Hard Stop

Certain elements of my life don't make any sense, that I'm alive, for instance. I should have died at 27, but I didn't have enough sense then, to see the long dark road ahead. Besides, if we all offed ourselves who would be left to tell the tale? There's something to be said for hiding in the back of the cave and keeping quiet. For one thing you live to a ripe old age, gather patina, and sound like you know what you're saying. I beg to differ with certain particulars. That whole alligator thing is bullshit. I never did. I've only ever encountered a few bears in the wild, and in each case I just screamed. Bears, it seems, are as shy as I am and they just run away. Black bears, anyway. Wanting to work out a method for doing an entire pork loin, I experimented with a tenderloin. Ground several small packages of different nuts, broke them into pieces in my larger mortar (don't powder them, think little pieces), pat the tender dry, then rub on either sorghum molasses or maple syrup, and roll in the chopped nuts, place a line of sage leaves down the length, wrap with several slices of bacon, then tie up (allows you to compress the tapered end, which I usually cut off, slice thin, and fry in butter as breakfast meat), sear on all sides, then bake for 30 minutes with a goodly splash of apple cider and white wine, surrounded with apple slices. I served myself with mashed potatoes and roasted Brussels Sprouts. It was a killer meal. The gravy was sensational. I'd bought a decent wine, a Ravenswood Old Vine Zin, that was complex enough for my jaded palette. I prefer large, complicated, red wines. A student of tannins, I wrote the book on charred casks. I would have kicked up the fruit a bit in this particular wine, more wild blueberry or something, it falls off the tongue and there's something left desired.