Wanna iguana?

Chez King is home to a pretty meatless kitchen. We aren't strict vegetarians but we enjoy our vegetables more than we enjoy muscle-based foods or organ meats (sweet breads, chitlins and such). One member of this household (not your humble narrator) is German (eine Deutcshe) who thinks of meat in her native language as das fleisch (flesh). You couldn't think up a more honest label if you were a cannibal.

We live about two blocks from Gene and Paul's Fresh Meats, the oldest, contiuously operating meat market in Dorchester, Mass., located at the intersection of Dot Ave and East Cottage Street and Crescent Avenue. As a sometime customer, I've always enjoyed the cuts offered by this establishment when I've needed a bit of animal protein to flavor a dish and I've also enjoyed the service.

While Gene and Paul offer the usual fare of chicken (das haehechen), pork (das schweinefleisch), and beef (das rindfleisch), and during the X-mas season they offer up a X-mas goose a-la-Dickens (die ganse). That's about it for the options. Curious about what else is available from Boston's meat cutters outside of Dorchester, we ventured on the Red Line to Charles/MGH station.

Entering the jaded, decadent zone at the back of Beacon Hill, we stepped through the door of Savenor's Market at 160 Charles Street. Savenor's motto is "Best on the Block," and by that they mean best on the chopping block. The shop is known for selling exotic game fit to eat.

The options, besides the domesticated breeds available at Gene and Paul's, included packages of ground antelope, ground bear, and a skinned coil of rattlesnake. The most tempting option of all was a selection of frozen iguanas. The chopping block and cleaver had been put to good use in preparing the iguana carcasses, but they were kept far from the skinning hook, the fillet knife, and the meat grinder. These iguanas were shrink wrapped sans head and feet onto their styrofoam trays with skin and frills in full glory. They were bright green on the outside, as if they had been killed nestled in some tropical, Galapagos foliage, keeping their color as obviously ineffective camouflage.

The iguanas' poses perched on their styrofoam trays, absent heads and feet of course, matched how they must have perched at the time of capture. They looked like they were ready to leap, adding to the exoticism of the promised meal. I don't know how popular iguana (dei eidechse) is on Beacon Hill but looking at the exposed flesh in the neck, wrists and ankles, it seems to be low fat and, thus, heart healthy. It is a bit pricey though. The cheapest iguana on sale was $97 and change. Sorry, Savenor's.... no sale. I picked up three chicken-and-apple sausages instead. They made two delightful meals this weekend. The sausages were about six bucks. I don't think iguana Bolagnese would have been any tastier.

We call it Dorchester, by gum!

Again, today, I heard a slur that grates on my ears. I told someone I live in Dorchester. He replied, "You mean Poor-chester, don't you?" He said it with an elbow in my ribs and a wink. The jab to my chest was enough to almost spill my beer. My indignation came just shy of my shooting beer out my nose like a dowsed hen.

No. I didn't mean Poor-chester. I meant the much-maligned Dot. I meant the biggest and best part of Boston and I am not ashamed to say that I live in Dorchester. Snobs can look down their noses at Dorchester, but I don't. Neither do all the other good people who choose to make a home here. Those are the people who stride into a new day with puffed out chests and imperial bearing whether they have the status or situation to command the respect they justly deserve.

Dorchester is an empire of dirty fingernails, of street smarts, of mechanical ability, of earned experience honed to an edge that cuts through flimflam and cuts to the beating heart of all that is wrong in Boston. You can't make a city of students who will move away after graduation. You can't run a campus without janitors, secretaries, technicians, assistants to all the bright minds around which Boston's much vaunted glory and reputation revolves. The real smarts are in the struts not the strutting.

If you don't like Dorchester, don't visit. It's obvious enough that most people vote with their feet or their Charlie Cards and don't leave their calling cards in Dorchester. The neighborhood is none the worse for wear because of their ignorant decisions. Who needs people who don't have the eyes to see beauty under the blemishes? Dorchester isn't a catwalk at a fashion show, all surface and little substance. Dorchester is where raw meat is seasoned and cooked to provide a toothsome and satisfying meal.

My companion on Charles Street took a sip of his beverage. "Doesn't the trash bother you? Don't your feet stick to the sidewalk?" he asked. Yes on both counts, but the trash on Dot Ave or any Dorchester side street doesn't bother me as much as the flotsam and jetsam that I find on the sidewalks puking up their guts after a late night bender downtown. I have yet to see a Dorchesterite vomit into the bushes or urinate in plain sight. The people of Dorchester have a sense of propriety. What happens in Dorchester usually stays there and the wider world is none the wiser that great things happen here.

Oral hygiene on the T

It took almost exactly a year but I have finally seen it. The ubiquitous nail clipping was unnerving enough. The nose hair-pulling, the scab trimming, the cuticle exfoliation...etc. The public meals...Who wants to eat on the T and stink up the car with lo mein for everyone's delight? On Thursday, I witnessed what I have been joking about for a year and it was just as bad as I imagined...

A man got on the Red Line at Charles/MGH. He wasn't an attractive man by any stretch of the imagination so I imagine he had nothing to lose, one of life's also-rans. He sat down next to two pretty, young girls and across from my companion and I. Once he settled himself, he pulled out a container of floss and unfurled a nice length to wrap around his index fingers. Yes, he proceeded to floss his teeth.

He extracted a sizable chunk of something and looked across the aisle. He must have noticed my horrified facial expression. I don't know what my companion's reaction was at that moment, but judging from the conversation afterward, it must have been similiar. The perpetrator stopped. The girls moved away as far as thier seats would allow.

The girls talked loudly amongst themselves, loud enough to be incompletely understood over the clack of the train's wheels over the tracks. One said, "He should take a bow." My companion said to me, "The worst part was when he sucked it back in his mouth with his tongue." I replied, "I suppose that would be better than flicking it off the string into the aisle. Maybe he thought he was being polite."

The man disembarked at South Station after hiding behind a newspaper most of the rest of the trip. He was the topic of disbelieving, revolted conversation at least until JFK/UMASS. That is where my companion and I got off. The girls were headed to Ashmont and the skeeve effect still hadn't worn off by the time we parted company.