Visiting Old Friends, Some Cooking Content
SWMBO spent the week before last house and dog-sitting for our friends in Berkeley. She drove down on a Friday, and wanted me to go with her. I was grumpy about it, because I’d planned to go skiing, but was ”persuaded” to fly down after my ski weekend.
By the way, I’ve resumed skiing after a twenty-year layoff, after realizing that the slopes are only a 50 minute drive from my house and that my knees are miraculously uninjured after six decades so I might as well use them doing something other that cycling. No running, thank you - during a miserable season running cross-country in high school I swore to never run again, and I’ve stuck to that oath. I won’t even run for a bus. Hence, intact knees :-) No conceivable cooking angle to this digression so I’ll say no more about it other than I wish I hadn’t lost two decades of skiing!
A pleasant week in Berkeley. Our friends returned from Hawaii and we stayed another weekend with them before heading down to Los Angeles. The only mishap was that their round stone outdoor tabletop fell off the table base to which it had only been silicone ”glued”, and broke in half.
I took the two pieces to another friend’s place. We used clear epoxy and a clamp to glue the pieces back together, filled the cracks and missing bits with more clear epoxy, sanded the epoxy to dull the gloss, cut a round of 5/8” marine plywood, set T-serts into the wood to bolt the table legs to, used construction cement to glue the wood to the underside of the stone top, applied Varathane to the wood, bolted the table base to the wood, and I brought the repaired table back to friend #1’s house.
When I entered the house, there was a big shout of “Surprise”. My wife had arranged a surprise 60th birthday party for me, and all my Bay Area friends were there!
One guy even drove up from Santa Barbara; incidentally he was the last friend I ever went skiing with. He reminded me of the time we jumped into a chute at Mammoth. I went first, got to the bottom upright. He went next, had a huge fall, the kind called a ”yard sale” that leaves your skis and stuff scattered all over the slope. He took so long climbing up the chute to retrieve his gear that, he claims, by the time he got re-assembled and skiied to the bottom I was asleep in the snow, and he was pissed. I don’t remember that part.
I had been happy spending my 60th in friend #2’s workshop doing a project with him, but the party was a nice bonus.
My birthday balloons - grump grump
Me and my friend - and terrific skiier - J____. He’s quite the outdoorsman, he and his wife, both in their seventies, still take two week backpacking trips into the High Sierras. J_____ is the only person I know who’s been attacked by a bear, and obviously the only person I know who’s survived a bear attack.
We then drove down to Los Angeles to stay with our ”Los Angeles parents”, who adopted SWMBO and I when we moved to L.A. in our twenties. S_____ is the best cook I know. She and her son taught me to cook, way back then. Covid interrupted her prolific entertaining, but she still cooks wonderful stuff for small gatherings.
In Berkeley, I’d been gifted a three pound piece of tuna belly, from the guy who caught it - another outdoorsman, he fishes and hunts so much that they hardly eat store-bought meat or fish. I brought that tuna to L.A. and cooked it for S_____ and her husband E_____. It was simple: cut into 2” steaks, pat with salt and pepper, crust with sesame seeds, sear in a couple of very hot cast iron pans, serve with a dipping sauce of soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, sesame oil, pepper, and cayenne. This tuna belly was fantastic. Rich, fatty, unctuous. I’ve never had better.
The next day I made dinner for S____ and E____, and S____’s son (my other cooking instructor, back when) and his partner. I made albondigas soup at SWMBO’s request, asparagus, and because I couldn’t find pork tenderloin at the store I roasted beef short ribs in S_____’s Dutch oven, topped with a creamy asparagus-garlic-horse radish sauce. I’ve never made short ribs in a Dutch oven; normally I pressure cook or sous vide it, but we didn't have a PC or time to sous vide. I like the Dutch oven results better.
On my last day in L.A., we made dinner at my friend P____'s house. He has had a hard few years. P____ has been in a wheelchair since high school. When we became friends in the late 1980s, he was a wheelchair racer, traveling all over the world to race, with huge powerful arms and shoulders, chest and back. His arms then were as big as my thighs.
But he’s been bedridden for two years, only able to transfer to his mobility scooter with help and a ceiling mounted hoist, and has become increasingly isolated, partly because of the Covid years and partly because people tend to stop visiting after a while. So SWMBO organized a little dinner at P____’s house with S_____, E_____, and P____’s brother and sister-in-law. I deboned two chickens, dry rubbed them, and brought them in a foil pan to P____’s house to roast in his new Haier oven.
So this is when the most interesting cooking thing happened. I put the chickens in the oven, set to 350F, added a baguette to warm up. After a little while I went to remove the baguette and increase the temperature a bit.
Wait. Why is the oven door locked? What’s this symbol “P” mean? Why doesn’t the damn touchscreen respond?
Get the manual, look through it, on page 30 it says “P” means “self-clean cycle”. Of course it does, everyone knows “P” means “self-clean” :-( The oven door is locked, the oven is headed toward 500F, and the touchscreen controls remain non-responsive. ****. The baguette is starting to blacken. I frantically read the entire manual. There is NO way to turn off self-clean or unlock the door. People are about to arrive. The baguette is smoking.
I found the house electrical panel, and switched the oven circuit off then on. Did this a couple times. The “P” disappears but the door is still locked. Wait twenty minutes. People are here. The door finally unlocks. Having no idea how much roasting the chicken has done by now, I threw out the blackened baguette and slapped the chicken into a pan. Hunted around the kitchen, there’s no flour - P____’s caretakers feed him packaged food, which is one reason he’s in such bad shape - but there was some corn starch, so I made a quick gravy to cover up whatever the chicken was going to taste like.
It turned out pretty dang good actually! Hey, a new recipe - debone chicken and run the self-cleaning cycle.
I hate modern appliances. I hate the people who design the UI for them. I hate the people who write the manuals for them. They are all sadistic retards.
Comments (22)
John Liu
2 months agoJohn Liu
2 months agoS____ is in her early 80s now, and starting to declutter after a lifetime of collecting cooking stuff, curios, artwork, clothing. Everytime we see her, she gives us stuff. I made the drive from L.A. to Portland with the trunk full of oyster plates, copper cookware, an IBM Selectric typewriter, and my favorite gift for my birthday - a slide of SWMBO and me, from 1991 or so, I’m about 28 and she’s about 30 here.
Dang that was a long time ago.
I’ll end with a useful discovery for those searching for the perfect household lighting. S____’s kitchen is kind of dimly lit, despite having ten overhead recessed ceiling lights, because over the years those lights have become filled with a mismatched collection of crappy CFL floodlight bulbs giving off sickly light and not much of it. I went to Home Depot and found the coolest LED bulbs. They have a switch that allows you to set the color temperature, from cold (5000K) to warm (2700K), are dimmable, and another setting allows the dimmer to change the light from low level super-warm (2000K, almost candlelight) to high level daylight (3500-5000K depending how far you push the dimmer). I installed ten of these in her kitchen and two wall dimmers, and she (and I) are happy.
These come from 65 w equivalent to 150 w. I’m going to see if there are some that will fit in my house lights.Related Discussions
Other friends who visit the yard
Comments (53)lol....What happened to this post? It didn't look like that when I previewed it. Janice,I did watch for a few. He was moving so slow though that I finally walked away. I also thought that the emergence was a night time thing but I guess this little guy needed to be "flipped" as my mom used to say about babies that got their days and nights mixed up.....lol You are more than welcome to save any of my pics. Hope your guy enjoys it! Art...See MoreA wonderful visit with a CF friend!
Comments (13)LOL - my beautiful gift bag - can you tell I was makeup shopping? We had such a wonderful visit - it was way too short and I know you all will NOT believe that - especially considering that it was Alexa and ME involved - there was NO alcohol. none. zip. nada. OK, pick yourselves up off the floor...we still had a 6 hr drive ahead of us, so Scott definitely couldn't and we did arrive at 10:30 AM...we considered bloody mary's but the visit was so short, we never got to them. :-) First Alexa gave me a wonderful basket filled with some of her home canned goodies! I got some of the gingered holiday chutney! YEA! Also some yummy looking apricot chutney, and some pickled asparagus! I appreciate these so much because I know what it takes to can - and I also am skeptical as to whether anything I have done this year is going to be edible - LOL! also in my basket were some green bean crisps that she got at the local farmer's market - these things are addictive. We can't figure out how they make them. They're crunchy but light green beans. (Sammy had one in the car and she likes them too.) Also some beautiful little wooden serving dishes - Alexa knows that sometimes my "entertaining" involves cocktails and assorted nuts - LOL. For lunch she made bbq'd pork sandwiches and following Alexa's lead, we put our coleslaw right on the sandwich - mmmm! We also had a yummy salad with lots of veggies and fresh cheese She had also made some great tortilla roll ups - we loved the red ones which had jalapenos in them. Here we are in Alexa's picturesque back yard with Sammy (who was a bit of a pain) Here are the texting buddies (LOVE that hair!) And here are all of us minus Scott who was taking the pic... Alexa's boys are adorable and friendly - and Scott and I both found Alexa to be charming, intelligent, funny, interesting, and a wonderful hostess. She was able to do all of this without having a car to get around - with her DH's vehicle issues this week! We all were so at ease together - we plan to get together again when we had down that way. I don't think the boys will let us forget it, either - LOL. Sorry it took me so long - we were on the road til almost 8 last night...long day but very fun. And I forgot to say that she lives in a beautiful beautiful area... Stacy...See MoreFriend seems to never want to drive to visit me
Comments (6)Thirties are a hard time.. usually new husbands and babies or young kids take much time away from friends. I don't know what her family situation is, but when I was in my early thirties, I didn't have much time for friends that lived 10 minutes away, much less could I even imagine taking a day off to drive an hour to go shopping. Even if she doesn't have kids, sometimes work obligations or gatherings with the in-laws take over many weekends. You say when you drive in, you're generally coming in town to visit your family... but, honestly, how many times would you drive that far and come in just to visit her? Have you driven in just to see her? Have you guys considered meeting for lunch or dinner half way? That sounds like a plan to me... I don't necessarily think that the friendship isn't special to her; I just think there are times in our lives when we aren't able to invest as much time as we like with all our friends. Some years are better than others. Friends don't need to physically see each other all that much. Keep in touch by phone. And one more thing, it may not seem fair but I have noticed usually the friend or family member that moves away does come back to visit more... I mean, that's home, you're coming back to see many people. So don't keep tabs; it's not really fair. I mean, you may come in town 5 times a year..for a reunion, a funeral, a wedding shower, your mom's b-day, a niece's baptism, etc.... but that doesn't mean your friend should have to visit you five times a year. Get the point; you moved away, not her. And, she doesn't like to drive so you will probably be seeing her on her home turf way more often....See MoreVisit in my friends Hosta garden...
Comments (13)He is working all day long in the garden says it keeps him alive :-) He's 75 years old... And as his pots stand close together on wooden pallets he can water them easily. He`s buying those big black buckets, thrilling holes and fills them with normal soil, mixed with a little bit of those fertilizer chips made of horse hoof (sorry, don't know the right word in english), puts the new plant into it and leaves it untouched for the next 3-4 years.Maybe it's just the right mix of soil, light and climate......See MoreJohn Liu
2 months agolast modified: 2 months ago
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2 months agoJohn Liu thanked dcarch7 d c f l a s h 7 @ y a h o o . c o mJohn Liu
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annie1992
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l pinkmountain
last monthJohn Liu
last monthHere’s my friend P_____ back in the day, about when the picture above of SWMBO and I was taken, when he was a racer.
annie1992