These Are A Few Of Our Favorite Things

I was getting the little chick ready to spend some time with her grandma. I put on some cologne before we went downstairs, and I guess some must have gotten onto her, because when grandma picked her up, she gave Allison a big hug and said, "oh, you smell good!".

This seemed to be good news to the little chick. "I smell good?" she asked. She stopped for a minute to think, trying to figure out where the smell may have been coming from. Then she realized - it must have been lunch.

"Like hot dogs?" she offered. And then, figuring that if a little is good, more would be better: "Smell my breath" she said, leaning over to share the love a little bit. Grandma said that she didn't think it was exactly like hot dogs, but took a sniff of the breath anyways, just in case.

I thought it was pretty cute. I also found it slightly worrying: if my Jean-Paul Gaultier works for a 4 year-old little girl, is it possible that I am not making the best grooming choices that I could be?

Something to ponder.

There Are So Many

There are a lot of things that I don't get. And not just math things, either: why people who drive so slowly don't just take the bus, instead. Why stores and restaurants with two doors seem to like to keep one of them locked (they are trying to reduce their business by 50%?). Why people making signs don't bother to check their spelling.

But here's the one that's been getting me, lately: when I buy bagels (one of the things I'm enjoying about being back in Canada), and they say "sliced" on the bag, they only kind of are. I don't know if you've had these, so I'll try to describe it.

Imagine that you're holding an unsliced bagel in your hand, with your thumb on one side and forefinger on the other. Someone challenges you to slice it without moving your hands... and so you cut on one side until the knife comes up against your thumb and finger, then go from the other side, until the same thing happens. You're left with a bagel that's sliced about 80% of the way through (40% on each side) and you hand the knife back, with a look on your face like you tried to do one of those little wooden puzzles where you have to do something that looks impossible until you know how.

Only, it seems, no one knows how.

Now I would guess that, with the extensive popularity that bagels have enjoyed over the last however-many decades, there is some pretty significant technology that's been developed for them. There is for everything, right? And like in most industries, I suspect that the big companies have access to the best of that technology... I mean, those bagel guys must have the equivalent of nuclear-powered nano computers for bagels, whatever that might be.

But they can't figure out how to slice them all the way through.

I can understand not slicing the bagels - for people who really like their bagels whole. I've never met any of those people, but I'm not saying they're not out there, and I support them completely. I can also understand slicing the bagels, for people (like me) who like to have their bagels in two pieces. What I don't understand is partially slicing the bagels except for a strip down the middle that stays attached so that, to get them apart, you still need to slice them yourself.

There might be something to this that I'm just not getting... maybe they've had focus groups, and the feedback has come in that some people want to put things in the sides, kind of like Subway used to do, without having them touch in the middle. Or that they're going hiking or something with their bagels, and taking all the sandwich fixings with them; they don't want the bagel to separate during the hike, but like to have a little help to know where to slice when they find the appropriate blade on the old Swiss army knife.

Or maybe they need to have a baked-goods summit of some kind. I think that the hamburger bun people have done rather well... they leave a little bit so the buns aren't flying all over the bag, but they do it at the side so the buns don't just rip into pieces when you try to separate them. Can any of you UN-type people set up something like that?

In any case, this is making me hungry.

I'm going to go have a hamburger.

Fast Food

I was trying to remember who had the slogan, "Have it your way!". At first I thought Burger King, but I think theirs is something about being made fresh. Dairy Queen, maybe? I know that, if I'm writing this, I'm connected to the internet and could look it up, but that somehow feels like cheating, so I won't.

Anyways, I've been organizing my pictures, and here's how the categories break down so far:

• Details - textures, colors, shapes that I happened to notice
• People - uh, that one's mostly people
• Scenery - a lot of buildings, but some other scenery-ish stuff, too
• Art - mostly sculpture
  

I have quite a few in some of the categories, though (scenery and people), and started to try to work through my people ones to pick out the keepers. Here are the categories I've got as I've been narrowing them down:

• Body language - I noticed them because of how they were sitting, standing, or moving
• Children - wee ones
• My favorite faces - we all have one
• Style - people I noticed because of something about their personal style... good, bad, or otherwise
• Italians - people who just really, really looked Italian to me, and kind of captured the feeling of the city
• Lost - people looking at maps. It's better than it sounds.
  
• Phone - Italians looooooove to talk on the phone, and here's proof
• Pictures - yeah, I know: they're all pictures. But these are pictures of people in pictures, but no pictures of people in pictures of pictures, which would clearly be just too much.
  
• Setting - it wasn't so much who was there, it's was just where they were
• Tourists - see them coming from a mile off

Anyways, I was trying to decide which ones to edit and post next, and I thought I'd try something a little different. If you have a preference, just tell me in a comment and when I get enough votes/a vote (depending on how things go), I'll edit and post those ones.

Your way... kind of like Burger King. Or maybe Dairy Queen, except without ice cream. And not quite like Subway, because I won't make you stand there and tell me how to edit them before I post them. It's like the very best of the fast-food world, and how can we go wrong with that?

So, polls close when I get enough votes to form a consensus, get a vote from Erin, or get tired of waiting, whichever comes first. And since I don't really like visiting facebook, any facebook comments will be warmly appreciated but disregarded in the whole voting thing. I'm sure you understand.

Look Out

We have oxygenated water available in our Lausanne office, now. If possible, it will make me even smarter.

I predict that, within a week, I will be able to remember which direction I was going when I went into the store.

I'd Like To Thank My Agent, God, and the Guy Who Planted Me

It is the year of the potato. And we have little creams in our coffee room to prove it.

Now, I like potatoes. I would doubt, actually, that you can find many people who like potatoes more than I do, and my family will back me up on this one. But the year of the potato? Seems a bit much, really. And it leaves me with a few questions:

1. Who decides this? It seems to be the UN, but beyond that, who knows? I mean, is it a committee? One guy in a little room somewhere? Was there a vote, and I just missed it? How do we know that the process has been fair - has there been any international oversight? At least a conference? If there's one organization who should understand a request to have the process monitored, it's the UN.

Oh, and if it's one guy in a little room somewhere, is he the one in Nashville who writes all the country music? Because that seems like he would have enough on his plate already without being responsible for things like this.

2. What's the competition based on? Potatoes are filling, and they are tasty and nourishing when prepared in a variety of ways, and if you spread one out over a plate it provides plenty of surface to hold cheese and bacon bits and whatever else you may want to toss on, but I'm not sure any of those warrant an award like this. Is it just running with other tubers? In that case, I can see it - frankly, between potatoes, carrots, and turnips I don't think you're going to get much argument.

But what if it's all foods? How do you put potatoes up against crême brulée? Or even steak? Have you noticed that it's never "potatoes and steak"? Yeah, well... there's a reason. And it could even go beyond that... can you imagine the panel sitting down, and the chairman saying, "okay, it looks like this year it's going to be a tough call: it's between potatoes, the Toyota Prius, global warming, and puppies." How do you vote on that?

3. A whole year?!? Even if the process is fair and the title is well-deserved, a year still seems like a little much. It's not as if potatoes are that new... we don't have a whole lot of educating to do here - I think that the market is already pretty well-developed. I would think Potato Month would be generous enough (though that would bring up the whole sticky issue of which one to choose) and maybe Potato Week would even do the trick. I would celebrate Potato Week, but the thought of dedicating a whole year to it leaves me just a little overwhelmed.

I don't know. But it is making me hungry.

For steak.

Parallel Universe

At dinner tonight, it occurred to me that something was wrong. And it was this: I was using broccoli to try and encourage the little chick to eat her pizza.

Yes, as in "I want you to eat this bit of pizza, and then I will give you more broccoli."

I think it was probably the ranch dressing. I guess if I would have just put that on the pizza I wouldn't have had any trouble at all....

Prague, Day 3

I'm really, really tired. Good day. Bought ceramics. Ate vast quantities of pork.

Must sleep now.

A Vicious Cycle

Some of you are going to be disturbed to read this. I'm sorry. But I'm going to write it anyways.

Every once in a while, I get in the mood for hot dogs.

The problem is that there isn't a good way to buy them so that they just work out. I have found dogs and buns that I like that come in multiples of six. Jalapeños aren't a problem - if I have those left, I can eat then with other things. Same for ketchup, mustard, and cheese. Sometimes I add fried onions (preferably sweet and purple, but I'm not too picky).

The killer is the sauerkraut.

I usually get done with about 12 dogs and find that I'm about 80% of the way through the package of kraut. What am I going to do with the rest of it? There's nothing else I eat it with... if I knew where to get decent pastrami I would try that, but I don't think that's such a genevois specialty.

And if I get another 6 dogs, I won't have enough.

Which means I have to buy another package.

It's like that musical thing where, if you play in 3/4 and I play in 4/4, we end up matching our downbeats every so often. And if one of us was going to trade over, that would be the moment. The problem is, this misalignment of the universe results in me eating a lot of hot dogs.

Now, I'm not opposed to eating the same thing multiple times in a row. In fact, if I make a big batch of something, I will sometimes freeze it, but just as often eat it until it's gone. (As a side not for anonymous, I would say that is a remarkable evidence of non-pickiness). But with hot dogs, I have this small inner voice saying that, at some point, enough is enough.

In fact, what usually stops the cycle is not actually running out of dogs and kraut at the same time.

It's looking down after I've taken a bite, and going, "what part of what animal could they make something like this out of, anyways?".

Yeah, that about does it.

Hey, I'm off to Prague for a while. Not sure if I'll get a chance to update while I'm there, but should have something worth reading when I'm back. Ciao!

The American Dream

So, in between preparing for the training I've been giving and trying to get rid of a virus on my laptop (if you get an email from me with a subject line of "VERRY IMPORTANT ATACHMENT! OPEN RIGHT A WAY!" you may want to proceed with caution), I have managed to delve slightly deeper into the American consciousness.

And here's what I've found.


I know that everybody says it, but it's true. The food here is just huge. I think I've finished 1 meal here (a sandwich) since I arrived. Almost everything I order seems to come family-sized. Which would be great, except I didn't bring along a family.

While I've been eating this food, I've noticed, again, how nice it is to be hearing familiar music (and by "familiar", I mean not rap and not in French). I like it... music with people singing in tune, with real guitars and drums. I hadn't realized how much I miss rock until I step back and think about how relieved I am not to be surrounded by euro-pop. It's like getting out of a stale room, somehow. It's good.


And everywhere... space. The streets are wide apart. The restaurants have miles between the tables. There are some apartments, but there are a lot of houses, even as I look into one of the business districts of the city outside of my hotel window. There's just a lot of room, and I can see why Europeans who come to Canada or the US for a little while find that so intoxicating.


The flip-side of this, though, is that I haven't been able to get a very good feel for the city. Most places I've worked, I walk everywhere. So I know how Milan or Munich or Zurich feel. I have a sense for the people, the pace, the architecture. But here, I kind of get the feeling that I'm just missing it. I guess it's a place experienced by car, not by foot. And that makes me sad.

Not sad enough that I can't make up for it with a burger the size of a small child, though. Not by a long shot.

Would You Like Fries With That?

I went for fondue with a couple of colleagues today. As we were eating, I decided that it would probably be pretty tasty to chop up some jalapeños and spice things up a bit.

Other things that I haven't tried or seen that might be good in fondue:
1. Beer
2. BBQ sauce
3. Bacon Bits
4. Fresh dill
5. Apple sauce

Any other ideas?

Good Genes

From a colleague at dinner this week, shaking her head:

"I don't get it. How do you eat like that (pointing at a rapidly-disappearing steak) and look like that (pointing at me)?"

Sure, I haven't been approached by GQ (recently) and won't be invited to open tryouts for... well, any Olympic team, but in the great genetic lottery, I'll take what I can get...

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Roasting Chestnuts By The Fire

I love the smell of roasting chestnuts... after 7 years in Geneva, where there are vendors roasting and selling them every few blocks, that's the smell that means fall is here. So when the little chick and I were out for a walk earlier this week and I saw some chestnut trees that had been shedding the nuts, I picked up a bunch and decided to give it a go. It would be fun, something interesting for the little chick to do, and, fill my house with that wonderful smell.

I thought about looking online for some recipes, but then I realized: they're nuts. You just roast them. How hard could it be?

Well, it turns out it's a little more complicated than I had guessed. I will be happy to share the recipe to success when I get it, but, in the meantime, I can tell you this:

1. 160° C seems to be a little high. Maybe really, really, high.
2. If you just put them in the oven like you find them, they'll explode.

Thankfully the little chick and I were out of the room when they started to pop, and she never connected the sounds coming from the kitchen with the chestnuts we had put into the oven. She was a bit disappointed when she found out that we wouldn't be able to eat them after all, and, with the kind of tact only a two year-old can muster, remarked as I was pulling the ones that remained on the baking tray out of the oven that there was a bit of a mess.

Yes, ma'am.

The MNB was over tonight, as usual, to practice, and I mentioned this to them. They seemed to kind it pretty amusing, but really - have you ever seen any other roasted nuts that all have the shells split? I just assumed it happened as part of the roasting process, and that, like mussels, that was probably how you could tell they were done.

Not exactly, as it turns out.

So we'll have another go at it. Next time I'm reading up, there will be no explosions in the kitchen, and everything will turn out beautifully.

If I had a quarter for every time I said that...

I Should Have Used Butter While Getting My Hair Cut

Turns out that olive oil and Brussels sprouts is a bad combination. Unbelievably bad, really. I thought it would be a bit healthier than butter and give the flavor a little boost, but it was just wrong.



Time for some audience participation, and maybe the chance for me to avoid another hideous kitchen incident like this. Have you ever tried something that really seemed like it should work, but really didn't?



In other news, I officially love getting my hair cut. Okay, every once in a while it doesn't quite work out, but I'm usually happy with how it looks after. And I think I could spend a good portion of my day just getting it washed. It puts me in such a good mood, I even talked to the girl cutting it today.

That may not sound strange, but my conversational French is... well, enough to stop most conversations. And I haven't found many of the girls at the place I go who speak English. So, I usually just kind of keep quiet, say "oui, c'est bon" when they look hopeful and ask me something, and "non, je ne pense pas" when they look doubtful and ask me something. It usually pans out okay.

So while I was getting my hair washed today, the girl asked me something I didn't understand. Plus, I was facing away from her, so I couldn't tell which response to use. Time to 'fess up.

"Desolé," I said, "j'ai pas compris; je ne parle pas tres bien français". And that's a pretty hefty understatement, even for me.

She seemed okay with that, and things continued without me either getting scalded, dyed crazy-German-lady red (a very special color not found anywhere in nature, but which, it seems, goes very well with cropped hair, glasses with a string hanging from them, and dangly earrings), or shaved bald. Hooray! That's my entire hair-cutting check-list. Mission accomplished. Almost.

"Qu'est ce que votre langue maternelle?" she asked.

"Anglais" I said. I figured that about explained it. She shrugged, and continued.

Turns out she didn't figure her French was very good either. She was Spanish, and also spoke Portuguese (she had lived for a while in Brazil, and maybe Portugal... I mean maybe I'm-not-sure, not maybe she-didn't-know).

Why is it that no one takes me seriously when I say my French is bad? My colleagues are under the amusing (and somewhat dangerous) impression that I understand everything they say, no matter what I tell them. And when things go horribly wrong - as they are bound to do when you combine banks, software, lunch and a language I don't speak - they seem to believe I'm just playing a joke on them.

"Don't worry," they tell new people who are just meeting me. "He understands everything."

"No," I say, "I actually don't. I didn't even understand your name."

And then they all laugh. It's really fun.

Anyways, she went on (in French) to tell me about, I think, much of the last 10 years or so of her life, what it was like to live in Brazil, what the pronunciation differences are between Spanish and Portuguese (hello! I'm the one who's still stuck on French, remember? I need two more languages in the mix like I need a bigger forehead), and how English people never learn French. Even the ones who live here. Not much I can come back with on that front, is there? I just agreed.

Except when she looked concerned.

In any case, it was a pretty good cut, and she was kind enough to rinse it after, which keeps me from feeling itchy (or looking really, really bad in my black shirt - and not the kind of bad that means "cool", either, just the way your grandparents mean it).

I think I'll go back. I just need to learn to say "what kinds of snacks do they have in Brazil, and do you have any with you?" first.

Taste Test

Well, I popped up a bit of white and yellow corn and did a side-by-side comparison. The results were surprising:

• Taste - the white is quite a bit sweeter and more pleasant than the yellow.
• Texture - the yellow popped up much fluffier than the white, and was less chewy. The white had by far fewer husks, but that is not enough to compensate for the compactness of the popped corn. I do plan to test again, though, since the volume of the corn once it was popped was far less than I was used to (and I know my popcorn pot pretty well). It may be an anomaly, but at this point, the yellow wins.
• Appearance - this is a draw: the size and shape of the yellow corn was much nicer, but the color of the white is better.
• Ease of Preparation - no appreciable difference.
  

Overall winner: close, but I'm choosing white by a small margin. I'll sure eat yellow if it's in front of me, though...

White Popcorn And The Demise Of The Interweb

We were talking about white popcorn tonight. I had a friend who just arrived back from a trip to Canada... she had very kindly asked if there was anything I wanted from there. Thanks, I said, it would be great if you could bring back some white popcorn... it's impossible to get here. She said she'd take a look for me.

Well, it turns out that they don't have it in Ontario. She went to a bunch of stores - seven, actually - including what may have been an actual underground hippie colony fronting as a health-food shop (who would they be hiding from, you ask? most likely the fashion police, but that's a whole other post). No one had it.

"Is it bleached?" the hippies asked her. "'Cause if it's white 'cause it's been bleached, we sure won't have it."

It seems like kind of a pointless thing to say, to me, since they already didn't have it and they didn't even know if it was bleached. But, I wasn't there. In any case, she was kind enough to bring me back a jar of Orville's original gourmet which, while not white, is going to be tasty. But she did ask me... what's the difference?

"Well," I said, "it's.... uh, better. You know."

"Better... how?"

"Well, it's lighter. It's not as chewy. The flavor is cleaner."

"So, is it bleached?"

And I realized that I have no idea. Why is it white? Why is it better, and why don't more people sell it if it's better? I decided I would just look it up when I got home.

So that's what I've done. But the internet has been pretty unhelpful on this one.

I tried what makes white popcorn white, with no quotes, and just got a lot of sites trying to sell me either white popcorn or, usually, something white and related to popcorn. I tried with quotes and got nothing. Same with why is popcorn white.

Now, usually, I can find what I need online in not much time. But this is different. I've been looking for a while, and I have only found one site that kind of explains it, here. And it just tells me that there are three common varieties of popcorn. But are they processed differently? Why do they taste different? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Alternative Field Crops Manual from Purdue University is more of a technical document than something done by David Rosengarten would be, but it's a shame. I've seen a few people suggesting that the husks are thinner on the white popcorn, which would certainly explain why the texture is better once it's popped, but I haven't really found anything substantive.

So, does somebody have a book or something?

Oh, and Anonymous, let me just head you off right now and say that this has nothing to do with being fussy. Really, popcorn is just on a whole other level...

Stockholm: The Animals

Sure, I've probably threatened to eat your cat if I could just find some bbq sauce. But deep down, I don't just love animals with garlic and a nice pinot noir. And this should prove it. There aren't a lot, but you can see more here.

Ice Cream

I thought I had ice cream in the freezer. I don't.

Crap.

Everything Is New

Well, I know I said it about Rome, and I know I said it about Bruges, but I think Stockholm may be the most beautiful city in the world. I spent most of yesterday wandering around the old town (Gamla Stan) with my mouth open, just trying to take it in. The architecture, the narrow, curving streets, the colors... it's amazing. And I saw/did some things that I don't think I've ever done before.

I went the whole day without listening to music. I had my mp3 player in my bag, but a friend asked me about a month ago... don't you ever just want to hear the atmosphere around you? I usually don't, but decided to give it a try, and it was nice. I sang a lot of the day, so it wasn't completely without music, but it was different.

Richard had gotten breakfast ready: oatmeal, cheese, bread, butter, and some blueberry cream cheese spread. After we had started eating, he realized he had forgotten something, and got some pickles out of the fridge. "You put pickles on your oatmeal?" I asked. It seemed a bit odd, but in a country where fish is regularly fermented, I'm not one to say where the boundaries should be. "No," he said, "they're for on the bread". So we kept eating, and I noticed that he would put the blueberry spread on his bread and then put pickles on top. I was intrigued, but decided to go without.

Until I tasted it.

Hmmmm..... not really like any other blueberries I'd eaten, I decided. I had a bit more, and then realized that it actually was kind of salty and not really very fruity at all. Might work with a pickle, actually. So I put a couple on and, sure enough, it improved things pretty dramatically.

After the meal, I mentioned this to Richard. He seemed to think it was kind of funny.

Turns out that the bluish-colored paste stuff is actually liver paté. Which is why it goes well with pickles.

I also saw a guy yesterday who may have been drunk out of his mind. He came into the square where I was sitting, people-watching, and smoking a very nice cigar (a Romeo y Julietta limited edition robusto from 2001). He had a ghetto blaster with him, and he started to dance with it, in the very center of the square. Before long, he got too hot, and took off his jacket, still dancing. That wasn't enough, it seemed, and he got rid of a button-down shirt, too. Getting kind of interesting, I thought, snapping away. Then he pulled out a bottle of Chivas and danced for a while with that.

Then he put it on his head.

And he kept dancing. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that, and I'm sober. So, if he was drunk, this is one talented man. Eventually the police came and the show kind of ended, but it was good while it lasted. I want to upload a picture, but my internet connection here doesn't seem to like some things, and that's one of them. But next week, I'll have a ton.

Well, would write more, but I need to get out and see the city...

Stockholm, Baby

In a few hours, I'm heading north. And I can't wait.

I will get to have time with some old friends - is there any better combination than traveling and seeing friends? Okay, maybe surf & turf. I feel relaxed and happy just thinking about it.

I am going to take a bazillion pictures. And some of them are going to beautiful.

I am going to listen to 600 hours of music.

I will take in a lot of beauty. If I recall correctly, the only thing more overwhelming than the "Venice of the North" is the people who live in it. Nice.

I'll feel short, but it will be worth it.

I'm going to eat salted licorice and pickled fish. If I can find it, I'm even going to eat Flying Jacob (I think that's what it's called... a casserole made with chicken, bananas and peanuts. I don't really like it, but it's really Swedish, so it just seems appropriate).

As I look forward to this, it makes me reflect again on what wonderful friends I have. I wish that I could load up the plane and take you all with me. I can't do that, but you can at least rest securely knowing that I will do everything in my power to take care of your share of the world's meatballs.

I promise.

Big Bird

I often find myself looking at swans and wondering if they are edible. I mean, that's a lot of meat. I guess the fact that there are a lot around here and they have yet to show up in the grocery stores should be an indication. On the other hand, it's quite possible the I've eaten swan several times and just not known the word for it in French. Or that it comes under the infamous "escalope" umbrella, which basically means "a piece of meat". And then the waiter looks at you funny when you ask what kind.

Anyways, I didn't eat this one. But I did take a bunch of pictures of him. As usual, you can find more here.