edenfalling: stained-glass butterfly in a purple frame (butterfly)
[personal profile] edenfalling
Things I hate: mentally tripping over, while halfway through falling asleep, a new plot thread that will shake up the middle section of "Lemonade" and help tie up the overarching Thing with the Sargul demons. Except I had not made any plans for this plot thread so I am all at sixes and sevens with regard to introducing it in ch. 17, and god only knows how many extra chapters it will add. *beats head against desk*

Things I love: mentally tripping over, while halfway through falling asleep, a new plot thread that will shake up the middle section of "Lemonade" and help tie up the overarching Thing with the Sargul demons. And now I get to hash out the details and make it work! *busily world-builds*

...

Writing is an addiction. If you haven't already started, don't.

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Parents have been and gone. Dinner last night was something of a mixed bag: the salads and appetizers at WildFire were quite good, as was my dad's cider brined pork chop, but my three-cheese macaroni was merely solid comfort food, and unfortunately my mom's pasta and seafood special was overcooked and rather tough/dry, as if it had been kept under a heat lamp for far too long.

Then we came back to my apartment for presents and desert, which was nice.

This morning we ate at McDonalds, then continued on to Home Depot where I bought a little strainer/drain cover thing for my bathroom sink (because I am tired of worrying about dropping rings and toothpaste caps down the drain) and some chains and S-hooks for hanging plants. (One of my 'presents' was a massive spider plant that has been living in my parents' bay window for several years. Technically it already belonged to either me or Vicky, since all spider plants in our family are asexually descended from the two baby spider plants we were given around 1990, but I had not had a place for it in my old apartment.) My mom also bought some plants at Home Depot, and my dad turned in some of the new curlicue fluorescent energy-saving lightbulbs for recycling.

We returned home to hang my spider plant and leave Mom's plants in the warm apartment rather than the cold trunk of the minivan, and then headed up the west shore of Cayuga to Bellwether Hard Cider. They charge $2 for a tasting (or $3 for a tasting plus a souvenir glass). Their ciders are quite good, and very interesting -- it hadn't much occurred to me previously, but of course the variety of apple would have an effect on the taste of the resulting cider. Also, some ciders are carbonated while others are not, and they vary in sweetness and level of alcohol. (Apparently the legal definition of hard cider vs. apple wine is 7% alcohol content; below that, it's cider; above that, it's wine. Which is useful to know.)

Dad bought a bottle of King Baldwin (dry, sparkling, made from Tompkins King and Baldwin apples) and a bottle of Black Magic (semi-sweet, blended with black currants) for use in family happy hours at the island. (Happy hour in this sense does not mean cheap drinks at a bar, though I suspect that was the origin of the name. Our happy hour is a custom Ardis introduced to the family when she married Grandpa; around 4:30-5:pm, you get together in the living room for crackers, cheese, wine, and conversation, delaying dinner until after 7pm.) He also kindly bought a second bottle of Black Magic for me.

We had lunch at New Delhi Diamond's, an Indian restaurant kitty-corner from the public library, and then decided against going to the Johnson Museum as it was already 2:30pm and my parents wanted to get at least some of the drive down to NJ done in the light.

All in all, a good visit. :-)

WARNING: Incomming Foodie.

Date: 2010-02-14 01:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vehrec.livejournal.com
Well, at least your mom didn't get the Monday seafood special or the Sunday brunch special. :D Then she might REALLY have been in trouble. Specials in restaurants are sometimes the last dumping ground for things about to go bad, things that haven't sold over the weekend when the markest are closed and are always going to be a bit of a risk. Now, Friday night? That's a known risk, fairly safe except for the risk of overcooked seafood, and lets face it, that can strike without warning in any cook's kitchen. One story from a book I own on the kitchen life, The Soul of a Chef recounts the visit of a food critic to then newcomer Micheal Symon's Lola. (http://www.lolabistro.com/) A food critic who was an old and well versed master of pasta. Wouldn't you know it? His pasta dish was overcooked. Symon's an Iron Chef these days.

It IS conceivable that your mother's dish was done early and then shoved under a Salamander to be reheated. But I'd just put that down to some rookie line cook or a distracted one. As for the mac and Chesse... well I don't know if I'd trust or expect anyone but Thomas Keller to elevate that above comfort food.

TL;DR version, you dish was a 'error' made by the chef, its originator. Your mom's dissatisfaction was probably caused by someone associated more closely with the final product.

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Elizabeth Culmer

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