Category: Food
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Arisia 2020 Report, Day 2
Saturday the 18th was a light-duty day for me, which meant I got to enjoy the con as a member rather than as one of the dancing monkeys. Still fighting off my cold, I slept in on Saturday morning, starting my day by having brunch with my CSFW colleague Alexander Jablokow at a nearby Mexican…
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Today’s Menu
This year's Thanksgiving feast was an epic one. Five adults, including one teenage boy, means we can paint on a large canvas. The menu: Oyster Patties Cremant d'Alsace Shrimp and Oyster Gumbo with Rice Turkey Breast Sous Vide with Herbs — Turkey Breast Sous Vide with Harissa Cote de Roussillon 2014 Cornbread and Oyster Dressing…
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Ancient Recipes
Very interesting BBC Travel story about re-creating ancient Mesopotamian recipes. Read it here. They include a lamb stew which sounds worth trying. The only surprising thing, really, is that anyone should be surprised that people living nearly 4000 years ago ate much the same things their modern descendants do. Food is a bedrock of culture…
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Vacation in Prague: Day 7
Over the past forty years of travel I've learned that one should always build in one or two unscheduled days when planning a trip. That way, if something's closed, or it's pouring rain, or someone gets a kidney stone, you have a little cushion so there's still time for all the things you wanted to…
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Vacation in Prague: Day 6
Another late start on Friday the 19th — didn't leave the flat until past 11 a.m. The adventurers crossed the river again and braved the Prague light-rail transit system for the first time. Since most of our previous explorations had been within the rail-less Old Town section, we hadn't bothered. One purchases tickets at tobacconist…
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Vacation in Prague, Day 3
On Tuesday the 16th we slept until nine and breakfasted on croissants and scrambled eggs, then set out to see the sights of the Jewish Quarter. This meant much less walking, as our flat was right in the middle of that part of town. We began at the Old New Synagogue, which follows the international…
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Vacation in Prague, Day 1
A note to the reader: because I am too lazy to hunt around the option keys on my laptop to find the right characters, I am spelling all Czech words without accents or other diacritical marks. We flew to Prague via Philadelphia, with a five-hour wait between landing in the hometown of W.C. Fields and…
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Culinary/Literary Notes
I can usually eat something without telling the world about it, but tonight I made a grilled marinated Porterhouse steak with an heirloom tomato salad, followed by fresh-picked ripe strawberries and ice cream. All served up on the porch on a perfect evening. But that's not what I actually intended to post about today. Lately…
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The Baristiary
For more than twenty years now I've done a lot of my writing in coffee shops. It gets me out of the house, I can observe my fellow pseudointellectuals and blowhards, and I don't have to answer the phone or walk the dog. In that time I've seen a lot of coffee shop employees. A…
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New Year’s Dinner
I made the traditional New Orleans dinner for New Year's Day: Hoppin' John (=black-eyed peas and rice), Brown Cabbage, and sausage. It came out very well: the Hoppin' John was wonderfully rich, thanks to the goodness of a smoked pork hock, while the sausage was a pretty decent facsimile of andouille (as decent as one…
The Cambias Digression 