Category: Holidays

From soup to nuts

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
Our Chinese pistache is not quite in “Last Leaf” mode, but it’s getting there.

I fight off the snow
I fight off the hail
Nothing makes me go
I’m like some vestigial tail
I’ll be here through eternity
If you want to know how long
If they cut down this tree
I’ll show up in a song

Not a lot of snow or hail to fight off in these parts lately.

Christmas brought a record high temperature — 65°, eclipsing the old mark set in 1955(!) — and it wasn’t even The Duck! City’s first record high this month.

Herself and I went out for a little pre-feast hike in the Sandia foothills with a couple hundred of our closest friends, their extended families, and their dogs. Only saw two cyclists in just under five miles, and their rigs didn’t look new to me, so, maybe not a festive holiday season for the local IBDs.

The good news is, we’re delivering the teachings of Jeebus to the Nigerians in the usual explosive fashion. So, at least the Military-Industrial Complex is ticking along nicely, if only in terms of supplying shiny objects to the news media, since it’s a little late to carpet-bomb the Epstein files.

The bad news is … well, not all that bad. I couldn’t locate any crosscut beef shanks for my beef vegetable soup, so I had to call an audible and run with another recipe that proved to be not quite as good as our favorite, which is from a “Better Homes and Gardens” cookbook with a 1981 copyright. After a week’s worth of chile-infused dishes I was striving for mild, and overachieved for a change.

However, Herself’s cornbread was superb, as was her salad, and thanks to exchanges with neighbors and colleagues we had an extensive menu of possibilities for dessert.

With the second season of “Fallout” finally available, we’d thought to revisit season one, since we’d forgotten what all the fuss was about. Alas, our Amazon Subprime Video membership is not ad-free, and the viewing experience was peppered at random with multiple sales pitches for depression meds, Range Rovers, and other shit that we don’t want, don’t need, and/or can’t afford, some of them running more than two minutes at a stretch.

Which was really a stretch. So this morning we decided to bring capitalism to its knees by signing up for the ad-free tier, then binge-watching both seasons before finally canceling the service entirely.

¡Venceremos! You’re welcome, comrades. Just crawl out through the fallout, baby.

O’G and the Night Visitor

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
The eastern sky on Christmas Eve morning.

I can’t say with a straight face that I’ve been a good boy this year.

So it must be that I was riding Herself’s coattails when Santa dropped off a holiday gift last night.

We both — yes, both of us — dreamed of our late cat Turkish.

The Turk at rest.

Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) left us far too early, on March 5, 2020. He and I reconnect now and again in dreams, but never have Herself and I met up with the old soldier at the same time.

In my dream, I was in bed, head propped on the pillows, but the bed was on the front porch of some vaguely familiar house from my past. I was just chillin’ there, watching the world pass by, when the Turk came aboard without so much as a bosun’s whistle and stretched out alongside me, as he did regularly when still he walked the earth.

Surprised to see my old comrade, I turned my head and said to Herself, who was nearby but out of sight, “Hey, check it out!” And then Someone hit the channel changer, the dream shifted gears, and I was lucky to have the warm memory of it when I awakened this morning.

Herself was scurrying around getting ready for work when I shambled into the kitchen and told her I’d dreamed of the big fella.

“I did too!” she said.

In her dream I wasn’t there, but her dad was, or might have been, though I don’t recall Bob Pigeon and the Turk being all that tight. He probably tried to explain how the Turk was going about the whole cat thing all wrong, and that would be as far as their relationship would ever go, because the field marshal was very much not interested in advice from junior officers.

Now, a cynic might write the whole visitation off as the upshot of eating spicy Mexican dishes for about a week straight, plus a few too many sugary seasonal treats.

But I know a gift when I see one. What a joy it was to have an old friend home for the holidays.

One big pile, no arrests

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Plenty of room on the Group W bench. Slide over, litterbug.

The dump is closed, all the wrong people are in cuffs, and there ain’t enough SNAP in the EBT for turkey but there’s a big ol’ ham living large in the White House.

Oh, well. We can still sing. Sing loud. You know the words.

Leaf me be

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
Hillborne on my trail.

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!

Posole, in its most basic form.

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!