitting at the end, someone had cut it off. 

Tire is dead flat at this point but we nursed it to another gas station.

I filled the right front tire and rolled the car back slowly as Leslie inspected it. 

Lo and behold, there was a rock stuck in the tire, sort of like it had melted in. 

We could hear the air whooshing around it.

Have never seen anything like it but it has been really hot here.

We managed to find an open tire store on a Sunday afternoon, the Firestone on Margarita and Steven replaced our old tire, which could not be fixed. 

We drove the next hour and a half to our destination, only to find the Onsen was shut tighter than a drum.

Leslie yelled and another guest, a sort of beaten up looking roadie for a death metal band, let us in. 

Said the customer service there was lousy. 

Had to keep the door shut because homeless people kept trying to sneak in. 

Was glad at that point that I had my concealed carry. 

DHS has always been a bit dicey.

We spent a half hour calling the manager and she finally called us back. 

Gave us a key to a room with no air conditioner remote. 

Leslie complained and we got a new room but the a.c. had not been turned on and the room was well over a hundred degrees. Nothing like a hot room in the desert.

Rooms and grounds were honestly quite nice but the service was atrocious.

Manager sort of apologized and said that she had a problem getting decent help out there.

We finally got the a.c. unit turned on but it did not cool down until four in the morning. 

I jumped in the pool, which helped a little bit and we finally ate birthday dinner in our warm bed. 

I got up early the next day and saw that there were foreclosure papers newly taped to the pool gate.

Place was lovely really, someone put a lot of money into it but obviously poorly managed or maybe somebody was just having a really bad day. Will never return, to be certain.

We left fairly early the next day, stopped by and saw Kaplan, bought a beautiful monumental Rookwood vase painted by the early artist Matt Daily that he had found the day before in Indio..

We then went to the Belgian restaurant Leslie likes in Ranch Mirage, Si Bon. 

I had lobster crepes, hers were duck confit in a Mexican truffle sauce. 

I thought it was delicious, Leslie's mushrooms were a bit sweet, hopefully we can give them another try.

We then continued home up the mountain, now safely back with our two cats Nico and Tiger.

I was back at it today, buying paintings and selling paintings. 

It has been a whirlwind of late. 

Got my teeth cleaned today by my dentist herself. 

You want a great dentist in Fallbrook, try Robin Mells. 

I paid a guy for some scrap gold and sent a painting to the Postal Annex for shipping tomorrow.

This afternoon I had a meeting with a cancer resource center in Temecula. 

I want to volunteer to talk to new cancer patients about my forty one year experience dealing with the disease. 

Told them that I would be happy to man a phone. Will see what, if anything, comes of it.

I don't know if you have seen me walking lately but I have had a serious limp for three months and it ain't pretty. I had a meniscus, anterior cruciate and medial collateral tear in 1979 and I have been bone on bone ever since. And now the arthritis has taken over. Probably need a new knee but going to see if I can get an x-ray and shot at Scripps Green on Friday to keep me going.

My last three chemo infusions start September 2. Wish me luck. I am still not unpacked from New Mexico and at this rate it might be October before my house and shop is in order. Can't work when I feel terrible, especially in the extreme heat.

See the shot at the very top? Put my shoes on in the van and something didn't feel right. Remember Eugene Levy in Best in Show with his two left feet? That was me. Helps to put them on the right foot, or in this case the left one. What a shmegegg.

Moby Grape

A band who should have been much more appreciated, harmonies that matched or exceeded Byrds, Beach Boys, CSN, three great guitar players, one of the first and best acid country rock bands but sadly mostly unnoticed...

New Mexico 2026

'twas a long trek, about two weeks in duration. Starting to blur a bit so excuse the abbreviated run down. Bit tired and used up.

It was a great two weeks, profits far exceeding my earlier pessimistic expectations. Always expect disaster and then be pleasantly surprised...

So last you heard I had narrowly averted said disaster, finding myself in Winslow with no money, credit cards or identification and not a prayer of getting home.

Found the wallet finally and was on the road again.

Thank you Bill.

But losing things turned out to be a continual theme the whole trip. 

Lost my phone once and it turned out it was in my hand. That was a trip.

Lost a rare weaving, caused a real kerfuffle. Losing it, man. Of course I found everything eventually.

Set up was non eventful. I had a lot of merch, used up about every inch of space. I have the whole setup thing pretty down by now after thirty five years practicing.

Thought I had 16' more of wall, they say they told me, I sure don't remember if they did. 

I rented a quarter of my booth out to my friend Steve. 

It worked but let's just say we have a different type of situational awareness, I could probably have used the room in the final analysis. 

We definitely had a different type of aesthetic but viva le differencé.

His clothes rack did bring more young people and gay men shoppers into the booth.

Didn't help me much but he made some sales. 

Found a really good Vietnamese place, Viet Pho, which was good because the place I liked on Louisiana closed down.

Had a great meal with Mark B. at a nice joint downtown, Antiquity.

 Great branzino.

J.F.

Saw some cool faces. The guy next to me is Stan, owns a guitar shop, friend of John Feldman.

Sold some paintings, sold steady, had a real good show.

Finished up the show, found out I didn't have a hotel for the night and extended.

Next day went up to Santa Fe and saw my buddy Ron, bought some pots and hung out.

He and his wife Lisa and I went to Paloma for dinner and had a nice talk.

Went to Tad and Sandra's Tuesday morning and had brunch with a bunch of smart folk. 

Wednesday I set up for what is thought of as the better show.

I brought some very high powered art and sold a high dollar painting right off the bat.

Was good because allowed me to coast a bit but business actually stayed steady the next three days.

Was a good week for food, new chef at Santa Cafe, amazing lamb dinner. Phenomenal hamachi crudo with melon balls appetizer. Elk carpaccio. Lobster rolls.

Best I have had in years there. I like Santa Cafe because not only is the food consistently delicious, I am claustrophobic and like to eat outside.

Next night was another great meal at Geronimo. 

I had the elk, which was good but I think the previous night's food was a smidge better. 

Did have two great bottles of Caymus.

People were great at the show, always see old friends there. Lots of no shows this year, not sure why. 

I met a tibetan man, told him I had been through initiation ceremonies with Kalu fifty years ago and gave him my tibetan name and secret handshake.

He said my third eye opened up then and there. Could have been, I was looking in the other direction.

I bought some great things, hung out a lot with Barry at our normal breakfast haunts.

I liked his hat, make america gracious again...

The best part of the show for me was when Emily, the late Chris's daughter, came up and hugged me and we shared a tear over her mother's passing. My memorial blogpost evidently really touched her. I also got a brother and sister who normally don't speak to share a picture and laugh together.

The important shit.

I bought a collection of wonderful baskets Monday morning, my friend Rick gave me a good lead.

Drove to Flagstaff, which had been hit by a flash flood.

The next day I headed home in the monsoon rain. Took the 66, all the way to Kingman.

At exactly 8:05 the song 8:05 by Moby Grape started streaming on the radio.

I looked up at the heavens and laughing said, "You've got a hell of a sense of humor. What happens at 8:06?"

 Back home now, all good.