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Trip, with foodstuffs
A Jewish Christmas, as I told everyone who would stand still long enough to listen: We ate Chinese, and saw a movie.
That's not precisely true. During the four-day trip to Washington, DC to stay with Nonelvis' parents, we did eat Chinese - twice on the same day in fact, excellent dim sum in the morning and then vegan Buddhist-style food for dinner - and the two of us did sneak out to see a movie - GalaxyQuest, which is silly, but more substantial than you think and a lot of fun - but neither of those events actually happened on the twenty-fifth.
On the twenty-fifth Nonelvis and her mother played hard in the kitchen all day - they like trying to make those imaginary dishes from Gourmet that real humans normally do not eat. In fact, the main course was something I would normally consider so old-money, so English-gentlemen's-club, that it embarrasses me to admit I ate and enjoyed it.
Oh, all right. It was pheasant. Pheasants jubilee, in fact (that is, with sour-cherry sauce). And asparagus and scalloped potatoes and two bottles of really excellent red wine and freshly-baked bread and several cheeses and then later a homemade apple tart.
No, they weren't celebrating Christmas. Nonelvis and her mother cook up something like this every time we visit. They enjoy it. And since I enjoy eating, I don't complain ... even though I confess privately to Nonelvis that I get just as much joy from an excellent hamburger as I do from an excellent pheasant - and the hamburger costs less, in money and effort, to make.
This was not my first time to have eaten pheasant. But the last time I had it, it had been prepared by the person who shot and killed it. Most of my exposure to game has been from the people who hunted it - and somehow it's not pretentious when it's being prepared in someone's kitchen by a man with leather-hard skin and powder burns on his hands. It is pretentious, to me, when it's being prepared by a chef at a restaurant - a status food, if you will. Mind you, the chef and the hunter may be of equal skill, in their specialties - I have seen some good ol' boys with hands the size of baseball mitts make a sauce or chop a carrot with more grace than I would have believed them capable of. The surroundings make all the difference.
I haven't decided yet whether I think normal people trying to cook recipes in Gourmet are pretentious. As long as I have a vested interest in the proceedings I believe the jury will remain hung.
It was a good trip for reading and Deep Thoughts - the two often being interconnected. I have several topics to rant about at some length over the next couple of days, but for now I have to try to finish reading my back email and get some sleep.
One more comment, though, before I forget.
As we were in the final leg of our trip home today, driving down route 2 on the final descent into Cambridge, we saw one of the programmable signs they use to flash messages about road work. You know - an square sign on a little orange movable trolley - the surface of the sign is black, and it has rows of dots that flip over, yellow, to make the letters or numbers.
It wasn't talking about road work, though. It said (as it flipped from message to message)
HE KNOWS
IF
YOU'VE BEEN
BAD
OR
GOOD
SO
BE
GOOD
So applause to the city of Cambridge (or to whoever hacked the sign). And compliments of the season to you all.
© Columbine
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