Category: Food

Beans ‘n’ booze

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

Herself and I dined out this evening with a neighbor and some of her out-of-town family, with whom we have become friendly over the years.

There was wine afterward on our back deck, and as it was getting dark nobody noticed (I hope) the half-assed mowing job I did yesterday. Miss Mia Sopaipilla and Buddy the Wonder Dog made brief appearances to rave reviews, but Turkish refused to leave his dressing room, citing obscure union regs about dogs and cats and never the twain shall meet outside the Thunderdome, and certainly not while the party of the first part is wearing a ridiculous purple harness and leash, which is the only way the big galoot gets outside since collecting a nasty and expensive abscess while at large and unfettered.

All in all, it was a pleasant way to end a day of making bricks without straw at PharaohNews. A casual glance at the interwebs at midshift unearthed a few small-helmet types aghast at our lack of investigative journalism. This is not unlike complaining that the free blowjob you just got from the unemployed barmaid didn’t include a free shot of top-shelf tequila with an artisan-beer back.

Getaways, groceries and grifters

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

There’s nothing like that first day after the Tour folds its big yellow tent and life gets back to normal.

I got out early for a two-hour ride northeast on Highway 24 and enjoyed a tailwind to Falcon. The headwind on the homebound leg wasn’t outlandish, and I considered stretching the outing to three hours before remembering that there was nothing to eat in Chez Dog, someone having been a little lackadaisical about grocery-shopping lately.

So I rolled home, made a list and headed north to Whole Paycheck, pissing away a car payment on bits of this and that to keep flesh on the bones. Last night’s “dinner” involved a tin of smoked oysters, cheddar, crackers and a salad, and that’s just not enough to keep a renowned cycling journalist at the top of his game.

Now it’s raining for a second consecutive day, which is excellent. It’s been hotter than the high-flange hubs of Hell around here lately, and this takes the edge off, as does a little effervescent Austrian rosé.

Alas, we may all be reduced to drinking feeble American lager out of red-white-and-blue cans if the “mine is bigger than yours” contest ends badly in DeeCee, as seems increasingly likely.

These overfed, undereducated pustules afflicting the body politic should be compelled at gunpoint to hold their slapfests in small-town bars and beaneries, in the company of the simple folks these rich fucks profess to care about. Maybe after a few vicious beatings administered by work-hardened knuckles they’d realize their cushy gigs are about people, not politics.

• Late update: Kevin Drum sure wasn’t impressed by either Obama or Punkinhead tonight. I listened to the first few minutes of Obama’s bit while cooking dinner and I wasn’t exactly hearing a clarion call to arms. As for Punkinhead, I unplugged his ass before he even had a chance to start lying. My patience has its limits.

Pizza, love and understanding

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

It’s been heavy lifting over at VeloNews.com this weekend. You know you’re in for it when the memo describing the tasks to be performed bears the subject line, “Glad I’m not you. …”

Cactus flowers
I slipped out for a quick ride and saw that the recent light rain had lit up the Palmer Park cacti.

Tour de Suisse, Route du Sud, Ster ZLM Toer, Giro del Trentino, Giro della Toscana, Nature Valley Grand Prix, Harlem Skyscraper Cycling Classic, Nevada City Bicycle Classic, Tour of America’s Dairyland, Tour de Grafton, Tour de Beauce, the Race Across America — I’m telling you, the party never stopped. I’m still waiting on stuff and here it is wine-thirty already.

Speaking of parties, I had to quick whip up another tub of pico de gallo for a friend’s 60th birthday yesterday, between bouts of frenzied pixel-pushing, and naturally I was missing a few key ingredients and had no time to leg it to the store. So I subbed a couple jalapeños for the missing serranos and some Deschutes Twilight Summer Ale for the traditional Mexican beer and you know what? It didn’t suck.

But I could do with a break from the kitchen tonight, and thus Herself will be fetching a Luigi’s pizza home after her stint at the local Humane Society, where she spends a couple days each week helping lonesome critters find happy homes.

Me, I’m still helping Mr. Microsoft find a few typos that spell-check can’t handle.

An evening on the deck

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

It’s 11 p.m. and I’m relaxing with a glass of rosé after two days of medium-heavy cookery and other minor labors in honor of a couple of friends and neighbors who are shuffling off to another area code.

Mexican feast
Cuidado señores ... hot plate! The leftovers are good, too.

I started yesterday, roasting some Whole Foods poblanos and Anaheims on the gas grill, then whipped up a basic posole (a recipe so old I can’t remember where I found it) alongside a pot of pintos with chipotle (from The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook). Herself, meanwhile, got busy on a killer lemon-vanilla pudding, saving the final touches for just before mealtime.

Today I hosed down the back deck and zip-tied down the fabric pergola cover — a good thing, too, as Bibleburg tied a record high of 91 degrees — and broke out the patio table’s umbrella for backup. Then I made a little pico de gallo salsa, roasted potatoes with Chimayo red chile, and a green chile sauce (all three from the Santa Fe folks). Poached a pound of chicken, shredded it, made enchiladas with blue corn tortillas, some Monterey Jack and that pot of green chile, and hey presto! Dinnertime.

There was wine, of course, and also beer. The 2010 Thierry Delaunay Touraine from the Loire Valley seemed a bit thin, so I switched to a 2010 Le Cengle Côtes de Provence, which has a beautiful copper color and a tart flavor that, oddly, reminds me of Jolly Rancher watermelon candies, an item I was addicted to as a much younger dog.

The beers were two seasonal items from Deschutes Brewery — Red Chair NWPA, which is hard to find right now, and Twilight Summer Ale, which should be around until September. I should have Vespa’d on down to Bristol Brewing for a jug of their Red Rocket Pale Ale, but tomorrow is another day, eh? As it is I barely had time to grab a shower before the guests of honor arrived.

We ate and drank and shot the shit until long after sundown, and now I and my wine are surfing Al Gore’s Innertubes in search of evil tidings, which are regrettably easy to find, and enjoying a cooling breeze from somewhere.

Or we were. A small yet authoritative voice in another room has chimed the hour in a style that Big Ben would envy. See you tomorrow.

The brown bird of happiness

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
Longtailed cat meets rocker
"Oh, God," says Miss Mia Sopaipilla, "please tell me that fat bastard isn't gonna cop a squat in this old rocker, because if he does, my new name is Flatty the Catty."

Mmm, leftovers. If there’s anything better than a turkey dinner, it’s a turkey breakfast, followed by a turkey lunch, followed by (wait for it) another turkey dinner.

Turkey sandwiches, turkey enchiladas, turkey quesadillas, turkey tacos, turkey soup — the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, my belt is not, and so today between bouts of gluttony I slipped out for a leisurely bird-burning ride with Dr. Mickey von Schenkenstein.

I was supposed to be working, if the word can be used to describe the transferring of pixels from point A (let’s call this Belgium) to point B (your computer). But hey, everyone was either traveling (or trying to), riding their own bikes, battling connectivity issues or suffering tryptophan poisoning, so I said piss on it and took 90 minutes off for a ride in the middle of the workday, just like the real cycling journalists.

We didn’t exactly tear up the trails — neither of us had been on a bike for several days, for one reason or another — but it was good to be outdoors, sweating gravy and solving the world’s problems.

I got back to the office just in time to catch some incoming from Belgium plus a smallish plate of leftovers for energy. Hey, a guy’s got to refuel. …