a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I had a picture of my vaccine card ready as we stepped into Two Beers Brewing Co. in Seattle’s industrial district, tonight. As of Monday, proof of a coronavirus vaccination —or a negative test— is required at most indoor businesses in King County.
Checking for one’s proof was done at the counter serving the beers, and even then it was very cursory. The place was busy and they seemed a little short on staff, as is the case in most places these days.
I made another Sunday night run
out to Amazon Fresh on Jackson Street last night.
They were again out of the Amazon branded milk and Chobani yogurt that they had previous times, and that I was looking for. It’s not a big deal; I was just a little surprised.
On the plus side: I discovered that they stock these biscotti called Nonni’s Biscotti ‘Originali Classic Almond’.
The biscotti are so dry that I dunk them for less than one second in my coffee, and then they are all soaked up and ready for eating.
We walked down to Chuck’s Hop Shop in Central District for our beers tonight It was barely 60°F/ 15°C, with a little wind chill.
The beer was good, though, as were the burgers and chicken sandwiches from the food truck nearby.
I made another run to the Amazon Fresh store tonight.
Every time I go there, they give me a voucher for another $10.
So will I have to go back again :^).
rusk noun \ ˈrəsk \
a sweet or plain bread baked, sliced, and baked again until dry and crisp
biscotto noun bis·cot·to \ bi-ˈskät-ō \ plural biscotti \ bi-ˈskät-ē \
a crisp cookie or biscuit of Italian origin that is flavored usually with anise and filberts or almonds —usually used in plural
[Definitions from merriam-webster.com]
I sometimes buy biscotti at Whole Foods, but they don’t always have it.
The best bet for me, when I want a special treat to dunk into my morning coffee, is to go to British Pantry in Redmond. They usually have some of Ouma’s rusks, an import from South Africa.
A large piece of the 12″ Key lime pie I had bought at Costco ($14.99) is left over from yesterday.
I had a piece for dessert tonight (of course).
There is rain on the way, that will arrive early in the morning. The rainfall here in the city has been low the last few weeks: at 0.69 inches (normally 1.60 inches this far into May).
Late afternoon, I walked to The Chieftain pub on 12th Avenue with my amigos, for a beer and a bite.
Yay! We made it back into The Elysian tonight, for the first time in some 15 months. (We had ordered take-out meals from it several times during this period, though).
Ordering beers and food is done by each individual, using a smartphone. The diner zaps the QR code on the card with the phone’s camera (card visible in the middle of the table), pick items from the menu, and pay for it on the phone by credit card, tip included. The wait staff shows up with the items a little bit later.
Will restaurants like The Elysian go back to physical menus in say, 6 months or so? Time will tell. One would assume that they do take orders from patrons that do not have even one smart phone in the group, to place an order with. (Aliens from Mars?).
It was time to open my tub of Marmite today. Whoah!
All three of my regular grocery stores were out of Marmite.
Well, I want my Marmite, and so they ‘forced’ me to search for it on Amazon, where it was available in tubs.
Whoah. Sign me up, got to get some of that! I thought.
These are the beers I had picked up on Sunday, at the enormous store called Total Wine & More, on Armory Way. They only had one six-pack of the Beck’s left, but I got more at the Whole Foods grocery store nearby.
I ran into a super-simple recipe for pasta sauce in the New York Times. Canned peeled tomatoes, butter, onion, a pinch or two of salt. That’s it.
The recipe mentioned San Marzano tomatoes. Would these be available on Amazon? I wondered.
Yes .. the original product from Italy! and so I ordered some.
Below is what I did to cook the sauce tonight.
There is a little basil with the tomato in the can.
I used Kerrygold Irish butter and white onion.
The onion is taken out afterwards.
I tossed the sauce with the pasta, and that was it.
No parmesan, so that I could savor the sunny, earthy tomato flavor better.
The onion and carrots that I had bought for making red lentil soup with, were not going to last forever. So I finally got going today, and got it all in the pot. Voila! It’s a welcome change from the same old grocery store soup I have had for many weeks now.
I like my confections bittersweet (marmalade, dark chocolate).
My kitchen cupboard had been out of marmalade for a while, and it was time to order some online.
I again picked up my groceries that I had ordered online, yesterday.
I forgot to review the substitutes that that the in-store picker had made, beforehand. (They pick a ‘similar’ item if they had ran out of the exact one that you had ordered).
Well: the Marmite that I had ordered was replaced with dry yeast.
Yikes. No! Cannot do that. They are absolutely not equivalent! I told the store this on the feedback form afterwards (without yelling at them).
I dined at Luby’s a few times while I lived in Houston in 1999.
The restaurant chain is now headed for liquidation.
Writes Jill Smits in Texas Highways Magazine:
‘If you grew up in Texas, you’ve probably eaten at Luby’s. And if you’ve eaten at Luby’s, your feelings about the restaurant may run surprisingly deep. While it’s been decades since I stepped inside one, my nostalgia for square fish, church clothes, and green Jell-O has been in overdrive since hearing the 73-year-old Houston-based cafeteria chain is closing multiple locations and heading toward liquidation’.
Parmesan was known as early as 1348. In the writings of Boccaccio (in the Decameron), he invents a ‘mountain, all of grated Parmesan cheese’, on which ‘dwell folk that do nought else but make macaroni and ravioli, and boil them in capon’s broth, and then throw them down to be scrambled for; and hard by flows a rivulet of Vernaccia, the best that ever was drunk, and never a drop of water therein.’
During the Great Fire of London of 1666, Samuel Pepys buried his ‘Parmazan cheese, as well as his wine and some other things’ to preserve them. [Source: Wikipedia].
My house smell of shallot onions and garlic.
It’s from a caramelized paste that I had cooked earlier.
The stuff is potent, and enough for 5 or 6 days to scoop onto fried eggs, or use as is, on toast.
The shallot onions and garlic are sliced thin and cooked down in olive oil.
After a while, l add in a small tin of anchovy fillets, tomato paste and salt & pepper.
When the tomato paste has turned a deeper red – it’s done!
There is a case before the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice) in Karlsruhe in Germany, over the right to exclusively use a 4×4 square design for chocolate slabs. German chocolatier Ritter Sport introduced it way back in 1932. In 2010 Swiss company Milka started using it as well.
Now Ritter Sport alleges that Milka violates its patent that had been registered in 1993.
Update Thu 7/23: A ruling in favor of Ritter Sport came down from the Bundesgerichtshof. Milka will no longer be allowed to copy the square design of the Ritter chocolate slabs.
I ran out to the grocery store again on Saturday.
Hopefully, the time will come again in the foreseeable future, when I would not have to dodge the other shoppers, nor be in a rush, so as to minimize my time in the ‘dangerous’ public space of the store.
My two Easter bunnies from Lindt still have a day or so to go before they are done with their 72 hour quarantine .. but I will probably wash the foil wrappers with soap anyway, before I tear it open.
