Neanderpundit

is how your mouth is gonna water.

I made ShishKebab last friday, because I could. Well, I had a brotherinlaw in from out of town, and he brought his girlfriend, and took back a wife. The new Mrs Brotherinlaw, besides being a riot, is an Austrian trained chef, went to school in Vienna. I can cook well enough to satisfy the ogwife and oglet, but cooking for a Viennese chef? The pressure was on.

So: I mixed up this marinade:

1-1/2 cup oil (I used olive)
1/2 cup soy
1/4 cup worcesterschire
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/3 cup lemon juice
2 tbsp mustard powder
2 tbsp parsley flakes
1 tbsp ground pepper
1 large garlic clove

Blended all together and soaked the kebabs therin. The kebabs by the way, courtesy of this guy:
The Chef and her new husband fought over the kebabs.

So tonight I revisited the recipe with a deer roast, and it’s every bit as good:

yeah, it’s not as pretty as it might be, I did it outdoors on the Weber- but your tongue fair slaps your brains out getting to it.

Mmmmmm.

On my tenth birthday, dad slipped this into my pocket and said “don’t tell your mom about this”

I was reading about gravveling potatos at Rob’s blog, and thought about carrying a pocketknife.
It’s a uniquely male thing, though more women are beginning to do so, but in my generation, you were nobody if you didn’t have a knife to play mumbletypeg or whittle or skin the occasional squirrel.
There were four kids my age in my neighborhood, and I was the last to get his own knife. I kept mine sharper than anyones, though.

The knife I carry, the knife above, is an old timer. I never liked stainless knives, because the edge isn’t easy to produce or keep. I prefer the little extra work to keep a carbon steel knife clean.

Anyway, that little knife never left my side until I was twenty seven, when I bought it’s brother, a three bladed old timer (clip, sheepfoot, spey) again in carbon steel, and with hardwood scales instead of the imitation stag.

Three days after I started carrying that knife, Dad died. At his funeral, alone in the room with him just before the closed the coffin, I took that shiny new knife (I’d just sharpened it sharp enough to shave with) and put it in the breast pocket of Dad’s suit. Yeah, more for me than him.

After we buried Dad, I came home and took the old knife and put it back in my pocket. It hasn’t left me (other than on business trips) in nearly twenty years. Sometimes I also carry a swiss army, sometimes also a leatherman in a sheath, but this knife is with me always.

Anyway, I’ve used that knife to peel potatos, to clean my fingernails, cut steak, clean fish, clean squirrels, trim hair away from burs in the dog’s tail, and a million other things.

Yes, I clean the knife between those things.

A knife is a man’s jewelry.