Still Alive

Yes, I'm still alive. I have been unusually unmotivated, uncreative and uninteresting lately. I think my cubicle job is sucking the life out of me. It's kind of like The Matrix. Life is easier when you're sedated and distracted, but occasionally you see glitches in the programming...

Go Germany

Euro 2008 info

Jealous?

1.32 gallons of goodness.

Bookshelves

We like books. For several years, our books have lived on some cheap shelves from Target.

I took some time off from my pointless coma of a job so I could build some real shelves. It was a good old sweaty, sawdusty experience.

Here are the first two of the three units in place.

Here they are, coated in extra-fumy enamel paint. Lindz and I got a good buzz off of that.

It's hard to truly realize the change in appearance from this picture. The shelves are seven feet tall, about nine feet wide, and eight inches deep. They occupy almost the entirety of one wall. They're made of real wood, not glued sawdust, and they didn't travel here from the other side of the world! What a concept!

Hedonism

This past week, Lindz was out of town on a business trip. When she's gone, my life loses its backbone and slumps into self-gratifying disorder. I went to work, went to the gym and took out the trash, but everything else was centered around food and wine (with some Netflix DVD's thrown in). I stayed up too late every night.
The experiences:
Mantra Cabernet Sauvignon Sonoma County 2004 (I think it was 04, but possibly 05): I bought this at a wine shop near my office. I just had to escape the gloom of the office, and it was too hot to enjoy a walk. I opened it that evening, letting it breathe while I was at the gym. It's a nice, deep crimson color with a heady aroma. I smelled black currants and a wee bit of coffee or chocolate. Maybe tobacco. It was a brown smell. It was a big, balanced wine with nice tannins and alcohol. It kept up nicely with the roasted goat steak I ate with it. I watched some Space:1999. I had some left the next night. I had salmon with the last bit of it.

George DuBoeuf Moulin a Vent 2005 Domaine des Michelons: Traffic was pretty bad Thursday night, so I got off the freeway to go to Total Wine and wait it out. I picked out this Beaujolais because it apparently got a 92 from Robert M. Parker. I dropped it off at the house and dutifully went to the gym. This wine was a clear garnet, with a clean bouquet (think of a bowl of raspberries with some cedar chips and a sprinkling of tobacco in it). It was a really elegant wine. It had the typical bright berry Gamay flavor, but with nice woodsy, earthy notes. It had good acidity; it was very nice with the sauteed beef liver I had for dinner. I watched Sunshine as I ate.

Saintsbury Pinot Noir Carneros 2005: I forced myself to go to the gym Friday evening. Afterward, I changed my clothes and went to a local Mexican place where I hadn't gone before. I had an ice cold Dos Equis and a satisfying, if unsurprising Steak a la Tampiquena (it's still North Carolina Mexican food). I went home, full and sleepy. I talked to Mom for a while, and by the time the conversation was over, I regained some energy. I was reading The Emperor of Wine, a book which has had the effect of filling me with ungovernable urges to run out and get a bottle. It happened at about 10 pm. It had to be Pinot Noir, but the good shops were closed. Lowes Foods had a sure thing: the Saintsbury. While I was wavering between that and another wine that I hadn't tried, I couldn't help but eavesdrop on some fellow shoppers. Four college boys were debating the merits of various cheap, fruit-flavored wines (cheapness and sweetness being the desirable traits, apparently). It took me back to my college days, when price and alcohol content were the only criteria we considered. I brought my Saintsbury home, and I happily sipped and read until after 1 am. This one has the things that I love in California Pinot: soft, fleshy cherries, hints of cola, chocolate and smoke, an indulgent experience. It's mouthfilling and ripe; it gives itself to you without a battle of tannins.

I finally got out of bed Saturday and drank a French press of coffee with my breakfast/lunch. What the hell, there was a glass of the Saintsbury left; I drank that as well (it was just fine with coffee and blueberry chicken sausages). To pretend to myself that I was an industrious individual, I did a load of laundry. I put on some clothes and drove downtown to Seaboard Wine Warehouse.

Their usual Saturday tasting was going on. This day, it was French whites. They were all nice (the Vouvray was a little sweet, though), but the only tasting wine I bought was a white Burgundy. It had a really nice lemon-zest note to it; I'll have to write about it when Lindz and I drink it. I wandered around the store for a while with the goal of getting a couple of bottles for the wine rack and one to enjoy that day. I looked at a few $60 bottles that I want some day, but I held to moderation. I got, in addition to that white Burgundy and a couple of tasty everyday wines, a bottle of Plungerhead Zinfandel Lodi 2006. I stopped at our local pizza place on the way home and got a 14" pie with mushrooms, sausage and anchovies. I watched Solaris (the Clooney version). The wine was huge and gooey. Lots of ripe fruit with a sort of medicinal, black licorice, eucalyptus underpinning. Hard to describe. The movie was slow, psychological and visually well done. Everyone else seems to hate it. I'm going to watch the 1972 version next. Anyway, I watched, drank, ate, loafed, read and briefly dozed. I got up and went for a walk. I was totally useless, and I loved it.

Sunday, I got up, had breakfast and coffee, did some more reading, ran the dishwasher to keep up the ruse of productiveness, and went out for sushi with Bryan. A while after that, I went to gym, and then Lindz was home. Like magic, as soon as she was in the house, I started bustling about dinner. When she's gone, I do not bustle under any circumstances.

The fact that I had showed up for work is the main blemish on this otherwise respectable streak of hedonism.

Cosmic Dragon Devours Sun

Get your affairs in order, the world is ending. Or at least get some wine and get buzzed before you go to work.

Cynical Observation from the Office

"Can-do attitude" is a phrase only used by people who don't have to "do," i.e., management. It seems to only be used in situations when the "do" is about to get bigger, such as a task becoming more complicated purely for reasons of reporting and documentation (a purely hypothetical example, wink wink).

Wine Tasting

On my new blog, I posted a couple of pictures from a winery Lindz and I visited yesterday.

Some of these wines might be a bit scarce in Michigan and Germany. Sorry.

Triptych: Farmers' Bounty, a Lovely White Burgundy, and Shamelessness

We got some great produce at the Farmers' Market this weekend. I made stuffed eggplant last night, and here are some yellow squash that I seared in a skillet:
JJ Vincent Bourgogne Blanc is an elegant chardonnay with a bouquet of vanilla and almond. The palate is a refined balance of melon and fig, with appropriate alcohol. There is a pleasing lemony acidity in the finish.
This shit was in the Sunday paper. I should know better than to be surprised by anything, but we really liked this:

I believe the drought is over

Yes, that's about 5 1/2" of rain your'e looking at. It is by no means unprecedented.
Tropical Storm Hanna passed by last night and this morning. The thick of it was closer to the coast, but we got the rain you see here in a fairly brief period of time (pretty much within 8 or 10 hours). Crabtree Valley Mall is nearby, and it is built on low ground. They have to erect steel-and-sandbag barriers in front of most of the entrances during times like these. Our house, thankfully, appears to be in a good spot.

Caught in the Act of Mooching

This was shot on the evening of Bryan's return from Germany. Oliver stayed with us while Bryan was away, and he was a brazen mooch of the very highest order. We demonstrated for Bryan here. As you can see, he coasts through life on his good looks and charm.

A bit of narcissism

Ellen wanted a picture of me cooking while wearing the T-shirt she sent me. I'm not cooking here, and I thought this picture looked better as black and white (the energy-saving bulbs kind of spoiled the color). You can't see the bright orange color of the shirt, but you can see my official title. When I tried to edit out the green pallor of the fluorescent lighting, the shirt and my head started to glow and flare like the sun.
I'm wearing the T-shirt as I'm topping the baked steelhead trout with roasted red pepper coulis. That's a roasted red beet next to it. This is the entree I cooked for Mom (Lindz made a salad of baby greens, pears, pomegranate seeds, local goat cheese, pecans and vinaigrette, and she took these pictures). We've done a good bit of eating out this weekend, and it felt good to work in the kitchen. Bryan cooked Chicken in Riesling the previous evening out of a cookbook he got in Germany.

Big Surprise! Pictures of Food!

Lindz and I usually try to pretend to feign frowning on processed food in a box, but this stuff apparently contains crack cocaine. It's Monkey Bread. It comes frozen, you warm it up in the oven, and it's soft and oozing with cinnamon goo. It's so good, you might sell a family member just to have some.
A gooeyness of a different sort is this. Bryan and I nibbled on various things and drank some beers he brought back from Germany. The jar on the right contains home made liverwurst (hausgemacht leberwurst) from Ellen's brother-in-law in Germany. I thought we should have some cheese. I got this Chaource at Costco. It's almost liquid at room temperature. It was unctuous, buttery delight. The liverwurst was rich and luxurious, and it brought back memories of things my parents and grandparents enjoyed. It was marginalized in this shot only because the cheese was more photogenic.

For Thanksgiving, one of the dishes I prepared was a gratin of braised collards. I bought too many collards. What you see here is half of the collards I bought at the farmers' market (4,480 cubic inches of collards, or 73.4 liters, is what fits in this sink). I still haven't decided what to do with the rest. What I did with these was chop them up, braise them with smoked pork hocks and red pepper flakes, and then bake them into a gratin with bechamel sauce. It was well received; I also made it for Thanksgiving two years ago.

Here's an action shot of me chopping mirepoix for the gravy:

Lindz took all of these pictures except the cheese. The majority of the food photography on Thanksgiving was done by Bryan, who will be posting pictures very soon on his blog, I'm quite sure.

Christmas in San Diego

People really enjoyed Lindz's marshmallows:

And people liked my bread. I was very flattered at how big a fuss they made at the Christmas party to which I brought it. It's a shame that people are always so astonished at the idea of someone making bread rather than buying it. I understand that reaction with the marshmallows ("You made marshmallows? How can you do that?"). Anyway, they enjoyed it, which is always the goal.

This is an onion ring at Stone Brewing's restaurant. It is as big as a doughnut. That's their Cali-Belgique ale in the glass there.
And here is the sunset, the last night there. Heartbreakingly perfect. Lindz and I got to feeling pretty emotional about San Diego. We ask ourselves why we don't live there, and it's an ongoing internal struggle.

Yes We Can

IKEA is open in North Carolina

Lindz and I visited the new Charlotte IKEA store. It is grand and glorious, and it was crowded. Not once, not even once, were we out of earshot of a crying child. It was still the IKEA experience, but with the overcrowded amusement-park element added. One child was shrieking as if someone was sawing his arms off.

We got a cabinet for the television, something we had been talking about for a long time. The old wire shelves that housed the tv and stereo are gone, the last vestige of our leftover furniture that looked more appropriate for a college dorm. We're trying to make it look like adults live here.

Speaking of adulthood, why is it so hard to make a living? I'm very thankful to have a job, and particularly thankful to have moved from a lame job to a better job in such uncertain times. But it's sucking the life out of me. It's too bad one has to spend so much of one's life toiling as opposed to enjoying and creating. It's still early days, but this new job is definitely demanding. It's quite a bit better than the alternative.

I hope it gets better soon. Perhaps the U.S.A. will regain a bit of the backbone that it has always bragged about having. Some new roads, bridges and windmills might be a welcome side-effect to all this spending.

But enough about my struggle with the malaise of a broken world. How about some lamb?

This was an end slice. Deeper inside, it was stuffed with pureed dried apricots, rosemary, almonds, garlic, and I can't remember what else.

Dinner on the Deck

I've been busy. Or at least that's the word I choose for whatever I've been. My new (6 months now) job has been challenging, and I have been uncreative, antisocial and lacking in initiative.

That being said, I cooked lamb sirloins, scallops (wrapped in bacon and in smoke salmon), baked bread, and Lindz made a salad. That Pinot Noir was goood. Too bad they only made 750 cases of it.

Ausgezeichnetes Frühstück

I couldn't wait any longer. Bryan brought some home made liver wurst back from Germany, an it is heavenly. I suppose I should have had a nice Berliner-Weisse with it, but it was only 9 in the morning.

Mrs. Cardinal

This cardinal is sitting on two eggs. She is no more than 20 feet from our back door.

Another Day at Work

Father's Day

Naan Sequitur

I suppose you'd call it naan, anyway. I made bread dough (1/4 whole wheat, 3/4 all purpose flour) and kneaded lots of fresh rosemary into it. After a few hours' rise, I flattened it, made it nice and slippery with olive oil, ground some pepper over it and grilled it:


It was good. The grill has hot spots, so there were some burnt spots. Still, there's nothing like that rustic, smoky flavor that bread gets from being made on a fire.

The Astonishing 360 degree Slinky Video Screen at the U2 Concert

The whole stage setup weighs 170 tons, apparently. "Sunday Bloody Sunday" came off very well.

The Museum of Glass in Tacoma

 

This tunnel of spectacular glass works is on the way into the Museum of Glass.

Smile

 

A monkfish at the fish market in Seattle. We got there early; they weren't throwing fish yet.

Pile o' Cheeks

 

It was a cruel irony that I was surrounded seafood in such profusion while setting a personal record for being the most miles from my kitchen. I imagine these cheeks would have been good prepared thusly: Pan-seared with a little dollop of chardonnay jelly, next to some asparagus risotto.

Life's Rich Pageant

 

So much stuff packed into so few blocks. I believe we took this picture as we were walking down the hill to go to dinner at The Pink Door, a marvelous restaurant in Post Alley. We had some off-the-menu seasonal things: risotto with fava beans, mint and goat cheese and some unbelievably delicious bacon-wrapped monkfish on a bed of braised artichokes. The pear tart was a very fine dessert, and I had some very good Oregon grappa while we watched the famous burlesque show that begins at 11 pm. We arrived at 8 to assure ourselves a spot.

As far as Seattle goes, I'd say we did a halfway respectable job of scratching the surface. 'Tis quite a town.

Diving Bird, Glass Dude

Lindz caught this shot of a Puffin at feeding time at the Seattle Aquarium:

And I shot this in the Hot Shop of the Museum of Glass in Tacoma:

A Seal Having His Teeth Brushed

The Pot Awakens

This is a piece of Guardian Service cookware. This stuff was manufactured from the 30's to 1956. We believe Grandma and Grandpa Zucker got the set for their wedding in 1939. It has been used to cook what amounts to, I am sure, a staggering amount of food over the decades. And now it's mine. It probably hasn't been used for a number of years; Grandma was doing poorly for a little while before she passed on.

 

I boiled fingerling potatoes in it tonight. I tossed the potatoes in olive oil, rosemary and garlic and served them along with broiled scallops with lime butter and grilled asparagus with reduced balsamic goo and pecans. Lindz's home made ice cream was dessert. I hope Grandma would be pleased.

More Adventures of Guardian Service

 

We drank a bottle of Lone Oak Vineyards Vin du Roi with dinner. I boiled the potatoes in Grandma's Guardian pot, then put them on the grill for a bit of smoky flavor. The main course was marinated grilled chicken thighs, and the veggie was a foil packet o' vegetables, also done on the grill.