magnetic and pantsless

it's just so goddamn wonderful to have Daddy-O back! it's amazing how the absence of ~10 lbs. of cat can make an entire apartment feel so empty.

he's gotten more petting than is probably good for me, claimed the top of the new Victrola as his personal Cat Pedestal, and enjoyed the leftovers of an improvised, ( vaguely middle eastern dinner )

as a final note, Daddy-O approved strongly of the meager leftovers. for dessert i recommend a glass of bourbon and a clove cigarette, to be enjoyed in the fresh evening air with suitable background music.

yesterday on my way home from work, i had to finally buy some actual groceries, so i stopped at the Mexican market on the corner. it's a pretty sad little market, really -- the prices are amazing, but the produce is pathetic (what there is of it -- they sell one kind of lettuce: wilted iceberg, and only three kinds of fresh peppers even).

at the butcher counter, i was momentarily stymied, because i couldn't identify most of what was in the glass case. i'm going to have to look this stuff up so i can figure out what's actually edible. but i knew what chorizo suerto was, so i bought some of that, and also some puerco al pastor, pre-marinated. the butcher asked if i spoke Spanish and i panicked and said no, even though i actually do speak a little. i always panic when i have to speak any non-english language to a native speaker, for some reason. either i try and i stutter and hopelessly mispronounce things i can ordinarily say just fine, or i pretend i don't speak any at all. it's stupid and lame and if i'm going to get around in Austin i'm going to HAVE to pick up more Spanish than i know. (for god's sake, i could have at least managed '¿qué es?'.)

anyway, he leered at me. i'd never been actually seriously leered at. i would've laughed except i was afraid of offending him. and then he charged me half price for the al pastor and said "special for you!" so now he's my favorite butcher, even if he does leer.

so i took home a pound each of chorizo and al pastor, a couple of pounds of onions, a couple of pounds of tomatoes, some jalapenos, lettuce, limes, cilantro, and 36 corn tortillas (the smallest package they had) for $10. i could get to like this place, although i wish they at least had romaine lettuce.

i also found there's a Central Market not too far from me, so now i know where to go if i need romaine and a non-leering butcher.

did i ever mention that i had an aunt Romaine? she was a Marine during the Korean war, but i think she died a few years ago. i only ever met her once that i remember; she married a descendant of Valentín Canalizo and lived in Long Island, where she had dogs instead of children. i think i'd probably have liked her if i'd had a chance to know her.

i made tacos al pastor for dinner, and god damn, but that was some fine pork -- tender, well-seasoned, and muy delicioso. and while i ate it, i watched the Mythbusters guys try to cut a pig in half with a steel cable. so i guess puerco was the theme of the evening.

i realized this morning that it's been a really long time since i posted anything substantive about how things are going, so i thought i'd try to catch up.

( overall, i have to say i'm doing reasonably well. )

most of y'all are science geeks -- someone explain this to me.

just now, i was about to apply the last dregs of some tasty BBQ sauce (try the spicy kind) to a chicken leg quarter in the oven. the bottle, a 20-oz. glass one with a wide bottom but relatively narrow neck, had been sitting upside down (at the high end of normal room temperature) for a half-hour so i could get all the sauce out.

i opened the oven (at 325F), pulled out the rack with the chicken on it, and, holding the bottle at about a 135 degree angle, twisted off the cap.

*SPLAT*

the accumulated sauce burst out of the bottle like it had been pressurized, and splattered over a four foot wide area, mostly onto the cabinets.

fortunately, i was able to get enough out of the cap to sufficiently enhance the already-sauced chicken, so dinner is still cooking. but i'm curious about what happened because i wouldn't have thought the temperature differential would be so strong, or that the sauce was close enough to the oven for long enough to make a difference. i've done the same thing before and never had this happen. i am bemused.

you have the floor.

last night i went for a simple dinner. i grilled a couple of chicken legs seasoned with salt and pepper, and had them with a nice-sized garnet yam, peeled and cut up and wrapped in foil. i grilled both for about half an hour. the yams were nicely caramelized. i just added a little butter, salt, and pepper. i wish i'd had a nice crisp sauvignon blanc.

lovely. but next time i'll use some herbs on the chicken.

tonight: ramen. it's been a 0-spoon day.

with the temperature in Pacifica still at 89 degrees at 8pm, clearly light fare was called for. i assembled the following:

mixed greens with kiwis and prickly pear vinaigrette
sliced pears
taleggio
cracked pepper water crackers (no bread handy, didn't want to run the breadmaker)
Fife 2001 Redhead rosé

i'd never had taleggio before... it's fantastic. the pears, as it turns out, aren't as good a match with it as i'd imagined; however, it goes very nicely with the champagne jelly Shirley bought me at the farmer's market... mmmmmmmmm.

the wine, an impulse buy based entirely on its unbelievably beautiful color, is bone-dry, light, and really does, as the fact sheet claims, have notes of pomegranate and jolly rancher watermelon. good with the cheese (but a real red would be better, maybe zinfandel) and perfect with the salad. inexpensive at something like $10 the bottle at BevMo. tastiest lightly chilled, but not cold.

re: prickly pears, i think they're more trouble than they're worth, overall. when i cut them open, i found one thin layer of fruit beneath the skin without much flavor and a sweet, crimson, tasty center with lots of small, rock-hard seeds. i ended up spooning out the centers and pressing them through a sieve to make a puree. warning: the juice will stain like pomegranate.

overall, not a stunning success, but still, everything's tasty. and i tried a bunch of new things, and now i know what to do with them later on.