Oct 02

Are We in the End Times, October 2016 Edition

I’m not talking politics. This concerns the state of college and professional sports. Let me count the ways:

  • The University of Washington whupped Stanford on Friday night;
  • Washington State University (winless two years ago) shellacked Oregon yesterday;
  • The University of North Carolina beat Florida State yesterday;
  • Cornell has won two games in a row, including their Homecoming bout against Yale;
  • The Buffalo Bills beat the New England Patriots 16-0, the first time the Patriots have been shut out since 1993;
  • The Chicago Cubs have the best record in Major League Baseball going into the playoffs.

The last one is definitely a harbinger of the end of days.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/02/are-we-in-the-end-times-october-2016-edition/

Oct 01

More Figgy Goodness

When fresh figs are in season and you can get them for a decent price, buy them. I bought two pints the other day at the fruit stand and puzzled about what to do with them for the usual Friday Night Follies. Luckily, I found a recipe in Deborah Madison’s cookbook, Local Flavors, for a fall fruit salad featuring figs, pomegranate seeds, persimmons, and walnuts. Since I didn’t have any persimmons and we have one friend who’s allergic to walnuts, it was time to gemisch. [Gemisch is Yiddish for mess. It’s our in-house term for kitchen improvisations.] Below is what I came up with:

Fig-Pomegranate Salad

1 1/2 pints fresh figs

Seeds from one small pomegranate

A few grinds of freshly-ground black pepper

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2-3 tablespoons white wine vinegar

drizzle of honey

drizzle of pomegranate molasses

pinch salt

Combine the figs and pomegranate seeds in a medium bowl. Grind the pepper over the fruit. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the oil, vinegar, honey, pomegranate molasses, and salt. Pour the oil and vinegar mixture over the fruit; toss to coat. Serve at room temperature.

This was a big hit with the crew. It went very well with the main dishes, grilled salmon for the omnivores and chickpea fritters for the vegetarians. The crunch of the pomegranate seeds was a good contrast with the softness of the figs.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/01/more-figgy-goodness/

Oct 01

Misplaced Nostalgia?

I grew up on the East Coast eating McIntosh, Cortland, Jonathan, and Rome Beauty apples. Family and friends are in the orchard business. My maternal grandfather co-owned an apple orchard. When we visited Seattle in the 1990’s, the apple selection was limited to Red and Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and one or two other varieties. Luckily, the selection has widened in the years since our first visit.

The other day I bought a locally-grown, new crop, McIntosh apple at the fruit stand. Julian doesn’t like them, so I usually don’t purchase that variety. I took it to lunch yesterday. One bite and I thought to myself: “DAMN! Is this a Red Delicious in disguise?” The apple had no snap to its flesh. It was as if it had been in cold storage for six months. The potential explanations are as follows:

  • It was a Red Delicious in disguise
  • Terroir (similar to wine grapes) is at work. If you grow grapes in a particular location, the resulting wine may be an entirely different animal from wine made from the same variety grown elsewhere. Soil and climate may affect apple varieties the same way. Apples from the same tree may have different characteristics from year to year depending on temperature and precipitation. Perhaps McIntosh apple trees don’t do as well when planted on the Eastern slopes of the Cascades as opposed to the Snow Belt of New York.

Maybe I should stick to West Coast apples on the West Coast–except for applesauce.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/10/01/misplaced-nostalgia/

Sep 27

Five Things Americans Can Teach the French

In the last post I listed five things Americans can learn from the French. This post lists five things Americans can teach the French.

Integrate your immigrants into society. These people have much to offer an aging workforce. Shuffling them into ugly suburbs called banlieues with little opportunity is counterproductive, given the violence that’s occurred in the last two years. America has had its own anti-immigrant demagoguery, but our better instincts have prevailed – so far.

Put reflective fog lines on the sides of roads, especially in rural areas. Some of the roads in the Gorges du Verdon area had no shoulders, just a sheer drop to the valley below.

Quit smoking. The percentage of persons over 15 years old who smoke in France is 27.6%, whereas it’s 17.2% in the US. (Stats courtesy of the World Health Organization) Smoking is now prohibited inside French restaurants, which means that sidewalk cafés are clogged with smokers.

Lose the crappy iced tea. This was my biggest rant from last year, and remains so.img_1979

Have fresh milk in the grocery stores. It was a surprise last year to find that all of the milk available in markets was shelf-stable. And this in a country famous for its other dairy products.

 

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/27/five-things-americans-can-teach-the-french/

Sep 25

Five Things the French Can Teach Americans

Although I’m All-American, I have a soft spot for France. There are many things that it does well, just as there are many things America does well. Here are five things that we Yanks can learn from our French counterparts:

Les plaîsirs de la table (the pleasures of the table). The French do not wolf down their meals; rather, they savor each course.  They don’t get itchy if the main course doesn’t arrive within five minutes of ordering it. We can all learn to slow down.

Eat sans gluttony. I wrote about this last year, the concept of “assez” (enough).

Drive less. Given the dearth of parking spaces on the Riviera and in French cities, this is a no-brainer. We left the Purple People-Eater in a free parking spot and walked or took the bus/train when we were in Villefranche-sur-Mer.

Invest in high-quality infrastructure. The Millau Viaduct, which we drove over last year, is a masterpiece of engineering, the 21st century equivalent of the Golden Gate Bridge. Americans used to do roads and bridges right. These days, road repair goes to the low bidder. The phrase “you get what you pay for” often applies to the results. If the same pothole has to be fixed year after year, the Highway Department needs to get a clue.

Value the old. Some of the buildings we’ve seen on our trips to France are hundreds of years old. Some retrofitting has to occur to bring them up to current code and modern conveniences, but it’s done. Meanwhile, the first option in the US when confronted with an old building is tear it down. How many architectural treasures have been destroyed as a result?

In the next post, I’ll turn the tables.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/25/five-things-the-french-can-teach-americans/

Sep 22

And What Have We Learned?

This trip, as with our previous travels, supplied us with memories of beautiful scenery and great food. It also taught us valuable lessons for future trips. Here are a few:

  • Traveling light means constantly searching for laundromats or paying hotels to do laundry for you. Cut yourself some slack and pack extra socks and undies. They don’t take up much room, and are probably what you’ll need to wash the most.
  • Paying $85 for your “Known Traveler Number” (KTN) from the Department of Homeland Security will only help you on flights originating in the US. In other countries you’ll still have to take off your shoes and pull out your laptops. We could only use the KTN for one flight on our itinerary. Unless you do a lot of domestic travel, it’s not worth the money. At least the KTN is good for five years.
  • Avoid changing planes at the Vancouver Airport. The distances between arrival gates and customs are long, and can be overwhelming to the mobility-challenged. If you have a short turnaround time, you could miss your connecting flight.
  • It helps to have a plan B when things go awry. Our rental flat in Lyon had a non-functional refrigerator. Fortunately, we were able to transfer to the hotel where we stayed last year without losing any money.
  • Regardless of the country, having to go to an emergency room while on vacation sucks.
  • If you find a free parking space for your rental car in a European city, grab it and don’t move the car unless absolutely necessary.
  • Despite the cute shoes we saw in Lyon, the average French man has the same sense of style as an American software engineer, with two exceptions: They wear more stylish eyewear, and their hair is a bit more groomed. The current style among hipsters is close-cropped on the sides and back, and longer on the top. Consider this a reverse mullet, or early Justin Bieber. If said hipster is going bald, he shaves his head; however, he has a beard to compensate. The beard may be a few days’ worth of scruff, or a bushy specimen worthy of Santa Claus.

Once the jet lag wears off (eventually), I’ll have more to report.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/22/and-what-have-we-learned/

Sep 21

Bonjour, Riviera

The homestretch of the French pilgrimage was on the Riviera. On Wednesday we landed in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. The view from our room at the Hotel Deux Frères was stunning. We saw the crescent-shaped harbor with Monaco in the distance. We also saw a flotilla of megayachts moored in the harbor, poor souls. Dinner at the hotel was merveilleux! We started with crab-stuffed tomatoes, then moved on to rack of lamb.

After breakfast, we roamed around Roquebrune. The town is what Julian refers to as a target-rich environment. He took many photos of the buildings, views, and street life. We also took a short visit to the cemetery, which has family plots going back over 300 years. We struck up a conversation (in French) with the friendly groundskeeper at the cemetery when he noticed my bandaged hand.

Because this section of the Riviera is so close to Italy, there’s a lot of cross-pollination between the two countries. Many of the local names look and sound Italian. In addition, the predominant cuisine of local restaurants is Italian. We had pizza for lunch today, and Julian had penne all’Arabbiata for dinner tonight.

Our last stop was Villefranche-sur-Mer, just east of Nice. The traffic in town is what you’d expect for a tourist destination, as is the parking. I was ready to tell Julian to drive to the Nice airport and get us on the next flight home when I saw an open parking spot that would accommodate the Purple People-Eater. We mostly walked and took transit from points A to points B. The hotel is located right on the working harbor.

On Saturday we took the train to Nice, mostly to visit the Marc Chagall Museum. The centerpiece of the collection is a series of paintings he did based on Biblical scenes. Many of these paintings were recently restored. The colors were wonderfully vivid. The rest of Nice was a big-city tourist trap. There was one exception: The memorial to the victims of the Bastille Day attack. The pile of toys, stuffed animals, candles, and messages takes up half a block of a park.

Sunday we took a bus to Cap Ferrat. Details of the visit are in the previous post. Our final dinner in Villefranche was at a Vietnamese restaurant. Then it was back to the hotel to pack and try to get some sleep before driving to the Nice Airport.

 

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/21/bonjour-riviera/

Sep 18

Riviera Motor Sports

Everyone has heard about the Grand Prix of Monaco. However, there’s a more popular motor sport here on the French Riviera: Parking Derby.

We were told that there were plenty of parking spaces near our hotel in Viillefranche-sur-Mer. There were, but they were all occupied. Finally we found a space about three blocks away. That’s where the Purple People-Eater stayed during our visit. Our breakfast on the front porch of the hotel was enlivened by watching other vehicles hunting for parking.

There’s a delicate physics at work when one looks for a parking space. There is the eyeball test: Will the space accommodate my vehicle? Then the passenger gets out of the car and flags the driver into the space. This process may or may not be successful. If not, the passenger may have to flag the driver to back up down a one-way street. (Been there, done that.)

There’s a common hazard of the Parking Derby, the scratch and dent count. Many French cars show battle scars from losing the battle for a parking space, either by dinging another vehicle or a wall. When we were waiting for the bus today, we watched a long parade of cars go by with assorted scratches, dents, and dings. The French see these as badges of honor. Either that, or the collision deductible on their car insurance is huge.

The pinnacle of the Riviera Parking Derby is in Cap Ferrat. This is an exclusive peninsula between Villefranche-sur-Mer and Italy. Paul Allen and other gazillionaires have pieds-à-terre on this spit of land. It should be noted that these “footholds” have more square footage than your average grocery store in the suburbs of Sheboygan or Seattle. We thought about driving over there today, but thought better of it when we saw the vultures circling for parking near the Purple People-Eater. The main town of St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat is a rats’ nest of one-way streets with limited parking. The peasants jockey for paid parking spaces throughout the peninsula. (Maybe this is how the town supports itself.) Meanwhile, the gazillionaires have valet parking or hired help. If they want a pizza, they can get it delivered–from Naples.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/18/riviera-motor-sports/

Sep 15

If Heaven isn’t in Provence…

I’m not going. This is the most amazing scenery. The combination of the hills, sea, sky, and vegetation is unlike anywhere else I’ve been. Throw in the history of the region and the cuisine, and you have the whole package.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/15/if-heaven-isnt-in-provence/

Sep 14

Gorgeous Gorges

We spent three nights in the Gorges du Verdon. This is France’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon. The Verdon River doesn’t look like much now, but in its heyday it carried large amounts of water from receding glaciers; hence the canyons.

A section of the Gorges du Verdon.

A section of the Gorges du Verdon.

Although the area is popular with other Europeans, we didn’t meet any other Americans there. I have two conjectures:

  • Rick Steves hasn’t done a TV show about the area yet. He does mention it in his book on Provence and the Riviera.
  • The gorges are not easy to access. The nearest airport is probably in Nice. Mass transit is unavailable. The main road, 952, is very narrow with lots of hairpin turns. It’s not for the faint of heart or sphincter function. The Purple People-Eater barely made it through when we met large (for Europe) RV’s. The shoulder of the road is non-existent in spots. One oversteer and you could wind up as vulture food in the gorge. (Is the resurgence of the vulture hereabouts due to motor vehicle, bike, and hiking accidents? Who knows?)

Our home for the duration was L’Auberge du Point Sublime, a hotel/restaurant near the tiny town of Rougon. There is a Point Sublime, and it lives up to the hype. It’s an easy 10-minute walk from the hotel. L’Auberge serves killer dinners made with local sheep and goat products, produce, and honey. I was still pretty ill our first night here, so all I had was the soupe au pistou for dinner. The room was rustic, but comfortable.

Overlooking the town of Rougon.

Overlooking the town of Rougon.

Because I wasn’t up for hiking the gorges, we visited two larger towns in the area. We did laundry in Castellane one day. This town is a major jumping-off point for rafters, climbers, and the like. The amenities also scream the demographic – lots of pizza places and sporting goods stores. We had lunch here at a Vietnamese restaurant run by a Dutch couple. The next day we visited Moustiers-Saint-Marie. This was the first town on the trip where we encountered tour buses. As it happened, the day we checked out, our hotel was swamped catering picnic lunches for a German-speaking tour group.

A view of Moustiers-Ste.-Marie.

A view of Moustiers-Ste.-Marie.

Both Castellane and Moustiers have hilltop Medieval churches. Many of the tourists took the steep trails up and back.

After this interlude in the hinterlands, the final leg of the trip goes for the glitz on the Riviera.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2016/09/14/gorgeous-gorges/

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