Random Esquire

Last night, I attended an anniversary party for a French restaurant of which I’m rather fond.  The Seattle folks ate there while in town visiting.  The theme of the party?  S&M Burlesque.  The best part?  It was a charity fund raiser for schools.  Let me tell you right now, folks, if all school fundraisers were like this, I’d be broke.  The kitchen poured out food, drinks were available at multiple bars and the eye candy…was plentiful.  Here are some shots of the evening.

Oh yeah…there was food there, too.

Funniest part of the night – in the last picture after the cut, you’ll see a tall, striking blonde woman.  She was approached by a middle aged man who introduced himself and then said, “What’s your name?”  She said, “Gigi.”  His response?

“Where’d you go to college?”

I can’t help it.  I laughed out loud.

More food, drink, and eye candy pictures after the cut. (more…)

We started our evening off with a fine dinner at MK.  Oysters on the half-shell and foie gras along with some cocktails to start.  MK generously gave us champagne to go with our meal.  I had their signature porkchop and my mother dined on whitefish with lobster.  We also ate, at Instigator’s suggestion, their pomme frites with truffle cream and let me tell you… I could have eaten them until I died.  They are on my “last meal request” list now.  We had a very light banana bread pudding with a salted caramel that was fantastic.  At one point in the meal, my mother said, “Are you going to take pictures?”  I said, “No…this meal is about you time so no pictures.”  I could tell she was happy but also sort of wanted pictures of the food to remember it all.  The good thing?  The manager happened to see my reservation (I assume that’s how he knew?) and came to the table and we talked about re-visiting the place to get some pictures of the food.  So it all worked out in the end.

Then we went to see Tina.  We were running a little bit behind so I hailed a cab.  The driver stopped, rolled down his window and said, “Where you going?”  I said, “United Center.” He said, “NO, no, I don’t want to go back there!” and then he started to drive off.  I barked, “BIG TIP!” and the brake lights went on.  We got in and got a fast ride over.  His tip was a throat punch.  Okay, not really.

Just before the show, Oprah walked in with Stedman and Gayle.  Flash bulb city.  Then…the show.  It was good and the first big concert my mother has ever been to.  She had a grin on her face the entire time.  My worries that she’d be distracted with thoughts of my grandmother’s health or a difficult family issue from almost exactly one year ago were calmed and that made me happy.  Anyway!  So, Tina Turner has “half-time” because, I suppose, the woman is 68 and just burned 3,000 calories in the first 45 minutes and needs to re-fuel with an Ensure.  The lights go up and my mother is glancing over at a bunch of people taking pictures. I said, “Who are they taking pictures of? Oprah?”  She said, “Some short little white guy.”

Yeah.  It was Tom Cruise.

So, just to recap the evening…

My evening involved my mother, Tina Turner, Oprah and Tom Cruise.

I’m officially gay.

1.  Figs are gritty.  I know it’s just the seeds but the grit still makes me cringe.  Fig Newtons are sort of like gritty cookies. (picture by Xerones)

2.  I turned on the TV tonight to a pizza dough rolling competition.  These guys were all competing to see who could roll the largest crust without tearing the dough.  One guy was getting ready to start and he kept rubbing the dough ball, intense concentration on his face, and this guy from the audience screams, “This is yours!  You’ve been waiting your whole life for this moment!”

That’s supposed to be encouragement?  That might make me pause and rethink the direction my life has been heading.

3. God, I hate the phrase “Dessert Pizza.”  It just does not sit right with me.

4.  I find it very funny that the slogan for Botox is “Freedom of Expression.”

5.  I spoke with my sister tonight and she called their nanny a “quirky bird.”  I said, “Quirky bird?”  She said, “Yeah… you know, a quirky bird.”  Is this slang I’m not aware of?  Then she said that my niece she smells weakness in a nanny like a wolf smells a lamb.  I daresay she sounded proud.

Little Filthy is so named because he has a very bad habit of…how shall I say it…he indulges in his own creations.  This would not be quite so possible were it not for the fact that he is box trained and so if I do not know he’s made a deposit, he may make himself a withdrawal before I am aware of the situation.  Hence…Little Filthy.

I made a curry for dinner tonight.  I placed a bowl of the dish on my coffee table and got up to grab a bottle of water and got distracted by a phone call and some e-mails.  I ate with the phone in one hand while I pitched old magazines off the table (do I really need the last 6 months of Wired magazine? No.).  I was about half finished when Little Filthy jumped up on the couch and put his paws on my leg and banged his face into my cheek.  This isn’t too unusual.  He kisses like a drunk driver.   I swiped my hand across my cheek and …it came back a little brown.

I sat there stunned at the thought that the dog has just sideswiped me with his baked potato.  I jumped up and washed my cheek and hand and then looked at his box…it was clean.  What the hell?

Then I realized…that monster had been eating my curry.  The same curry that I then ate for dinner.  And now I don’t know if I’m more worried about what his box is going to look like or that I ate my dinner after him.

ugh.

1.  I tried tamarinds this weekend.  Besos cracked open the pod and I bit off some of the sticky fruit.  Then I shuddered as drool drained out my mouth.  Okay, that’s not entirely accurate – but it was damn sour.  I can’t believe that I hadn’t had it before.  Then I decided that I wanted to eat more things that I’d never eaten before.  So I tried menudo.  Only, I found out later that Besos had told the server that I was a novice and so some things were left out of the soup.  I demanded to eat whatever was omitted so the server brought me a bowl with a calf’s foot in it, which I ate bits of while Besos cringed.  And then I ate a taco…with tongue.  That’s right. A tongue chunk taco.  Again, Besos cringed and shuddered.  What else should I try?

2.  The local newscast showed a bar where supporters were cheering on an Olympic athlete from a neighboring town.  They interviewed a woman and I did a double take at her.  She had the deepest vertical wrinkle I’d ever seen between her eyes.  It looked like a slot for a vending machine and I wondered if anyone was ever tempted to slide a quarter into her forehead.

3.  I’m officially a photographer (I guess) in that I’m going to get paid for some photographs.  Which is ironic.  Because LynchSeattle had to explain what an F-Stop was to me just last week.  How about that. I’m like a half-ass idiot-savant.

[Edited to add:  Just spoke with Besos and now I'm disturbed I picked at the calf foot.  I don't like the idea of eating something that probably stepped in its own feces.  Or anyone or anything else's feces, for that matter.  Yeah, probably no more foot for me.]

1. Tomorrow night, I’ve been invited to, and will attend, a tasting at a seafood place. The last tasting I went to I was served 5 appetizers, 9 entrees and 4 desserts. I’m not sure I want to contemplate eating that much seafood. I think shrimp are over-rated. I realize this is blasphemy to some but, there you have it. I am so-so about shrimp. I like scallops and oysters. But here’s the thing with oysters – and mussels, too, for that matter – I sometimes have to not think about the fact that I’m eating its digestive system. Like, the things that were on the way out.

I figure that if the mussel has eaten it and I’m eating the mussel…I’m too high on the food chain to be eating the parts of its food that even it has declared as waste. It’s clearly a matter of how large the animal is and how difficult it is to clean and perhaps how offensive the taste must be – but it still strikes me as odd that at some point, we simply shrug and swallow it down. It’s a little disgusting, quite frankly.

2. I read through the Sleep Quirks comments again. Good God, you guys are a bunch of weirdos. I shouldn’t read them a third time or I’ll start trying half of them just to see how they feel.

3. As I walk to work, I often watch the feet of the people in front of me. The women in their heels avoiding the grates, etc. Okay, so maybe I’m looking at some of the legs attached to the heels since it is summer. But I’ve noticed something that only men seem to do. Some guys bounce up on to the balls of their feet, lifting their heel, immediately after taking a step. As a result, they appear to bounce along as they walk. It isn’t always dramatic, but their heel leaves the ground long before it is getting ready to take the next step. Women never seem to do this. Probably because it looks a little stupid.

4. I sometimes say some things that I think are ‘sayings’ but may, in fact, just be stupid things I say. Like:

a) Don’t drop your blob.

b) Sleep faster; we need the pillows.

c) She’ll smoke your sausage and eat your cigarettes.

Surely I didn’t make this kind of nonsense up.

1. I find it humorous that I somehow manage to be a bit of a foodie and to enjoy some incredible meals and yet yesterday, I found myself banging two frozen waffles together over the sink wondering if too much ice had formed on them to get them crispy. And then I burned them in the toaster oven. Foodie FAIL.

2. I noticed a bulge in the bathroom ceiling yesterday. I quickly figured out that the air conditioner’s condensation drain was clogged (the AC is above the bathroom) and that the kill switch to prevent the pan overflow had obviously failed. But for a moment, as I stared at the bulge, I hoped that it would beat and pulse and indicate the presence of a evil spirit or poltergeist in the hopes that I could avoid calling AC repair and just opt for a priest or crazy little old lady to tell me that ‘this house is clean.’

3. Last night I saw Plush and she is just as great as ever. She’s a peach, that one.

4. My friend (new nickname: Sitcom) had a bit of a wild night at a bar a while back. It began with a bit of a slap-fight that turned into kissing that then ended with a night of passion, as they say. So life continued on after that evening and then Sitcom finds out that this person she’d had this fight/night with? Yeah, he won an Oscar. Sitcom calls up her friend to tell said friend about this bit of news but before she begins her story, Sitcom’s friend excitedly tells her story…that she (friend) just slept with a guy who designed a Target circular and wasn’t that terribly exciting?! Sitcom’s friend was so excited to have actually slept with the guy who decides if the video games belong in electronics or toys. And Sitcom then had to tell her that her wild fling was with an Oscar winner. Talk about raining on someone’s parade.

This made me think that I need a more exciting job.

I attended the Wine.Dine.Donate event in Chicago, sponsored by Epicurious at MK. I had been invited as a guest of Epicurious and took Instigator, foodie that she is. If you live in San Francisco or New York, these events are coming to your city and I highly recommend them as they are for a good cause (America’s Second Harvest) and, as an added bonus, you can meet Tanya Steel, editor-in-chief of Epicurious and James Beard recipient. Instigator and I were fortunate enough to be seated at her table and I had the good luck of being next to her. She was well spoken and quite charming. On to the food, yes?

The best hors d’oeuvres of the night, in my humble opinion, was the spicy bison tartare on a housemade cracker. Second to that was the wild mushroom bruchetta. We sipped on Pol Roger Brut nv Champagne while mingling. My apologies for the low lighting in the food pictures. Here’s a shot of the restaurant prior to seating.

Dinner was a yellowtail tuna (seared rare, wild watercress, roasted red pepper, new potato, white anchovy, quail egg, black olive) and duck breast (patty pan squash, roasted spring onion, chanterelle mushrooms, pancetta and a red wine sauce.) The tuna was served with a Pascal Joviet Sancerre. Instigator loved the cracked pepper and I thought the anchovy made the dish. The duck was served with a Museum Crianza.

Dessert was a cherry tart with creme fraiche sorbet, bittersweet chocolate sauce and almond streusel. It was served with a Churchill’s 10 year tawny port which tasted a hell of a lot better than my previous experience.

And a generous swag bag came at the end of the meal. Thus concludes my dake with Instigator.

Let’s eat our way through Europe. Here are some pictures I took of my meals during my travels. Tuck in and hang on. This is a killer post of food.

Paris, France: Escargot with garlic and parsley butter.

From Rue Cler in Paris: Nutella and banana crepe.

Paris Street Food: Gyro…on a baguette.

More food after the jump.

(more…)

I was reading Schokolade Madchen’s blog and she did and entry on how she’s making foods she ate as a child for her German born husband.  So far, he’s impressed with macaroni and cheese but not so much impressed with green bean casserole.  The man clearly has good taste.

This made me think of what foods I loved as a kid.  For better or for worse, I ate anything as a kid.  I still do, generally speaking.  I admit, I love meatloaf – but with barbecue sauce, not ketchup.  And if I make it, I have to eat it with scalloped potatoes and green beans because that’s how I remember it.  I dig maple and brown sugar malt-o-meal, too.  (Another food she’s making for her husband.)  I do not miss eating goulash at all.  Does anyone love this stuff?

Hmmm…I do remember taking vanilla ice cream and mixing in peanut butter and Nestle’s Quik like some mad scientist.   Of course, I also mixed together all the shampoo and conditioner pretending that my bathtub was a laboratory.  I didn’t eat that, though.

This reminds me of the time I flushed an apple down the toilet.  I had taken a bite and decided I didn’t like it.  So I flushed it.  Then I promptly tried another apple.  It sucked, too.  So I flushed that.  I have vague memories of my father eyeballing me from across the bathroom as he snaked the toilet and apples pieces came bobbing up to the surface.  To this day, I still can’t stand Jonathan apples.  Those things taste like dust to me.

What’re your favorite childhood foods?  And did you ever do something with your food that got you into trouble?