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Cooking For Fun

07 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in cooking, food, Uncategorized

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What’s the saying, “Why do it if it isn’t fun?”  Let’s be real. Sometimes cooking isn’t fun. Like it’s work and the budget for food is small ’cause there ain’t no money. Then again there are opportunities that cry out for creativity. 

Friday, there was almost an entire half gallon of milk with a “sell by” date of 30 December. It figuratively was imploring me to use it. Add to the ingredient pool two bars of Ghirardelli Baking Chocolate, one 100% Cacao, the other Semi-Sweet. Last night we made real hot chocolate with melted 100% Cacao. Just melt 2 oz of the chocolate, mixing it into a cup of water, Add sugar. Then add three cups of milk. Bring it almost to boiling. There are more steps but that is the gist of it. You will wonder why you ever use that instant hot cocoa mix, especially with the vile desiccated marshmallow marbles.

Today I melted  two ounces of the Semi-Sweet in a double boiler, dissolved that in milk and added it to Cook and Serve Vanilla Pudding as it cooked. I added a shake or two of cinnamon, just because the cinnamon was within easy reach. That received a nod of spousal approval.  Now there was a cup of milk left from the short-dated  half gallon. A cup of Hot Ovaltine finished that off.

I did not let the milk go bad. Mother and Dad would have been proud. The calories consumed is another question.

Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend… Motivation?

19 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Exercise/ Fitness, Existential Despair, Foreign Films, Uncategorized

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,

That is today’s tune.  I am at an ebb.  Given that alcohol and drugs are a suicide run for me and sexual infidelity is not my style either, my two principal diversions are exercise and eating. Add the beginnings of a cold to the mix. So exercise is a complete turn-off. That leaves eating. Or maybe, I will blog.

Yeah, I’ll blog. And drink coffee.  The coffee tastes good. The chair is comfy. I will go back to Rainer Werner Fassbender’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, starring some great German actors, like Günter Lamprecht, Hannah Schygulla, Gottfried John, and Barbara Sukowa. This was a miniseries on German Television (Deutsche Fernsehen. sounds classier, doesn’t it?) but it was released in theatres in the USA.  Fassbinder was a bad boy’s bad boy, i.e. a homosexual drug addict and rather indiscrete about his proclivities. He never got much of a following beyond the art house crowd, here in the America of Ronald Reagan and the 1980’s. 

The story follows the life of a petty thief, Franz Bieberkopf (Lamprecht), who served time for the murder of his lover. It begins with his release from prison for this crime.  There isn’t a lot of moralizing but there is some fantastic cinematic storytelling. 

I have to bear in mind that stories are meant to be experienced in the mind in some fashion. I need not have written a thesis on Fassbinder in order to enjoy this. And I don’t need to mythologize about his angst as a gay artist either.  He wanted me to enjoy this story, I’ll betcha.

So I will blog and watch. And not obsess too much about food. Maybe I will do some ironing and shoe shining, and sublimate my service bottom energy into something productive.

Night Picture

16 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Amtrak, cooking, Uncategorized

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It is the middle of the night. Back pain has me awake. There will be no trains to watch till after 5:30 AM.  The Silver Meteor , #98, Miami to New York ,is running late. Then again, it usually runs late, from a little to a lot.  Amtrak tries. They really do.

But for now, as I take a break from reading Behrouz Gets Lucky by Avery Cassell, I decide a selfie is in order. I turn the camera around, so I don’t take a mirror image. I doctor the picture a bit. I look at myself and say, “What the Hell, I’m 66.”

Behrouz Gets Lucky is an entertaining read, about two masculine presenting lesbians who fall in love with each other. Doggone it I love Love. I don’t care much for TV love shows.  I’m partial to Fred and Ginger kind of love stories. Substitute Rita Hayworth or Judy Garland for Ginger. Then again, if dancing is not your thing, Bogart and Bacall are perfect.

“You know how to whistle,don‘t you Steve? You put your lips together and blow.” 

MrsCorC? has a hair appointment in the morning. I will go swimming while she gets clipped. Maybe.  I may just sleep.

I made bread in the bread machine motivated by nothing more than laziness and reluctance to shell out $3 or more for a loaf of marginal stuff. Much as I like the convenience of the bread machine, it’s time to knead my own dough with my own hands.  Maybe make my own scones or beignets. The catch is to bake for somebody else, like my AA buddies. Why the Hell not? Perhaps it will assist in managing my hours a little better.

So where is this picture, you ask?

Here. That vein on the left side (right side?) looks kind of imposing there.

Brush With Greatness

02 Saturday Dec 2017

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My friend John on his previously mentioned cycling excursion took photos of the house where Mother Maybelle Carter and her family lived while she performed in Richmond on The Old Dominion Barn Dance on WRNL-AM 910. This was 70 years ago.

I did not know this. Maybelle Carter was the mother of June Carter Cash

“Shazzam”

02 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by in Futurism, Smartphones, Uncategorized

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I got a text from a long time friend just as I was sitting down to the huevos rancheros I ordered for brunch at my friendly neighborhood trendy restaurant.

He was on a weekend bicycling excursion to where we call The Center Of The Universe, Ashland,Virginia. Virtual Railcam LLC has a camera placed there, so that trainspotters like me can watch rail traffic at home. (Amtrak’s Northbound Silver Star #92 just passed by.)

He texted to let me know he just bought a cookie and would be riding by the webcam. I have known John since sixth grade. We were roommates our First Year at the University of Virginia. We live in the same town and communicate almost daily.  Fifty-plus year continuing friendships are remarkable these days, but  I could not have imagined receiving a text from him, then seeing him wave at me in a live image on a tiny handheld computer fifty four years ago.

Breath-taking. 

The larger point I want to make is that assumptions we have about progress are being outpaced by that actual progress itself. We still cling to Nineteenth and Twentieth Century ideas about the world and exercise little scepticism about them. Malthusian ideas about population growth and food supply were advanced before mechanization, plant genetics, and animal breeding revolutionized agricultural productivity. Think about that.

Do we face a technological utopia or dis-topia? I don’t know. But our visions of the future say more about us today than they do about what tomorrow has in store.