A flash, in the pan

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments

One of the benefits of going back to a regular schedule is that I get to pay more attention to cooking instead of simply throwing something together in a rush and then jumping back in the barrel.

Martha Rose Shulman has offered a couple of interesting dishes recently in her “Recipes for Health” column in The New York Times. I whipped up her stir-fried tofu and peppers night before last, and it was a hit; it’s an easy bit of cookery, based on a Chinese dish called rainbow beef, and reminds me slightly of an old favorite, kung pao beef, from (of all things) a tattered Betty Crocker cookbook I bought on impulse at some grocery checkout years ago.

Tonight I’m going to tackle her stir-fried pork and greens with noodles, which is just a little more elaborate but packs more punch, including as it does a half-pound of swine instead of soybean curd (Shulman says the vegetarians among you may substitute tofu for the pork).

While we’re discussing mindful cookery, you might enjoy this article from Tricycle, the Buddhist quarterly. Author Laura Fraser rattles the pots and pans with Dale and Melissa Kent, who spent seven years at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California’s Ventana Wilderness. Dale did a two-year stint as tenzo, head of the kitchen; Melissa was ino, or head of the meditation hall.

Zen priest and cook Edward Brown tells Fraser that mindfulness in cooking “is much more about receiving your experience than dictating it. Most people’s habits of mind and activity, when it comes to cooking, are about making it come out the way it’s supposed to, rather than receiving and appreciating it the way it is.”

With that in mind (pun intended), I set about making breakfast this morning. It’s a meal that has been haphazard here lately, generally a fruit smoothie, some oatmeal, occasionally just a container of yogurt and some juice. Herself had mentioned a hankering for scrambled eggs with green chile, but was otherwise unspecific, so I winged it. Improvisation. A couple bars of jazz in the kitchen.

Locating some roasted Hatch mild chile in the bottom of the ’fridge, I peeled and diced a large one, then sautéed it in butter and olive oil for a few minutes, adding a small minced glove of garlic about 20 seconds before pouring the eggs — whipped with sea salt, freshly ground pepper and a dash of green chile powder from the Santa Fe School of Cooking — into the skillet.

Then, with one eye on the cooking eggs I assembled two basic side salads — just a few leaves of lettuce and some sliced tomatoes drizzled with olive oil — and toasted some fresh bread from a local bakery. Then I shoveled the eggs onto the plates and served ’em up.

Simple stuff, I know. But it sure did taste good.

Leaf me be

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Fall is here with a vengeance. The wiseguys say this past weekend was it for aspen-viewers, but there's still some color down here in the flatlands.
Fall is here with a vengeance. The wiseguys say this past weekend was it for aspen-viewers, but there's still some color down here in the flatlands.

Another extended stint in the VeloBarrel has come to an end. Tomorrow, the off-season begins — it’s back to the usual two days a week playing editor at large for VeloNews.com, with two weeks before I have to crank out some nonsense for Bicycle Retailer & Industry News. Livin’ large, folks, livin’ large. Why, I may even ride a bicycle.

We had a “Wild Kingdom” moment here last night. Miss Mia Sopaipilla was watching one of the kitchen windows like it was must-see TV, so I took a peek myself. I had my reading glasses on, instead of my seeing glasses, but detected a couple lumpy shapes waddling through the back yard to a gap in the fence. Porcupines? Skunks? Really small Repuglicans?

Nope. Raccoons. I put my seeing glasses on and stepped out into the alley just in time to catch one of the masked devils scrabbling up a neighbor’s latticework, behind a climbing vine. No camera handy, alas, so you’ll have to make do with this midafternoon ‘coon-free shot of our own vine.

Retro-grouchery

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
I don't know why that hand is in there. I bet this bike can stand on its own, drink a couple of Belgian ales and maybe jump over the moon like Elliott's bike in "E.T." (Stolen from tech editor Zack Vestal at VeloNews.com.)
I don't know why that hand is in there. I bet this bike can stand on its own, drink a couple of Belgian ales and maybe jump over the moon like Elliott's bike in "E.T." (Stolen from tech editor Zack Vestal at VeloNews.com.)

Katie Compton, the Beast of Bibleburg, blew everyone’s doors off at CrossVegas last night. I was reading a piece on her crazy quilt of sponsorships yesterday — Stevens frameset, Dugast rubber, Zipp wheels, bars and cranks, SRAM Red drivetrain — and scoping out all that bike jewelry got me to thinking.

Remember the good old days, when a cyclo-cross bike was a beast of burden instead of a thoroughbred?

Like a lot of us, I rode my first few cyclo-crosses on a mountain bike. My first “real” ‘cross bike was a steel Specialized Sirrus road frame that a framebuilder acquaintance in Santa Fe doctored with a torch, adding cantilever braze-ons, removing the chainstay bridge and shifting the seatstay bridge up a bit. My second was a real ’cross bike, a neon-yellow steel Pinarello with bar-end shifters, MA-40 rims and Wolber 28 Cross Extra rubber, Weinmann cantis and a Shimano 600 drivetrain straight out of the gack box like the Sirrus before it, ’cause I knew from experience that it was going to take a beating.

I got a little more disco as my skills and resources improved, stepping up to a series of Steelman framesets in Excell, Reynolds 853 and Dedacciai zero-uno, his venerable CC first of all, followed by a succession of Eurocrosses. Instead of generic Shimano cantis I stepped up to Paul’s Neo-Retro and Touring brakes. And I raced at least once with a Voodoo Loa ti’ bike sporting a one-off Marzocchi suspension fork and a pair of Zipp 530 carbon clinchers, because I got ’em for free from Andy Ording and thus wasn’t emotionally invested in their long-term viability.

But after a while I started to feel like a fat bald guy driving a Maserati in hopes of picking up chicks.

First to go were the tubies, ’cause I got sick of losing a pair every weekend to the Chatfield Reservoir goatheads. The ti’ bike went away shortly thereafter (though I held onto the oddball fork). And the Zipps went back on the time-trial bike where they belong.

My final race, in 2004, was on my Reynolds 853 Eurocross, with a clincher wheelset and no spare bike, not even spare wheels; I rode to the course from the DogHaus, and when I flatted midrace, I replaced the tube and rode back home.

If I were to stage a comeback, I’d do it on that bike. Like me, it has a ton of miles, dents, dings, scratches and scrapes, but somehow it keeps on keeping on. I wouldn’t trade it for a six-pack of Stevenses. No disrespect intended.

But still, damn. Look at this thing. I’d hang it on a wall and bow to it six times a day, maybe pray to it. But race on it?

Equinoxious

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
That first glimpse of snow on Pikes Peak is always something of a surprise.
The first sight of snow on Pikes Peak is always a surprise.

I just popped out for a quick shot of Pikes Peak as seen from the DogHaus (well, as seen from the rear bumper of the ’83 Toyota 4WD truck parked in front of the DogHaus, anyway). Looks cold up there. Glad we’re down here.

Turkish has been harshly critical of my weather-management skills the past couple of days. He stalks from door to door, pitching a bitch about how much it sucks being penned up with the lesser beings, until one of us finally throws his ass outside into the crisp fall air.

Then he perches atop a deck railing, as white and puffy as a Repuglican senator, blinking his big blue eyes in astonishment and wondering where all the nifty sunshine and warmth went.

Right down Adolf Barack Hitler Saddam Hussein “Uncle Joe” Stalin Obama’s commie rathole, is where, Turk’ me boyo. No more sunshine for us red-state weirdos unless the feddle gummint issues it to us. If he weren’t so damn’ busy socializing our health care, killing the seniors and trading white Christian babies to the A-rabs for oil, we could mine more Murkin coal and heat the outdoors, too.

Turkish finds my meteorological management not to his liking.
Turkish finds my meteorological management not to his liking.

Could be worse, though. My man Hal at Hardscrabble Times reports snow at his Crusty County ranchette, both yesterday and today, the autumnal equinox. We both agreed that a couple hundred thou’ apiece would go a long way toward dissipating winter’s chill if spent on a pair of cozy bolt holes in New Mexico or Arizona, but couldn’t think of any mostly legal ways of laying our hands on same.

And anyway, that wouldn’t solve Turkish’s problem. He hates auto trips more than he hates being cooped up indoors on a cold, blustery morning — or any other kind or morning, come to think of it.

La Cage aux Folles

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

Those of you who are not living in caves in Afghanistan probably have heard of this thing called “Twitter,” in which people with too much time and technology on their hands pester each other 140 characters at a time. It’s called “tweeting,” though it’s generally far less musical and soothing than birdsong, unless the bird in question is a constipated turkey buzzard.

Well, it seems there’s going to be a TweetUp at Interbike featuring chirpy industry types, schwag, powerful beverages and conversations that are not restricted to 140 characters. It’s at 7 p.m tonight at the Lavo Restaurant, Bathhouse and Nightclub, at The Palazzo.

I have a Twitter account, but will not be in attendance. I will be croaking like a big, fat raven right here in Bibleburg, helping the VeloNews.com mob post all the news from Sin City. So rock on, all you robins. Tweedle-dee-dee, etc., et al., and so on.