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)
- 3 years ago
- 3 years ago
S____ 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
Don't wait to long to visit cancer friends
Comments (13)The one thing that you can always tell the person you are visiting is how much they mean to you...Back in the days when we thought I was going to die, the number of friends and family that visited and told me how much they cared about me was shocking..even our children...I always knew the our children loved me but my husbands children who had only been in my life for some 20 something years, made an extra effort to show their love for me and to even tell me how much I meant to them and how much having me in there lives had mean't to them...When you don't know if you have another month it's important to know that you have made an impact so I say don't be hesitant to visit or to share how you feel...I actually had to start taking anti depressants because my emotions were so raw... They went from saying a quick ..."Love Ya" to "Ruthie I Love you so much"...Yes they call me Ruthie...They were way to old to start calling me Mom and their real Mom would have had a coming unglued if she had ever heard them call me that so we just stuck with Ruthie which they started calling me when they met me..Even some of the Grands call me Ruthie for the same reason...that GrandMother would just cause them too much grief and I don't want that for them and Ruthie is fine for me.... This post was edited by ruthieg__tx on Thu, Mar 6, 14 at 13:41...See MoreCooking In My Friend's Kitchen In Berkeley
Comments (21)This morning, the sky through the bedroom window was bright and blue and cloudless. SWMBO pointed out that we had lox and cream cheese, so all we needed was bagels and red onions. I pushed the dog off my legs and walked outside, turned left, crossed a street and another, and in three minutes was at a bagel shop. Across the street, the grocery store had onions, and red potatoes. If coffee wasn't making back in the house, two cafés were a block further down. My shoes could have been repaired, a burrito eaten, a used book or DVD purchased, or any number of other daily errands done, within a block of where I stood, onion and bagel and potatoes in hand. Three minutes stroll later, I was slicing bagels in "our" kitchen. A walkable neighborhood is magical. It feels like Star Trek, where the Enterprise could warp from planet to planet in less than a minute (of TV time) and the crew could teleport up and down from the planet surface in seconds. In a walkable neighborhood, you can beam from bagel-world, grocery-planet, coffee-station, with less effort than it took to walk from the bridge to the transporter room. In comparison, a driving community feels to me like hitching up a covered wagon and rattling for hours through two-light intersections and endless parking lots, from big box to strip mall. It is so much of a harder way to live, I think. In Portland we live in a "semi walkable" neighborhood. There is a grocery store, coffee shop, several eateries and brew pubs, pizza, a haircut place, and a few assorted stores within an eight minute walk. The much denser commercial streets are more like 15 minutes' walk. The more convenient way to get around is on a bicycle, which I think of more like Luke Skywalker's X-wing. It is a fun way to get around, you get to swoop and speed, but there is a certain pre-flight delay as you unlock the bike, buckle on the helmet, clip into the pedals, and you need a certain degree of alertness, lest your fragile craft be smooshed by Imperial Battlecruisers of the Buick class. I love riding my bike and living in a cycling neighborhood, but there is something even more special about living in a walkable neighborhood. I feel so lucky to be spending two weeks in such a place. I'm thinking about how I can manage to live in a walkable neighborhood someday. The potatoes were for crab chowder. No recipe was followed. Just melt some diced onions in butter, cube red potatoes with skins, add boiling water and half a bouillon cube (no stock being handy), simmer for awhile, then mash up some of the potatoes to thicken. Add consistent sized cubes of stuff with pleasant colors - I had cucumber, but bell pepper would work - little strips of parsley or scallions or other greeney, salt and pepper. Bacon is always recommended but I had none, so I threw in a Parmesan cheese rind and some cubes of gruyere cheese. After the seasonings are right, add heavy cream and simmer a bit more. A flour slurry if you want thick spoon-standing chowder, but I prefer a more liquid soup. The crab comes last. Let it stand and the flavors mingle, then reheat and serve....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 MoreWent to visit a friend in Rehab Sunday
Comments (6)This is the first time he has been in re-hab and we won't give up on him yet...the other guy yep I am done.....I thought he had hit his bottom but guess not....as he is back doing what he was......Now this friend....I will help him til I find out he has relapsed if he has I am done...I will always be his friend and love him...but I won't let him drag us down too.....I think actually the naranon is what we need to attend they said I am going to find a place close to us.......Stacie!! I am proud of you...100 days that is great super.....Hugs to you!!! Stacy...See More- 3 years agolast modified: 3 years ago
3 years agoJohn Liu thanked dcarch7 d c f l a s h 7 @ y a h o o . c o m- 3 years ago
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Here’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