Autumn remains delightful, if you avert your eyes from the nation’s capital.
I’ve been mixing things up a bit. For openers: riding my way through The Fleet. Six different bikes in a week, including the Rivendell Sam Hillborne, pictured Saturday on the Paseo de las Montañas Trail.
I’m also riding different routes, or old ones backasswards. More dirt, with the mango Steelman Eurocross yesterday and the red one today. Yeah, I know, embarrassment of riches and all that.
Off the bike, I’ve been revisiting neglected recipes, like pasta al cavolfiore from the “Moosewood Cookbook.” You want to add maybe a half teaspoon of a good ground red chile to the tomato puree for that one.
Another old fave — a conventional eggs-and-taters breakfast, generally reserved for Sunday — makes a nice change from the boring old oatmeal or yogurt. For Monday’s lunch, I’ll scramble a couple more eggs and dump them, any leftover spuds, a small handful of arugula, a scattering of diced tomato, and a sprinkle of sharpish cheddar, atop warm flour tortillas. Fold and eat.
If the spuds didn’t survive Sunday maybe I’ll whip up the makings for a classic tuna salad sammich a la Craig Claiborne. I leave out the red onions because Herself hates uncooked onions, and the capers because I hate capers. Instead I add some chopped bread-and-butter pickle chips, because we can both agree on those. Haven’t added any minced jalapeño yet, but I can see it happening. Possibly tomorrow. You can’t stop me!
Rooting through my recipe binder the other day I stumbled across one I’d gone to the trouble of printing, but couldn’t recall ever actually cooking. It’s a Greek stew, from Sarah DiGregorio, and once I started putting it together it came back to me. Why did I only cook it the one time? Very easy, very good, even better the next day, and nicely suited to the cooler weather.
But then, the basic posole I’m making as we speak is even easier, and like Sarah’s stew, improves with age. It takes about five minutes of prep and two hours of simmering. Even the Irish can manage it.
Meanwhile, I’m leaving our Halloween lights up for Thanksgiving. Take that, turkeys!
Mad Blog Media 
Wow, is that a Cinelli stem?
That, sir, is a Nitto. Grant the P at Rivendell favors him a nice tall quill, though I notice he’s carrying threadless now too. This’n sits slightly above saddle height.
Got the Stumpjumper bars sitting a bit above saddle height right now. It is ugly as sin as proper bike etiquette goes, but it is about function, not form.
And we know you’ll tell the truth…index or friction? I thought the Riv lads would have a conniption fit when I ordered my Appaloosa with index. But they did it and I ain’t a sorry for it.
Friction, of course. Silver friction shifters from the Riv Kandy Kitchen. I have those on four bikes — the Sam, both Soma Sagas, and the New Albion Privateer. The Nobilette, Soma Double Cross, one Steelman Eurocross, the Steelman time-trial bike, and Voodoo Wazoo all use Shimano index shifters, Dura-Ace or Ultegra (the Wazoo uses just the one, transmogrified by a Paul’s Thumbie into a thumbshifter).
I love the Silver shifters. Once your fingers remember how a non-indexed shifter works they’re mostly trouble-free, especially with a seven-speed cassette, as on the Privateer. The other bikes have nine-speed cassettes, and I botch a shift now and then under pressure, but not enough to get worried about it.
The Dia-Compe friction shifters on the Soma Pescadero are a little less reliable than the Silvers, or so it seems to me. I may replace them with an old set of Dura-Ace nine-speed bar-cons that I pulled off the Voodoo Nakisi when a dodgy fork turned it into an organ donor.
I have bell and front rack envy.
Not me. I have posole envy! With cornbread please.
Corn tortillas perhaps?
Hm. Good idee, Herbalicious. Herself has made cornbread for other soups and stews, but I’ve never put her to work backing up a posole.
A good corn tortilla is a thing of beauty, but hard to find in stores. As Jim Harrison once wrote of himself, I am a savagely incompetent baker.
That bell can raise the dead. I have to be gentle with it to keep other trail users from jumping out of their skins.