MINOR AMOUNTS OF FRUSTRATION

In another few days, when I'm convinced I'm not Typhoid Mary -- that is to say, not likely to infect anyone with Covid -- some beer will be purchased. Specifically a dark brown ale. Not for drinking. There is an urgent need for Belgian-type meatballs. Fatty ground meat, chopped shallot, breadcrumbs, egg as a binder, salt, pepper, pinch nutmeg. Browned, then simmered in a sauce made of caramelized chopped shallot and dark beer. Eaten with hot garlic bread.

Plus, very likely, a chilipaste with minced garlic, touch sugar.

Might simply acquire ready-made meatballs at one of the Chinatown shops that caters to Vietnamese. None of which have a selection of beers. A beer sauce requires a heavier sweeter beer than the typical American muck at the corner liquoreteria.


Not today though. I still have a mild cough, and the sounds coming from my apartment mate's room last night reminded me of the neighbor's angry dog across the street.
And I swear I heard her growling too, though that may be "incorrect".
But both of us are on the way to full recovery.

The other reason it will have to wait is that a nice meal demands a good smoke afterwards, and I couldn't even finish the bowl I tried late last week, which was disappointing.

A spectrum of aged Virginias with a small amount of Smyrna leaf, altogether quite pleasing. Complex, subtle, sweetish. Reminiscent of that old-fashioned incense-like fragrance one associates with libraries and the deep veranda around tea-time.


The reason for garlic bread instead of frites, which would be better, is that there is no decent friet-kot around the corner to pick up a huge bag of fresh hot fries, Americans don't know how to make them in any case (clarified beef fat, deepfried twice for perfection) and usually have limp greasy long potato lumps instead of actual patat friet.

[Sorry, but y'all never learned how to cook properly. It must have been that broomstick-up-the-arse Puritan disapproval combined with the Great Depression that did it. Cookbooks for the newly middle class from the nineteen fifties and sixties are both hysterically funny and horrifying, and apparently they still "cook" like that in the Midwest and much of Texas.]

As you can tell, Anglo "cuisine" does not have a place in my heart. Or stomach.
I've seen what y'all do to pasta. Wars are started that way.
Oh, and your cheese. Sweet Jesus almighty.
Plus that awful beer!
Gatver!



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