1. After a waffle and a couple of eggs at Sam's and writing out checks for three more bills and making a trip to Yoke's for Christy, I acted on a thought that buzzed through my head yesterday. I bought a box of Grape Nuts. I wondered if Grape Nuts muffins would be good. I bounced around on the World Wide Web a bit and found a recipe that looked simple enough and early this afternoon I baked a batch. They worked. I am also very pleased with another cooking idea I carried out. I boiled my last potato and a handful of baby carrots until I could fairly easily push a fork through them, drained them, and combined them with the cabbage I recently made. I took a little bit of this dish out of the pan and seasoned the sample with a few caraway seeds. I loved it and so I seasoned my mess of potatoes, carrots, and cabbage with caraway seeds and it was perfect -- tasty, substantial, and warming.
2. Today was the release date for Wallace Brewing's annual barrel-aged strong ale, Vito. This year's Vito, thanks to Shawn's suggestion, was aged with Basil Hayden Boubon spirals, and Shawn and I met around 3:00 to give it a try. Before I knew it, Holly placed a tulip glass that was bigger than I wanted in front of me. Vito has a fairly high alcohol content, so I resolved that this one glass would be my only beer for the afternoon. As the Vito warmed up -- and I wish I had let my glass sit for about twenty minutes before drinking it -- the beer's complexity asserted itself -- the subtle brown sugar of the bourbon, the vanilla of the oak spirals, and the smoothness of the aging process. Wallace Brewing's brewmaster, Jack, joined Shawn and me and told us about how he made this year's Vito and he piqued our interest to look forward to the January 19th release of Wallace Brewing's 10th Anniversary Ale, a Scotch Ale that Jack made sound well worth waiting for. I don't know if I'll make it to the actual 10 year anniversary party on the 19th, but I will surely go up to Wallace to sample the Scotch Ale at some point.
3. Back home, I settled into my tv room and did a search of movies available to me, looking for Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. This movie has been on my mind recently. I saw it in Portland in 1983, soon after it came out, and it fit perfectly into my preoccupation at that time with plays and fiction written in the USA that explore the illusions characters live by (what Prof. Clark Griffith called "the Grade B movie in their heads") and what happens when those illusions shatter.
I will return to this movie soon, but, tonight, after about forty minutes or so, I gave it a rest. When I was nearly thirty years old back in 1983, I found excitement in the ideas of these American plays and novels and short stories, but now that I am nearly 65, these stories are less intellectually stimulating and are much more painful. Tonight, I needed to take a break from Sandy Dennis' brilliant and excruciating portrayal of the deluded character, Mona. The illusion she lives by in this movie, and, the fierceness with which she protects it, is nearly unbearably painful. I know as the movie develops, she's not alone in living a life shaped by a reality she wishes for but that doesn't exist and I will return to this movie soon and watch as other characters confront the pain generated by living lives unsupported by what's actually true within themselves and in the world they occupy. Tonight, I was tired and could only absorb so much of this movie. But, good Lord, do I ever love watching Robert Altman's films.
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