1. When I fly into NYC on Monday, I'll be taking four different fairly short train trips in order to arrive at Nanuet, where Debbie will pick me up. I know how to get around in each station. Three of them will involve escalators, buying a ticket from a machine, and some walking. I decided it would all go more smoothly if I didn't have a suitcase to lug/roll around. So, today, I finished packing a box with my clothes and a duffle bag and I shipped them by UPS to Josh and Adrienne's house. The box should arrive on Tuesday. Now all I have to carry in the airports and the train stations is a backpack.
2. I'd say that over the past nearly forty years that I've been doing a lot of (not gourmet) cooking for myself, I've been very reliant on recipes. But, since Debbie purchased and mailed to our house the book No-Recipe Recipes by Sam Sifton, I've become a wee bit more imaginative and confident that I can whip up some meals without a recipe.
Today, I thawed out a container of crab stock. Later on, I chopped an onion and a few stalks of celery and cooked them for a while in olive oil. I took a handful of frozen shrimp out, put them in the pot and thawed them and cooked them until pink with the onions and celery. So they wouldn't get too tough, I removed the shrimp and set them aside. I added flour to the onion and celery, seasoned the mixture with Old Bay seasoning, salt, and pepper, let that cook for a while, and then poured the stock over the mixture. I thought I was doing really well as the onion and celery boiled away in the stock and suddenly remembered I had intended to add potatoes to this dish. So, I quickly chopped up some little Yukon golds, got out another pot, and boiled the potatoes, drained them, and added them to the original pot. Before long, I added in the remnants of a pint of heavy cream I'd bought a week ago and added whole milk. I returned the shrimp pieces to the pot.
I succeeded. I cooked up a pretty good batch of shrimp chowder without a recipe.
Later, I looked at the fish chowder entry in No-Recipe Recipes. It recommended starting with chopping up bacon and cooking it or melting a chunk of butter in the pot (or both).
I'll keep that in mind next time around.
3. I prepared to make this chowder by creating a half an hour or so of mild euphoria for myself. I bought my first ever six pack of Rogue's Honey Kolsch at Yoke's, poured myself a glass, and, also for the first time, I listened to Pink Floyd's 1970 album, Mettle. As the album got underway with the instrumental "One of These Days", I realized I'd heard it at one or more of the Pink Floyd tribute band concerts I've been to and I enjoyed flashing back to those shows and the same thing happened as I listened to "Echoes".
By the way, Rogue's Honey Kolsch hit the spot for me. The honey makes it the sweetest Kolsch I've ever tasted and I enjoyed the many floral dimensions of this beer as well. It's not over the top sweet, but the sweetness asserts itself enough that next time I drink a can, I'm going to put on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's version of "A Taste of Honey"!
The euphoria continued at 7 p.m. when I tuned into Bill Davie's 58th Tree House Concert. As the concert started, I was also watching a U. S. Open tennis match between Felix Auger-Aliassime and Carlos Alcaraz. I muted the sound on the tennis match, was enjoying Bill's early bird special, his great energy, and his getting his concert underway when the tennis match suddenly ended because Carlos Alcaraz had a leg injury that was too painful for him to play.
So I turned the sound on the tv on really low to find out why the match ended and listened to Bill at the same time!
Before long, I muted the tv again and enjoyed Bill's selection of songs, that he seemed to be managing his physical difficulties well, and his reading of some of his recent poetry and a smattering of the great Philip Levine's poems.
It was a good afternoon and evening for experiencing euphoria!
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