When I was growing up©, I used to calculate how old I will be in the year 2000. This was my Mayan Calendar of sorts – the year 2000 was so far away and the double-digit age of 31 seemed so unbelievably huge that I didn’t bother to look beyond the year with too many zeroes. Now, ten years on the other side of that imaginary horizon I still can’t believe I made it so far without any outstanding achievements. No lives saved, no cure for cancer discovered, no small town square named after me, no major scientific problems solved, no bestselling books written and no spread in the Blind Playgirl Magazine. The only thing I can show for the previous 40 years of my life is a steady weight gain and a child who is extracting the most aggravating noises out of the Nintendo WII as I type this.
This year started with me trying to decide if that’s what an alcohol poisoning feels like and will end at the same place in another attempt to achieve it. As always I hurt some people, made some people laugh, got fatter but not any wiser. In other words, a pretty average year, just another one in now a long line separating me from that naive age when I couldn’t imagine the life past 31.

I would like to thank many readers of this blog, people who thought enough of my writing to stop by and leave a comment, and many others who know me on Twitter, Facebook and in real life (there are about 4 or 5 of the lucky ones). I hope you all have a great year, stay healthy, employed and sexually active happy.

This is an old (1956) Soviet song – “5 minutes til the New Year”:

httpv://youtu.be/12kPdU6A71o

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This post is about pickles. Not your regular brownish-green vinegary mouth-puckering pickles. It’s about bright-green, crunchy, slightly salted pickles that taste fresh, slightly garlicky and with a hint of dill – pickles of my childhood. The closest thing to these that can be found in your regular grocery store is the Claussen Pickles but they are a far cry from the real thing. Rarely you can find excellent Ba-Tampte Half Sours usually in the kosher refrigerated section. For a better version head on to the Russian Store, they are sold by weight at the counter (grab yourself a couple of pickled apples and tomatoes while you are there).

Sometimes you can find a pickling spice mix at a Russian store, or if you have friends who will smuggle it for you illegally from Eastern Europe.

In the absence of pre-made spice mix I always use dill weed (fresh or dry) or dill seed, lots of garlic, some black peppercorns, maybe a hot pepper (be careful how hot), if you have cherry leaf or two, a horseradish leaf (which I’ve never seen sold here) and a few bay leaves.

Yesterday after a downtown lunch I stopped by the City Market and bought about 5 lbs of fresh pickling cucumbers.

These are not gigantic-looking things sold in Wal-Mart, they are small, light-green,bumpy and crunchy. In this area they are available only during the summer. I brought them home and soaked them in the kitchen sink to let all the dirt come loose. I also cut the ends off and pierce the cucumber with a knife in the middle. This way the brine has more surfaces to penetrate the cucumber.

From there on the process is simple – wash the cucumbers and put them in the jar, adding garlic and spices at the same time. The hard part is to guess the amount of salt. The general rule of thumb is 1 tablespoon of salt dissolved in 1 liter (quart) of warm water, I think it has to be a regular tablespoon heaping with salt. Lately I’ve been using 2 measuring tablespoons of salt per quart of water.It doesn’t have to be extremely salty, maybe slightly saltier than you’d like to taste. The whole point is to keep the fresh taste and crunchiness and not to over-salt the pickles. Fill the jar to the top, cover and leave on the counter. You can start tasting the pickles the next day or two. When they reach desired taste, place them in the refrigerator.

They are good with any food or drink, a hot dog, a sandwich, a shot of vodka or just by themselves.

They are good when you are eating with great friends…

…or when you it’s just you, pickle and this song….

 

httpvh://youtu.be/g266Uwp6ZnI

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Everyone knows that the 1st generation immigrants are the great keepers of the American Traditions. From the time they get their copy of “How to become an American” handbook when they cross the border, they start religiously celebrating all of the American holidays from singing auld lang syne on the New Years Eve to consuming mass quantities of turkey and stuffing on the Thanksgiving day. It’s the immigrants who have real citizenship certificates signed and sealed by a federal judge and not a baby footprint. It’s the immigrants who can pass a 100 question civics test to become a citizen. It’s the immigrants who know that the second stanza of the National Anthem is not just humming. It’s the immigrants who can correct spelling errors for their American co-workers.

This explains why a flawless reenactment of the First Thanksgiving was performed at my house today; I might have thrown a piece of pork in the smoker, but otherwise – flawless.

As a Thanksgiving present to my less-certified American citizens I present a short video based on the poem personally composed by the Midtown Miscreant.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HmaMDSO1Kw

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Every spring in a secret undisclosed location in downtown Kansas City…

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“Sunset Over A Sea of Corn” would have been a title of a picture I should’ve taken but waited just long enough for the sun to finally dissolve in the eight-feet-tall waves of corn somewhere between Bowling Green and Laddonia.

Maybe I am compensating for not having a car for the first 23 years of my life and never taking a real road-trip until I was a grown man but I’ve been doing a double-duty putting some miles on my car driving around these here United States. It also helps me maintain a healthy-sized carbon footprint, adding my little share to the global warming and destroying the environment. Luckily my daughter doesn’t mind hours of driving as long as I don’t sing in the car, which is hard because the seemingly omnipresent country station is pumping out things like:

She thinks my tractor’s sexy
It really turns her on
She’s always starin’ at me
While I’m chuggin’ along

You should hear this stuff with the Russian accent, it will really “turn you on”.
Over the past weekend we added another 1,200 miles to my car’s odometer, going to Chicago and back. This time we took a different route cutting through the South-Central-Eastern Missouri and Central-Western Illinois in order to make a stop at Springfield,IL to check up on the Land Of Lincoln. Driving on the rural highways has a more intimate feel since you actually have to slow down in each little town on the way, you get to see people’s houses, rusted farm equipment, smell the manure, and pass a tractor or two on the way. Somewhere between the anti-abortion billboards, entertained by a single country radio station, another breed of American people goes on about their lives unconcerned by their standing in the social media.
We took our time driving through this area and if I actually stopped and took every photo I wanted to, we’d still be on the road. So here are a few I actually had a chance to take.
The General Store in Atlas,IL has this sign that is the most concise restaurant review I’ve ever seen: “Eat Here – Get Worms”.


Pike County Courthouse in Pittsfield,IL

Lincoln’s Home in Springfield, IL.

Lincoln’s Home is just a part of a larger historic site which preserved Springfield as Lincoln would’ve experienced it, sans tourist crowds. In front of his home Lincoln Troubadours perform the period songs.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvshZW_Zfik

Next the Illinois State Capitol (compare to the Kansas State Capitol):

Chicago always has the neatest-looking sculptures. This one looks like alphabet soup on acid:

Chimpotle’s likeness scares customers away near some local bar:

Obligatory skyline shot:

I guess you can find peace and quiet even at the busiest corner in the middle of the busy city:

This could be Chicago’s mayor and his wife, or KC’s mayor and his wife (after skipping a dinner or two).

Lincoln’s body is still there, tourists disappointed by the lack of a souvenir shop wandering around the cemetery.

View of the Mississippi from Louisiana, MO.

Louisiana turned out to be a very nice small town with several streets lined with Victorian mansions overlooking the river. Some in better condition than others.

Health-care debate goes on here as well.

After watching the sunset we finally got back on I70 and the countryside disappeared in an unending strobe-lights of trucks and road construction cones. We were almost home.

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