Oct 07

Bad News for Leaf-Peepers

People who drive around Central New York to gawk at falling leaves this fall could be sorely disappointed. In years past, the leaves would be near peak color at this time of year. However, climate change has left its mark. The leaves are slow to change color and are relatively muted. My brother-in-law has been clearing trees on a property outside town for a future home, and he’s noticed that the leaves are just falling off the trees without changing color. Julian thinks that the trees are just scared that Stan is coming after them with the chainsaw. This pattern reminds me of what passed for autumn in Dallas. The trees might be colored for one day, and then fall off the trees.

The view from the parking lot of Mom's apartment. The leaves are pretty muted in color.

The view from the parking lot of Mom’s apartment. The leaves are pretty muted in color.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/10/07/bad-news-for-leaf-peepers/

Oct 06

Destiny and the Dinosaur

No, this is not a post on evolution, creationism, or anything in between. We are visiting my mother and sister in my hometown of Hannibal. This is a small farming town north of Syracuse that hasn’t changed much in population since I grew up. Several of my high school classmates and a few former teachers still live in town, but for the most part I can come here without recognizing or being recognized by anyone in the grocery store or on the town square.

Yesterday Julian had a hankering to have lunch at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Syracuse. On the way we stopped at the Destiny USA mega-shopping mall. When it first opened, it was called the Carousel Mall because of the antique carousel installed near the food court. As enclosed shopping malls fell out of favor, the developer morphed it into a shopping and entertainment venue and renamed it Destiny USA. It has an electric go-kart track, ropes course, bowling alley, and several video game arcades along with the same mall stores you’d find in Sheboygan or Seattle. This strategy can make sense in Syracuse, since the climate is not conducive to outdoor recreation other than hunting, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling 5 months out of the year (if you’re lucky). However, getting out of Destiny USA reminds me of the lyrics in Hotel California

: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” It took us a good 20 minutes to get out of the parking lot and back onto route 81. Do not rely on your cell phone’s map application to get you out of that mall alive.

The Dinosaur started out as a couple of guys and a smoker serving food at biker rallies, but they settled down and bought the restaurant in downtown Syracuse in 1988. (The Dinosaur still caters; they did the BBQ lunch at my Cornell reunion 12 years ago.) They’ve since added restaurants in other cities in the northeast. They even have a restaurant in Chicago now. They have live music on the weekends, mostly blues and rock. We originally parked our rental VW Beetle in the motorcycle parking space, but thought better of it when we realized that a couple of bikers could turn the car upside down with their bare hands. The ambiance is decidedly roadhouse-biker bar. The walls have old posters of blues concerts from juke joints near and far, with old license plates. The waitstaff, bartenders, and cooks are liberally festooned with piercings and tattoos. They had a variety of beers on tap and in the bottle, but they had the most important BBQ lunch beverage from my point of view: Unsweetened, unflavored iced tea–with refills.

The bar at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

The bar at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

As for the food, we did a divide and conquer strategy. Julian ordered the ribs and I had a brisket sandwich. Each order came with two sides. He got black beans and rice and pulled pork collard greens, while I got french fries and homemade applesauce (Syracuse is in apple country). Both meats were cooked with the requisite amount of smoke. The collards were superb, especially cut with pulled pork. The applesauce was made the way I do: Apples cooked with the peels, then ground through the coarse filter of a food mill. We definitely ate our fill.

Any self-respecting barbecue joint has its own sauces and condiments on the table and for sale, and the Dinosaur is no exception. It has two sauces, Sensuous Slathering and Wango Tango. The latter is a bit spicier than the former. The garlic chipotle and habanero table sauces were both excellent. They also have a seasoned salt rub called Cajun Foreplay. We bought some of the rub and habanero table sauce (Devil’s Duel) for our refrigerator’s Arsenal of Democracy on our way out. The Dinosaur also has a cookbook, which I bought several years ago. Definitely getting lost for.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/10/06/destiny-and-the-dinosaur/

Oct 06

The Central New York Car Culture

Some places are known to have large numbers of a particular type of car. Seattle, for example, probably has more Priuses than anywhere else in Washington state. Here in my birth turf of Central New York, the major vehicles on the road are trucks and SUV’s. I can understand trucks since this is a rural part of the state, but the preponderance of SUV’s is baffling to me. In my family, about the only one with a car is my nephew’s wife. Even my mother has an SUV. Nevertheless, our rental VW Beetle sticks out like a sore thumb in most parking lots hereabouts.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/10/06/the-central-new-york-car-culture/

Sep 30

French with a Side of Food

Julian signed up for a noncredit French class at a local community college last fall. He wanted to brush up in advance of a future vacation to France. I chose not to sign up with him that quarter, preferring a quiet evening to myself. He’d come home from class with good reports about the professor: “She’s a native speaker and a stickler for pronunciation.” Okay. “The class is very relaxed.” No exams or grades, of course it’s relaxed. “She’s a foodie. She’s even published a cookbook.” Oh, really? Tell me more… After some more arm-twisting, I decided to sign up for the second class in the series with him winter quarter. And here we are, enrolled in the fifth quarter.

The professor, Yolande, was born and raised in Paris. She married an American and immigrated to the US. For a while she had her own personal coaching business and published her cookbook, “Pace of Provence”, in 2001. We managed to find a used copy on the Barnes & Noble website. Although the book is 15 years old, the recommendations she makes are still nutritionally sound. The recipes are very easy to follow. One of our classmates, a novice cook, has made several recipes out of the book successfully. I made the fig appetizer for our Friday night crew, and they disappeared quickly.

Our French class cooks!

Our French class cooks!

The students have been a mix of people of varying ages and origins. This quarter we even have two Chinese students. There was a significant drop-off in students from French 2 to French 3, so the class has become much more interactive. Yolande instituted a feature called “Quoi de Neuf?” (What’s new?) This is like show and tell, except in French. This section has continued into French 5. She’s also giving us French literature to read, starting with excerpts from Les Misérables. Our latest assignment is the chapter where Jean Valjean goes to the bishop’s house. [Trivia question: Who played the bishop in the Hugh Jackman-Anne Hathaway-Russell Crowe version of Les Mis? Colm Wilkinson, who originally played Jean Valjean in the stage version. Julian asked why Wilkinson didn’t play Valjean in the movie, since his voice is better than Jackman’s. Simple: He’s about 25 years too old for the early scenes.]

If you want to review a language you studied in high school or college, or learn a new language, I highly recommend doing it through a community college. The tuition is reasonable, particularly if you’re doing a non-credit class. You’ll meet a diverse group of folks, and you just might wind up with a professor with a foodie or other interesting background.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/09/30/french-with-a-side-of-food/

Sep 23

Bye-Bye, Basil

Today was the first day of autumn. The temperatures at night have hovered in the low 50’s, which means my basil plants are ready to give up. We got several batches of pesto and numerous other sprigs for dishes from only three plants. The peppers and tomatoes may go next week. That leaves the perennial herbs to spend the winter on the upper deck.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/09/23/bye-bye-basil/

Sep 17

It Was Bound to Happen

You may call an earlier post about couples attaching locks to the Duwamish Head Bridge. Our friend Gayle, who first alerted us to this, sent me this link. Kids, bring your own wire cutters, especially if you threw the keys into the Duwamish. Chances are the keys have disintegrated in the toxic muck.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/09/17/it-was-bound-to-happen/

Sep 17

Haikus for September in Seattle

It rained hard today. It seems as if everyone forgot how to drive in the rain. As a result, traffic downtown was awful. So, with nothing better to do on the bus, I wrote a couple of haikus.

Rush Hour

I’m just killing time

Drawing smiley faces on

Steamed-up bus windows.

 

Exercise in Futility

Blowing fallen leaves

Off crowded tree-lined sidewalks

In the pouring rain.

 

September

The drought is over

Now we commence to wonder

When the rain will stop.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/09/17/haikus-for-september-in-seattle/

Sep 16

Now We’re Talking Team-Building!

Our department went to a baseball game last week, the Seattle Mariners versus the Texas Rangers. This plot was hatched last year, but we couldn’t find a suitable date for everyone to attend a day game then. We contributed for tickets, and our boss was generous enough to top off the fund so we could get an upper deck suite along the third-base line with a catered lunch. (Thanks, Mike!) Alas, he wasn’t able to make it to the game at the last minute.

Safeco Field on a sunny day.

Safeco Field on a sunny day.

Our department is dispersed around the Seattle metro area, and there is little chance for meaningful interaction outside of jam-packed monthly meetings and the annual goal-setting retreat. A purely social activity is critical to break down the geographical and job-title barriers. The hard-core baseball fans spent much of their time watching the game, while the rest of us got up and schmoozed with our coworkers about kids, pets, and life. The food was good. One coworker bought an order of garlic fries from the vendor downstairs. Let’s just say that she was protected from vampires for several days. We had a drawing for bobblehead dolls. An officemate got the Nelson Cruz bobblehead shown below. No sooner did I snap this photo than the real Nelson Cruz slammed a home run, his 40th of the season.

Nelson Cruz, bobblehead.

Nelson Cruz, bobblehead.

The second-best part of the outing: The Mariners won 5-0. The best part: Conversing with colleagues about our lives outside the workplace in a relaxed atmosphere.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/09/16/now-were-talking-team-building/

Sep 15

WWMW?

I miss Molly Ivins. Political writing has been much less joyous since she died in 2007. Think of what she’s missed in the last eight years; hence the What Would Molly Write (WWMW) acronym in the title:

  • John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate in 2008.
  • The election and re-election of Barack Obama.
  • Rick Perry’s two failed runs for the presidency. Molly referred to Perry as Governor Goodhair. Imagine what she would have written about his eyeglasses.
  • Ted Cruz reading “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor.
  • Tea Party activists with signs saying “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”
  • Donald Trump’s campaign. Oh, the column-inches she could have filled on him alone.

 

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/09/15/wwmw/

Sep 09

An Observation

My last post on utility companies and their reluctance to cut branches around power lines struck a chord. I had more traffic from that than any post since the one on the recreational pot shop in Seattle with the food truck in the parking lot. I’m having a hard time drawing parallel lines between the two posts…

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2015/09/09/an-observation/

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