THE EMPEROR’S NEW SNOW, Or cloudy with a chance of bullshit…

So, the little weather icon on my home google page warned us that we were in for a little snowstorm this Saturday morning right here in beautiful downtown Aptos.

People on the street were muttering under their breath about the impending doom lurking in the clouds.  This morning I awoke early and raced to the bedroom window where, even without my spectacles, I could clearly distinguish the rows of verdant lawns and the neighbor’s blossoming crabapple tree.  To be honest there was a skiff of frost upon the rooftops but, even on the north slopes that was but a memory by 8:30.

On a related note, Tama and I were driving on the “freeway” near our house last Saturday and got caught in traffic as everyone slowed to peruse the electronic reader board hanging over the west bound lanes… “HEAVY SNOW AT SUMMIT ON HIGHWAY 17” it cautioned… I offered to drive us up there to see what the locals considered to be heavy snow, but bowed to Tama’s wise council that it would be best to stay clear of any roadway that is life threatening on a clear day and currently filled with novice foul weather drivers.  I later heard in my ceramics class that indeed there was nearly 6 inches of snow yet on the ground and the hill folk had squandered the weekend sledding with their children.

Almost like Quincy…

HAPPY VARENTINE’S DAY

Being by nature a romantic old fart, I took the ever lovely Tama out to dinner on the 14^th.  Upon her request we went for Japanese food at a local eatery called Takara.

What a delight.  They have an outstanding sushi bar, but I am so very done with sushi and we wanted more food than that so we waited for a table in the restaurant proper.  Lots of bamboo and wood (but artfully placed) and a tall guy like me couldn’t turn in any direction without crashing through the cotton noren hanging willy-nilly every where.

Made it to the table and received menus and those nifty little rolled up, steaming hot towels on a plate (where are those towels when you really need them after you’ve fingered your way through a whole platter of tempura?)  The house tea they delivered was a pot of genmaicha, my favorite green tea.  It was originally tea for the poor, working class since it has roasted brown rice in it, added back then as filler, which gives it a nutty, toasted back flavor.

Next came the salad… a moment I normally dread in Japanese restaurants.  It is generally my opinion that the Japanese only tangentially caught the concept of salad.  Usually some shredded iceberg lettuce and a glop or two of a nasty, viscous dressing that reminds me a little too much of fluids better left unexamined. Imagine my surprise when this one turned out to be plate licking good.  A guest appearance by sundry other vegetables and a dressing lightly flavored with ginger and sesame oil with a hint of wasabe.  Things were looking up. 

For an entrée Tama had a combination of tempura and beef teriyaki.  Frequently the cow bits for teriyaki come from the chewier portions and require the use of a wakizashi to render it into bite sized chunks… not so here.  Tender and well flavored and of a healthy size (often the asian fusion chefs seem to have no knowledge of how big a cow actually is…) it was generous enough to make lunch the next day.

After dithering between tonkatsu which I love, even though it is just a breaded veal cutlet in a kimono, and tempura, I went with the full combo plate of battered bits of this and that. Shrimp and a wide variety of underground veggies.

I had nothing left for lunch…

Everything was just a hint above expectation and it is someplace I would be happy to take the yokels who are visiting from out of town.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

AQUAMAN, AQUAMAN, WHEREFORE ART THOU AQUAMAN?

Well, a couple of weeks ago we made the trek, with friends, to Monterey for a de rigueur visitation to the famed Monterey Aquarium to gawk at the fishes.  Circumstances rather than good planning put us there on the Sabbath, thereby avoiding that grimmest of pitfalls. . . the dreaded crush of elementary school fieldtrips.  After ransoming King Richard to gain entry we stepped into the ebb and flow and drifted on the tide of humanity into Jellyfishland.  Now these are truly one of the strangest of God’s creatures (was she stoned or just bored on that day of creation week?)  As an inkling of things to come, the jellies, as they are referred to, are floating in tanks devoid of all else; a seemingly barely big enough space narrowed front to back so they are always center stage and pleasing to the eye of the beholder.  The walls are an innocuous “blue screen” blue so as to disappear from the scene and each tank is lit from above with a blacklight so as to make the tentacles all glowy and iridescent.  Zowie! Rather like a Pixar movie. Sadly, as I progressed along the aahs and oohs and ooze of humanity, I felt like I was getting farther and farther from the smell of tideflats and deepwater symbiosis so that by the time you finally found Nemo he was a tidy, two dimensional faux-fish, manicured and Disneyfied as if a real, multicolored fish weren’t quite good enough to dazzle and amaze. 

No surprise here but I’m kinda old school about many things and one of those things, it turns out, is aquariums (aquarii?)  I’m used to, and seem to prefer, the ones where you wander through dark, cavernous hallways that smell of damp and saltwater, peering through plate glass into dim, ocean colored realms that are big enough for the fish to catch a nap when they are tired of being photographed.  Sometimes you had to stand for a passable amount of time before you saw any signs of life at all. . . but that kind of aquarium is for frittering away the better part of an afternoon avoiding some other responsibility.  It was not something you put on your bucket list to be “done” so you could move on to the zoo or the Museum of Modern Art.  One felt like a visitor to another world rather than some yabbo who had imported a gaggle of exotics for a moment’s pleasure.  It seemed dirty and gritty and, yes, even a wee bit shabby… you know… rather like the real world.

Sometimes you go out hunting or walking or poking about and see nothing of any consequence. Doesn’t mean things aren’t out there. Just means you aren’t as important as you thought you were.  And failing to see a moose the first dozen times just makes it all the more spectacular when you do. It’s what nature does. It’s how things work.

Anyway, back to Monterey… after the clownfish and the flamingo klatch and lots of interactive and zoomie graphics bits, we stopped for a bit of an in-house gnosh. Good and a bit pricey as all in-house cafes are wont to be. (no fish on the menu I noticed…)

A quick stop to watch them feed the sea otters and then we strolled through a nice exhibit about the cannery which was the building’s previous tenant.  Interesting and informative… eleventy-gazillion fish processed every 60 seconds, 24/7 and everyone was shocked and amazed when they ran out of fish to catch…

 Then it was upstairs to the tidepools and kelp beds.  Oops, gaggles of giggling Japanese girls and piles of Dads on “got the kids” weekend. Either would be tolerable but in combination I found them a tad wearing… a quick jaunt through the gift shop to admire the hellishly expensive, handblown glass doo-dads, a couple of postal cards and out the door and off to the car.

Monterey Aquarium. Check. Been there. Done that.

IN MY FAMILY IT WAS STACKWICHES AND DEAD DOG...

In those proverbial “good ol’ days” a mom or dad, constrained by lack of time or money, would clabber together a hodge-podge of what you would eat if you had time and what you had on hand and what you thought may or may not taste good together but what the hell...  I am certain that this often resulted in gustatory horrors of near biblical proportions and gave a whole generation a phobic dread of things called Chef’s Surprise or Seafood Fiesta or anything with the words layered or short-cut in their titles. This fear also generally encompasses foodstuffs with recognizable names but with the brand name of a tinned product inserted at a clever juncture, and all casseroles comically named after inedible or unappetizing objects. True, in some instances this is the wiser course, but to cast wide your umbrella to include all such dining opportunities under one turned up nose, as it were, you run a real risk of missing treats that may well already be on the culinary endangered species list. Between energy drinks and the all too invasive MacMeadowMuffin, fetched up thru the driver’s window under jaundiced yellow arches, we have lost touch with individual inventiveness. Where are those pre-ramen noodle dabblers in the kitchen arts… those who sought the philosopher’s stone using only a fridge full of leftovers and a stopwatch?  Remember the scene in Apollo 13 where the chief engineer dumps the box of stuff on the table and says to his crew, "This is what they have to work with. Let's bring 'em back safe." Before the mass marketing of breakfast-inna-bag, if you were running late for deer hunting or some other “on the go” lifestyle choice, you just scooped and ran… breakfast, lunch or dinner held together by a starch of some kind and consumed rather like a meat ice cream cone.

Sunday morning, at breakfast, I was given the opportunity to indulge in one of those classic familial treats from days gone by.  Our friends Lovely & Michelle were here from Quincy, on their way south, and Lovely stepped up to her family home plate and hit one out of the park.  Named after one child’s choice of pronunciation for the word g-r-a-n-d-p-a, it is called The Coby (cob-ee) Sandwich.  First you have to have fluffy, cheap white bread (toasted in the oven broiler so you can make a stack of them at once…) and SPAM (also broiled to perfection.) After that it’s just a question of assembling the bread and SPAM along with a fried egg, ketchup and a generous smear of, what else, grape jelly.

At this point some of you are, no doubt, casting about for a hazelnut biscotti to cleanse your taste buds and your imagination.  But then think about it for a minute… you have toast and jelly along with breakfast meat and fried eggs… how is this any different from all those other breakfasts you’ve eaten but with the measured improvement that you don’t have to wash a plate?

And yes, I am sure you could make this with 8 grain bread and smoked salmon and egg substitute layered with stone ground chipotle chutney and organic hackberry conserves.

But wouldn’t that be like giving a beautiful woman three breast implants?  Trying, unsuccessfully, to improve on perfection…

Bon apétite

SPAM ENCHANTED EVENING...

Having already mastered Spam steaks in a port wine reduction sauce, I forged ahead deeper still into my SPAM cookbook. (and a tip of the processed meat chapeau to Traci for thinking of me when this fine literary tome came thru Quincy Thrift…)

After much perusal and indecision I settled on European Old School and made Chicken Cordon Spam served with french fries and a medley of legumes sautéed in butter.

I know, I know… you are all dying for the recipe, right?  Simple, really. You take a couple of boned and skinned chicken breasts and carefully slice a nice, deep pocket in the fat ends of each.  These caverns are then stuffed with a pan fried mixture of onions, peppers, mashed spam, fresh Thai basil and garlic pepper stirred into pepper jack & parmesan cheeses mixed with a little heavy cream.  Once the stuffing is in place fold the opening shut and flop the thin “tail” of the chicken breast up and over.  Logic dictates that you pin all these folds in place with toothpicks… use brightly colored ones and count them going in and coming out to avoid putting your eye out as it were… and let them set for a while in the fridge to firm up. 

Heat up some butter in a cast iron skillet, dust the chicken with flour, dip it into beaten egg mixed with a little salt, pepper and paprika, roll it in bread crumbs and pan fry until done.

Short of picking up an order of popcorn chicken at KFC and eating the Spam directly from the can, what could be easier?

OLD SCHOOL CHRISTMAS

Since I’ve never been one of those folks who see Jesus as a redneck, Southern Baptist, white guy from just south of Macon, Georgia but, rather, what he was… Jewish… this year we elected to celebrate the 25^th in the time honored tradition of Jews everywhere. We went out for Chinese food. 

We dined at the Golden Buddha in Soquel, a delightful and tasty dining experience completely devoid of Chinese zodiac placemats and hideous, shadowboxed, low relief landscapes done in faux mother-of-pearl.  Instead it is a veritable warren of small, low-ceiling rooms rather as one imagines exist in the back streets of Shanghai.  Lots of dark wood and bamboo accents, great service and killer food. 

Tama had Sizzling Concubine and I sampled something called Sunset Prawns… ummmm.  Sichuan/Hunan food so a little spicy, a small sampler bowl of boiled peanuts when we sat down, an appetizer of Tianjing potstickers and Tsingtao beer in the great big bottles… Happy Birthday, Jesus, indeed.