Seattle has a National Hockey League team again after nearly 100 years. Its first NHL team, the Metropolitans, was the first US team to win the Stanley Cup. The current iteration is the Kraken, named after the mythical sea creature. This is a big deal for Seattle. The region has a couple of semi-pro teams, but none of the colleges or universities has a hockey team. The Kraken has been hyped for at least two years, with T-shirt and jersey – I mean, sweater – sales.
As would be expected, most of the Kraken team members are from Canada. Two or three are from Sweden. All of them are NHL veterans. Much to this Cornellian’s chagrin, two of the Kraken went to Harvard. (The Harvard-Cornell hockey game in Ithaca was immortalized in the novel and movie Love Story. It’s been a grudge match for over 50 years.)
Tonight is opening night versus the Golden Knights in Las Vegas. The atmosphere in the rink is more like a Vegas show than a sporting event. At the end of the first period, Las Vegas was ahead 2-0. It could take some time to release the Kraken.
I’m a proud southpaw. Julian looked over at my work computer setup the other day and asked, “How come your mouse is on the right side?” I replied, “So I can write while I’m manipulating the mouse.” Actually, the real reason is so I can pet whoever is on my lap with my left hand.
“Get that phone out of your hand and resume petting me already!” Neli, the absolute monarch of the office.
One of the few upsides of canceling the trip to Europe is that we’re able to see our friends Bruce and Laurie, who moved to Michigan six months ago and are in town this week. Bruce had hoped to accompany us on the trip, but he needed back surgery over the summer. We hosted them for dinner last night.
Julian made his killer pasta puttanesca recipe. I went through a couple of cookbooks to find a suitable dessert for the event. I found one in Florentine, by Emiko Davies – a pear chocolate cake. As I mentioned in this post, the arrival of locally-grown pears is my cue that autumn has arrived. I bought some Bartletts for the cake. Since the recipe is gluten-free, I had to get some almond meal. I also needed to pick up some bittersweet chocolate. The recipe was straightforward, once I poached the pears and melted the chocolate. I couldn’t find my springform pan, so I baked it in a deep-dish pie pan. The result is below. It received rave reviews from all four of us. It was more moist than most flourless cake recipes. Since the recipe is flourless, I expect a request to make it for the next Mixed-Marriage Passover Seder.
Way back in February, I was fully vaccinated and Julian had had his first shot. We were optimistic that COVID-19 was going to be beaten back. As a result, we decided to re-book the trip to Europe that we’d had to cancel in 2020. Julian scored great apartment rentals in Florence and Paris and almost-reasonably-priced flights. We were supposed to leave September 20th.
We canceled the trip on the 15th. Several factors led to this decision, not the least of which was the Delta variant of COVID-19 running rampant in the United States. While Europe hasn’t banned American travelers yet, the hoops one has to jump through are onerous. For example, we’d have to get different “health cards” for each country so we could enter museums or restaurants. It’s anybody’s guess whether we’d get them in time. Italy had a rapid turnaround; however, I think we’re still waiting for France’s carte sanitaire. The rules are subject to change while we’re in a country. My vacation time doesn’t allow for long quarantines in any of our destinations. The health of our elder statescat, Luka, was another consideration. I didn’t want our cat sitters to have to make end-of-life decisions (and pay for them) in our absence.
Maybe next year, Paris.
We’ll be back eventually. This photo was taken in 2015, before the tower’s base was fenced in.
I grew up in upstate New York. I like my cheddar cheese to bite back. One of the best bits of culinary advice my mother gave me was to use sharp cheddar in macaroni and cheese. Unfortunately, finding truly sharp cheddar here in Washington is nearly impossible.
Julian decided to make patty melts for dinner last week. For the uninitiated, a patty melt is a burger served on rye bread with caramelized onions and cheddar cheese. We asked the cheesemonger at the Murray’s kiosk at the QFC for a recommendation. We wound up with an Australian cheddar. The results were…meh. The cheese just wasn’t sharp enough.
I tried the cheese in a sandwich the other day. It wasn’t bad uncooked; however, the sharpness was probably dissipated by the cooking. Mom was right.
The bald eagle nesting pair who live on our street have decamped to their summer aerie. In the meantime, a pair of hawks have apparently taken up squatting in the nest. One hawk sat on a branch of the Douglas fir off our deck for over a half hour the other day. Julian took numerous shots of the bird. Note the band on its right leg.
Quite a handsome specimen. Photo courtesy of Julian.
Let’s face it, friends, to stay alive we have to kill other things. Sometimes they’re already dead on arrival in our kitchens; other times we actually do the killing. Last week I had to perform mass murder: Yeast Mode, my sourdough starter, was put out of their misery. Cause of death: Contamination by the wrong sort of organisms, i.e., mold. I should have put Yeast Mode in the fridge when the summer heat warmed the kitchen to the point where it was painful to turn on the oven. At least I know where to get a refresher starter when the weather cools down and I’m ready to bake again.
I was talking to an acquaintance of mine after church about the drawbacks of working from home. She said, “I’ve forgotten what people look like below their shoulders.” Given the “COVID 19” weight gain some folks have experienced, that may be a good thing.
I like to do our weekly shopping in larger supermarkets. They have the variety of produce and seafood I want. Some of them will cater to ethnic populations in their neighborhoods. But sometimes when I just need to get two or three items on the way home, smaller grocery stores will do the trick. Some are independent, others are small branches of large chains. Note that I’m not talking about “convenience stores”, which exist to sell cigarettes, cheap beer, rolling papers, and junk food for the post-cannabis munchies. I mean real grocery stores.
Going to smaller grocery stores has several advantages. You can get in and out faster. You usually don’t have to worry about managers frequently “reorganizing” items in an attempt to separate you from more of your money. Sometimes smaller stores will carry organic or other items that are hard to find in mainstream stores. You can get acquainted with the staff, who are usually happy to help you find items.
My usual small supermarket in our old neighborhood closed earlier this year. Kroger, the owner, said it was underperforming. This is nonsense. The store was always busy. Sometimes I couldn’t maneuver a cart around because of the other customers. The building was small, which left no room for a pharmacy. That’s probably one reason for the “underperforming” that the corporation saddled it with.
Now that I’m stuck working from home, the closest thing to a small grocery is the Yakima Fruit Market around the corner from us. There’s a Mexican market across the street from the fruit market as well. Having stores within walking distance works – at least when it’s not 90° or more outside.
I’ve done more than my share of cookbook-reading over the years and have developed strong opinions on the genre. I gave my strategy for adding a cookbook to the collection in this post. Even if the recipes and other content are first rate, some cookbooks have layout and other issues that reduce the chance that I’ll use the books regularly. Here are three examples.
The font used. I don’t need bifocals (yet), but sometimes fonts can be too small or cutesy. If you can’t tell the difference between 1/3 and 1/2 in a recipe, forget about it. Many folks slammed the first Ruth Reichl-edited Gourmet Cookbook for having pale yellow titles. What was the publisher thinking? Julian bought a cookbook last week that has barely readable 3rd-grade-level block letters for titles and chapter headings. The recipes look good, but the titles and goofy drawings detract from the content.
Printing recipes on a colored background. This is a common sin in my coffee table cookbooks. If there’s insufficient contrast between the page and print, coupled with a puny font, you’ll have a hard time reading the recipe. Maybe there’s a reason these are supposed to sit on your coffee table. It’s difficult to cook from them.
Language. I do my share of cursing (as Julian knows when I have work-from-home connectivity troubles), but I try to keep my discourse on a higher level on this humble blog. It seems as if many authors (usually men) feel the need to use liberal amounts of R-rated language in their cookbooks. The originator of this trend was undoubtedly Anthony Bourdain; however, at least he wrote good prose between the F-bombs. The pretenders can’t. Come on, guys, your mother may read your book and decide to wash out your laptop with bleach.
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