Smoked salmon, a ridiculous lobster and absinthe makes the heart grow fonder....

The birthday festivities continued this today. We started with a great bagel feast with both lox and my father's smoked salmon. David Wolfe and Crystal Cawley, who stayed in one of the local inns, joined us for breakfasts and books (and lithographs, as it happened).

We then spent the day puttering about on this and that. Gillian and Andy (and Oliver) beginning to pull things together to return to CT tomorrow and my parents beginning to prepare for their trip out of the country (the first of two this month...the rest of us are suitably jealous).

Several of us ran down to the Port to pick up lobster for dinner tonight. We usually get 1.25 pound sea chickens but I mentioned to the man that it was for my 40th dinner party and that perhaps one of them could be in the 1.75 range (this being the largest I have ever had or been inclined to have...leaving bigger ones for folks "from away"). As it turned out, they didn't have much other than pound and a quarters but...after opening about 6 crates or so, he opened one and said, "Oh, this is a good one for 40" and sold me a "2 pound" lobster. When we got home, I took a look at it (see photo). It was not 2 pounds, it was more on the 3.25 or so (that is a 1.25 beside it). It was very nice of him and a genuine treat. Picking the body was the best. I ended up with what usually takes the bodies of mine, my grandmother's and one of the boys . Yum.

Then we had a few presents (from mom and dad and my sister and Andy, all of whom will not be here on me "real" birthday). Mom and dad gave me a Garmin StreetPilot c530. The intent, of course, to assist in my various forays into the hinterland (and NY City) for various fairs, events, trips and client visits. It appears to be brutally cool, determining (immediately out of the box) exactly where it was in Tenants Harbor and, once I told it the address of our house, plotting the most efficient route back. I think I could become quite attached to something that tells me were to go...it is like getting a new wife (though not nearly as warm, charming or fun to be about).

Gillian and Andy sated a wish I have had for several years. I have had a low-grade interest/fascination with absinthe for a long time...more or less on the grounds that if it was of interest to Maupassant, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Picasso, Wilde and Hemingway, it was probably worth tasting at some point. This interest grew a few years ago when I read an interesting article on T.A. Breaux, a scientist in New Orleans who became fascinated with the myth, legend and history of absinthe and spent a decade or so trying to separate the truth from the hype around it. In the end, he used a great deal of very sophisticated modern technology to get at what made "real" absinthe special and has been a major driver in absinthe's renaissance. A reasonably good article on his adventure can be found here (see also, generally and here).

Breaux took what he had learned...that is, a literal rediscovery of how to distill true absinthe, and founded Jade Absinthes. Anyway, to make an already too long tale slightly shorter, my sister and Andy gave me a bottle of Jade PF 1901. Most of us tried a wee dram after dinner, undiluted, and then some a bit more diluted. It is very hard to describe. There is a rich and wonderful smell (the product of its primary ingredients, green anise, florence fennel and grande wormwood), think sweet spiced licorice. The taste, undiluted, is strikingly strong, sweet and fragrant and not at all bitter (imagine a very good licorice with a splash of 130 proof bite to it). Diluted (about 3 parts water to 1 part absinthe), it is simply exceptional. The closest analogy might be a very good, subtle and smooth, mint julep...but with licorice. Oh, and watching it turn from the clear pale green to a very soft, milky palest of green is strangely pleasing.

I have not tried dripping the water through a sugar cube...though I think there is a absinthe spoon among my mother's silver. I have read here and there that that practice really came into vogue toward the end of the absinthe craze of the late 19th century....when the vast majority of what was sold as absinthe was little better than paint thinner....bitter and unpleasant. I may try it, just for the "process" experience...but this bottle does not need it at all.

I do not really drink at all. I like a single shot of a good single malt now and then (and the very occasional martini). The history of the drink is interesting. The "ritual" of mixing it is pleasing. It has a truly unique and, for me at least, extremely pleasant taste. I can see how nice it would be after a heavy meal...or on a hot summer day...or just about anytime.

One should definitely spend one's 40th trying something new. I am very grateful my sister (and Andy) pulled this off. I now have 3 years to think of something that will amuse my sister just as much. To come back (finally) to a bookish note, some quotations on absinthe:

Absinthe has a wonderful colour, green. A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset? —Oscar Wilde

One cup of it took the place of the evening papers, of all the old evenings in cafes, of all chestnut trees that would be in bloom now this month. [by Robert Jordan, who kept a flask of absinthe in this pocket, in case he forgot the paper on his way home.] —Ernest Heminway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (said to have been written, more or less in its entirety, while drinking absinthe).

The most delicate, the most precarious adornment, to be drunk on the magic of that herb from the glaciers, absinthe! But only to lie down afterward in shit! —Arthur Rimbaud