Where are you running off to?
Don't worry, I'm not tracking you down. I'm just making conversation (and also a big sandwich and a cocktail).
I’ve spent much of the past week listening to Passage du Desir, the new album from celebrated country artist Sturgill Simpson (recording under the new moniker “Johnny Blue Skies").
It’s a fabulous record, one that shows off the same incredible range that Simpson has been demonstrating since releasing High Top Mountain more than a decade ago. It’s country, yes, but there’s blues, ‘70s soul, psychedelic rock and more in there—and some heartbreakingly beautiful songwriting along the way.
(“Jupiter’s Faerie” is an absolute gut-punch of a song, in the best possible way.)
With all that emotional depth to wade through, of course, I want to focus on the most delightfully-frivolous song on the album: “Scooter Blues”, a riotous riff on running away that might be the best Jimmy Buffett song the late pirate never wrote.
I've been feeling like a piece of rice paper
Think I'll move to an island and turn into vapor
Get a scooter and a house on a hill
Fish all day just to fill up the grill
Spend my mornings making chocolate milk and Eggos
My days at the beach, my nights stepping on Legos
Wave to the world, screaming, "Hasta luego"
Everybody back home will say, "Where the hell did he go?"
Gonna hop in a boat, throw the paddle away
Offer my heart up to the break and the sway
Wake up every day in the sun
Kick off my flip-flops and go for a run
Gonna hop on my scooter, go down to the store
When people say, "Are you him?" I'll say, "Not anymore"
With the wind in my hair, I'm gonna scooter my blues away…
It’s the perfect run-away-from-it-all fantasy song, one that served as an excellent backing track as I spent the front half of this week crawling around a still-under-construction building in the heat.
It got me thinking:
What’s your leave-it-all-behind fantasy?
Set aside finances, obligations or reality.
I bet you’ve got some back-of-the-mind idea, some half-baked notion about what you would do with your time if you could just quit your job and skip town.
Would you go tend bar on an island somewhere? Open a cafe in the French countryside? Abscond to a cabin in Montana so you can work on your writing?
For many years, my pat line was that I’d go open a record store on the beach, but a handful of recent beach trips have reminded me that, for all his faults as a character, Anakin Skywalker had a point about sand. (It’s coarse, rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.) Now? I think I’d like to open a bike shop that also sells sandwiches in some arty little mountain town.
It wouldn’t make any money, but that’s not the point of a fantasy, now, is it?
That time hasn’t come yet, though. Besides, it’s Friday!
The Action Cookbook Newsletter is a vacation of the mind, and today I’ve got some great stuff for your weekend ahead—a meat-free recipe for the grill, an American spin on a favorite European drink, some quality entertainment, and more!
Hop on, friends.
Taste the heat, not the meat
Summertime is grilling time, and there’s nothing I love more than throwing a nice big piece of meat over the fire when it’s hot out.
Of course, it’s possible to grill up a great dinner without meat, too.
It might come as a surprise, given my well-known appreciation for barbecued meats and whatever it is that they put in Skyline Chili, but there was a nearly two-year stretch in my life when I was a vegetarian. It started almost on a lark—I decided to see if I could do it, I lost a ton of weight, and then I just kept doing it as long as I could.
Eventually, I gave it up while backpacking around Europe—the early aughts were a less-friendly time for meat-free options in the Eastern Bloc—but even as I’ve gone back to eating meat, I’ve retained a good deal of fondness for some of the things I learned to eat in that time.
This is all a long way of saying that I really enjoy a good piece of tofu.
It’s been a punchline for hack comedians for as long as I can remember, but it’s such a wonderfully-versatile protein, and when prepared with a little care, it can be genuinely delicious. A trip to the farmer’s market last weekend had me in the mindset to make a meat-free sandwich that could stand up to the messiest Instagram burger, and some marinated tofu would be at the center of it.