Happy Anniversary!!

First there’s nothing then there’s a lot..

Exactly three years ago today, I was in this location (with an extremely rare picture of the feeder to prove it). Do you know where it is?




Got it? here’s another clue.



You’re correct, it’s the hallowed grounds of the Augusta National Golf Club. (and the famous 12th hole on amen corner). If you EVER get a chance to go to the Master's, do not pass it up (unless of course you don’t care about golf). It is an experience you will never forget. Actually, I take that back. Even if you don’t care for golf, it is a lovely place just to be. As I probably said in a long ago bottom feeder, people somehow behave civilly, and you sort of have the feeling of being in church. And there is a requirement to eat a pimento sandwich. You have to. Sigh…it lives up to its reputation..

Have Done:

Some of the “to do” has lapsed into the “have done” category. Wednesday, MFO and I had a chance to “review” the new tour at the historic Sotterley Plantation. They are revamping the current tour of the manor house and wanted to do a “dry run” before going public. I did learn some new things about the place including a new appreciation of Herbert Satterlee and his approach to decorating the place, along with Mable Ingalls. Sotterley Plantation and Historic St. Mary’s City are worth visiting and revisitng…

And, speaking of the latter, last night we went down to the Annual Archeology Lectures at the Visitor Center. Of course everybody knows that April is archeology month, and the City sort of honors that with lectures on various topics. Lecturers were Ruth Mitchell (senior archeologist – in position, not age!); Tim Riordan (Director of Archeology); and Terry Brock a PhD Candidate from Michigan State(!) Ruth and Tim spoke about ongoing projects around the city and what they are learning about early life in the colony. Great stuff, it's nice to see what's under our feet and what we can learn. Terry spoke more specifically about his research into “community” in the African American community during slavery and after emancipation. There is so much neat stuff to do (but I haven’t mentioned this before).

Can Do:

The normal Friday feature is a bit lacking today, although (speaking of history again) there will be a program tomorrow (if the stupid government stays open) at Thomas Stone National Historic Site near Port Tobacco. Our own Aaron Meisinger the multi talented re-enactor (and did you know one of the original servers at Brome Howard Inn?) will be portraying Leonard Calvert (first governor of Maryland). Aaron is always entertaining no matter what hat he is wearing. Things start at 2pm.

Sotterley Plantation kicks of this year’s lecture series with a program about Frederick Law Olmstead, a famous landscape architect and urban planner. There will be a film. No charge, begins at 3pm (exactly when the coverage of the final round of the master’s begins!!). Depending on the status of the golf tournament, you may or may NOT see the feeder..

Jefferson Patterson Park opens this weekend…

Speaking of openings, the new wine and liquor store “Twist” is having hoopla today as part of their Grand Opening. Ribbon cutting at 4:30, food samples, and for all you die hard Redskin Fans, Dexter Manly will be there from 6 to 8.

Tiki bar opens on the 15th. Plan to either attend or stay away…

Quick Foodie Notes:

I note that todays “Around Town” insert in the Enterprise that (how did I miss this?) our “tea room” in Leonardtown has shed its little old ladies who eat cucumber sandwiches (not that there’s anything wrong with that) image and has become – for want of a better term – a “real restaurant”. It’s called “Cahil’s Café” . Unless I missed it (always possible) the derivation of the name is not revealed. Owner is a Hilburn, and chef a Turner..but I am always a fan of alliteration. Anyway it'll go on the list for a feeder visit...

I see iron is coming out of the ground just north of the Olive Garden, which I suppose will eventually turn out to be the Texas Roadhouse or Texas Steakhouse or whatever. Wonder if they had any pause for thought after Lone Star shuttered…

I had another couple of topics, but we’ll save those for another day..

If you go out this weekend, remember you MUST

DFD

Ps: Go Phil!

Missing Muses...

Sometimes the muses are cracking at your brain, filling the cells with brilliant ideas and sometimes they seem to be taking a break. Like today, which reduces one to talking about banal things like ….

Weather: I know that the Mayans think the world is ending next/this(?) year in December. Some days I think they may be on to something. Have you noticed the increasing trend of violent weather lately? Big snowfalls all winter, tornadoes in March, heavy rains, strong winds, no let up. And, concurrently with this, the weather guessers seem to be sort of unable to call the shots anymore. Like last week they forecasted big storms, and we get nothing. Or light rain predictions fill up your rain gage… Eighty degrees one day, middle forties the next. Go figure.. and what do you know? we’re coming around that season that sends coastal dwellers reaching for their martini glasses, the time when storms are given names in case they want to come calling..it’s always something…

Or, you can talk about that old reliable….

Sports: Please pass the salt and pepper so I can apply it to a large serving of crow that I have to eat. After ranting about the state of women’s basketball, the men do me proud in their highest showcase of college basketball, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's National Championship Basketball game. Not. One of the teams doesn’t put 50 points on the board and both teams give a pitiful example of throwing bricks and dinner rolls at the basket, with the losing team shooting under 20 percent!! Awful. And, mercifully after tonight, both genders can put away the basketballs for a while as the women’s version of the same will determine their champion, with the pre-season favorites of Stanford, UCONN, and Brittany Griner watching on TV with the rest of us. Another benefit of the end of the Road to the Final Four, is that we don’t have to suffer Charles Barkley anymore.

And, leaving Sports, that leaves my first love

Food: As you might remember, I get the St. Louis food newspaper/magazine “Sauce”. I got another version in the mail on Monday. Okay, and also as you might remember I have taken to sort of look at Facebook without doing much posting there. I have “liked” the Sauce page (wall? Whatever the hell you call it) and glance at it occasionally. Well today, they have a thing about Tony’s (St. Louis’s long time premier restaurant – IMHO) with a title something like “Ever wonder what the trick is to keeping customers happy?” and a link to an article where Vince gives his top five tips for good service, because Open Table gave them an award in Best Service category. Well, that caught my eye as I can attest to that distinction. So I clicked and that whisks you to another place with the article..snippets:

Know the pulse of the party - Is it a business meeting? “Seat them where they can talk their business.” Date night? “Give them some walls…

Keep notes - keeps track of guests, preferred tables, favorite dishes, even birthdays

Call guests by name - staff at Tony’s is trained to speak to the guest by name at least four times during the course of a visit

Have a long-term, devoted staff - Some employees have been at Tony’s for more than 20 years.

Always look for ways to improve - ..."crew find one thing to improve every month at the restaurant and strive for betterment on a daily basis. “We earn our reputation anew every night with every guest.”

Notice that none of these have to do with the food service itself, it’s about making the diners happy.. food is only part of the equation. If you’re interested, you can read the whole thing here.

When I first saw reference to the article, I thought I would go look at it in the magazine… guess what? Nowhere to be found. Only online. I find that a disturbing trend. More and more print media is being “obsoleted” by the social media. If you don’t do Facebook you may not know. Where will this all end?

The Mayans know… wonder if they would

DFD

To Rant or not to Rant...

What should I do? Rant then do nice, or vicey versa… hard to tell.

To kill a little time did you go to Google’s home page today? Those guys amaze me. Silicon valley somethings, dreaming up stuff for us to see in their “Google Doodle”. This week they celebrated the birthday of the Bunsen Burner guy. Did you have physics or chemistry class memories with one of those? Long time memories. And today they celebrated the 119th anniversary of the “documented” ice cream Sundae (always “ae”) not the 100th, not the 125th, but the 119th. They are very clever those google somethings. I type about three letters and Boom! Suggestions. And by golly they are 95% right. How do they do that??? I guess they are smarter than me.

Okay, I guess I’ll out and out rant first. I think I may do this every year about this time, and hopefully I don’t get in any more trouble than I usually do. Last night I watched the final four of the men’s basketball tournament. Exhilarating stuff. Up and down the floor at breakneck speed, long range three’s (please expunge the “three ball” from the lexicon of sports reprorting), rocket passing, soaring dunks, great stuff. Anyway, it’s played at a tempo that’s exciting. Okay, tonight I am watching (there’s no Holme’s dammit) the women’s version of the final four is on. After a half of play (of the first game) the number one and two seeds have amassed the huge totals of 50 points between the two teams. Twenty minutes of play and there’s 23 points on the boards for one team. Missed chip shot layups, front rim free throws, dribbles off foots, tripping on own feet, loss of controls for no reason. Maybe I should not consider this the same sport. Maybe it’s my problem. I should consider it a different sport, like say, Cricket, Horse Polo, and don’t compare to another sport by the same name. And who is that women on ESPN? that hokey accent-- "They bin aplayin' fer a long taame"...along with Holly Rowe who starts every interview "what were you thinking...." great job Holly.

Okay, let’s move on

I met some friends today for Brunch at Café Des Artistes in Leonardtown. We have kicked around “Brunch” lately so this was a good opportunity to check out an opportunity. Café is a pleasant place to enjoy a Sunday interlude, kind of a frilly, semi formal place to enjoy Sunday casual dining. I have gone on record as stated that “brunch” should include a special menu, and they have a “light offering” section on their menu that might qualify. We were surprised that there was not an omelet or a quiche option today.

First,long time readers may remember that an experience at his same CDA gave genesis to the DFD campaign. Well, today we repeated that same experience. As I was arriving at the restaurant, there was a white pickup parked past the restaurant the disgorged three people in ball caps, sweats, tee shirts, hooded sweatshirts, and torn jeans. I thought well, there must be remodeling work today someplace. Nope, they crossed the street and entered the restaurant. Of course they were seated.

During our stay, I might speculate that at least half of the patrons were not what I would consider appropriately dressed for the situation. People came in dressed in jeans, sweat shirts, and generally shabby clothing. There were several tables more of my generation clothed in appropriate dress. What the hell, am I missing something? "C’mon honey, let’s go in here and get some chow".

I have considered this phenomenon, and have mixed feelings. Dress to respect the food and the establishment, or just go in to pound food in the mouth. Who cares about ambiance, sense of place, I’m just going in to shovel in the food.. In the end, the money in the cash drawer looks the same, but geez, do I have to share my experience with somebody who looks more like a construction worker than a diner? The most I could wish for is some dim awareness that “hey, I’m not dressed like these other folk”.

So, lack of some ambiance aside, how was the food? With Chef Loic in the house it was good. Our table had two Eggs Benedict, and a Strata (kind of an egg casserole). I am happy to report that the Eggs Benedict (which calls for poached eggs), was presented with the eggs poached in the classical manner of swirling them in boiling water to form a little pouch rather than the one eyed offerings coming from a “cup”. Where else do you get that? And the egg yolks were properly cooked with a lovely orangey/gold color. They were also just coagulated, not runny, just right.

So, a good day and MFO will arrive tomorrow. She’ll probably be road weary and we might not be able to

DFD

SOMD, how do I love thee....

let me count the ways, I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.....:....well, maybe that's a bit strong.

Anyway, counting the ways in my life today:

1. I was notified of the opportunity to procure some special goat cheese which I have enjoyed in the past.

2. As part of picking up the goat cheese, I ran into a good palate friend in the parking lot of the local gourmet store (Blue wind) who had purchased some wine. Nice conversation.

3. I went into the store, picked up the goat cheese (Cherry Glen Monacacy Ash and Chipotle (award winning, I’ll let you know, an odd combination)). with more nice conversation...

4. Came home, selected the DFD costume, and drove over to the Dry Dock.

5. Up the stairs to the just reopened place and thank goodness, no flat screens, still just an inviting space overlooking the harbor.

6. Saw a friend at the bar with whom I don’t get to spend enough time, and sat down. Great to catch up over cocktails.

7. Same barkeep as last year, silent but efficient, served a nice Gray Goose dirty martini, up.

8. Enjoyed seeing many friends from work and around the community. All, I might add, appropriately DFD’d.

9. The “new” menu is pretty much the same, salads with toppings (crab, shrimp, etc.), appetizers (mini crab cakes, mussels tonight), entrees including chicken, steaks, salmon, and so forth. The only variation I remembered was no duck. A new offering was a lamb shank. Lamb Shank is an odd choice for a seafood restaurant, eh?


10. Ordered a cup of crab soup along with the lamb shank. The soup was less glutinous than I had remembered which had a nice bright color.

11. The lamb shank with creamy polenta was very good, pleny of well done flavorful meat, and i paired with a glass of a Louis Martini (now resurgent) Cabernet, which belied your preconceived notions of Louis Martini...

12. More mixing with friends.

13. A I was leaving, I “crashed” the kitchen and talked a bit with Ben and Beth, long time inhabitants of the line in a small kitchen space. They’ve got it under control.

14. Thank goodness, another opportunity for pretty nice dining.

15. And I didn’t go over to First Friday in Leonardtown. Many options.

16. Tomorrow awaits. Chapel duty and maybe a chance to help with food events.

17. Why we love and live here.

depending on events, i will be

DFD

I'm no Fool!!

Well, here it is Friday… there is always a lot to talk about on Fridays..

Like what to do..

Tonight is the First Friday of the month, meaning the Calvert Museum will be offering their Free Friday, Leonardtown will be buzzing with the usual First Friday hoopla (North End Gallery, Quality Street, Fenwick Books, antiques center), and a special event for me will be the spring opening of the Dry Dock on the Solomons. As related in this column, the rumors of closing have proven false. I myself will a least be starting out there. It’s a special place for the Feeder, as I began my stint here at Pax River by going there most every Saturday night (we worked Saturdays in those days) with dinner at the bar in the old upstairs at the original block house location. You could get a good meal there, and it was before the box stores took over. They were a special bunch, cook, bar keep, and servers. Now that was a place a single diner could fit. Maybe more on that subject later.. Sigh, you can’t go home again.

This morning’s enterprise informs us that tomorrow will be “Solomons Island Kite Day” at the foot of the bridge on the Calvert Side. We always appreciate the show from the digs..and for you outdoorsy types there will be a river clean up held at Myrtle point park from 9 to noon.

There’s a very nice article about the Sotterley speaker series for this year on the front page of the “Community Section” of the aforementioned newspaper. I am so glad that I was able to establish that for Boeing during my community relations life at Boeing. Not that I’m proud or anything. They are usually very good. First one is a week Sunday (4/10) at three. Had I anything to say about it however, I would not have scheduled it during the final round of the Master’s….

Surprisingly, that’s about all the cultural stuff I can ferret out, don’t think there are any concerts or lectures this weekend. Perhaps a post Maryland day lull..

Other other’s

On the technology front it appears my issues with the “Blog Mail’ were caused by the fact that my space on their server was full. Bad things happen when computer things get full. Wouldn’t you think that will all the measure, quantify, instant information, and communication technology that a little message could be generated? "Bottom Feeder, your mail box is about to exceed your limits, please address this problem". Nope, just let the damn thing fill up and all of a sudden you’re helpless. Anyway, a fix was made such that it enables me to once again to see your always informative, interesting, and penetrating comments to the blog. I value those.

And although I’ve sort of shied away from doing much commentary on “the Final Four”, this weekend will put a wrap on college basketball for this year. Then, all there will be left is the NHL playoffs, and sometime in August maybe the NBA version. Although I must admit the Frozen Four college hockey is always a great watch. Minnesota Duluth, Michigan, North Dakota, and (gulp) Notre Dame are in the hunt. I must say (pay attention Domer) that Notre Dame has excelled in sport this year with men’s and women’s basketball doing well, as well as a respectable football showing. Anyway, the hockey is next week.

So, pick out something to do and enjoy the weekend. March certainly did NOT go out like a lamb. But here’s a sure sign of spring..



So given the weather you may have to keep out the sweaters for a bit when you

DFD