Thursday

Book Review-Bourdain;Miscellany-Washing Car, Running out of URL's; Pic of Week-My Very Own

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In Honor of His New Show
Called “No Reservations” featured on the Travel Channel, Mondays, at 10 pm.

Below, a review of Bourdain’s book “Kitchen Confidential”.

”Kitchen, Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain

A reader might require an acute interest in all things culinary or understand the logistics of New York to better enjoy this book of shock, fun and information as regards chefdom. But then again, maybe not. For the author, Anthony Bourdain and chef extraordinaire, is, and this surprises me to no end, an absolutely wonderful writer. I figure if a chef of such renown can write so well, perhaps I, an imagined writer, could cook right well if of a mind.

Bourdain relates his tale of aspiring, learning and achieving a career as a chef as if parts of a grand meal. For the appetizer we learn about his exploits in the infamous Culinary Institute of America. For the main course we learn of many New York restaurants that suffered Bourdain as a chef and from which he emerged a more experienced and worldly wise chef. For dessert the author teaches us the many culinary terms and advises those of us who aspire to chefdom of the basic rules to guaranteed cooking success.

“This business grows assholes: it’s our principal export. I’m an asshole. You should probably be an asshole too.”
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The above quote reflects the street-wise honesty and New York attitude of the author. In an interesting bow to current events, Bourdain tells of his time as chef on top of the world trade center in a bittersweet narration as the reader realizes the book was obviously written before the 9/11 attacks. Bourdain also spent some time cooking in my own home town of Baltimore and what he has to say about this mid-atlantic berg not only did NOT insult this native, the tale had me rolling in the aisles in his right-on-the-money assessment of the city with no discernible personality.

This reader struggled at times to understand the culinary terms bandied about. This reader, despite having no experience in the restaurant world beyond that of a diner, totally enjoyed the behind the scenes account of what really goes on in the famous kitchens of the world. They curse, smoke, cut, bake, chop, scream, do drugs and in-between all this human activity, manage to serve restaurant crowds every night, weekends and holidays.

The book left me with one nagging question, for the author firmly believes the best food requires little addition by the cook beyond absolute freshness and superior quality. A notion espoused by many who cook with a passion. I must ask, however … should this concept take hold across the world, wouldn’t this negate the need for such as chefs?

Oh well. They can always become writers.

More book reviews HERE

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Washing the Car

Myself has never personally washed a car in my life.

Not that I’m proud of that fact. Or ashamed either.

There’s car washes for that sort of thing and occasionally I would pay bucks to have someone else do the deed. I say “occasionally” as I was never, ahem, particularly fussy about my car.

This house in Serendipity Shore lends itself very well to washing one’s own car. The driveway is wide and paved and water supply is right by the garage door. While owner of a pressure washer to combat Delaware mold that will grow right upon one’s person should one stand still, I chose not to use this device to wash the Jeep. I’m still antsy about that paint issue with Chrysler products and I fear the pressure from the pressure washer might take paint AND dirt off the auto body.

There is no hot water, however, at the outside spigot.

With no experience at washing vehicles for over fifty years, I plotted, schemed and then did the deed.

I heated up a big pot of boiling water and poured it into a bucket. “A mop!” I thought. I would wash the car with a mop.

This after filling up the bucket with cold water to temper the boiling water. Dip the mop inside the bucket, boom, pour soapy warm water over the car then wipe it down. With the mop.

Now I don’t know why I thought of a mop. It just seemed a simple way to get the soapy water over the vehicle to then wipe off the road dust covering the car.

I did a fine job of cleaning inside the vehicle. Paper towels and Windex handled the windows just fine. The small vacuum cleaner picked up all the bits and pieces of whatever covering the floor rugs.

And at first the mop seemed to work fine. All over I dipped the mop into the bucket then allowed the soapy water to cover whatever part of the Jeep I was then upon. A couple of quick swipes and hey, I had to stand back and admire my ingenuity.

After covering the Jeep with soapy water I hosed it down with the hose. Man that Jeep looked mighty fine and shiny.

The next time I took the vehicle out I could not believe my lying eyeballs. For large splotches of dried soap film covered the entire Jeep.

It would seem that one has to actually rub the entire vehicle with either a rag or hey, even a mop but evidently I missed quite a bit with my mop idea.

Next time, a soft rag will be dipped into that bucket and I will put some elbow grease after the soapy water is sloshed on the car.

Hey. Mopping your car clean.

A concept which time has come. Somewhere out there an enterprising American will fine tune my idea and come up with a product that works.

Running out of URL’s

I do know that URL’s are long affairs using numbers and alpha to create links to web pages and pictures.

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Surely the combination and permutations are not infinite?

I worry about this.

For every single Blog post, every single picture, every single search for God’s sake, has a URL. Way I figure it’s in the billions. DAILY!

Now I realize the world is not as prescient as The Wise I.

But someday, folks, we’re going to run out of URL’s.

It’s going to be nuts. Likely we’ll have to re-use old URL’s no longer in business. Confusion and chaos will rein. We’ll click on a news story and get “Ben’s Dirty Jokes”.

I’m proposing a personal limit on URL’s. Such is mine own selfishness that this limit will affect me greatly.

All for the greater good.

Some mathematician should figure out how many URL’s can possibly be configured from all the letters in the alphabet and numbers 0 through 9. Okay, so it will figure in the trillions. Heck, what with using millions, possibly billions of URL’s every day, we’ll hit a trillion in no time.

Then the amount computed for URL’s possible should be divided by the number of people on the planet. Okay, we’ll leave out Africa for now as their leaders would probably abscond with all allotted URL’s at any rate.

This will be the limit of URL’s allowed for each human on the planet.

Then hey, one can sell their URL allotment, keep them for a later time, or even actually use them. When one’s allotment of URL’s is used up then time to go on Ebay and buy some more.

Remember you heard it here first.

More Miscellany posts HERE

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Taken By Mine Own Non-Photographer Self

This pic is my pride and joy. For just as soon as I saw the butterfly happily sipping from the hummer feeder I knew he would pose just fine as I fetched the camera cell phone.

As for Mr. Bee, well he was just as happy on the garden’s new coneflowers. So he posed as well!


More pics of week HERE

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