Halfway home: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, as we reach the midpoint of this latest busy week of innovation and economic progress. It’s Feb. 26, and honestly, the pickings are fairly slim on Planet Earth: You can go nuts for National Pistachio Day (one of only two nuts mentioned in the Bible, by the by) or go medieval for Ash Wednesday (not mentioned in the Bible, more of a 6th century thing), and that’s…
By AMBROSE CLANCY // Old joke: What’s the shortest book on the shelf? Answer: “The Culinary Arts of Ireland.” One page, one recipe – “throw stuff in a pot of water and boil it until every last trace of flavor is eliminated.” It’s an old joke because it doesn’t apply anymore. Ireland has become a modern European nation, and its natural resources of fresh vegetables, lamb, beef and fish are served in wondrous ways, in…
By AMBROSE CLANCY // How’s that New Year’s diet going? What? You’re back to Danish and bacon for breakfast, chicken nuggets for lunch and beers and pizza-with-extra-cheese (you know, with the gang) for dinner? And who’s the evil person who left black-and-white cookies in the break room? Don’t they know you’ve become a healthy, weight-conscious person? What happened? Simple, according to Mag Selig, writing in Psychology Today: “Diets don’t work!” But you’re not alone in…
Moving right along: It’s Wednesday already, dear readers, as we speed through this latest busy workweek and plow straight toward the big year-end holidays. The hills are alive: It’s Dec. 11 out there, a.k.a. International Mountain Day, when the U.N. would like you to consider the overexploitation of mountainous regions, home to 15 percent of the human population and one-quarter of Earth’s non-marine lifeforms. Level headed: There aren’t many mountains in Indiana, where Hoosier…
By AMBROSE CLANCY // It was raining horizontally, with sleet, driven by a December gale. We could hear the sea pounding the concrete strand one street away as we ducked down an alley with the sharp smell of turf fires on the wind. No one was around, except the two village dogs crouched in a doorway, just their noses sticking out to the wind. Soaked, shivering, we made it into the safe harbor of the…
By AMBROSE CLANCY // I have become what I feared I would become. A coffee snob. Not that person at Starbucks ordering a grande macchiato pumpkin spice with dark chocolate shavings – please – but the one who can’t drink bad coffee. My friend, bon vivant Jim Murray of Dublin and Brussels, lives by the code of refusing things on the basis of LITS (Life Is Too Short). For him, it applies mostly to mediocre…
Welcome back: Summer is unofficially over, schools are open and there are only 118 days remaining in 2019, dear readers, as we get back to it on this Wednesday, the fourth day of September. Actually, you’re already halfway through this latest workweek – and it’s Eat an Extra Dessert Day, too, so turn that frown upside down. La-La Land: Happy anniversary Los Angeles, founded (by 44 disparate Spanish settlers) as El Pueblo de Nuestra…
By AMBROSE CLANCY // You never forget your first time. No, not that. But rather that everyone who has ever had summer pudding has a distinct memory of their first taste, digging into a dense concoction of bread or cake with glistening blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and their juices, served with softly whipped cream. It’s sensational any time of the year, made with seasonal berries or ones found in your local supermarket in the dead of…
Welcome to Wednesday: And the midpoint of another busy week of summertime socioeconomic innovation, here on Long Island and around the world. Speaking of world-rounding, there are so many readers to wish well on this 24th day of July – enjoy the Carnival of Awussu in Tunisia, Children’s Day in Vanuatu and Simón Bolívar Day in Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia, marking the 1783 birth of El Libertador (more birthdays below). Young at heart:…
By AMBROSE CLANCY // You’ve seen him – and it’s almost always a him – sitting at a restaurant table with a glass of wine. As the waiter stands holding a bottle, our man shakes and swirls the wine into a whirlpool, then sticks his nose into the glass and inhales as if drawing his last breath. He sips some wine, his cheeks puff out, he propels the wine around his mouth and then –…
By AMBROSE CLANCY // You know cider, right? That’s the stuff in plastic jugs you buy at a supermarket or a roadside stand out east when the leaves begin turning in October. When you’re home, you take a taste and begin wondering how to spell “hyperglycemia” so you can immediately Google it. It goes in the refrigerator, and before Thanksgiving has turned cloudy and vile. Right? No, you don’t know anything about cider. Americans are…