1. I spent time today playing around with the cabbage recipe I made last week and enjoyed so much. Today, I chopped up an onion and a head of cabbage and fried (sauteed?) them in a mixture of olive oil and butter and seasoned them with caraway seeds, Johnny's seasoning salt, sea salt, and pepper. Last week I had told myself I'd add chick peas to this mixture, but forgot to do it. Today I remembered. Instead of turkey stock or chicken stock (which the recipe calls for), I used pork stock as the liquid to pour over the cabbage and onion and brought it to a boil and then let it simmer until the cabbage was a little more than tender -- pretty soft, the way I like it. In a separate pot, I brought some potato chunks and baby carrots and caraway seeds to a boil, let them simmer until tender, drained them, and added them to the pot of cabbage, onion, and pork stock.
It's really good. I have quite a few quarts of pork stock in the freezer and haven't been using them and I was especially happy today that my pork stock tasted so good in this dish.
2. I went over to Christy's after I'd been to Yoke's to shop for Sunday's family dinner to watch Gonzaga play North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Right from the get-go this was a lousy game for the Zags. They ended up losing 103-90. I thought the Zags looked sluggish while the Tar Heels were spry. The Zags missed a lot of shots early and the Tar Heels got hot, helping themselves mightily by snatching what seemed like dozens of offensive rebounds (actually it was 14), getting a ton of second and third shots on too many possessions, and by burying the Zags with several hot shooting streaks.
The Zags' sluggishness translated into a lousy night on defense and to the Zags getting overpowered on missed shots. The Tar Heels outrebounded the Zags 42-21.
Do I think it mattered that Gonzaga played yet another game without Killian Tillie and Geno Crandall? Yes. I do. Deeper teams can play more aggressive defense because if a starting player gets in foul trouble, there's an excellent player to replace him. Without Tillie and Crandall, I think the Zags' starters might be more tentative on defense, might be more concerned about getting in foul trouble. Both players will also help Gonzaga on offense, but this Zags' team is a great scoring team anyway. It's the Zags' defense that needs work. So does their rebounding. We saw this against Tennessee and again tonight against North Carolina.
Zach Norvell, Jr., when asked by the press what needs to change defensively, replied, "Just be tougher. I feel like through stretches of those games we were really soft. We didn't really put our best foot forward on the defensive end and we weren't locked in mentally."
I'd say if you're following the Gonzaga Bulldogs, enjoy their often dazzling offense and also watch over the next dozen games or so and see if their defense and rebounding improves. Unfortunately, Gonzaga will not play any teams as talented and powerful as Tennessee or North Carolina until the NCAA tournament. It will be in the tournament when their defensive improvement, if it happens, will be most severely tested.
3. I shed tears today. I think I know how this came about. When I was with Ed and Jake at the Old Montana Bar and Grill on Friday, the Kinks' song "(I Want to Fly Like) Superman" came on and I love that song. I came home and asked Alexa to play it repeatedly. I pulled the lyrics up on the World Wide Web and got a kick out of them.
Suddenly I wondered if the Crash Test Dummies' song, "Superman's Song" was available on Alexa. It was.
Ever since this song came out in 1991, it's affected me. It takes me back to my early days teaching at LCC, to having moved back to Eugene after living for a year and half in the country outside Marcola, to the way my life in the early 90s was an intense mixture of great friendships, happiness, and success and profound disappointments and failures in my academic life and my personal life.
I understand why listening to Brad Roberts sing about the heroism of Superman, in contrast to Tarzan, takes me back to the early 90s, but I don't really understand my emotional attachment to this song, why it always moves me to tears -- why it's cathartic.
It is, I know, a personal eccentric pleasure -- one of many I experience. And, today, I stopped everything for about a half an hour and played this song repeatedly, called up the lyrics and reread them, and watched the band's official video of the song. If you happen to do the same, I won't be surprised if your response is, "What? That song gets to him?" The answer is, well, yes it does and shedding a few tears today while listening to it was a relief and helped clear my mind . That's what catharsis does.
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