Three Beautiful Things 08-30-2023: Kitchen Changes, Tasty Pasta Dinner, Transplant Update

1. Debbie and I agreed to purchase new cookware, a new blender/food processor, new mixing bowls, new knives, a new knife sharpener, and a few other odds and ends for the kitchen. I spent a lot of time today reading about cooking with and taking care of stainless steel cookware and about how to use our blender/food processor. Next tasks: fill the sink with warm soapy water and wash the new cookware and knives (when they arrive) and figure out what stays upstairs in our little kitchen and where to put it and what goes in the basement, the extension of our kitchen.

2. I used our tried and true cookware this evening to prepare our HelloFresh meal called Penne Rustica with a Kick. While I boiled a batch of penne, I browned panko bread crumbs and sliced almonds,  trimmed and cut asparagus spears into inch-long lengths, diced a tomato, and chopped a couple or three green onions. I cooked the asparagus in olive oil until the spears were an almost neon green and then added the tomatoes. I drained the penne, and added it to the asparagus and tomatoes, once the tomatoes softened, along with garlic herb butter, Parmesan cheese, cream cheese, and pasta water. 

After combining all these ingredients and cooking them for a couple minutes, I divided the food between two bowls and topped the dish with green onion pieces, red chili flakes, roasted panko and almonds, and some more Parmesan cheese. 

It worked! 

3. Kidney transplant update: Debbie and I have an appointment on Thursday, Oct. 5 at the transplant center. We decided the other day, for a variety of reasons, that I would tell the program that I'd like to return to inactive status until after this meeting and after I go to Pendleton the following week. I'll return to active status on Oct. 15th and I don't see going inactive again unless I haven't had the transplant by the time Cosette and Taylor's wedding arrives. I'm not 100 percent positive what their wedding date is, but it's possible it'll be in February.  

Three Beautiful Things 08-29-2023: Imagining Anise in Applesauce, Basting Pork Shoulder with Mojo Cuiollo, Contentment

1. It struck me the other day -- maybe it was something I read -- that apple and anise might work well together. I looked deeper into this possibility and, lo and behold, I found a recipe for anise applesauce. Today I made it. It's an applesauce sweetened with dates, with a subtle licorice flavor, balanced by fresh lime juice. I think it works.

2. Debbie returned home from visiting Hiram and Molly excited about a marinade sauce Hiram had used: La Lechonera Mojo Cuiollo. Debbie purchased two bottles of it. I knew we had a couple of hunks of pork shoulder in the freezer, so I thawed a chunk on Sunday and knifed holes in it and put it in a zip lock bag with the Mojo Cuiollo on Monday. Today, I removed the marinated pork, seared it on all sides, and fairly slow cooked it, basted it, at 300 degrees for a couple hours or so in a Dutch oven. When I could pull the meat apart with a fork, I turned off the oven, left the meat in the still warm oven, and sautéed two onions that I peppered and cut into thin rings. Meanwhile, I removed the meat from the oven, pulled the meat apart with a fork, and put the pieces in a bowl. Now the onions were done and I folded the onion rings into the bowl of pork.

Debbie had made a bean salad over the weekend and I made a batch of rice and these were our sides. I had basted the pork in a shallow puddle of fresh Mojo Cuiollo sauce and we both ladled this liquid over our rice and our pork. 

It worked. 

3. Debbie and Gibbs went to bed early this evening and so Copper and Luna had an ample stretch of time to wander around the living room. Luna alternated between attaching herself to my chest and strolling on our coffee table. Copper stretched out on the floor near where I sit in the living room, but once it began to thunder, she scooted into the bedroom and found comfort and shelter under the bed where she stayed until long after the thunder ceased and I came to bed. 

Copper, Luna, and I are enjoying being back to our routine. They are especially happy for all of us to be together through the night. 

Their contentment inspires mine. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-28-2023: Imagining Creamed Corn in Cornbread, A New Condiment Staple, A Top Notch Family Dinner

1. As I think about cooking food these days, I try to imagine possibilities, try to imagine new approaches, rather than relying almost exclusively on what I've done before. 

For example, a while back Debbie mistakenly bought a can of creamed corn instead of whole kernel corn.

Knowing this, I wondered to myself if possibly creamed corn might work as an ingredient in cornbread.

Recently, Christy assigned me to make cornbread for tonight's family dinner.

I jumped on the World Wide Web with creamed corn cornbread in mind and, sure enough, I found a recipe.

Therefore, today, I melted a stick of butter, put it in a mixing bowl. I added a drained can of whole kernel corn and can of creamed corn and the two boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix. 

I mixed this well and added a cup of sour cream and, just to see what might happen, I went a little beyond the recipe and added a small amount of blue cheese dressing and some grated sharp cheddar cheese, too.

I mixed all this together, heated the cast iron skillet, buttered it, and poured the cornbread mixture into the skillet and baked it for about 50-55 minutes at 350 degrees.

The result was unlike any cornbread I've either prepared or eaten before.

It was dense, sweet, rich, moist and packed with flavor. I think the sour cream helped tame the sweetness of the Jiffy mix and the sweetness of all that corn so that it was tastefully sweet, not uncomfortably sweet. 

Because this cornbread is so rich, we didn't need to add butter or honey to our individual pieces.  

If I make this creamed corn cornbread again, I might try to figure out how to make it not quite so rich and  a little bit lighter.  I would also like to make it from scratch rather than depending on the (admittedly very convenient) Jiffy mix. 

If I can't figure out how to do that, no problem. 

Our family enjoyed the cornbread I baked today a lot.

2. Last week for family dinner,  and while Debbie was back east, I made a cabbage salad with an Asian dressing that combined sesame oil, olive oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, minced garlic, and minced ginger.  

I didn't put all that I made on the slaw and, a couple of nights ago, Debbie accidentally discovered this dressing in the refrigerator and told me I had to make more of it and that we should have it on hand ALWAYS as a condiment staple.

So I made more today.

3. Tonight's family dinner was superb! 

Christy hosted.

She greeted each of us as we arrived with a cocktail called Lynchburg Beer. To me it was a like a Dark and Stormy from the Deep South, combining Jack Daniels with A & W Root Beer and lime juice. The lime was the essential ingredient. It helped cut the root beer's sweetness and helped make room for the Jack Daniels to be the drink's most forward taste. 

I'd never heard of this cocktail and enjoyed its unique flavor and that it was so refreshing.

Paul assembled a relish tray featuring Carol's homemade dill pickles alongside her bread and butter pickles, complimented by black olives.

Christy made superb stuffed peppers for the main course. She steamed the stuffed peppers in her crock pot and they featured an awesome stuffing of ground beef, rice, tomatoes, onion, cheese, and other delicious seasonings. I might have forgotten other ingredients in the stuffing. 

It had been a long time since we had stuffed peppers and I loved their return.

Carol made a terrific cucumber salad to go with the stuffed peppers and I brought the cornbread I already described.

For dessert, Carol made a splendid banana cream pie with a graham cracker crust. 

We talked about a wide variety of things tonight. 

Debbie returned to work today and we discussed the art and science of teaching.

We also talked about the mind boggling wonder of seeing our children and step children grow into adults and how parents just never really know what direction their children's lives will go and how much our adult children live more securely knowing that their parents' home is always a shelter in the storm, if wanted or needed. 

 

Three Beautiful Things 08-27-2023: Small Kitchen Project, I Further Educate Myself, Debbie Fixes a Sausage Dinner

1. We have a small kitchen with limited cupboard/storage space. This means two things, basically: first, we don't bring much new into our kitchen and, second, we see the space in the basement at the bottom of the stairs as an extension of our kitchen.

Today was one of those days when we started clearing a few things out of the kitchen in anticipation of our new cookware and knives coming toward the end of the week. We opened up some drawer space, a little bit of counter space, and we'll have some items to donate. 

It's a good little project.

2. With the kitchen foremost on my mind today, I read up on flavor possibilities, learned more about knife care, and made some decisions about future meals -- which meant making a shopping list to guide my food shopping on Monday. I'll be leaning on food preparation I'm used to and trying out some ideas that are new to me, starting with the cornbread I'm taking to family dinner on Monday evening.

3. Debbie fixed a simple and tasty meal tonight. First, she made a delicious bean salad. She also boiled baby Yukon potatoes and mashed them, adding sour cream and a little heat with leftover red pepper crema from our HelloFresh taco dinner.  These two items perfectly complimented the Cajun sausage she chopped and fried. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-26-2023: The Costco Gods Smiled Again, Post-Shopping List, Ground Beef and Moroccan Sauce

 1. I hopped in the Camry and blasted over to Coeur d'Alene for a quick haircut at Supercuts and then, after gassing up, went on a shopping spree at Costco. It was fun stocking up on chicken and ground beef and some pantry items. I also decided to replace our current blender/food processor with a new one. 

I'm told by others that parking is a nightmare at Costco, but the parking gods smiled on me today, again. I almost immediate found a parking place close to the store. I'm also told by others that Costco on Saturday is a crowded nightmare. If it was crowded, I didn't pay attention -- I entered the Costco Zone in my mind and had a great time wandering the aisles, taking my time, and imagining possible future cooking projects with the goods I purchased (using rebate funds from the purchase of our heating/cooling system).

I didn't hang out in Coeur d'Alene after shopping -- I wanted to get the meat home as soon as possible and I didn't bring my cooler for this Costco shopping spree. 

2. Back home, I made a list of the food purchases I made, what I put in the basement freezer, and what I put in our basement pantry. If I don't make such a list and check it from time to time, I forget what we have in the basement because those things are out of sight and I forget all about them.

3. Debbie also did some shopping after she worked in her classroom or several hours. She purchased a jar of Moroccan sauce. I figured I'd give it a try. I chopped an onion, cooked it until tender, then added ground beef to the pan which I seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder and fennel seeds. The sauce already had cinnamon, cumin, and all spice in it, but, in retrospect, I could have added cinnamon and allspice to the ground beef to enhance the flavors in the sauce. Once the ground beef was cooked, I added sliced mushrooms and folded in a moderate helping of the sauce. As the mushrooms cooked, I added dried apricots to this dish -- next time I'll chop them. 

I made a batch of jasmine rice and topped the rice with turmeric.

I was making this dish up as I went along and I almost got it right.

I now think I could have been more aggressive with the seasonings and because the ground beef from Costco is leaner than I usually buy, this meal turned out a bit dry. Next time I'll fix a simple sauce. On the positive side, I think my instincts were good that fennel worked well with the ground beef and Moroccan sauce and I liked seasoning the rice with turmeric. 

Oh! Next time I might also add lemon juice to brighten the flavors and integrate some chili flakes or cayenne pepper into this experiment to give it more bite, more heat. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-25-2023: New Cookware Coming, The Vibe at The Lounge, Black Bean Tacos and Unhurried Blues

1. When we bought our heating/cooling system through Costco, that purchase included some rebates and today I used some of that rebate money to purchase a stainless steel cookware set and some new knives. It'll be fun to have more that just our cast iron pan to cook with and to have pots and pans of various sizes. Likewise, a variety of knives should be fun. 

2. I returned home from going with Ed to deliver a Garrenteed BBQ order to a customer near Cataldo. Debbie went to Pinehurst Elementary School to size up how her preparations for the upcoming school year look. When she finished, she swung by the house and we jetted up to The Lounge and spent about an hour or so yakkin' with the former Pinehurst Elementary principal, having some solid yak time with Cas, and discussing a few things between ourselves. 

If I've never written this before, I'll be sure to say it now: it's awesome having a place to go for a beer or two and some great yakkin' at a joint where most of the other people at the bar and at tables are about our age. 

I've a lot in this blog about enjoying youngsters and when youngsters I know come into The Lounge, I enjoy them a lot. 

But, the general vibe at The Lounge, especially in the late afternoon and early evening, is the special vibe created by people, oh, let's say 50-55 years old and older, and I sure enjoy that vibe.

3. Back home, I took out our week's last HelloFresh bag and fixed black bean tacos, seasoned with HelloFresh's always reliable southwest spice blend and southwest paste. I went beyond the bag a bit by adding chopped cabbage and lime cilantro sauce to our tacos and was very happy with that result.

After listening to The Travelin' Wilburys while I cooked, Debbie and I sat in the living room and listened to a variety of excellent songs from the 1970s. Then I put on a playlist of J. J. Cale songs and his music put me in the mood for some Chris Smither. I loved winding down this evening to J.J. Cale's and Chris Smither's slower blues rhythms and their superb songwriting. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-24-2023: Debbie Is Back Home, The Marvel of the Young Becoming Adults, Copper and Luna Roamed This Evening

1. Debbie's trip out to Newark was a dumpster fire of delays, but her flight back to Spokane from Reagan International went smoothly. Everything was on time. 

I picked her up and right away Debbie started telling me about the fantastic trip she had, the time she got to spend with Adrienne's family and Molly's. She told me about art, the theater, our grandchildren, and a lot more.  

2. We continued and deepened our discussion of Debbie's time away by going over to The Beanery for a wood-fired flatbread dinner. I marveled, as Debbie told me about things, how Molly, Patrick, and Adrienne have not only grown into adults who are doing well, but have developed independent minds, all following different lights, lights of their own choosing. 

I will always think that the best thing Debbie and I did was provide a safe and reliable home that Molly, Patrick, and Adrienne could always return to, or live in if need be, and that as far as developing the vision and values by which they live, the best we could do was encourage them to go their own way and support them. It's a marvel to me how Molly, Adrienne, and Patrick have taken charge of their worldviews and the conduct of their lives, independent of Debbie and me, and I feel the same marvel about Carol and Paul's daughters.  

Have my feelings of marvel included bewilderment, discomfort, some anxiety, and disagreement? 

For sure. 

To quote Omar Little: "It's all in the game."

3.  Debbie's return home is a boon for Copper and Luna. Debbie is still on Eastern Standard Time and went upstairs to bed at around 7 o'clock WITH GIBBS. 

With Gibbs absent from the living room and kitchen, Luna and Copper, for the first time in a month, could roam, be near me in the living room, and relax outside the bedroom and Vizio room.

Then, when I decided to turn in, Luna and Copper joined me -- again, for the first time in a month. 

Both cats purred, reacquainted themselves with the geography of the bed with me in it, and enjoyed our return to our nightly routine.

I had a great time while Debbie was gone taking care of Gibbs, Copper, and Luna.

Now I'm very happy that Debbie is back, not only so we can yak and do things together, but also because when she's upstairs with Gibbs, the world of our house becomes larger and more relaxing for Luna and Copper. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-23-2023: Change in Transplant Status, I'll Officiate the Wedding, A Good Evening Walk

1. Transplant nurse Tara called me from Providence Sacred Heart with the news that the results of the testing I had done from February-May were all in and I am still fit for a transplant. Tara told me she was going to change my status from inactive to active and I agreed to that change. I have over eight years on the transplant list, so this means I could be offered an organ sooner than later. 

I spent much of the day contemplating this change in status, letting my mind race for a while, and doing my best to accept the fact that I could receive a call any day offering me an organ.

2. This afternoon, I answered a rap on the door and it was Cosette and Taylor. They asked me to officiate their wedding and I agreed. Details regarding the date and the structure of their ceremony will be forthcoming.

3. With the smoke and the heat and with having pulled leg muscles when I fell a couple or three weeks ago, I haven't had many good walks over the last few weeks. 

I got one in this evening, though. I walked on Riverside until it merges with Mission and ends at Cameron. I sauntered to the four way stop, walked through the Shoshone Medical Center parking lot, climbed the stairs to "The Trail" and walked down "The Trail" back to Riverside/Mission and retraced my steps back home.

The cool air felt awesome, my legs appreciated the exercise, and I arrived home feeling better than I have in weeks.

I'm sure looking forward to less summer heat and I hope, if things are in fact cooling down a bit, that I might also get back to riding my bicycle.  

Three Beautiful Things 08-22-2023: The Beer Cheese Soup Experiment, Fixing a Ravioli Dinner, Debbie's Trip to D.C. Moved Me

1. It didn't take long, but it was a blast. 

First, I turned on the oven to its lowest temperature (170 degrees), put my leftover macaroni and cheese in a cast iron pan, and slowly warmed it up.

I chopped two slices of bacon and cooked them in a pot. Once these bits were close to being cooked, I added the chopped pieces of a small onion and, when they were tender, I added two or three cloves of crushed garlic and let it all cook for another minute or so.

To this mixture I added all-purpose flour and stirred it up and let it cook for a short while.

Next I poured two cups of Heidelberg beer into the pot and whisked everything until it was all smooth. 

Now I added grated cheese and cream cheese to the pot with some milk and whisked the soup until the cheese melted.

I removed the lukewarm mac and cheese from the oven and added it to the soup. 

As I hoped, the pasta got a bit warmed up, but did not get softer with more cooking.

I ladled myself a small bowl of this rich and creamy soup, put a few dashes of Frank's Original Hot Sauce over the top, and enjoyed the way I used the leftover mac and cheese to add body and green peppery flavor to a beer cheese soup.

I'm thinking of straining the macaroni out of some of the left over soup and using it as a sauce to pour over a soft boiled egg on toast. 

2. A few hours later, I sliced a yellow pepper in half and roasted it in the oven for about 20-25 minutes and then put a packet of spinach with a crushed garlic clove in a pan and cooked it until the spinach wilted. In a pot of salt water, I boiled a package of cheese and spinach ravioli. I drained it.  I added pasta water to to the wilted spinach along with vegetable stock concentrate, sour cream, and cream cheese and whisked it and cooked it down into a sauce. To this sauce, I added the ravioli and once the roasted pepper had cooled, I cut the two halves into strips and put them over the ravioli and sauce. I topped it all with parmesan cheese and squeezed the juice of an entire small lemon over everything. 

I especially enjoyed that I went all out with the lemon. When I eat the leftovers, I might add some red chili pepper flakes to this dish to give it some heat.

3. Today, I loved knowing that Debbie was visiting the National Mall in Washington, D. C. and was spending time at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Knowing she was experiencing some of the world's finest modern art was part of it, but I loved that she was on the Mall, spending time viewing the grandeur of the monuments. Yes, we only lived for three years in a D.C. suburb, but every time I drove to Union Station, parked the Sube on the top of the parking garage, and explored the National Mall, I was more and more moved by its beauty. 

I also loved venturing to other parts of D.C. to visit the Aquatic Gardens, the National Arboretum, different neighborhoods, the Lincoln House, and my favorite two places to drink beer: DC Brau, the brewery, and Church Key, my favorite tap house. 

I miss the movie theaters, the Union Market, the long walks I took all around Washington, D.C., days in the National Portrait Gallery, heading downtown to hear lectures on art at the National Gallery, a poetry reading by Billy Collins, great music at The Kennedy Center, and more. 

Knowing Debbie was in Washington, D.C., enjoying a day's worth of its stimulating variety and pleasures, moved me deeply. 

I loved knowing she was there. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-21-2023: Clean Teeth, Mac and Cheese, Beer Soup Maybe?

1. After an hour, starting at 8 a.m., under Kathy's care with my yap wide open, my teeth are now smooth and clean and everything looked good.  

2. Early this afternoon, I took last Monday's HelloFresh bag out of the refrigerator and made a creamy macaroni and cheese featuring roasted green pepper and roasted garlic. 

3. In the evening, while watching episodes of Chopped After Hours, I started thinking about the mac and cheese I had left over. One of the After Hours baskets included a bottle of beer. I really like beer soup. I don't remember ever trying to make it at home. I'm going to see I can transform the mac and cheese I have to work with into a small pot of beer cheese soup -- possibly with a little bacon -- and, well, I don't know just yet what else the experiment might include. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-20-2023: I Didn't Get Arrested, Making Asian Slaw, Family Betrothal Dinner

 1. So, my wandering mind went wandering again today. I don't know to what ends of the earth it shuffled off to, but when I bought groceries today at Yoke's, I picked my goods up off the checker's stand and meandered out to the Camry and completely blanked out on entering my PIN number into the debit card machine. The checker sent another employee out to the parking lot to find me and, luckily, I looked up when I heard a voice calling from about thirty feet away, "Sir! Sir! You forgot to punch in your PIN number!" I slinked (perp walked) back into the store, completed the transaction, and thanked the checker for not having me arrested.

2. I managed to rein in my wandering mind long enough this afternoon to combine chopped red cabbage, shredded green cabbage, grated carrot, and chopped green onion into a bowl. For a dressing, I combined sesame oil, olive oil, brown sugar, soy sauce, minced ginger, minced garlic, and rice vinegar and shook them up. Before applying the dressing, I chopped walnuts, put them in the salad and, after I dressed the salad, I topped in with toasted sesame seeds.  I then brought this Asian Slaw to family dinner. 

3. Late last week, Cosette and Taylor began to get the word out that they are now engaged and beginning to plan a wedding. Tonight's family dinner celebrated their news. 

We started with one of the blended mojitos Carol whipped up and enjoyed baguette slices with roasted red pepper bruschetta for an appetizer. Paul and Carol collaborated on making sausage with garden fresh vegetables in a foil packet and Paul grilled them. The Asian slaw I brought was a side. Christy made a light limoncello shortcake icebox cake with fresh raspberries for dessert. We raised a toast to Taylor and Cosette, wishing them the very best. 

Conversation veered all over the place: What are Cosette and Taylor's plans for a wedding ceremony? A reception? Is everyone happy that basketball players no longer wear short shorts on the court? What's the future of pandas? Will Christy take in a second dog? (Her answer is NO!) Was Yacht Rock appropriate betrothal music? Why didn't we listen, instead, to Flogging Molly in advance of their August 22nd concert at Spokane's Knitting Factory? Ha!

Three Beautiful Things 08-19-2023: Remembering Joni's Mother, A Beer at Moon Time Takes Me to Eugene, Yakkin' at The Lounge

1. If you live in North Idaho/Eastern Washington, you know what I'm talking about. Wildfires in this region have destroyed people's houses and other structures and polluted the region's air with smoke.

Because of the terrible air quality, I thought long and hard about whether I would venture out today, as planned, and drive Ed to Post Falls for the Celebration of Life for our classmate Joni's mother.

I decided to go and it was not only the right decision, but a great one.

Ed and I met Stu in the parking lot and got settled into a pew at Peace Lutheran Church.

Joni's mother, Mary Margaret Carlisle, who went by Maggie or Margie, died about four weeks ago and as soon as we knew when and where her memorial would be held, Ed, Scott, and I planned to go.

About twelve years ago, Maggie had planned out her memorial service. She selected readings from the Bible and decided what hymns she wanted. Her children, long with the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church followed her wishes to the letter and so the service was not only a memorial, but an expression of Maggie Carlisle's personality and her love for others.

2. After the service, Ed, Scott, and I joined the reception in the Fellowship Hall and had a good time talking to other classmates and visiting with some of Maggie's peers. 

As Ed and I left the church, I suggested we stop in a Moon Time for a beer before heading back over the hill and we did. I was happy that Moon Time had Ninkasi's Maiden the Shade IPA on tap and enjoyed going on a pint long trip back about twelve years when I first started really enjoying Ninkasi's beers in Eugene. 

3. Back home, I spent time with Gibbs, Copper, and Luna and then headed up the The Lounge. I sat next to Ryan at the bar and he told me about his recent trip to Ireland, his having just heard Green Sky Bluegrass in Missoula, and he told me he thought he might go to Missoula on Aug 20th to hear Flogging Molly, an idea I strongly encouraged him to follow through on!

It was a quiet evening at The Lounge which meant I got to yak for an extended period of time with Cas. We got to discuss our Fantasy Baseball League, tell each other a bunch of stories involving people from Kellogg, and we talked about the world of boxers and boxing in the 1970s and 1980s when both of us followed the sport more closely and developed some fun memories and recalled some of them tonight. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-18-2023: Hash, Burgers and The Lounge, Balancing Light and Heavy Foods BONUS! A Limerick by Stu

1. As planned yesterday, I did turn Thursday night's tostado into Friday morning's hash. I forgot to include bacon, but I thought the combination of sesame seeded fried potatoes, southwest seasoned black beans with onion and green peppers, and a fried egg on top was delicious. I hope next time I'll remember the bacon. 

2.  I had a grand old time in uptown Kellogg, starting around 4:30 when Ed picked me up and we joined John H., Tim and Cindy S, and Doug and Eileen J for burgers at the Elks. After we finished our dinner, we all migrated across McKinley and took a table together at The Lounge and had a rousing time with stories about everything from Cindy's cheerleader accident at the Univ of Idaho to Ed's, Mike's, and my good fortune in New York City to that harrowing day when Ed fell off the roof at the Tall Pine. 

3. Back home, I watched another episode of Chopped from about four years ago. 

One of the competing chefs, the Korean owner of White Tiger, a Korean restaurant in Brooklyn, paid homage in the entree round to her German husband by preparing a plate of pork prepared in a German style.

She made it through the entree round, but in the final assessment of hers and the other contestant's three plates, the judges agreed that her German entree plate had been too heavy and they chopped her.

This got me thinking about the history of meals, stretching back to my childhood, in our family and where I'm at with food today.

I've been thinking a lot about contrasts in flavors and mouth feel the last few days -- contrasting, say, sweet with salty, cool with spicy heat, soft with crunchy, etc.

Now I'm thinking a lot about dinners with light and heavy food. It's a continuing concern of the judge's on Chopped. They never critique an appetizer, entree, or dessert for being too light, but are quick to criticize a plate of food that is too heavy.

For me, heaviness in food is not only a matter of the food's weight, but also it richness. While the flavors of rich foods like prime rib, cheesy potatoes, and, say, macaroni and cheese are wonderful, when there's too much richness, I leave the table feeling more sluggish than nourished, more sleepy than energized. 

I enjoy rich (heavy) foods more in the colder months, but even in the winter, I enjoy meals much more that either lean toward lighter foods or are nicely balanced between the heavy and the light. 

While we're on the subject of food, here's a limerick by Stu:

No way that this food is a dud. 

Grows better from dirt than the mud. 

Loaded up it’s a treat, 

Goes with eggs, fish or meat. 

Cannot beat the great taste of the spud! 

National Potato Day

Three Beautiful Things 08-17-2023: On Being Pretty Good, Turning Tostados into Hash, Thank You Bridgit

1. Over the last, oh, let's say twenty years, I've given a lot of time over to doing things I enjoy and tried not to pressure myself into thinking I had to get really good at them. My ZOOM mates and I spent some time in our last meeting talking about this very thing -- we were talking about our lack of interest in "monetizing" things we do out of enjoyment of them. 

I know that I'm not a superb writer, photographer, actor, cook, movie reviewer, beer taster, or, well,  anything I do as an amateur. I don't think I've embarrassed myself (too often, at least) on stage, in the kitchen, behind the lens, and doing other things, but when I read really good writers, see superb photographs, watch cooks prepare superb food, I'm not in their league, nor do I need to be.

In baseball, a ton of players have played the game well, but aren't in the Hall of Fame.

Often they are said to be in the Hall of Pretty Good.

I think that's a fine place to be. 

So, I plug along.

Today, I thought about how frequently, it seems, on Chopped the competitors say they will turn the ingredients into a ragout or a ragu.

So, I devoted a good chunk of time today to learning more about the stew known as ragout.

I also began looking more broadly into the different possibilities for making the pasta sauce known as ragu. 

I need to write down my thoughts about the ragout and. ragu or else what I'm thinking about will disappear in the foggy wetlands of my short term memory.

2. Another thing I've been contemplating is going off script with our HelloFresh bags. 

This evening, I followed HelloFresh's recipe and directions for Smashed Black Bean Tostadas, and then, once I'd finished HelloFresh's way to prepare them, I fried two eggs and put an egg on top of each of my tostados.

It was a simple move, inspired by a Chopped episode I watched that focused on brunch and how a good yolk-y egg enhances any number of entrees, entrees from a variety of different countries' cuisine. 

I liked what I did.

I have leftover beans and cooked green peppers and onion seasoned with HelloFresh's southwest paste and southwest spice blend.

My plan now is to fry potatoes and some bacon and turn the leftover tostado ingredients into a kind of TexMex black bean hash. 

3. I am very grateful for a post Bridgit made on our Westminster Study Group page. Right now, Bridgit's mother is very ill and in agony. Bridgit and her siblings are also agonizing and very upset about their mother's suffering and the inadequate medical attention she's received.

In the midst of all this trauma, Bridgit took time to go back and read blog posts I made as our mother was dying, and, not only quoted some of what I wrote in August 2017, but wrote about how much she appreciated knowing that Christy, Carol, Paul, and I, as well as other family members and friends of Mom's, were at Mom's side during her time in the nursing home, except at night, and gathered around her bed to bid her farewell right after she died, not long after Carol and Paul had been singing to her and had gone home.  

Bridgit profoundly understood our devotion to Mom and, again, I'm very grateful that she wrote her appreciation and understanding. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-16-2023: This Old House, Getting Off Script, Family Dinner on the Anniversary of Losing Mom

1. This house Debbie and I live in has been in our family for sixty-one years. It's solidly built.  This week, it has stayed fairly comfortable for much of the day during this current four day heat wave. I'm grateful this heat wave has been relatively short, that it looks like the days will start to cool down on Friday. I'm also grateful that Debbie and I decided to go all out and have a heating/cooling system installed in our house in the spring of 2022. By the time this week's temperatures went over the 95 degree mark and began to hit 100, the sturdy walls of our house needed help keeping the house's interior cool and the cooling system has worked superbly.

2. I've never been a very talented actor. I know that. I was fortunate, though, when we lived in Eugene, that I was invited to play small roles in a handful of plays and I loved being involved in these productions.

I learned early on that a character, however large or small its role in a play, cannot truly come to life until the actor knows the characters' lines, is off script, and is free to actually act. 

Watching a few episodes of Chopped today, I thought how it's much the same thing with cooking. Until I know food and seasonings so well that I don't need a recipe, I won't be truly cooking. I'm not even close to that point right now. 

I've been thinking a lot about how cautious I am with seasonings, especially when cooking for family dinner. I'm always concerned that I'll overdo the turmeric or lemon juice or black pepper. I realize that much of my life, growing up here in Kellogg, eating fast food and dining hall food in college, and going out to eat at many restaurants that serve food pitched to the middle of the flavor spectrum, that I am inexperienced with flavors and, when I try to cook with new and different seasonings,  have become way too dependent on recipes to dictate the proportions of my seasonings.

Watching the chefs on Chopped, I love how they fire herbs and spices into their dishes without the aid of measuring cups or spoons because they know how these seasonings work, they can anticipate and imagine how their creations will taste, and they know how to balance, say, bitterness and sweetness, heat and coolness, and so on.

I'm not literate in very many cuisines. I should watch/rewatch Chopped episodes with a notebook and pen and, at the very least, write down the names of dishes they prepare. I've never, for example, prepared a ragout at home (or ordered it in restaurant), and, when I start thinking about cooking at home, it's a good example of a dish that never crosses my mind to prepare. 

There are countless other dishes like this that the Chopped chefs know, that are ingrained in their mental inventory of cooking possibilities.

I'd like my mental inventory of possible dishes to grow, if possible.

3.  Over the last few weeks, different residents of the Silver Valley have been giving Front Porch talks uptown on Wednesday at 6:00.  These talks are occurring at the same time that a Smithsonian exhibit, Spark, is on display uptown. 

Tonight, Carol and Paul were the Front Porch speakers, but with the temperatures still in the mid-90s when they spoke, I played it safe and did not attend.

Today, though, is also the six year anniversary of the day Mom died.

Christy suggested that we got together somewhere in the Silver Valley after Paul and Carol finished their presentation and have dinner and raise a toast to Mom.

So we did that.

Carol, Christy, Paul, Molly, Brian, and I met at the Broken Wheel for dinner and cocktails and we not only raised a toast to Mom and talked about her, we also tried to sort out some of the details of Dad's life in the Silver Valley and of our Grandma Woolum and her life back in Tennessee, later in the Silver Valley, and, finally in Spokane. 

We couldn't remember everything, but we pieced together several things as well as we could.

Carol and Paul had told family history stories during their presentation and, in that spirit, we continued such conversation as a way of paying tribute to Mom's life (and Dad's and Grandma's) six years after she died peacefully here in Kellogg. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-15-2023: Reflecting on Restaurant Work, Trying to Learn from Watching *Chopped*, A Day in My Head

1. After spending a part of Sunday and much of the day Monday preparing and cooking food for my contributions to Monday's family dinner, I was wiped out today. I didn't think my body was very tired. Nothing I did in the kitchen taxed me physically. 

I was mentally fatigued. Preparing four different styles of chicken wings, baking one batch and frying the rest, and figuring out how to arrange the food I fixed and that Carol and Molly contributed into a convenient buffet and figuring out what dishware to use required concentration, a bit of imagination, and some calculation. 

Back in the olden days when I taught writing classes, I organized some of my sections around the question of work and working and the course in American Working Class Literature & Composition that Margaret and I taught as a team focused all the time on work, working conditions, the demands of work, and the nature of many jobs themselves. 

Many of the students in these courses either were currently working in the present or had worked in the past in bars, pubs, taprooms, cafes, and restaurants. So did Margaret.  Without self-pity, but in plain truthful stories and with clear minded analysis, these students wrote about the mental demands of their jobs, the focus required, the remembering, the reading of customers, especially the grabbers and pinchers, and the fielding of requests, demands, and complaints. 

These food service jobs required intelligence, savvy, suppressing feelings, and stamina.

It was draining.

So, here I was, drained and I didn't have that much to keep track of or  a single difficult person to deal with who was eating the food I prepared.

I thought a lot, as I rested, about Billy McCallum, the owner and chef at Billy Mac's, one of my spiritual centers when I lived in Eugene. I thought about his dedication to preparing all his menu offerings, ranging from salads to soups to steaks to sandwiches to pasta dishes to fish to desserts, from scratch. I sat here and thought about all the work Billy did to prepare for customers, before his bar and grill opened, and marveled at all the great food he and his other cooks prepared in a tight, narrow kitchen. 

Eventually, physical health problems led to Bill Mac closing his establishment in 2021 and retiring. 

But today, knowing Billy McCallum not only ran and cooked for his restaurant, but ran a catering business, too, and knowing how efficiently he cooked and plated food for his very busy restaurant -- on any given Thursday, the people I dined with on Thursdays at Bill Mac's took up anywhere from eight to fifteen seats at a table --, I thought how exhausted he must have been night after night after night.

And here I was. Ha! Exhausted -- and all I did was spend parts of two days fixing food for a small family dinner. 

2. Yeah. I never told anyone I was thinking this, but when I retired, but was teaching on a very limited and part time basis, I thought from time to time that I might enjoy applying for a job doing food preparation for someone -- mostly chopping. A friend of mine in Eugene has a top-notch catering business and from time to time he would post that he needed food prep help in his kitchen. 

His postings emphasized the requirement that the person doing this work need to be able to work fast. 

That requirement moved me to put any thoughts I had about doing part time food prep work to rest.

I'm slow in all parts of my life, but especially in the kitchen. I don't trust myself to chop, cut, dice, mince, season, or do anything with food quickly. I have a wandering mind. I need to slow down in order to concentrate. I need to work slowly to keep everything straight if I'm doing multiple tasks at once in the kitchen.

My lack of alacrity is, oddly enough, one of the reasons I took a long hiatus from watching the cooking competition show Chopped. 

Watching the competing chefs forced by the clock to work fast, run around the pantry, sweat, and often stress out made me stress out and I don't really enjoy the competition angle of Chopped that much.

But, this evening, with cooking on my mind, I opened up the Food Network app on the Vizio and watched three episodes of Chopped.

I endured my anxiety as I watched the competitors cut fast, prance around the pantry, dash to the ice cream machine, frantically shove things in and pull them out of the oven, drag meat grinders, food processors, blenders, and other appliances to their food station, and sweat. I almost vicariously passed out.

But, for me, while I think Chopped is kind of a gimmicky show because of the absurd combinations of foods the chefs have to work with after they open their baskets, I very much enjoy listening to the judges talk about cooking, especially when they praise competitors for having elevated the products they had to work with.

Most of all, I try to learn and remember what these judges say about the relationship between flavors and textures in the meals they judge.

I'm not very good at it, but I'm always trying to figure out contrasts in the food I prepare for family dinner or when I give out assignments.

So, Monday night, to me, the central food item of our dinner was the hot wings. Because these wings would be at least moderately spicy and because it's hot outside, I wanted to have cool (or cold) items to go along with the hot wings. That's why I assigned Carol to make a cold Mediterranean soup and why I made a cold Mediterranean tomato salad.

I wanted to contrast the hot wings and these cold sides.

I also needed to have wings available that weren't hot (or spicy).

At first, I thought I'd make teriyaki wings, but my taste buds' imagination didn't think the sweet, brown sugar-y, and soy sauce saltiness of teriyaki would pair well with the Mediterranean sides. I liked the contrast between the hot wings and terriyaki wings, but I decided to make Mediterranean flavors a kind of flavor thread that would be present in the not hot wings and that would contrast with the hot wings.

So, I made lemon garlic wings and Mediterraneans wings (whose flavors may have been too much like the soup and salad). 

I listened intently to the judges critique the flavors -- what complimented what and what complemented what -- where were their consistent flavor themes, where were there contrasts that balanced each other out.  

And what did the judges have to say about similar and contrasting textures? Was there a pleasing variety of textures in Monday's family dinner? I'm not sure.

3.  Well, for four days this week, our area has joined the many other places in the USA under the siege of a heat wave (are we in a heat dome?). I can't be out in the heat and I'm very grateful that Debbie and I had a heating/cooling system installed in our house in the spring of '22. 

I rested, worked puzzles, munched on the ten to twelve chicken pieces left over from Monday night, thought a lot about cooking, and watched Chopped until after 1 a.m. 

I tried to make the most of staying indoors. Whatever this day lacked in excitement, I made up for it in comfort and the pleasure of living in my head, enjoying teaching memories, focusing on gratitude, and daydreaming about future days in the kitchen.  

Three Beautiful Things 08-14-2023: Frying Wings in the Morning, Chicken Wing Dinner with Mediterranean Sides, The Cucumber Moscow Mule Rocked My World

1. I'd read the warnings that North Idaho would be under an extreme heat warning this week through, I think, this Thursday. 

Well.

I had about 60+ chicken party wings thawed and I'd decided on Sunday how many wings I would prepare of each style I'd decided to fix for family dinner.

Normally, when I cook chicken wings, I fry the chicken (in lots of butter), prepare whatever sauce I'm going to coat the chicken pieces with, and, when I'm done frying, immediately coat the wings and serve them.

This morning, I decided to do much of the cooking before the extreme heat settled in, so I got out the cast iron skillet and the cast iron Dutch oven and fried up four batches of wings. I had one more batch to go, but this batch was marinating in a ziplock bag and I would be baking this batch later.

Hoping this all worked out, I refrigerated the pieces I fried, planning to warm them late in the afternoon in the oven, setting it to the lowest possible temperature, after I had finished preparing the oven baked wings. 

2. When I planned this dinner, I thought we'd be eating on the patio. About midafternoon, I texted Molly, Christy, Carol, and, by accident, Paul Richter, instead of Paul Roberts (!). Paul Richter texted me back, wish our family a successful dinner, and made sure I knew that I had erroneously included him in my message. 

But, I digress.

I texted everyone to suggest that rather than eat on the patio in 90+ degree heat, that we eat in our air conditioned living room. 

Everyone liked that idea.

When I thought we'd be on the patio, I planned for a meal where the wings would be served a room temperature and we'd have cold Mediterranean food to compliment the wings.

So, I just moved the patio into our living room. I put a cooler stocked with Heidelberg and Polar seltzer water on the living room floor along with a waste receptacle to throw chicken bones into.

I made three kinds of wings. About half of them were hot wings made with Frank's Original Hot Sauce. I think Franks' sauce is perfect for hot wings because it's a moderately hot pepper sauce. I like how Frank's gives me the pleasure of heat without burning off my lips or sending me screaming to the kitchen for ice water.

Christy, however, like many people I know, cannot eat food that has heat. 

No problem.

I decided to complement the hot wings with a batch of Mediterranean wings. These wings had marinated overnight in olive oil, cumin, oregano, paprika, lemon juice, and garlic. I baked them and served them garnished with cilantro and feta cheese.

I love lemon chicken, so I made a lemon, butter, garlic sauce and coated another batch of wings with it.

I saved out a small batch of wings to be naked, unseasoned, uncoated, just in case anyone wanted to take a break from the other wings.

So, in my mind, Mediterranean sides would work well with the Mediterranean and the lemon garlic chicken and, I hoped, compliment the hot wings as well.

So, I assigned Carol the task of making Cold Chickpea Tahini soup. 

I had been in the mood for cold soup for the past week and Carol did a superb job making this soup, an explosion of Middle East flavors and textures. It was our appetizer. 

I also decided that I wanted a NOT green salad to accompany our wings and I turned to my very trustworthy America's Test Kitchen book of Mediterranean recipes and found a tomato salad that was just what I wanted -- cool, flavorful, a contrast to the hot wings and a compliment to the other wings.

Carol gave me tomatoes from her garden. The salad was dressed with a combination of oil, cumin, garlic, fresh oregano, juice drained from the tomatoes with salt, green onion, and plain Greek yogurt. I topped the salad with feta cheese and made chopped cilantro available for those who wanted it.  It tasted about 400 times better than it looked. (I would have been chopped thanks to lousy presentation.) (I also know now that all of us like cilantro -- so, I won't be cautious with it again.) 

I also set out celery sticks with little dipping bowls and the choice of Blue Cheese and Tzatziki Ranch Dressing, thinking the Tzatziki dressing might go well with the Mediterranean and lemon wings, knowing both would work with the hot wings. 

Molly brought Butter Flake Rolls that went really well with the chicken and the soup and salad.

3. Now let me rewind to our cocktail for tonight.

I assigned Christy to make a pitcher cocktail. 

As I looked at a range of possibilities of pitcher cocktails, the phrase "cool as a cucumber" popped to mind when I discovered a recipe for Cucumber Moscow Mule Pitcher. I suddenly remembered a session of craft ale enjoyment at 16 Tons about ten years ago and Colin was pouring beer and started raving about a gin and tonic with muddled cucumber he'd recently enjoyed at a Japanese tavern in town, Izakaya Meiji Company.

I thought -- hmmm -- it's going to be hot outside, everyone at dinner enjoys Moscow Mules -- why not have Moscow Mules with the added refreshment and excellent flavor of cucumber?

Christy's Cucumber Moscow Mule Pitcher was the perfect cocktail to kick off this evening's chicken wing extravaganza. 

I hope we'll return to it again. 

I haven't seen Colin for nearly ten years, but I sure thought of him tonight and if I were in Eugene and if he were still working at 16 Tons and if I saw him, I would thank him for putting the beauty of muddled cucumbers in a vodka or gin drink in my consciousness.  And, just as he did after drinking the aforementioned gin and tonic, I'd do my best imitation of Colin flipping out over the joy and pleasure of a great cocktail! 

I went to Beach Bum Bakery this morning and bought a half a dozen cookies: three Ginger Molasses and three Chocolate Chip. 

Awesome dessert. 

This was the perfect time for me to host Family Dinner.

Having the house and the kitchen to myself, it didn't matter if this chicken wing dinner took me two days to prepare, didn't matter that I was working on something in the kitchen for about eight hours today. 

I'm slow in the kitchen. 

I like to take my time. 

I really enjoy cooking chicken wings and trying out new styles. Before today, I'd never made lemon garlic or Mediterranean wings. 

Today I prepared just over sixty pieces of chicken.

I'd say, at the end of the night, about ten pieces remained. 

Just as I had hoped!

Everyone dug in seemed to enjoy this chicken wing and cold Mediterranean soup and salad blowout! 

Three Beautiful Things 08-13-2023: Solemn ZOOMing, Family Dinner Prep, My Slipping Powers of Memory

1. ZOOMing with Bill, Diane, and Bridgit was solemn today, but the honesty of our discussion was most admirable. As is often the case, our discussion was about life in our sixties. Diane is working her way through all that she learned from her recent cancer surgery. Bill's mother is in her eighties and her welfare presents Bill with numerous challenges, as does his own compromised health. Bridgit looks forward to retirement and is doing all she can to do superb work on her job while also dealing with her own physical challenges and keeping a caring eye on her mother. I continue to weigh what I do or don't want to do as far as treating my kidneys. 

Solemn, but not depressing. If we'd pretended like everything was peach-keen, that would have been depressing. We didn't do that.

We discussed our various difficulties and challenges honestly, without self-pity. 

2. I made some very good progress today in getting ready to host Monday's family dinner. The food is ready to cook. Aside from tomatoes I'm picking up from Carol, I have all the ingredients I need right here. I have an order in at Beach Bum Bakery that the bakery can fill. 

Stay tuned. In my next blog post, I will reveal what food kept me busy today and will occupy much of my day on Monday.

3. The reach of my memory diminishes a bit more all the time. It can be frustrating not to be able to recall titles of movies I recently watched or the details of books I've read. 

In many ways, this blog is a memory aid. Countless times I've tried to remember when certain things happened or what movies I've seen or haven't seen and going back to posts on this blog has helped fill in any number of blanks.

There is a kind of funny positive side to not remembering things the way I used to.

I enjoy putting on PlutoTV and watching reruns of the World Poker Tour tv coverage of the tournaments the WPT hosts.

Today, for example, while I worked the NYTimes Sunday crossword puzzle, I had on the 2012 Five Diamond World Poker Classic on the Vizio. 

I recognized the players at the final table. I knew I had watched this tournament play out before, probably three or four years ago.

I had no memory, however, of who won the tournament.

So, today, I enjoyed the drama of the final table and admired the skill and courage of the players as if I'd never seen it before. 

I used to remember almost everything, it seemed -- for better or worse.

I haven't completely lost my memory, that's for sure, but my memory bank account is not nearly as full as it used to be. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-12-2023: Debbie Will See Another Show, My Leg Seems Recovered, Family Dinner Preparations

1. Josh enters lotteries for less expensive New York City theater tickets. He scored two tickets for the August 13th matinee showing of the Tony Award winning musical, Kimberly Akimbo. Debbie and Adrienne will see it together. 

Debbie's trip to NY has, in her words, "been fantastic in about five different ways." In other words, much more great stuff has happened than she expected. 

Tuesday she'll board a train and head to Molly and Hiram's house in Woodbridge, Virginia.

2. I woke up today thinking the leg I injured when I fell was feeling a lot better. 

And I was right.

I made several painless trips up and down the basement stairs.

Once the sun went down, I went for short walk, just to see how it would feel, and my stroll to the four-way stop at Cameron and Bunker and on home again was also painless. 

3. I'm hosting family dinner on Monday. I started preparing for it today and will do a lot more on Sunday and Monday. (I'm not revealing the dinner I have in mind!) For me, hosting family dinner without Debbie around is a sizable task and I don't want to try to do all the preparation on Monday. By spreading the preparation out, I can enjoy our dinner together more. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-11-2023: Morning Cooking, Classic Screwball Comedy, Poker in Italy

1. When I'm holding down the fort, I prefer cooking in the early part of the day. So this morning, I opened a HelloFresh bag, chopped Brussels sprouts and cooked them, toasted a packet of panko with green onion, boiled spaghetti, and made a lemony white sauce and enjoyed Lemony Spaghetti with Brussels Sprouts Sprinkled with Scallions and Toasted Panko for lunch with half of what I fixed packed in the icebox for Saturday.

2. I returned to Vizio University today and decided that it might be fun to watch a Preston Sturges screwball comedy. I rented Lady Eve, a light and wacky romp starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, in an implausible and fun-filled tale on a luxury liner about a wealthy snake expert (Henry Fonda) who's been on the Amazon for a year colliding with the a trio of card sharps, fronted by Barbara Stanwyck, who plan to fleece the naive scientist for thousands of dollars. Things get complicated when Stanwyck's seductive ploy, against her will, turns into an authentic love affair. Soon this screwball tale takes has more ups and downs than a Six Flags roller coaster and the wild ride to come is dizzying and a lot of fun.

3. I wasn't quite ready to call it a night, so I relaxed until after midnight by watching a WTP poker tournament from about 2012 that took place in Venice, Italy at the Casino di Venezia. The poker was fun to watch, but almost as fun was being inside this majestic casino, the world's oldest, and having a chance to enjoy the romantic beauty of Venice itself. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-10-2023: Good Recovery, Carol and Paul Perform in the Park, Debbie Goes to NYC

1. I really figured, given how hobbled I was on Wednesday, after falling, that today would be another day of limited mobility. But, no! Evidently, sleep and rest and some time for my leg to recover from the shock of the insult it suffered helped it come around and I moved around the house pretty well today.

It seemed like the fall also fatigued me -- again, I think it was a shock to my system. To Copper's delight, I spent a few hours on the bed, much of it asleep, and Copper got to spend a good chunk of time right where he wants to be.

2. It was a little bit uncomfortable getting in and out of the car, but I managed and I went to the Kellogg City Park and listened to Carol, Paul, and Friends perform as part of the Thursday evening Music in the Park series. They were doing hits from the seventies when I arrived and then transitioned into gospel music. I was concerned that if I took a chair, I might have trouble getting out of it. So I found a good spot to lean against the fence that surrounds the swimming pool. 

Carol, Paul, and their friends had a great time performing and their sense of fun and enjoyment was contagious -- especially during the seventies part of their show, audience members clapped, sang along, and laughed. They were having a great time.

I left a bit early. I needed to make a quick stop at Yoke's and get home and fix dinner.

3. I get things mixed up, so I hope I have the date correct. If I do, today promised to be a most stimulating day for Debbie. She and Josh went into Manhattan and visited the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and then went to Theater at St. Clement's, a combination theater and Episcopal church, to see an Off-Broadway show. John Rubinstein was playing Dwight D. Eisenhower in a one man play entitled, Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground. 

Sounds like a perfect day to me. 

I'm eager to learn more from Debbie about her day in New York City. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-09-2023: I Fell Today, Copper Needed Special Attention, Dinner Was Already Prepared BONUS: A Limerick by Stu

1. As I grow older and gradually less steady on my feet, I am mindful almost all the time of my immediate environment and am on the lookout for any number of things that might cause me to fall. 

This morning, I wasn't mindful.

I fell.

Gibbs was in the back yard barking and I thought he'd barked enough so I took a rawhide chew out into the yard, hoping he'd want to come in the house and enjoy it.

My focus was on Gibbs. 

My mind wandered away from what might cause me to trip and fall.

Sure enough, as I turned to head back up the back porch, I forgot that last summer we raised the landing on the bottom of the porch. Now it's a small step up from the yard to the landing and onto the porch.

I tripped over the landing and fell forward, lightly scraping a knee and an elbow, but I also pulled muscles in my upper left leg. 

I spent much of the day treating my leg with ice packs. I managed to do the dishes, change the bed sheets, carry Copper upstairs from his hideout in the basement, and do other little jobs around the house, but I hobbled. 

All because my mind wandered from watching where I was going.

Yes, my leg is sore, but the good news is that I didn't hit my head on anything, I had little trouble getting back on my feet, and I got through the day all right. I hope my leg returns to normal in the next few days.

2. Normally, when Debbie is home, she and Gibbs sleep upstairs and Copper and Luna join me in in the bedroom for the night.

To keep Gibbs calm, when Debbie's gone, I bring him into the bedroom to sleep with me.

I put Copper and Luna in the Vizio room where they have comfortable places to lie down, where their food and water are available, and where they have a litter box.

This arrangement stresses out Copper. 

Today, after I carried him up from the basement, I put him in the bedroom, right where he wanted to be, and decided not to include Luna. 

I lay down with him and was this ever just what he wanted.

He pressed close to me, a rare occurrence. I petted him, he purred, and, for the first time ever, he kneaded my arms, and moved even closer to me. 

Then, as if he'd been awake all night, Copper fell into a deep relaxed sleep. 

I worked the Wednesday NYTimes crossword puzzle and marveled at how much Copper needed this time on the bed with me,  alone. 

3. When I prepared the baked beans I contributed to family dinner on Tuesday, I also opened one of our HelloFresh bags and made two zucchini flatbreads with lemon ricotta cheese, grape tomatoes, honey, and chili flakes. 

I was very happy today that I'd made this food ahead of time. It was much easier on me and on my sore leg not to have to cook a meal tonight, to have food prepared and ready to eat. 

Here's a limerick by Stu

Was a song, sung by Nat, and a hit.

Summer time, talked of beer and it fit!

Can seem a bit hazy,

Talking days that are crazy.

Kicking back doesn't hurt you a bit.

National Lazy Day

Three Beautiful Things 08-08-2023: Home Duties, Baked Beans, Molly's Birthday Party and Oregon Coast Stories

1. I mentioned yesterday that I made a list on Monday of things to get done on Tuesday.  For reasons that I can't explain and that no doubt defy rationality, I, well abhor is too strong of word, but I resist making to do lists (I'm fine with grocery lists). My mind, though, is wandering a lot these days. I'm not hanging on to things I think of as firmly as I used to. So, I relented. I made a list -- and I completed all but one task -- I'll do it, change the bed sheets, on Wednesday.

So, I got my laundry folded and put away, took the cat food cans to the basement, brought paper towels upstairs, emptied and then filled the dishwasher, cleaned counters, prepared the beans I would be taking to family dinner, prepared the HelloFresh meal of zucchini, tomato, and lemon ricotta cheese flatbreads to snack on over the next couple of days, and other things.

I enjoyed working in the kitchen with my laptop tuned into an episode of High Stakes Poker and especially enjoyed watching kidney transplant recipient Jennifer Harman play very well for most of the program. I hadn't watched her in action for a while and it's fun to see how she plays her cards and to watch her chew Double Bubble Bubble Gum and blow bubbles at the table.

2. The recipe I use whenever my sisters assign me to bring beans to family dinner is a slow cooker recipe. 

For flavor, the recipe is superb. After I soaked a pound of pinto beans overnight, today I put the beans in the crock pot with a chopped onion, a quarter cup of brown sugar, a third of a cup of molasses, and six cups of water. Later, after the beans became tender, I added Dijon mustard.  

This recipe is simple to make, but even though it's always a success at family dinner, I'm not happy with how liquid-y the beans turn out. I like baked beans to be thick and creamy and I've never achieved that when following this recipe. Today, for example, about an hour before leaving the house, I poured the beans into a Dutch oven, brought them to a boil, and then turned the heat way down, left the lid off, and hoped to cook the water down. It worked pretty well, but doing this risks making the beans mushy.

So (thank you for sticking with me if you are still reading this), I'm going to start looking for oven baked beans and see if I can keep the great flavor of the molasses, brown sugar, onion, and Dijon mustard, but also cook a creamier batch of baked beans that are thicker. 

3. I transferred the slightly too liquid-y baked beans into a bowl and put them in a box along with a party sized bag of Lays potato chips and a six pack of Heidelberg tall boys and drove over the Carol and Paul's house to contribute to and enjoy the celebration of Molly's birthday.

The menu for tonight's family dinner was perfect.

Carol made mojitos for tonight's cocktail -- and I offered up the Heidelberg alternative. Paul grilled hamburgers. Christy made potato salad and brought two bags of Tim's chips, including a new product, Tim's Sasquatch Surprise chips. Carol presented a plate of tomatoes from her garden, lettuce from her garden, sliced onions, and dill pickle to put on our burgers. 

This was an awesome meal and, to top it off, Zoe fulfilled Molly's request to have mango cream puffs rather than a cake. These cream puffs were just the way I like them: smallish, light, and very tasty.

Dinner conversation centered for significant stretches of time on our family's past visits to the Oregon coast. The Roberts have a trip planned to Rockaway Beach over Labor Day and so tonight many stories emerged about the 2009 trip that Mom, the Roberts, Christy, Everett, and I took to Rockaway Beach. 

I didn't witness nor take part in much of the hilarity my sisters and nieces laughed out loud about at dinner because I spent quite a bit of time on that trip by myself, visiting state parks, doing some mild hiking, and taking photographs. 

I had just been celebrating with my Class of 72 friends in Lincoln City. It was the year of our 55th birthdays. Debbie was traveling between New York, North Carolina, Chicagoland, and Texas. 

Later in the month, I flew out to Chicago. Debbie had the Sube with her and asked me to come to Chicago so we could bring the car back to Eugene together. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-07-2023: So the Tire Had a Nail After All!, Lunch with Jeff at Cougar Bay, Back to Vizio University

1. So the Sube's right front tire was losing air and a week ago I took the car down to Silver Valley Tire. One of their guys checked out the tire and didn't find any damage. Jeremy explained to me that the problem might be with corrosion on the wheel and advised me to keep an eye on the tire.

I did just that.

And, by Sunday, the tire was looking low to me again.

So I returned first thing this morning to Silver Valley Tire. Jeremy took a look at the tire, measured the air pressure, and confirmed that it was low again.

Then he said, "Let's have one of the guys take another look at it."

This sounded better than having the wheel replaced!

Sure enough, as can happen, the guy last Monday missed seeing a small nail in the tire.

Jeremy brought me the small nail, told me it was the culprit and that his guy was repairing the tire.

When the car was done, Jeremy handed me the key. I asked what I owed him and he said, "Nothing. We got the nail out and your tire is fixed."

This was, by my count, the third time Jeremy has said, "No charge" after his shop did a small-ish job for me.

Yes, I had paid for the work last Monday when the tire was first checked, but I would have gladly paid again for having the tire repaired today. 

I appreciated Jeremy's gesture a lot.

2. I brought home the Sube, but for my trip to CdA to see Jeff Steve at his family's house overlooking Cougar Bay on Lake Coeur d'Alene, I rumbled over the pass in the Camry.

Jeff traveled from Ventura this weekend to participate in Coeur d'Alene's annual Art on the Green, an arts festival that his mom and dad helped found fifty years ago.  

Jeff's flight back to LA would be leaving this evening. Jeff was working remotely today, but invited me to come over and join him during his lunch break at 11:30. He fixed us a delicious Cobb salad and we refreshed ourselves on his deck overlooking the lake with a couple of cans of Deschutes' premium IPA, Fresh Squeezed. 

I learned more about Jeff's work in Ventura, not only as a project manager for a law firm, but also the kinds of orders he's been getting as a boat builder and how another project he's been working on is shaping up. 

We also reflected back on the days, starting in 1985, when we both lived in Eugene, when our apartments were very close to each other (but not the same building), and what a vibrant time that was -- yes, for me, a very confusing time, but confusion has its own energy, and it was fun remembering the fun things we did and the great people we knew -- Doug, Lorraine, Scott, Dave, Sue Ann, Debbie, and others.  Movies, walks, activism, dinners, Keystone Cafe, deep conversations, music, and more. I sure enjoyed bringing some of that past back into the present with Jeff today. 

3. As I settled in for the evening, I returned to Vizio University -- and the Criterion Channel. I was feeling a bit too tired to watch a movie, but I was eager to go searching for Criterion Channel interviews and to listen to experts in the world of cinema and television.

Currently, there is a collection of Stanley Kubrick movies from the 1950s available on the Criterion Channel.

I visited this collection and to my utter delight, Criterion had posted a video interview with David Simon, a creator of The Wire, discussing Kubrick's intense WWI movie, Paths of Glory.

David Simon's focus in this interview, and in The Wire, is on the relationship between institutions and power. In Paths of Glory, the institution under examination is the French army and its bureaucracy and Simon explains how he sees power coursing through the army's hierarchy, how it's a means of self-protection for those at the top and a means of dehumanizing and exploiting the soldiers on the ground. In the middle of the bureaucracy, and caught between the generals and the foot soldiers, is Col. Dax, played brilliantly by Kirk Douglas. 

I thoroughly enjoyed David Simon's reading of Paths of Glory and, maybe even more, enjoyed his discussion of how this movie guided him as he wrote episodes for The Wire. In a way, The Wire was Simon's way of reworking Paths of Glory into a five season story about institutions and power in Baltimore, in the worlds of drug dealing, the police force, public schools, the city newspaper, city and state politics, and the dock workers' labor union. 

I also watched, for the third or fourth time, Alicia Malone's introduction to the Criterion Channel collection of British New Wave films. Seance on a Wet Afternoon is included in this collection and I was hoping she referred to it in her introduction (she did not) -- largely because it didn't seem to me to have much in common with the other movies in this collection aside from director Bryan Forbes' brilliant use of location shots and the techniques of cinema verite in the part of the movie when Billy goes by Tube and bus to pick up the ransom money in Leicester Square. Otherwise, it does not share with the other movies in this collection a focus on the working class, on filming on location in northern industrial cities and towns.  It's not an angry young man story either. Even though I may not totally understand why it's a part of this collection, I'm sure glad it is! It's one of the most intense, absorbing, and troubling movies I've ever seen, made more intense by its actors' brilliant acting, the sure direction, and the haunting black and white cinematography.  

Three Beautiful Things 08-06-2023: The Dark Genius of *Seance On a Wet Afternoon*, Clearing My Head, Delicious Improvised Pasta Dish

1. It's hard to say I enjoyed watching the 1964 British crime movie and psychological study, Seance on a Wet Afternoon, because it's hard to enjoy watching any character in any movie descend deeper into psychosis and to observe the impact this psychosis has on marriage.  But, as difficult as it was to watch, I thought this was an exquisite movie, superbly written, perfectly cast, and masterfully directed. Kim Stanley didn't appear in many movies over her career, but she took on the role of the troubled medium, Myra Savage, in this movie and she gives an unnerving performance, mining the multiple veins of Myra Savage's deeply troubled mind, taking us deep into her delusions. Myra's husband, Billy, played perfectly by Richard Attenborough,  lives under Myra's dominance and offers no effective resistance when Myra hatches a plan to kidnap the grade school daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Myra's plan is to gain notoriety for her parapsychological gifts by leading the police to the girl.

I won't give away how this plan turns out.

And I hope I'm not giving away any details about the plot when I say that this movie reminded me in many ways of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In the same way that Albee's play simultaneously examines Martha's deep insecurities and her illusions, as well as her domineering humiliations of her husband, George, this movie also covers very similar territory. 

2. I needed to get out of the house and take a walk after watching Seance on a Wet Afternoon. I gathered up mail I had to send out, drove uptown and parked near The Lounge, and walked to the Post Office and then south on Division to Market Street, turned right, and then north on Main and then west on McKinley and returned to the Camry. My mind was clearing enough that I went to Yoke's and picked up a few things and imagined just what I'd like to fix myself for dinner.

3. I melted butter in a pan and added two cloves of garlic, minced, and the juice of an entire lemon. I boiled spaghetti, drained it, put the butter/garlic/lemon in the bottom of a bowl and put the spaghetti on top of it. I tossed the pasta and topped it with fresh basil and freshly grated hard cheese. 

I loved the lemon forward taste of the garlic butter and the basil complimented the other flavors perfectly. 

It was a simple and very satisfying evening meal. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-05-2023: Delicious Cold Flatbread, Yakkin' with Ginger at The Lounge, Molly Zoe Brian at The Lounge

1. Thursday evening I fixed two Brussels sprouts hot, sweet, and cheesy flatbreads. I ate one and put the other in the icebox. I had planned to eat the second one on Friday, but ate dinner at the Red Tail Bar and Grill instead. At lunchtime today, I took out the flatbread and, because I really like cold pizza, I decided to eat this pizza-like flatbread cold and am I ever happy I did. It was awesome and I still had a bowl of the delicious green salad I made the other day left over. Great lunch.

2. Around 5:00, I drifted on up to the Inland Lounge, ordered myself an ice cold mountain fresh Rainier beer and had a great visit with Ginger about how her fantasy baseball team is crushing mine in our head to head match this week. Our match still has another day to go, but I waved the white flag today and bought Ginger a congratulatory White Claw and then we talked about live music shows we have seen and lamented ones we have missed. Mainly, I lamented that I wished I could go to Bozeman this coming Wednesday and hear Mountain Grass Unit, a trio of bluegrass players from Birmingham who are students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Jeff played some of their music on Deadish several weeks ago and I thought right away how much fun it would be to hear them in person.

3. Before long, Brian E. walked into The Lounge. Then Molly and Zoe. The four of us grabbed a table and spent the next couple of hours or so talking about Sapphire's unicorn birthday party, Molly and Brian's great time at the Foo Fighters' concert in Spokane, this and that about the All-Class Reunion, and a bunch of other stuff. At one point, Molly and Brian's friend, Troy, joined us. More talk, more stories, and then food -- an order from Wah Hing. 

I'd never socialized with Zoe and Molly outside of family functions and it was fun to do so tonight, especially at The Lounge, a central part of my life living in Kellogg and a place where Brian and Molly enjoy hanging out, too. (I wasn't sure if Zoe had been to The Lounge before -- that question never came up.)  

As we ate and drank some beers and yakked away, Dick, Renae, Bucky, and Debbie strolled in. They'd just had dinner at City Limits. Dick came over and greeted us all with a ton of good cheer. He ambled up to the bar and was yakkin' with Cas and I got up and joined them and then had a fun chat with Bucky and Debbie about the upcoming Zags' basketball season.

I was home by 8:00. Gibbs, Copper, and Luna were all at peace -- no protests while I was gone -- and I settled into a quiet end of the evening, got the animals all situated in their nighttime spots, and hit the hay, feeling content after having a peak experience at The Lounge.   

Three Beautiful Things 08-04-2023: Spur of the Moment, Great Beer at the CdA Casino, Contentment Back Home

1.  I completed the Friday NYTimes Crossword Puzzle in the bedroom, keeping Luna and Copper company. I had left my phone in the living room. Gibbs barked and barked and barked and then barked a little more because the lawn guys were mowing and blowing at Christy's, Jane's, and our house. He also barked when Ed knocked on the door, but from the bedroom I didn't hear Ed's knock -- nor did I hear my phone ring about three times. Ed had called. When I emerged from finishing the puzzle, I saw I had a text message from Ed to call him.

He got off work early today and, on the spur of the moment, wondered if I'd like to go the CdA Casino.

Wow! I hadn't been down there for months and hadn't spun a reel since our April trip to Pendleton.

I made sure the oven was off, the burners were off, that Gibbs, Copper, and Luna had food and water, and that the a/c was on low in the living room, and I leapt into the Camry and rocketed out to Kingston, picked up Ed, and we blasted down to Worley.

2. I had a fun afternoon. 

It was fun yakkin' with Ed going down to Worley and coming back. I enjoy the drama, the ups and downs of spinning some reels, and Ed and I took a most enjoyable break at the Red Tail Bar and Grill.

I sat down at the bar and was stoked to see that Red Tail had Firestone's Double Barrel Ale on tap. I don't see this beer very often. It's one of my very favorites. It's a malty, but not overly sweet, pale ale in the British tradition with nice touches of caramel and toffee. I remember when I first bought this beer at Albertson's on 18th and Chambers in Eugene about twelve years ago, my first hit when I took my first sip was that it was 1979 and I was back in England, touring the country, and drinking beer in one town after another. 

I really enjoy hoppy West Coast IPAs and, every bit as much, I enjoy taking a break from them.

Double Barrel Ale is, possibly, my favorite "take a break from IPAs" beer and it made my day that I could enjoy a pint before eating a prime rib French dip late this afternoon.

3. Back home, everything was as I hoped it would be. No protest dumps, no protest puddles. Gibbs was ecstatic when I walked in the door, scampering like a roadrunner and jumping up and down on his invisible pogo stick. In contrast, Copper and Luna had found spots of contentment in the bedroom and were still and mellow when I checked on them. 

I closed out the evening listening to Jeff's August 3rd Deadish show. Among other things, he reached back to 1963 and played some fantastic Jerry Garcia string band music as part of his tribute to the days between Jerry Garcia's birthday (Aug. 1) and the day of his death (Aug. 9). These are hallowed days in the world of  the Grateful Dead, known as The Days Between. Jeff's tribute to the Days Between was awesome. It'll be available at kwep.org for a couple of weeks and I plan to fill the house with this show's sounds a few more times. 

What a relaxing day: great coffee this morning, happy pets all day, a couple hours on the road with Ed, spinning wheels, drinking a favorite beer, and enjoying a solid meal at Worley, learning Debbie is having a great visit (with awesome NY beers) at Adrienne's, and loving superb Jerry Garcia music from sixty years ago --- I hit the hay with gratitude tonight feeling like in my little world, things might be unspectacular, but they are pretty good. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-03-2023: The Birth of Hip-Hop (in Part), Cats and the Thursday Crossword, Back to HelloFresh

1. I finished watching Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap. I keep thinking about what one of the rappers said. I'm not sure exactly what period of time he was referring to -- 1970s? 80s? -- but he explained that hip-hop started, in part, because of music being eliminated in the NY City public schools. No more horns in the schools. No more keyboards. But, the young people had lp records, turntables, and their own words. Inspired by the desire to tell their truths, their voices and words became their instruments.  This was, in part, how hip-hop was born. It's not the whole story, but this part of the story speaks to the longing to create, to make music, to express one's truths, and hip-hop was definitely born out of the desire for self and cultural expression. The entire documentary reiterates this fact multiple times. 

2. It always takes me longer on Thursdays to complete the daily NYTimes Crossword Puzzle. Thursday is, to me, funky day. The Thursday puzzle almost always has a funky twist to it, an unusual theme, and once again today, I completed the puzzle, but I didn't figure out the theme until I read the NYTimes review of the puzzle (every NYTimes Crossword is accompanied online by a review article). 

I bring this up because once I knew this puzzle would be time consuming, I decided to spend my puzzle time with Luna and Copper on the bed. I assumed the prone position on my back, Luna immediately sprang onto my chest,  and Copper got close enough to me that I could pet him. Both cats went into deep relaxation. I had to do some low key acrobatics to accommodate Luna on my chest and to be able to type words into the puzzle. 

I succeeded. 

All three of us were happy. I didn't join Copper and Luna's chorus of purring, but if I were a purring being, I would have.

3. Going out to Radio for dinner on Wednesday interrupted my HelloFresh schedule (no problem), but I got back on it today! 

All I had to do was oil and toast a couple flatbreads in the oven, chop Brussel sprouts into small pieces and cook them in oil, and make a spread combining Ricotta cheese, Italian seasoning, lemon juice, and olive oil. When the flatbreads were toasted, I topped them with the Ricotta lemon spread, put the Brussel sprout pieces on the spread, and topped it all with grated cheese. I popped the flatbreads back into the oven, let them bake until the cheese melted, took them out, and drizzled them with hot honey.  

I cut one of the flatbreads in quarters for my dinner tonight and wrapped the other in foil to enjoy on Friday. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-02-2023: Negotiating Space with Our Animals, Spontaneous Dinner at Radio, The Art of Rap and the Worlds of Hip-Hop

1. As I have no doubt mentioned before, Gibbs and Copper and Luna can't be in the same room together at the same time. Gibbs doesn't try to hurt Copper or Luna, but he barks his brains out at them and doesn't stop until the cats go into another room. 

With Debbie spending time with family in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, I've decided to take Gibbs to be with me at night and make the Vizio room Copper and Luna's hangout for the night. Luna has no problem with this arrangement, but Copper would sometimes strongly prefer to be with me at night. 

Every morning, I move Copper and Luna's food and water into the bedroom, where they prefer to be, move them in there and I join them during the day. They are most content when I come in, lie down, and they can be close to me.

So, really, the deal with all three of our pets is that they crave human company. I wish we lived in an idyllic situation where the lion lies with lamb, but we don't! 

So, since Copper, Luna, and Gibbs cannot be in the same room at the same time, I am committed to spending as much time as I can with all three of them and I'm understanding when Copper or Gibbs protests our situation -- I just clean up their occasional disapproval! 

2. As I often do on hot days, I was indoors today. I hadn't quite entered the hallowed halls of Vizio University yet when Christy called. She, Carol, and Paul had planned on joining other All-Class Reunion Committee members for a dinner and debriefing at the Hilltop Inn tonight. I decided not to participate, but an urgent family situation (I have no details) left Lori no choice but to postpone the dinner/meeting.

Christy called to invite me to join Carol, Paul, and her for a dinner out at Radio Brewing.

I accepted.

I drove myself up so that I could shop at Yoke's after dinner.

I arrived early, wanting enjoy a Silver Mountain IPA before dinner. I enjoy this beer, but not with food. 

That worked out.

We piled into a booth, ordered dinner (I had a beef panini sandwich with an Asian cucumber salad), and had rousing conversation about the reunion slide show Christy had just posted, the mystery eggs Christy found in a raised bed, and about labor unions, carrying a topic forward from family dinner. 

I didn't know that Molly and Brian might be joining us, but BOOM! they suddenly popped into Radio and sat with us, making the evening even brighter and more fun.

3. I arrived home from Yoke's and decided to go to night school at Vizio University. 

This month, the Criterion Channel is featuring a collection of movies called simply, Hip-Hop.

I suppose I first became aware of hip-hop back in about 1986 when Run DMC's video "Walk This Way" dropped on MTV and as time went on, I was aware of hip-hop and rap, but it wasn't music I purchased nor did I play it at home. Many of my students at LCC were into hip-hop. I used to go to the dance department's end of the term recital and I always felt energized by the hip-hop dance students' performances. I never dived into hip-hop, though, and I realized that much like many people don't have an ear for the words and lines of Shakespeare, I had not developed an ear for the rhymes, beats, and words of hip-hop performers rapping.

I've never been an "I hate rap" guy. 

I've always been a "my ears are not quite attuned to rap" guy.

So, I looked over the offerings in the Hip-Hop collection and decided to watch Ice-T interviewing a whole bunch of rappers and MCs in a 2012 documentary called, Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap.

I almost finished this movie, but with about twenty minutes left, I had to get to bed.

This documentary was exactly what I wanted to see and I can imagine watching it repeatedly.

Ice-T is the perfect host for this project. Not only does he have access to all the rappers and MC's he interviewed, but he also brings gravitas to these interviews. The artists respect him, they open up to him, they take his questions about the craft of their poetry/lyrics seriously and talk to him as a fellow artist.

This documentary is not, as Ice-T tells us early on, about the cars and bling and money and the other peripheral things often portrayed as what hip-hop is about.

No -- it's about the art, the art of composing rhymes, rhymes that are integrated with the beats, and about truth telling through raw words, metaphors, hyperbole, and a range of other tropes. In one interview, Ice-T says that he sees the best raps as dealing head on with the B-side of street life.  That's going to stick with me. 

I've always read and been told that if we can travel to places we are unfamiliar with and learn from places and people different from what we are familiar with that we are better human beings for it. 

I agree.

Although I never left the living room last night, I felt like I was, in the best way available to me, traveling in an unfamiliar world, the world of hip-hop and the art of rap, and that I'm more receptive to a world of music I have trouble understanding but that, at the very least, I can see has profound artistic integrity and profound social value. 

I'll finish the movie and let it work on me for some amount of time and my guess is that other films in the Criterion Channel's collection called Hip-Hop will become a part of the unstructured, pretty much serendipitous curriculum of Vizio University. 

Three Beautiful Things 08-01-2023: Life in Bethnal Green, A Family Goes to Manhattan, Cool Walk

1. Today was another glorious day at Vizio University. I returned to the Criterion Channel's collection, Brit Noir, and decided to watch the splendid portrayal of life on London's East End, in Bethnal Green to be precise, entitled, It Always Rains on Sunday (1947).

The noir films made in Britain in the late forties and on into the fifties definitely laid the groundwork for those slightly later British films known as The British New Wave. Like the movies to come later, It Always Rains on Sunday is, in part, a domestic (or kitchen sink) drama, and relies for its power on capturing the everyday atmosphere of pubs, a jazz club, and street markets as well as shadowy, petty thieves, dark, gritty places in the East End, and small time acts of corruption and sexual betrayals. 

The story of It Always Rains on Sunday centers on the lives of the members of a blended family and how Rose, the mother, played by the sturdy and brilliant Googie Withers, tries to juggle the comings and goings of her husband, two stepdaughters, and son while she harbors, in their home, her ex-lover who has escaped from prison and shows up in search of food, sleep, and pleasure. Withers plays the complicated discontent, boredom, divided loyalties, and yearnings of Rose perfectly. Unlike many women characters in American film noir, Rose is not a femme fatale. She's not cunning, not manipulative. She's caught between the excitement of her past and what she's settled for in her present. 

It's poignant.

2. So when I'm home alone, it's easier for me to poke around on the Criterion Channel, find surprises, and explore avenues I hadn't even thought of.

So, today, I had thought of British noir films and I had planned on watching It Always Rains on Sunday.

What (or I should say WHO) I hadn't thought of was Hope Davis.

I was poking around and I clicked on the icon of a movie I'd never heard of called The Daytrippers (1996). I saw that Criterion had organized a small collection of features around this movie and the first one that caught my eye was a filmed conversation between the superb Hope Davis and the director of The Daytrippers, Greg Mottola. 

Before I set this discussion in motion with a click, a rush of great movie watching memories filled my heart and mind.

I'd say it was about 15-20 years ago. I discovered that a bunch of actors, all women, all in their late thirties, forties, and early fifties were doing invigorating work in movies, playing grown up women with a wide range of emotion, gravity, humor, and fierceness. I began searching out their movies -- or having them find me. Let me name several of these actors: Laura Linney, Patricia Clarkson, Catherine Keener, Marcia Gay Harden, Joan Allen, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Melissa Leo, Frances McDormand, Amy Ryan, and several others. I can't list them all.

After listening to Hope Davis and Greg Mottola discuss The Daytrippers, I had to watch it and, my oh my, what a discovery! 

The story takes place briefly on Thanksgiving night, but almost entirely on the day after Thanksgiving. 

It centers around how Eliza (Hope Davis) finds a letter her husband, Louis (Stanley Tucci), carelessly dropped in their bedroom. 

It's a love letter from someone named Sandy.

Confused, Eliza takes the letter to her parents' house, where her sister and her boyfriend have travelled for Thanksgiving Day. 

I forgot to mention that The Daytrippers is the epitome of a low, low budget independent movie -- and, yet, the cast is absolutely first rate. Here are the main players, in addition to Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci:

Rita (the mother): Anne Meara (OMG! She's stupendous!)

Jim (the father): Pat McNamara

Jo (the sister): Parker Posey

Carl (the boyfriend): Liev Schreiber

Having read the letter, the family decides to pile into the family station wagon and drive from Long Island to Manhattan so that Eliza can track down Louis (who works in Manhattan) and find out what this letter is about. 

Suddenly, I was reminded of one of my favorite Thanksgiving movies and one of my favorite Patricia Clarkson movies. In Pieces of April, a family also piles into a station wagon and travels from suburbia to Manhattan (Lower East Side).

Both movies are structured, in part, around the cars' journeys, but also on the journey into the complicated relationships between family members -- and each movie features a boyfriend who is an outsider.

I'll set Pieces of April aside. I've made my point. Both are road movies or journey stories about the American family.

As Eliza and her family are on their journey in search of Eliza's husband, the movie begins going on detours. It digresses. These digressions are rich. Two of them give us more glimpses into other families and other digressions take us into social scenes in Manhattan. They all, in their own ways, test the relationships between members of Eliza's family and each of these digressions unfolds more to us about what makes each of these family members tick.

Ultimately, Eliza tracks down Louis, but I'll say no more about what Eliza learns and how she responds.

I'll only say that if I could go back in time, I'd return to January of 1983 and January of 1984 at Whitworth College. During those two Jan terms, I taught a course called "The Family in American Drama". I would love to be able to revisit those classes, but somehow reach into the future and bring Pieces of April and The Daytrippers back to those two classes, watch both movies with those students, and add them to the awesome discussions we had about great American plays and movies that explored the difficulties, tensions, strengths, and weaknesses of the family in American life. 

3. After being moved by Hope Davis' work in The Daytrippers, I watched another discussion about the movie, this time with director Greg Mottola, Parker Posey, and Liev Scheiber -- and they were joined toward the end, via speaker phone, by Campbell Scott, who appeared in the movie and also helped produce it. 

By now, the day had cooled off and as Cameron Avenue darkened a bit, I went on a twenty minute walk, not only for exercise, but to further relish the delights of having discovered The Daytrippers and of sorting it out as I strolled, mostly, on the street where I live.  

Three Beautiful Things 07-31-2023: Listening to Interviews at Vizio University, Watching *The Small Back Room*, My Intro to Cavatappi

1. Well, unlike at colleges and universities across the USA which will be soon be festooning enthusiastic "Welcome Back" signs to greet returning students, no signs, balloons, or streamers were in sight as I returned today to Vizio University.

As you might remember, Vizio University is the name I gave my unstructured study of movies from over fifty years ago and to spending time listening to or reading interviews of scholars and critics, actors, and others about what we now call old movies.

When I moved the television out of the Vizio room into the living room so Debbie and I could watch Columbo, Perry Mason, Monk, and occasional movies together, I took a break from Vizio University.

But Debbie is on a trip to New York, New Jersey, and Virginia for about three weeks, and to answer those of you who wonder what I do when I "batch" it, today I returned to Vizio University.

I watched three interviews and a movie and it was thrilling. 

First the interviews.

• One of my favorite illuminators of movies from the past, and especially film noir, is Imogen Sara Smith. The Criterion Channel is currently featuring a collection called Brit Noir, movies made in the years following the end of WWII and in anticipation of the British New Wave. The Brit Noir movies portray the uncertainties of the post-war years and of the impact of the war itself. I thought a lot about Foyle's War as Smith delved into these movies' exploration of tension, tension caused by being in a society at war, by the deprivations of rationing, and of a society divided by social class.  I realized, once again, while listening to Imogen Sara Smith how much I enjoy British movies of the 40s, 50s, and on into the 60s and how great it felt to be making contact with these movies again.
• I also thoroughly enjoyed watching the latest installation of the Criterion Channel series, Adventures in Moviegoing, featuring Isabella Rossellini. As the daughter of two of cinema's most famous contributors, director Robert Rossellini and actor Ingrid Bergman, Isabella Rossellini's life has been rich in cinematic experiences and it was captivating listening to her talk about her life's involvement with movies and what she sees as having ever lasting value in films. For Adventures in Moviemaking, the person being interviewed chooses several beloved movies from the Criterion Collection to make comments about and show clips from. Isabella Rossellini's choices were fascinating, focused, in part, on silent movies and circus stories, and in commenting on these films she expanded upon what she loves about movies and about her experiences as a director. 
• The Criterion Channel is also featuring a collection of movies under the title of The Method, featuring actors ranging from Marlon Brando to Kim Stanley, from JoAnne Woodward to Rod Steiger, from Ellen Burstyn to Paul Newman, all of whom studied and put into practice the techniques of The Method. So that viewers might understand more fully what is meant by The Method, Ethan Hawkes, Vincent D'Onofrio, and the author the book, The Method:  How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, Issac Butler, entered into a rousing discussion of The Method, its teachers, the revolution in acting that emerged, and the actors devoted to it. It's a fascinating discussion that illuminates all of the rigorous work great actors put in so that the character we see them play come alive as specific characters, with detailed motivations and physical attributes.

2. After watching Imogen Sara Smith's discussion of British noir movies, I decided to watch Michael Powell and Emetic Pressburger's movie, The Small Back Room (1949).  

Last October, at Bill and Diane's place in Shoreline, we watched Powell and Pressburger's movie, A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and I was eager to watch another of their movies.

Several years ago, I watched the 2008 movie, The Hurt Locker, the only movie I'd ever seen focused on the disabling of bombs. 

Now I've seen two.

The Small Back Room tells the story of Sammie Rice, an alcoholic bomb expert working for the British government during WWII, who gets drafted into a project to figure out how particular bombs the Germans are dropping in England work. They look like thermos bottles and explode when a person picks them up. 

This is just one layer of the story. Sammie Rice has an artificial foot that is painful. His doctor has prescribed him pain medication and he's expending a great deal of energy resisting the pull he feels to drink whiskey. In addition, the movie explores the tensions and cynicism of the bureaucracy Sammie Rice works in -- their workplace is referred to as "the small back room" -- and Rice's frustration with the fact that his disability means he is stuck with bureaucratic work. Moreover, Sammie Rice is engaged in an intimate relationship with a woman, Susan, who also works in the small back room and Rice brings his frustrations, his efforts not to drink, and his feelings of inadequacy into their relationship, complicating it. 

And, so, this movie is a war story. It's a critique of bureaucracy. It's a love story. It's an examination of alcoholism. It's a sensitive portrayal of Sammie Rice's disability. Ultimately, the story is a test of Sammie Rice's character, his ability to think clearly and carry out his expertise while under excruciating pressure. 

3. With Debbie out galavanting around, it means that when I fix this week's HelloFresh meals, I'll be able to make them last two days.

This evening, HelloFresh introduced me to the pasta called cavatappi, which I experienced as being akin to, but not exactly like, macaroni.

I put the cavtappi in a pot of boiling salt water, chopped up two scallions, and a container of mushrooms. I cooked the mushrooms in olive oil, removed them from the pan, and made a sauce. I melted butter in the cast iron pan, added a packet of flour, let it get slightly brown, and then added milk and pasta water. To this I added cream cheese and when the cheese had melted and blended in with the liquid and thickened some more, I added in the cavatappi, mushrooms, and a packet of herbed butter. Once the butter melted and all the ingredients combined, I put half of what I cooked in a bowl, half in a container, and enjoyed a tasty dinner.