voyager

Another aside. Tests are such an arbitrary screen. Our son always tested easily, without stress and showing his best self. Simply his nature. A friend of his told how he had to press his knees together to keep his whole body from shaking when taking a major test. Again, simply his temperament. Doesn't seem fair to award either of them on the basis of the same test.

An aside, San Francisco had for 100+ years a superb academic public high school. VERY difficult to get into, even from the most rigorous private schools. Recently, it was proposed that it was too heavily weighted toward Asian students, put to a vote and its requirements and curriculum modified to suit a less rigorous norm. So now we have no free, public high school recognized nationwide for excellence. If there's a win here, I can't see it. FWIW, for some 30 years my aunt was the Latin teacher at this school. She joked that she loved teaching Latin, not just for its discipline, but because since it was not a required course, she had no qualms kicking an obstreperous kid out of class. When I got to college, many kids were from this school. When they heard that she was my aunt, they were in awe. Apparently she was herself an institution.

Yes.

Absolutely! The problem was with the mismatch of student and school. His high school college counselor shook her head and said that this was an utterly foreseeable disaster, that she/we/he should have realized how totally foreign this school would be for an "outside the mould" kid from a super-liberal California city.

This kind of attitude is worth noting. Our son was wooed by and given early admission to a small ivy league that that year was deemed No 1 in the country. City born and bred, he found himself a fish out of water in the minuscule New England town, finally yelling "uncle" near end of first year. "Get me out of here!" Wound up in an enormous urban school, where he flourished. BUT, although he had accessed counseling at the first school, once he expressed a desire to leave, not one outreach from school staff asking for reasons or offering help. "Pack your bags, kid. There's hundreds waiting for your spot!" eta a favorite anecdote. He told how he realized how out of place he was when in chemistry class, he looked down the aisles and counted 23 pair of Sperry Topsiders and one pair of yellow Converse hightops.

That's not entirely a bad thing. It starts the "We are not they" conversation early on. Our son went to lower and middle with the likes of Gettys and other lesser but incredibly wealthy names. He came home from an early play date with the comment, "Funny family. David has four mothers and three of them have brown faces." He didn't know about housekeepers, cooks and nannies. And/but he soon understood that some people live very differently from us and from anything to which we might aspire. And that some of those people are "perfectly nice" and others of them are not. LESSON: don't get sucked in by the latter.

D-i-l texted last week from dinner at Le CouCou. No report on the food yet. She was excited to be there since we had taken her to several dinners at two of Daniel's restaurants in Paris.

I'm not a big spender but I've seen many starters no larger than the infamous shrimp that are priced at/near $28. I boggle that this was unfamiliar to Sietsema. Are food critics allowed to carry chips on their shoulders?

I dunno. IMHO this article parallels Eater's latest hit piece. I can't say that I'm convinced.

Ah! codfish cakes! A childhood memory and favorite.

It's hard to single out Single Thread as guilty promoting “luxury visitor dining at the expense of local residents.” The entire Sonona/Napa area has become both destination and retirement residence of the loaded.

Tripas is very prevalent in NorCal taquerias. As you say, no relation to tripe.

In today's journalism, it's (fill in the blank) "The writer clearly doesn't know the difference between ____ and ____." Apply to your favorite category.

Get a Bamix immersion (stick) blender. Rinse under hot water, stand to dry, put away.

High of 91 here today. TOO HOT for me. No relief until Sunday/Monday.

In France, when it's 'too early" for me for wine, I order panaché, French shandy. Not very sweet, a good drink.

Heh! And you think YOU do? Hang in there.

I have never had that caliber meal on United, any class, domestic or international, and I’m a “million miler”.

Mississippi roast Cottage Pie. Carrots and peas added to "reserved" roast and its juices. Tasty dish, but I have the suspicion that Sneak and I have misconstrued the concept of "aged beef". This is, at least, the end of this last do.

The sample read on Amazon reads straightforward enough albeit all from the "brunch", aka most boring section of the book. What raises my hackles are chef recipes that require 25 ingredients and several hours of work to create a sauce that you're instructed to put in a squeeze bottle and make 7 dots around the plate. "Whaaaaaat?"

So do I!

An experiment: grilled prawns on curried carrot puree. This was "good", and worth the try, but is possibly a winner with proper tweaking.

Home from the country, hungry, don't feel like cooking -> sausage hash. (Have I mentioned that I love hash in all its infinite variety? Meats of all kinds, fish, shellfish, mollusks, all delicious. What's not to like about onions, potato and protein?)

Thanks! It’s nice to know “people”! It’s for my d-I-l and her bestie who’s treating. If they’re successful, and I had a clue who you are, I could be had for lunch at my place. Providing you act fast. My clock’s ticking.

Anybody have the secret phone number?