Life in the key of E flat minor

This past week I wanted to try a vegan dish, perhaps to balance my minor flop earlier . I am an omnivore, but I do appreciate a good vegan recipes that makes me want to eat it. I think I found it. A warm bowl of peanut soup This is usually the time of year that I have the foresight to look for vegan dishes to practice before Lent comes along. Also, as Christmas approaches, I start a fictive month called NotPaidSoonEnoughuary, the time between my December and January pay dates. Starting in the summer, with all the cheap, good, seasonal vegetables, I start making soups and meals to freeze for convenience as well as surviving the 41 days between paydays. Until the end of the year, I am always planning to make dishes with leftovers to be set aside to revisit at the end of January. In short, if my dish is a success, I freeze it and I can usually hold off tapping into it before Lent so I don’t always have to cook, killing two birds with one stone. I went to Stephanie O’Dea’s A Yea...

Warning, this one is long so I added a lot of pictures to make it go quickly. A picture of our approach, Jupiter is the white dot in the upper left corner I jetted off to Fort Lauderdale last weekend for some fun in the sun before the Christmas holiday. I had two free nights from Starwood Hotels and on a whim I picked Florida as the place to use them.  I thought that would be nice to get a bit of relaxation before the end of the year holidays completely kicked in. Friday, I left work a little early for the airport. I breezed through security , got a cup of Peet’s, boarded my flight, miraculously scored a row with an empty middle seat, settled in my flight and lost myself in the pages of a book to pass the time. Finally my attention waned from the book when that captain announced our initial approach to the airport – high visibility, very few clouds, 76°F.  It was dusk and I could see the sunset over the clouds in the distance; Jupiter was high and bright in the sky. I ...

I love to see presents under a tree which glows bright with Christmas lights. It brings me right into the holiday spirit.  I must confess that I was going to stage a plate of cookies and milk for this picture, but I got too lazy. Merry Christmas!

About 10 Saint Patrick Days ago, I stumbled across this recipe when I was looking for some non corned beef and cabbage meal to make.  I goggled Irish recipes and dug a few links deep to find a hearty recipe.  I didn’t want to land on the usual shepherd’s pie. Lo and behold, I found the Trimlestown Roast Sirloin recipe.  I couldn’t find any story behind the roast. I looked to see if it was an active city or a town or a village; it’s a road in the Dublin area by the Co. Dublin/Co. Meath boarder (in the Co. Fingal area.)  I searched for any historic figures.  There is a Baron Trimlestown, of Trimlestown in the County of Meath (maybe that’s why the road is named what it’s named since it’s a stone’s throw from Co. Meath.) This title was created in 1461 probably by Edward IV (if not by Henry VI) for Sir Robert Barnewall. Today, the title is held by Raymond Charles Barnewall, 21st Baron Trimlestown. As of now, there is no known heir to the barony so on Barnewall’s de...

While I was in LA, I wanted to go on a tour of some buildings on the National Registry of Historic Places . I thought that I had included the Bradbury Building in blog.  However it also was one the buildings I wanted to see.  I took this photo of the elevator, decked out for the holidays. 

About two years ago I had a chance to go to the Azores.  Steve was sent there for a stint and I had an open invitation to visit. However the $1000 price tag and the lack of frequent flying opportunities (It’s just SATA that goes to Terceira directly from the US and the only Alliance airline is TAP ) made it difficult to come to fruition. Like most of my travel knowledge, what I know about the Azores was solidified during my youth.  When I was 13, Prince Andrew and Fergie honeymooned in the Azores and I went to my encyclopedia to learn about the islands.  To simply explain the Azores to you, they are Portugal’s Hawaiʻi. While more subtropical then tropical, the islands lie southwest of the Portuguese mainland and tourism is one of the main industries. Plus, volcanic activity left its impact on the island. The Azores sit on the crossroads of three tectonic plates. Named the Azores Triple Junction, this is where the North American, the Eurasian and the African Plates me...

Usually when I’m in an airport first thing in the morning on Monday, it’s because I’m heading out early for a day trip somewhere. Today, however, I’m still in transit, connecting from a red eye out of Southern California to Philadelphia. Thinking about my recent visit to the LA metro area, I want to go somewhere where I don’t have to drive at all. The traffic in all throughout the region was hellish. Even my beloved US 101 Songline was more like a parking lot than a freeway. It reinforces why I love cities with great public transportation. City Island Nautical Museum, image courtesy of Wikipedia When I turn the phrase “city with great public transportation” I immediately think of New York, our most populated city in the US. While the traffic can be as nightmarish as Los Angeles (have you ever tried to get into the city through the Lincoln Tunnel at 4:30 in the afternoon?) the subway and bus system as well as the taxis of NYC eliminate my stress of needing to drive. ...

If you don’t know, I can’t stand Rick Santorum . He is just too partisan and too intense for me to stomach. He is too polarizing and I find him plainly despicable. In Iowa, he recently made the outrageous promise to reduce significantly federal funding for food stamps  under the premise that the nation’s increasing obesity rates make the program unnecessary. Igor Volsky, Health Care and LGBT Editor for ThinkProgress.org , notes in his piece, " Santorum: We Don’t Need Food Stamps Because Obesity Rates Are So High " that Santorum calls the food stamp program one of the fastest growing programs in Washington. Volsky highlights that cost of the program has increased because more Americans are out of work and wages are down and disputes the connection between the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a.k.a. food stamps, and the rates of obesity in Americans. In the column, Volsky comments that the Department of Agriculture has data that shows that around 33.5 mil...

This week, as year ago, I was in the UAE visiting my friend, Eileen, and her family.  My lovely hosts took me and some of their friends dune bashing in the desert of Sharjah, the emirate immediately north of Dubai. It's like a roller coaster ride, but in a beat up Range Rover. A few times our young driver stopped so we would take some pictures of the desert landscape.  While there were a caravan of Range Rovers, we were able to stop on the other side of dunes to make us feel like we were the only ones there.  The sane was a beautiful vermilion and, like other desert locales, its color shifted as the sun started to set. I hope when you look into this photo that you feel a little lost and yet in awe, and you can almost feel the arrival of the cold evening that was falling when I took this photo.

I was wondering if I had exhausted all of my favorite treats from around the world and feared that I wouldn’t be able to write another “Not yet named food entry.” In the middle of my panic, it hit me out of the blue, I should write about kelaguen or rather kelaguen mannok , chicken kelaguen, to be exact. During my time playing for and serving on the board of the Philadelphia Gryphons , I became very good friends with a former classmate and colleague, Joe. Joe is Guamanian or, as we lovingly teased, Guamish. He came to Philadelphia somewhat on a lark. A Penn alumnus in Hagåtña had mentioned that Joe should apply to Penn. It was a good school; if it was good enough for the alumnus, it was good enough for Joe. Only applying to two Universities – Penn and the University of Guam, Joe got into Penn and he headed to Philadelphia. Little did he know that he was going to school a lot of us about our territory in the Pacific. A view of Hagåtña, the capital of Guam - image courtesy of W...

My roommate and I had our annual Christmas party this year, and outside of the neighbor calling at 1:30am to see if the party would 2:00am because she could hear everything in her apartment, it was a wonderful night. One of the many dishes that we had was my take on Cocktail Meatballs (a.k.a. Grape Jelly Meatballs.) Prior to my friend Ryan’s birthday party in San Diego about 2 years ago, I never really had heard of treating meatballs this way.  Apparently I’ve been obviously to meat and jam combinations all my life; my friend, Denise, has invited me over to her parent’s for Night in Venice annually for the last 20 years and I enjoyed the Cocktail Kielbasa (a.k.a. Raspberry Kielbasa). Yet I never noticed the similarity between the recipes.  It wasn’t until I asked, “What’s in the sauce, sesame seeds?” that I learned it was raspberry preserves. A crock pot of Cocktail Meatballs For an easy and hearty appetizer, I simply use a 4 quart slow cooker on high and add two 1½ pou...

I’ll be traveling to Southern California this weekend for work. Since I have a red eye home, I hope to be able to go to Got Kosher on Sunday and get some more of the pretzel challah that didn’t survive the trip to San Diego last time. Yet, I still haven’t decided either I’ll stay in LA or Anaheim (I have reservations at hotels in both cities.) The majority of time working will be in Anaheim and to get an affordable flight, I’m taking United/Continental in and out of John Wayne Airport. The Airport is an hour from the LA hotel, in good traffic. The event, a reception and game, is at the Honda Center, but the tickets for the game are up in Westwood. Once I am finished with my responsibilities, will the convenience of being close to the work event be outweighed by the ease of being close to downtown LA? Gamble House in Pasadena, CA So I googled “LA travel blog” to help me decide. I found The Los Angeles Consortium for Online Travel on Christopher Elliott's The 11 best new...

I love the holidays.  I still believe that if you have a good Halloween then you're set until Mardi Gras!  Yuletide is the biggest high point for me during this Holiday period.  I'm a strong advocate of decorating for Christmas immediately after Thanksgiving and keeping it up until Epiphany.   Here's a detail of the tree in the apartment during the day. This year the tree is decked out in a wintry theme of gold, silver, white and cerulean. Icicles and faceted jems spread glow in the daylight and in the tree lights as well.  The shiny balls reflect the shine and create a festive look that's reminiscent of the delightful chill of a good hibernal night.

I can't remember when I first made this dessert; I would say that it was over 10 years ago. I can't remember where I found the recipe; I think that I what I was watching was a long forgotten show on the Food Network. I do remember that it was an episode about cooking with cheese, and the original recipe was for making 6 individual Cranberry-Ricotta Tarts with toasted Almond Crust. I do remember going on line for the recipe with the foresight to copy and paste into a word document since I have never found it on line since.  Folks starting to enjoy the tart I go into more detail about the history of this dish earlier in my blog, Musing on how traditions get to be . According to that post it’s now been about 11 years since I’ve been making the Cranberry Ricotta Tart. Also, I’ve gone back to calling it a tart since a torte is a cake. Aunt Florence's attempts to keep the tart for herself I am sharing a Ryan family tradition that over a decade old. I hope you make i...

My hotel chain of choice is Starwood and I am a member of the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) program. Earlier this year, SPG ran the SPG Getaway Free promotion.  It entailed earning one free Resort Night Award for every three eligible stays at over 1,000 hotels across all their brands from May 1 through July 31. During that time, I stayed a total of 8 nights – split between work and leisure – at the following hotels: Aloft Houston by the Galleria; Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel; Sheraton Reston Hotel; Four Points by Sheraton San Diego; Sheraton Mission Valley San Diego and Palace Hotel, San Francisco (one of my favorites!) These six stays earned me two award nights at over 200 of Starwood's resorts ; I should have squeezed a night in a Philly Starwood to get 3 nights! Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel, beach view, image courtesy of Starwood The West Coast and Southwest choices were out of the question since the airfare would be prohibitively high. The majorit...

When I was up in Cambridge for the Penn/Harvard tailgate, I had a wonderful view of Boston and the Charles River.  I felt for the quintessential American autumnal holiday that a classic view of changing leaves in the home state of the "first" Thanksgiving would be the best way to wish my friends and readers a wonderful and loving Thanksgiving. Let me leave you with this: As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

One thing about the Philadelphia airport that sours me on traveling is going through the TSA security lines.  I have no problem with the scanning itself to make sure that we are secure for flight.  It’s both the security guards who stand at the entrance to the long queue shoot and, of course, my fellow passengers. My first beef is with these security folks; I assume they are not an official part of the TSA due to their dress and lack of TSA accessories.  They seem to be airport-employed agents who obliviously tell you which line to get into: Expert, Casual or Family/Medical Liquids.  I’ve been cattle-shooted (or is it cattle-shot) into the Family line several times, and not because it’s empty.  Sometimes, it is the shortest line and I’m sent there to alleviate the back up.  However, it doesn’t actually speed my time through security. What Kind of Traveler Are You? icons, images courtesy of TSA This leads to my grievances with my fellow passengers....