• #10528 (no title)
  • 15 September 2020
  • Gourmet, Down South
  • The Author
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  • What Endures. What Passes.

Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Tag Archives: food

Hiding

02 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by David in cooking, Exercise/ Fitness, loneliness, Love and stuff, Sexual Identity

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food, passion, swimming

I do all kinds of things to hide out.  Mostly they are “activities”.  I’m being busy, waiting for the chance for something exciting, exotic, or just plain memorable to happen.  This is not unique to me and it’s certainly not a waste of time. Because there’s a lot of time between the exciting, exotic or memorable events of life. There are gaps to be filled.

So I swim. In the water I get lost. In my thoughts. In time. In my workout. I love feeling the water on my body as I swim. I love how my muscles feel.  I don’t care much about my pace or whether I am moving quickly or slowly.  I fantasize that a woman desires me because I swim, that she finds me attractive, that I’m wanted.

And I cook. I love the smells, the sounds of a whirring blender, vegetables frying, the colors of the vegetables and fruits.  I love to see heavy cream turn into whipped cream.  I love sharing what I cook with others.

And I try not to think about the void in Passion. The Love is there. Good old Love. Old Love, soon-to-be geriatric Love.  Selfless Christian Sunday School Love. But I need Passion, too. Passion that can flower because that Love is there.  Put all the chips on Passion.  Tattoo your name inside a heart on my bicep Passion.  Staying awake after one fuck, just so we can have another go Passion.   No “good” manners, dirty-talkin’ Passion that would make your friends blush on the outside, while they die of envy.

“Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.”– John Mellencamp

Rest Day

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by David in cooking, Exercise/ Fitness, Sport

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20th Century Writers, exercise, food, swimming

Back in high school, fifty years ago this fall, I went out for cross country, then track.   I got used to working out five days a week.  Five workouts a week mean I’m serious about the program. I like the self-discipline it fosters. Yesterday I finished my five workouts (lap swim 2050 meters 82 lengths of a 25 meter pool) I started Friday. By then my body was feeling the fatigue and the work I had put my body through.

Workout #5 was not without drama, all internally generated.  The mental fatigue wanted me to just skip it, wait till the next day or the next. I left the house, did some errands first, and  got to  the Y around four P M.  Looking at the sky, I saw dark and ominous storm clouds in the northwest sky.  Usually the storms come out of the west so I thought we might miss this batch of nasty. No such luck. The pool closed just as I was ready to go in. So I got dressed, went home, resolute to return. I had time to go online, and take a nap before I ventured to return . When I got back the lifeguard was outside and he told me the pool would reopen in about 25 minutes. OK.

I get in the pool and start. Every little tweak and funny feeling I magnify into a re-injury of my shoulder or my back.  I find that groove that distance athletes can find, where I feel I can go on forever. I finish my distance.  It was faster than yesterday.  The feeling of accomplishment and being on “purpose” is great.

Home again. Mrs C or C? had already texted that she was tired and hungry. Fortunately I had brought some steaks down from the freezer to thaw that I would fix on the George Foreman grill. Paired with the fresh local tomatoes, we enjoyed a delightful supper, with minimal effort.

Today, on the rest day, I had a nap that was more a continuation of the night’s sleep. I’m enjoying the luxury of doing what I wish to do, write. Then I will read,starting a novella by James Baldwin Giovanni’s Room. It is a gay-themed story, from a major American writer of the Twentieth Century. I read some essays by him in high school,  Notes of a Native Son.  After I finish reading Baldwin, I’m moving on to Nelson Algren.

Retirement. It’s about creating your own world. Cool

Cooking In Modern Times

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by David in cooking, food

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

food, hummus, pressure cookers

A few weeks ago, I went to my new favorite cooking store, Sur La Table, after Sunday brunch at a restaurant in the same mall. They had this rather fancy device called a Lux Multifunction Cooker by Fagor. It is a slow cooker, rice cooker, yogurt maker, and pressure cooker all combined with a control system that allows all these functions at different times and temperatures, under pressure or not.  I’ve always been intrigued and somewhat intimidated by  pressure cooking, the fear of a malfunction present in my mind dampening my enthusiasm.

Last night, I decided to use the device for the first time.  I started by making yogurt. The tricky part, for me, was getting the milk to the right temperature to kill any microbes that might be in the milk, 185-190 F (85-87.7 C). I did not have a candy thermometer and the meat thermometers I had didn’t give an accurate reading, so I wasted a lot of time. The cool down to 100-110 F (37.7-43.3 C) was easy. I added some fresh yogurt, set it to “yogurt” and went to bed. The function prepares the yogurt over 8 hours, (longer if you wish).  When I woke up, I had a rather tasty yogurt all ready to eat. So I am generally happy with the yogurt making function.

This morning, after soaking the garbonzo beans overnight, I used the pressure cooking function to prepare the beans for the homemade hummus  I’ve been contemplating. I put in the beans, the water, to the right amount maybe, 1:1 beans to water, and 2 tablespoons oil (their suggestion). I pressed the pressure setting  to high (9psi), set the timer to 25 minutes and pressed “start”. It does cook automatically once the pressure is reached. And it does shut off automatically.  It has two cool down function  “Fast” and “Slow” also called “natural”. All “Slow” means is that you leave it alone once the device is turned off and the pressure escapes through the safety valves. I allowed 60-90 minutes to cool down, but I suspect you could use a shorter interval.  I just checked on the garbonzos. They were ready and delicious! These garbonzos are unadorned, no spices, not even salt.  This multifunction cooker is  a keeper!

On to making the hummus.  I will get out my copy of Moosewood Cookbook and use that recipe. I may make felafel also. I feel like a hippie again.  Gonna go light the patchouli incense and put on my Ravi Shankar CD.

Later.

The Injury

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by David in cooking, food, Health Issues

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exercise, food

Yesterday  Dorothy and I went to the Y a little early because there was a demonstration class for a program called M.E.L.T. that I was curious about. M.E.L.T. is an exercise program designed to stimulate the production of the fluids that keep our joints lubricated. It sounds very valid, but won’t work for me, because the fusion makes my getting on the floor and getting up again really difficult. So after saying  “No thanks. This won’t work for me” to the leader, I left to sit out in the area where the Senior Citizens hang out.

The Wimbledon Quarterfinals were on. A lady was showing another lady (probably a centenarian) how a numerical puzzle similar to a Sudoku worked. It was a typical “hanging with the Seniors” morning.

A staff member approaches me.

“Are you David?”

“Yes”.

“Dorothy fell off a treadmill. She is OK. She is getting first aid right now”. I go back and see the lifeguard from the pool who is a Fire Fighter/ EMT in his real job attending to her.  She is on the floor, at the back of the treadmill with blood coming from a nasty laceration at her kneecap.

“We called an ambulance”. Moments later, the EMT’s and  Fire Fighters from the station down the street are there. They continue what the lifeguard started, put her on a stretcher and take her off to the hospital about two miles away.

Once at the ER, after assessing the severity of the injury, the waiting begins.  First she goes to X-ray, then she’s back. Dorothy is lucid, cheerful, and talkative. We chat for a while. I tell her I will take care of dinner that night. We wait and  wait. There is a little  excitement when an elderly gentleman who is shouting about pain or something is transported on a stretcher to another facility. His son, about my age, balding, with a Larry Fine hairstyle, wearing pale pink tennis shorts and a pale pink polo shirt, comforts and reassures his father that all is well as they leave. The son’s pink Hello Kitty backpack is the last thing I notice of the two. (“That’s odd”, meaning the backpack, is my mental note.)

We wait some more. Another elderly lady, age 83, is waiting at the nurses station on her stretcher until a room opens up. She too is lucid and a little embarrassed  to be causing “all this fuss”.

Dorothy needs to go to the Ladies Room and  Nora, the RN working with her, takes her. When  Dorothy returns, we talk about The Thin Man, prompted by the name Nora,  Nora Charles being the name of Myrna Loy’s character. We both agree about what a good movie it was and both of us concur that Asta was a really cute dog.

Finally, Simon, the PA, comes in. He is handsome, about six feet tall, Latino, with a neatly trimmed black beard and black horn-rimmed glasses. (They were the style made famous by Barry Goldwater, half a century ago.) On Simon’s left ring finger is a black wedding band. Interesting.

He lets us know the knee cap is not broken and goes to get the cart containing all the wound-stitching paraphernalia,  sutures, needles,  Betadine, saline solution, draping cloths, bandages, other dressings.  He returns and gets to work, first numbing the wound area with Xylocaine.  The suturing is somewhat painful and I hold Dorothy’s hand. It takes about an hour to close a gaping wound with fifteen stitches. Simon tells us that she needs an immobilizer for her knee and that Nora will bring it in when she returns with the discharge instructions and a prescription for Lortab.  Dorothy is calm, relieved it’s over,  and we wait some more for Nora to return with a wheelchair for transport and the aforementioned stuff.

Getting outside, I discover that at 3 PM, it is sweltering. I pull the car  up to the exit.  A burly male nurse gets her from wheelchair to car  and we head to her house.  The big challenge is getting her out of the car, a full-size 1998 Mercury Grand Marquis LS (Dad’s old car), without banging her leg around too much.  We get her out and into the house.

At this point, she calls her son Harvey, recounting the story, assuring him that she’s OK, and asks him to arrange for a home aide to be with her while she is temporarily incapacitated.  At this point I leave to go home, eat some lunch, fetch my phone charger, and  get the salmon, tomatoes and cantaloupe I had been planning to fix for J’s and my dinner.  The fresh basil, balsamic dressing and Gorgonzola crumbles are also packed.

I return. The house, being the house of a 90 year old, could double as a sauna. I turn on the air conditioning. The home care coordinator comes, as does Harvey. They map out a plan for care for the next few days, while I rest a bit. The home care person is very reassuring and Harvey, Dorothy and I are pleased with what she suggests.

Harvey and Home Care Lady leave. I start dinner, hunting for what I need in a strange kitchen. There is some dried tarragon to season the salmon. I find a grill pan in the oven. I  figure out how a strange oven works. Solid state electronic controls mean that turning a simple, mechanical knob to the right setting in a simple, familiar manner is out of the question. It is a Bosch oven, very nice, all in all, with a convection feature. In about a half hour, the fish is ready. The tomato is sliced, garnished with fresh basil, drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette dressing with the Gorgonzola crumbles completing the presentation.

Dorothy loves her dinner. The tomato is a local tomato, from Hanover County, northeast of town.  These are the prized tomatoes of the Richmond area, unquestionably delicious. The tomato is as tasty as its reputation promised it would be.

Dorothy has found a walker (my late Aunt Midge’s). It expedites getting out of her chair, where she sits with leg elevated per the discharge instructions. She uses the bathroom  while I prep the cantaloupe. It too is delicious.  A rainy May has meant some fine produce this year.

Comfortable, confident she can get along on her own for the night, Dorothy sends me home.  Around 8:45, I arrive home, recount the day’s events to J and prepare her a plate of grilled salmon and fresh tomatoes from the leftovers I brought.  I sit for a while, then strip out of my sweaty clothes, and take the nicest shower I have had in a long time.The patchouli-scented soap is a real pleasure. I decide to sleep nude, luxuriating in the clean feeling and before I know it, I am asleep.

A day well spent. A job happily done.

Random Observations

06 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by David in cooking, food, Fruit, personal grooming, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

food

Observation #1

Men are gross. The ladies are right about that. Why do I say that? Yesterday, at the Y , I’m getting dressed after my swim. One of my fellow members is also attending to his grooming. He takes the blow dryer there for use in drying hair, presumably that particular hair on top of the head, and, after a quick once over to his pubes, uses the communal blow dryer to dry the space between his toes! All of a sudden, I really didn’t need to style my hair with the blow dryer.

Observation #2

Somebody tell me the difference between cultured buttermilk and kefir. The most basic one is that kefir costs about twice as much. The two products taste remarkably similar. I know there are active probiotic cultures in kefir, but does their presence mean I have to pony up twice as much dough?  I guess so. 

Observation #3

Kitchen parchment is really cool stuff. Last night I lined the pan with it when I grilled the swordfish steaks in the oven and wrapped the corn on the cob in it as I cooked them in the oven along with the fish. The clean-up with parchment was easier, I think, than with aluminum foil. By the way, cooking corn in the oven or on the grill is so much easier than throwing them in boiling water on top of the stove.

Observation #4

Fruit 1: Why do strawberries seem to last an incredibly long time before turning into gross red pulpy blobs these days? I notice this in the ones I buy at the market in the big PETE #1  containers that come from some farm near Watsonville, California. Maybe they pick up a weird vibe from the spirit of John Steinbeck, who lived near there. The locally grown, “pick your own” kind seem to have the shorter life I remember from the Dark Ages of the Eisenhower Administration.

Fruit 2: Peaches grown locally, within a few hundred miles, more or less, are delicious. The ones trucked in from California or Washington (I live in Virginia) are pretty nasty. Let’s not even talk about the ones from Chile that show up in the stores in the winter.  I must say that the Chilean cherries are pretty good.   Chilean  apples aren’t bad. The oranges are so-so.

The Community of Soup

07 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by David in Soup

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

food

Tuesday, here in Richmond, we had a cold snap.  We were all settled in and excited about Spring; birds singing, flowers blooming, the smell of freshly cut grass in the air. Then Mom Nature offered her two cents about our vernal reverie. It got cold again and once more it was Soup Weather.

With an early Easter, I still had a recipe that I had meant to use during Lent but had not had an opportunity to fix. It was for Manhattan style clam chowder, the tomato-based type. Since Mrs CelibateorChaste? is lactose intolerant, she doesn’t enjoy the milk-base New England style. I am Bisoupual , can go both ways, and went Manhattan style for her. I had downloaded a pretty good recipe from the Betty Crocker website and started the prep.  Nothing goes exactly to plan when I cook, and by the time I finished the preparation, I had doubled the recipe. My trip to the store for missing ingredients yielded the fresh parsley which made the chowder.

Chowder simmering away, I took my walk. Upon finishing the walk, I covered the azaleas to protect them from the freeze. I was all settled in when Mrs CorC? came home from work.  We both enjoyed a fine and simple mid-week supper, more than compensating for the inconvenience of the untimely cold spell.

In the making of soup, stew or chowder, bountiful leftovers are a given.  Here is where the community piece comes in. Soup is meant to be shared!  Running down my list of likely beneficiaries, I decided my stepmother Dorothy would be the recipient. She is 90, and in no way feeble, but she has lived alone since Daddy died  in 2011. So when I dropped by the next day to take her to the YMCA  for her exercise class,  I brought the soup.  I felt good sharing it. I hope she liked it.  Simple Gifts.

Story-As Yet Untitled Part 2

31 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by David in Love and stuff, seduction

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food

He had lived in this fashionable (read over-priced) neighborhood long enough to know the ins and outs of The Parking Game reflexively. The Green Signs read “2-HR Parking, Except by Permit  Mon-Fri 8 AM-6 PM”.  Here it was Friday Morning at 9:57, The Parking Enforcement People were lurking, ready to pounce, when they found her car, started it and motored off to the diner on Broad.

The diner was one of those places that was almost too “Home Town”. Politicians would show up there for grits, eggs, country ham and a photo-op, eager to show that they were of the Common Folk, despite being multimillionaires. But the food was good, the coffee was drinkable and the waitresses’ tattoos were interesting in their own right. As they walked from the car to the diner, he took her hand. She gripped his as if this little intimacy was completely natural.

Karen was working this morning. “You again?” she teased him  “Got your Rolaids under the counter all ready, Darlin’.” She pointed to an empty booth. And they sat down.

“What are you doing off on Friday?” she asked. “I know. You work from home and set your own hours.”

“Bingo. How about you?”

“I’m a nurse. This is a long weekend”

“Where do you work?”

“Orthopedics. Lots of old ladies with hip replacements. Spinal fusions. You know. And what do you do at home, when you claim to be working?”

“I’m a writer, but I’m only doing it until I can get a part-time job waiting tables.  I’m one of those lucky stiffs who has a trust fund. I keep quiet about the money. People think I’m a vet with bad PTSD, so bad I can’t work. I say nothing to stop them thinking that. I’m a vet all right, Marines, Iraq, Fallujah. But my head’s on pretty straight. I know plenty who aren’t so lucky. I volunteer at the veterans’ outreach.”

She looked at him, trying not to be too obvious in her approval. “This may be the last unmarried man out there not totally stuck on himself”, she thought.

For a few minutes, they discussed ordering the salt herring and decided to get them. That they were salty and fried were bad ass enough reasons to get them.  Both secretly rejoiced at being on the 10 Most Wanted List of The Food Police.

Suddenly, in the middle of the small talk, he grew quiet and looked her straight in the eyes. It was one of those scary moments when she knew what he was thinking and he, in turn,  was aware of her thoughts.

“This is nice.”

“Yeah, nice”

As they ate, she took off her Dansko clog and rubbed her foot on his shin, moving to his calf muscle. He smiled. He swore to himself that this was the sexiest thing any woman had ever done to him.

When they had finished and he had paid, they walked out. She reached in her purse, took out the Camel pack, looked at it as if that camel had told her to fuck off, and then tossed them in the trash barrel at the corner.  She looked at him and said. “Have you ever had one of those moments when you know you’ve had enough?”

To be continued

Braces, Burgers, Toys

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by David in memoir

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Tags

Cars, food, Surgery, Toys

Anyone who has had a spinal fusion/laminactomy  will know whereof I speak. It has been exactly ninety days since my surgery. I had an office visit today. The X-rays were taken. The surgeon came in the room and together we looked at them.  What we were looking at was whether the titanium screws that hold the fused vertebra in place were holding as the bone grafts continue to grow. They are! As a result, my turtle shell brace, called because it looks like a rig the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would wear, has been put back in the Torturer’s Closet. Now I have a soft brace, which is a smaller, manageable brace, that fits at about the waist. Black, stretchy, with velcro.

I celebrated my liberation by going to McDonald’s and ordering a Big Mac. One practically needs to take out a mortgage to buy one of these now. Sadly, the pickles, special sauce, lettuce, cheese and two all beef patties (so they claim) just doesn’t taste the same as they used to. Kinda dry. Oh well. Most people experience this disillusionment at age 25. I’m 40 years late. The coffee is good though, as well as some of the meal size salads.

I remember a place before McDonald’s came to town, called The Beacon. It had the same stuff hamburgers, fries, shakes that McDonald’s would be selling. Daddy would take us there after Church on Sunday, so Mom didn’t have to cook. We would sit in Daddy’s 1953 Nash Ambassador Super and eat. My parents didn’t complain about the food then; cheap food was a dream come true for them and we children didn’t know any better.  We liked the experience, because as a prize for buying the swill, they gave away little plastic airplanes in primary colors. With the exception of the toy B-36, the planes were jets, Korean War era  jets, the F-80, the F-94, and the legendary F-86.

We accumulated scads of these things.  They were not to the scale of the green plastic army men we had, but we didn’t care. The army men were not to the same scale as the Tonka  Green “Six-by”Army Truck we had either.  Again, we didn’t care. The idea was to have fun. Are children allowed to have fun anymore?

Hush-A-Boom.

22 Thursday May 2014

Posted by David in Uncategorized

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Bullwinkle Moose, food, Weight Watchers

 

One of my favorite episodes  of  Rocky and Bullwinkle is based on the premise that Bullwinkle could remember everything he ever ate,  One particular item he consumed was a banana on which, written on the peel, the formula for making the silent explosive “Hush-A-Boom” was recorded.  All I remember about the formula was the final ingredient, “a pinch of salt.”  Why I mention this is that I returned to Weight Watchers after an eighteen month hiatus.  I have regained some weight (Surprise! Surprise!),  up to 208.8 lbs as of Saturday, May 17th.   I really enjoy WW. I like being accountable and mindful of what I eat. I measure my portions.   I carry my lunch and snacks to work with me.  What is hard is the food diary, recording the stuff.  I am aware of my “points”, but , after working three ten-hour days in a row,  I just want a few precious more minutes of down-time during the day.  So, like Bullwinkle, I am remembering eveything I ever ate, in order that i can record them on my record, maybe. 

An Old Post Yet To Be Published

04 Sunday May 2014

Posted by David in Amtrak, Sexuality

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Tags

food, swimming, train spotting, trains

I wrote this a long while back, in May 2014.  We had yet to sell my Aunt’s house.  I thought I would post it as it is.  I remember the day quite well. The tentative title was Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!  This was before my shoulder and back surgeries.  I was  still working.

It is Sunday. I am sitting in my late aunt’s house, now vacant, enjoying my coffee and taking time to write, enjoying the few noises I do hear. The birds sing, the insects hum, and, in the distance, a freight train moves down the main North/South line.  It is a freight because I can hear the wheels grinding on the steel rails for a long time and the air horn sounding.  When I leave the house I stop at a grade crossing to watch a Northbound Amtrak train, with nine cars, plus a locomotive.

Later I go swimming. First I weigh in and decide 204.2 lbs isn’t bad for  5ft 11in. It is down from 208 lbs a month earlier.   I do a long 1650 meter swim.  It  takes 38 min 50 sec. Not bad, I ratonalize, for a 63 year old.  I feel the stretch of my back muscles, but the stiffness in my legs restricts the efficiency of my kick.   The cool water feels great to my body.   It is an exquisitely sensual feeling, to experience my body awaken.  Later, at lunch, I remark to my wife that the endorphin rush is kicking in, a great high.

I wrote a lot more semi-philosophical gibberish about, appetites, and craving  food, alcohol and sex.  I frequently eat to change the way I feel. “That donut or (———-) (name your food of choice) will sure make me feel better or quiet the churning in my gut”.  Food worked before booze for me in changing how I felt.  And worked again after I quit drinking.  Sex was the Big Mystery, the Big Kahuna of Excitement and Mood Alteration.  I loved it.  Still do.  Being naked with a woman, coming together in a sweaty pile, making noises, and feeling that my partner (wife) and I have uncovered the secret to Oneness with The Cosmos.  (How’s that for gibberish?)

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