Stuff

Should I get a haircut? It's been a month and last time got it cut pretty short. It's at that awkward, in-between phase where if I wait a week it will start to look better. I could post a photo and solicit opinions from my readers but I don't live my life by polls. It was a rhetorical question.

I went to Champps for dinner tonight because I didn’t feel like cooking and they have a good and enormous grilled chicken Cobb salad. At the table next to me a child’s birthday party was going on. One boy of about three years. Also four adults of a grandmother, an uncle, maybe an aunt and I guess the kid’s mother. First off the mom opened up all of the boy’s presents, not just the wrapping, but the boxes and pieces inside, untying the twist ties that held all eight pieces of some Fisher-Price farm animals in place. In seconds, cows, chickens and Shep, the dog, were all over the middle of the restaurant floor. After five minutes of waiters nearly slipping on plastic cattle the mom finally picked them up and they went back into the box. This left the boy who happened to be wearing red shoes, purple socks and a Montessori t-shirt to play with his one remaining toy, an 18-inch plastic male action figure. The "Ken" doll remained in the stiff position of a corpse and the boy began to swing him around like a stick. He continued this for the next twenty minutes, nearly hitting or tripping or smashing into every waitperson who walked by. Meanwhile the adults at the table ignored him for the most part except for smiling comments about how cute he was and flashing pictures from a new digital camera. Occasionally after nearly ruining trays of other people’s food the uncle would try to reason with his nephew and get him to sit down beside him. The boy ignored him and went back to playing with his new toy in the manner it was intended, as a child-size whacking stick. Despite the freedom the kid was being given it struck me the contrast to my own upbringing where adults at least paid attention to you by telling you to behave and not disturb or maim other people. I got the feeling that the adults (it really didn’t seem like any were the parents and if not where were they on his birthday) were just too tired or timid to care about the kid or about the waitress whose shin has an impression of a plastic man’s face deep into it. Growing up adults always seem to tell kids to watch out for other people and that by telling you this it showed they cared not only about them but you as well.

I also noticed a couple at another nearby table send back a Santa Fe Guacamole Wrap or some such concoction because it didn’t live up to the woman’s high expectations about such things. For God’s sake, lady, it’s bar food at a nationwide sports bar chain. The “special Santa Fe sauce” is Ranch dressing and the tortilla is probably from Food Lion. If you want fine dining stick to T.G.I. Fridays.

At work we got the regular notice to clean out the refrigerator. I ignore these messages because I don’t put food in there. The reason is there is no room. Three people buy their monthly supply of Lean Cuisine at once and stuff the freezer full. The refrigerator is full of leftover cake from the August birthday celebration four weeks ago. No one ate the Crisco lard sheet cake then, no one will eat it now. The flowers aren’t decoration. They’re mold. Or maybe not. There are enough preservatives in those cakes to keep Bob Hope going another twenty years.

Unused Used Books

I made the rounds to the used book stores yesterday looking for a hardbound copy of Stephen King's On Writing.

I found a copy. It looked new, like it had never been read before. Good for me, I thought. From inside the first pages fell a small card. A Christmas card. "Merry Christmas, Chris. Love Chris and June."

Bon Appetit

Julia Child died last week. Like many others who love to cook she was my first teacher in all things culinary. Years before I picked up a chef's knife or made anything from scratch I would watch "The French Chef" reruns on PBS Saturday or Sunday afternoons and just observe this world so different from any I'd experienced first hand. Growing up I never tried to cook along but I think what I gained most from this early exposure was the understanding of what could be done. To many cooks in the Midwest, French cooking was something "fancy", something "different", something intimidating. Julia Child taught that there was no need to fear or be pretensions about good food. Just jump in and have fun.
Things about cooking and life I have learned from Julia Child:

1) You're never too old to begin and master something new. Julia didn't begin to cook until in her early thirties. She didn't appear on television until she was fifty.

2) Never stop learning. You can always learn from others who share your passions. Look at three of Julia's last television shows: "Cooking with Master Chefs", "Cooking with Julia", "Baking with Julia". These programs all show Julia sitting back and learning.

3) Always ask why. Early cookbooks gave basic instructions about ingredients and process but never told why you should beat egg whites in a copper bowl or shock vegetables in cold water. Julia told you why you needed to use butter and not margarine at critical steps.

4) Be humble but don't worry about expressing your well researched opinion. The best things in life are to be shared generously. This includes your time and talents. If you have strong opinions, give them but allow others to have their opinions too.

5) Some people just won't get it. Don't worry about them. I noticed during cooking shows that some people watching or in the audience "oooh" or laugh when the cook uses wine or butter. It always seemed childish or puritanical to see this reaction. No one is getting drunk. A quarter cup looks like a lot more than it really is. These are ingredients like any other. Grow up, cook and get over it.

6) Aim for greatness and let the world rise to meet you. Before Julia few grocery stores had more than one kind of lettuce (iceberg). There were no fresh leeks, limited fresh seafood, ?Parmesan? cheese only in green cardboard box. She told people to go out and ask for fresh oysters and duck and the food world in America chnaged forever.

7) Who cares if you make mistakes? Drop a chicken on the floor? Get your pan too hot? Hollandaise sauce scrambled? Who cares? You can fix it. If you can't fix it, throw it out and try again. If you don't have time tonight, order pizza and try again tomorrow. It's not the end of the world. It's only dinner.

Cache on the Barrelhead

Went on a roadtrip this weekend to the mountains. Saturday Julie and I drove to Boone, NC for a day of geocaching. Geocaching is about finding hidden treasures with a Global Positioning System (GPS) device. People will hide things (containers, time capsules, log books) all over the world and then post their coordinates on a web site. Others then try to find the things they have hidden by tracking down the coordinates with a GPS. Finders often leave behind treasures as well as taking some.

Here's a view from Blowing Rock in the town of Blowing Rock, NC.

Our first geocache of the day and my first geocache ever was a time capsule in Blowing Rock, the town of Blowing Rock, not the rock Blowing Rock. This confused us at first but we eventually found it. The time capsule is under this plaque so we couldn't dig it up.


Our second geocache was in the town of Elk Park, NC beneath a waterfall. It was a popular spot for local sunbathers, Coors drinkers and chain smokers. And that was just one couple.

We searched around for about 30 minutes and Julie eventually found it hidden under this rock.

Here it is.


Here's Julie holding the find and the GPS. It was a one gallon container with a log book we signed and other goodies people left. It was really fun.