The other day my dad told me about the vegetable garden at the old folks’ home. He said his neighbors grow a lot but don’t eat much. So he’s swimming in tomatoes and squash.
After I got off the telephone with my dad, things started arriving from my neighbors.
A beautiful day in the neighborhood, indeed.
My neighbor Vern’s tomatoes and basil, on my deck.
My neighbor Nancy’s blackberry pie, on my deck.
Puget Sound Pizza, the little pizza parlor that could, will serve breakfast seven days a week starting Sept. 12.
"We will continue to serve our current breakfast menu but will add some lighter fare for the Monday thru Friday crowd," PSP honcho Jim Higgins told me. "We will be adding oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins, seasonal fresh fruit plate, as well as assorted breakfast sandwiches for the grab-and-go construction workers
…Yep, I’m talking about you and me sitting down to a meal in the middle of the day.
Oh, it’ll be an anonymous affair. Most likely, I’ll regale you with fibs and tales about my stint in a Venezuelan prison, or my adventures as Maya Angelou’s personal assistant. You’ll probably even pay your own way, too.
There’s a new Web site/service called noonhat.com. It matches you with available lunch partners. Pick a geographic location and day. Input your e-mail address. You’ll be matched up — by no criteria other than the willingness to have
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Michael Jackson, the world’s leading beer critic-historian, died today.
“Michael gave us our voice and vocabulary, and grounded the history and traditions of beer,” says a memorial note on AllAboutBeer.com. “Beginning in the seventies with the publication of the ‘World Guide to Beer,’ Michael began beating the drum demanding more respect for beer. He swirled and tasted beer, filling pages with new words. He traveled unceasingly, discovering styles and traditions long gone or on their way out the door. He chided the mainstream press for its beer provincialism.
…Drive-thru service is one of the “key business builders” recommended in a national restaurant survey.
Sixty-three percent of quick-service restaurants expect unspecified but larger sales from drive-thru operations, according to a survey by the National Restaurant Association.
I’m a California kid, so I understand car culture. We had a drive-thru dairy in our town, and there were no cows in sight.
Drive-thru cleaning. Drive-thru cigarettes, even drive-thru frisky espresso, they’re all part of our vehicular addiction.
Back when I worked for Restaurant Ray, I did a drive-thru promotion. One of his restaurants
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A food critic, a walleye, a stick, at the Minnesota state fair. AP photo
A fellow blogger at a major West Coast news organization reports on a whirlwind eating tour at a large Midwestern state fair with a bunch of food writers from across America.
Walleye on a stick. Who knew?
But this is the line that sticks with me: “Other delicacies we tried included … pork chop on a stick …”
Um, I think we called that a bone before we started skewering food
…My dinner companions Friday night were ages 10 and 40. One stuck a straw in her nose. One sat quietly.
The 10-year-old is the one I dine with the least, and the one I enjoyed the most.
“I’m cranky,” the kid announced when I met her and her dad at Farrelli’s newest pizza parlor, the one on Pacific and Garfield in Parkland, near PLU.
“I hate tomatoes,” the kid said halfway through the meal, joyously licking tomato sauce off a slice of pie.
“Bacon!” she exclaimed at one random moment. “I loooooooooove bacon!”
 Pretty porterhouse, on my deck. |
See that porterhouse? That’s what I’ve done with my summer vacation.
I take that back. Eating steak is work. If you chewed on the New York strip I had for breakfast today, you’d agree.
But about that porterhouse, and that bone-in rib steak and that London Broil and even the filet mignon that was bigger on price than it was on flavor …
I melted a
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