August 2008 - Page 2 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

The Omnivore’s Hundred

ADD writes:

Andrew Wheeler posted this challenge on the Very Good Taste blog…here are the rules:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten. (I’ve opted to italicize; my blog, my rules.)
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

Alan’s American Variant: I asterisked (*) any items that are unknown to me. Most of the starred items, I have heard of, but I don’t know what they are. Pathetic, I know.

(Oh, Johnny B. hates tomatoes, it seems.)

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:
1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho*
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi*
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses*
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes – specifically apple
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper*
27. Dulce de leche*
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda*
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (I’ve had each, but not together; would certainly eat it if offered)
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly*
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal*
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu*
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi*
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle*
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine*
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin*
64. Currywurst*
65. Durian*
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost*
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu*
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong*
80. Bellini*
81. Tom yum*
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate*
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa*
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano*
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

I should note that I didn’t cross off anything, because I’d try it in theory. Faced with a whole insect, who knows?
Also, many of the thinks I checked on the list, I tried only once, and didn’t particularly enjoy.

ROG

The Lydster, Part 53: Room of Many Colors

Lydia is susceptible to allergies, not just peanuts, but also including dust mites. So it is incumbent upon us to scrub her walls thoroughly periodically. Last year, during the process, Carol and her father painted Lydia’s room a peach color that Lydia didn’t like for reasons of design that were lost on me. So this year, when she was asked what colors she would like on her walls, Lydia told them, and Carol and her father complied. The room is now pink. And blue. And purple. And yellow. And green. With a floor that’s a color called Rose Balcony. And now Lydia is very happy with a room that she can call her own. They also painted a white chair pink to match her bedding. Joseph, the 11th son of Israel, would be pleased.
***
Other sources of allergies, which I share with her, are grasses and ragweed, which we monitor. Saturday, while I was cutting the grass, Lydia came outside to pick some wildflowers. That afternoon, she had shortness of breath, and that night she coughed for three hours; cough medicine is of no use, but the drugs in the nebulizer eventually did the trick.
***
I don’t often say things like, “Boy, is my girl smart!” OK, maybe I do. But it seemed like only a few weeks ago, she insisted that twenty-nine was followed by twenty-ten, my insistence to the contrary notwithstanding. But now she can count to one hundred and beyond. Shades of Toy Story.

Picture #1 courtesy, of Earthworld Comics, May 2008.
Picture #2 courtesy of Uthaclena, August 2008.

ROG

Julie Hembeck Turns 18

One of the great pleasures I’ve had as a result of reigniting my friendship with Fred Hembeck and his wife Lynn Moss was getting to know their daughter Julie. From an awkward 15-year-old teenager to a beautiful 18-year-old young lady, she has blossomed in her confidence as well as her artistic eye. She will be going to college next month in New York State, but about four hours from home, compared with a couple colleges she looked at right in the Mid-Hudson that were only about an hour’s drive. So Fred and Lynn have to cope with being empty-nesters.

In fact, Leonard Bernstein, who would have been 90 today, discusses and plays the Ode for Joy, just for Julie:

And speaking of the Hembecks, Carol, Lydia and I made our annual trek to their chateau earlier this month. As usual, Fred and I blathered about what we’ve later described as unincapsulable. I know we talked about FantaCo, Regis Philbin, and Fred’s new book. But the conversation tended to flit from subject to subject.

He, our wives and I also had a philosophical conversation about blogging. My wife chastised me for me saying that she should look at my blog, rather than me having to explain what I had written. I noted that it isn’t just the information in the blog that I was trying to convey but the style and manner in which I said it. So to give a Cliff’s Notes version of it wouldn’t do it justice.

Fred ragged on me when he discovered that I had watched on the Internet the last 10 minutes of “There Shall Be Blood.” About every 10 minutes he would find some parallel slapdown to give me, ending with “Oh I suppose you listened to/read/watched/ saw the last 10 minutes of THAT,” no matter what it was. He even got my beloved wife to join in the fun. I had a good time anyway, with Lynn’s vegetarian dinner a highlight of the day.
***
Another satisfied Fred Hembeck customer.

BIKE QUOTES

After my accident lost me six weeks of riding time, I got on the bicycle, but it just didn’t feel right. So I decided I ought to take my bike to the shop to make sure it’s OK. Between the time it took the shop to get to my bike in the queue, them actually fixing it and me getting to it, a total of ten weeks of prime riding time was killed, alas!

So I am on my bike, functionally for the first time in two and a half months. It feels foreign, strange. The seat had replaced as were the pedals. The seat needed adjusting – it was too high; as did my helmet – it was too tight. So I decided to ride on the sidewalk the three blocks from the bike shop to the church so I could get back to the church picnic I had left to get the vehicle in the first place and do my adjustments then.

I pass a woman on the sidewalk, not a half a block from the shop, passing her four feet wide of her, going quite slowly. And what does she say? “You’re not supposed to ride on the sidewalk!” Of course, she was right, but I was rather hoping for some cosmic grace. But explaining all of this would have taken too much time, so I just said, “Not without getting killed,” which was true enough; I didn’t feel in control of my vehicle. Then she said something I didn’t hear, and I rode back, sighing.

Back at church, I then made the appropriate adjustments so that I could ride on the street.
***
“The cyclist is a man half made of flesh and half of steel that only our century of science and iron could have spawned.”
– (19th-century author) Louis Baudry de Saunier
***
“My family car is an SUB and I love it. On my new ‘sport utility bicycle’ I can cart groceries, take my kids shopping, haul a barbecue grill and make a margarita,” by Mark Benjamin. Complete with video.
***
More bikes as transportation.
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Brilliant Bike Locking:

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The Bike to Work book.
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“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.” – Arthur Conan Doyle.
***
How high are those gas prices?
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A Borgman cartoon.
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“A seat and handlebars have a magical way of bringing out a childish enthusiasm
that is too often thrown by the wayside as we grow up.
It’s always there. Waiting to be revived.
And when you find it again, it’s fun and strangely familiar.
Just like riding a bike.”
– Mary Buckheit
***
Actual sign: “Burn Fat Not Oil.” True that.
***
Bicycle service and parts.
***
Someone e-mailed this; don’t know the original source –

Green Machine

What’s your carbon footprint? And I don’t mean your cycling-shoe size.
No, I’m talking about the color of the moment: green.
“Puh-leeze,” you say, “I ride a bike. I’m greener than a hung-over Carnival Cruise passenger in a hurricane.”
Is that so? Then you won’t mind taking this climate-change quiz designed just for cyclists:
I commute by bike . . .
(a) every day
(b) couple times a week, if it’s not raining and the alarm goes off
(c) I no longer commute since getting fired for making fun of the boss’s Prius
My frame is made of . . .
(a) steel, aluminum, carbon or titanium
(b) bamboo, hemp or old Clorox bottles
(c) spent nuclear fuel rods, covered in baby seal fur
I only eat energy bars made from . . .
(a) endangered white-rhino meat
(b) locally grown, fair-trade, organic ingredients
(c) ethanol waste products
I clean my chain with . . .
(a) jet fuel
(b) citrus-based degreaser
(c) nothing, thus allowing it to exist freely in its natural state
After cleaning my chain, I . . .
(a) hose the drippings into the nearest storm drain, which empties into the local orphanage’s playground
(b) take the gunk-filled degreaser to the recycling center
(c) like I said, I don’t clean it, you fascist chain murderer you
When my water bottle gets moldy, I . . .
(a) chuck it in a roadside ditch
(b) cut off the top and recycle it as a planter
(c) use it to plug the exhaust pipe of Hummers
If I can’t ride my bike someplace, I . . .
(a) drive my SUV there as fast as possible, with my tires under-inflated and the AC blasting out my open windows
(b) walk, car-pool or take bio-diesel-powered public transportation
(c) ride the indoor trainer while watching my Al Gore videos
***
Why Bike? Top 5 Reasons to Ride

ROG

QUESTION: Looking forward, looking back

There was major flooding in the city of Rensselaer, just across the river from Albany, a couple weeks ago, and the mayor blamed it on some controversial development taking place a few miles away. I was practically struck dumb (yeah, hard to believe, I know) by the comment of someone I know: “Now the blame game begins.” It didn’t feel like a “blame game” at all. It was historic flooding that closed the train station from Rensselaer to the next stop to the south, Hudson. SOMETHING happened. We should talk about it, don’t you think?

There seems to be a certain mindset – I don’t know of it’s an American process or not – that says, “A bad thing has happened. Let’s not dwell in the past, but let’s move on,” even before one can grieve or understand the loss.

But wait. Your house in California burned. Again. You’re going to build a THIRD time. I saw at least one home owner say that on the news this fire season. But it’s not just YOUR decision. Building in a know fire zone means resources are put in place to contain the next fire. Can we talk about this first?

Likewise, building in a flood zone. I think I mentioned in this blog about a town that after the historic 1993 floods on the Mississippi moved the whole town to higher ground and was spared the devastation that its neighboring towns experienced AGAIN in 2008.

I am fascinated by Greensburg, KS. Devastated by a tornado in 2007, it is rebuilding as a ‘green’ city.

Certainly, there are implications of this thought process dealing with interpersonal relationships, where someone who is wronged is told to “get over it!”, usually too quickly for my taste.

So, my overly broad question: when do you look forward, and when do you reflect on what happened to see if maybe, just maybe, this needs to be rethought?
***
Because it’s been hanging out, an orphan

***
And just because:

ROG