I decided that Winter was a time that called for hearty food and decided to make chili again. For myself, I would have bought the meat at the butchers but when trying to feed a cast of thousands, you want to economize. I looked at the hideous greasy chopped meat selling for $2.39 a pound in the supermarket and I shuddered. However London Broil was also selling for $2.39 a pound. The pasta maker attachment I had bought for my Kitchen Aid mixer also included a meat grinder, so I was able to make my own virtually fat-free chopped meat for the same price as the garbage meat. To make the sauce, I bought bags of over-ripe tomatoes at $1.00 a bag. They would have been too delicate for eating out of hand but they were just perfect for making a sauce. I also bought a bag of mystery hot peppers which I had thought were Jalapenos but turned out to be far more potent. The end product thus turned out to be a lot hotter than I had planned, so I made a large pot of Basmati rice to take some of the punch out of the chili. Let's see, I also baked a loaf of potato bread and took a loaf of sour dough bread out of the freezer that I had previously made using my own home-made starter culture. Finally, I made several key lime pies (and whipped cream, of course). To my astonishment, the food began disappearing like we were beset with locusts.
It is strange how people tend to crowd into the kitchen, the smallest available space. Maybe it is the sense of intimacy or maybe just the easier availability of food. Fred read some of his poetry in the kitchen and I must say that it was quite good. It really gave the feel of the heroic fantasies of Robert E Howard.
We played some of the Saxon folksongs I had posted to my blog. I explained to Abby that I used to just post other people's translations but that the quality was so crappy that the translations bore little resemblance to the originals. I told her that I was not trying to achieve grammatical perfection in my translations. I just wanted the songs to be understandable, even if it involved a small effort. When you insist of grammatical perfection, you start down the slippery slope of starting something new entirely that shares nothing but the title with the original. Minimal translation is what I would call my method.
Finally, we listened to a song I had posted in memory of my grandfather, Die Internationale. This was sung by Hannes Wader and ends in the enthusiastic chanting by thousands of Hoch, die Internationale, Solidaritaet.
Lyrics to folksongs, along with my translations and a few links to youtube so that you can hear them can be found on my blog at http://dispatchfromnewyork.blogspot.com/
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