9 minute read
Beer
BEER
By Bert Mattson
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Socially distant dabbling
Aristotle said man is by nature a social animal. For perspective, consider the creativity social drinkers show in their commitment. Years back, a trend surfaced in our neighborhood in various guises, one being the Booze Fairy. The gist was that a gift basket arrived anonymously at your doorstep, and you were obliged to pay it forward. The specifics are hazy, except for a polite turnaround time.
Aristotle goes on to opine about “unsocial” people in a way that could be construed as unflattering. It’s possible that besides being “beneath our notice,” these sorts are busy marveling at the playful ways extroverts amuse themselves. At any rate, I enjoyed how Booze Fairying prompted participants to acquire old-timey manners of awareness of friends’ and neighbors’ preferences in drink. Further, it encouraged these ambushers to know their audience and practice stoop security. Contrary to first impressions, it wasn’t completely frivolous — point extroverts.
Still, I had a false idea of the depth of social drinkers’ creativity until the advent of COVID-19. Happy hour has little attraction for me. That’s probably evidence that I’m one of Aristotle’s invisible duds. I certainly didn’t miss happy hour during quarantine. I did, however, sit in awe of the small talkster invention of Quarantini Time — videoconference software as happy hour life support. It struck me as, alternately, a sort of boozy “Brady Bunch” montage, tipsy “Muppet Show” outro, or, at its most masterful, how I imagined “Hollywood Squares” at commercial break. Occasionally, an unwitting cameo — making a sandwich or something in frame over my wife’s
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shoulder — would earn me video jibes or catcalls. Aristotle had no idea.
In the digital shade, I reconsidered the bottle share — a sort of friendship scale beer fest.
In my thoughts, these trends converged and contrasted with the increasing (socially distant) use of online ordering to secure lockdown re-supply. The third party services that in some cities allow for ordering a meal and liquor drop in concert, seem to lag in our region (with the exception of loosened rules regarding restaurant off-sale). Further, Minnesota law does not allow shipping of beer from outside her borders. Limiting shipping to within borders, combined with the high cost of shipping, renders monthly beer clubs a somewhat unattractive option. Shipping may be palatable if a big box in another city stocks something appealing yet locally unavailable. Third-party delivery services do exist, but building a basket is awkward and, as with restaurants, stores are better served by using their delivery service, if that is offered.
As I explored the potential for getting a beer gift basket delivered in another city by Haskell’s, for a $20 surcharge for anything under $100, it occurred to me that Rush Smokes & Liquor allows customers to build a six-pack, also sells select stogies, and delivers to one’s door for a paltry five bucks.
The simplest pairing approach is to match beer darkness to that of the cigar wrap. October, maduro, and porter: Booze Fairies behold.
Bert Mattson is a chef and writer based in St. Paul. He is the manager of the iconic Mickey’s Diner. bertsbackburner.com
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COUNTRY MINUTES
By Nicole Helget
The Dogs of Oshawa Township Part 9
The grass is too green for September and the mosquitoes too numerous. The rain keeps coming too hard. The humidity hangs on too long. Like a lot of things this year, the weather just seems off.
We’re amateur mushroom hunters. It’s been a great year for fungus. I can spend hours out in the woods with my eyes scanning the ground, downed trees, and high-up branches for oysters, elm caps, chicken of the woods and hen of the woods. I keep trying to train the dogs to sniff them out for me, but so far, no luck. Pony and Polar Bear seem bent on digging up mole tunnels and raccoon scat.
We discovered chanterelle and lobster mushrooms for the first time in our mushroom hunting history in the area. Maybe they’ve always been there, but I thought the discovery was strange. They were so orange bright and abundant, that I spied them out the car window as my husband was driving.
“Pull over!” I said. Before he put the car in park, I was unlocked from my seat belt and out the door. First, I smelled the air. If you really try, you can smell mushrooms. Then, I crouched over and admired the forest floor. My lungs filled and my heartbeat in my fingertips. Chanterelles, these flower-shape beauties, were everywhere underfoot. As we picked our favorites (it’s good practice to harvest with restraint and reservation; take only half of what you see), I said, “This is so weird. They don’t grow here.”
The lobster we discovered about another five minutes into a walk. “No way. No way!” He pointed to it. I knelt down and admired its weird little curls, its density, and especially its rust color. The lobster is a very, very distinctive mushroom. My husband kept his eyes to the ground and discovered one after another, mushrooms of varied stems, gills, caps, and colors.
Mushroom hunting is like treasure hunting. Every fungus is a specimen to be admired and studied and researched and photographed and shared all over social media. The best fun is learning which ones are edible and which ones can give you stomachache. You can pinch off the stems, take the caps, place them gill or pore side down on white or black paper and wait. The cap will drop its spores into a distinctive pattern and color, enough evidence to hazard a reliable guess as to what it is with the help of a good guide book.
The afternoon is still one of my favorite memories of summer, even though the insects soon homed in on us and chased us back to the safety of the car. “God,” I said. “They’re awful.” I shook my hair out, which loosened a few of the buzzers. I clapped my hands and smashed one. “Relentless.”
My dogs love when the d r a g o n f l i e s c o m e . T h e dragonflies show up after the waves of gnats and mosquitoes and feast on them. Around this house, when we are feeling under attack by gnats or mosquitoes, the kids will say, “Where are the dragonflies?!?” That’s because I used to teach them that nature balances itself out. I used to teach them there was a relationship between cause and effect, food source and predator. So, the dragonflies would save us from suffering bites. Usually, the dragonflies hang on until the food source dries up. They’re still here, and Pony and Polar Bear find it very fun to chase them down into the ravine. Dragonflies seem to have a sense of humor. As in, they’ll flit close to the nuzzles of my dogs and then flight off in hilarity.
Pony darted off into the ravine after a dragonfly. When she returned, small burs covered her fur. Thick. Green. Tiny. Hundreds of them.
I let her into the kitchen. “Jesus, Pony,” I said. I began the assessment. These burs weren’t like ordinary cockleburs, big, identifiable star shaped seeds, annoying but easy enough to pull. These burrs were little, kind of like hundreds of tiny ticks. I began pulling off the ones on her face, around her eyes. “What did you get into?” Her chocolate eyes appealed to me for help. “Sit. Sit down.”
Polar Bear paced and moaned around in the kitchen. He was clearly nervous about what was happening. For thirty minutes, I sat there, pinching off one burr after another and setting it carefully on a paper towel. When I realized I’d be there until the pandemic was over or the end of the world, whichever came first, I decided to try to comb them out. While I searched for the comb, Polar Bear comforted Pony with a lick and a sneeze. I dragged the comb across her back, picking up some burs along the way. Pony didn’t like
the yanking and pulling and tried to move away from me and hide behind Polar Bear.
So, I remembered what mom used to do when we had gum in our hair: grease. I slathered some bacon grease on her fur and started removing them again. I’d swipe the comb through her fur, wipe it off on a paper towel, and go back again. This worked slightly better and I kept at it until one side of her was pretty clear and until she couldn’t tolerate the unwanted attention anymore. “Fine. We’ll work on it some more later.”
The next morning, I came downstairs to the kitchen and found the two dogs cozily snuggled up together. I noticed that nearly every bur was gone. “What the…” Polar Bear licked Pony’s ear and a spark alighted in my brain. “Polar Bear, did you…”
He wagged his tail like he was proud of himself.
“Good dog,” I said.
Later that day, I went out to check a hen of the woods spot near a dying oak. I was so busy swatting at mosquitoes and carefully stepping around the prickly currant brambles, that I didn’t notice the long, stringy, sticky leaves full of the same burrs that Pony had. Although I barely brushed the plant, it was like it reached out to grab for me. When I got back to the house, I looked at the bacon grease and looked at Polar Bear, then thought better of it. I threw the pants in the garbage.
Nicole Helget is a multi-genre author. Her most recent book, THE END OF THE WILD, is a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, a Parents' Choice Award Winner, a Charlotte Huck Award Honor Book, a New York Public Library Best Books for Kids, a Kirkus Best Middle-Grade Book, an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students, a Best STEM Trade Books for Students K-12, a Georgia Children's Book Award Nominee, and the Minnesota Book Awards Middle Grade Winner. She works as a teacher, manuscript guide, editor, and ghostwriter. She lives in rural St. Peter with her family and dogs. You can follow the Dogs of Oshawa Township at @TheOshawa on Twitter.
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