| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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newton, my uncle, cooked venison outdoors in this rusty old grill. it's been hot, but we were under a canopy of pecan trees and breeze managed to find its way into the backyard via the driveway. he also fried up some crappie (it's a fish) dredged in spiced cornmeal. side dishes were fresh corn, squash casserole, and mississippi sweet potatos. and, of course, homemade wine. newton pulled about 3 bottles of apricot wine out of the old tool shed. newton's apricot wine recipe: find an apricot tree. pick the apricots off the ground, don't wash them. you'll need the bacteria. combine one cup of apricots with one cup of sugar and quart of water. seal it up int a jar and let it sit for 6 months or more. strain it, bottle it. the apricot we were drinking was from 2001. it was a good year. i suggested put the date on the bottle with masking tape. it was thick and sweet and had some sort of sediment. it was sort of like apricot nectar that had been spiked with vodka. my cousin warned me not to drink too much. newton sent me home with a bottle. along with some venison, crappie, and sweet taters. |
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but seriously, how big are texas crappie? are we talking about bony fish the size of your hand? |
just so people know - the name of this fish is generally pronounced "croppie". |
there was a time when my cousins and i caught over a 100 bluegill in a lake in new mexico. my aunt made us (quite appropriately) clean and eat them all. i don't much like those little sunfish. |
for me, texas fishing has always been crappie and perch - panfish, the kind you can catch off a pier or the beach or from a rowboat. easy, lazy fishin'. uncle newton up there - who's around 80, now - still keeps a bamboo patch in his yard for making fishin' poles. when i lived in rhode island, i remember kids fishing off piers in newport with improvised rods from tree branches or broom handles or something. i haven't been fishing in years. |
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we mostly fished for largemouth bass, catfish and trout. we'd jig for bluegill, etc, but usually catch and release. i really didn't like fish much until long after i stopped fishing. |
did a word search for "california crappie". i found the same species as there are here - black and white. but it also said that they were an introduced species - only been there since 1918. they're native here, so maybe the move shrank 'em. i have no idea what fish we caught in rhode island, except for this one flatfish you could catch off the docks. anything we caught in a boat in the ocean we never knew. none of our parents knew. except once when i caught a pufferfish. and once when a friend of mine caught a sand shark. what i miss is clam hunting. i had an aunt (the lithuanian one) who'd take me to an estuary and we'd hunt for littleneck clams with our toes. boil 'em up then dip 'em in butter. and they gave me beer. god bless those old world types. |
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although, i've got to admit, there's only so much of that stuff i can drink before i start getting nauseous. and i consider myself an inveterate drinker. the most interesting thing about pruno is the jay jarvis masters poem. anybody who follows that link, be sure to click on the "sidebar" to read the poem. |
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just out of curiosity, what's your drink of choice, v? wodka? i think i've heard you mention port, once. yes, i think the nazis were bastards. i could understand the russian. americans pick up a little bit of russian from movies or books made during the cold war (or about the cold war) where all the villains are soviet russians. i know "da", "tvarich", "do svidaniya", and "spasiba". I had to do a word search to find out how to spell the last two. i came up with this site. so blame them for the spellings. will any of those phrases actually work? |
Droopy, what's your email address? I'm in PA now and I left your letter in MT. |
dorogaya spider, Pish. Ochen' zhdu. Zhdu vashego otveta. S neterpeniem zhdu otveta. Poka! Do svidaniya! Tseluyu. S uvazheniem, droopy |
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i can remember when calling someone "tavarich" in america was an insult - you were a commie, a leftist, un-american. the "old country" for me is ireland, wales, and scotland. but i'd still like to visit lithuania, the czech republic, etc. |
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but i'll try to hang on as long as i can. |
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like i said, i plan to stay alive as long as is convenient to me. but if you ask stephen hawkings, he'll tell you about entropy. life is temporary moment of wholeness in a world of disorder and chaos. |
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