We drink a lot of ice tea at our house, especially in the warmer months. For many years we always use
d one of those ubiquitous jars with a spigot. But we finally got tired of every one eventually leaking.
I looked around on Amazon and found one that looked good. Unfortunately it
didn’t last, nor did its replacement. So we picked up a pitcher at Bed, Bath and Beyond. It also gave up on us after not very long.
Scratching our heads, Terry checked out practical, down-to-earth, plain-Jane Smart and Final. She bought two plastic but commercial grade pitchers. It’s been a couple of years now and they’re still doing the job and doing it well.
Sometimes simplest is best.
I wrote a while back about the loss of our local fish market, Poppy’s, and the lack of fresh fish available locally. Well guess what? Poppy’s owner Mike is back, teaming up with the third-generation owners of the local Rocca’s Market. He’s there in their meat department providing us with fresh fish three or four days a week. Hooray!
Welcome back, Mike! We’ll be seeing you on a regular basis.
I was at Costco the other day, and the Cameron Hughes rep was there in the wine department. Terry and I have been big fans of CH since we discovered it a few years ago. They buy lots of premium wine the winery wants to get rid of and bottle it with just a lot number (Lot 128, for example), the grapes in the wine (Chardonnay, etc.), and the location (Napa Valley, Monterey County, or whatever). They don’t reveal the name of the original winery. By doing this they can sell a $30 bottle of wine for twelve or fifteen dollars.
I told the rep how much we enjoyed their wine and said we purchased by mail order. I realized the term “mail order” somewhat dates me. There is no mail involved. I order online through their Web site, and they ship via FedEx Ground.
Maybe it’s just an old phrase that has stuck around for lack of a better one. How recently have you talked about dialing a number and how long has it been since you’ve actually put your finger into the dial on a rotary phone?
Language is odd. It can be right there with the culture (“there’s an app for that”) while at the same time it can lag behind.
If you haven't seen the Seinfeld soup nazi episode you've probably heard about it. The patrons put up with the abuses of the owner because they liked his soup so much. I suspect that the episode must be based on a real restaurant in New York City. But most of us have experienced places like that.
There is a fast food Middle Eastern place near my office where I will go sometimes which sells falafel wraps. The fellow who takes your order is humorless almost (or maybe not even almost) to the point of being rude. He hates it when you order something to go and then actually insist on getting the paper cup for your drink. And, of course, you'd better pay quickly. I will go there when I actually happen to be in the office and am not up for the cafeteria. But if I have time I prefer the shop a couple of miles further away which is much more friendly and sells a proper falafel on pita bread.
There is an Indian restaurant in Morgan Hill Terry and I enjoy. They have a buffet and it works out nicely to meet her there after church for lunch. There used to be a young guy there who was very friendly. Recently it's been staffed by a middle-aged (I should talk) fellow who is not the most friendly. One Sunday we were the first to arrive and he had to turn on the lights and bring out the food so we could eat. His body language and demeanor were such that Terry whispered to me, "Well excuse us for wanting to have lunch!" At least on our last visit the cook, a very nice Sikh gentleman who has been there for a very long time, gave us a smile and thanked us as we left.
Bur really, a little friendliness couldn't hurt, could it?
When I was growing up in Southern California and we fired up the coals and cooked hamburgers outside, we called that barbecue. As an adult, particularly in my Oklahoma years, barbecue was when you marinated the meat in a secret family or restaurant sauce and smoked it over low heat for several hours. What we did when I was a kid was called grilling.
Somehow that distinction still stands for me. Today we have a few barbecue places near us by terms of the second definition. When we cook burgers (meat or veggie) outside at home (now using propane) I call it grilling.
Interesting how our use of language changes.
One thing about Alaska is that you have some different offerings in your food selections. Not on the cruise ship, really, but on land. Taking the railway from Whittier to Denali, one of our choices was reindeer nachos. Now I really have no interest in eating reindeer. But it was a long, ten-hour trip, the food choices were limited, my blood sugar was dropping and I was getting woozy. It was the best option for protein at the time. Not bad. Not great. A tad rich, but it did the job.
When we arrived at Denali we ate at the local restaurant across the street from the Princess Lodge. Terry’s choice was elk sliders. She offered me a bite. I declined.
Now none of this would make any sense unless I had become a vegetarian, which I hadn’t. After all, I eat beef, chicken, and pork, too, in the form of bacon. I have guilt feelings about the first and the third, but that doesn’t keep me from having the occasional hamburger or the frequent strip of bacon at breakfast.
At the same time I refuse to eat lamb, veal, and venison. Lamb I won’t eat…just because. You probably understand about veal, though I’m told that veal today is for the most part not the veal of the traditional definition. As for venison, I refuse to eat Bambi’s mother or father, and hate the gamy taste anyway. Besides, I really dislike mint jelly with meat.
As I said, none of this makes any rational sense. But then for most of us, how many of our eating habits do make rational sense?
A reflection from our Goose & Turrets Getaway — Presidents' Day Weekend 2011
Terry and I have long been known to dress up a little for dinner, even when others tend not to. I am, after all, the guy who complained that civilization was coming to an end because the Ahwahnee restaurant in Yosemite let in a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. On our recent trips to Montara we have pretty much given up the practice of dressing up, simply due to the casual nature of that part of the California coast.
On Saturday of this trip we paid our first visit to La Costanera, just down the street from the Goose & Turrets. It's right on Highway One, overlooking Montara State Beach. The building for many years housed a Chart House restaurant. It's now a Peruvian restaurant which opened in late 2009, and has developed a fine reputation—very well deserved, as we discovered. What surprised us, though, was that everyone there was dressed up. Except us. I felt a little bad, though it was probably in part karma for all my years of snobbery. Raymond at the G&T suggested that many patrons drive down from San Francisco, which would make sense.
On Sunday we went to an old standby, Cafe Gibraltar in El Granada. (Both restaurants, by the way are Zagat rated. It's probably the first time Terry and I have eaten at Zagat rated restaurants two nights in a row, and something we're not likely to make a habit of.) At Gibraltar there was a reasonable share of dressed-up people, but certainly more of the mix we are used to seeing Coastside (as the San Mateo County coast is called).
We certainly had two evenings of fine dining, and it's nice to know that people still take the time to dress up to go out to dinner, even if it was a lesson learned at our expense.
d one of those ubiquitous jars with a spigot. But we finally got tired of every one eventually leaking.
didn’t last, nor did its replacement. So we picked up a pitcher at Bed, Bath and Beyond. It also gave up on us after not very long.
