Alberty's Blah Blah Blog

So, I have a friend who is an insurance and financial advisor in Parkersburg: Kevin. I’ve known him for a while and he’s done right by me, financially. So in late May of 2008 he had come down to check on me and hang out for a while and, since he considers himself a bit of a whisky aficionado, I gave him a bottle of Templeton Rye that I had scored, the last one in the store.

He went back home to his wife and kids and had himself a tornado.

He said that the sirens went off, so his wife and kids went into the basement. But he, being an old farm boy, opened the front door and watched the skies from the front stoop, shoeless.

They had built the house themselves. And I mean, themselves. They had lived in it for about five years. Kevin was doing pretty well. He had a strong financial planning business and insured nearly everyone on his side of town.

He said he heard it first. His house was on one side of this little valley, facing a row of houses on the hill across the valley. The sky darkened, the hail started, and like some kind of strange dream, the houses on the other hill started raising off their foundations, like removing Post-it notes from a desk, and disappearing in a flurry of … dark shards.

He ran back inside and made it to his family in the basement bathroom when it hit his house. The sound was indescribable. He said it felt like a moment of forever.

When it was done and he saw that they were all safe, he left the bathroom. At first, he said, other than the smell and the feeling of the air in the basement, the only odd thing was the light coming from upstairs. But when he went up the stairs the rest of his house was gone. And the houses around him: gone. He was standing in between little mounds of rubble.

He knew he was looking in the direction of his kitchen, but there were no walls. The walls that he had built himself were simply gone. And in the middle of what was the kitchen was a small mound of shredded cabinets, countertops, bits of kitchenware, a broken chair from the living room. And on top of this little mound was the pristine, as yet unopened bottle of Templeton Rye. Which he said he immediately opened.

I asked him, “What did you do?”

He told me that they walked to his parent’s house. He borrowed one of their cars and went around to check on his clients. When he found Ed Thomas, the beloved Applington-Parkersburg football coach, Ed was on his hands and knees crawling on the football field.

“What are you doing, Ed?” he said.

Thomas didn’t even look up, but said, “I’m picking glass out of the field.”

Kevin said, “Why?”

At this Coach Thomas looked up. “The boys are going to need to get out here as soon as possible. Besides, what else can I do?”

Sometimes the twisters in our lives are real ones, not some silly overblown metaphor.

And we are not necessarily defined by our actions in the thick of it, but by our response in the aftermath. There is no shame cowering in the basement. The shame would be in letting the inciting moment leave us twisted, braided into some Gordian knot, giving into the tragedy. The real heroism often comes after the fact, when life must go on. Because it will go on.

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One of favorite childhood food memories is of our family’s little Indonesian Rijsttafel.

I lived my first five years in the little village of Rumbai on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. It wasn’t just the middle of nowhere, it was literally the middle of the jungle. I kid you not. Our house was on the edge of town. It was our house, an oil road, fifty yards of grass clearing, then the dark green imposing, seemingly impenetrable wall of jungle.

How close were we to the jungle? We sometimes had monkeys living beneath our house—our houses were built up on stilts and cement blocks to mitigate the monsoon flooding.

How close were we to the jungle? I was once caught in the front yard playing with a green mamba, one of the world’s most poisonous snakes. I still don’t know why it didn’t bite me.

How close were we to the jungle? I got to once a pet tiger. It was dead. It had killed a local guy, so the town company called in a crazy Australian tiger hunter to come in and kill it. I still remember what it felt like — I have a horrible memory.

My mother seemed to embrace Indonesian food. And even though we never called it Rijsttafel, we did eat that way from time to time.

Rijsttafel is Dutch —I know, weird, but click here for a brief history of the Dutch in Indonesia — for “rice table.” It’s a bit like tapas.

Anyway, we would have a major entrée, then fill the table with tomatoes and olives, dill pickles and gherkins, eggs, and anything else mom may have thrown onto the table.

The mainstay of our Rijsttafel was Saté Ayam.

There is a scene from the animated film Ratatouille. Anton Ego, the villain puts a bite of ratatouille into his mouth and he is suddenly transported to his childhood. This is the one dish that does that very thing for me.

I really do hope that you try this bad boy. Now, it’s deecidedly an Americanized version. But it is so tasty.

Saté Ayam

Ingredients:

2 lbs. Chicken breast, cubed
4 clove garlic, thinly sliced
4 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp water
some oil

For Sauce

1 onion, Chopped
1 tbsp oil
1 c. water
1/2 c. crunchy peanut butter (Sometimes, I admit, I add a bit more. It depends on how thick you want the sauce.
2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp chili
to taste salt
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp almond extract (this was Mom’s secret ingredient. It punches up the flavor)

Directions:

You will need bamboo skewers for this dish…or not.

1   Mix garlic, soy sauce, water into a bowl.

2   Add chicken pieces and pour in oil until the chicken is fully covered.

3   Shake, then marinade for up to three hours.

4   If using skewers, skewer five pieces of chicken on each skewer. If not, then, obviously, omit skewering chicken pieces.

5a  If skewered, grill until chicken is fully cooked.

5b  If now skewered, saute the chicken until fully cooked.

Peanut Sauce

1   Saute the onion in hot oil until soft.

2   Add the water, peanut butter, spices, sugar, and stir well top combine.

3   Cook over low heat, stirring constantly.

4   Add soy sauce, lemon juice and almond extract. Stir until combined.

* I always like to add some sambal (an indonesian garlic/chili chutney available in any Asian grocery. It has a rooster on it.) but it makes it spicy. And soooooo goooooood.

The Finish

We usually put the chicken on a bed of rice and pour the sauce over the chicken.

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