White Asparagus. D. R. Belz

living harder and harder.

      This is a present-tense future in which outlets for the written word —never more devalued by Cain’s yardstick than in the first decades of the 21st century —are at once infinite and scarce.

      Many of the prose pieces in White Asparagus originally appeared in newspapers, on which the plug will soon no doubt be pulled; and literary magazines, most of which no longer bother to send even form rejection slips.

      Like Hollywood, you simply hear nothing.

      Nothing at all.

      “There’s very little room in newspapers for news anymore much less the stuff that I do,” said Belz. “But if you see me out in the yard walking the dog, it’s because I’m trying not to write.”

      Here’s a moment of gratitude that he didn’t try too hard.

      ­— Rafael Alvarez

      Macon Street, Baltimore

      Thanksgiving, 2009

      Acknowledgments

      I am indebted to dozens of people who had a hand in making this book.

      I am grateful for the love and support of my family. Thank you to my wife Rena; my children Mary Eleanor, Grace, Claire, and John T.; and to the Belz, Mudd, and Nehrling families. And thanks to Muz, Constance O’Toole Belz, who has never failed to ask me how my writing was coming.

      Thanks to my generous friends: Rafael Alvarez for an introduction. To Jim Burger for the author’s photograph. To Stephen Doyle of Doyle Partners in New York for creating the design concept and photograph for the cover.

      Thanks to my teachers and mentors for their patient inspiration: Richard M. Prodey, Michael Iampieri, James Johnson, Robert Keller, Bob Cullen, S.J., Sr. Maura Eichner SSND, Phillip McCaffrey, Thomas Scheye, and many others.

      Thanks to the editors of the publications who first saw fit to put my work between covers: Unicorn, City Paper, the Valley Times, The Evening Sun, The Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore Examiner, the Southern Literary Messenger, Oregon Review, Antietam Review, MacGuffin, The Cynic and others.

      Thanks to the writers and colleagues who influenced this work by their example and their encouragement.

      Thanks to all of my students, who taught me everything I know about teaching writing.

      Finally, thanks to the publishers, editors, and designers at Apprentice House Press who believed in and encouraged this project: Lauren Hooper, Marguerite Pravata, Sheila Watko, Gregg Wilhelm, and Kevin Atticks.

      — D.R. Belz

      Chestnut Ridge

      Spring, 2010

      The following program contains scenes of graphic violence, adult language, and nudity. So, what are we waiting for?

      Going Metric, Going Crazy

      Now that there’s a well-established European Union, you can bet that sooner or later the specter of the United States converting to the metric system will rise again.

      But I don’t care what they say. I don’t care how many public service commercials they produce. They might be able to tax my income, regulate my driving, standardize my deductions, approximate my demographic make-up, optimize my consumer-producer potential, as well as take all of the hormones out of my beef jerky, but no government in the world is going to make me “think metric.”

      They can’t make me think in meters, kilograms, liters or Celsius. I like thinking in the English system. I speak in English. I write in English. Why can’t I walk, lift, drink, and even sweat in English?

      I’ve heard that the metric system is logical, accurate, and scientific. Above all, it’s systematic. Well, therein lies the downfall—and the beauty—of the English system. It’s entirely chaotic. Two pints to the quart, four quarts to the gallon, 36 inches to the yard, 5,280 feet to the mile—this wonderful non-system glories in whimsy, in arbitrariness.

      It seems to me the world is a lot like that—fluid, unpredictable, inaccurate. The indiscriminate English system of measurement is perfectly suited to this, the most indiscriminate of all possible worlds.

      While government and business might conspire to change my monkey wrench into a metric spanner, force me to fill up my gas tank with liters of gas, and establish that a trip from Baltimore to Ocean City, Maryland is 243.2 kilometers, I can rest with the knowledge that they will never succeed in purging our language of the poetic, albeit unscientific influences of the English system.

      After all, what other name for a hogshead but its own? How else does an engine run but on horsepower? Five hundred sheets of paper is nothing other than a ream. A score of something? Why 20, of course. A dozen is 12; a kindly baker makes it out to be 13. I’ve given my body strict instructions: When I give blood, it is to stop at a pint—none of this liter stuff.

      If something is incredibly heavy, it weighs—not a metric ton—just a plain old ton. Horses are hands high, their reins feet long. They run not kilometers, but furlongs. Football players fight for yardage. A country mile is substantially longer than a stone’s throw; a city mile is 12 blocks, a block being what you fancy.

      My shirt size is 36 long in inches; my neck size is 16 of the same—just keep those crawly centimeters off my body. If you’ve ever chopped a cord of wood, you know exactly how much it costs in calories, those magical quanta responsible for shedding ounces and pounds. It would take a meat ax to take off a kilogram, I’m sure. When sailing, you look to do knots, not kilometers per hour. Our clothes are made from bolts of cloth, measured in yards, to be sure. And I’ve never missed having an accident by a millimeter, but by a hairsbreadth.

      Most official rhetoric on the change to metric emphasizes that the United States is the last industrialized nation yet to switch over to the metric system. Even the English, they tell us, have abandoned the English system.

      Since when has the United States done anything sensible just because everyone else is doing it?

      I say, let’s force the rest of the world to be poetic, backward, and unsystematic.

      Let’s make them use the old feet-yards-miles and see how they like being force-fed some kind of foreign conspiracy.

      Let us not budge in this weighty matter—not one iota! Let inefficiency reign! Long live the square acre!

      The Joy of Cooking Internationally

      With this, the all-new, sixth edition of The Joy of Cooking Internationally, we extend our sincere wish that a world of fine eating come your way!

      We hope this volume will allow you to appreciate what the various ethnic groups have to offer the true gourmet of cuisine international: their varied temperaments, from those spicy Latin dishes (chapter 12) to those salty New England chowder heads (chapter 9), as well as their attitudes toward your desire to serve them–in their own natural juices, which, incidentally make excellent soups and stews (chapter 3).

      Don’t miss such tempting world-famous favorites as Swiss Steak (page 23) Blacks’ Eyes Peas (page 345), Jewish Wry Bread (page 67), Chilean con Carne (page 112), and a delicious Turkish Taffy (page 98).

      Finally, we hope this book will give you new ideas on serving the people whose guts you’ve always hated, but never knew how to prepare. Bon appétit!

      — The Editors

      The Joy of Cooking Internationally

      Irish Stew

      2 cups potatoes, peeled and cubed

      2 cups carrots, chopped

      1 cup onions, diced

      1 hod peat moss

      1 large Irishman

      2