Huh. Contrary to my expectations, listening to
to dispel a hangover.
TODAY’S SNACK
I was in my kitchen working on today’s snack. She was digging up our day lilies from our tiny front garden for transplant to the sidewalk garden of the automotive joint across the street. Philip Glass, very loud. The soundtrack to that recent documentary, which I just got and saw this week.
She had asked the dudes, the Indian guys who run the place. Our neighbourhood, as regular readers know, is a slightly dingy inner-city area known for biker gangs and crack whores. Slummy or up-and-coming, depending on who you believe. No Starbucks yet, no serious modern condos, and the 100-year old crooked houses like ours rub shoulders with auto garages and a second-rate banknote printing company and a grinding operation that grind, I don’t know; gears? Tools? Machine parts? A laundromat. A really crappy diner. A seedy adult shoppe. And a couple of green shoots of funky young retail shops. It’s a great neighbourhood.
But these transmission guys, they have a weedy sidewalk garden to which, a couple of years ago, they added some plastic flowers. She wanted to get rid of our day lillies, so she offered to plant them in place of the plastic ones.
So it’s a typical Saturday at our house. Killer does the hard labour, I do the pretty stuff. That’s our deal.
Salad rolls with seared tuna. With what I have on hand.
So: dipping sauce: one part honey, one part rice vinegar. You can add anything you like to that base. I chopped up a red bird chili, some chives and come cilantro.
President’s Choice sustainable tuna from the freezer. You could use anything, as long as it’s good. Shrimp or whatever. She had made 5-spice powder for something else a month or so ago, so I mixed that with canola and some sesame oil. Turned them in the mix, and into the hot frying pan for a minute a side. Could have done even less.
Then thin spears of red pepper and cucumber, mint leaves (lots) and some special greens I get from the fig lady, cut into shreds. Tossed it all with some miso dressing I had left over from the salad I made for was last week’s sushi snack.
Salad roll paper. Plate of water. Dunk ’em. A tongful of salad, a couple of slices of the seared tuna. Roll. There.
The greens have edible flowers. I pressed one into the top of each roll. Serve with the dipping sauce and a bowl of ponzu. I served a French Muscat.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
CHAPTER THREE
...in which I resume the writing of my memoirs,
Mango Pudding Blues, or Diary of a Supertramp....in which I turn 44, now unquestionably middle-aged.
...in which I am visited by a series of epiphanies.
...in which I struggle to connect the music that I feel with that which I can play.
...in which I contemplate what last things I need to obtain before the vast hole in the internet slams shut.
...in which I struggle with the nameless remaining devils that beset me.
...in which I reveal an unexpected tenderness.
...in which I catch a Leonard Cohen concert.
...in which I eat a lot of raw fish; sushis and sashimis and crudos and ceviches and tartares and carpaccios.
...in which I preach tolerance and forgiveness.
...in which I dispense much unasked-for advice.
...in which I pass along hot stock tips.
...in which you, dear reader, become increasingly baffled.
Monday, May 18, 2009
EVOLUTION
Like cathode ray tube TVs, like cassette decks and CDs, one day we'll be obsolete.
