CHOWDER

"...I thought I would try a little experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered the word "cod" with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few moments the savory steam came forth again, but with a different flavor, and in good time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us."
—from chapter 15, "Chowder" of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

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I have come down with a cold. I am managing fine, but I am tired and my body aches. I arrive home to a bowl of New England Fish Chowder Casserole.

"Awesome, chowder!" I exclaim.

"Actually, its a chowder casserole," The Wife corrects.

"Don't break the spell. It's chowder," I imagine I answer, although I don't. I acquiesce and eat.

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Although any "semi-firm white fish" is allowed in the recipe, cod is recommended. The chowder before me is made with fillets of wild caught cod. It sings. It swims well.

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I am reading Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg. I have completed the first two chapters—"Salmon: The Selection of a King" and "Sea Bass: The Holiday Fish Goes to Work." Tonight, I am to begin "Cod: The Return of the Commoner." I sense an omen in my meal.

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Greenberg's book is well-written and he is wrestling with major questions. What are we doing to our oceans? Is it possible to domesticate fish? If so, should we? If we do, have we chosen the best fish to domesticate? Which makes the least environmental impact: overfishing of wild fish or the effect that escaped farmed fish have on the remaining wild fish? How have we already altered wild stocks of fish? Does it matter what type of seafood is on my dinner plate? Is sustainable aquaculture feasible?

He asks and answers these questions while presenting the history of salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna. He explores our relationship to these four fish and what it means for their future.

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On the whole, I am not a fan of seafood. I don't like crab or lobster. I don't like clams or mussels or oysters, although I do like clam chowder, as long as the pieces of clam aren't too big. I will eat shrimp or prawns, although not in large quantities. I prefer darker-fleshed fish, such as salmon. I will eat white fish, although I prefer it deep fried or in fish stick form. I like canned tuna. I have never had sushi, nor can I imagine myself eating sea urchin or squid or sea cucumber or shark. That is all a way of saying that I haven't been overly sensitive to how we treat our oceans because I'm not usually eating what comes from its shallows and depths.

In that sense, Greenberg is opening my eyes to items that have made the headlines of the news here and there, but I may have missed because they didn't impact me. Or, rather, I didn't realize how they impacted me, because I have discovered and realized that they do.

This is partly due to my reading and reflecting upon Moby-Dick: (1) with its critique of the hunger for whale oil and the evils of rampant over-consumption, which I can now translate into other areas of our oceans' water columns and food chains; and (2) in pointing me toward intelligent ocean-related books such as Four Fish.

This is also partly due to the simple style of presentation that Greenberg places before me as a reader. He doesn't beat me over the head. Instead, he conveys his passion and concern for fish populations as someone who loves to fish for sport and loves to eat fish.

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Another chapter of Four Fish awaits me this evening. Another bowl of cod chowder awaits me at lunch tomorrow.

CHRISTMAS CHOWDER

"Clam or Cod?" 
—Mrs. Hussey to Ishmael and Queequeg in chapter 15, "Chowder," of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick

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The Wife made fish chowder "casserole" for Christmas Eve dinner. There was not only chowder but also 21st Amendment Toaster Pastry India-Style Red Ale. Additionally, there was the traditional household reading (whenever we eat chowder) of chapter 15 of Moby-Dick for those gathered.

We laughed with Ishmael and Queequeg as they ate chowder and "ordered" extra bowls when Mrs. Hussey was otherwise occupied. We laughed at the absurdity of a cow wearing fish-head slippers while walking along the beach eating the remains of fish, and therefore, providing salted milk. And we enjoyed our own chowder.

CLAM CHOWDER

Another wintry day meant another hot soup waiting for me after a day at work. This time it was the aforementioned clam chowder. It was one of the best bowls of chowder I've ever had. The clams were plentiful but not overpowering. The potatoes were firm but yielding. The broth was milky and neither too thick nor too thin. The bacon in it made it to die for. And, like The Wife's Guinness Beef Stew, The Wife's Clam Chowder was a great partner for Deschutes Brewery's Red Chair Northwest Pale Ale.

GUINNESS BEEF STEW & ALE

The Wife told me that I would be coming home after driving in the snow and ice to a hot steaming bowl of clam chowder. I thought about that clam chowder all day at work.

When I arrived home, the house smelled of stew. I was confused.

The Wife told me that she knew that I loved stew, so she made a big pot of it for me. She figured I would like it even more than chowder. She was right.

I had two large bowls of Guinness beef stew—Guinness stout broth, beef, carrots, potatoes, green peas—and a pint of Deschutes Red Chair Northwest Pale Ale, my favorite session beer. The bitterness of the beer played nicely with the stew. In fact, the flavors of the stew enhanced the bitterness of the hops, making the ale more leafy and piney than it is otherwise. It was a great start to a wonderful evening in a warm home.

CHOWDER

The Wife's spectacular fish chowder + Jubelale + a rowsing dinnertime table reading of chapter 15, "Chowder," of MOBY-DICK.

Perhaps stretching the "red" a bit, but it's there: in the rim of the bowl and the bacon.

MOBY-DICK 15: CHOWDER

"Clam or Cod?"
—from chapter 15 of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, "Chowder"

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One of my favorite chapters. I love the language. I love the playfulness of the language. I love the playfulness of Ishmael as he orders more bowls of chowder from the kitchen of the Try pots.

"A clam for supper?"

"Oh, sweet friends! hearken to me."

"...a little experiment..."

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This is one of those chapters that does nothing to really further the story, but the story would be much less without it.

CUTTING IN: BEGINNINGS

I have decided to take a year and read Moby-Dick closely and in great detail, to really reflect upon what appears on the page, and to see what intrigues and challenges me. My primary goal is to read it from cover to cover, although I am also going to skip about as I see fit. Some chapters will be read again and again. Some chapters will be engaged by bringing them to life.

I imagine eating clam chowder and relating my experience to that of Ishmael and Queequeg eating their clam and cod chowders at the Try Pots in Chapter 15, "Chowder." I hope to spend some of the season of Christmas at the ocean, much as Ishmael and his shipmates spend their "short, cold Christmas" "broad upon the wintry ocean" in Chapter 22, "Merry Christmas."

I hope to make hardtack at home. I hope to visit the Working Waterfront Maritime Museum in Tacoma. I hope to visit the Karpeles Manuscript Museum (also in Tacoma). I hope to visit a tall ship, and perhaps ride on one. I hope to be able to taste whale blubber.

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My interest in reading Moby-Dick once again was piqued by the Dalkey Archive's Summer 2009/Vol. XXIX issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction. This special fiction issue is dedicated to Herman Melville's ; or The Whale, an extract edition of Moby-Dick. It is nearly 400 pages of text that was left out of the Moby-Dick in Half the Time abridged version. It is weirdly enticing to read every paragraph, word, and punctuation mark left out of Moby-Dick during its abridgment.

This play with the text led me to realize that there are three full versions of Moby-Dick—an American edition, first published in 1851 by Harper & Brothers in New York; a British edition, first published in 1851 by Richard Bentley in London, which differs due to revisions of both Melville and Bentley; and the Northwestern-Newberry scholarly edition, first published in 1988, which "created" a new text by trying to determine what would have been the actual corrections and revisions that Melville himself would have made, but ultimately resulted in a new version of the book formed by using bits and pieces from both the American and British versions.

Needless to say, I now have at least four versions of Moby-Dick floating about the home library.

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The name of this year-long reading project, "Cutting In," comes from the chapter of the same name (Chapter 67). This brief chapter describes the crew of the Pequod cutting in to the carcass of a recently captured whale and dissecting it into its component parts. It seemed an apt metaphor for what I find myself doing to the text as I read and reflect and reread. Therefore, "Cutting In" it is.

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I hope you will embark on this journey with me as I engage this great and sprawling mess of a novel in its various incarnations.

NAPOWRIMO #6

Picture by The Child. "Cheryl Plays the Organ While The Choir Sings."

Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Prompt #6 - Converse with Images

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DIALECTICAL QUEEQUEGS

"Who-e debel you? Speak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!"

Debel you?

Not me.

[1]

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Enter the tents of Mr. Melville’s “Tales of the Exotic: the Polynesian Peepshow”! Experience the tropics! View cannibal man in all of his savage glory! Come so close that you can almost touch his tribal markings, the mysterious and painful-looking tattoos! Watch as he wields various weapons! The spear! The harpoon! The lethal lance! Keep your children near at hand, that they don’t end up the next shrunken head of his ghoulish collection!

[2]

Miguel Covarrubias restores nobility to this heir of the throne, this son of the king, this prince who is divine. There is no Icarian fall here. There is no stooping from his station to serve aboard a Nantucket whaler. There is no selling of one’s birthright for a pot of porridge, a bowl of cod chowder. There is only majesty made manifest. There is disconcerting bravery, masked and regal, yet rightly bestowed by the gods upon this royal man. This is the strutting and befeathered cock. This is the light that emanates from the heavens and her inhabitants. This is the indigenous island native in his natural habitat.

[3]

Here then, is 1935 Heritage Press Editions Typee Queequeg, an embryonic version of the half-man, half-spectre of unearthly complexion and dark purplish, yellow color. This is 1941 lithograph Mexican Street Scene transposed from Mexico to the Marquesas, turned ninety-degrees from profile to full-frontal portraiture, seated to standing, transgendered, clothes and caution now thrown to the non-existent wind (because these scenes are both situated in the breath of the God of Elijah—no earthquake, no fire, only stillness and silence) Queequeg. This is breach of time-and-space, non-linear, semi-non-Melvillean Queequeg. Yet: the spear, the harpoon, the lance! Step right up!

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The images I played with:

[1]

Queequeg from Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Italicized quotes are from Chapter 3, "The Spouter-Inn."

[2]

Young fierce Marquesan warrior from Typee by Herman Melville, as illustrated by Miguel Covarrubias for the 1935 Heritage Press Edition.

[3]

Mexican Street Scene (lithograph, 1941) by Miguel Covarrubias. (I recently viewed this lithograph at University of Puget Sound's Kittredge Gallery.) Also, a reimagined Queequeg, combining elements of all three images, although revisited primarily through image #2.

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I conversed with the images. The images conversed with one another. Covarrubias conversed with Melville's ghost. Queequeg conversed with his alternate selves. The conversations recorded themselves onto the page.

SAMUEL ADAMS OCTOBERFEST

Octoberfest, an Oktoberfest/Märzen by Samuel Adams.

Served on tap in a Samuel Adams Octoberfest dimpled mug.

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I kept hearing good things about this seasonal offering from Samuel Adams, so I decided I would keep my eye open for it. I found it on a lunch outing with The Wife.

The generous dimpled mug arrived with a red-brown beer with two-fingers of ivory head. The nose was of a sweet dark bread. The flavors were primarily caramel and nuts, with a hint of the same sweet dark bread beneath. This is much sweeter than I expected, but the sweetness is just about right.

This is a beer that would easily complement sauerkraut and brats or a burger and fries. I had it with wild salmon and seafood chowder, which worked as well.

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This is a great beer for someone new to the world of craft beer or trying to explore a transition from macrobrews to microbrews. Also, very sessionable.

TWO-FOR-ONE on THE TAPHANDLE

The weekend began with a beer and ended with a beer. It was a good weekend!

Friday night saw me visiting with my friend in Seattle. At his suggestion, we had dinner at McMenamin's Six Arms. I ordered their on tap India Pale Ale, which was a decent representative of IPAs. The aroma and flavor was primarily citrus, with less grapefruit and more lemon than I would have liked. There also seemed to be a hint of plum at the edges. Color was a great gold and the ale had very nice lacing. I had it with McMenamin's bacon cheeseburger and fries. The bacon was overdone, as well as the fries, but all in all a good meal.

Next was the movie Ugetsu on DVD. The movie was brilliant. It is a ghost story that takes place during the sixteenth-century Japanese civil war. Occasionally, I was reminded of some of the absurd, illogical short ghost stories of Uchida Hyakken's Realm of the Dead. Then conversation of various topics: narrative, therapy, suicide, death, child-rearing, loss, art, James Hillman, mythology, cats, friendship, photography, religion, India.

Sunday brought the celebration of the fortieth wedding anniversary of the parental units. The brother, the sister-in-law, the sister, the wife, and I took the mother and the father to Anthony's Homeport in Bremerton. I ordered Scuttlebutt Porter on tap. The flavor was of chocolate with a biscuity base. Ephemeral wisp of cinnamon and/or nutmeg. The color was of a vaguely translucent dark brown with a thick light brown head. Good lacing. I had one with my entree of Alaskan silver salmon in a red pepper sauce, potatoes, and butternut squash, as well as with Anthony's signature clam chowder. I had another after dinner, accompanied by Bailey's Irish Cream Chocolate Mousse. A great ale with a great meal.