Text 25928, 137 rader
Skriven 2015-04-12 16:20:32 av Ruth Haffly (1:396/45.28)
  Kommentar till text 25823 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: disconcerting 481
=========================
Hi Michael,

 ML> Speaking of which, I saw a kid (maybe 20) today at a restaurant
 ML> who looked exactly like the Buddha. He was nearby enough for me
 RH> Had to clean your glasses to make sure you weren't having a
 RH> hallucination?

 ML> Sort of. This guy looked like a particular kind of Japanese
 ML> Buddha - not the usual fat old bald guy, but jet black hair
 ML> and a widow's peak with the Buddha face - he's peculiar to
 ML> representations from a particular era (late Meiji I think
 ML> but that may be my brain making stuff up). I mentioned to
 ML> my friend I was dining with, who glanced quickly over that
 ML> way and said, oh, he's not that fat, and then I said, take
 ML> another look, and she had the whole O M G phenomenon.

I probably would have had to do a second look also. The buddha I'm most
familiar with tis the old, fat one.

 ML> the train station making distressing animal noises. There are
 ML> stories in many cultures of saints becoming idiots or vice versa.
 ML> It's not my place to wonder aloud about the ways of the universe,
 ML> but this was a disquieting little sequence of events.
 RH> A rather disconcerting experience, but still, an "interesting" one;
 RH> thanks for sharing it.

 ML> A strange kind of "peak" experience.

Definately not an everyday sort of encounter, even in all of your
travels.

 ML>  OTOH, if they
 RH> were trying to expand their menu selections, I wouldn't neccessarily
 RH> want to taste the first attempts.

 ML> Depends. I'd take it for a discount, maybe.

Possibly there. The one bbq place in town offered free samples one night
before they actually opened. They hadn't gotten their final kitchen
inspection so couldn't charge for food but it made for good PR. We've
gone back quite often, and the food has stayed top quality. The other
bbq place in town that opened a few months before, started off with
really good food, both meat and sides. Next time we went, the meat was
still good but sides had taken a big nose dive in quality. Third, and
last time we went, the meat wasn't as good as before, sides were still
of the lesser quality. We never went back and they closed some months
later.

 ML>   We all have strengths and weaknesses
 RH> in our cooking; sometimes we add to them, other times we feel it best
 RH> to just keep letting the experts do a particular dish.

 ML> I guess I'm just a step more adventurous (plus have more
 ML> time on my hands) and on occasion am willing to go where
 ML> no layman has gone before. Sometimes the results have been
 ML> perfect, sometimes I have to retreat with my tail between
 ML> my legs and eat the stuff only at its point of origin,

You win some, you lose some. I don't try a lot of "fancy" things, but do
a good job on basics. I got most all of my cooking mistakes out of my
system before getting married--but not all, as we found out. (G)


 ML> There is a dish called veal valdaostana (or valdostana)
 ML> that is a kind of ordinary melding between parmigiana and
 ML> cordon bleu, but there was a guy named Stanley Nicas who

Interesting sort of combination.

 ML> at one time was the coach of the US culinary Olympic team
 ML> who made it in a different and altogether better way.
 ML> People tried to pry the secret out of him, and he sort of
 ML> gave it away, only I think he lied by leaving out a crucial
 ML> secret ingredient. Forty years later I still think of that

He didn't want his version to become common and messed up, the way so
many do when the chef lets out the recipe.


 ML> dish and how he made it. Sad to say, the dish wasn't on
 ML> the menu when I last visited his restaurant (not recently -
 ML> with Sacerdote shortly before he left the echo for good),
 ML> as he was sort of retired and had not vouchsafed the recipe
 ML> to his children; and it will, unless it is in notes left
 ML> behind when he died a year ago. I suspect that his secret
 ML> addition might have had a dab of hoisin and/or caramelized
 ML> onion.

I presume it still hasn't been found among the papers from his estate.


 ML> Hee Hing's Buddha's delight
 RH> I'd have to go to at least one, if not more, Asian markets to find
 RH> some of the ingredients but it looks good. Probably quite tasty too,
 RH> looking at what's in it.

 ML> That's a dish I would not make, not because of the nature of
 ML> the ingredients but because of the proliferation of them.

Sometimes the sheer number of ingredients is overwhelming. I'll look at
some recipies and decide not to make them, as they have a list of
ingredients a foot or more long, and most of them are not ones I keep on
hand.


 ML> Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 1-14-1998
 RH> They sort of folded, just before we got to HI, but then made a bit of
 RH> a come back. Don't know if they're still surviving or the Advertiser's
 RH> share of the market was too overwhelming and the S-B folded again.

 ML> Gone. Bought and dismembered by the Advertiser, which is
 ML> now called the Star-Advertiser I think.

No surprise, the S-B didn't look like it was in too great a shape.

 RH> We've talked about going back to HI for a visit; our former church is
 RH> having its 40th anniversary this year so we're debating.........

 ML> Sounds like fun. Tell us more later.

It's still in the debateable state right now. Part of it depends on
Dad's health, if it looks too chancy, we probably won't go. We're going
to be travelling later that month as is, so need to keep an eye on
finances also. If we do go, we will for sure hit up some of the places
we used to go to--Maui Mike's Chicken, Molly's Smokehoue BBQ, the Korean
hole in the wall place in Mililani...................

---
Catch you later,
Ruth
rchaffly{at}earthlink{dot}net  FIDO 1:396/45.28


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