Sunday Recipe: Cocktail Hour

And now, for something really different.

It's that lazy time of summer when we've all been too hot for too long. No longer motivated to go out and actually do things, most of the time, after a long, hot day, all I want is a drink. Those of you who know me know that I am generally a beer drinker, but these are two great refreshing vodka cocktails I have been enjoying (and serving to happy visitors) for the last couple of weeks. Naturally, you can use whatever vodka you like, but I like to keep things hyper-local, from the produce I buy to the beer I drink, so I've been using Boyd & Blair Potato Vodka -- made with locally grown potatoes, distilled and bottled right in Glenshaw.

The first drink, a spicy mango concoction, comes courtesy of Rob, a distiller at B&B. It is bubbly and fruity, but also has a serious bite, thanks to the ginger beer and the arbol chilis. It's a party in my mouth.

Dear NBC, You Suck

Exhibits A and B

For many years, I have maintained that Starbucks makes coffee for people who don't actually like, you know, coffee. I suspect that the baristas breathe a secret sigh of relief when confronted with this order:  "large coffee, please," because I see all manner of complicated drinks --- things with whipped cream and syrups and all sorts of other crazy stuff essentially designed to mask the coffee flavor in coffee. I submit Exhibits A and B, pictured to left:  the Starbucks' Toffee Nut Frappuccino and Mocha Praline Frappuccino, respectively. And I rest my case. (Mocha Praline? Really? Who thought up that combo? Paula Deen?)

A week into watching the 2012 Summer Olympics from London, I can say with authority that NBC is to sports what Starbucks is to coffee -- all frothy and foamy and treacly sweet with very little coffee (or in this case, actual competition.) I don't need caramel syrup in my coffee and I don't need personal backstories to create interest in a sporting event.

The Burnett Effect

Back here at Bucco Central ... At the start of this baseball season, I was adamant that a winning season -- not a 81-81 finish -- but an actual winning season would constitute success for your Pittsburgh Pirates. Anything less than 82 wins would be a failure.

The Pirates have, so far, exceeded expectations and, in fact, for the Pirates to finish 82-80, they would have to finish the last 59 games of the season at 23-36. So that would actually suck, right?

But the Pirates are not going to go into a 23-36 slump. They are going to remain relevant. They will not go into that good night because Allan James Burnett will not permit it.

Last night, with the Pirates reeling and keeling after two bad losses to two really bad teams, Burnett did exactly what he said he would do -- stop the bleeding. Early in the day, I was running some errands and I was thinking about the Pirates and Burnett, which made me think, "Okay, AJ, you asked for it. Can you do it?"

Gone Fishing

I'll be back just as soon as I've ingested my body weight in Wellfleet oysters.

The MLB All-Idiot Team

From the same addled mind that brought you the All-Fat Guy Team and the All-Fro Team, I bring you the All-Idiot Team. And people, this is meant to be light, just a list of guys who have done truly idiotic, embarrassing, mind-boggling things, both on and off the field.

14.  Fred Merkle.  My historical choice because, when you have a dumbass play named after you, you've really done something special. "Merkle's Boner" occurred in game in September, 1908 as the Chicago Cubs and New York Giants were battling in a tight pennant race. In the bottom of the 9th, Merkle singled and his teammate, Moose McCormick, moved to 3rd. The next hitter singled to center and McCormick scored what seemed to be the winning run for the Giants. Merkle ran toward the dugout without touching 2nd base. The Cubs threw the ball to second and Merkle was scored a force-out for the final out of the inning. After that, the game was called -- either due to darkness or because the Giants fans had swarmed the field believing they had won -- depending on what reports you read. The Giants and Cubs finished the season tied for first and the Cubs won the pennant in a one-game playoff. The Sporting News reported the incident as "the stupidity of Fred Merkle." Nuff said.

Five Most Pivotal Moments for the Pirates

Back at Bucco Central at the All-Star Break, with your 48-37 Pittsburgh Pirates sitting atop the NL Central, I have a moment to reflect on the things that got us here. Obviously the main cogs driving the magical Pirates have been A.J. Burnett's determination and veteran leadership, Pedro Alvarez contributing regularly, Clint Hurdle's genuine affection for his players and light touch, Ray Searage's tutelage of the pitching corps, the amazing bullpen and the even more amazing Andrew McCutchen. Really, I've started to run out of superlatives regarding that guy -- he is nothing short of breath-taking. Still, in the afterglow of Sunday afternoon's beatdown of the San Francisco Giants, I spent a bit of time thinking about very specific moments, five (okay, six) key situations that have made these Buccos so bewitching.

Fishing, Fantasy and Pirates Baseball

Meanwhile, back at Bucco Central,

On Monday night, I headed down to PNC Park to take in the game with my good buddy Captain Bucco and my other good buddy UConn fan (who, it should be noted, is also a Buccos fan, but that gets complicated.) At any rate, UConn Fan, Captain Bucco and I walked out to the bleachers on a perfect evening, and we watched the game and it was as if we had dipped ourselves in magic water, to paraphrase W.P. Kinsella.

Captain Bucco shared a story, a fantasy really, of what the team might be like away from prying eyes. "Sometimes," he said, "when I'm at the gym and I'm bored on the treadmill, I allow myself to fantasize and I fantasize that A.J. Burnett and J-Mac take the entire pitching staff on a fishing trip during the All-Star Break."

"Entirely possible," I said, knowing what avid anglers Burnett and McDonald are.

Sunday Recipe: Grilled Veggies, a/k/a, Eat Like the Italians Eat

This is not a recipe, so much as a guide-post, a half-map, half-reflection on the bounty of summer. One of my favorite things to make for dinner in the summer is a mash up of grilled veggies, with grilled bread and some cheese. If you get the chance to travel in Italy, most restaurants have a sort of 'bar' of grilled veggies -- eggplants, roasted peppers, zucchini, etc. -- all available as side dishes. But this time of year, with farmer's markets booming in Western Pa., I like to serve the grilled veggies as the main course.

There are lots and lots of options for grilled vegetables and I've tried to grill everything but a cauliflower (although, now that I mention that ...) That said, certain veggies just scream to be grilled.  Exhibit A:  zucchini. And Exhibit B:  eggplant.

Maybe it's something about the squash family of vegetables, but I never eat eggplant unless it is grilled. Eggplants can get a little mushy and/or slimey, but toss them over a flame and they turn into silky, smokey goodness. The same is true for the humble zucchini and it's cousin, the yellow squash. I believe they are at their absolute best when cooked on a grill, nary a sautee pan in sight.

Pirates GM Neal Huntington -- #winning

Meanwhile, back at Bucco Central ...

Facebook was not even a glimmer in the eye of Mark Zuckerberg the last time the Pirates won and blogs like this one were unheard of, all of which is to say that my Pirates, if you didn't know, have been terrible for a very long time. And yet, the team seems to be rounding a corner around due in large part to three people:  Andrew McCutchen, Clint Hurdle and Neal Huntington. Whether or not you are on the Bucco Bandwagon or remain skeptical of the team's heretofore success, today seems like a good day to take a stroll through the biggest moves that Neal Huntington has made and evaluate them -- WIN, LOSE or PUSH.

Why the Pittsburgh Pirates Won't Have Another Back-End Collapse in 2012

We're three months into the season and, just on paper, this Pittsburgh Pirates' season looks a lot like last year's Pirates season. 70 games in, the Pirates are a heady 38-33, good for a winning percentage of .535. A .535 winning percentage may not look like much in other cities, but around here we can get downright giddy over that, almost drunk with success.

And yet, many people are are teetotalers, dour prohibitionists abstaining from the Pirates grog. The sense I get is that folks are waiting for the other cleat to drop. Right on their foreheads.

Last year, at 70 games in, the Pirates had their heads above water hovering around .500 ball and month later, they were sitting pretty at 53-48. Of course, 19 innings deep in Atlanta, Jerry Meals happened . Everything turned to crap after that and your Buccos lost 22 out of their 31 next games, at one point dropping 10 in a row. What I keep hearing is, let me know how they do in the back-half of the season, implying subtly, or not so subtly, that they will have another August swoon and everything will turn to excrement all over again.

I'm here to say -- stop worrying. Give in. Drink the Kool-Aid. Drink deep. Get on the Bandwagon -- not just your pinky toe, but all of you. Here's why:

1.  BURNETT and J-MAC (which sounds like a 70's TV cop show -- "Burnett and J-Mac:  Two partners who couldn't be more different, except that they love to catch bad guys. Thursdays on ABC!"). I admit it -- I wasn't all that fired up about the Pirates brass signing 35 year old A.J. Burnett from the Yankees. In his three seasons with the Yankees, his ERA was 4.04, 5.26 and 5.15, respectively. Except for one notable game, Yanks fans hated him. While I don't put that much stock into the feelings of New York fans, my gut feeling was that the Yankees and their All-Star batting order (with matching price-tag) might be able to put up more than five runs per game routinely, but my Pirates were not. Not by a long shot.

Turns out, I grossly misunderestimated the guy. He's turned into the thing the Pirates lacked last year -- a stopper. Burnett is the guy who, in the midst of a four-game swoon, takes the ball and says, "Look, these guys aren't getting more than one run off of me and we're gonna win this fucking thing." Who knew A.J. Burnett was that guy? I don't even think Burnett knew he was that guy. But he is and I think it's something Pirates fans will come to appreciate when they hit a rough patch, as all teams do.

This is to say nothing of the effect Burnett has had on young James McDonald. J-Mac has good stuff including a pitch that just drops of the edge of the earth, but he was wildly inconsistent. One start he'd go for seven stellar innings and in the next start he'd look like Josh Fogg on a bad day. For whatever reason, or however it happened, Burnett has helped J-Mac become a complete pitcher, one on the cusp of greatness. Oh, these are good times for fans who like to watch skilled hurlers.


2. CUTCH. Andrew McCutchen is one of those rare players who I feel lucky to get to watch. The guy is simply electric on the diamond. There may be others who are faster, but I don't know of any other player who is as fun to watch run as Cutch. Sitting in the stands at PNC Park and watching him go from 1st to 3rd on a single is like seeing Blondie at the Mudd Club or the Beatles at the Cavern. Okay, that's probably a wee bit hyperbolic, but the point is that he, like Blondie or the Beatles, is so memorable.

Just when you think he's hit maximum speed, he turns it up another notch. He can hit for average (.345) and hit for power (13 HR, 45 RBI, and a slugging pct. of .586). He closes the gaps on fly balls so quickly that he robs opposing players of potential extra base hits regularly. Of course all of that was true of McCutchen last year, too, but I think that both the success (in the first half of the season) and the misery (in the back half of the season) have helped him this year. In short, I think that psychologically his is prepared to carry his team from time to time (as he did through much of May) and he also knows what he needs to do in order to do that. There's real power in that kind of knowledge and, like Burnett, I think that 'Cutch will find a way to put his team up on his back when they need a lift.



3. SCHEDULE. Last year, in the back half of the season, the Buccos played the Houston Astros (stinky) nine times and the Chicago Cubs (stinkier) just seven times. This year, they have the Cubs (even stinkier than last year) 13 times after the All-Star break and the perpetually stinky Astros 10 times. Outside of the division, they get to play the bad stinky San Diego Padres six times (as compared to just three meetings last year) Add to that, they had to face the soon to be World Champ St. Louis Cardinals 13 times in the 2nd half of the season, but this year they only get them six times. In sum, the 2nd half of the Pirates schedule was a veritable murderer's row last season whereas this year, um, not so much. This is not as hard as parsing Proust, after all. The Pirates face more bad or mediocre teams to finish the season. All they have to do is beat the teams they should beat to keep chugging along towards their first winning season is two decades.


4.  PITCHING DEPTH. Earlier, I referenced the Jerry Meals game. While many have posited that game destroyed the delicate Pirates psychologically, I don't think the disappointment of that game was what sent the team careening into a tailspin, so much as the fact that the team was worn out, particularly the pitching staff. That 19 inning game came five games into a stretch of 20 days without a day off. The pitching staff was stretched to the limit by the Meals game and something as simple as a scheduled day off might have helped them hit re-boot. Instead, they never recovered until much later in August.

The Pirates are situated better this year with a better rotation (with Burnett and McDonald as 1 & 2  are a huge leap over Correia and Maholm as 1 & 2). The staff is rounded out nicely with Eric Bedard and Kevin Correia (right where he belongs as the #4 starter) and Brad Lincoln holding down the fort for the injured Charlie Morton (gone for the year) and Jeff Karstens. The good news is that Pirates announced Karstens will start tonight against in Philly. If he is the same Jeff Karstens we saw through most of last season, the braintrust Ray Searage and Clint Hurdle can go to a six-man rotation during stretches like the one the Pirates are in now. [See what I did there? I actually referred to Pirates coaches as a 'braintrust' and I did it WITHOUT irony.]

5.  JEAN PAUL SARTRE. What do you have to lose by climbing aboard and enjoying the ride for however long it lasts? The ability to say, "I told you so?" Son, that's no way to live. Having fun is more important than being right. My experience is enriched by allowing myself to give a shit. And let's face it -- it's all about me. Games are more fun to watch. Stats are more fun to parse. Maybe the Pirates will go down the drain like last week's spray tan. If that happens, what do I lose? Really? What does it cost me? A few months of actually caring? That would be a bad thing because ...

Maybe, just maybe, this is the year that the Pirates finish the season playing meaningful games in August and September. I, for one, want to be a part of that.

Jean Paul Sartre, noted Existentialist and Pirates fan

Pittsburgh Passion and DC Divas Set for Epic Clash on Saturday

On Saturday night, the Pittsburgh Passion, welcome the DC Divas, their long-time rivals, and this Saturday figures to be as epic as all of the previous battles between these two teams. These two beasts of the Mid-Atlantic opened the season against each other in DC, a game that the Passion won by a score of 35-34, a win that put the Passion in the driver’s seat to win their division and the 5-0 Pittsburgh squad can secure their playoff position by sweeping the Divas, a fact of which both teams are acutely aware.

In the world of women’s football, the Divas and the Passion are Duke versus UNC, the Sox and the Yanks, Lebron and Cleveland. All of which is to say, more often than not when the Divas and Passion take the field together it’s a memorable night. 

Sunday Recipe: East Meats West

The other day, I was craving meatloaf and then, of course, I reminded myself that I don’t really like meatloaf and that the only proper purpose for ground beef is to make a proper burger. But still, something about the texture and the homey comfort of a childhood favorite was calling to me. Of course, when I was a kid, I liked all manner of foods that don’t really stand up all that well to an adult palate -- freeze-pops and Big Macs, Campbell’s canned soup and tuna cassarole. They all seem so good in theory I suspect because such strong memories are attached to them. Our recollections are tainted, not to be trusted. In a good way, perhaps, but they are not to be trusted nonetheless.

For instance, my favorite meal when I was sick was Campbell’s cream of tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches (made with Velveeta and Town Talk bread, yo.) But the idea of that exact meal? Do I really want that now? Not so much, actually.

On the Pittsburgh Penguins Complete Meltdown

Losing is part of being a fan. It's what we sign up for when we decide to give a shit about the athletic exploits of this sports team or that. When you become a fan, you expect to be entertained, hit some high notes and also have moments of deep despair following particularly painful losses. Every fan has a running list of the worst losses of his or her life. It's just part of the package.

If you find yourself walking around in Boston, grab a random person and ask about the worst losses she can remember. I'll betcha she names the 2003 Red Sox or the Patriots loss in SB XLII. If you're in Cleveland, I hope you have some coffee or something, because the list of disappointing losses may be longer than what you bargained for.

Penguins and the Flyers: In the Octagon for Round 1

"Hey you. Hey! Four Eyes!"
"Who me?"
"No, dipsh*t. Him"
"Wha'dya want?"
"Yeah, you. Tell your boss I said, 'Nice tie.'"

Flyers coach Peter Laviolette passes on a compliment to Dan Bylsma via Penguins assistant coach Tony Granato, with the diminutive Pierre McGuire looking on from below.

When the Penguins and Flyers play, even the coaches pop a gasket.

Sunday Recipe: Easter Ravioli with Pears and Marscapone

Every year, at both Christmas and Easter, I make ravioli and frankly, the Petracco tradition of ravioli are more sacred to me than the actual holidays. In sum, I cannot imagine Easter without them. Gram (pictured here as a middle-aged woman) lived to be 93. Might have been 94 or 95 -- we were never clear on her exact year of birth and I was 20 when she died. I grew up in a little house across the street from her little house and spent countless childhood and adolescent hours with her. I'm luckier than most people. The years I had with Gram I consider to be one of the great gifts of my life.

Gram and I did a lot of cooking together, but as to the actual ravioli, I grew up making those with my grandmother, Vera because by the time I came along, Gram was tired of the prep work and just let her daughter Vera do the rav making for our wing of the clan.