Today is Fathers’ Day, and it falls bittersweet. It will be 2 years in July when we had to bury him, but his legacy and memory live on as strong as ever. While I couldn’t call him up today and chit chat about cars and laugh with him about the general dysfunction that the American auto industry is flailing through (with the exception of Ford), I still talked to him.
All day.
About how good it made me feel when he visited Shannon and I a few years ago in what was an obviously 2 bedroom apartment with one bed. The other bedroom was filled with computer junk and a very uncomfortable couch. He never batted an eyelash. As long as I was happy, so was he.
He’d known or suspected my sexuality for a long time, but never asked any questions or seemed to care one way or the other. That was his greatness: he didn’t care about a lot of things. Just if someone, child or not, was a good person who was carrying his or her own weight and helping out others when he could.
I called Daddy the night I bought our car in February 2007. He thought I bought a good car (it’s a Ford) and got a good deal. Both are true, but his approval made it all the more important. The Daddy seal of approval was always the highest honor we could attain.
Not that he was that hard to please.
One of my most vivid memories of childhood (a kind of Mayberry moment) was him coming home late one Friday afternoon in the summer after having worked all day 60 miles away with candy bars in his pockets. My sister and I got to choose a pocket, and we kept what we found. I don’t know if I got a Baby Ruth or a Three Musketeers, but I know it was good.
Like I said, it’s been a bittersweet day. Remembering a man I love but can’t call up and talk to when I want.
I’ll keep what I have: memories about and stories of the greatest man I’ve ever known.
Happy Fathers’ Day, wherever you are. When you were in the hospital there at the last, I could see my new car from your room. I was hoping you’d at least get to see it.
No matter. Trust me: she’s good. She looks like a cat getting ready to pounce even when she’s sitting still. Her name is Baby. And Baby gets good mileage when I let her, but she doesn’t mind getting up and going, either.
You’d be proud, Daddy. I am. Of the both of us.
21 June 2009
20 June 2009
Spinach and Cheese Pasta: Good Food that Doesn't Have to be Chewed
Shannon’s been going through dental work for what seems like a lifetime. In reality, it’s only been a couple of months, but each trip to the dental school in San Antonio is an ordeal. We have the choice of leaving before the sun comes up or coming back to Austin with rush hour in full flower.
It's an ugly flower at the very least.
Since I can’t see very well when the sun is down or barely up, we opt for the latter. My vision has deteriorated to the point that I can’t safely drive on highways when it’s dark.
As bad as the trips are, they pale in comparison with preparing menus for someone who’s having his teeth systematically taken out.
I have to make sure the food is good and nutritious, but also prepare it in a way that doesn’t require chewing. In the process I’ve come up with some really good recipes.
Thus, my newest creation: orzo with spinach and gouda.
If you’re like I was a week ago, you don’t know what orzo is. It’s a very small pasta that plumps up to the size of a very large piece of rice. But it tastes better than rice because it’s made out of wheat, not rice. It’s a hearty addition to something as simple as spinach and chicken soup.
Ingredients:
1 box of mushroom broth (organic, if available)
1 pound of spinach, julienned
¼ cup of carrots, julinenned
1 pound of orzo
4 slices of fresh ginger
Sliced green onions (but only the white parts)
2 tablespoons of white pepper
2 teaspoons of salt
½ cup of smoked gouda cheese
fresh cracked black pepper to taste
Putting it together:
Dump the mushroom broth into a medium to large sauce pan on medium heat. Slice the spinach into strips. (Rolling them up and using scissors makes this much easier.)
Julienne the carrots. (There is no easy way to do that.)
Cut four substantial slices of ginger from a fresh root (dried ginger will not work)
Toss the carrots, spinach and ginger into the brew. Add the white pepper (do not use black pepper at this point—doing so will fundamentally alter the flavor of this dish) and salt.
Let it come to a boil. Turn the heat down and dump to the orzo in.
Cover. (If you don’t have a lid that fits the pan you’re using, I’ve found that skillets make very good lids. Especially the cast iron kinds. They’re good and heavy, and won’t blow off if the heat gets too high.)
Stir occasionally to keep the pasta from sticking. (Orzo has a nasty habit of sinking to the bottom and sticking to the pan, and you don’t want to lose any of the flavor to stuck pasta.)
When it’s approaching done (it’s done when the pasta swells to about 2 or 3 times its original size), toss in the white parts of the green onions. Stir them and remove the whole thing from heat. The onions will continue to cook as you finish the rest.
Stir in the smoked gouda and let the whole thing sit for a little bit.
Add black pepper to taste (freshly ground, of course).
Serve and enjoy.
Not having teeth doesn’t have to be so bad. Even for those of us who have some left.
It's an ugly flower at the very least.
Since I can’t see very well when the sun is down or barely up, we opt for the latter. My vision has deteriorated to the point that I can’t safely drive on highways when it’s dark.
As bad as the trips are, they pale in comparison with preparing menus for someone who’s having his teeth systematically taken out.
I have to make sure the food is good and nutritious, but also prepare it in a way that doesn’t require chewing. In the process I’ve come up with some really good recipes.
Thus, my newest creation: orzo with spinach and gouda.
If you’re like I was a week ago, you don’t know what orzo is. It’s a very small pasta that plumps up to the size of a very large piece of rice. But it tastes better than rice because it’s made out of wheat, not rice. It’s a hearty addition to something as simple as spinach and chicken soup.
Ingredients:
1 box of mushroom broth (organic, if available)
1 pound of spinach, julienned
¼ cup of carrots, julinenned
1 pound of orzo
4 slices of fresh ginger
Sliced green onions (but only the white parts)
2 tablespoons of white pepper
2 teaspoons of salt
½ cup of smoked gouda cheese
fresh cracked black pepper to taste
Putting it together:
Dump the mushroom broth into a medium to large sauce pan on medium heat. Slice the spinach into strips. (Rolling them up and using scissors makes this much easier.)
Julienne the carrots. (There is no easy way to do that.)
Cut four substantial slices of ginger from a fresh root (dried ginger will not work)
Toss the carrots, spinach and ginger into the brew. Add the white pepper (do not use black pepper at this point—doing so will fundamentally alter the flavor of this dish) and salt.
Let it come to a boil. Turn the heat down and dump to the orzo in.
Cover. (If you don’t have a lid that fits the pan you’re using, I’ve found that skillets make very good lids. Especially the cast iron kinds. They’re good and heavy, and won’t blow off if the heat gets too high.)
Stir occasionally to keep the pasta from sticking. (Orzo has a nasty habit of sinking to the bottom and sticking to the pan, and you don’t want to lose any of the flavor to stuck pasta.)
When it’s approaching done (it’s done when the pasta swells to about 2 or 3 times its original size), toss in the white parts of the green onions. Stir them and remove the whole thing from heat. The onions will continue to cook as you finish the rest.
Stir in the smoked gouda and let the whole thing sit for a little bit.
Add black pepper to taste (freshly ground, of course).
Serve and enjoy.
Not having teeth doesn’t have to be so bad. Even for those of us who have some left.
18 June 2009
Smokin' Strawberries
I’m always shocked and pleasantly surprised to stumble across a combination of flavors whose resonance creates a taste that is greater than the sum of its parts. A little citrus juice can make an ordinary cantaloupe extraordinary. Sausage in a meatloaf pops.
I made two such discoveries this past weekend: how to prepare the perfect strawberries when all you can get is shipped in from California and what goes amazingly well with those perfect berries.
When I was a kid, we had a strawberry patch in the back yard. It grew over the septic tank, so they were always big and luscious. I picked about 8 quarts every other day and sold most of them to the neighbors. There are only so many strawberry pies we could eat, and there was always one in the fridge.
I can’t get quite that quality of berry any more, so I like to sweeten the pot. I slice them up, put in some raw sugar, honey and fresh—squeezed orange juice. That gives them a whang and sweetness that rest on the palate for a good while. It’s a perfect combination of sweet and interesting.
If you want to take it to the next level of flavor combinations, get some smoked goat cheese, cut a slice of it and put some of the berries and juice on top. The flavors, though an unlikely combination, will rock your world. It’s a 3-D taste experience.
The combination would make a very good appetizer for a fancy dinner party or just good snack food for a less formal occasion. For the formal occasion, use a couple of slices placed on an angle that compliments the serving dish and spoon some berries and juice over it. For less formal ones, put a round of cheese on a plate and spoon the berries and juice over it.
Depending on your religion, you will either see Jesus, Buddha or Allah. If you don’t have religion, you’ll just see infinity and what is possible.
It’s all pretty much the same.
Good food that both surprises and delights is not a luxury if you do it right. Good ingredients mean good food.
Strawberries and smoked goat cheese. Think about it. The intermingling of sweet and tart and smoke in a humble strawberry. Who would have thought?
God is good when He wants to be.
I made two such discoveries this past weekend: how to prepare the perfect strawberries when all you can get is shipped in from California and what goes amazingly well with those perfect berries.
When I was a kid, we had a strawberry patch in the back yard. It grew over the septic tank, so they were always big and luscious. I picked about 8 quarts every other day and sold most of them to the neighbors. There are only so many strawberry pies we could eat, and there was always one in the fridge.
I can’t get quite that quality of berry any more, so I like to sweeten the pot. I slice them up, put in some raw sugar, honey and fresh—squeezed orange juice. That gives them a whang and sweetness that rest on the palate for a good while. It’s a perfect combination of sweet and interesting.
If you want to take it to the next level of flavor combinations, get some smoked goat cheese, cut a slice of it and put some of the berries and juice on top. The flavors, though an unlikely combination, will rock your world. It’s a 3-D taste experience.
The combination would make a very good appetizer for a fancy dinner party or just good snack food for a less formal occasion. For the formal occasion, use a couple of slices placed on an angle that compliments the serving dish and spoon some berries and juice over it. For less formal ones, put a round of cheese on a plate and spoon the berries and juice over it.
Depending on your religion, you will either see Jesus, Buddha or Allah. If you don’t have religion, you’ll just see infinity and what is possible.
It’s all pretty much the same.
Good food that both surprises and delights is not a luxury if you do it right. Good ingredients mean good food.
Strawberries and smoked goat cheese. Think about it. The intermingling of sweet and tart and smoke in a humble strawberry. Who would have thought?
God is good when He wants to be.
03 June 2009
Strange Times
If anyone doubts that we live in strange times, they only have to take a quick look around. The government owns a majority share of GM and a significant portion of Chrysler. Not to mention AIG and other financial firms. All the major banks are in hock to the Fed. Friday evenings bring a bank failure more often than not, and the FDIC recently shut one down mid-week, contrary to its policy of closing banks at 5 p.m. on the last business day of the week so to have time re-open on time on the next business day.
Chrysler, with the help of foreign governments, seems poised to emerge from bankruptcy and either sink or swim. The proof will come when they actually convince people to buy their cars. And we aren’t there yet. If the deal with Fiat closes (and that’s not a done deal yet), we’ll see whether a combination of two ailing companies can emerge significantly stronger than the sum of their present weakness.
GM has the same problems as Chrysler, but, since they’re an international company in a way that Chrysler isn’t, everything gets complicated.
What happens with GM China or GM Europe or GM South America? Listening to one news report after another today, I don’t really know. In fact, I don’t really understand which part of the multinational company is being restructured and where the other entities come in. If they do at all.
That uncertainty and confusion will likely make consumers even less confident about buying a GM product. In many ways, the burden of their complexity is their biggest liability.
Still, I have an eternal optimism that comes from somewhere I don’t know. Perhaps it’s faith, but I don’t see GM or Chrysler as religious issues.
Maybe it’s a fundamental faith in the financial system and its ability to heal itself.
Maybe I’m just naive or stupid, but I don’t think so.
I think it originates in the cynically jaded optimism that informs the rest of my life.
My best guess is that Chrysler and GM each have a 50/50 chance of surviving long enough to turn their respective companies around and that the failure of either one could easily pull the other down with it. And the undertow could become strong enough to suck Ford out to sea, as well.
Domestic auto sales hold the key to any turnaround: they must rebound to about 12 millions units annually. If not, any (and possibly all) of the Big 3 could end up liquidated.
Consumer confidence will have to increase to a level that people are willing to take on the significant personal debt incurred when buying a new car. As long as job security continues to be so widely tenuous, car sales will drop or remain stagnant at best. So as long as unemployment continues to rise, car sales will continue to slump.
The auto industry is inextricably tied to thousands of companies in this country and to many more around the world. As companies fail, their former employees will not be buying cars. Employees that fear their company might fail won’t be either. They will hoard cash, instead, and not buy anything that isn’t an immediate necessity. Many, if they have to buy a car, will buy a used one, a purchase that does the industry no good.
If President Obama’s administration succeeds in salvaging the parts of Chrysler and GM that are worth keeping and the companies survive, he will be a hero. If it fails, he will be reviled as arrogant and incompetent. It’s the biggest gamble Mr. Obama has entered into in his entire political life. The outcome will either confirm him as a saint or condemn him as a naïve meddler.
If he fails, many will forget or just plain not understand the enormity of the crisis that we are living through, and the blame game will go into overdrive.
I don’t have answers. I only have hope, and that’s a rare commodity these days.
Thanks to swift and decisive action by our president, we’ve averted what could have easily spiraled into a depression equal to or even worse than the 30’s. Catching companies in mid-air as they implode is no small feat.
I hope that the US government will get out of the car and financial services business as soon as possible. The idea of the Treasury owning big chunks GM and AIG, among others, gives me pause. I just don’t much like it. It is contrary to everything I believe is best practice.
When best practices fail, we have to turn to the next best thing. And that’s where we are now: the unfortunate owners of some highly risky companies.
Although it may take years to rebuild the financial system, reconstruction is going full speed ahead. Recovery will follow the reconstruction by a year or two.
Still, I don’t think the market will go to 13,000 anytime soon. I’m expecting 9,000 by year-end, and maybe 10,000 in a year and half. It was highly over-valued at 13,000 but is about as under-valued with it sitting at 8,700.
As I said, these are strange times. I am old enough to remember when gas went from about $0.33/gallon to over a dollar in what seemed like one night back in the 70’s. The effect was crippling and led to inflation and unemployment on just about every front. The car that had cost $10 to fill up suddenly took $30. The crushing effect of the sudden spike spared almost no one from financial hardship.
Times were bad, but today I’m more insulated from the vagaries of the economy than most people. Because of my job, I know the gory details of my company’s financial position, and I’m not concerned at this point. And I can still afford gas (what little we use), rent, food and any number of things I don’t really need. They’re great to have, but I don’t really need a bunch of them.
Granted, I would be surprised to see a raise this year, but I can live with having paychecks that don’t bounce and show up on time. Too many people don’t have that luxury: being able to sleep at night, knowing they’ll have a job for the foreseeable future.
In the midst of all the fear and uncertainty and hopelessness, I still have faith, the evidence of things not seen.
Chrysler, with the help of foreign governments, seems poised to emerge from bankruptcy and either sink or swim. The proof will come when they actually convince people to buy their cars. And we aren’t there yet. If the deal with Fiat closes (and that’s not a done deal yet), we’ll see whether a combination of two ailing companies can emerge significantly stronger than the sum of their present weakness.
GM has the same problems as Chrysler, but, since they’re an international company in a way that Chrysler isn’t, everything gets complicated.
What happens with GM China or GM Europe or GM South America? Listening to one news report after another today, I don’t really know. In fact, I don’t really understand which part of the multinational company is being restructured and where the other entities come in. If they do at all.
That uncertainty and confusion will likely make consumers even less confident about buying a GM product. In many ways, the burden of their complexity is their biggest liability.
Still, I have an eternal optimism that comes from somewhere I don’t know. Perhaps it’s faith, but I don’t see GM or Chrysler as religious issues.
Maybe it’s a fundamental faith in the financial system and its ability to heal itself.
Maybe I’m just naive or stupid, but I don’t think so.
I think it originates in the cynically jaded optimism that informs the rest of my life.
My best guess is that Chrysler and GM each have a 50/50 chance of surviving long enough to turn their respective companies around and that the failure of either one could easily pull the other down with it. And the undertow could become strong enough to suck Ford out to sea, as well.
Domestic auto sales hold the key to any turnaround: they must rebound to about 12 millions units annually. If not, any (and possibly all) of the Big 3 could end up liquidated.
Consumer confidence will have to increase to a level that people are willing to take on the significant personal debt incurred when buying a new car. As long as job security continues to be so widely tenuous, car sales will drop or remain stagnant at best. So as long as unemployment continues to rise, car sales will continue to slump.
The auto industry is inextricably tied to thousands of companies in this country and to many more around the world. As companies fail, their former employees will not be buying cars. Employees that fear their company might fail won’t be either. They will hoard cash, instead, and not buy anything that isn’t an immediate necessity. Many, if they have to buy a car, will buy a used one, a purchase that does the industry no good.
If President Obama’s administration succeeds in salvaging the parts of Chrysler and GM that are worth keeping and the companies survive, he will be a hero. If it fails, he will be reviled as arrogant and incompetent. It’s the biggest gamble Mr. Obama has entered into in his entire political life. The outcome will either confirm him as a saint or condemn him as a naïve meddler.
If he fails, many will forget or just plain not understand the enormity of the crisis that we are living through, and the blame game will go into overdrive.
I don’t have answers. I only have hope, and that’s a rare commodity these days.
Thanks to swift and decisive action by our president, we’ve averted what could have easily spiraled into a depression equal to or even worse than the 30’s. Catching companies in mid-air as they implode is no small feat.
I hope that the US government will get out of the car and financial services business as soon as possible. The idea of the Treasury owning big chunks GM and AIG, among others, gives me pause. I just don’t much like it. It is contrary to everything I believe is best practice.
When best practices fail, we have to turn to the next best thing. And that’s where we are now: the unfortunate owners of some highly risky companies.
Although it may take years to rebuild the financial system, reconstruction is going full speed ahead. Recovery will follow the reconstruction by a year or two.
Still, I don’t think the market will go to 13,000 anytime soon. I’m expecting 9,000 by year-end, and maybe 10,000 in a year and half. It was highly over-valued at 13,000 but is about as under-valued with it sitting at 8,700.
As I said, these are strange times. I am old enough to remember when gas went from about $0.33/gallon to over a dollar in what seemed like one night back in the 70’s. The effect was crippling and led to inflation and unemployment on just about every front. The car that had cost $10 to fill up suddenly took $30. The crushing effect of the sudden spike spared almost no one from financial hardship.
Times were bad, but today I’m more insulated from the vagaries of the economy than most people. Because of my job, I know the gory details of my company’s financial position, and I’m not concerned at this point. And I can still afford gas (what little we use), rent, food and any number of things I don’t really need. They’re great to have, but I don’t really need a bunch of them.
Granted, I would be surprised to see a raise this year, but I can live with having paychecks that don’t bounce and show up on time. Too many people don’t have that luxury: being able to sleep at night, knowing they’ll have a job for the foreseeable future.
In the midst of all the fear and uncertainty and hopelessness, I still have faith, the evidence of things not seen.
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