My mother said there was no need to spend all day making a meal that we’d eat for just a few minutes, when we could just visit and enjoy the day together, instead. And this reasonable idea worked for everyone. Since I knew we were taking her to the Malaysian restaurant — now on the short list for a James Beard award, by the way — and I saw that they were offering a Thanksgiving carryout dinner, we thought we’d give it a try. It was a good choice.
Our takeaway Thanksgiving dinner was tasty this evening. The only thing that went wrong were the re-heating directions, which underestimated the amount of time a de-boned, stuffed duck needed to reach the appropriate temperature after sitting overnight at 38 degrees. But we managed. And this version of the classic Chinese Eight Treasure Duck was tasty. The leek and herb stuffing made the whole thing. I would enjoy this again.
We also had a kale with pomegranate tahini dressing, Wagyu fat mashed potatoes with duck gravy, and a surprisingly tasty root vegetable tart.
For dessert, my lovely bride made a peach crumble, from our own peach tree.
Even in our small group of three, we enjoyed a family continuity. We sat at the dining room table that my grandparents bought for my mother, which has since been handed down to me. Above us there was a picture of my great-grandparents’ home, framed from some of the wood salvaged from that old place. Behind me sat some of the other small lived things that have made up the memories of our lives. Not just mine, or even my mother’s, but also some of the items that have come to The Yankee over the years.
This weekend we’ll mark 18 months in our new home, which means, for me, 18 months of introspection about the details of homes and the lives lived in them. This is our second Thanksgiving here. Last year we hosted my in-laws. And so now we’re having our second Thanksgiving guest. Two successful Thanksgivings. And this, repetition and pleasant memories, are how traditions form.
I think about that a lot in this house, which raised a family of five for two decades before the previous owners’ children flew from the nest. They’re everywhere in this house, of course, and they should be. And now, slowly, then suddenly, so are we.
I have no idea, of course, about how that family marks Thanksgiving. Being sentimental, I wish I did know. Incorporation is how traditions grow. But whatever those people do, I hope they’ve had a fine time doing it this week, as well. And I hope you have had a fine time in keeping your traditions, as well.
Even when the menu changes, when the locations move, or the guest list is altered, traditions can continue. Traditions are intentional. Traditions are in the spirit of things.
Our god-nephews (just go with it) have a light like this in their bedroom. Last Christmas they were of the age where they wanted to give you a tour of their room and all of their treasures. I had the privilege of meeting many of their action figures and see several of their creative projects. But this light stole the show. And so, as a joke, I ordered one for Christmas last year.
Ours has made a life for itself in the living room. I’ve recently discovered that you can program it to turn on and off at specific times. And, of course, you can control the colors through your phone. (Because what light doesn’t need an app?)
I think these were two of the better color schemes I saw recently.
My mother flew in yesterday for Thanksgiving. I picked her up at the airport, and we have enjoyed our visit so far. She ran some errands with my lovely bride this morning. I spent a little time finishing up the week’s grading. I even got ahead of things and wrote a few notes for classes next week. Also, I had a Zoom call with a student, as well. It has been a productive day.
This evening we went across the river and had Malaysian food. We met a friend there for dinner a few weeks ago and, just a bite or two in, I thought she would like this, so we’re back. And we ordered all of the same things. And she enjoyed it immensely, because it is good stuff.
Essentially a fragrant, flavorful, magical packet of Malaysian awesomeness! Coconut cream-soaked rice topped with sambal, roasted peanuts, crispy anchovies and hard-boiled egg, all neatly wrapped in a fresh banana leaf.
Rendang Daging
Braised beef in spices and coconut cream (our rendang is slow-cooked for at least 6 hours for the best flavor).
Ayam Goreng Berempah
Spice marinated fried chicken with sambal tomato.
We visited a cidery after dinner and just had ourselves a nice little evening in a quiet and empty Philadelphia. Everyone had gone somewhere for the holidays, it seems.
We enjoyed Kampar so much that we ordered their takeout Thanksgiving meal for tomorrow. No cooking, a new flavor profile, they even provided reheating directions. What could go wrong?
This weekend I improved my bike hipster cred with this new-to-me vintage belt buckle. I’d prefer that it was blue or orange or red, but the green will, I’m sure, grow on me.
I haven’t spent a lot of time looking, but I hadn’t run across a buckle like that before, rear derailleur looking all abstract, looking ready to climb. And when you know, you know, you know? So I bought it, and now it’s daily wear.
I have three daily wear belt buckles, which means I’m dangerously close to starting a collection. If I add three or four more I’d have a complete biographical collection. But I probably shouldn’t do that.
We went over the river on Friday night. A friend of almost 20 years from back home was in town. He used to live up here, too. And he was back for a conference, and heading up to New York to see his family. So we ventured over to pick him up for dinner.
And before we got there, we saw this sign.
Hmmmm …
We drove right beneath city hall. Built using brick, white marble and limestone, it is the world’s largest free-standing masonry building and was the world’s tallest habitable building when it opened in 1894.
Designed to be the world’s tallest building, it was surpassed during the phase of construction by the Washington Monument, the Eiffel Tower, and Turin, Italy’s Mole Antonelliana. The Mole Antonelliana, a few feet taller, suffered a spire collapse in a storm, and so this building stands a bit taller.
I’m sure we’ll discover more about it at some point in the future.
Our friend, Andre, suggested we try a Malaysian restaurant, Kampar, which has been shortlisted for a James Beard Award. While we waited the hostess gave me a new way to ask restaurant staff about their favorite dishes. She said the rendang daging was the reason she worked there. So we ordered that, and several other family-style dishes. And I’d work there for the rendang daging, too. It was a sweet, tender, slow-cooked meat. It offset the pickled vegetables well. Then, opposite that was a fried chicken done in a style that, by rights, I should not have enjoyed as much as I did. (But I want some more, even now, just thinking about it.)
So everything was great. We had about three bites before my lovely bride and I looked at each other and said, almost simultaneously, that my mother would like to try this place. So we’ll bring her when she comes up.
The weather is holding up. I got in 65 miles of riding this weekend, all of it just around the familiar neighborhoods. I’m trying to squeeze in every mile possible. You know the feeling, I’m sure, chasing the thing to forestall the thing.
That made sense right about here.
Now if this mild weather will just last until spring …
Some many years ago I had a brief passing thought about a photograph project. What would it be like to shoot all of the rust? It has a certain beauty. It says, well, a few different things, if you contemplate it long enough. It’s also everywhere.
And sometimes, I find myself staring at a bit of rust.
When I do, I think of that passing thought. How long would that take? And who are you kidding? How many things would rust away by the time you got back to the starting point? Saturday, when I was looking at that bridge, I wondered, wWhat does all of the rust in the world weigh?
I was staring at that bridge while my lovely bride was checking in for her triathlon. She did a half iron this weekend.
The half iron includes a 1.2 mile swim, in a river, this time. Here, she is exiting the water right on schedule.
Immediately after that, there’s a 56 mile bike ride.
She dropped her chain, and said someone swung out in front of her and ran her off the road. She was OK. At least two different people were less fortunate, and had accidents involving cars. Excellent job securing those semi-controlled roads by the race organizers and local authorities.
And after that 1.2 mile run, and well-paced 56 mile ride, she had a half marathon to wrap up the event. Here she is setting out for the run.
She had a great swim, and she was pleased with her bike ride. But she did not care for her run. Aches and pain and no shade and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, when she made it to the line, she finished with a smile.
And that’s her fifth 70.3, to go alongside her three Ironmen triathlons. And wraps up the best part of the season. I think she has one or two more runs scheduled, just for fun, but everything is for fun from here. (It should all be fun, I say. Finish with a smile, that’s what I say.)
On the way back home today, we stopped at this place. ‘
Because, look, when you tell a trusted friend you are driving through her native neck of the woods and she simply replies that you have to go eat at this place, you take the advice.
Our trusted friend was spot on with that recommendation.
Today was a long day in the car; there was a lot of reading Wikipedia to pass the time. Tomorrow, it’ll be back to work.
It was a damp and chilly and otherwise gray and rainy day here today. It also sprinkled. And moisture just simply hung in the air, like we were looking out over a moor. And it was also grey and dreary and it drizzled and it was cold. Furthermore, it was dank and slippery and nothing in the distance, such as it was, looked appealing. The clouds, not content to just pass lazily by, ground to a halt, and then lowered themselves upon all of us. It was the sort of day you might best address with hot tea and a horror story. Ridiculous for the second week of May, but ideal for sitting around and taking it easy. And, anyway, the pest control people were due between noon and 4 p.m.
He arrived at 4:35.
So it was good, then, that it was a day for blankets, because if we’d sat around and did nothing on a beautiful day waiting on that guy to show up and wave his high pressure sprayer around … that would have been a real … buzzkill.
Anyway, he got some spiders and ants and wasps. We will see if I should remain skeptical.
But while we visited away the afternoon, my mother had some serious cuddles with the cats. I realized that I inherited the “an animal is sleeping on me, and thus I can’t move a muscle in fear of disturbing the creature” thing from her.
Poe took a lot of naps.
We watched King Richard. It was OK. Two or three great scenes where you wonder if they were real, dramatized or Disneyfied. Probably a movie about Venus and Serena Williams, specifically, would be more engaging, but Will Smith can’t play those parts yet. AI can’t do everything, you.
We also watched the first episode, of three, of the new documentary on the Boston Marathon bombing.
I was driving to campus one fine, sunny Monday when those bombs exploded at the finish line in Boston. And I remember listening to the Boston et al scanners online in my campus office later in the week, and wishing people would stop trying to “report” from what they heard on scanners.
Scanners are endlessly fascinating. I grew up listening to them. For my entire childhood my grandparents had one sitting in the living room and it was either on, or I’d turn it on. But that’s where the sausage is being made in the first responder’s world, and that doesn’t at all make it valuable information for a regular audience, particularly in the most stressful circumstances, like, say, a vicious gunfight after a week-long manhunt.
That, too, was fascinating to hear, in an intense and morbid way, but that doesn’t always merit continually commentary from everyone else.
Anyway, the documentary is in three parts, and they’ve got a substantial handful of the key law enforcement types as prominent interview subjects. They are all speaking pretty candidly, which is delightful. The documentary will have to at least touch on the online sleuthing for suspects, but they surely won’t spend a lot of time there. I bet they won’t talk about the scanners at all. I bet David Ortiz makes it into the documentary.
They did not talk about the best part of the whole horrible experience, the one detail I’ll always shoehorn into a conversation about that particular story, and the part I hope to never forget.
NBC Sports reported people crossed the finish line and kept on running, running to Massachusetts General Hospital, where they donated blood for victims.
That’s just the most beautiful damn thing.
Then, so many others were moved to donate blood that Mass General and the Red Cross temporarily stopped accepting blood donations.
Regular people, working in the interest of helping other regular people. That’s why the bad guys can’t win. We won’t let them.
Out in the backyard, the black cherry (Prunus serotina) is flowering nicely. And, if you would, I’d just like you to stop for one brief moment here and contemplate the focal plane of this photograph.
This is how it worked. Our sellers left us a list of all of the wonderful growing trees here. It’s terrific, really. And on that list, it simply said “Cherry trees.” They were very helpful in many ways, the sellers, but I think a little map would have been fun. It would have eliminated some mystery.
But the discovery is the fun, you say! And you are right! And we are still discovering things!
Late last summer I figured out which of the two trees were the cherry trees. That sounds ridiculous, it’s not like we have 400 acres here or anything, but these particular trees don’t look like how I remember, or envision, cherry trees. These are big. Then one day late last season I had this great idea: look for trees with fruits growing on them.
Viola.
So there are the two cherry trees out back. Tall as can be. I thought they were chokecherry trees, but then I began reading about that species and these two guys are much bigger than those. So I’ve now decided they must be black cherry trees. To be fair to me, according to what I’ve just read, the two species are related.
See? Still discovering things. (And I love that part.)
I’ll try to eat more of them this year.
Speaking of eating, for dinner tonight we went to a local Indian restaurant. This is a new-to-us place, but well regarded, and widely so. It sits in an old bank light to look like a new age church and people come from far and wide to try the food. Indeed, when someone who’s been around here a long time asks where we moved, and we tell them, they ask us if we’ve been there yet.
And now, having gone, I’m quite disappointed it took us almost a year to go.
This was so good.
I had the lamb biryani.
The menu describes it as “Fragrant basmati rice are layered with a spicy and delicious Lamb curry made of succulent chunks of lamb leg to make this classic flavorful rice entree.” That’s enough for two meals, easily. And so that’s dinner tomorrow, and I’m sure it will be even better in that way that the best spiced dishes often are.
My lovely bride and my mother each tried different chicken dishes, pronounced them both incredible, and we were all quite pleased. Especially since the guy said “We only do reservations on the weekend, but come right this way.”
Every plate that passed by looked intriguing. Most of the things on the menu was calling out to me. We’ll be back there, and probably quite soon.
Have a great weekend! We’re going to do something this weekend we’ve never done before!
