I spent some time this afternoon making bread. I decided to follow a recipe for focaccia. All I needed was a packet of yeast and a potato - the other ingredients were there in my kitchen. Right now the dough is still rising - if I’ve even done everything correctly. At one point when it got hard to mix, I got my hands in the bowl, only to find that it was still very gooey. The more I tried to rub the unfinished dough off my hands and into the bowl, the worse it seemed to get. Like quicksand. But there’s just something satisfying about getting your hands covered with dough: It’s a visceral understanding of the consistency. As I added more flour to the mixture, the feel of the gradually changing dough was immediate.
I’m meeting my friend Troy for a drink in a few minutes, so if I bake it tonight, it’ll be after that. I figure on trying a small round in the oven to see how it comes out. I haven’t quite mixed in all the flour called for in the recipe, so I’m a little suspicious. The occasion of the meeting is a celebration of “25 Years of Chimay in America” at the Reef. Chimay, if you don’t know, is one of the more memorable Belgian craft beers. Beer - you might not know this from drinking Budweiser - is one of the classic monastery crafts of Europe. So much food processing knowledge was saved by monks during the dark ages, and many alcoholic beverages exist today as signature creations of very specific places for that reason.
For now, I’m going to treasure the opportunity to drink a beer made in Belgium. Should we be facing an energy crisis as some people say, then such long distance transportation of potables will become a thing of the past and we’re going to have to take up the challenge of producing those things we enjoy locally, or simply do without.
Posted in bar-scene, gourmand | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:48:00 GMT
Today is the last day of the Greek Festival, and I am afraid I just don’t have any mad money to spend this weekend. I pass by the Greek Orthodox church every day on my way back and forth to work. It seems like every time some fun comes along, I’ve just blown my budget on something else. I guess the secret is that there are always opportunities to spend too much money and wake up the next day with renewed vigor to stick to a budget. The same thing happens every year with Adams Morgan Day, and in a week or two there is the Takoma Park festival - that’s not such a budget-buster since I know a guy who will let me hang out on his balcony overlooking the street, and he’s always got plenty of beer.
I might stop by the Greek Festival this afternoon anyhow, and take a spin through the market, but it’s going to be annoying not being able to afford a big lunch under the tents - I’ve got food at home, but it’s just not the same. Perhaps I’ll scrape together enough for an assortment of bakalava.
I did stop by, if only for a minute. I absorbed the atmosphere of the dining tent, then went to the bazaar. Men with beards nearly knocked me over when I tried to enter - they were lunging at each other to give one of those kiss-on-both-cheeks greetings and I nearly got caught in the middle. I didn’t get my baklava - it was so crowded, and I didn’t have the money to feel confident throwing my weight around. Everything was down on the table, so my height was no advantage - and I didn’t want to clobber anyone with my swinging computer bag.
I went out the door and up the steps back to 16th Street. Regarding the street, deciding between bus stops, I noticed some people emerging from the front of the church. I’ve never seen the inside of the Greek Orthodox church, so why not?… A sign said “please use the center doors”, and when I got to the top of the stairs to pull the door handle, it wouldn’t budge.
Someone called out from sidewalk level… “You can get in through the side!”.
“Yes”, I stifled my anger, “I just came from there. But now, I’m here.”
I took a moment to let the irony subside. And, tried to let go of my anger… “Screw this.”
It was one of the best decisions I made all day… I walked to the stop, caught the next bus, got on and found an old friend: Lo and behold it was Richard Goines. He used to work with me at the record store years ago, and he still lives just up the way from me, so it’s not too strange to see him. He had a little entourage along for the ride - his niece and her little daughter. The daughter seemed very well dressed - in a dark Chinese silk dress - and there was a good reason: They were all just returning from Walter Reed Hospital where the little one had been singing to entertain wounded soldiers. I was impressed. I can probably see the Greek Orthodox church any time I want, but running into friends on a bus is a rare treat.
Posted in DC-roaming, gourmand | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:34:00 GMT
The toast is my handiwork. The photo is not. My coworkers were very excited by the composition I created with two flavors of fruit preserves. I just happened to run out of one flavor and move on to the next.
Posted in gourmand, photos | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:14:00 GMT
I continue to read “The Zen Of Fish”. It’s been giving me terrible cravings for sushi. Whole Foods has a Genji Express counter, and that’s the cheapest way to get a sushi snack around here. So that’s what I did. The book is entertaining: It tells a lot of the dirty secrets of sushi. American tastes are different, so if you have something you really like (cough, cough… California rolls), you might find out you can’t get it in Japan. So it’s not authentic, is it? But don’t worry, these things have a way of cross-pollinating. Like Italian pizza. More fattening parts of the fish have become more popular, which makes sushi a lot less healthy than you think. And the book weighs in on topics like: Soak your nigiri in a mixture of soy sauce and wasabi and the chef will be tempted to lop off your head with his kitchen knife, then commit seppuku.
It’s dangerously warm today. I sat out on the astro-turf in Silver Spring balancing my roll combo in one hand and fishing it out with the chopsticks in my other hand. This was when the head honcho from work walked by. He was startled to see me eating with chopsticks. He didn’t even know where to get sushi around here. I smiled and nodded.
Posted in books, gourmand, DC-roaming | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:58:00 GMT
I am working in the office for the three days before Christmas. As I discussed before, it’s quiet and lonely. My routine is disturbed: I am sitting around waiting for the hotline to ring and trying to be enterprising. Basically just stuck here for seven hours when I could be doing the laundry I desperately need to do.
The good news here is the leftover food from the office holiday party Friday. It includes more Lasagna than I could ever eat in a week. I had trouble lifting the foil tray out of the refrigerator. (ahem… there were two trays.) There is also enough soda and juice to last for quite a while. We still have a lot of snacks that arrived in gift baskets, too.
I normally have two options if I want to eat here at work: Walk over to the shopping area and choose from along the spectrum of expensive/unhealthy food options, or remember to bring something from home. The closest grocery store is a Whole Foods, which can wind up being very expensive if I’m not careful. This office is located out at the edge, and now there is a construction project happening between us and downtown, making it feel even more remote. But walking over Elsworth and the new development is always unsatisfying for me. It’s shiny and new, but so hollow. It never matches my expectations - I wander around lost, like I can’t find the wonderful things I imagined would be there. I always settle for something less, or leave disappointed. The little Latino grocery store near us closed one day without warning, and I fear I’m going to lose the Italian sandwich shop, which is worth the money.
Posted in gourmand, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 17:19:00 GMT
It’s a shame I had to work yesterday. My boss is taking a long weekend in New York to visit a friend and see a museum exhibit. It’s the sort of thing I thought I would get to do with my sister - she went to museums with Olga yesterday while I was working. On the other hand, I got to help shop for clothes, high-end face cream, and a violin(!) I even got to try my hand with the bow. (It wasn’t pretty.)
When I finally got home, there were phone messages: Vanessa was looking for me. It was Olga’s birthday (there was uncertainty about the actual date) there were dinner reservations for 8:00, and did I have anything I could bring as a gift - perhaps some sort of bound, printed material? “It would be a lot easier to get a hold of you if you had a cell phone.” Apparently she couldn’t call me at work, which is what everybody else seems to do. Also couldn’t email. I spent the day sitting at a desk with a phone and a computer, so I can only imagine how hard it must have been to reach me.
The gift request would definitely have come in handy when I was at the bookstore borrowing the DVD of “An Inconvenient Truth” so Vanessa could watch it. As it was, I had just enough time to change my shirt, shave, and get going again.
We joined Olga, her parents and her boyfriend for dinner at The Little Fountain. It’s a small place and Olga used to work there, so the staff was an extension of the family. I sat through another delicious meal and conversation largely in Russian. Vanessa is now trained as an interpreter, and I suggested that she could practice by telling me what the others were talking about. I think I can now say “I don’t know” in Russian. A few words are becoming familiar, but I don’t know if I could pronounce them properly. Once in a while I would hear a word borrowed from English and get the gist of the conversation - or at least a good guess about the topic.
With the extra hour from Daylight Savings, I stopped in at Asylum. It was not particularly busy. There was a good stretch of bass-heavy rock music to keep my foot tapping. One extra hour was not nearly enough.
Posted in gourmand, bar-scene | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:38:00 GMT
I was so sleepy today. Having constant yawn attacks. I can’t imagine what for: last night I actually got to bed at a reasonable hour. And yet it was a struggle to drag myself out of bed, I was dozing off on the bus and couldn’t read. I had some coffee and a soy-protein smoothie. I ate a decent lunch: a small bowl of pasta and tomato sauce with some bread a cheese. Some days I’m tired, but this was ridiculous. It prevented me from multitasking. I didn’t try to fill the little delays in one task with work on another - or, when I did, I would return to the first task much later in confusion.
When I’m tired, everything is useless. I can’t make any judgments. I can’t concentrate; can’t fend off distraction. It’s a waste of my time and yours. (Ahem - my employer’s time). On the other hand, how can I complain? I’m taking next week off, and I have to settle things in the office so they don’t fall apart too much while I’m gone.
Let’s amend that first statement: I had nervous energy. I could tap my foot to keep from passing out, and I would startle back to full awareness for a minute or two. I took a walk to the grocery store to get the bread and cheese, but once I was sitting down again, it was just as before.
I’ve been putting off laundry for a few days, and I can’t push it much further. I think it may rain over the next of couple days anyhow. So I went to the laundromat. With the washer running, I went to Ercilla’s for some pupusas and a Maranon (That’s cashew fruit juice. The pupusas are harder to explain if you’ve never seen one. They are cornmeal patties filled with cheese and whatever else. Mine were ‘reveulta’ - pork.) At Ercilla’s the TV news was on… in Spanish, of course. They talked about the California wildfires and the Space Shuttle. Two things I had been tracking at intervals during work to stay awake.
I missed live video of the shuttle launch itself when I realized the time had passed, but I got to watch ‘main engine cutoff’ and the fuel tank’s-eye view of separation. Of course, main engine ignition is always my favorite, but now that they have all those cameras mounted on the thing, we can see views they never let us see before. Views that nobody ever saw before. The tank bracket charges pop, scattering bits of shrapnel, and then the shuttle ‘falls’ away. Surely it only looks so dramatic because of the wide angle lens, (“Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”) but the thrusters are also putting in some distance. They say it’s a big day for Space Feminism (I think those are actually my words) - Both commanders are women. Fark.com worried they were in imminent danger of collision - but that isn’t true. The pilot is a man. But I still love to laugh at stereotypes.
The wildfires are also best viewed from space. If you want to get the enormity of it, and not just watch reporters standing in front of burning mansions.
Now I’m going to bid you good night, fold laundry and watch “House, MD”.
Posted in olssons, gourmand, ontology | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:05:00 GMT
What Christmas Means To Me
My boss has been at one of our stores for two days receiving a skid of Christmas Cards and other related holiday paraphernalia. That leaves me alone here to handle all the normal interruptions of a Thursday - which is a furious morning hustle in the best of times, what with constructing the email newsletter, and editing/proofreading all the contributions. Five people posted to four blogs, and they all needed reviewing and artwork preparation. Two of them were ready very late. The results look pretty good, I suppose.
Liverwurst on Rye
That’s what I had for lunch today. I like to cut across to the Silver Spring Deli over on Georgia Ave. Their liverwurst is not the best - it’s simply the only one I can find around here. (like, for instance - why doesn’t Quiznos have a liverwurst sandwich?) They serve slices from a log, not spreadable paste. It could be ten times more luscious. Where am I gonna go around here for a decent liverwurst?
My Sister, Back In The New World
She’s been threatening to visit me in DC, and today she finally started talking about concrete timing. That was a relief, because I was looking to take a week off, but still had to hear about my bosses indecisive plans to take a New York jaunt herself. So, now that’s settled. Which leaves me with 1) cleaning up my apartment, 2) finding something for her to sleep on, and 3) sorry, I don’t know why I thought there would be more. Obviously, I’ll think of it as I’m walking out the door. Her friend has a couch, and lives two blocks from me, but I guess she’s going out of town that week.
Posted in gourmand, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:57:00 GMT
Well, let’s add Gabrielle Walker’s new book “An Ocean Of Air” to the book basket. I’ve had a paperback galley lying around on my desk at work for several months now - it has debuted in hardback during that time, so I could see what the cover looks like if I felt like it.
Anyway, there was some late night drinking with my bartender friends last night - mainly because they have been experiencing a dearth of customers lately. I don’t know what is causing it. The Reef seems like a perfectly nice place to spend an evening to me. I am careful not to drink too much, and they are careful not to charge me too much. So I guess that makes me an unusual customer. When it is slow, I can usually read a book, but when it is that slow I have no choice but to talk to the staff, who would be too bored otherwise. And, I figure that socializing is the real reason I go - otherwise I can just drink and read at home. Or, just read. But, one side effect of going out is that it keeps me awake. An evening at the bar cannot be compared to some super-productive evening at home reading, writing, playing music, writing computer programs, cleaning the apartment - it has to be compared with an hour or two of television, a snack in the kitchen, checking my daily websites & email, then falling asleep around ten. Because that’s pretty standard.
Today I made good on my promise to fix one of the cash register PCs at the store in Dupont. I didn’t bother to punch in, and it took a little longer than I expected. Mainly because there was more than one problem with it: The PC was fried - it probably just needs a new power supply - and the customer-facing display was garbling the signal to the receipt printer. I didn’t suspect the display at first, because it seemed mere coincidence, but now I’m wondering if the display didn’t power surge through the parallel port. BTW - these are some old PCs. The replacement will have to be temporary. It runs such an early version of DOS, that it won’t run some of the new programs in standalone mode - but we don’t care so much about that.
The new cashiers are not used to me yet. It’s rare that I have to intervene physically - there’s a repair guy for the hard stuff, and I could ask the programmers to do it (not sure how much that costs us, though…). Usually I can
just talk someone through a problem over the phone. One of them has seen me come in to shop, and asked me why she had never seen me working. After working there for so ling, tt makes me giggle to think somebody wouldn’t know the scope of the operation. Six stores, a warehouse, and an office. She was signing a customer up for a frequent-buyer card and explaining why we wanted their email address. I had to chime in with “It’s a newsletter. I’m the one who sends it.” To which I get a “Oh so is that what you do.” Obviously, I do a lot of stuff there. It was a let down to know that the front line didn’t know the reason behind something so simple as an email newsletter. I’ve been looking at the newsletters other stores send out.
Hmmm… I guess I was going to talk about the book, huh?
This afternoon after Olsson’s, I sat in my quiet room enjoying the afternoon light of a fall afternoon, read a few chapters of “Ocean” and dabbled on my synth. Come on now - who doesn’t love physics? I can see it in everything. It is a mental block for me that anyone would lack that way of seeing. Huh? …what? How can that be. There is a place only twenty miles away where no human could survive without a lot of special equipment. It’s closer if you like to climb mountains.
Okay, clearly I’m losing interest in this line of thought. I gotta go see a man about Beer & Bratwurst. And they called it Ockoberfest. Life is short, so I’m going to get in touch with my German heritage. Or childhood memories of Busch Gardens Williamsburg. One of those.
Posted in books, bar-scene, gourmand, olssons | no comments | no trackbacksPosted by Evan Bittner
Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:42:00 GMT
