Take a ride in Mr. Peabody's wayback machine

In a previous post, I talked about time and how much it has always fascinated me. I also mentioned that time can only move in one direction and that is forward. However; for the period from 2005-2025 time is indeed going in reverse. There is interest in doing things “the old way”. We are going back to our roots, reviving old, long forgotten techniques and skills that were afraid to have been lost in antiquity. I just saw a review on a retro website for a brand new Sony radio that is retro styled. It looks like it came right out of a 1960s yardsale, wood grained case and all. My wife and I went to “Mule Day” in Tennessee which is coincidentally everything mule. Amongst the vendors selling ticky tack, hot dogs, and balloons were a lady showing how yarn was spun and a man who made corn whisk brooms entirely by hand. One of my hobbies is woodworking. The online discussion group I belong to are constantly chatting about the “great handtool revival” and the increasing interest in selling off power tools to be replaced by 100+ year old hand tools. It’s showing up everywhere, even automobile manufacturers are reintroducing old cars that had their original hayday in the 60’s like the Dodge Charger. The TV channel, “TV land” regularly reruns shows from the same time period. I like it. It’s good to have a revival and throwback to the past. Enjoy it while you can because in February of 2025 we are all going to put our toys back in the closet where they belong. Of note during the same period of time is the interest in the Earth and conservation of all things “green”. It’s not just about saving the whales these days. Now it’s everything but Kudzu. I’ve seen more spins on the “green” thing than I can shake a stick at. Just watch advertising and you will see what I mean.

Saved by Cranberry sauce

Yesterday’s theme was food. Everything that happened to me centered around it. Some of it wasn’t too tasty, either.
I get to work and start unpacking my daily supply of provisions only to find out that my Tupperware jug of grapefruit juice had leaked all over the inside of my lunch box, right on top of my daily planner. The next 20 minutes were frantic, wet, and sticky. I got lucky and didn’t have to toss out any important documents. Breakfast went pretty smooth. I don’t know why I added breakfast except that I like to be thorough.
About mid morning I ran into an unexpected treat in the breakroom: an entire plate full of unmolested, homemade chocolate chip cookies. They must have just been placed there because they were still covered in wrap and were piled pretty high. I wasn’t hungry so I simply made a mental note to swing back by later and grab a few after lunch.
When lunch rolled around my ribs were sticking out. It looked pretty good in the cafeteria so I went through the line and got the baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and lima beans. When I looked down I was just a little miffed. The chicken breast was the smallest I had ever seen. It looked more like the breast of a pigeon than a chicken. I’ve seen a chicken breast or two in my tender years and I know they grow them bigger than that. The mashed potatoes were just barely there to represent their species as well. Jeez, the only thing I’ve got a decent helping of is the lima beans. Oh, the lima beans. They have this recipe for lima beans that will send you into orbit. They look plain but that is just a disguise because they are very spicy. I sometimes dream about them. When I paid for my lunch I made a comment about getting the smallest chicken breast I’ve ever seen which only returned a giggle from the cashier. Oh well. So I sit down, reassuring myself that at least they didn’t jip me on those wonderful beans, only to discover that they were both bland and cold. So there it was before me; skimpy, bland, and barely there. It didn’t take me 5 minutes to choke it all down while holding back just a few tears. After the carnage was over I was contemplating a second helping while whining to everyone within earshot of how little I had actually gotten. Theirs’ was as skimpy as mine as well. We all got quite a shock when we later noticed that the lunches rolling off the assembly line were piled high for everyone else! Big, heaping mounds of mashed potatoes, carrots falling off the plate! Chicken breasts with real meat on them! It wasn’t fair. We had been taken, robbed, swindled. After some discussion and further reconnaissance of the area we concluded that the cafeteria folks were afraid they would run out of food if they gave it all away during the first hour. Remember how you skimped on the candy for the first hour or two last Halloween then when it started getting late you were pouring the rest of the bowl into some kids plastic pumpkin, trying to get rid of it? Our situation was surely the same. We grumbled about it, my belly grumbled about it.

Then the little man on my shoulder reminded me that there were homemade cookies upstairs! That’s right! Homemade chocolate chip. Those cookies would hit the spot and provide just enough sustenance to get me through the afternoon before I starved to death and had to be taken to the hospital before suppertime could save me. Without a word I slipped away from everyone on the way back from lunch to pinch a big handful. As luck would have it, a few other people saw those cookies and no one thought to save any for me. Oh the horror! The plate was even gone! Next time, I’ll squirrel those cookies away ahead of time. So now what am I going to do to keep from starving to death? I had to settle (out of court) for some peanut butter crackers.

My last chance to actually enjoy a meal was approaching at a turtle’s trot since I had to work late and the ride home was plagued with a wreck on the river bridge. It seems like there is a wreck every day on that stupid bridge. I haven’t conducted any studies but I believe that the chances of a wreck on the bridge will increase for me if I have the urge to pee on the way home. Murphy carpools with me.

Supper was looking grim. I hadn’t laid any meat out of the freezer and I didn’t expect to find much in the way of leftovers in the fridge due to the fact that there are two grown kids (vultures) living with me. I was determined that I would scare something up even if I had to kill it first. That or order Chinese takeout. As I walked in I was shocked and surprised to find a miniature Thanksgiving meal was just ready. My wife had cooked a whole chicken with stuffing, vegetables, gravy, rolls, and even had CRANBERRY SAUCE too! WOW! What a feast! I didn’t even bother to look around to see if I had the correct address or pinch myself as if in a dream. I just grabbed a plate and started scooping. We’ll see who wins the portion control game this time! I slobbed down a whole plate full of goodies and just for good measure, went back for seconds. That’ll learn ‘em to try and starve ME at lunch! That was one fine meal too. June Cleaver would have been proud of my wife that day. If she had served me in pearls, pumps, and an apron I would have known I was in Heaven because it couldn’t have gotten better than that.
I semi passed out in my easy chair that evening with the dog and life was good. Well, maybe except for a little indigestion from overeating.

Let me out! Let me out!

I just ran across this old picture on my computer. It's my oldest son Marshall sitting in front of one of his all-time favorite toys: the toy box. He and his little brother were in his room one day playing when I noticed that the noise level appeared to be quite a bit louder and more desperate than normal. I trotted down the hallway to see if they were really going to kill each other this time to find one of them sitting on top of it while the other was locked inside. Figuring that the little one was being held hostage and was most likely terrified of being trapped, I yelled at Marshall to let him out. Just then the wife walks by and says they do that all the time. Evidently, the way she explained how the game was played was for one to climb inside, the other then closed the lid and sat on it. They would both sit there and holler for about 10 minutes then switch places and start over. By now all 3 of them were looking at me as if they couldn't believe I hadn't ever heard of this game before. Sensing their impatience to get back to their claustrophobic fun, I just shook my head and wandered out to my workshop to the sound of blood chilling screams that would have even raised the hair on the back of Boris Karloff's neck.

July 4th, 2010 in Destin Fl. for a mini vacation

Kathy asked me if I was going to write a journal of our trip to Destin, Fl. similar to what I did for our trip to Sanfrancisco. I’ll hit the highlights and points of interest (for me anyway), give my observations on the oil mess in the Gulf, and fill in the chinks with my usual catty remarks and sarcasm. It’s been a couple of weeks since we got back so I won’t attempt to put it all in order.
The ride down turned out to be really nice. Once we got off the interstate below Montgomery we turned off the beaten path and took the back roads all the way to Destin. It was all farm country on a two lane road. We passed thru several one-horse towns that looked as if they hadn’t changed in 50 years. Lucky for us that Kathy’s Toyota gets good gas mileage. We didn’t see a gas station for nearly the entire time. Some of the ones that we did see were shut down. If you weren’t a farmer in this part of the country, you were in big trouble. I don’t know what kind of work would be available other than farming. I even saw a sign on a trailer asking for work: “day laborer”, work needed. That guy must have been in serious money trouble. It started to rain on the way down and got worse the next day.
We were pelted with a steady downpour of rain the entire first day in Destin but we had a plan for it. Other than narrowly missing several drivers who appeared to be suicidal with their left turns immediately in front of us during the rain and testing the limits of our little buggy’s braking we spent the day shopping. We have been going to a lot of antique shops lately. I look for old woodworking planes and try not to buy tea pots and she looks for everything. I guess it’s a sign of getting slightly older when you see items you really don’t consider junk, just stuff you had 30-40 years or so ago and there is no way they could be considered antique. So we hit several antique stores and gathered a little information about an outdoor flea market that was upcoming on the weekend. Lunch found us nearly the only people occupying an out of the way Asian restaurant. I think it was Japanese and Chinese together. She had sushi and I had tofu. It was all excellent as I knew it would be, judging from my observations on the general hygiene of the place and tacky decorations on the walls. The best Chinese restaurants are to be found in the seedier parts of town and have to be really old and established before the food gets that down home flavor and they can be trusted. We also decided that sushi is the number one choice amongst the residents in that area because it was everywhere we went. I think we ate sushi nearly every day. At the little restaurant I bought her a pair of woven flip flops with some fancy needlework on them. She only has about 200 pairs of shoes in inventory and was worried that she was going to run out. I enjoy buying things for her and since they were smaller than a breadbox, watching her face light up is well worth the money.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find what I wanted in any of the antique stores and try as she might, Kathy couldn’t find anything she didn’t want. I had to talk her out of several items including some that were so large they wouldn’t even fit on top of the car, much less inside it.
The sun came out the next day and we didn’t see more than 5 minutes of rain for the remainder of our trip. We ran right for the beach and expected to be the only ones there because the media reported that everyone cancelled their vacations due to the oil spill in the Gulf. I guess the ones that were there already didn’t know how to listen because the beach was pretty packed. Beach real estate is pretty scarce and what little is available is shared by way too many people. We were given directions to our designated beach access by the hotel folks and told to keep a pass on the dashboard for the guards at the checkpoint. I told you that the beach is getting harder and harder to access and the guards and turnpike are a sure sign that access is being controlled tightly. We had a square of sandy beach that was about the length of the back of a sister hotel to ours with warning signs to stay the heck out of “their” beach on either side of the hotel next door. “No sunbathing or loitering” I pondered this a moment and decided that walking was neither of the two and took my chances and immigrated to the adjacent beaches. As I walked from hotel to hotel, the beach was much less crowded than ours. Beyond the hotels it was empty except for the FEMA crews who were patrolling looking for tar and oil.
The wife eventually decided she wanted to go out into the water. It was very rough due to the hurricane that was heading into Texas. I warned her not to go in above her knees as I figured she would get dragged out to sea by the rip tides and/or strong waves. She went out about 3’, lost her balance (and just about her bikini too), and was unable to get up. I was sitting there watching her flop around in the water wondering if she was ever going to be able to stand up again of if she would really get dragged out to sea when some guy walked over to her and fished her out. That was a close call.
Subsequent visits to the beach were pretty much the same except that one late afternoon on the July 4th weekend we were close to a bunch of college kids who were having way too much fun. Kathy stared and grinned at them the entire time. I figured that she wanted to go over there and hang out. If they would have so much as waved at her, she would probably still be down there with them. Maybe she was planning to conscript a few of the boys to rub suntan lotion on her. I wasn’t being too helpful in that dept. Probably would have been slightly more fun than sitting there listening to somebody bitch about how loud they were, I wish they would turn off that jungle music, when are they ever going to leave, just want some peace and quiet, etc. The kids ended their party by singing, “I’m proud to be an American” at the top of their drunken voices which ended with a round of applause by everybody within hearing distance. They stumbled off, leaving empty beer cans and beach chairs behind for others to clean up after them.
I did get to watch a pervert in action while he took a picture of a young girl in a bikini laying on the beach next to us. He walked past her in a straight line while his head turned around like it was caught in a tractor beam. Circling around behind her, he pulled out his cell phone then snapped the picture while pretending to make a call. He even held up the phone to his ear for a few seconds then walked off behind us. I don’t know if he got a shot of Kathy in her bikini or not since he walked behind me as well. I told her what happened and mentioned the possibility that he might have gotten her too and it freaked her out. Within minutes she knew that she was going to lose her nursing license and everyone from her work would recognize her on the website that this guy was going to put her picture on. She was laying on her belly so it would have had to been a shot of her behind. I had to ask her if she thought the people at work would recognize her rearend or not. She was sure that the pervert would have her on the internet in moments and we had to do something to stop it from happening. She wanted to shut down his website. I told her that it would be no problem as there couldn’t be more than a couple of websites with pictures of girls in bikinis on them. A little while later her ranting and general panic subsided.
She got a little oil on her suit at the beach and spend an hour back at the Hotel trying to get it out. I got a spot on my leg somehow. Other than that, there were a few chips of tar here and there but it wasn’t a big deal.
We ate a lot of seafood while there and paid a king’s ransom for it too. Lunch was nearly as expensive as supper. I paid $70 for a lunch of crab legs for her and grouper for me. We also got to wait for it for over an hour. As a matter of fact, the cost for a meal in the upscale places was even more horrible. I paid $100 for a couple of steaks and some drinks at a place called “Tommy Bahamas bar and grill”. We couldn’t get a table because more of those people who didn’t know about the oil crises were in there so they let us find a spot at the bar. Kathy wanted a Long Island Iced Tea so I got her one. Later I found out they were $11.25 each. She asked me for another so I got it and didn’t think too much about it until it was time to leave. She couldn’t finish her $35 steak so I told her to cut it up and we would take it home in a doggie bag. Watching her try to slice it up revealed that she might be impaired in some way. She was smearing that thing all over the plate and half of it was falling off onto the bar. I asked her if she was drunk but she assured me no problem, she was fine. We got out of there after having my wallet molested and I immediately confirmed my suspicion that she had one too many of those drinks. She was stumbling pretty bad and had bumped into me several times so I got her pointed in another direction and took her to the hotel. I was kind of thinking that the bartender sure did put a lot of alcohol in those drinks while I watched her make them and I also forgot that little miss muffet had trouble holding down even a half glass of wine without getting really silly. After the upscale fleecing, I went back to my usual lousy Chinese restaurants and found the food to be every bit as good, if not better, with pricing that even a cheapskate would smile at. Speaking of that, we were in Publix picking up some bagels and drinks and I also wanted to buy a small can of shaving cream. All they had were big cans which were more expensive than I was willing to shell out. I told Kathy there was no way I was going to pay $1.55 for a can of shaving cream when I knew I could get it at home for $.99. I told her I would just shave with soap and skip the shaving cream. About that time I thought I heard her muttering “cheapskate” under her breath. I turned around and asked her what that snarky comment was and she repeated it for me quite a bit louder. Anyway, I got to eat boiled shrimp that still had the heads on them at the Chinese place. Pretty cool. That and I had some of the hottest (spicy) chicken I had ever eaten. Those jalapeno peppers in there were enormous.
We found the flea market on Saturday morning but there was hardly anyone there. So we headed on down the highway to waste an hour or so in the hopes that more people would show up. Floridians aren’t much for getting up in the morning, that’s for sure. I even took Kathy to a yard sale to see if they were any different than the ones at home. After we got away from the tinsely, touristy part of Deston, it started to look more like the Florida I like. Local businesses, people, and the like. We didn’t see “Alvin’s Island”, the gift shop and junk emporium on every corner. No fancy outlet malls, shopping villages, or boutiques. The flea market turned out to be a lot of fun. They had a little bit of everything and it was obvious that nearly everyone there was a local. After lunch we started to head back to the hotel and got caught in a horrible traffic jam. It was the holiday weekend and I attributed it to tourists/vacationers but we later saw that there was a wicked wreck that slowed everything down. One car was on it’s roof and the other looked like it had been crushed in half. We found out the next day that there had been at least one death. I was bitching to Kathy about all of these tourists jamming everything up and that we were going to have to find another place to stay about the time we came upon the wreck. She didn’t care about the traffic and was simply happy to be there but indicated she was sick of all the complaining.
We looked around at the new trendy shopping villages and outlet malls but I hated every bit of it. There were signs in some of the clothing stores that they had exactly what the movie stars wore, the latest fashions, all priced accordingly. I didn’t find much that interested me. The hurricane that hit the area a few years ago, leveling it, ruined the entire town. Old Florida, with it’s beat up shell houses, old falling down restaurants and charm had been replaced with Hollywood wannabe designer outlets. One day I told her we would try and go inland a bit to find the old cracker Florida and we didn’t have to go too far. Another indoor flea market, some antique stores and my favorite; lousy Chinese restaurants, lifted my spirits.
At one antique store in the scary part of town, I found the holy grail of teapots; an English one that was made in Staffordshire, England. Exactly what I had been looking for and even on sale. I got it for around $16. In another one, I spied a pair of old Stanley woodworking planes laying on the floor halfway underneath some other things. I dragged them out and got down to some serious haggling with the owner. I got them both for $100. I didn’t need them but at that price I couldn’t resist. Those antique dealers are a pretty crafty bunch. The guy knew what they were worth. He told me that he asked someone he knew who was an expert and priced them on the high side for good measure. I told him my intention was to use them and not simply flip them for a profit. I think that’s why I got such a good deal.
On the way home we stopped at this tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere. It had about 20 tables and was packed full. Everybody knew everybody. Our waitress was serving her Grandpa at the table next to us. The people waiting for a table were visiting with friends who were already seated. The food was incredible. We ate some real country cooking and the total was less than $20. During the meal Kathy had that interested smile on her face while she stared at the people across from us. When the waitress switched her plate and one of theirs, she saw her chance and jabbered with them for 15 minutes. I’ve got to get her out of the house more often.
I think I’m done with Destin. Next time we go to Florida I’m going to try and find a place that isn’t so developed. Navarre just might be the place; right next to the flea market. If I find somewhere fun, Kathy is likely to run off on me with a bunch of college kids or something.

Biscuit bodhisattva

Anybody who has known me for somewhat longer than 5 minutes knows that I like to cook. I have historically gone in for the strange and oriental pursuits and like to boast that I'm fairly good at it (I like to boast about anything I think I can get away with). It's been more than 15 years since the wife got me that hand hammered wok from the 30 minute infomercial we saw on TV and I'm still spending a large number of Sundays in the kitchen whipping up stir fry and dumplings for the family and occasional stray teenager. Any kid that shows up at my house becomes mine while they are here (usually with my son) and they will always be fed. I get a big kick out of sitting them down at the table and watching them eat. (I like to use them as guinea pigs to try out new things too). We once had a door-to-door salesman show up just as we were sitting down to eat a big Chinese feast. He was young and looked really hungry so I made him sit and eat with us and wouldn't talk business until we were all done. I didn't buy anything from him but he walked away with a full belly. So the other day it was getting close to suppertime and I was wondering what to fix. The idea of having supper at a cheap restaurant was looking good since I'm on vacation and there wasn't anyone here but me and the oldest son, Marsh. As I stood there in my pantry, waffling over the rather bleak selection of supper choices, in walks the other son and one of his friends. I had been hoping to catch him here for a few minutes since I always subcontract out all of my Christmas present wrapping to him and I had fixed his car this morning; so he owed me large, as far as I was concerned. I hit him up about the gifts I needed wrapped and he countered with the excuse that he couldn't because he had a friend over. Not to be outwitted, I immediately volunteered her as well and they were both conscripted into service as gift wrappers. There wasn't a press gang in the King's Navy that could have put those two to work quicker than me. She thought it was fun since she liked to wrap gifts anyway. I thought it was fun too since I wasn't going to have to do it. I like to buy gifts but I'll leave the wrapping for others. I loaded them up with all of my things and just for good measure I also gave them what the wife had left to wrap as well. "Being one of my kids" occasionally is a double edged sword in that you will do some chores.

My belly reminded me that I still hadn't solved the food problem yet and I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to bail out and eat somewhere else. I thought about take-out pizza but remembered that I was facing the jaws of 3 hungry kids plus myself and my wallet was already groaning from Christmas spending. No problem, I'll whip up a batch of spaghetti. Cheap, quick, easy. Big problem: no noodles. I swear I had two big boxes of spaghetti noodles and now they're gone. I looked around for other options and started to get a little nervous. Jeez, I needed to go grocery shopping. We were out of everything. All that was left was the chicken in the refrigerator that had been seasoned for the next day's supper. I was going to make Southern style pan-fried chicken. It was going to be a special meal for the wife. You see, all these years that I spent studying the mysteries of Chinese cooking had left a big void in my ability to cook traditional Southern foods. Recently I had been practicing but the results were not too good. I was hitting the biscuits pretty hard and had been interrogating the older women at work for their secrets to biscuit Nirvana. I would bake up a batch, try them, scrutinize them, then back to the drawing board for more questions and answers. I watched Alton Brown on the food network. I studied recipes for hours on the internet. I discussed protein content in the flour on biscuit forums. Some said it was the type of flour, others mentioned shortening instead of butter, perhaps it was my kneading technique. My boss at work even floored me with the statement that he just bought premade biscuits in the frozen food isle and baked those! Oh, the inhumanity of it all! Imagine it if you will, simply popping a few of those floured hockey pucks into the oven and calling them biscuits! I believe that is still a misdemeanor in some formerly Confederate states. I just can't go on about it. I summed up all of my choices and decided that the best thing to do, considering the circumstances, was to cook tomorrow's feast tonight. The wife would understand. She knows kids too and wouldn't want to see any of them starve to death if they missed one supper. (She also knew about my biscuits). So there it was laid out in front of me. I was going to go all-out, hog wild, and fix a traditional Southern supper. Pan-fried chicken, made from scratch biscuits, mac and cheese, and corn. Only logistical obstacle was that I needed to get that stuff cracking right now. I set to work like a wild man, using my years of experience as an Industrial Engineer performing stop watch time studies to prep and cook everything as efficiently as possible and with the least amount of effort.

You're most likely wondering why I didn't make mention of gravy, that most puritanical object of Southern affection. They say it flows in the veins of all the sons and daughters of the Confederacy. I must admit that gravy is my Achilles heel. I just don't get it. When I make my confession about this shortcoming, I usually get grins and suggestions. "Oh it's so easy". "All you gotta do is..." I listen with a sheepish grin and think back to the day that 3 foot high flames were blazing out of the frying pan the last time I attempted gravy. My insurance agent has written a clause in my homeowner's policy that I am not to be making any gravy in that house or my fire insurance is cancelled.

I think I had it all on the table in about 35 minutes. As I was racing around trying to get it all coordinated and ready, I nearly forgot about the biscuits and pulled them out just in time. Brown but not burned, I was happy. The kids didn't say much, they were too busy stuffing themselves. But I did hear one comment: "These biscuits are so good, just like my Grandma makes". There you have it, the ultimate compliment, the purple heart of cooking, an Oscar: "just like Grandma's".

Tea for one

Tea for one

Tea is the second most popular drink in the world (water is first). Nothing to it; simply drop a few tea leaves into a pot, add hot water and enjoy. Or so it would seem. Actually, tea is sort of a Zen-like endeavour that can best be described as a journey with no end. The proper marriage of two simple ingredients has endless variations. Water is the first ingredient and thankfully the only variation is the temperature. The freaks will argue that the water must come from a running stream and cannot be bottled or (God fobid) come from a tap. I believe the most over-the-top example of water collection is the tea water that was gathered for an empress in China from the dew of plum blossoms in the mountains every morning (it's true). For the moment, I'll just get my water out of the tap, thank you very much. I can't taste the chlorine in it thanks to my filter. Maybe not good enough for the Empress of China but good enough for me. Tea water temp. can (and should) vary from boiled to just slightly warmer than tepid. It all depends on the next ingredient, the tea itself. The same tea will taste vastly different depending on the temperature of the water it is steeped in. I opened a package of "Sencha", a Japanese green tea and became a little worried when I saw it. The leaves were tiny. It smelled different that the other teas I had been drinking. When I tried it, I hated it. Tasted awful. Besides being tenacious, I am pretty cheap, so I wasn't about to throw it away or give up on it. Pretty good combination for a tea drinker. So I started experimenting with this stuff. The first thing I did was to heat the water less. In order to heat water anything less than boiling requires careful observation of the water as it heats in the kettle. I think that some kettles act different than others. I've got a cast iron kettle and it acts differently than my old tin one. Anyway; I had read in "The Tao of Tea", one of the great Tea classics, that tea water was to be heated to various degrees that were described by the size of the bubbles in the kettle. "When the bubbles are the size of shrimps eyes" is the temp. for white teas. "Bubbles the size of crab's eyes" is the setting for green teas. I think that "bubbles the size of fish eyes' is the setting for oolong and black teas but since I don't drink much of these, I don't pay attention to that one. Anybody out there ever seen a shrimp's eye? Or a crab's eye for that matter? Not lately, I'm sure. Well, it's a fun thing for me to tell others about anyway. Gives the whole experience a little bit of mystery to it. So, as I watched my water in the kettle for a crab's eye sighting, I noticed that the size of the bubbles does indeed change depending on the water temperature. Oh, I could get all technological on it and stick a digital thermometer in the water to indicate the ideal temperature but sometimes I prefer the old ways. Besides, who wants to stand there with a probe in their hand when all they have to do is look for the crab's eyes right? I started to pull the kettle off the stove earlier and earlier, noticing the behaviour of the bubbles and the water itself until I got the hang of this fish eye stuff. There is one other sign, which is most difficult and elusive to look for and that is "at the first breath of the water", meaning when you see just a faint wisp of steam from the pot. I don't usually catch that one. I believe it has more to do with the ambient temperature in the room anyway. So, as I progressed to catching crab's eyes, to shrimp's eyes, I noticed that the tea was starting to taste a little better. Tea should feel "silky" on your tongue. You will know what I mean if you get the temperature low enough. When everything comes together, the taste difference is dramatic. I've noticed that some teas are actually sweet, others have a wonderful woody taste, and others simply are hard to describe in words but they do taste good. It's possible to compare tea tasting in the same light as wine tasting. I had a tea in one of Sanfrancisco's Chinatown tea shops that was so good it didn't even taste like tea. It was fantastic. It was also $700/lb. yikes.

So I've determined that water temperature plays a big part in the preparation of tea. I think that this is of primary importance, the other variables are of lesser concern but merit discussion anyway. The amount of tea placed in the pot also determines taste but this runs in conjunction with the steeping time. Add too much tea and you better decrease the steeping time. Too little and let it sit longer. It's all about balance. I believe that the taste of the tea will be different depending on how much is in the pot. Take two pots of tea, side by side, one with too much tea and the other with not quite so much. Let them both steep, one for a little while longer than the other (the one with the lesser amount of tea in it) and they won't taste at all the same. I prefer to fix a pot of tea with the intention of only using the leaves once. Some like to throw the leaves in there and pour the water over them mulitple times, letting the tea steep longer after each pour.

So what's left? Why, the tea of course! Every tea has it's own method of preparation. The water temp/steeping time/quantity of tea leaves is different for each one. It took me nearly the entire jar of that Japanese Sencha tea to figure out how to correctly make it (at least to where I liked the taste). I went from hating it at the beginning, to loving it in the end. It really was wonderful stuff and taught me tea preparation. I need to dig around in my tea stash and see if there's another bag of that stuff hidden in there.

Man's best friend

So there I was, sitting in my easy chair, chatting with cupcake, quietly discussing our upcoming date on Friday. Scooter was on the couch sleeping and, after a fashion, woke up to jump in my lap for his daily visit and back massage . He had that friendly look in his eyes, as dog's do when everyone is home and they insist on being the center of attention. He usually won't come to me unless I call him so I was rather enjoying his uninvited company. I knew all he really wanted was his back scratched but I didn't mind being used. Petting a dog is very therapeutic and tends to make me forget my worries easily. 30 seconds into our little nightly visit and Scooter pukes all over my lap! K A T H Y!!! GET THIS LITTLE BLANKETY FRICKIN" SOB OUT OF HERE BEFORE I DROP KICK HIM INTO THE NEXT COUNTY!!!!! I guess we'll try it again tomorrow night.