Go away, Phil....

I don’t know what Punxsutawney Phil will report this morning, but besides the good food over the weekend, there was this snow thing.. It started Saturday morning fairly benignly,



But it never ended all day. And after a day of snowing and blowing, snowing and blowing, blowing and snowing, we woke up Sunday morning to see out the windows





And depending on where you stuck the high tech measuring device…



Here and there the wind did some interesting things with the snow, like this little gem that formed only about 4 inches high right next to our patio door..



But the cold (get it?) reality was that the driveway was covered, drifts had to be moved, and so out came the equipment. After an hour or so, some advil, and one snow shovel later, we had:



Attn County Road Commission: We, as well as our neighbors live on a circle with the driveways radiating to the houses on the outer (longer diameter) with a community circle on the inside. Gosh, look at those snow covered streets what will we do? Okay, hooray, here come the snow plows!. But, INVARIABLY, INVARIABLY, they start plowing counterclockwise on the inside of the circle, clearing the inner curb, and shoving the windrow of snow into the middle of the road. That won’t do, so let’s make another pass, and shove that nasty (now larger) pile another few feet to the right. Great! almost done guys, one more pass will do it and clear the road. Ah, that’s great. Well, guess what? All the driveways are now effectively sealed from that clear road by a two to three foot wall of icy, heavy, cubes and chunks of snow. "That's your problem Mr. Homeowner, we're here to serve the public!" Is it not possible to begin outside and work in? I just don’t get it.

Other flakes:


I don’t care about your politics, how you feel about the current administration and its leader, but I hope some of you saw President Obama join the broadcast crew of Vern Lundquist and Clark Kellogg at the Georgetown/Duke game on Sunday. The guy has a great sense of timing and humor, saying he was coming after Clark’s job in three or 7 more years, and when Vern talked about that tape of him missing his left handed shot in practice and asked him “since you’re left handed, do you have any problem going to your right?”. Without a pause, he responded “no, didn’t you see me at the Republican Caucus?”. You can think what you want, but I personally enjoyed that immensely.

And, we did NOT end our weekend by looking at the Grammies. I am only dimly aware of who "Bouncy" or whatever her name is, and can honestly say that i have never heard a complete "song" that she does. and the same goes for that country star with four names "teenage sensation taylor swift". what little i've heard of her efforts are a range of about 5 notes. But then, you all may enjoy them, i don't. Gimme Shelter.

Super bowl only 5 days away! I think the first pre-game show starts tonight!!

This just in: Phil was proclaimed to see his shadow. more to come folks
And I guess for that day, you can

DFF

FOR SALE: A slightly used bottle of Lupini Beans – reasonable offers considered

Unexpected Pleasures...

Don’t get your hopes up. Remember this is about food, , and also the feeder is getting up there in years.

Pleasure One: Friday I was privileged to have a quick tour of the “new” Port of Leonardtown Winery (which will be documented in an upcoming post), and then we decided to take lunch at Thompson’s Corner Kafe. (I have no idea why they decided to put the “K” on corner (or they could have done Korner Kafe) but that’s not the point). I had several stringer reports with advice of “you gotta go there!” to which I thought yeah, yeah, just another diner. Then, MFO brought home the remnants of a lunch she had there recently; a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and by golly the ham had been carved off the bone - it wasn’t luncheon meat! Okay, you got it. This place IS worth checking out.

So, after seeing the winery we drove behind Bell’s, er, I mean Winegardners motors to an unassuming little building that once housed “Sis’s Hideaway Bar” an historical African American bar. Kevin Thompson’s (of Seafood/Catering fame) has taken it over and remodeled it and opened the “Kafe” mainly for lunch although they do serve dinner on the weekends. Upon entering, I immediately thought “Hey, I like this place!”. The same feeling you get when you walk in St. James Pub. Done in knotty pine paneling with high ceilings and stuff on the walls it somehow reminded me of a “lodge” atmosphere. There is a little knee wall that separates the largish space so that it feels a little more private, and there are many tables and booths (here they’re booths, not banquettes). On the wall to the right as you walk in there are some historical photos, but without any documentation (have to get MFO on that!), and a cold case with oysters and crabmeat for sale. Oysters were $10 the pint. Behind that, there is a “bar” for ordering that is a replica (?) of a boat. Pretty cute. There is a menu, but mostly things are on “white boards” (also reminiscent of St. James Pub), and since it’s the Thompsons, it leans heavily toward seafood. On the day we were there, there were crabcake, rockfish, and oyster sandwiches featured, along with other things that escape me at the moment. You tell the nice lady what you would like, she asks if you would like a drink, and if so, there’s a dispenser on the other wall reminiscent of McDonalds. I did see some wine bottles, but no beer taps. On such a cold, windy day an order of oyster sandwich and oyster stew combo sounded good, so I ordered that ($13.99), and my companion helpfully ordered the (??!!??) “stuffed ham soup” and we got a couple of cokes and sat down. Soon a plate arrived (they do deliver to your table) with an open hamburger bun piled with (~10) hot fried oysters, and a bag of (frito lay) chips. Just the thing. There was also two little tubs of “Kens cocktail sauce”, just as you would expect. I wondered about the stew and soup but the oysters were quite inviting so we shared a couple of them. In another couple of minutes we were presented with (Styrofoam) cups of the oyster stew and the stuffed ham soup and a quizzical look because another “oyster sandwich” on the tray. We mentioned we only ordered one, but he said “well, have another and enjoy!”. We did. Oh, the oyster stew was piping hot, and just a little kick, and you had to work to get a spoonful that didn’t include an oyster. The stuffed ham soup had all the right stuff (pun?), and also was very tasty

It’s obvious that the feeder has missed the boat here, it’s a great luncheon place, and the number of “locals” we saw testifies to that fact. The printed menu leans almost entirely to seafood, with the only non-seafood selections a hamburger, grilled chicken breast, or chicken salad sandwiches. All the dinners are seafood with the classic fried or boiled Combos, crabcake, fried scallop, oyster, fish, shrimp, clam baskets are all you can get. Prices for the luncheons on Friday were a bit hefty but so were the portions. Great food, nice place, a “northern” version of St. James. Just right.

Second Pleasure: we had decided to attend a production Friday night of the Port Tobacco players in LaPlata entitled “Once on This Island”. The daughter of one of our neighbors was performing in it so we thought we’d do “theater” coupled with a dinner at Casey Jones (officially The Crossing at Casey Jones). We hadn’t been there for quite a while, mostly out of the distance factor, and so we thought this would make a nice evening. So, with a weather eye we started out and arrived at LaPlata 15 minutes ahead of our 6:30 reservation, but the host said no problem and we were led to the dining area. As you remember, the restaurant is nicely divided by partial walls and partitions on different elevations, making each room nicely private. The warm stone walls are set off by the linens and carpet, giving a comforting feeling. The wine cabinet has art pieces on it. We were seated in a booth that was a room away from the "open" kitchen, but I had a line of sight for viewing. All evening I never saw anything but quiet attention to the food, no histrionics, just doing their job. Water was immediately brought to the table, and after a little bit, the server (dressed in a muted burgundy shirt and slacks as was the entire staff), and said Hi, would you care for anything besides water to drink? I decided to re-apply the drink test, but MFO wanted a glass of wine so started thumbing through the (quite extensive) wine list. He said “I can maybe help you if you wish, would you like white or red?” White. “We have several what did you have in mind?” I guess Chardonnay. “do you like oaked or unoaked?”. How many times have you heard that in a restaurant? He then said, “while I’m here would you like to hear the specials or wait?” Now is fine. They had a Red Spruce Cheddar appetizer with onions and fruit compote, a Kobe beef served over garlicked mashed potatoes, and a Seared Ahi tuna (that was swimming a day ago) dusted with Fennel Powder with fingerling potatoes. Out of curiosity, I asked the price of the Kobe dish. He apologized and said 28 bucks. Alert readers will be as surprised and pleased as I was. He then went off for the drinks. Plusses for service. The drink was perfectly prepared, in a nice size glass allowing for room over the cocktail and ice without being rim full, and MFO enjoyed her wine after it cooled a bit. After a bit of lingering and calming, we looked at the menu and wine list. In the interest of your time and my fingers, we’ll contract a bit here.

Both the wine list and menu have a great selection of dishes, food all described without too much verbiage (espresso-crusted long island duck breast with cinnamon seared foie gras, sautéed polenta andbraised fennel & onions, drizzled with a blackberry coulis), and prices were extremely reasonable. I believe there was only one option over thirty. Appetizers were equally intriguing. The wine list was organized by “weight”, from light to heavy and “ripeness”. It’s a great read, with wines from places I had later to go look up. Priorat, Kremstal, Les Mesnils? Again, prices were extremely reasonable. You could find a pretty good bottle for whatever you wanted to spend. We had settled on our food (after a second correctly prepared Dry Manhatten) and we decided that we’d go for the specials, and thought a Chambolle Musigny would be a nice accompaniment to the food. Order was the du jour Tomato Bisque topped with a “Grilled cheese sandwich” and their version of a Caesar salad (grilled hearts of romaine lettuce lightly brushed with olive oil, drizzled with our chef’s homemade Caesar dressing and served with a parmesan tuile and fresh croutons); and both the “specials”. The server came back and said the wine lady thought our choice was appropriate, but unfortunately the Burgundy was not avaible and suggested the bottle of Lane Tanner that accompanied him. He said let’s open it and see what you think and if it’s not right we’ll try something else. One alert reader who is a pinotphile will recognize that Lane Tanner Pinot is no slouch. It was lovely and only 33 dollars in the restaurant.

I could fill another page with the description of the food, but each course provided the “wow!” experience. I had expected good food, but what we had was just outstanding. The fingerling potatoes with my tuna I would have gladly eaten on their own, just right texture, and full of flavor. The tuna was just seared on the margins, cold in the middle with a lovely translucent red center and the fennel dust added just a tickle on the tounge. What a dish. The Kobe reminded us of what beef can be. Oh, and with the cork and carry law, we brought Lane home with us.

A great meal, totally unexpected pleasure. I hate the word “destination”, but boy, if you don’t mind a little drive (with maybe the wine in the trunk) I hope you wouldn’t be disappointed. They are worth it.

We finished the evening with a nice production of the play and thought our neighbor did an outstanding job..Nice evening. too bad there's nothing to do..

and you can be we were

DFD and DFT

Lunch and Life...

Today MFO and I attended the annual “holiday office lunch” of the local branch of the company that I work for part time. And, as it has grown to be, it was postponed until after the holidays. Enough time has passed that it moved from “just another lunch” during the plethora of such events at the hectic holiday time to a pleasant outing. Long time loyal readers will remember the feeder’s opinion that lunch can provide a relaxing respite from the pressures and hassles of the day, offering a time to reset the brain, relax a bit and enjoy good company and food. This year it was held at Café Des Artistes over in Leonardtown. With the local folks and a couple from the home office “up the road” we numbered just nine, so it wasn’t hard to have conversation.

As is the practice of CDA, they display the works of local artists and are currently featuring art of Candy Cummings, the local artist who does “collections”. The pieces on display are constructed from “found” techy objects like circuit boards, vacuum tubes, rubber bands and the like. They provide kind of an odd contrast to the eclectic French country atmosphere of the restaurant. But, good for them supporting local art.

The menu still offers primarily French dishes as we have stated before, along with a daily special sheet. Today it was a shrimp pasta dish. Besides the sandwiches, salads, soups, and combinations thereof, there are entrees for those with a heartier appétit. The serving staff has remained pretty constant over the years, and know what they are doing without the recorded messages. MFO did a hearts of palm salad (with a side of frites), I did their signature sandwich the croque monsieur with a Caesar salad. Others did the pasta, a couple of the steak and frites, soup, and even two orders of escargot. Everyone was happy with their choices judging by the clean plates. MFO and I shared a little Key Lime parfait cupcake which was very good.

With the closing of the other main restaurant in Leonardtown, it’s good to see that CDA keeps humming along. And, I think there are reasons why that is so. You can pretty much count on good service and consistently good food. I think I can count on the fingers of no hands the time I have been in that restaurant when Chef Loic is not present. That’s what it takes, day in, day out, in the kitchen, touch every dish. Making a restaurant go is paying constant attention to everything. Good to see they have it down. This is a great example of why you go to locally owned and operated restaurants, not some place with Neon and branches everywhere.

Speaking of which, MFO was driving north on 235 yesterday morning and reported that a “now hiring” sign is in the front of the “new” OG, and the place was parked full. It would be an interesting exercise sometime to count the number of places food is served around here, and use some estimate of people on the floor and see how many there are. Could be quite a number. And, only a fraction of that number actually know how to serve a table.. Just think how many times “Hi I’m….” is repeated daily. Endless, just like that salad bowl and airsticks.

Oh, I got my February issue of Bon Appetit yesterday, and my first glance at the cover did not have our favorite “B” word pop out at me. The banner just read “Meat &. Potatoes”, and “winter soups, pastas & stews”. Good. How appropriate for February, that cold, dark month. But then, my eye was attracted to a little blurb on the right side leading with “Snack Attack” under which they listed “Best Ever” popcorn, wings, chips and more. I think “Best Ever” is even more egregious than just plain best. Wings? Gimme a break.

(life part):

Lastly, I was saddened today to learn of the passing of J.D. Salinger. How many of you read of the adventures of Holden Caulfield in your formative years and related to him. I know I did. “I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible”. Thank you…. and good rest J.D.

And of course today we were all

DFL

The Sporting Life, and electrons...

Monday morning quarterbacking somehow turned into Tuesday morning quarterbacking and now it’s Tuesday afternoon. So just some this’s and that’s.

Sport Section

If you watched the Saints/Vikings yesterday, you were not alone. It was the most watched football game (excluding Super Bowls) since the historic game between San Francisco and Dallas that resulted in “the catch”. If you don’t know what that is, skip to the technology section. Also, it was the most watched television program of any kind (excluding Super Bowls) since the last episode of Seinfeld aired 12 years ago. If you don’t know what that is, there is no hope.

I also watched that game (as well as the earlier one) and it made me wonder. I really didn’t really care who won, there were good story lines on either side of the ball, and having the Saints go to their first SB is a good thing I guess, although I don’t know why they continually linked that with Katrina – a stretch in my book. But as the game wore on, I really had to feel for Brett. Yes, it was his choice to be out there, he knows what football entails, but it was painful seeing him struggle to take a wallop, get to his feet, limp around and go for another play. Are we really to the point of “win at any cost” where it is an objective to conciously try to injure your opponent? When a linesman has the QB in his grasp after the ball is gone, why is it necessary to elevate him more, and then slam him to the turf, with no attempt at restraint, under a body that outweighs the QB by 150 Lbs or so? Hot dog, we cracked his rib!! Great hit man!! High fives all around. I suppose this will label me as a softy who “doesn’t get it", but boy, it’s hard to watch. Now we get the hype building up to the Super Bowl.. yahoo! Which I will be watching, by the way. Good opportunity to make some nice food..

Technology Revisited

Some of the reason that blogging has taken a temporary back seat over the weekend is because I was stumbling around with my Droid. It continues to astonish me what you can do with the thing. Street views in Google, traffic in your hand, e-mails come streaming in. Golly, gee whiz. But, that’s not why we’re revisiting the technology section.

One of the more useful inventions of man is the Garage Door Opener. How many times do you remember in your youth you were commanded by mom or dad to “get out and open the garage door” in the driving rain, sleet, snow, or 90 degree temps, and you did as asked, getting wet, pelted, frozen, or melted while struggling to lift a wooden garage door weighing three times as much as you so mom or dad could drive into the shelter of the garage before exiting the car?

We are on our second go-round of this device (thank you lightning strike), and they have given rise to yet another inexplicable engineering phenomenon. Our first one we had, I painstakingly managed to finally convince the car to act as “the button” and that worked fine. We have a rather long driveway, and at first you could press the button as you rolled in off the street, and by the time you got to the threshold, it was open waiting for you. Well, over a period of months and years the distance from the door at which it would pay attention to you diminished. New battery? No matter. Finally you mostly had to drive to the door and push to open. So, after the lightning strike mandated a new one, we were pleased to see that the range again increased to “street distance”. Due to fear of failure I continued to use the little hand held device instead of going through the laborious “set main unit to learn, run to car, push two times, wait for light to flash, then press and hold until light goes out", failing time after time until something finally clicks. But, anyway, after a few months of good operation with the “new one”, the radius of effectively began to diminish. Street, then three quarters, then half until at last you were parked at the door with multiple pushes.

But what propels me to include this gibberish is that the other day, I paused at the street to get the mail, and out of habit pushed the little button. To my utter amazement, the door began to open! Again, no action on my part, just cooperation of the demons. That in and of itself is cause for wonderment, but after a couple of days of this, today I gleefully pushed the button only to watch the door remain stationary. Creep a few yards, nothing. Once again, I’m now back to almost touching the garage door with the nose of the fluttermobile before it listens to me. What’s up with that? Some have suggested that EMI from the base may be a factor, but who knows. I prefer the demon theory myself..

But there is no change in the need to

DFD

Magic in your hand....

For a few years, I used to carry around an iPAQ, a little device that was about the size of a small cigar box, which would alert me when a meeting was to begin, whose birthday was coming up, a phone number for somebody, their address, e-mail addy, that kind of thing. Most folks know that’s called a PDA. It was a bit cumbersome, but it kept some semblance of order to my life. And, being an engineer, people expected you to have funny stuff hanging off of you. After all, I used to have a belt holster for my slide rule.

As years went by, the batteries in the iPAQ became less reliable as did my brain, and it all culminated the other day as I was happily driving along toward Sbucks, glanced over to a building on the side of the road and noted gee, there’s a lot of cars……Holy (insert explicative)! There was a little community kind of meeting that I was supposed to attend that had just evaporated in my mental schedule. Three lanes of traffic negotiated, I humbly walked in right before the “well, I guess that’s all for today” speech. Okay, that’s it. I’ve had it, I have to get something I can have with me. Now, I was quite aware that many of my friends had such various devices because I get a lot of e-mails with “sent from my…….” tagged at the end.

Not completely oblivious to modern technology, I knew there is a bewildering array of products out there that flip, tilt, open, slide, pop, and have virtual and real QWERTY thingies, which is probably what I would need. In the past, I would have conducted an exhaustive web search, talked to friends, looked at Consumer Digest (to discover the best model was made in Kazakhstan, with only 5 produced), scoured the local outlets, etc., for up to a month. Somehow in my advancing age, I have gravitated to the “S---w it, I want it NOW”. So, after just a little looking I decided that the DROID was for me. I know iPhones are all the rage, but to be honest, I do believe those red and blue maps so decided that the V source was better than the A network

So yesterday after a quick phone consult with a geeky friend, I marched into the local Verizon store and now am the proud owner of a little black device that is much smarter than I am. It used to be that the cell phones had an inch thick instruction book with them (only because there was a section in all known written languages, including Sanskrit), but this one only had a “getting started”. After fumbling around for a while and discovering that their idea of the size of my fingers was incredibly wrong, I was able to send a text message with something like: “HJellllop I hazwe aq Drtposd” . I also mistakenly called somebody and was unable to figure out how to cancel the call, so sorry for running your answering machine out of tape. But, i am learning...

I am still in amazement that I can hold this little thing in my hand, (allegedly) get e-mails, find the nearest Pizza joint, and it will give me directions on how to get from my current location (which it well knows) to that destination complete with the “turn left in…” directions. How to they do that? Amazing. It's magic.

I heard the other day that the average teen ager (whatever that is) now spends in excess of 7 hours a day “connected”. I am not sure that is horrible, that generation (whatever letter is attached) is growing up in a world that so different than ours was, that maybe they will be better equipped to be caretakers of it and us. I can only hope that a few of them are spending at least some of those hours learning something on the web, not entirely telling their friends that they just exhaled, or playing Godzilla XIV, so we’ll see.

Okay enough, I’ll be texting you or befriending you.

Oh, and just to reassure you that although I have entered the handheld cyber world, my traditional values are still intact:




And continue to put down the device when it’s time to

DFD