Food fit for a Queen

Jerry and I took a little vacation this week. We started the week by doing San Diego activities then headed north for a few days.

Here's what I ate on the road.

Our first stop was Laguna Beach where they have art galleries. We didn't buy anything except lunch. We ate at the Heidelberg Pastry Bistro.

I had the Spicy Heidelberg Wrap and iced tea. It wasn't terribly spicy. It was good.
This was across the street from the Pottery Shack that isn't there anymore. It's now The Old Pottery Place where they have a cafe, an art gallery, tchotchke shops, etc. I'll miss the Pottery Shack.

We then shopped for a while in the downtown part of Laguna Beach for a few hours then headed to our hotel in Long Beach.

Jerry comes up with fun vacations. We stayed on the Queen Mary for a couple of nights. For dinner the first night we ate in the Promenade Café.

I had fettuccine with vegetables. (I forgot to take the picture until I had eaten quite a bit of it. Sorry.)

The next morning we had breakfast in their coffee shop. We had bagels with cream cheese and caffè americano. (Again, I forgot to take the picture until after I had started eating. There's a bite missing from the bottom half.)

We then took the Catalina Express to Avalon on Santa Catalina Island. I don't know if the hotel upgraded us to the Commodore Lounge on the way to the island or if it was part of the package Jerry booked. (We were planning on taking the boat from the Queen Mary but that service gets turned off after Labor Day so we had to go to the downtown port. Maybe they upgraded us for our inconvenience.) Because we were in the Commodore Lounge, we got a cookie and a beverage.

Here's my chocolate chip cookie with the usual missing bite because I forgot to take my picture in time.

And my mimosa.

There's not much to do in Avalon. There are tourist junk shops. And restaurants. (There are tours around the island but that's another story.) We had lunch at a café on the water.

I had a mushroom veggie burger and fries. I forgot about taking a picture until I was finished. It's just as well, it wasn't terribly good. The mushrooms had no flavor and the burger was pretty flavorless, too, in spite of all the flavorful ingredients the menu said it contained. Don't bother with the Busy Bee Café when you visit Avalon. Jerry wasn't thrilled with his lunch, either.

Veggie burger and fries aftermath:

(As you can see I finished it anyway.)

Our return trip wasn't until 7:30 so we had dinner in Avalon. It was much better than lunch. Jerry enjoyed the aroma of the smoker cooking food at El Galleon and they had pasta primavera for the picky eater so that's where we ate.

My pasta primavera before even one bite was taken!
(We didn't keep what they called "souvenir glasses.")

We sat on the outside deck of the boat on our return to Long Beach. There was a beautiful sunset.

We had some shopping to do in Santa Monica so that's where we headed Friday morning. We got on the freeway and decided to stay in the carpool lane and held out till we got to the Santa Monica area for breakfast. We had bagels with cream cheese and americanos at Tanner's Coffee.
My Linux netbook wouldn't connect to their free WiFi service so I didn't get to check my email for the whole trip.

We were very successful in our shopping on Montana Avenue but you'll have to wait to hear about that adventure.

We then headed downtown to shop at Penzeys Spices. Jerry stocked up on spices. Later, you'll hear about some other fun stores we happened to run into.

We had lunch on the Third Street Promenade. I had a caprese sandwich. Yum.

We finished with our shopping and headed home. We were not ready to do any cooking. So we went off to another fine restaurant.

That's just a taste of our vacation. I'll tell you what we did between meals later.

Tennis anyone?

Jerry and I went to Pacific Taco #1 for supper tonight. We're on vacation and aren't cooking. The restaurant usually has some South-of-the-Border music playing on the juke box. But tonight there was no music. Just schmoozing between regular customers and the people behind the counter.

The TV was on, but without sound. It was tuned to ESPN and was showing a match from the US Open tennis tournament.

Tennis was the only sport I ever willingly participated in. I was introduced to it through my best friend through my junior high school days (I seem to have changed friends each time I changed schools).

I took lessons in the summer-activities-in-the-park program. One lesson that stuck in my mind was How to Deliver a Killer Serve. The instructor told us to hold our rackets just so, toss the ball into the air, and swing the racket through the ball with a motion we would use as if we were hurling the racket at our opponent. My friend, Kenny, mastered that serve. It would put an incredible amount of spin on the ball so after it curved into the ground it would take off in a strange direction, as if it hit a little wall on the court.

Most of us couldn't quite get the hang of the serve. Some even messed it up so badly that they managed to hurl their rackets at their opponents.

At the end of the six weeks of lessons, we'd have a tournament. The entry fee was a can of new balls. You were out of the tournament after you lost your first match. The loser of each match would get the balls that were used in the match. In one tournament I got to start out against one of the best players in the program. I went home after that first match with the can of balls. I'm sure I lost 6-0, 6-0.

I even participated in the junior high school's tennis program. It was an after school activity where we just played games against others in the program. We didn't play against other schools. It was for fun with little, if any, competition.

I think I kept this tennis thing up for about three years. Each year would start out with a nasty blister on my thumb where it rubbed against the racket. It took a few weeks to figure out how to grip the racket at the start of each year.

Tennis was a good sport for me. I was good enough at it to have fun. And I was on my own. I'm not a team player. Probably because I was always among the last to be chosen for teams in gym class.

(I don't think that any of my family ever watched me play in my few competitions. But I'm not complaining, mind you, just observing.)

I even followed professional tennis. When I lived in Los Angeles in the mid-'70s while working in the B-1 Division of Rockwell International ("Where Science gets down to Business"), I went to The Strings' World TeamTennis games at the Fabulous Forum. (I'm stunned to find out that WTT is still in business.) I'd even know who was playing at Wimbledon.

But I don't follow it or any other sport now. I didn't recognize the names of either of the players tonight. The closest I've gotten to tennis in a long time were the occasional emails I'd get offering me hot pix of Anna Kournikova. I had no idea who they were talking about. (Roger Federer, on the other hand...)

I guess I'm over tennis.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A lamp.

Bling! Went the Strings of My Heart!

I was talking with Mom a bit more than a month ago. She said that she was going to Santa Fe or Albuquerque to look for some drawer knobs or handles. I had told her of my attempt at the same kind of project long ago. We wanted to replace the ordinary handles on the doors and drawers at the end of the hall that have been there since we moved into the house. We went to San Diego Hardware to try to find something nice to put there.

There were acres of knobs and handles on display. And even more in their catalogs. After a only few minutes I was overwhelmed. I was hyperventilating and had to leave.

Years went by.

After we lit up the hall with our Solatubes we could see the boring hardware much too well. It had to go. Mom's trip to the hardware store inspired me to give it another try. Jerry was only too happy to work on this project.

We headed back down to San Diego Hardware. (What, you expected us to go to the Home Depot?)

This time, I remained calm. And, in spite of the extraordinary number of choices, it didn't take us long to make a decision.

We chose some Edgar Berebi handles.

Here's the end of the hall, lit up by our Solatubes.
The handles are intricately carved. There is faint detail carved even on the back sides of the handles.
We didn't choose to mount the handles at this angle. That's where the holes are.

The drawers' handles were what got us interested in this line of hardware. We've got some salt and pepper shakers that match our L'Objet turtle napkin rings that are covered with Swarovski crystal that sparkle in even the faintest light. These drawer handles have the same treatment.
These drawer handles sparkle in even the faintest light!

While we were searching the catalog for the handles that had the right widths and same finish, we saw some switch plates and thought they were pretty. But we didn't order one.

Till a week later.

We thought about it and decided that we needed to finish the sparkly treatment of the newly lit hallway. So we went back down to San Diego Hardware, flipped through their catalog and ordered the switch plate that has the same finish as the drawer handles.

I tried and tried to get a picture of the sparkly switch plate. I tried day light. I tried at night with just the Solatube's light. But my lame camera couldn't really capture the sparkles. So I settled for a flash picture. It shows some sparkles.
I guess if you want to see their full beauty, you'll just have to schedule a visit.

Congratulations, Ms. Magic Meryle Cohen!

2013 Edition is here.

It's Labor Day Weekend. That can mean only one thing: Time to celebrate Ms. Magic Meryle Cohen's accomplishments!

This account of her accomplishments is a complete change from last year's story. It's not even characterized as celebrating her birthday. Happy Birthday, anyway, Magic Meryle!

I got some emails in May through the Contact link in my profile from "meryle cohen" pointing me to some items on the Internet that feature Cohen the Violinist.

One of meryle cohen's tips was to search YouTube for "Cohen the Violinist." To save you the time, here it is:

Ain't she grand?

Another message pointed me to a page of Oceanside Portraits. Click on it to enlarge it. Cohen the Violinist is the one with the violin.

This year's story pointed us to her information in the San Diego Reader. It has a link to subscribe to an RSS feed that lets us know about any of her performances The Reader knows about. I've subscribed! I hope to see her some day.

Some time ago, Izzy had gotten a message from meryle cohen through her profile's contact link. It pointed her to the YouTube video. She posted it on her blog. I left a comment about how I had gotten my messages and had been saving them for today's post. Izzy deleted her post. That's why some of you might have been confused about that message getting deleted. Thanks, Izzy, for letting me continue this story!

Good Friends

Mom has always been a Reduce, Reuse, Recycle person. When we were kids, she reused a plastic can with a perforated top. It's label had peeled off probably from having been washed before being reused. It was refilled with some scouring powder. Was it bought in bulk, further reducing waste?

Peggy made sure we knew what was in the can. On its side she wrote something like:

Bon Ami

French "good friend"

from Latin "bonus amicus"

That little bit of etymology introduced me to the notion that words aren't simply sounds that have had some sort a meaning assigned to them but rather have rich histories and meanings built right into them.

But not everybody has figured that out. Every day at work I hear people using words that pretty much sound like the words that they want to use. I know what they're saying but it bugs me that these highly educated people are just making sounds and not employing words that are full of meaning.

Some examples:

• When someone isn't making progress he tries a different tact.
• When something is irrelevant, it has become a mute point.
• When a skeleton of an idea needs more substance, its details get flushed out.

I grimace each time I hear those (and I hear them a lot) but I keep my mouth shut. That last one gets to me the most. I never hear anybody use the word they really want.

I'm sure somewhere in this post I have committed my own sin. But that's OK. You know what I meant.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A lamp.