Eat my luscious brown balls
. . . which would be a much funnier title if I were something other than a Russian Jew, but hey, for all you know, I spent my Las Vegas vacation sunbathing in the buff.
Enough of that. Let’s talk meatballs. Here’s Marcella Hazan’s recipe, from her book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, which I LOVE. Buy it. You won’t be disappointed.
What I learned on my Las Vegas vacation
A few surprising things, and a few kinda interesting items:
- Jake is a pretty good chess player. My brother (who is somewhere around Expert level) slaughtered him no worse than he usually slaughters me.
- Make your opponent tie down his pieces to the defense of pawns. (My bro did some teaching, too.)
- George Bush is in big trouble. My brother, a revivalist Christian from the heart of Orange County, no longer supports him. That tells me Bush’s base is seriously in deep shit.
- Jake and I learned to play Texas Hold ‘Em.
- We went to an Irish pub last night. I love black pudding.
- AOL sucks every bit as much as people say it does.
- There are indeed some fine restaurants in Vegas. Saturday night, we went to Ferraro’s, an upscale Italian restaurant. My mom and dad cleaned their plates (Jake and I were making jokes about them leaving tongue marks). Afterwards, my mom insisted, “I don’t like Italian food.”
- My son and I get along much better when we’re on vacation. I suspect work makes me grouchy. Go figure.
We’re flying home today. McCarren International Airport recommends we show up two hours prior to our flight. I hate to travel, but I do love coming home.
D.
Easter Eggs
For those of you who don’t play computer games, an Easter Egg is a little extra something that programmers stick into a game to please their loyal gamers. Let me see if I can give you a few.
Demented Michelle has a book giveaway: Hunter’s Moon, a paranormal romance by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. Here’s Michelle’s summary:
The heroine has just won the lottery, which you think would buy her happiness, but, instead, she wants to kill herself.
But the cold and (supposedly) heartless hitman she hires to do the job, can’t follow through. The mistmatched pair fall into some heavy lust, which leads to a more enduring romantic bond, one that is forged as they deal with the mafia, the heroine’s toxic family, and the small, little fact that the hitman is also a werewolf.
Head on over and sign up.
Some of you may want to check out Bookseller Chick’s roundup of recommended Young Adult fiction. I think I’m responsible for that thread, owing to my rave about the Bartimaeus trilogy, which Kate & BSC both recommended. Jake and I did make it back to Barnes and Noble, by the way, and we picked up  Twilight and The Book Thief.
Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know about Paperback Writer’s Friday 20? Every Friday, PBW answers 20 questions from her readers regarding publishing and writing. Good stuff. She and Bookseller Chick both have recent posts about title-repeats, by the way, which reminds me: high time I checked to see if my collection of three one-word titles are fresh and original or not. I kinda doubt it.
Oops, family is here. Gotta run. I’ll try to add to this later.
D.
Wow. Major hit counter suckage.
Don’t tell me you’re all celebrating Easter weekend with your families.
To reward my faithful readers, I’m going to make the following one-time offer (which will expire at this time tomorrow — that’s 8PM PST):
I will honor any requests for recipes or blog topics in general. If I don’t have a good recipe for you, I promise to find one, test it, and report back. Caveat: ask for something impossible or extraordinarily expensive, and I’m going to make sh!t up.
Play nice.
D.
South Park, satire, a quiz, and Passover
One thing about an AOL dial-up internet connection: you quickly learn to be judicious in your choice of links. No power surfing like I do at home, nosirree.
Thanks to my Vegas trip, I missed the much talked about South Park episode wherein Jesus and Bush pooped on an American flag. According to Billmon, over in “Right Blogostan [he has a link to Malkin] the hysteria du jour revolves around the refusal of the producers of South Park to permit an cartoon image of Mohammad to appear on the show.” So, I’ll take Billmon’s word for it, since Michelle’s site is graphics-intensive, truly a slow load, and in any case, evil.
The land of butts and big hair
Cigarette butts, that is. I went to a casino last night with my dad — one of the dozens of casinos which have sprung up in recent years far, far from the Strip, solely to cater to the locals — and we shot craps. Or, more accurately, I gave him a twenty and told him to wager it for me (because, my luck? You don’t want to know.)
Good news, I won twelve bucks. Bad news, I had to be in a casino to do it. Fifteen, twenty minutes in that place and I smelled like an interstate trucker’s ashtray. Meanwhile, a steady stream of good Midwestern Folk coursed by, women sporting Peggy Bundy hair-dos, men in mullets. On the wall, management had posted color photos of all the people who had won big in their casino — “Cleotis, $5,000, Keno” beneath a wizened gap-toothed fellow grinning over a sack of cash. Literally, a sack of cash.
Most of yesterday we spent shopping, with pilgrimages to New Balance, Banana Republic, Kid’s Gap, and Barnes and Noble. We had a good lunch at P.F. Chang’s (upscale Chinese, nexus of Vegas power-lunchers), and I made salt water chicken for my folks, my sister, and my brother-in-law. (This recipe is so awesome, no one in my family complained about the chicken. Not even my mother.)
Today, depending on when Jake wakes up and how fast the weather turns fiery, we may get over to Red Rock Canyon. I’m also going to go hang out with one of my classmates from residency, who practices here. Tony Roma’s for dinner tonight.
The desert air sucks moisture from stones. I wake up with my eyes burning, throat thick, nose . . . you don’t want to know what’s up there. Nose bleeds soon to follow, I’m sure. How do people live like this? Without pounds of natrium and yards of linen bandages, I mean; although, I guess that’s not living.
Maybe I should just go see the Celine Dion show, thereby putting myself out of my misery once and for all.
D.
Thirteen guilty pleasures
As you might imagine, many of these are food. I guess I never made it out of my Oral Stage.
1. Candy: Take Five candy bars being my current fave (chocolate, caramel, and omigod PRETZELS inside!) but I still have a soft spot for Cup O’ Gold and those chocolate-covered cherries with all the pink goop inside. Oh, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups — can’t forget those.
2. Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, an L.A. phenomenon. Fried chicken and waffles . . . why not? You put honey on your buttermilk biscuits, don’t you?
3. Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. Even my son endlessly repeating lines from this film can’t ruin it for me. Steve Oederkerk (Frankenthumb; The Godthumb; Thumbtanic) plays the Chosen One, recognizable by the little face (named “Toungie”) that erupts from his tongue when he’s upset. Spoof chop-saki at its best. I can even forgive Oederkerk for writing the screenplay to Patch Adams, although I cannot forgive anyone ever who compares me to Patch Adams.
4. The Breath Bomb. I don’t know what else to call it: a combination of Claussen Kosher dill pickles, kim chee, and a bottled Chinese item ominously called “odor frying fish”. The latter is a combination of dried anchovies, red pepper, garlic, and black bean. If I eat this stuff, Karen won’t come near me for hours.
5. Chinese massage place in Rosemead. If I hate L.A., why are there so many things I miss about it? Not only the food, but Venice Beach, and Melrose Ave., and all the twisted little live comedy theaters, and the awesome bookstores (like Amok). Anyway, down in Rosemead there’s a massage place where you pop fifty bucks (or whatever it is by now) and you get to hang out in the hot tubs and saunas, then get a massage, then hang out in the hot tubs all over again. It’s heavenly.
6. Driving like a maniac. Hey, man, that’s why our Camry is a V6.
7. Critter-feeding gladiatorial sports. Some animals seem to take an almost human degree of pleasure in stalking and killing their prey. Our best critter in this regard was Julia, an Eastern Indigo snake who had a serious jones for live mice. Centipedes are thrilling hunters, too.
8. Tight jeans. Because I can, dammit. There has to be some payback for all those hours in the gym. Now, if only some attractive women would stare . . .
9. PC games. What a complete, utter waste of time! Thank heavens my son bogarts our gaming computer, otherwise I would live out my life playing World of Warcraft, Dungeon Siege II, or Civilization IV. As it is, I probably spend less than four hours a week gaming. Could be worse — much worse.
10. Chick tracts. Whenever I see these lying around, I have to pick them up, dust them off (or disinfect them — they end up in some of the weirdest places) and chortle myself silly over them. Biblical literalists are funny!
11. Deep fried pork rinds because they taste like bacon, and they’re crunchy, and they have zero carbs. I love ’em to death, even if they tend to put my esophagus into spasm if I eat them too fast.
12. Ethnic porn. I keep trying to get Karen to cry out “Ay Poppy!” at appropriate times, but she just won’t play along.
13. Autoerotic strangulation. But since I’m a coward, I omit the leather belt and hold my breath. Safer that way.
Okay, those last two? Kidding! Jeez!
D.
Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged!
Yatta yatta yatta. Boy, am I sick of that paragraph.
Poopydigs tells us what's on her mind this weekDarla loves Texas as much as I do!D. Challener Roe: another insomniac! We ought to get together and form our own nation.Sapphire Writer shares words of inspirationJMC wants to toss the ball aroundPat J. gives us thirteen soundtracksSaltwater Chicken
This is my son’s favorite version of roast chicken1. It’s a modification of Julia Child’s recipe (from Mastering the Art of French Cooking), but I have simplified Julia’s recipe, and brining the chicken is — sorry, Julia, I love you, but it must be said — an improvement on the original.
You can do this with a roaster or a fryer. Rinse the chicken inside and out, then put it into a plastic garbage bag. Add four to eight cups of brine, seal the garbage bag, put it into a bowl large enough to catch anything that leaks, and stick the whole thing into the refrigerator. Soak in brine overnight. I have left the chicken soaking for two nights with no ill effects.
Since I soak for such a long time, I use a weak brine: one teaspoon of kosher salt for every cup of water. If you prefer a faster soak with a more complex brine, check out this recipe from The Experimental Kitchen. I haven’t tried it, but it looks like it has potential. Hey, the author pinched it from Thomas Keller, so it’s gotta be yummy.
Now for the recipe . . .
Walnut & Son will be in Las Vegas
. . . from the 12th (today) to the 17th. No telling when or how often I will post, and I will undoubtedly be even more remiss than usual visiting your blogs.
We’ll be staying with my folks, which is always an adventure. My goal on this vacation is to find some GOOD places to eat, and spend as little time in buffets as possible. I would also like to expose my son to some stand-up comedy and/or live theater, if I can find it.
One neat thing: WordPress lets me set the posting date and time in advance, so I have a few goodies planned for y’all. And with any luck, I may even have some Las Vegan snark to share.
D.
Hagiographic interpolations
Wherein I rant about the artistic liberties of biblical epics.
(Don’t worry, darlings. It gets funny.)