I want the shoes!
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Did anyone here have the great good fortune to see Warren Zevon perform? I didn’t, but always thought he was vastly underrated as an artist. I knew only about 6 facts about him until I read a great article about 10 minutes ago, in The Guardian. Sadly, we’ll never get the chance now, but his music lives on for further exploration, and the research will continue. Why oh why didn’t I subscribe to Rolling Stone Magazine, while I had the chance? Maybe I’ll start collecting the old copies. They’ll take up far less room than the real estate required for cookbooks.
BTW, (to get back to the near past and present) think his Lawyers, Guns, and Money song would have been great in either Breaking Bad, or Ozark. Maybe Better Call Saul??
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Jeez, patchouli… every time I smell it I get rushes & flashbacks to the methamphetamine days. My #1 crank dealer wore it.
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Very interesting @JoeBabbitt! I can only say that, logically, it only makes sense. After all, anyone who ever saw Reefer Madness knows that marijuana is merely a stepping stone or gateway drug to the harder stuff. So, for patchouli oil to carry over to a newer drug craze is quite reasonable! Funny thing is, I don’t recall the aroma in the mid- late 70’s or the entire 80’s - hmmm:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
But, I was quite busy then, perhaps the wide open spaces in Alaska or the desert air of Nevada, diluted the powerful patchouli aroma.
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After he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, Warren Zevon appeared on the David Letterman Show. Letterman asked Zevon if there was anything he understood now, facing his own mortality, that he didn’t before. Zevon replied, “Just how much you’re supposed to enjoy every sandwich .” That phrase has become somewhat a mantra for us - enjoy every sandwich.
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You know, so funny you bring that up, as I just read that quote attributed to him today. I was researching how he got mesothelioma, since I know it’s linked to asbestos exposure. Really didn’t know much about him during his life, just some of his quirky hits. Want to delve a little deeper into his music now. Do remember reading an article about his terminal Dx in People magazine. Newly clean, he told his Doc he didn’t want narcotic pain meds, due to addiction risk. Doc gently explained it didn’t really matter, since his prognosis was so grim. I read that he refused treatment, worked on his final album, did indeed go on a drug and alcohol binge, but lived longer than was expected. Long enough for the release of his album, and to welcome a grandchild or two. Before his time, I think, under appreciated, by all accounts a difficult man, and bit of a train wreck at times, but deeply loved by friends and family. At least his musical genius lives on.
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Lobster picnics on the rocks. Lobsters cooked in an old galvanized garbage pail (now considered bad practice…? But I’m still alive😋)
No plates no tools, rocks were plates and tools. 
Always with the ubiquitous Coca Cola (couldn’t gag one down now)…
And of course s’mores after.
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But, ah! It was so much better out of the green bottle!
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My perspective on nostalgia may be different.
My paternal grandmother was a truly horrible cook. She would make the Chef Boyardee pizza-in-a-box taste like ketchup on cardboard. I swear she put the box in. Her oven was in the basement next to the furnace.
My mother was better but still mediocre. She tried, and there were a few bright spots, but it just wasn’t anything to get excited out. The key was to sit down on time when my Dad walked in the door and when he stood up for his night job we were done. I have a small handful of dishes I make based, quite loosely, on what my Mom made but there really is little resemblance. Mostly conceptual.
My great aunt Elizabeth had family Thanksgiving and Easter. Her cook/housekeeper Mina made wonderful food. I didn’t learn much from her but she taught me that food could be better than what I was used to.
For me nostalgia includes watching Julia Child and Martin Yan and Jeff Smith on public television. As many of those show back up on TV and YouTube I feel waves of nostalgia. Watching a show of Julia Child I remember the first time around that I tried and made and learned from brings huge waves of nostalgia.
I remember working 32 hours straight through to get a project out on time and coming home to throw a couple of hot dogs into a pot (I like 'em boiled) and waking up to screeching smoke alarms and charcoal in the bottom of the dry pot. I still have that pot and you can still see the outlines of the disaster. Nostalgia.
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From literally 5 minutes ago. Lee must have read your mind!
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No doubt he did, and I also have precognition! Plugged into the universe in a weird way, due to living so close to Portlandia, and still loving the scent of patchouli! 
Thanks so much, thoroughly enjoyed watching, and listening. Glad so many others recognize Warren’s genius. What a lovely tribute he was paid. A travesty he’s not in the R&R Hall of Fame. Let’s hope that changes. Fear I’ll be going down the rabbit hole, I’ve got so much to learn about the songwriters and artists I admire. I’ll be looking up W Zevon’s last interview with Letterman, for sure. Thanks again @bbqboy.
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A sweet memory to share, this time only going back to the early 2000’s for once. Kid #2 had a bestie, all through middle and high schools. They went to different universities & the bestie has moved on to San Diego, but they’re still close friends. Anyway, bestie loved my coconut cream pie so much, I started to make her one for every birthday, around this time in June. No longer possible, of course. Today I got a text from the kid, saying Natalie had reached out to ask her for my recipe, which I of course provided. Earlier, I had expressed I was sad I couldn’t make her one anymore. Anyway, kind of warmed the cockles of my heart they’re still friends, and the pie will live on…
Many more food memorit’s nostalgia to share, but for later.
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My bestie’s mom made the best whoopie pies. I keep hinting, but to no avail . . . no pies in the mail, no recipes in the inbox 
Maybe I was the Eddie Haskell to Wally and Beaver?
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What a nice testament to how food and kindness stay with us throughout life!
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So sorry the hints never worked @gaffk! I hear Whoopie pies are quite the thing in your part of the country! I’m not sure I’ve ever had one!
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Thanks, @poptart, I too think food and aromas of it resonate, and bring us close to memories of people, related or not, with whom we’ve shared - no matter the time in our lives. Birthday cake story coming up soon.
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I lost all in my (only) divorce so no pix of the good old days, but what I do remember is that no matter how hectic life was during the week we always had Sunday dinner. This tradition spanned my whole life till my mother finally got too old to pull it off by herself . Probably 80 or so.
We carried on for a while til real life intervened.
Usually a roast or chicken in some incarnation, occasionally pork chops.
Never fish. We only had fish when some family member caught a stringer full.
Always a starch and vegetable.
And of course. -always dessert 
I wish life was that simple now.
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OK, this is from a Chowhound post I wrote back in 2012, in a thread about earliest food memories:
Earliest would probably be a bowl of cold canned string beans with mayo. Not exactly haute cuisine. Next, I think, were “shtickels” at a local deli (sort of a beef Slim Jim thing), and Hydrox cookies – can’t replicate that one.
Since my mom was a great baker, but a not-so-great cook, some of my fondest early food memories are of baked goods that I helped make – in particular, thumbprint cookies, with that great baked-nut smell* and taste. I was entrusted to chop the nuts (in a wooden bowl, with one of those lethal-looking steel choppers), and to then ball up the dough, dip into beaten egg and then into the nuts, and sometimes also do the all-important thumb-press. Back to Mom for jam application and baking.
For holidays, we used to make something my parents called hazen-blossoms – this was a family project. Mom rolled out pastry dough paper-thin and cut it into diamonds with a slit in the middle (using one of those zigzag pastry wheels, which at the time was made of hand-carved wood). I pulled the ends through the slit to make sort of a bowtie, which was a delicate process due to the extreme thinness of the dough. There was a certain amount of pressure in this, as the dough-rolling was pretty labor-intensive, and Mom didn’t appreciate it when I would occasionally rip the dough when making the knots.
Dad handled the deep-frying, in a deep cast iron frying pan, and I would then arrange them on a serving plate, sifting powdered sugar over each layer. I’m not sure where my older brother was in all of this, as he was a bit of a klutz in the kitchen. I know he ate his share. All this started well before I turned six. Later on I graduated to cutting the dough as well, but never the rolling (although I tried – Mom made it look so easy!).
Much later, when I suggested making these things “like when we were young”, I recall a meaningful glance between my parents, before Dad said “sure, but now you get to do the deep-frying”. I quickly learned what a miserable (and dangerous!) chore that was, and it was the last time for making those.
- I think some of our earliest memories are tied to smell. The department-store bulk candy counters – what a wonderland for a small child. These were signalled by a certain indescribable, but specific, mixed-candy smell, before I even saw that island of glassed-in compartments with its scoops, scales, and little white bags. Another very early memory for me is being in downtown Oakland with my mom (I couldn’t have been older than 3 or 4), when she pulled out a tin of strong-smelling and intensely-flavored ammonium-chloride licorice candies. I rediscovered these at German delis as an adult, and now know them as salmiak pastillen. Hmm, diamond shapes again.
Not food-related, but downtown Oakland at that time (mid/late-fifties) was a very busy place with lots of noise and traffic, sidewalks filled with businessmen rushing about in gray suits and hats, and women wearing hats, gloves, and perfume. The Key System tracks were being torn out on Adeline St. in South Berkeley, and houses were being moved or demolished for the future BART. Things became much quieter over the following years and decades, both in downtown Oakland, and on Adeline St.
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A few more throwback mainstays getting increasingly harder to find these days on “fancy” menus (as an indication of food fashions), let alone on today’s post-lockdown takeout lists that we’ve hungered to consult to promote local trade:
Soupe a l’oignon
Green Goddess (has to have anchovies) on iceberg-based salad bowl [“exotic” = romaine]
Salmon Coulibiac
Chicken Kiev
Beef Wellington
and now departing from wrapped/crusted protein, but staying with protein:
Lobster Cantonese (pork+egg enriched fermented black bean/garlic sauce)
ending with personal weakness for
Boston Cream Pie
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Good ones @BoneAppetite! Also Chicken Cordon Bleu, and the formerly ubiquitous Chef Salad with 1000 Island Dressing. I hear you on the Boston Cream Pie! So many more too. In my little town and nearest city, it’s getting increasingly harder to find any kind of Chinese food. To me, very sad. Oh, there’s Panda Express, which to me is like Food Court Chinese, except for a couple good dishes. Still, a place I don’t frequent, hardly ever.
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