small h

No, like Columbo. The next episodes are just as good.

Blackfish with olive, sage, lemon and urfa pepper. Potatoes roasted with rosemary, oregano and smoked paprika. Broccolini with cayenne.

One day, we woke up, and poof! Liquor license. It's Ripley's, I'm tellin' ya.

Asparagus and mushroom pizza, made with sourdough discard. I may be done messing around with different recipes and methods - this could be the one.

Some weeks ago, Mushroom Queens at USQ were giving away spent mushroom blocks to use as compost. I took one and mixed it with the potting soil for my balcony plants. Behold! I am growing accidental mushrooms!

Squid, asparagus, shiitakes, curry leaf, lime leaf. Watercress soup with carrot, ginger & turmeric. And radioactive yogurt.

Has to be a wedding cake to make the Times.

Baked whiting, Spanish-style. Roasted broccolini, Italian-style. Crashed potato with rosemary, Pioneer Kitchen-style.

And then you went to Disney World and Space Mountain was under repair. I was one of those scofflaws who lay down on the floor of the Sistine Chapel and got yelled at by nuns.

I parbaked this one, following the King Arthur instructions. My favorite discard recipes are crackers and biscuits. And I'm going to give sourdough pasta a try. My balcony garden is one of the great joys of my existence. It's in early stages now, but I am optimistic about the season.

I begin by saying that this happened in the country that invented logic. Before we left for Athens, I bought noon entry tickets to the Acropolis, one of them a "senior" ticket (not for me, 'cause I'm not quite there yet). I presented the tickets to the gate agent, and he said senior tickets were only for EU members. Okay, no problem, happy to pay the additional cost. Nope, I have to buy a whole 'nother ticket. Well, not super thrilled about that, but fine. Ah, but they are sold out of noon tickets, and the next available entry is 6pm. I immediately went into WTF mode. I have two tickets. There is already space reserved for us. How can the noon tickets be sold out, when I am holding two of them, and one can simply be exchanged for another ticket at a higher price? The gate agent wouldn't budge. It took us about 40:00 of arguing with two other people before we were finally ushered in, past the gate agent, who started yelling (luckily, I understand almost no Greek). Behold, the Acropalypse! IMG_6550.MOV The crowd thinned out once we got through the entrance, thank Athena.

Some highlights from the trip. We only went to one of the places on my original list (and it was pretty mid, as the kids say). Sardines at Varvakios Market. A very generous portion for five euros. Oysters at the same stand were eight or ten euros each, which I thought was kind of bizarre. Taramasalata and a gratis yogurt dessert from Καραμανλίδικα. We lucked into a table at this very popular mostly-deli in Monastiraki. Fine dining in Athens apparently means "pour stuff next to other stuff." Three of the dishes in our fancymeal at Varoulko on the Piraeus waterfront had this little flourish. This is a riff on dolmades - sorrel enclosing seafood paste. Click to see all the action! IMG_6728.mov Composed crab dish with green apple (and stuff poured next to it). Mullet with "cauliflower textures" and "carrot gel." Sure, why not. (It was very good.) Also, stuff poured next to it. Gopes at Fish Taverna on Aegina. I'd never heard of gopes. The internet offers five or six other names for it, but I'm sticking with gopes. Crazy bitter greens, more of a medicine than a food. Probably horta, but when you boil something this hard, it's tough to tell. Excellent eggplant salad and what was listed on the menu as "shrimp cooked with barley" (barley apparently = orzo) at Ouzeri o Skotadis, one of the approximately 87 interchangeable seaside restaurants in Aegina. Breakfast of champions - a cheese pie on the boardwalk. Back in Athens at Ella, owned by a friend of a friend. Really nice yellow split pea mash with lentils and grilled tomato, unimpressive fries, nice citrus and beet salad. And at the bar next door, which had a Muhammed Ali theme (?), our second encounter with Athens' other trend - drinks with sorbet, in this case, apple and basil. Here is The Rashomon Effect. Why is it called that? No idea. What does Rashomon have to do with Muhammed Ali? Also no idea. So! I've very old, now. But at least I spent my birthday someplace even older than me.

Sourdough discard pizza. Next time I might try broiling instead of baking, but no complaints! Basil from the balcony. Also lettuce and oregano from the balcony. The balcony is booming!

Dayum.

Inspirational, as I'm about to make sourdough discard pizza dough.

I guess my favorite memory has to be the time when my college roommate's dad took us to USC for dinner, and I got a little too exuberant and flung my wine into the ashtray, extinguishing dad's (probably 8th) cigarette. Dunno what I ate, but the embarrassment has stayed with me.

FYI https://cityparksfoundation.org/events/wet-leg/?mc_cid=1c594578cb&mc_eid=bee7194cc2

I loved that place. Like a restaurant in a model train set.

My sister said the same.

Today in first world problems: biscuit too flaky to function well in a sandwich.

Girl dinner.

I was there with my dad in January. He has a PhD, so this partly checks out.

$9. Damn tariffs.

Baked whiting, Spanish style. Roasted broccolini, maybe Italian style? Parm is involved.

Definitely duck eggs at USQ. Also pheasant. Not sure about today, but recently.