I was browsing Chowhound last week and found an entry about homemade tortillas. That’s something that I’ve always wanted to try, so I figured I’d do it this weekend, and printed out a couple of recipes. I’ve talked to my neighbor Maria about them before, and she always mentions that I should come over some time while she’s cooking them, to see how easy it is.

She looked at the recipes that I’d printed, and said, “Oh, no no,” and right there in the street, rattled off her own from memory while I frantically scribbled it down.

Here’s Maria’s recipe:

5 cups La Pina flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup shortening
2-3 cups warm water
a little butter to brush on

In a big bowl or on the counter, combine the dry ingredients well. Add the shortening, crumbling it in by hand, until the whole dough has a nice grainy texture. Slowly add the water and mix it in as you go. Don’t over-water, or it will be sticky. Knead the dough, but not too much, as it’ll get tough. Seperate the dough into individual balls for tortillas, brush a little butter on them so they don’t develop a crust, and let them rest for a while - 20 minutes in this weather, 40 in cooler weather. Roll them out as thinly as you can; I dusted my bread board with flour each time, but I didn’t have any problems at all with them sticking, so that might have been overkill.

Then just fry them up in a dry pan. I have a tortilla pan for reheating, but it’s not as non-stick as my grandmother’s old cast iron, so I used that, which limited me to 12-inch tortillas. Flip them a few times. You’ll see when they’re done; they’ll puff up into layers. I found cooking them slowly over medium heat was good, but I could have gone with a little lower heat, as they were a little thick and I still had a slight raw flour taste when I was done. That will probably go away when I reheat the leftovers.

Maria insisted that La Pina was the flour to go with. It’s just a Mexican brand of all-purpose flour, as far as I can tell, but who am I to argue with the expert? I went and got some La Pina; fortunately, the Mexican grocery is right across the street.

They were good, basically very tender gorditas. I filled mine with chili-lime shrimp done on the grill, with grilled pineapple on the side. The kids aren’t huge fans of shrimp, but they liked them.

I could also see making smaller, thicker rounds, and deep-frying them for sopapillas, which I remember having with honey drizzled over them when I was a kid.

The kids and I worked all weekend on getting this boat ready for Jeff to hop into it and hit the lake when he comes home. It came home from the shop on Thursday, all mechanically sound, but was still full of cat fur (and pee - ewww) and a whole season’s worth of red dirt.

So, first we washed. And washed. And washed. Seamus gamely got under the bow and scrubbed the carpet where the cat had been living while I washed under the cushions. I’m not sure that they’ve ever been cleaned, at least not since he’s had it, and they were due.

I brought in the cover, which also reeked of pee, and had to sew up the rips incurred by my own knuckleheadedness before I could throw that in the washer. You see boats travelling with the covers on all the time, but apparently theirs are less flappy than this one, or maybe they don’t have sharp corners on the insides to rub.

It’s really a small boat, without room for three of us to work inside it, so I set John to the photography. He had strict directions to not take pictures of my ass, at which he failed miserably.

By the time it was dry, it was really too hot to think about going back outside and waxing it, so we saved that for this morning. Wax on, wax off, and both of the kids had a hand in it this time, although John was still being the crazy photographer.

Some of his photos were really quite good.

Some were a little sillier, but it was still fun to download them today and see the world through his eyes. Maybe that kid needs a camera too, but I’ve been letting him use my good one, and I’m afraid he’s become a bit spoiled.

But we ended up with a shiny clean boat, and now we all want to go out on the lake. Grapevine says that Jeff’s thinking of selling it, and all of this work has made me think that I might want to buy it, but I know the rule, and I know exactly how mucha pain in the ass a boat can be. Still, it’s sort of the perfect size for my little family, and it does have enough power to teach the kids to ski. I was younger than Seamus when I first got up on double skis, and about John’s age when I learned to drive a boat.  This bears thinking on.

Big Jeff’s mom just called, and although we’ve had a vague idea of when he’s coming home, we finally have a flight number to make it seem real!

Her voice was so happy, I knew what she called for before she even got the words out, and mine shortly went up into supersonic levels too.

He’s flying home on the 8th, and it’s into a public airport so we all get to meet him. That’s not always the case with military airports. We get to do our hugs and our greetings and our welcome homes, and then he’s released for the evening. He does have to go back the next day for out-processing, so I expect he’ll just stay in a hotel room down there that night, with a big family BBQ the next day. It’s worth driving down twice in a row for, that’s for sure.

We’ve been expecting it, and both of us have been getting a little stressed about getting things ready for him. That’s a little silly; I’m sure he’s going to be so happy to be home that he won’t care if there’s a little dust on his shelves. Hell, that man doesn’t care about dust when he’s home anyway!

But besides the hot tub cleaning (which didn’t stay cleaned and doesn’t seem to actually be hot anyway), we’ve got a lot of prep work done. I brought his boat down and had it serviced yesterday, and the kids and I are going to go over it and get it clean this weekend.

JJ and I have talked about when and how we’re going to get the horses back up to their own house; that will probably be next weekend so they aren’t unsupervised for too long.

Jeff’s mom is heading up this week to clean and to restock him with staples, since we tossed a bunch of stuff when we turned the refrigerators off.

And Mike is thinking about the welcome home party - that’s definitely Mike’s department. He throws the best parties!

So, what does one do when greeting a long-lost family member in an airport? We can bring balloons or flowers or signs, because it is public, but I’m not very good at that creative stuff. He’d like the attention though, I know he would. Maybe some balloons? A banner? Help me, you artistic friends!

Oh, it’s nothing new, being into food. One of the most distinct cultural heritages of being Californian is a sort of a food snobbery, after all, coming from growing up absolutely spoiled with freshness that other parts of the country didn’t see thirty years ago.

My mom must have started that for me then, as one of my most consistent memories of her in my childhood is wrapped around the garden that eventually grew to be at least a third of our not-small backyard. Mom was very into organic gardening, before it was trendy (or possibly the first time it was trendy - this wasn’t too long after the 60s) and she was also big on food exploration. I grew up watching her grow different things and learn to cook new flavors, and I must have absorbed more of that than I’d thought at the time.

I sort of picked up cooking myself in high school, when she took a retail job that had her working in the evenings. I remember a dish or two from my dad, who floored us by knowing how to make a great lasagna. Where did he learn that? It certainly wasn’t from his mother, and I don’t remember him setting foot in the kitchen when my mom was in residence, except to carve the turkeys (which he taught me to do, and also to snatch the oysters before they got to the table) or maybe to barbecue. Did mom also do the outside cooking? I don’t recall.

But I took that lesson of not being afraid to make mistakes in the kitchen off to college with me. And mistakes there were, both from my mom and many, many more from me over the years. After the first dorm year, where I gained at least the “freshman 15″ from horrible dining service food, I was quite relieved to move to an apartment where I could cook for myself. And sure, more mistakes there, and some lean living, and a brief and embarrasing obsession with chili-mac, but my roommates and I settled pretty well into a cooking rotation. It was easier to cook for three than for one, and we just didn’t have the room to all cook at once, so at least once or twice a week, it was a communal dinner. The fourth roommate rotated, but was invariably weird, so dinner for three was the norm.

And I’d brought some paperback copies of my mom’s cookbooks with me; my favorite ones that I’d grown up reading like novels. I still have them, mostly old faded copies of the Frugal Gourmet’s series. Say what you will about the man personally, but he had a huge hand in developing adventure in my cooking, and a love of the backgrounds and histories of food.

I’ve had some poor years since then, and some dark ones, where I didn’t branch out into much of anything new, but I grow back out of it routinely. I get into cooking ruts, just like everyone else who has to cook for their family every stinking day. I get tired of it, and I get lazy, and then I pick up one of my now over two shelves-worth of cookbooks, and I get comfortable and I read. I rarely cook anything directly from a recipe these days, but I’ll grab concepts and file them into the back of my head where they can jump out and surprise me on some insomniac night, and just like that, the magic’s back and it’s fun again.

Sometimes it’s not even about the cooking. I’m not really into going out to eat very often, but along with my resolve to try to break out of my shell socially comes trying new foods and new places to eat. The little Thai place that my friend found downtown got me so excited about Thai food that I might have just the slightest crush on it, and it’s all I can think about sometimes.

Going to Vegas seemed to be the perfect opportunity to discover new things, and I had a great time doing that. I had a taste of Vegas-kitsch down at the Peppermill (which was great), I wandered into a Whole Foods and sincerely regretted not bringing a cooler on the trip, and when themis offered up a choice that included Thai, I jumped all over that. Wow, and did that ever fuel my crush!

She’d discovered the Thai place through a site called Chowhound, so I went back and looked it up yesterday. I’ve just now come up for air today.

I will probably never be the gourmet that lots of the people there seem to be, but I’ll happily take their recommendations to heart, and find more treasures. And if I can bring some of that home to my own cooking, all the better. I’d like to pass that on to my own kids; I owe it to my mom.

edited to add: tell me a story from your food history! I love the variety possible.

And how does one sum up a week’s trip in one entry anyway?

Short version: worth it.

Worth it even though I was the only one that I noted, who was paying for the thing out of my own pocket. Everyone else was on their bosses’ dime, either through a public utility or a vendor. Even the bosses that were there were on their corporate dimes, and really, so was I. Except that my business is so small that its money and mine are indistinguishable.

Still, it was worth the money. I learned more and made more professional contacts than I ever have in this business. I’m lucky if I see one or two people in the industry a year, besides classes that I take, and here was a whole convention full of them.

The classes were fantastic; some were a little too short, but gave me avenues to investigate for further site development. After at least half of them, I groaned, knowing that I’d just added one more priority-one thing to my list of things that absolutely have to be done to get my site going.

The trade show was great. I came out of there with ten pounds of information on meters, and at least four vendors willing to come out and take a look at my project. I shamefully picked brains, and got to play with their models, and now have a much better idea of how meters work than I’d gleaned from reading.

The tour of the Hoover Dam was really neat, although not as in-depth as I’d thought. It seems that they canceled the hard-hat tours after 9-11, even for those of us in the industry. Still, it was awe-inspiring and just plain interesting. I’ve now been inside two of the largest dams in the country, as I took an insider’s tour of Shasta almost 20 years ago when I’d just moved up there.

Vegas itself was really great. That city is laid out extremely well for driving, as you’d expect for being so new. I drove every day from my hotel downtown to the convention held out on the west end of town, and I’m very glad I did. My previous impressions of the town were colored by only being in the touristy areas, and it’s really a much nicer city than that.

A few days into it, I finally noticed what was absent, and then I started looking for it. That has to be the cleanest city that I’ve ever seen; there was hardly any grafitti! And I saw why the next day too, with a grafitti-abatement truck parked right in the middle of the road cleaning something up. All of the trees are trimmed, what little lawn ares there are are well-kept, and the xeriscaped areas are weed-free and beautiful, for the most part. They take their water conservation seriously there.

But the best part was easily the people. Part of my reasoning for staying so far away from the resort was to force myself to get out and interact, and to buck my tendency to hole up by myself when I’m in a strange situation. I’d made arrangements ahead of time to meet two of my online friends, so at least I had to get out on those days.

And what a wonderful surprise both of those meetings were!

The first was my friend Alicia, who I virtually met years ago through Nance’s chatroom. We’ve done the typical low-level journal thing since then, of vaguely following each other through our online writings, but not doing a whole lot of correspondence outside of that.

I was so nervous about meeting her. She would be the very first journal-type invisible friend that I’d ever met, so of course, all of the typical fears had to gallop through me. She gave me directions to her dog park so I could meet her and her pal Murphy, who is a super-star indeed, and I got the delightful bonus of getting to meet her sweetheart Shawn Marie.

Holy cow, talk about MY good luck that day! Not only did I get to meet an old friend, I got to make two new wonderful friends! My nervous voice, which probably squeaked on up into that register that only dogs can hear (conveniently, one of them was a dog, and could translate) settled right back down into normal registers. They were so great, and pretty soon we were talking like we’d all known each other for years. They took me to the Peppermill, which was fantastic, and very much old-Vegas kitschy, which was my personal theme for the trip. I was very disappointed to see bedtime roll around so soon; I could have stayed up all night with them. They’re both wonderful people, and I wouldn’t know who to call lovely and who to call artisitc, as they are both clearly each of those things and more. They have a loving and supporting relationship that we would all be so lucky to see in our lives, and I’m a better person for having met them.

My second visit was with a woman from a message board to which I’m a fairly new member: ThreeWayAction. I’ve found that board to be very welcoming, but I’m still very much the new guy, and for one of them to reach out and make the time to meet me while on her own vacation says tons about the kind of person she is. I got to meet her fiance as well, and had another fantastic evening getting to know them. They chose Lotus of Siam, a Thai restaurant in an out of the way strip mall, which turned out to easily be the best meal I had the entire time in Vegas. I’m just learning about Thai food, and to have someone so knowledgeable guide me through a little of it at the best place in town was just priceless. I could easily have stayed and chatted with them all night too, but they had other things to do and I was leaving at dawn, but meeting them was definitely one of the high points of the trip.

I had so much fun with the new friends that I’ve resolved to make an extra effort to put myself out there more, to go to more gatherings like this, and to try not to be so much of a hermit. Once I get over the initial shy part, I’m really OK.

I had misgivings about the trip as a whole before I left, as Vegas didn’t seem the place to be alone, but it was perfect. In fact, as places to go by oneself rate, Vegas was actually pretty high up there. There are so many business travellers that no one looks twice at someone eating by themselves (OK, except for the still-awake and drunk Alaskans at breakfast yesterday morning, but I’ve been those guys, and they were really funny.) I’d have loved to have shared some of the experiences with someone dear to me, but I have a feeling that having someone with me would also have made me more insulated, more couple-y. It’s when you’re alone that you have to get out and interact with other people; one of a couple has a built-in friend to talk to and can tune the rest of the world out if they choose.

I left Vegas a little wore out, both from my brain being stuffed full daily and from the sheer overwhelming presence that Las Vegas can bring, but I also left wanting to go back, to see more of the other sides of the city, and to see my friends again. Next time, frozen custard and pinball; you won’t be able to tear me away from it!

Our 20th is coming up. This means the old friends are coming out of the woodwork as well as those who we can’t seem to remember. And it makes for great fun when your best friend has the memory recall of a goldfish and they are all contacting her first. Well, needless to say, I’ve finally gotten the emails, the instant messages, and messages from that hell we call MySpace. As a result, I had drinks with a old friend who dates way back to Girl Scouts. Let the fun begin!!!

Nothing is funnier than watching two women, in a bar, with a big stack of yearbooks dating back to before we had boobs. Back to 1981 when we wrote things like “Sweet” and Scum Bucket” above people’s pictures, thinking for some reason that it woud promote world peace or heal some old wound. And, to make it even funnier, we are friends with a lot of those “scum buckets” and “sluts” now. AND, where are all those people we labeled as “sweet”? Hmmm Dunno. So, Lisa and I talked a few hours over Beer and Rum and Cokes. We had 20 years of catch up to play and realizing that we weren’t even friends in High School. We ran in different circles. Our circles overlapped, like the Olympic rings, but instead of being the part on the inside, we were on the far side of the rings. But after we realized it was time to vacate the premises, it was decided that we are now people that we always knew we were. We met as children who don’t care what you look like, how much money your parents have (or don’t), or if you have a pair of Dittos gracing your ass. It was based soley on, you’re nice. And at the end of our conversation, besides setting up the next get together, we jointly came to a conclusion, we sincerly hope that everyone worked through thier issues and grew up and became adults. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we ALL could just realize that all it takes to have a full and wonderful friendship is to just look at someone and the only thing running through your head is …

… You’re Nice!

Granted, a road trip by myself isn’t all that fun, but at least I get full control over the music.

I’m about ready to go, except for the packing. I’ve got the cat uncomfortably tucked in at the kennel (where there were way too many dog noises for his taste), I’ve got my clothes all washed and ironed, and I borrowed a soft case for my pistol so I could stick it under the seat.

What?

Oh, and I made provisions for y’all too. A couple of my favorite people (I have lots of favorite people, and these are two of them) have graciously agreed to write guest posts for me while I’m gone. I didn’t get into the whole notification list thing, but if you check in here once or twice, you might be pleasantly surprised. Be nice to them, I’d like to keep my friends!

I went to pick up my date in the early afternoon, since I was near there.

We hung out for a while, did some errands, had ourselves a little pizza. It was very nice; low-key for sure. He was very gentlemanly, and held every door for me, which almost balanced out the fact that I could clearly tell that he hadn’t changed his socks for a couple of days.

So we took ourselves to the movies. I haven’t seen a good movie in a long time, and Meet the Robinsons was said to be pretty good.

Yup, it was. And my date didn’t even complain too much when I insisted that he brush his teeth and go to bed.

It was past his bed time, after all.

Spring not only brings out the crazy internet dating in me, but also, stereotypically, the need to clean.

This year, I started with Jeff’s house. He’s going to be home sometime in May, we think, but I won’t have much time at the end of the month to deal with things. His mom’s going to do the main house cleaning, but I went up Saturday to get some of the heavier work taken care of. We want to surprise him with a house and toys that are ready and waiting for him when he gets home.

Popping open the lid to the hot tub was a little discouraging though.

It wasn’t the frogs so much as the tannins from the oak leaves that had made their way in to rest at the bottom, merrily staining the shit out of the plastic. Oak trees and hot tubs, while picturescue, are a royal pain in the ass.

The frogs were amusing though. I rescued them to be dumped into the dog trough.

They did not find it quite as amusing as I did.

After I took pictures, I got down to work, bailing and siphoning out the nasty water. I gave it several scrubbings, busting my thumb open in the process, to get as much of the organics off as I could before I introduced bleach into the mix.

It took old-fashioned sponging out with rags to get the sand and crud off of the bottom, and then I tackled it again with the bleach, probably ruining my jeans in the process. I should have thought to wear shorts, as most of the cleaning was done from inside the tub and there really wasn’t any way to not get wet.

Three hours later, and of course, I don’t have a picture for you. I was rubber-armed and wiped out, and I forgot. But I filled it back up, dropped some chlorine in there, and tested out the pump. It works, and I also learned that the water should be over the jets before one turns that part on. Oh well, I was wet anyway. We’ll have to see if the heater works; I turned it on at least.

Then it was back down the hill to strip his bed so I didn’t have to wait for his pathetic dryer to work, and could wash the linens at home. You know that the cheating whore didn’t get that far in her cleaning; gross.

My last mission was to bring the boat back down with me. I’ve got an appointment to get it serviced for him so all he has to do when he comes home is to hitch it up and go to the lake. But I was tired and the boat confounded me. I could not for the life of me figure out how to get the motor raised up so I could tow it without scraping the prop off on the road. And I discovered more cleaning to do, as there’s apparently been a wild cat living under the tarp. That’s OK; Mike said that if I needed help, to call him, so I did. I hope he can help me go get it this week so I can start working on it.

I swear; it takes three people to keep that man’s life in order while he’s gone. He’s a busy man!

He was weak when he started, and even though he got a little better, by this morning, he wasn’t even peeping at me. I knew he was done.

He never did learn to stand up, although for a couple of days there, he tried so hard that he’d catapault himself over onto his backside and get stuck upside down, waiting for me to come rescue him. I had to hold him to the food and the water, but he’d eat and drink once he got there. Yesterday was encouraging when one of his legs seemed to be working better, and he’d throw himself around the enclosure in little circles.

But no, when I came home at lunchtime today, he’d expired. Poor little quacker. Seamus knows to expect this, I kept warning him, but he’s going to be a sad boy.

The rest of the eggs didn’t hatch, even though I incubated them for five days after the first (and only) duck emerged. I checked them the other night and didn’t see either movement nor any more blood vessels, so I guess those are toast too. I don’t know why; we didn’t do anything differently and they did grow initially. So I turned off the incubator too. No more ducks.

Poor things. But at least we gave it a shot. Now, would anyone like a very slightly used incubator, waterer, and feeder? I can use the trough and the light and probably the shavings. It will probably be many years before I feel the need to raise eggs again, and this stuff is just going to clutter up my garage.