Archive for the ‘Food and Drink’ Category

I loves me some fine snark

Thursday, December 9th, 2021

One of my favorite snarky movie review posts was back in 2000, on a now-defunct blog called At Swim Two Birds, named after a literary novel. It was a collection of reviews of the truly execrable movie, Battlefield Earth. The blogger had collected a series of reviews from newspaper movie reviewers, and linked and excerpted them.

I remember two bits from those reviews. In the first, Roger Ebert said that the director used a tilted camera in some shots because he had seen that other directors used tilted cameras, but he obviously didn’t know why the other directors had used them.

In the second bit, which was in the final review quoted, and the one that made me fall off the couch in helpless laughter, the reviewer, whose name I don’t recall, opened the review by saying that he had held off for a week after the film’s debut prior to writing his review, and that, in cases like this one, where every review was scathing, it was often tempting to say that the movie wasn’t actually all that bad. He said he couldn’t do that with Battlefield Earth, “because I would be lying.”

This is a restaurant review, not a movie review, but I giggled throughout it, and just had an incredibly wonderful time reading it.

I will not be eating at this restaurant.

Road trip report

Tuesday, September 21st, 2021

I was out of town over the weekend. One of my sisters had a birthday recently, and her daughter wanted to host a surprise party for her. It was originally going to be held on her birthday, but it was delayed because my niece’s husband tested positive for COVID.

In any case, I left home last Thursday and drove to Texas. I took two days to travel from Denver to Dallas, which seemed to work well. It turned out that I was the surprise at the party, which was fine. I had a nice visit Friday and Saturday, then left Sunday morning to head home.

On the way out, I went east on I-70, then south from Salinas. My plan for the return trip was to head west, stopping in Amarillo for a meal at Dyer’s BBQ, and stopping overnight somewhere along the way before heading north on I-25 at Raton to get back to Denver. It didn’t happen that way.

I got to Amarillo in time for a late lunch, but Dyer’s was apparently closed for remodeling. At least, there was fencing all around the building, it looked closed, and nobody was parked around it. Disappointed, I grabbed a quick fast-food lunch, then continued on. I was far enough west of the main highway that my GPS navigation decided that the back roads were faster than going back to the highway. That may have been correct, but it meant fewer gas stations and rest stops, which can be important factors for someone my age.

In any case, I got to Raton before dinnertime, and headed north because I wasn’t that hungry yet. I ended up driving all the way from Dallas to Denver in one day, which was not something I’d intended; I just didn’t want to pay for an overnight stay when I was only a couple of hours from home. It took about 13.5 hours total. The last time I’d done a drive of that length was in 1997, when I drove from Denver to San Antonio in one day; about 16 or 17 hours, as I recall.

I spent yesterday recovering; the lack of activity caused pain in my legs and hips, and I had a headache that started sometime Sunday afternoon and lasted until sometime yesterday. If I had it to do over again, I think I’d stop in Amarillo, no matter that it was early afternoon, and find another place for a good meal and get a room overnight. Maybe try that place that has the 72-ounce steak that’s free if you can eat it in a certain amount of time. Not that I’d order that; I know I can’t even consider that kind of massive meal anymore.

It’s Thanksgiving

Thursday, November 22nd, 2018

Since it was only my girlfriend and myself today (my daughter and her friends had other plans), I did not cook a Thanksgiving dinner. I did make a couple of desserts: a bourbon chocolate pecan pie and some chocolate rum balls. Instead, we went out. It was fine, and I don’t have the room in my fridge for leftovers from cooking a big meal, anyway.

One thing I meant to do, but never got around to, was to learn this so that I could play it today. Maybe next year.

Not healthy yet

Wednesday, February 14th, 2018

I think I’m over the flu; my fever broke Friday night. My resting pulse is back down where it should be, as is my temperature.

Unfortunately, I have a nasty lingering cough, and I’ve had laryngitis since Sunday, so I’m certainly still under the weather.

I made French onion soup for dinner Monday. That turned out nicely, and hot soup on a cold night is one of my favorite things. The leftover soup was also pretty good for yesterday’s lunch. Scallops with pesto are in the plans for tonight.

I could watch this over and over

Thursday, February 8th, 2018

I like cooking, and this popped up in my YouTube recommendations. Very interesting, and I think I’ll have to try some of the varieties. A lot of people in the comments complain about the wider shots, but I thought it was very effective and done quite well.

Happy Scotch Day!

Thursday, July 27th, 2017

Not much time left in it, but I’m celebrating with a couple fingers from a bottle of Auchentoshan Three Wood that I’m close to finishing.

Catching up a bit

Wednesday, April 12th, 2017

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. I’ve been busy at work, I’ve been dragged down by my seasonal allergies (when I’m congested, I can’t use my CPAP), and I’m just getting over a bout of food poisoning (my own fault, embarrassingly). They’re all just excuses, though. I haven’t felt motivated to post, and that’s the real reason.

I did want to mention this past Monday evening, though. I have a number of Jewish friends and acquaintances, and I was invited to a Passover Seder that was held at a local community college. It was a nice evening; I had fun, met some nice people, and ate some interesting food. Couldn’t sing along with anything, but I did get to do a reading.

The amusing (if offensive) portion of the evening was on the way into the venue, though … the local chapter of The Gideons was passing out New Testaments just outside the entrance. Legal, I know, and I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t be; I’m saying it was tasteless and offensive. I know it was important from their point of view, but I still think they shouldn’t have done it.

Today is National American Beer Day

Thursday, October 27th, 2016

I was confused and thought that it was National Beer Day, but it isn’t – National Beer Day is April 7th here in the USA, and June 15th in the UK. National Drink Beer Day is September 28th. International Beer Day is August 5th.

However, it is National American Beer Day, which was set up to celebrate American brews.

Good enough. Time for a beer. I usually prefer IPAs, and there’s good news on that front. Got a different one tonight, a Good Juju.

beer-yellowstone

Back to normal

Monday, July 11th, 2016

… or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Marion had family visiting all last week, and I was tapped to help out with driving and hosting duties. We covered a lot of ground, visiting various places from Nederland to Cripple Creek. Good food, but we were on the go from (usually) 8 in the morning until 8 or 9 pm each day. We got them back to the airport Saturday afternoon, and then more-or-less collapsed.

Sunday was Marion’s birthday. We didn’t go anywhere, but I cooked dinner for her. I fixed tagliata, and made a chocolate orange torte for dessert. We had the leftovers for dinner tonight. Good food, if not as good as a few of the meals we had during the past week.

This morning I went back to work, and had a couple of packages on my desk that had arrived last week. One contained some LCD displays I’m planning to play with, and the other contained a Raspberry Pi 3 that I won in a drawing. Fun stuff.

Happy New Year

Thursday, January 7th, 2016

I hope your holidays were good.

Mine were very enjoyable. Marion and I came home a few days ago from a holiday trip to New York to visit her friends and relatives. We had a good time there, and I can recommend the food at Osteria Laguna and the Miss Korea BBQ restaurant – we had quite a good lunch there. I was good on the trip – I only gained a pound or so. I did pick up a couple new cookbooks at Kinokuniya, though, and I’m looking forward to trying some of those recipes.

Arriving home was a slightly different matter. We got to the car park, and my car wouldn’t start. Dead battery. Marion didn’t know how to deal with push-starting a car with a standard transmission, so that ended up being a fair amount of effort (on my part) and stress (on hers). Eventually, we got it started and managed to get home.

I took it in to my mechanic yesterday. It was a bad battery, which is not nice, but better than the alternator or some other part of the electrical system. Still, that’s money that I hadn’t anticipated needing to spend. It’s the third battery for the car, so I’m doing a little better than average on battery life.