Haze of Yesterday

First slice since August. Damn… Well this one’s for your ears, not your mouth. Between work and everything else life throws at you, I managed to write a song. So please, give it a listen. And don’t hesitate to tell me how it changed the way you listen to music forever… or that you wanted to stab yourself in the ears while listening to it. Either way, I’d love the feedback. It’s called Haze of Yesterday and I hope you enjoy it. Click here to listen.

For the musically inclined…

Recorded with a 1957 Vega E-201 hollowbody, Fender MIM Strat, Ibanez GIO bass (frets shaved off courtesy of my friend), and a Yamaha Stage Custom drum set with Zildjian ZBTs.

A Taste of Falmouth: The Quarterdeck

The Quarterdeck on Main Street in Falmouth

The first thing you’ll notice about the Quarterdeck is it’s unique atmosphere that feels like you’re almost stepping aboard a ship circa 1700… until you take a few steps past the entrance and see the high-def TVs above the bar. But the restaurant is about as close to a ship as you can get on land. Local artist, Joe Downs, designed the restaurant with the idea in mind that he wanted to create an authentic feel of being below the deck on a sailing vessel. In fact, part of the interior is constructed with wood from MacDougall’s Boatyard in Falmouth Harbor; some wood dating back as far as the late 1600s.

On to the important part; the food. I started with a cup of clam chowder for an appetizer. Now, anyone who knows seafood, knows that Legal Seafood’s clam chowder is out-of-this-world delicious, so I’ll use it as a scale

New England clam chowder

to measure how good any other chowder is to better inform you readers. The Quarterdeck’s chowder is good, but I wouldn’t expect the white house to be

A sign that adorns the wall right when you walk in. So if you want a kitten, you know what to do.

calling in for an order for the next presidential inauguration.  It had plenty of potatoes and clams, which is great, but the consistency is what I found to be it’s only flaw. The broth was nice and thick, but had a bit of a powdery texture to it that I wasn’t a fan of. Overall, an 8 out of 10 on the Legalmeter. Definitely worth ordering as an appetizer, but order a cup, not a bowl, and save room for the entrée I ordered.

Shrimp and Scallop Scampi with roasted tomatoes is the bees god damn knees.

Shrimp and Scallop Scampi. For the seafood enthusiast, those words alone should be enough to get your mouth watering, and I’ll come out and say it, words won’t really do this dish justice. Everything from the scallops that melt in your mouth like butter, down to the sauce on the linguine is every bit as good as you’d imagine. The roasted tomato adds the perfect amount of flavor in contrast to the seafood to make a pasta dish that’s worth the visit alone if you’re anywhere near Falmouth. 10 out of 10.

A Taste of Falmouth: The Clam Shack

Every year around this time, I take a one week hiatus from apple-picking, country-clubbing, sheep-farming Stow, Mass. and spend a week in a wonderful little place down the Cape called Falmouth. It’s a week full of going to the beach, hitting the bike trail to Woods Hole, and stuffing my face with seafood, and I can’t get enough of it. This year I decided I’d review some of my family’s favorite restaurants to go to down here in a little piece I’d like to call A Taste of Falmouth. Enjoy.

The Clam Shack

Vineyard Sound from Falmouth Inner Harbor

The Clam Shack is very appropriately named, because the first thing you’ll notice (aside from the intoxicating smell of fried food) is that it is, indeed, a shack. But this small establishment with menu’s written on chalk

Talk about a Kodak moment. The two people who brought me in to this world, posing in front of The Clam Shack.

boards has a lot more to offer than meets the eye. There’s very limited seating inside, but plenty of tables outside with a fantastic view of the Vineyard Sound from Falmouth’s Inner Harbor. There’s even rooftop seating, but be wary of seagulls who aren’t shy when it comes to swooping in and copping that fat clam belly you’re saving for last. Seriously. My Mom’s friend came to the beach with us once, had a sandwich in her lap one second, gone the next.

Fried clams, scallops, and onion rings. Don't plan on any intense physical activity after consuming.

The menu consists mostly of seafood such as fried clams and scallops, fish and chips, fish sandwiches, lobster rolls, and clam chowder, and French fries, onion rings and chicken wings for those who don’t like fish. I ordered a large plate of fried clam bellies, a medium plate of fried scallops, and an order of onion rings, which was enough for my parents and I. The clam bellies were nice and soft as expected, with just the right amount of batter on them. The scallops were a little chewy but still very tasty, althouugh not as sweet as you might expect a scallop to be. Not as battered as some others I’ve had but still enjoyable. The onion rings were every bit as good as they look in the picture. The perfect amount of crunch is what makes an onion ring so good.

Deep fried goodness... mmm.

With its unique atmosphere and a view that’s exclusive to Falmouth, The Clam Shack is definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area. They are a bit pricy though ($70 for the clams, scallops, and onion rings, pictured to the left), but the price of seafood reflects market price so it’s to be somewhat expected. Overall, for its quality of food and view of the harbor, I give The Clam Shack a 7 out of 10.

Injuries + Bad Bullpen = Pedro Martinez on the Sox

Let’s face it. The way things have been going for the Red Sox, they’re not gonna be at full health down the stretch, especially in the bullpen. Who knows how Beckett will be when he comes back, and Wakefield hasn’t been doing too hot. Pedro already said he wants to come back and play for a contender this year… I’m just sayin… Starting rotation, or out of the bullpen, it’s happening in 2010. You heard it here first.

Mad props to…

Adrian Beltre: Raise your hand if you thought Beltre would be leading the Sox in average (.349) and RBIs (52) two weeks before the all-star break. When the Sox signed him, they signed him for his reliable defense and solid bat. He has done nothing but exceed the expectations that had been set for him at the beginning of the season. The 2 time Gold Glove winner has stepped in and filled the role at third that Mike Lowell could no longer do because of his hip, and has come up huge at the plate in games when his team needed him to. He’s not going to start the all-star game, but he should.

Evan Longoria: He probably will start the all-star game, but that’s not why he’s getting mentioned here. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s professional athletes making absurd amounts of money and not putting forth their greatest effort. Kudos to Longoria for getting in teammate B.J. Upton’s face after he dogged it chasing down a fly ball in Sunday’s game against the Diamondbacks. Upton, a talented player with excellent speed, has no excuse for jogging after a fly ball in a tie game, in which the Rays ended up losing. It’s a good sign for the Rays to see a young player stepping up and taking a leadership role.

Ozzie Guillen: If there were any coach in professional sports who would go out to dinner with a player from a rival team while they’re currently playing each other, it would no doubt be White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. After the Cubs Carlos Zambrano erupted in the dugout the other day, he did what any irrational hot-headed nutcase would do… go out to dinner with the coach of the team he’s playing. While the meeting of the two mad men makes Big Z look even worse than he already does as of late, it doesn’t change the image of Guillen who has made it clear that he doesn’t really care what anyone thinks, and pretty much does whatever he wants. Hopefully for the owner of the restaurant they ate at, there wasn’t an argument over who was picking up the check.

FIFA: Hey, it only took 4 blown goal calls on soccer’s biggest stage, but FIFA has agreed to re-open the file on instant replay technologies. I think that soccer, more than any sport, could benefit from instant replay, and ironically, it’s the only major sport that doesn’t use it. In a sport where 1 goal is more often than not the difference, it’s so crucial to get the calls right. At the very least, they should implement instant replay to protect the lives of the refs who blow the calls.

Banana Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

Got a couple of over ripe bananas being neglected at the bottom of your fruit bowl? Well if you don’t, go buy some banana’s and make this in a couple days. I figured it was time to branch out with my culinary endeavors into the realm of dessert, and why not start with ice cream? However, I can’t take full credit for this recipe. It’s straight out of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream book, so if you don’t like it, you know who to blame.

What you need:

All the ingredients, minus the eggs, sugar, and 2 Hershey bars.

• Ice cream maker, or an alternative method of making ice cream. Google it
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 over ripe bananas
• 1 lemon (juice only)
• 4 Hershey’s chocolate bars

Yeah, I have fancy ice cream bowls. You wanna fight about it?

Ben & Jerry’s Sweet Cream base:
Whisk together your eggs and sugar in a large bowl. Add 1/4 cup of sugar at a time when you mix. Then add your cream and milk and mix all of it together. Follow the instructions for whatever method of ice cream making you are using to freeze the ice cream. With an ice cream maker it usually takes about 30 minutes for it to freeze.

Banana and Chocolate mixture:
Mash up your two over ripe bananas. Squeeze the juice out of your lemon, and strain out the pulp and seeds. Mix the two of them together. Chop up your Hershey bars and add them in to the banana mixture and stir.

Limited edition ice cream container. Get em while they're hot.

When the ice cream is almost done with the freezing process, add the banana and chocolate mixture and mix it up. Let it continue the freezing process for a few more minutes. Even when the “freezing process” is completed, the ice cream is still usually pretty soft, so dig in if you want, but I put mine in a container and froze it for a few more hours before indulging. Enjoy.

Poll: No-hitter? It’s kind of getting old…

Edwin Jackson tosses a no-hitter against his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays.

We as baseball fans have been spoiled… with good pitching that is. This season has already given us 2 perfect games (should really be 3), and 2 no-hitters. Tonight’s no-hitter tossed by Arizona Diamondback’s pitcher Edwin Jackson was sloppy to say the least. He walked 8 batters and threw 149 pitches, not to take away from the impressiveness of it. It was also against his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays, who get no-hit like its a bodily function (2 perfect games and 1 no-hitter thrown against them in the past season and a half). Maybe it’s just me, but Jackson’s no-hitter really didn’t get me excited. I was far more excited about Armando Galarraga’s should-have-been perfect game.

There have been 20 perfect games and 224 modern era no-hitters. But perhaps the most under looked pitching feat is the 20 strikeout game. It’s only been done 3 times in the history of the game. Twice by Roger Clemens and once by Kerry Wood. Stephen Strasburg… dazzle me.

“Bard” from the 9th; Laser Show in the 10th

Is it too much to ask for Daniel Bard to get a chance in the 9th inning, especially after Jonathan Papelbon blew a 2-run lead to the same team the night before? Apparently so. Is it too much to ask for Dustin Pedroia to hit 3 home runs in one game? Apparently not. The laser show could be seen from space last night as Pedroia went 5-for-5, hitting his 3rd HR of the night in the 10th inning to bail out Papelbon from what could have been his second loss in as many games against the Colorado Rockies. An assist goes to Darnell McDonald as well for keeping it tied in the 9th by snagging a near-home run from the top of the wall in deep center.

While Pedroia had the best game of his young career last night, the real story here is Papelbon, who came in to the game with a 2-run lead in the 9th for the second night in a row, and blew the lead, for the second night in a row.  With a 11-8 lead in the bottom of the 8th, 2 outs, and runners on the corners, Bard came in to relieve Scott Atchison. Bard surrendered 1 hit that allowed 1 run to score, and struck out the next batter, all on 10 pitches. Now I’m sure that me and a thousand other Sox fans were shocked to see Papelbon come in for the 9th, given that he was 24 hrs removed from giving up 3 runs on 2 home runs in the exact same situation. It was the perfect time for Terry Francona to give Bard a shot at closing out a game. Instead, Pap came in and nearly did what he did the night before; lose the game in the 9th. He gave up 2 earned runs on 3 hits, and was about 6 inches shy of losing it had it not been for McDonald’s defense.

Let’s go to the top of the 10th. Marco Scutaro digs out an infield single, and sets the table for some extra inning heroics, which have been harder than ever to come across for the Sox this season (who, after last night, are 2-7 in extra inning games this season). Enter Pedroia, director of the laser show, who deposited the second pitch he saw from Huston Street into the stands for his 3rd home run of the night, giving the Sox a 13-11 lead. Let’s analyze Papelbon’s past 24 hours up until this point; 1.1 IP, 5 ER, 2 blown saves, 1 loss. Why not put him back out there in the 10th and see what happens? That’s exactly what Francona did. And much to my surprise, Pap had a much needed 1-2-3 inning, giving the Sox a much needed win to avoid the sweep. Now just out of curiosity, if he had blown it in the 10th, would that have been two blown saves in one game?

Now it’s time for the Papelbon vs. Bard debate, which I think may be settled sooner than later. Every season since 2006, when he became the Red Sox full-time closer, Papelbon’s OBP against has risen from .211 to .305, and his K/BB which was 9.63 in 2008, dropped to 3.17 last year, and currently stands at 2.25. Even more concerning is the fact that we haven’t even reached the all-star break, and he has already matched his earned run total of 14 from last year, and has allowed 6 HRs, 1 more than all of last year. He’s also matched his blown save total of 3 from last year. It all comes back to the fact that he is essentially a 1-pitch closer. It’s impossible for a closer to get by in the MLB with 1 pitch; Mariano Rivera is of course the exception to this rule, because he’s just a freak. So many times this season has Papelbon thrown a splitter that doesn’t split, or a slider that stays flat and seen it hit for a gapper, or even worse, taken out of the park. He has no confidence in any of his pitches besides his fastball, which can only get you so far before hitters start to pick up on it, which they seem to be doing. Bard on the other hand, has a handful great pitches. A fastball in the high 90s, a great slider that Manny got to witness first hand last friday, a curve that breaks nicely through the zone, and a change-up in the low 80s; all of which he can throw for strikes. He also boasts a 3.33 K/BB and a .238 OBP against. While he does have 4 blown saves in 7 attempts this season, I believe those numbers would come down after he was given more opportunities. The mentality of a closer is something that can only be achieved from experience.

With Bard still relatively unexperienced in the closer role, it doesn’t seem likely that Papelbon will get dealt before the trade deadline this year. After next season, his contract is up, so they could be looking to deal him in the offseason, or sometime in the middle of next season. A lot depends on the progress Bard makes, and how Papelbon finishes this season, but it’s beginning to look like Papelbon’s days in Boston may be numbered.

The Resurrection of Big Papi

Don’t call it a comeback. Around this time a year ago, an ailing knee, a PED revelation, and a painstaking 2 months at the plate were all but signaling the end for one of Boston’s most beloved sluggers. After an injury-plagued 2008 season where he failed to reach 100 RBI for the first time as a member of the Red Sox, it was becoming ever so clear that the man who put the 2004 World Series champs on his back could no longer produce. Though he finished with a respectable second half, it hardly made up for his lack of production in April and May. On June 20th last year, he was hitting .208 with 5 HRs and 28 RBI, and was on track for the worst year of his career in Boston. A year later, he’s batting .263 with 15 HRs and 45 RBI, even after an April of struggles all too reminiscent of last year. It’s pretty safe to assume that barring an injury or a prolonged slump, Ortiz is on his way to another 30HR/100RBI season.

His resurgence couldn’t have come at a better time for the Sox. Entering the season with one of the most dangerous rotations in the AL and a revamped defense, the one question mark was whether they had enough power in the line-up to contend with teams like the Rays, Yankees and Twins. After the Sox had their worst April of the decade, Ortiz’s bat has helped them climb from the basement of the AL East to within a game of the Rays and Yankees who are tied for first going in to today.

Assuming his production doesn’t slow down, and he finishes close to what his projected number are, it poses the question about what to do with him at the end of the season. He’s making $13-million this year and his contract is up at the end of the season. He has a club option worth $12.5-million that the Red Sox shouldn’t feel obligated to pick up, because they know that at this point in his career, even if he can continue producing like he is, he’s not worth that type of money, and other teams aren’t going to take a chance on an aging DH with a history of knee problems. It’s clear that Ortiz loves Boston, and if he’s doing this well right now, who’s to say he doesn’t have another year, possibly two, left in him? While two might be a stretch at this point, I would love to see the Sox offer him a 1 year contract in the neighborhood of $5-million. A lot will have to do with the free agent market this off-season, but in a season where the DH position is particularly weak throughout the league, Ortiz can certainly not be underlooked.

Loaded Scrambled Eggs

Everything you need to create this masterpiece, minus the cheese.

Tired of boring, old scrambled eggs? Me too. Here’s a different take on the classic breakfast dish that takes no more than 10 minutes to make.

What you need:

• 2 eggs
• 1 small potato
• 1/2 inch slice of onion
• Ham (1 slice of a spiral ham, or 3 pieces of deli sliced)
• 1 piece of American cheese
• 1 tbsp olive oil

This recipe makes one serving.

Ham, potato, and onion sauteing in olive oil.

Preheat your pan on medium heat. Start by peeling your potato and dicing it up along with the ham and onion. Saute all of it in 1 tbsp of olive oil for about 10 minutes, and keep it covered. Mix it around every few minutes to cook evenly. Beat your two eggs and add a dash of cream if desired. Once the potatoes are starting to brown, add your eggs and cheese in to the pan.

Loaded Scrambled Eggs and an Asiago Cheese Bagel from Panera. Dee-lish.

At this point the pan is going to be very hot so the eggs will cook quickly. With your spatula, keep mixing everything up so the eggs get evenly dispersed throughout. After 3 minutes the eggs should be done, the cheese nice and melted, and your meal ready to devour. Complement with an Asiago Cheese bagel from Panera and happy feasting.