Looking out my cubicle window on a group having lunch on the north lawn of the Texas Capitol. That little hangie-downie thing in the middle of the photo is part of a small wind chime on the inside of the window.
Lunch on the Texas Capitol lawn
Weekly Photo Challenge: Lunchtime
Recently I’ve started watching a few TV reality shows. I watch them intermittently, but they still hold that staring-at-a-car-wreck fascination.
The first one that got me hooked was Restaurant: Impossible. Chef Robert Irvine swoops in with $10,000 for a 2-day makeover of the decor, the menu, the wait staff, and the owners. Chef Robert finds dangerous kitchen environments, equipment that looks like it has never been cleaned, wait staff who ignore their customers and owners who are afraid to say “Boo!” to anyone. Those restaurants need miracles to stay in business and Chef Robert and his team deliver.
One day, out of inertia, I kept the TV on and watched the show that followed, which turned out to be Restaurant: Stakeout. My, my, my. Willie Degel comes in with hidden cameras and catches the staff goofing off, eating, drinking and carousing. When Willie confronts them with their unacceptable behavior, that’s when it gets interesting. They deflect, they rationalize yelling at customers, they lie. Willie sits them down, gives them a Good Talking To and most come around to embrace professional behavior.
Then there is the show Mystery Diners. Charles Stiles and crew also go in with cameras, only they are called in when there is some monetary discrepancy, maybe a business is losing $4,000 (or more) per month and the owner doesn’t know where it’s going.
The cameras record employees putting money in their pockets, leaving the business unattended, drinking on the job, fighting, serving alcohol to minors, and so on. And when the owners confront these employees, they also deflect, lie, deny. Some are fired right on the spot, rationalizing their actions all the way to their car with the cameras following them.
The restaurant world is a rough one.
However, with all those uncleaned appliances, dangerous food handling, and cocky waitstaff, one might get a little leery of going out to eat. Maybe I should change to the Travel Channel and watch shows where they spotlight restaurants in a good way. Or better yet, cook my own meals and read a good book instead of watching TV.
Last night I made vegan mashed potatoes and read part of The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone. It’s a start.
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Dragon or unicorn cupcakes anyone?
from Whole Foods Market, Austin, Texas
Love: warm, chewy cookies right out of the oven and a good book. It just doesn’t get any better.
I didn’t get to taste these wonderful peanut butter cookies fresh from the ovens of Tiff’s Treats. I bought them as a Thank You for a co-worker. But it was nice driving home with that aroma filling up my vehicle.
Yummy cookies from Tiff’s Treats
I recently rescued these books from the storage shed. I was so happy to find them. I remember reading the whole set as a youngster and being enthralled with the stories. They are next on my to-(re)-read list. And then I’ll return to Tiff’s Treats to get some cookies for myself.
I think I’m in love.
The Junior Classics
Weekly Photo Challenge: Love
November 9th and the high is predicted to be around 82 degrees. That’s about 15 degrees warmer than normal. It’s going to get cold, sooner or later. When it cools off, I’ll be in the mood for soup again. Here’s a post from my old blog, written in the summer of 2011.
In addition to my new Black Bean Chili Soup recipe, I recently made Lentil Soup from Rip Esselstyn’s Engine 2 Diet book. The real name of the recipe is Savory Lentils and Greens and it is on page 222.
I had the list of ingredients in my shopping app when I was at the grocery store, so when I started making the soup, I had all the ingredients. That’s a good start. Everything was going fine and dandy until it came time to add my leafy green of choice, kale. There wasn’t any room for it in my Dutch oven pot. (Dutch oven pot: is that redundant?) It was just chopped up green stuff but when I took off the lid after the soup had simmered for 45 minutes (or thereabouts), there was no room. In fact, my supposed-to-be soup looked like lentil chili, it was so thick.
The Black Bean Chili recipe called for 3/4 cup of water; it was supposed to be thick. It was in self defense that I ended up using 5 cups of water and making it into soup. This recipe called for 5 cups of water and 5 cups of vegetable broth. I just knew it was going to be soup-y. No? Obviously I’m still having “issues” with soup recipes.
No room in the Dutch oven for the kale? I got out my second Dutch oven and transferred half of the lentil chili into it. To make it soup, I ended up filling up both Dutch ovens with several more cups of water and it was still a little on the thick side. Now I had two 5-quart Dutch ovens full of lentil soup. That’s a lot of soup especially considering I’m the only one at my house interested in it.
Although I had read the recipe correctly and had all the right ingredients, there was one little detail that I had missed before starting this endeavor. The recipe “serves a firehouse of 10.”
Oh.
Well that explains it. When I try a new recipe, I like to make it exactly as written for the first time. I just wasn’t prepared for the quantity. Next time, I’ll try cutting it in half. If I remember, that is, and I probably won’t.
It's a long story ... 