Like, The Weather

It's been beautiful all week and I've been preparing for the spring plant. Yes, I garden. In fact, I'd have to say that I enjoy gardening even more that I do cooking. But, there's nothing as satisfying as preparing food you've grown yourself. Just pondering that makes me a little dizzy Although I can't say that meat you butcher yourself is more rewarding to prepare and masticate than what you buy at the store. Huh. Funny that. And I won't eat fish I catch. I have a fish bone phobia and don't trust my deboning skills one whit.
I bought 'cheater' tomato plants, the larger ones in big pots. German Queen heirloom. I bring them in at night because it gets down to 40F and I don't want them to freak out or anything. My dead German grandmother would be proud! I've also got starts on carrots, beets, cantaloupes and red onions going in a cold frame off the abck porch. Later I'll put in lettuce and Silver Queen sweet corn. I've never planted corn before, but SQ is Miss Kitty's favorite variety and last summer we didn't find any of it, so I figured that this year I'd give it a go.
One last little tidbit: I made a salad today from new dandelion leaves with a basalmic vinagrette. You know, every year I forget how mild tasting and refreshing those baby leaves are because if you eat some later in the spring they're as bitter as a day trader who missed the Amazon IPO back in '98.*
*I have no diea what I'm talking about, not intended as factual reporting.

UPMC

Parents, can't live 'em and too much work to dig shallow graves.
Today I had the rare treat of driving my Dad to his doctor's appointment at the evil behemoth that is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The photo at left includes some of the buildings in this complex. It's like something designed by the spawn of Caligula and Dracula on crack and meth. What is the deal with the bad parent always being the one you have to take care of in their old-ish age? My parents aren't old, btw. My dad is 69 and my mom is 68. That's not old. 80 is old, this is fringe old, at best. But, you have to keep in mind that my Dad gave up on life in his early 40s. One day he just quit going to the bars and hanging out with lowlifes and breeding horses and going to work. He sat around the house, in a recliner that started quickly to smell like ass, eating Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers and watching TV. Pretty much, that's still what he does. Have I mentioned that he's mean? He's mean. I really shouldn't drag up my childhood because I might want to write a memoir someday, a little cautionary tale for assholes who are thinking of procreating, but he used to mock us if we got straight A's on our report cards. "You think you're so goddamn smart..." What a peach, that one.
So, because I love my mother, I hauled his sorry ass to the Oakland section of Pittsburgh to see his doctor. He's fine and will outlive everyone because mean people never die. But the really cool thing, and the thing I'm kicking myself over because I didn't have a camera with me, after lunch Mom and I went for a walk outside so that I could smoke and we could stretch our legs. We found a fellow smoker, a young guy in a hospital gown and slippers hooked up to an IV on wheels smoking on the sidewalk. Mom took one look at his bare arms and said, "You should have a coat on!" To which he replied, "I have a high fever. I'm warm enough." Then I muttered, "Why do I never have a camera when the surreal pops up?"
Then we went back inside and I read two outdated issues of US Weekly waiting for Dad to finish up.
I should include a rant about the tentacle like UPMC complex sprawled across a steep hillside, called 'cardiac hill' because walking up it will give you a heart attack, but what's the point? The monster is what it is at this point. Situated in the worst locale imaginable, with almost no parking, it's not going to go away in my lifetime. In fact, it'll only get worse, bigger and more unnavigatable. I could imagine dying being preferrable to regular visits here...although the cafeteria does offer a wide array of foods at a very reasonable price. Reminds me of how I can bump into Uncle Freddie anytime I want - all I have to do is go to the Ellwood City Hospital cafeteria at lunchtime because he eats there everyday. He says that he always sees people he knows at the hospital, and if he starts choking while having the Special he'll get quick treatment.
Sigh.

Top Chef 4.5

The short and sweet of this episode is that Stephanie continues to impress. The long and sour of the episode is that Dale has emerged as the #1 asshat. His not even thinly veiled jealousy of Lisa winning the elimination challenge - and a trip to Italy - led to him drinking too much, picking a fight, and ridiculously posturing while, wait for it...clutching his crotch. I honestly believe that had his booze addled brain thought of it, he'd just have whipped it out and stood there waving his bits around. At first I was almost embarrassed for him, but then not so much. Clearly he thought that he was being intimidating, which is hysterical (and more than a little sad) because Lisa could soooo take him if he decided to bring it on. Dale isn't a bad cook by any means, but he's nothing special either. He falls in the middle of the spectrum and no amount of clawing and bitching is going to lift him into the culinary stratosphere, partly because of skills and partly because of mindset. Actually, I'd say largely because of mindset. He just doesn't seem able to grasp the larger scheme of a dish, evidenced by his out of hand dismissal of Lisa's bacon and miso syrup. If there's one thing that we know in this competition it's that you have to bring something delicious and unique to the table, not deviled eggs. Lisa's insistence that the Fire Team (Stephanie, Dale, Lisa) actually push the envelope on the fire theme worked in her teams favor. Stephanie's spicy grilled shrimp drew raves from the judges as well. Dale's relish? They didn't hate it and it tied in well with the other dishes. Dude, face it, you weren't going to win a trip to Italy with relish. Had Lisa not won, Stephanie would've.
The other ugly in this episode falls to Zoi. By episode two I told Miss Kitty that Zoi was in over her head. She seemed stressed to a breaking point, and it couldn't actually have helped that her real life partner was also in the competition and doing much better. I think that Jennifer does have talent and originality, and now with her girlfriend gone maybe she can focus on seriously kicking some ass. We all know that Spike heads her shit list.
Two worst cheftestants remaining? Nikki and Spike. Ryan flew under the radar this week, as did Mark. I don't know what to make of the Kiwi. Can he step it up? Anything is possible considering how the first couple of shows Lisa played a long and played it safe and was on the chopping block more than once because of it. She's definitely stepped it up. I just haven't seen one impressive thing from Mark or Ryan, and Nikki, apart from making her own noodles early on and impressing the judges with that, she's done nothing.
Next week looks like more drama than ever!

Hell is for kitchens

I'm not a regular viewer of this show. Indeed, I only drop in when there's nothing better to watch on the science channel (this evening I fore-went the evolution of the button in medieval Europe and how it later became a satanic sign of pride to Puritans, Quakers, and the Amish...who knew?).
I regularly watch Gordon Ramsay's BBC show, Flip This Kitchen Nightmare, or whatever it's called. But this spawn of Chucky Americanized version of that show, with a lot of tweaks and a completely different premise, is akin to being force fed nutrients through a rubber tube inserted up your nose and down your gullet. How awful are the contestants? The men are completely vile, foul mouthed and misogynistic (in a bad way). The women are incompetent cry babies who should be armed so that they can kill the men, and then themselves after a lengthy stand off with police. Did I neglect to mention that the teams are separated by sex? A lot of the women are young, nubile hot blondes. The men...not so much. Chubby bald kitchen hacks who name call the women and back stab anyone within arm's reach. Gee, I wonder why this show isn't more of a hit? I know I wanna see more middle-aged whiners who serve raw chicken complaining about almost everything. Don't you?
This show is hideous, even as reality shows go. The contestants are so wretched that you can't help but wonder what starving orphan from Darfur would be desperate enough to eat their cooking. I'll have that with a side of salmonella because my life doesn't suck enough already, sir.
But, to be fair to the cooks on the show competing for a chance to be executive chef at Ramsay's new LA eatery, Ramsay makes life hell for them. Ridiculous hell at that. Through editing or just plain genetics, he lacks any and all appeal. I almost hate him more now than Emeril (who, btw, is a ghoul...evidenced by his copious knuckle hair).
Ach, I'm going to have to give this show up, even if it means watching how shoelaces are slowly being replaced by velcro or how installing a composting toilet can provide enough natural gas to your home to fry an egg and heat one pot of tea. I've had enough! This season just sickens me.

Beagle Update

Bela is hearty and hale, I don't want to jinx us by saying that she's thriving, but she's thriving, plus she likes her new food! It's only the third one we tried, so I'm glad that we didn't have to sink even more money into puppy chow that she'd actually chow, and that wouldn't give her diarrhea. She did have a bad bout of the runs after eating a bowl of the cat's food.
BTW, the cat hates Bela. But Whitey is all meow and no cattle. His declawed paws of fury are no match for Bela's idiot savant exuberance. I'd say more, but it's hard to follow up a sentence like that.

Bela

Bela's eyes are wide open, and sadly, mine are not. But this isn't about me, it's about a puppy. A wee beagle puppy that Miss Kitty picked out of a litter of eight who will soon come home with us. I think we are picking her up on April 12, when Bela will be eight & 1/2 weeks old. She was born Feb 13 to a mother who had been knocked up by a fellow beagle while supposedly hunting rabbits. Oh, you crazy kids!
Edit: The breeder called this morning and instructed a desire for me to pick Bela up this week. She's placed an ad for the puppies in the local newspaper and doesn't want any mix up where Bela got sold to another owner.

St. Anthony's Chapel

Peeking out from beneath a thin veil of mouldering linen is the skull of St. Theodore, entombed, as it were, at St. Anthony's Chapel in the Troy Hill section of Pittsburgh.
Miss Kitty and I ventured to St. Anthony's after a wonderful lunch at Atria's (after a typically disappointing visit to the Warhol Museum...I already have a rant written about that place, I need only to find which notebook it's hidden in). Troy Hill is a neighborhood in steady decline, perched on a ridiculously steep incline above the Allegheny River on the North Side of the City. The streets are peppered equally with bars and churches on alternating corners, as is typical of former steelworker/blue collar enclaves. Along with the row houses, watering holes, and houses of the holy there are the people who cling to this hillside with its intemperance and piety and blue collar roots as deep as the river valley below. How can you not admire that? The North Catholic HS proudly displays a weathered and faded banner proclaiming their girl's basketball team state champs...1988.
We took in the surroundings as we wended our way down the narrow streets to St. Anthony's, which we spotted the spire to a block or more before we had to make our final turn. If the lore of Catholic relics is to be believed, St. Anthony's has a collection of nearly 5,000 first rate relics, a figured surpassed only by the Vatican. By first rate I mean they are original splinters from the cross (or the actual bones of a saint, or thorn from crown of thorns). A second-rate relic has merely been touched to the first rate relic, and a third touched to a second rate relic, etc. I have to admit that I wildly speculated on this rating system, before I actually researched it and discovered that my nonsense was actually correct. The lesson to be learned here is to never hesitate to posit a crank theory because you just never know.
Some fellow gawkers were there to do actual church stuff like pray, so maybe they weren't gawkers but, you know, religious. Either way, Miss Kitty and I had to stop ourselves from giggling because...How fucking much mojo do these people need to believe in whatever it is that they believe in? We counted five skulls on display. Five. I don't know about you, and whether or not you'd be considered saintly enough for someone to cut off your head, deflesh it, and sell it to someone seeking relics for their church, but if my corpse or skeleton was going to be pieced apart, I'd rather a medical school did it. Well, truth be told, I want a Viking funeral, a raft set on fire in the Monongahela River, but surprisingly I'm having a hard time getting anyone to agree to that. The only thing that I can contribute to the spectacle is my body on fire, so I need volunteers to carry out the ceremony, and risk imprisonment for abuse of a corpse. Is that too much to ask?
After our self-guided tour of the chapel, Miss Kitty and visited the gift shop across the street. Naturally I had to buy something. I mean, mojo is mojo regardless of what you think. Miss Kitty bought a St. Francis medal for Bela's collar, even though we haven't picked the puppy up yet. Soon, very soon. She's pikced out, just not picked up. As soon as she can leave momma dog...it'll be nothing but puddles and piles until we get her trained.