When You Decide

When you decide what you want to do with the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to start right away. For Susan and me, that meant rebuilding our house in Westhampton. We started working with a builder and an architect and got an initial estimate. Then Covid hit, and costs skyrocketed. The final quote came back at nearly double the original estimate. The businessperson in me kept thinking buy low—sell high, so I told the builder we’d wait a few years. Then I remembered: When you decide what you want to do with the rest of your life, you want the rest of your life to start right away.

Moving forward at that time probably wasn’t the best business decision, but from a personal perspective, things really worked out. So many related decisions just seemed to fall into place. For example, we locked in a lower interest rate on the mortgage. Then interest rates rose, and we were able to take advantage of the higher rates and markets to pay off the mortgage faster. And yes, you can rationalize anything.

The real reason we went ahead with the rebuild is that Dylan (a.k.a. “Dilly Bear”) loves his Gramp’s BISTRO CLAMS. Said another way, rebuilding the house in Westhampton has given us more time with our kids and grandkids. This video pretty much says it all.

Check out the video

One of our favorite pastimes in Westhampton is clamming on the deserted islands in Moriches Bay. There’s something about getting something for nothing that the women in my life love. Last summer we had the whole crew digging clams. In about an hour, we dug up over a hundred.

Digging clams is fun. Eating them is wonderful. My recipe for “Bistro Clams” has its origins in my first trip to France years ago, when I experienced escargot. I soon figured out that it wasn’t the rubbery snail I loved, but the wonderful garlic herb butter. You could put this butter on shoe leather (or a lowly snail) and it would taste good. Pair it with a freshly harvested clam and a piece of bacon, and you have culinary heaven. The look on Dylan’s face says it all.

Check out the recipe

https://impromptufridaynights.com/bistro-clams/

When it comes to the important things in life, economics are usually way down on the list. A tasty clam dish can be important but the look on Dilly Bear’s face is priceless. Just Don’t Blink.

If you enjoyed this blog and similar stories about wine, supper clubs, and food, follow me on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter). Subscribe to future posts at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and check out my book Impromptu Friday Nights—a Guide to Supper Clubs, published by Morgan James Publishing and available wherever books are sold.

Every Christmas is Different

Every Christmas is different, but in many ways, things are the same. As our kids have gotten older and have families of their own, getting everyone together isn’t as easy. From a culinary perspective, there are a few things you can count on.

The house will smell like garlic
There will be seafood on Christmas Eve
A roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding on Christmas day
Plenty of red wine will be consumed

Note: A traditional Paul Kenny Christmas Plan

GARLIC

Our daughter Jennifer nailed it: “The kitchen smells like Christmas Eve at home.” She’s right—I use a lot of garlic in my cooking. When Christmas comes around, I always start by peeling a few heads of garlic for mise en place. Look back at the menu above and you’ll spot garlic throughout.

SEAFOOD

I grew up in Silver Lake, an Italian neighborhood in New York. Thirty-one of the thirty-five kids in my grammar school class were Italian—Tommy Palumbo, Danny Monteforte, Georgy Deleo, Patsy Frachetti, and my best friend Tony Ciafone, to name a few. A fixture of holidays in Silver Lake was the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. As an homage to my Silver Lake upbringing, there will be seafood on my Christmas Eve menu. My dad would say: “You can take the kid out of Silver Lake, but you can’t take the onion and garlic out of his cooking.”

I must confess I still have a little scar tissue from one particular Christmas. When the whole Kenny Clan came to Memphis, I published a menu featuring “The Feast of the Seven Fishes” for Christmas Eve. After dinner—which included clams, shrimp, scallops, and cod—my brother-in-law Brian asked why I called it seven fishes when there were only four. Now, Brian is a nuclear scientist and one of the smartest guys I know. So I told him I was careful to count and made sure he had at least three shrimp and four clams. Sales and marketing guys just look at the world differently than scientists do.

ROAST BEEF AND YORKSHIRE PUDDING

Note: The perfect medium rare

My family has a tradition of overcooking the holiday roast. We all like our beef medium rare, but we always used to end up with medium well. It wouldn’t be the holidays if the beef isn’t overcooked. The fact is, your roast continues to cook after you take it out of the oven—Mom’s roast beef pulled at 140 degrees would wind up at 150 degrees. That nasty gray color is never good, unless you’re one of the outliers who like their beef well done.

My mom can’t be blamed for this. We can blame the cookbook industry. Check out my notes in the Joy of Cooking. Instead of cooking to 140 degrees as the book says, I pull the roast out when my internal-read thermometer reads 120 degrees. Then I let it rest for 20 to 30 minutes, and the roast will temper out to a little over 130 degrees—a perfect medium rare.

Note: See my notes in my copy of the Joy of Cooking

I once worked with two great chefs who ran Memphis’s top white tablecloth restaurant. When I asked what percentage of their customers preferred their beef medium rare, they said 85% at higher-end restaurants do. Of course, some people grew up in households where mom overcooked everything and medium well was the standard. I believe people like what they grew up with, but I still have a problem killing a good piece of meat.

Note: Checkout the blog

https://impromptufridaynights.com/cookbooks-lie-experience-doesnt/

PLENTY OF RED WINE

We have a tradition of buying double magnums (3-liter bottles) of Joseph Phelps wine for each of our grandchildren in the vintage of their birth year. The plan is to open them at a party celebrating their 16th birthday.

Note: SEE THE FEATURE PHOTO WITH EACH OF THEIR DOUBLE MAGNUMS

My buddy Tom Julian started this tradition. Our daughter Jennifer was born in California in 1984. Tom came out to visit, and we toured Napa Valley together. The Phelps vineyard has always been one of our favorites—it sits in a small sub-valley and produces excellent wines. Tom bought Jennifer a 3-liter bottle, and we enjoyed it at a wonderful party in 2000.

We originally planned to celebrate her 18th birthday with it, but we got nervous about how well the wine would age. We stored it in the basement of Tom’s old house on Onondaga Street in Rye, New York—the perfect place for wine storage. Fortunately, the wine held up beautifully. When we first opened it, we were nervous. Older wines change color slightly, and this one had a reddish tint instead of the deep purple of newer wines. The taste was good at the start, and as the evening progressed, it got better and better. Funny how that works…

Note: Tom Julian, Jennifer, Paul and Susan Kenny getting ready to open a 16 year old bottle of Phelps

While we won’t be drinking those double magnums this Christmas, a fair share of red wine will be consumed. Every Christmas is different, but the wine consumption remains constant.

Special People 3

This is a repost of a blog originally written in 2017

In life you meet special people. Ronnie Wenzler was certainly one of them. I moved to Memphis in 1990, and the first night I was there, the president of Kraft Food Ingredients and Ronnie, the VP of Sales, took me to dinner. Making conversation, the president asked me if I played golf and mentioned that Ronnie played “a little” golf. So I asked Ronnie what his handicap was, to which he responded, “It’s a 3 or better if it has to be.”

I spent the next 20 years figuring out just what that meant. The figuring usually meant losing a bet or two. It turned out that Ronnie was a gifted golfer and one of the most entertaining people I ever met. Amongst his many golf accomplishments was having beat the great Jack Nicklaus in the 1956 US Amateur. As Ronnie would say with his Memphis drawl, “Jack was just 18 years old, but I was only 21.”

In the 1990s, Kraft had a business meeting at Butler National in Chicago. Someone mentioned to Ronnie that Jack Nicklaus just happened to be there that day. Ronnie went to the locker room and found Jack putting on his golf shoes. Ronnie walked up to golf’s greatest champion saying, “Jack, you probably don’t remember me.” Jack cut him off with, “Ronnie Wenzler, you old SOB, how are you doing?” Jack then asked him if he wanted to join him that afternoon for a round of golf. Ronnie politely declined, telling Jack he was happy to leave their competitive record where it was.

Ronnie and I had another special connection. We were the sons of very influential fathers. Ronnie’s dad, Jack Wenzler, was a legendary golf pro in Memphis. He taught golf for over 60 years in Memphis and Florida. It turned out that Jack and my dad (a college dean from New York) both spent winters in Winter Haven, Florida. For Christmas one year, I bought my dad a package of golf lessons with Jack Wenzler. Turned out they didn’t work much on dad’s golf game; rather, they got together regularly and talked about their sons.

After Ronnie retired from Kraft, he became a golf coach. In that role, he gave me a great gift. He taught my son Brian to play, and love, golf. Brian was a latecomer to golf and didn’t show an interest in the game until he was well into his high school years. Ronnie taught Brian the swing fundamentals and broke the “Kenny curse.” My father taught me to play golf, and my swing looks like my father’s swing. A curse of a swing that Jack Wenzler couldn’t fix with my dad and Ronnie couldn’t fix with me. Brian, on the other hand, has a beautiful swing crafted by Ronnie.

More important than the swing is the love of the game. A golf lesson with Ronnie was 50% golf and 50% life lessons and laughs. Ronnie made golf fun for Brian. Brian loves the game, and we had a great time in Scotland a few years ago. (check out the blog). Many times during that trip I told Ronnie stories and thanked him for the gift.

Ronnie passed away in 2010 after battling cancer. His old golf opponent Jack Nicklaus called him towards the end to wish him well. My guess is that Ronnie reminded Jack of where their record stood during the call. I also called Ronnie towards the end and thanked him for the gift. Ronnie made me laugh and asked me to pray for him. Something I do regularly.

If you enjoy this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons, subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and be on the lookout for my book Impromptu Friday Nights: a Guide to Supper Clubs. Morgan James Publishing published the Kindle version on September 5, 2017, and the hard copy came out January 30, 2018.

Note: The feature picture is of a young Ronnie Wenzler and the legendary Ben Hogan. Ben is congratulating Ronnie for winning the 1953 Memphis Junior Golf Championship.