I recently went into the Patagonia store in NYC to return a sweater and a pair of pants. I’ve bought their clothes for years. I still wear things from Patagonia that are more than 15 years old. My Patagonia luggage has gone all over the world with me and it still looks brand new. So when my year-old sweater and pants pretty much fell apart at the seams, I took decided to take Patagonia up on its warranty. My old gear was all made in the USA, except for one sweater that was made in Italy. The two items I returned were made in China. I mentioned this to the very helpful sales clerk at the store and he confirmed my suspicions. “The quality just isn’t the same”, he said. I got the feeling that he was as much an enthusiast as an employee. A lot of people I know have an unusually strong feeling about Patagonia. Maybe it’s because their clothes kept me alive when I used to spend a lot of time in the mountains at sub-zero temperatures. When a company makes clothes that sturdy, you start to rely on them, to trust in them. I have a Patagonia fleece jacket. I can’t ever remember being cold in it, no matter what the weather. Like a pocket knife or a good watch, I expect that jacket will last for decades. It’s about ten years old now and it still looks pretty good.

The sales clerk told me that the company can’t find manufacturers here in the states for technical clothing. Patagonia isn’t alone. On a recent trip to REI, I found absolutely nothing in the men’s department that was made in this country.

So where are the people who made my old fleece jacket? Have they left the workforce over the last ten years? Have they found better jobs? Did they move to China to find work? I’d actually like to know the answer to this question. The people who made that jacket possessed great skill. They worked with quality materials and probably took pride in their work. Do factories sit empty somewhere, or have they found a new purpose making something else?

Consider the high-end companies that have moved their manufacturing processes to China over the last several years: Patagonia, Arc’teryx, North Face, Marmot, Outdoor Research, Sierra Designs. These companies have not dramatically dropped their prices. Their products are pretty expensive. Do American companies really lack the ability to compete? Have all those garment workers taken jobs as investment bankers, mortgage brokers and Google programmers?

This transfer of information is non-invasive and seems mundane, even comforting as it builds into a familiar patter of talk, even if it’s not always much more than pleasantries.

Then comes the day when you walk into the local drugstore to buy hand lotion and it’s the character from your soccer team working the register.  WELL HELLO NON SEQUITUR.  It’s as though your life was following that comfortable pattern and suddenly the conversation seems to veer unexpectedly.

“Pass the ball over here!” is followed by,

“Would you like to purchase one of our oreo cookie sandwich specials along with that?”

Now that sacrosanct pathways have been jerked together and forced into uncomfortable proximity though there arises new information.  It’s not every day that you are able to shake off informality and turn it into more formal situations.  It’s not every day that you’re able to change relationship dynamics.  One day you might get that chance though, and it’ll be interesting. You could even blog about it.

Most of you probably don’t know that the main ingredient in a fish fry is a fish. I mean you know it on an intellectual level, but how many of you have started with a whole cod and turned it into a fish fry? Anyway, we’re members of Cape Ann Fresh Catch, which is a community supported fishery. The basic idea is that consumers (of fish) pay a group of fishermen up front for the season, then the fishermen deliver fish every week to the members. Knowing that their catch is already sold, they don’t have to chase high market value fish that may be in dangerous waters or overfished. They can fish in a safe and sustainable manner and have a more consistent livelihood. For the members, it means knowing where dinner came from and supporting a local industry that faces tough competition. Go ask at your local supermarket where the fish comes from. You’d be surprised.

This is week two of the program and again we have a big, delicious looking cod. I have honed my Japanese Deba knife to an edge so sharp it could finish a New York Times Saturday crossword puzzle all by itself. I am ready to filet.

Our cod is cold and slimy. Like a dead fish. Expertly, with swift and accurate strokes I slice two filets off the sides. It only takes about 20 minutes. Long enough for the Cruise Director to become infatuated with the idea of eating the eyes and for her to start googling (googley eyes?) recipes for cod eyes.

While I am flouring the fish and sprinkling it with salt and pepper, the Editor at Large is mixing a Bisquick batter and deep frying sweet potatoes in our 1920s Wagner Chicken Fryer. I quickly whip up a cold pasta salad with fresh scallions, Vidalia onion and spinach, then batter the fish and toss it in boiling oil.

The end result tasted, well, just like fish fry. I think we did pretty well. It was flaky and light, not overly greasy. We all ate our fill, the Cruise Director ate the fried eyes after making a smily face on her plate using fish eyes and potato parts, and there was still fish left over when we were done. Next time I’ll remember to buy some beer.

Cornish hens also fake their international cred. They originated in Connecticut, not Cornwall. I guess ‘connecticutish hens’ didn’t fit on the label. This must be why cornish hens taste so delicious prepared with hominy. Truly native foods falsely labelled as foreigners must suit each other well.

I cut up some yellow onion into dice-sized chunks, mixed them into the hominy, added a bit of pureed hot pepper in a tomoto base, just enough for flavor. Stuffed this into two cornish hens then basted them with a puree of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce mixed with olive oil. Yeah, I used the canned stuff.

I fired up the grill, blasted the little birds at about 450 degrees then turned down the burners, reapplying the basting  a couple of times until they were cooked and delicious. I mixed the leftover stuffing with a combination of wild rice and short-grain brown rice and served the birds sliced in half over rice.

Frank Pepe’s pizza in Connecticut has generated a lot of hype around its traditional, coal-fired pizzas. A much better example of this style is Patsy’s on 74th St. in Manhattan. This is wonderful pizza and probably quite authentic, but it is a different style than modern, good NY pizza. During my years in California, separated by 3000 miles of deserts, mountains and mid-western Republicans from a desirable slice of pizza, I began experimenting with ways of duplicating the experience at home. I begin with two premises: that there are many styles of pizza that are good and that, lacking professional ovens and mixers, I will not be able to duplicate exactly anything that I find in a commercial pizzeria. My homemade pizza is pretty good. People like it. I’ll share with you the basic recipe. At it’s best, it’s closer to the coal fired style.

So there’s really no recipe… I have a mental block that keeps me from measuring anything in the kitchen. But I start with some flour. A bunch of it, in a bowl. maybe it’s all white, unbleached, organic King Arthur brand flour, maybe it’s about half semolina. It depends on whether I can find semolina anywhere. Whatever you do, don’t use up all the flour in the house. Not yet.  Throw in a spoonful of salt. What size spoon? I dunno. A big spoonful will make it taste saltier than a small spoonful. Use a little more than you think you should. A splash of olive oil.

Half fill a pint glass with room-temperature water. Stir in about half a packet of yeast. Maybe more, maybe less. Depends how much flour you started with. You can add a little honey to the water. Stir it up well before you pour it into the flour.

Mix the dough with a wooden spoon, adding flour if it gets soupy, water if it stays powdery. When it starts to look like pizza dough, knead it with your well-floured hands, folding it over as you knead. Form it into a ball, coat it with oil, and cover the bowl with a damp cotton washcloth. Let it sit for a few hours. Then punch it. Boom. If you made it right, it should deflate when you hit it. fold it and knead it a couple more times, then start to shape it into a disc.

At this point you may have the urge to spin it in the air and toss it hand to hand. This is fine. Just don’t act on the urge and everything will be ok. Flatten the thing out. Get a rolling pin if you need to. Empty beer bottles work too. Do not use full ones. Make sure to dust the counter with plenty of flour. The dough shouldn’t stick to anything. Make it even and as thin as possible. It should be a little elastic. Make it a little large and it will shrink to size. You can use a pizza pan or stone or a cast iron pan or cookie sheet. Make the pie on the counter, then move it to a peel or to the cooking surface before topping it.

Sauce is a whole other topic, for another time. Go, make pizzas, be happy.

Said by castirony, our prolific test kitchen supervisor, while sipping a glass of wine in the BiB living room. Yes, yes it is. Do you leave it there for everyone to see, and come to their own conclusions? Do you sweep it away to keep things orderly? Or do you exercise it’s destiny and strike?

This area seems to have the potential of that individual match quite frequently. There seems to be lots of things afoot in the North Shore, that just aren’t put in the spotlight. In Beverly alone, Cabot Street seems to be experiencing a bit of a growth and beautification spurt, several local businesses are expanding to 2nd locations, and the local political scene is heating up.

But what to do about all of that? Do you strike up conversation with local shop owners and residents about what Beverly could be like with a little citywide effort? Do we read news tidbits and say ‘oh, that’s nice’, but not look farther? Or do you attend local meetings, find out more about what is and isn’t going on, and if it’s something you feel strongly about, act on it?

I’d really love to see the Cabot Street Downtown area flourish. No more sad temporary vinyl signage, but instead businesses who put on an attractive and inviting storefront, events that actually attract both residents and neighboring towns to come here, a more than 50% utilized recycling program, and on, and on. But I’m just one lone resident, in a house with a few others who share my sentiments. What do you do, dear reader, to make the towns you frequent a better place?

An unstruck match is provocative, but it’s only achieved a mere portion of it’s potential.

~Editor At Large

The starting point for Chocolate Fondue is pure cacao. I don’t like to use sweetened chocolate because I’d rather have more control over what I add to sweeten it. I picked up a block of 100% from Colombia sold under the brand name Luker. It was in the international foods aisle. As a backup, I grabbed a couple of bars of Ghirardelli. That worked out well. The Luker smelled wonderful, but had a real bitter edge. Ghirardelli’s 100% is very smooth for unsweetened chocolate. I like an edge, but not too much, and I don’t want to have to add extra sugar to cover it.

I started with an improvised double boiler – one saucepan floating in another, the bigger one partially full of water. I started heating up some evaporated milk in the smaller pan and broke the chocolate into pieces, letting it melt into the milk.

It’s all about improvisation. The mix got thick, and I was out of milk. Editor-At-Large scored some light cream at the corner store, and that smoothed out the sauce perfectly. I managed not to overheat it and I was able to finish it without adding an emulsifier. A raw egg would’ve been my backup plan.

I heated up the water in my fondue pot, made a clean transfer of the chocolate, lit up the Sterno, and let other people figure out what stuff to cut up for dipping. Not my problem. I’ll handle chocolate and fire, let others handle fruit and poundcake.

If I’d had a better handle on my guests particular tastes and tolerances, I would have added some powdered chili pepper to the mix, and possibly some turkish coffee. Maybe next time.

This is a town you can go out in. It’s a town in which you can have a night on the town. There are beaches, there are ice cream and hot dog stands. Where are all the people, well-dressed in their summer suits, twirling parasols over their shoulders as they take in the sea air and participate in the life of a small city’s downtown?

Tonight, Cabot Street yielded the above mentioned espresso as well as a rich and flavorful guacamole at Cielito Lindo (and a tasty pitcher of margaritas as well). I often forget about Cielito Lindo, but it’s really pretty good. When I asked for hot sauce, the waiter brought a small dish of apparently home-made habenero sauce that packed a meaningful punch. No pandering to the local tastes, just real-deal hot mexican sauce. I enjoyed it. We made it to the theater on time to hear some of the live piano music before the previews started.

We four bloggers hope to be your new fingers on the pulse of what is going on in the area. Everything from people watching, foodie outings, shindigs, and general thought provoking local info. Being the varied group that we are (let’s see…we have a Texan, a Local, a Mainer, and a New Yorker), I’m sure all of that and more will be covered.

I’ll be your intrepid Editor At Large, running amuck through the local topics of the day/week/hour as I see fit to publish. There will be some inevitable ranting and raving, but mostly I hope to leave you with questions to ponder and pursue.

If you’ve gotten this far, good for you. *gives a virtual cookie* But oh, there’s more! We’ll be taunting you with posts from our;

• Test Kitchen Supervisor (food & drinks)
• Help Desk (people watching & supposition)
• and roving Cruise Director (things to do & things done)

Please be patient while we tidy up the place and work out the kinks in our big bad virtual world, I think your North Shore experience might be the better off for it.

~ Editor At Large

Many fine things start quietly in the dark of night. There are four of us sharing a house in Beverly, Massachusetts. None of us are natives of this place but, for differing reasons, we’ve ended up living here. I’ll leave the others to tell their own stories; I landed here by chance. After a year of traveling, moving from place to place and mostly living in borrowed houses or with friends, I settled, for a few months, into a housesitting arrangement in a lovely beachside home with vast windows onto Beverly Harbor. Chance led me to a job opportunity. I met a lovely girl. I decided to stay.