It's Sloppy Joe Day!

 

An ad on Twitter -- whose name the company's new owner, Elon Musk, inexplicably changed to "X" but it'll always be Twitter to me -- popped up this morning, announcing that today is "National Sloppy Joe Day." 

Sponsored by Prem Meats, a Wisconsin-based "state-approved meat processing facility with a retail meat market," the ad had nothiing to do with honoring our President who is doing a fantastic job. 

Its purpose was to remind readers of the critical role the Sloppy Joe has played in the development of American cuisine — indeed, of our democracy — and to encourage them to consume one or more of these beloved albeit messy sandwiches on this most sacred of holidays. That, in turn, spurred me to share my world-famous Sloppy Joe recipe with you, my loyal readers.

Disclosure: I can’t take credit for this recipe. That goes to my sister-in-law, Nancy. I have it courtesy of my sister, Judy (not to be confused with my wife Judy or grandmother Judy), who included it in a book of hand-written recipes she compiled and gave to us as a wedding gift 40-some years ago. The recipe book, in a three-ring binder, contains dozens of recipes Judy knew I loved made by people I loved — gems like "Aunt Margaret’s Pineapple Salad" (made with my all-time favorite ingredient, Velveeta) and childhood Sunday School teacher “Mary Alice Moore’s Popcorn Balls.” Its pages are stained with splatters from ingredients that popped out of skillets and mixing bowls over the years as we faithfully re-created the recipes for our own family. The most-splattered page of all is the one containing Nancy’s recipe for something Sloppy Joes were known as in 1960s rural Missouri where we all grew up. The ingredient that binds all the others together will come as a surprise but trust me, it makes the dish.

These Sloppy Joes are particularly delish with a slice of Velveeta on top of each sandwich or, if you're feeling experimental and can fathom consuming Sloppies tinted an unnatural shade of yellow, you can stir chunks of Velveeta into the skillet just before serving until they melt.

Here’s a photo of Nancy’s recipe in Judy’s handwriting. (Click to enlarge and please disregard the stains.)

For those of you under 40 who can’t read cursive writing, here it is in Ariel:

Nancy Dryden’s Juicyburgers

1 lb. ground beef

1/3 cup chopped onion

1/3 cup chopped green pepper

1/4 cup hot water

1 can chicken gumbo soup

1/2 cup catsup

3 Tbsp mustard

Dash worcestershire sauce

Pepper

Cook ground beef, chopped onions and pepper in skillet until meat has lost its pink. Then add hot water and chicken gumbo soup. Add rest of ingredients and stir well. Bring to a boil and then simmer. 

From my family to yours, Happy Sloppy Joe Day. And in case I don't write another post before Sunday, have a nice Easter, too.

The dumbest Super Bowl commercial ever

There were lots (and lots and lots) of commercials during Sunday’s Bowl game. Many, if not most, missed the mark completely. The reason? The ad agency folks who created them and the clients who approved them neglected to explain the features and benefits — the reasons  viewers should buy whatever product or service they were promoting. Many featured celebrities who were paid handsomely to promote themselves, because they sure weren't saying or demonstrating anything about the products they were supposed to be pushing. Disagree? OK then, take this test. What product or service was Kris Jenner promoting? Laura Dern? Dan Levy? Tina Fey? Chris Pratt? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Gimme the name of the brand, not the genre. See what I mean? 

But the worst commercial of all didn’t feature celebrities. It featured the second unhappiest family in America (after the Bidens). 

A quick recap: A young figure skater is performing in a competition. Camera cuts to her dad in the audience as his daughter finishes to wild applause. The seat next to him is empty. For a split second, he smiles, pleased his daughter did well, but then glances at the vacant seat beside him, loses his smile, and becomes instantly sad as a wrist-slashingly depressing singer starts intoning a song that reminded me of the opening scene in Dr. Zhivago where young Yuri follows his mother’s casket to her grave. The singer continues her dirge until the commercial ends. 

The skater who, for a second, had flashed a triumphant smile, is now looking as sad as her dad — she obviously heard the music. Cut to a blue KIA EV9 as dad drives his daughter through the snow along a twisting mountain road. He uses the car’s navigation system to map out his route and arrives at a home which, conveniently, has a frozen pond in the yard. 

Cut to an old man — presumably the girl’s grandfather — inside the house, in a wheelchair. Cut back outside to the girl’s dad. He is stringing carnival lights above the pond, which he plugs into a generator that, in turn, he plugs into his electric car. Someone wheels the old man to the window as the lights come on above the pond, revealing the girl re-creating her skate show. The old man’s tears up, puts his hand on his heart and writes “10” (e.g. the score an Olympic judge would give for a perfect performance) in the frost on the window. I assume he wrote 10 to indicate his approval but perhaps he wrote it to let his son and granddaughter know that’s how many days he has left to live since they obviously don’t visit often — otherwise they wouldn’t have had to use the navigation system to find him.

Cut to, and hold on, the car as announcer intones, “Kia. Movement that Inspires.”  

I’ve had bowel movements that inspired me more. 

There are so many things wrong with this commercial I hardly know where to begin.

For starters, why did Kia choose a sad situation — a seriously ill elderly man unable to leave his house? Why didn’t the creators have the girl perform on a frozen pond outside a hospital where, from a window, her mother, holding the baby to which she just gave birth, watches her daughter do triple axels and spins? That would have been a happy occasion. Don’t you want products that make you feel happy? Of course you do. Everyone does.

Another observation: This is 2024. Everyone has a smart phone. So why didn’t the girl’s dad simply take a video of her performance with his phone and share it with the old man?

Why is the music track that plays under the commercial as depressing as “The Funeral March of a Marionette?” Shouldn’t a commercial for a trendy product be lively and/or happy to communicate how using it makes one feel? 

Why didn’t the girl's dad, when he installed the lights above the frozen pond, simply get an extension cord and plug them into an outdoor socket? Wouldn’t that have been cheaper, faster and easier than buying a $42,000+ electricity-generating car? 

Come to think of it, are there any benefits of owning a Kia EV9 other than being able to use it to generate electricity?  Does the car reduce CO2 emissions?  If so, that could have been mentioned to appeal to environmentally-conscious consumers. Does it help owners save money on costly gas? That benefit would have appealed to budget-conscious viewers. Is it fun to drive? Does it have unique safety features in snowy driving conditions? How does it compare to other cars in its price class? Does it convert, at the touch of a button, into an airplane? Who the hell would know from this commercial? 

Certainly not viewers, though it’s a safe bet both the agency and client got VIP tickets to the Super Bowl from CBS which charged something like $14 million to air the spot.

What’s the next Kia EV9 commercial gonna show? The dad and daughter in their KIA following a hearse carrying the old man’s body to the cemetery? 

Sure, why not?

The Death of Capt. Waskow

Ernie Pyle

I just finished reading “The Soldier’s Truth” by David Chrisinger. It is the biography of Ernie Pyle, the journalist known for his reporting from the European and Pacific theaters during WWII. Pyle’s dispatches from the front lines about ordinary soldiers were printed in hundreds of newspapers back home and eagerly devoured by millions of readers. Pyle was killed during the Battle of Okinawa in April,1945.

Pyle filed “The Death of Captain Waskow” from Italy in early 1944. I read it for the first time yesterday while using a treadmill at the gym. At its conclusion, I had to climb off the treadmill and sit down. My head was spinning not only from the story, but from the beauty, truth, power and simplicity of Pyle’s writing.

Every journalism student should be required to memorize it,  It should be read aloud from the Capitol steps every Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day. It should be on the syllabus of every American history class. All of us should read it and re-read it often, to remind ourselves why, whatever our differences and there are many, we can be proud of our country and, especially, how much we owe to those who fought and sometimes died for it.

The Death of Captain Waskow

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 – In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

"After my own father, he came next," a sergeant told me.

"He always looked after us," a soldier said. "He’d go to bat for us every time."

"I’ve never knowed him to do anything unfair," another one said.

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow’s body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.

Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.

The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road.

I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions.

We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead man lay all alone outside in the shadow of the low stone wall.

Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. "This one is Captain Waskow," one of them said quietly.

Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.

The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That’s all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I’m sorry, old man."

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

"I sure am sorry, sir."

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

A bargain cruise with nothing to see but the sea

Azamara Onward

Maybe I should change my name to Tom Triton. It (sort of) rhymes with Dryden. And Triton, in Greek mythology, was King of the Seas. 

That’s me. 

Between November 18 and January 20, I spent 28 days on cruise ships. The first was a 12-day cruise from Lisbon to Ft Lauderdale. The second was a 16-day voyage from Buenos Aires to central Chile via Antarctica. 

Halfway through the first cruise, I received an email from longtime friend, Carolyn Worthington, publisher of "Healthy Aging" magazine. I replied we were on a repositioning cruise aboard a top-shelf cruise line, and that it was everything we hoped it would be, and more, at an incredible price to boot. She invited me to write an article explaining the benefits of a repositioning cruise for the January issue of her magazine and, when I got home, I did (see below).

What’s a repositioning cruise? Read this and you’ll find out and learn how you can enjoy a lengthy, luxurious and leisurely sea voyage for as little as (hold on to your hats) $50 a day. That’s cheaper than staying at home (unless, of course, you are incarcerated but it's a safe bet nobody's leaving chocolates on your pillow at night). 

Enjoy. 

Imagine you are a contestant on America’s longest-running game show as the announcer describes the grand prize on which you are about to bid. “Today’s showcase is … a transatlantic cruise!”  (Oohs, aahs and applause from the audience.)

“That’s right, you and a guest will enjoy a 12-day cruise from Lisbon, Portugal, to Florida aboard a super-luxury ocean liner. Your cruise will include a balcony cabin with twice-daily maid service; three gourmet meals each and every day; unlimited Champagne, wine, cocktails and beer; daily trivia and bridge games; fascinating lectures; afternoon cocktail hours featuring exquisite tapas; a fully equipped fitness center; nightly entertainment; and two days in beautiful Bermuda. All this can be yours (more oohs and aahs) if …. the Price is You-Know-What.” (Applause.)

 What would you bid? Fifteen thousand? Ten thousand?

If so, you would hear the dreaded buzzer indicating you overbid.

The correct bid?  A mere $3,200, which comes out to $133.33 per person, per day, not counting airfare. That’s the price my wife and I paid for the above cruise aboard the Azamara Onward in November. The fare even included staff gratuities, and our travel agent graciously threw in a $300 credit to spend onboard. That’s an incredible value considering that a 12-day Mediterranean cruise in October 2024, on the same ship in the same room, is listed on vacationstogo.com for $10,320 — $430 per person per day.

It’s no easy feat these days to find a room in a Motel 6 and three fast food meals for $133 per person, so how did we land such a bargain? 

We booked a repositioning cruise.

Twice yearly, the major cruise lines — including MSC, Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Princess, Holland-America, Celebrity, Virgin, Disney, Azamara, Oceania, Regent and Silversea— reposition their ships.

In the fall, liners that spent the summer calling on European ports are redeployed across the pond to Florida, where they will spend the winter season visiting Caribbean islands, Mexico and Latin America. 

The ships generally take 12 to 14 days to cross the Atlantic. Most depart from Barcelona, Rome or Lisbon.  En route, one or two stops are made in islands like the Canaries, Madeira, Azores, Bermuda or Puerto Rico. 

In the spring, the ships return to Europe, making the same stops along the way.

Because they know most passengers prefer cruises that stop at a different port every day, cruise companies offer steep discounts to entice travelers onto repositioning cruises. And since they don’t have to pay to dock their ships in different ports every day, the cruises cost them less to operate than standard cruises. 

Repositioning cruises are a win-win for the cruise companies, and for travelers who prefer days at sea where they don’t have to rush off the ship every morning and be herded onto buses that take them on excursions to visit yet another rum distillery, beach, museum or cathedral. Because there’s nothing to see but the sea, you can’t help but relax. There’s no rush. Nothing frenetic about it. If you’re one of those people who has to be on the move at all times, you can always take advantage of the walking track or head to the fitness center.

Repositioning cruises are targeted toward a specific demographic — retirees who love the days at sea and have the time to cross the ocean at a leisurely pace — so the sailings rarely sell out. Our ship, which can accommodate 680 passengers, had just 429 passengers. Ninety percent appeared to be least 65 or older. Many told me they were on their tenth, twentieth or, in the case of an Australian woman, forty-third repositioning cruise. 

During the day, the pool deck was mercifully free of annoyances found on mass-market cruises, e.g. screaming children, wet t-shirt contests, and music blasting from giant speakers, making it easy to concentrate on a good book, converse with new friends, or enjoy a snooze in the late autumn sun. 

Fellow passengers who have taken multiple repositioning cruises told me that the weather can vary wildly. Cruises in October or May generally encounter highs in the mid-seventies. Cruises in November or April average ten or so degrees cooler. The key is to pack clothes you can layer and shed or don as the weather dictates. 

Is a repositioning cruise for you? If your idea of a perfect vacation is outdoor sports, a tropical beach, or sightseeing, the answer is probably no, you won’t enjoy it. If you prefer vacations that give you free time, you love being catered to 24/7, and can view the ship rather than a different port every day as your primary source of entertainment, you probably will. 

How much can you expect to pay? It depends on the cruise line, the level of service it offers (not all include free booze and gratuities as ours did), and the room category you book. As I’m writing this in mid-December, 2023, Vacations To Go, the company though which we booked our cruise, is featuring on its web site more than 30 repositioning cruises in October/ November from Europe to Florida.  Starting prices (per person, double occupancy) range from as little as $529 for an inside cabin on Royal Caribbean — less than $50 per person, per day — to $370 a day for a suite on Silversea, one of the world’s priciest lines, favored by travelers who demand nothing but the best. Airfare to/from port cities isn’t included. 

If you like to plan ahead and want to lock in your price on a specific cruise, book now but be forewarned:  You just may bag a better deal if you are willing to wait until a month or so before departure because some lines drop their prices even more.

Whatever you choose, bon voyage. 

You just may run into me, because I’m getting ready to book another one.

A moment like this

My first visit to Chile was in September, 2002. I spent several days in Santiago, then flew 600 miles south to Puerto Montt, considered to be the northernmost outpost of Patagonia. While I would have loved to continue deeper into Patagonia which extends southward for another 1200 miles, I didn't have the time, so I rented a car and drove to Puerto Varas, a resort town on Lago Llanquihue, Chile's second-largest lake. Across the lake is a snow-capped volcano, Osorno. 

I got to my hotel on the lake in late afternoon and went to the bar for a drink and to drink in scenery so breathtaking I wanted to commit it to memory. Kelly Clarkson’s “A Moment Like This,” the song that had made her the first American Idol just a week or two before, was playing in the background. I found it odd that a song from an American tv show that had just been released was already a hit in Chile. To this day, whenever it comes on the radio, I’m transported back to Puerto Varas, the stunning scenery, and that sublime moment.

Today is the second day of my second visit to Chile, day 13 of a 16-day cruise from Buenos Aires to the Falklands to Antarctica to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America, and up the Pacific coast to San Antonio, Chile. 

The ship left Punta Arenas, Chile, in Tierra del Fuego yesterday afternoon and this morning emerged from the Straits of Magellan into the Pacific where the sailing was anything but smooth — the ship was bouncing up and down, shuddering at times. 

Mid-morning, the captain announced that, because the water was so rough, he was going to steer the ship into the Patagonian Archipeligo, a series of channel islands that form a barrier between the Pacific and the Chilean coast. He said the diversion from our intended route would not only provide a smoother ride, it would give guests the opportunity to see Chile’s world-famous fjords. 

It was a bonus I didn’t expect, the cherry on top of the sundae of a trip that has far exceeded my expectations. I spent the afternoon on the top deck, awe-struck by ice-blue glaciers, rocky islands, endless forests and snow-capped Andes peaks. There wasn't a sign of human life -- no people, no boats, no roads, no trails, not even a fishing cabin -- for 10 hours. This part of Patagonia is not only uninhabited, it is absolutely pristine.

Though it’s summer, it’s cold in southern Chile — I wore my parka the whole time — so after a couple of hours I stepped into the cafe on the 14th deck for a cup of coffee, which I enjoyed as I continued looking out the window as some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen passed by. 

In the background, “A Moment Like This” started playing over the cafe's speakers.

Some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this.

Lucky me, I've gotten to experience it twice.