They should charge for the fork

The following is about exactly how I think of restaurants (like one near me) that do stupid, manipulative things like sell biscuits and gravy, but without eggs, or eggs with biscuits, but without gravy. Then if you order eggs and biscuits and ask for some gravy, they try to tack $3 more onto your bill. Basically all those ill-tempered restaurants that try to control what you can eat, how you can eat it, and look for ways to hike up your bill. I gotta say, I never get wronged at Cracker Barrell, even if they aren’t local. “May I have some apple butter for my grits? Sure.” Sometimes easy is just part of the meal.

Bobby: I’ll have an omelet, no potatoes. Give me tomatoes instead, and wheat toast instead of rolls. : Waitress: No substitutions. : Bobby: What do you mean? You don’t have any tomatoes? : Waitress: Only what’s on the menu. You can have a number two – a plain omelet. It comes with cottage, fries, and rolls. : Bobby: Yea, I know what it comes with, but that’s not what I want. : Waitress: I’ll come back when you make up your mind. : Bobby: Wait a minute, I have made up my mind. I’d like a plain omelet, no potatoes on the plate. A cup of coffee and a side order of wheat toast. : Waitress: I’m sorry, we don’t have any side orders of toast. I’ll give you a English muffin or a coffee roll. : Bobby: What do you mean “you don’t make side orders of toast”? You make sandwiches, don’t you? : Waitress: Would you like to talk to the manager? : Bobby: You’ve got bread. And a toaster of some kind? : Waitress: I don’t make the rules. : Bobby: OK, I’ll make it as easy for you as I can. I’d like an omelet, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee. :Waitress: A number two, chicken sal san. Hold the butter, the lettuce, the mayonnaise, and a cup of coffee. Anything else? :Bobby: Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven’t broken any rules. :Waitress: You want me to hold the chicken, huh? :Bobby: I want you to hold it between your knees. — from the film Five Easy Pieces

Lo Mein

Last night I pretty much duplicated Pei Wei’s lo mein, but I made it with rice noodles (a vegan alternative). Stir fry fresh broccoli, carrots, sweet peas, and firm homemade tofu in sesame and canola oils. Finish with soy sauce in the pan. Simmer dried shitakes and bean sprouts in a broth of garlic, celery, and pepper. Cook and add the noodles, top with red pepper flakes. It was superb.

Tonight, that broth, with lots of substantial ingredients, makes it a pho-like noodle soup. This time with buckwheat noodles. Lovely stuff. Asian pear for dessert, and wine.

Organic Cotton T-shirts

I love my new organic cotton T-shirts from Anvil. Most cotton in the world is farmed in impoverished countries by children (as young as 3yrs old) with scarred fingers for 12-15hr days in scorching heat, at the expense of their schooling and their futures. F*ck that Abercrombie and Old Navy garbage. Also cotton accounts for about half of the industrial chemicals sprayed on the earth. We’re wearing a significant amount of the pesticides that have likely been banned in our own country, handled by toddlers that work like convicts at hard labour.

Most (probably not all) organic cotton clothing makers use responsible labor, packaging, and dyes. Anvil t-shirts impress me. No pesticides or chemicals used to make these. They have great stitching, are incredibly soft, and come in some great colors. I like the charcoal and chocolate, with black being simply my favorite. At about $6 plus shipping at amazon.com, it’s a good value, if you wear t-shirts. I also prefer not to wear advertisements for someone else’s logo or brand – I’m not a billboard – so blank is great.

On the other hand, with limited funds, I’m not above cruising the Goodwill for $1 cast-offs. I don’t like the origin, but wearing them can be cathartic. Anyway, these Anvils are lovely. I’m wearing one now.

Box Juice – Good for People and Earth

I’ve become very happy about the reformation of box wines. Not Franzia or Rossi (ack!), but good wine. Three Thieves Bandit, Bota, and Yellow & Blue are making some apparently stellar boxes for great prices. Of those three, only the Bota is bag in a box, though, for ultimate long-lasting freshness. But there are plenty of others. Hardy is popular, and some 1.5L cubes. At about $16 and applicable sales tax for a 3-liter box (equivalent of 4 bottles), you’re looking at $4.50/bottle for excellent grape. I’m having Y&B as I write, and I’ve got Bota on the shelf in the kitchen. This isn’t your grandmother’s box of wine. Vineyards have realized that box wine is:

• Cheaper to package, ship, and sell – half the weight is in the bottle (and some vineyards aren’t cutting price by quite as much as they save)
• Stays fresh much longer – great for light consumption and that healthy glass per evening
• Eco-friendlier, due to recyclable packaging and less intense manufacturing, and much lower shipping weight

With the latest thinking on the health benefits of light consumption (US government agencies actually had but suppressed data supporting this in the 1990s), these clarities make it much easier to have a glass or two for wellbeing when permitted. Red wine (reservatrol) is thought to stave off heart disease and many effects of aging and balance cholesterols toward the good ones, cabernet sauvignon may help prevent alzheimers,  and of course it has long been understood that wine cleanses most pathogens that adversely affect humans.

These developments (realization of the nexus of benefits to personal heath and ecology) are a boon to the wine industry – revitalizing wine as a handier beverage, but also bringing in tons of light “sippers”. And sipping is the way to go: sipping wine slowly increases absorption (through the mouth) of the helpful nutrients that quick consumption loses to liver processes – increase from absportion is by a factor of 100. It’s like a single bowl of tobacco per day for a true pipe smoker (one who doesn’t inhale). People with zero wine consumption are actually closer, statistically, to the health situations of those with heavy consumption. Moderate consumers who consume in a moderate manner beat them all.

I have a feeling it helps with maintaining a healthy weight too – and not because wine drinkers are statistically, generally closer to their optimum weights. By experience, I notice I’m less interested in desserts and other snacks with wine. It has done nothing but enhance, however, my craving for pure, high-quality dark chocolate (my ’secret’ source being CVS’ dollar aisle) – no nougat, not cookie, no garbage, and no high-sugar air-filled Hersheys - just dense, dark chocolate. On the other hand, that doesn’t seem to be much of a problem in moderation, either.

Downsides to the box are:

• Even bag in a box may not be a perfect vacuum seal, tho that’s the intent – so, if you’re going to keep your box of wine more than a few days, you should probably refrigerate it. You can decant your red and let a small portion warm up 40min before drinking. Still, 3 weeks is the advised time before damage from oxidization, once opened, if you’re using the bag in a box, compared to days for a bottle or the ordinary lined/bagless box. For non-bagged boxes, there’s no pump, so consume those in normal same-as-bottle time frame.
• Because of the initial vacuum seal, you get what you package, so you can’t rely on a vintage to age. However, storage becomes less of an issue and, besides, 12-18 months is the current intended consumption time for most common wine. How long were you going to pack away that $10 bottle of Ravenswood?
• It’s highbrow to go lowbrow, so surely the yuppies are going to ruin it, like they have coffee shops, motorcycles, and most everything else. Just give it time.

In my home, it’s coffee in the morning, tea by day (or water with some Mexican lemon juice), and the wine in evening. Box wine is a great, relaxing medicinal, for body and soul, to look forward to at day’s end. The box has brought me back from rare moderate to frequent light consumption.

I think light consumption helps settle the stomach too. I have acid reflux and take Nexium but, after the first night, the wine is treating me right in reaasonable quantities. During a fast (from meat, wine, and oil), the Apostle St. Paul advised Bishop St. Timothy to drink wine medicinally for his stomach (medicinal use is always approved when one’s bishop judges it a genuine illness). Contemporary science has since rediscovered what people already knew – it helps with peptic ulcers.

There’s a good article on wine and health [here]. Wikipedia’s [piece] is also excellent.

Running in Circles

My dog loves to run circles. He’s surprisingly fast, runs like a jack rabbit, and is an excellent dodger. He’s my darling boy. He was the typical abandonment from a breeder (lucky enough they didn’t shoot him), and was rescued by www.OKsaveAdog.org by Kim Bowers, who does excellent work. Click the album cover below for more photos.

MoongChee

Beautiful Avian Residents

I have a pair of birds that have selected my property as a home, it seems. They’re gathering nest material and mating. They chirp a lot. I mimic, sing to and talk to them, and they seem to like it and feel more comfortable. They have learned my dog won’t eat them, either. Gorgeous, beautiful birds with great silhouettes. Click the photo for the whole album of their photos.

Birds

Earthwise ’supercharged’ Electric Mower

I like my reel mower, but it’s one heck of a lot of work. I don’t much like the smog-belching alternatives. So this week I got an Earthwise electric mower. Ace Hardware has them on sale for $180. These things are powerful and do a fantastic job of mulching. 5-minute setup time out of the box and there’s no gasoline, no oil to change, no spark plug to foul, and no filter to keep clean.

I got the corded version. I’ve used a vacuum cleaner before and, besides, I’d used a corded Black and Decker electric mower some three decades ago. They were awfully weak then. But these new electrics have 12-amps, and that’s enough power to tackle my bermuda grass with ease. I mowed the entire lawn one-handed (they’re light, too). Just whip the cord to one side and mow away from the outlet, and you’re good. They do make a cordless one for $100 more, but I’m against multiplying lithium batteries, if I don’t have to. Same reason I don’t drive a hybrid.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that the thing is quiet enough that I can have a conversation while mowing. My dog doesn’t hide from it – he plays on the lawn while I cut it. And I didn’t breathe any nasty fumes. The ACE version has the bag, but I only care about mulching. Amazon.com stocks various models (click the image), and they ship free.

Onlookers worry about the power and the quality of cut. I personally hate lawns and don’t care that much – mine was here when I bought the house. But the cut and power were just like any other mower I’ve used – except this one actually mulched better. Given that I could have paid $20 less for a gas mower and had to keep gas, oil, and plugs in it (there goes my $20), plus always be cleaning the filter, breathing the fumes, etc – and the build on those is only good (these days) for about 2years max – I think this is an excellent purchase.

Santa Fe, NM

There are some nice things there. The town being ringed by mountains is wonderful – to be able to look up and see mountains all the time. The weather is pleasant.

But I was expecting something that wasn’t there. The walkable downtown area is not a livable, urban downtown area. It’s mainly a district for tourists or locals to go spend some money on a fancy dinner. But it lacks the real, livable character of a downtown that you’d never have to leave. It’s not the hub of fresh produce on the street, cart vendors, coffee houses, and affordable diners. And the mass transit, well… isn’t. I can see why visitors might like it for a few days but, as a place to live, the rest of town is the usual strip malls.

By contrast, I think a more satisfying time can be had in Guthrie, Oklahoma or Stillwater, Oklahoma (if you stick to downtown and stay away from the corporate garbage).

Going through Amarillo, Texas to get to Santa Fe is not advised, unless you have no other choice. The stench of the feed lots (which ought to make a Republican insist on grass-fed beef) is overpowering. They have a nice whole foods type store called “Eat-Rite” off the Georgia exit, which is an oasis, if you have to go through. You’ll need one, because that wasteland created for cattle will have you fighting the wind for hours to and from.

If you decide to go to Santa Fe, though, better to fly to Albuquerque and take the 90min train to Santa Fe, or catch the connecting flight. I’m a fan of the train. Stay at the Silver Saddle Motel and ask Billy at the counter (wide-brimmed hat) where to get the best huevos rancheros. He knows a place where the roosters walk around outside, and the hen house is in the back.

Dirt! The Movie

Dirt! The Movie is fantastic. It’s about soil, yes, but really it’s about biology, anthropology, and culture. Highly recommended. Widely available.

Travel & Las Vegas

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” — Mark Twain

Speaking of which, the wife is going to Las Vegas for a convention. I’m jazzed about that – it’s a great opportunity for her. I detest Vegas – I’ve been enough.

I’m looking at Portland for my next flight. But also planning another trip to Korea.