Suey

SUEY  

I DO remember Mom’s chop suey, but only vaguely.  

1. You guys are much older than I, and she fixed different stuff for Amy and me after you guys left home

2. I was spoiled, and didn’t like anything other than tomato soup and cheese sandwiches on white bread.   She didn’t push me to eat it.

3. There WAS a Chinese restaurant out on Broad Street (toward the Westinghouse Plant) and she took Amy and me there as a treat.   I got a cheese sandwich as I recall.
  

Heat With Wood

Maine Masonry Heater

We heat primarily with wood in Maine, and for those of you who haven’t visited (yet!), we burn most of that in a gigantic brick box (called a “masonry heater” or a “Finnish Fireplace”) parked in the middle of our kitchen/living room, which makes up most of our house’s ground floor. The theory is that instead of using the intense, but intermittent (only hot when a fire is burning), heat of a steel wood stove to heat the house, we heat a big thermal mass (most of the brick box is a labyrinth of flues to best capture the heat of the fire) that radiates a low-level, but constant, amount of heat. We fire it twice a day, but it is warm/hot 24 hours a day, which the cats have definitely noticed.
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Go Dogs!

“Is that a Portland Sea Dogs cap?”

I”m standing in line at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market bank machine. Forgot to bring money this Saturday.

Winter is a strange time at the market. We”re looking at winter vegetables and stuff that stores well – beets, carrots, cabbage and the like — not the most exciting selection. Of course there is always meat and cheese and eggs and citrus. Way fewer farmers show up, there are no tourists and only the most die-hard shoppers, like me, bother to show up.

“It is,” I said.
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Unique Art in San Francisco

Recently, I went to see three new pieces of art in San Francisco that couldn”t be more different from each other; four, if you count the de Young Museum, itself.

de Young entrance

The new de Young museum opened in San Francisco in October and I took my first trip to check it out last week. The architects are Herzog & de Meuron, a Swiss firm well known for its museums, but this their first in the United States. John King’s review is especially interesting.

Two pieces of art were commissioned for the opening: An installation by Andy Goldsworthy in the entry court, and a huge mural by Gerhard Richter at one end of the lobby. Continue reading “Unique Art in San Francisco”

Toasting the Rectors

LONDON (Reuters) – Wine drinkers have healthier diets than people who prefer beer, according to research reported by Danish scientists on Friday.
  

They tend to buy more fruits, vegetables, olives, low fat cheese and cooking oil than beer drinkers who are more likely to consume ready meals, soft drinks, sugar, sausages, lamb and butter or margarine.
  

“This study indicates that people who buy wine purchase a greater number of healthy food items than those who buy beer,” said Professor Morten Gronbaek of the National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen.   He and his team looked at what Danish consumers who drink beer, wine, both, or only non-alcoholic beverages buy in supermarkets. They analyzed 3.5 million transactions in their study, which is reported in the British Medical Journal.
  

Although the research was confined to Danish consumers, Gronbaek said studies in the United States and France produced similar results.
  

Gronbaek said wine drinkers tend to be educated, healthy and lean or they are middle-aged women who drink moderately while beer drinkers are less educated, healthy young men who have a higher alcohol intake.                      

Snow In Maine

Snow in Maine

After several rainstorms that had washed all of our existing snow away, today it finally snowed again in Maine, and all looks right with the world again. It was big slow fluffy soap-flake snow, exceedingly squeeky with every step.

–E

Unk T Hunkers

fatGuy.jpg  Christmas was hard on me.   I slipped out of the low-carb diet last summer and THOT I was watching what I ate (apparently AS I ATE IT) and then Christmas came.   Booze, food, more booze, even more rich food, chocolate, late nights and early mornings.   Suddenly my slax all felt tight and I was rummaging in the back of the closet for my fat clothes.   Trigger One: fat clothes
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