1. Stanley Tucci is wordly. He was born and raised in a modest suburban Italian home in Westchester County, NY, has lived in Italy, and now resides in England. His boyhood residence might have been suburban, but his family's cuisine was Italian, old country Italian, and Tucci has spent his life devoted to superb food, especially Italian dishes. In his memoir, Taste: My Life Through Food, Tucci takes us on an autobiographical tour of the places he's traveled and lived, acquaints us, at times, with eateries he's loved, but mostly (at least in the first half of the book), he focuses on dishes and meals prepared at home. At well-timed intervals in the book, he takes a break from story telling and shares recipes, tempting his readers to stop everything they might be doing, dash to the grocery store and buy cans of plum tomatoes, heads of garlic, onions, basil, oregano, varieties of pasta, and chunks of stew meat and country spare ribs and just cook, cook, cook and eat, eat, eat.
2. Dan Armstrong wrote me an email of admiration describing how much he enjoyed Carol's article in the local paper about our family dinner -- an email I will soon respond to. Part of why I haven't written back is that Dan also wrote enthusiastically about a BBC cooking program, The Great British Menu. It turns out that this show has been around for a long time, but I hadn't heard of it. Tonight, in part so I can write back to Dan and tell him about watching it, I watched the first episode of Season 5 of the show. It's a competition program. Chefs carry out assignments and compete to prepare a (I think) four course meal for like 100 people including Prince Charles. In this episode, the three chefs presented a starter and they had to secure ingredients for the dish from local suppliers outside the suppliers they had long relationships with. They were cooking in Scotland, so the chefs went out into the Scottish countryside, tracked down suppliers, interviewed them, and got to know local ingredients and some local people better. I enjoyed that. Who scored best once the three prepared and presented their starters? If you'd like to know, you'll have to watch the show. I'm not giving anything away!
I wasn't quite ready to turn in after watching this cooking show and I accidentally stumbled upon a six-part documentary presented by Amazon Films that I didn't know existed. It's a chronicling of the history of the Grateful Dead and I thoroughly enjoyed the first episode tonight. It explored Jerry Garcia's musical biography, his transition from bluegrass/jug band banjo player to electric guitarist and explored the band's formation and its early days as the Warlocks, explored the members' liberating experiences with LSD. Their experience contrasted mightily with the frightening things I was told about LSD when I was in junior high and high school.
This first episode reinforced things I'd known about the Grateful Dead's early days, but also expanded my understanding of their musical explorations and devotion to the sound they created.
I look forward to moving forward and watching the other five episodes.
3. I just can't watch every college basketball game that's televised -- I'd like to, but I also want to do other things. Tonight, the one game I just had to watch was Marquette hosting Villanova.
Marquette dismantled Villanova from the outset of this game. The Golden Eagles discombobulated Villanova with a swarming pressure defense and, as the game progressed, wore the Wildcats down with their depth, size, quickness, and versatility. I loved watching Marquette get great contributions at different stages of the game from different players. Justin Lewis consistently and efficiently scored from all over the court, but he had quiet passages during the game and it didn't matter. Tyler Kolek was on fire early in this tilt. Darryl Morsell put his team on his shoulders at one point in the second half and blistered the twine. Marquette's inside players out rebounded Villanova and scored crucial points on put backs, alley-oops, and drives to the tin. Villanova pushed back, played with a lot of fight, but, in the end, they couldn't match Marquette's size, versatility, and defensive pressure.
Marquette won this game, 83-73. They further demonstrated tonight that, as of now, they are, along with Providence, the cream of the crop in the Big East Conference.
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