Tag: ek humor

Fiddleheads

Fiddleheads are a very ephemeral thing.  For 2 or 3 weeks in the spring the emerging shoots of several types of ferns are available for eating.

Now to me they resemble nothing so much as Asparagus in taste, but perhaps that’s because of my preferred method of preparation about which more shortly.  Others notice a hint of Almond, but you couldn’t prove it by me.  They’re extremely high in Vitamin A, less so in C, and otherwise have all the good nutritional characteristics you expect from a vegetable.

Personally I don’t recommend picking them wild.  I’m not Euell Gibbons and I stay away from toadstools and amateur fugu too.  Fortunately they’re available from some grocery stores in season (my local Stop & Shop carries them), you can get them over the internet (www.fiddle-heads.com), and also frozen and canned.

Actually this diary is not about food so much as it is about writing.

From 1934 to 1975 Rex Stout chronicled the adventures of Archie Goodwin (fictional detective) and Nero Wolfe.

If you have not yet made Archie’s acquaintance yet you really should.  He’s a fun guy.  Dances 2 or 3 nights a week, heiress girlfriend with interesting connections that can usually scare up a buck or two. Often deployed by his boss as a sympathetic face for the women to cry on the shoulder of.

Still, among your other exciting duties are the cataloging of the orchid hybrids and book keeping.

About Nero

His name is taken from The Black Mountain where he and Marko were born and where he served in Italian Intelligence during the first world war.  He has a house in Egypt you know.

Yet it is hard to pry him away from 35th street where he keeps a very rigid schedule.

• 9 to 11 Orchids.
• 4 to 6 Orchids.
• Lunch is usually at 1:15 p.m.
• Dinner is generally at 7:15 or 7:30 p.m.

He is obsessed with sausage recipes and never does business outside his house except when tempted by his love of food and flowers.  When he is not otherwise occupied he reads books about which he has strong opinions.

What makes Nero Nero instead of a Mycroft Holmes variant is that he’s admirably mercenary.  He’s not interested in detecting so much as he is in making money, right up to his Galtian marginal tax rate.

They don’t do much.

It’ll tickle yore innards.

You know: of all the songs I’ve ever sung, that is the one I’ve had the most requests not to. I have time for one more here. this one is a little song dedicated to the Boy Scouts of America. [applause] We seem to have a convention here tonight. The Boy Scouts of America, those noble little bastions of democracy, and the American Legion of tomorrow. their motto is… I would like to state at this time that I am not now and have never been… a member of the Boy Scouts of America. Motto is, as you know, be prepared! and that is the name of this song.

You are no doubt familiar with songs about the old lamplighter and the old umbrella man and the old garbage collector and all these lovable old characters who go around spreading sweetness and light to their respective communities but, it’s always seemed to me that there is one member of this happy band who does an equally splendid job, but who has never been properly recognized in song or story, and this is an attempt to remedy, at least in part, that deplorable situation.

I know it’s very bad form to quote one’s own reviews, but I would like to mention something that The New York Times said about me a year ago which I’ve always treasured — they said:

Mr. Lehrer’s muse is not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste.

Now we come to that peculiar bit of americana known as the football fight song. I was reminded not too long ago, upon returning from my lesson with the scrabble pro at the Harvard Club in Boston, in the days of my undergraduacy long ago when there used to be these very long Saturday afternoons in the fall with nothing to do — the library was closed — just waiting around for the cocktail parties to begin. and on occasions like that, some of us used to wander over to the… I believe it was called the stadium, to see if anything might be going on over there. and one did come to realize that the football fight songs that one hears in comparable stadia have a tendency to be somewhat uncouth, and even violent, and that it would be refreshing, to say the least, to find one that was a bit more genteel. And here it is, dedicated to my own alma mater, and called Fight Fiercely, Harvard.