Quoting Michael Loo to All on 10-11-19 12:29 <=-

Remember the leeks? They had been stowed in the fridge for another
day. Ruth had a couple saved out for private experimentation later
and the rest we divvied up and did two ways. Mark induced Steve to
frizzle some on the grill, and I julienned some and made them fondu
with butter. I think both met with general approval, the preferences determined by whether you favored grilled or buttery flavors.

Both worked well.... There were a few core pieces left over in the end,
and I took a couple of those home with me... ended up chopping them
fairly small and cooked with onions to go with the couple of lamb hearts
I'd bought at the market Saturday as a treat for Richard... those I cut
in half lengthwise and pan-fried in butter... and to fill out the meal,
we had the steak and kidney pie leftovers... so he got at least a taste
of the picnic... :)

Aleppo brand halvah with pistachios was pretty much as expected
but a little greasy in the mouthfeel. It had a high proportion
of pistachios, which almost justified the elevated price.

I was surprised a bit at the feathery/grainy texture of it... but it was
still quite nice, and the pistachios did enhance it... :)

Near the register at Petra the other day Steve had found Turkish
delight in 3 flavors, coffee, orange, and pomegranate. This was not
the typical starch-based lokoum we usually see but was pretty high
in fruit puree so had a different than usual texture. The flavors
were dubious, bearing as little resemblance to the real thing as
the candies did to the bright brown, red, and orange photograph
on the lid. A dull dark brown coffee tasted like mud; a dull dark
pink pomegranate had a bit of acid and bitterness but not a whole
lot else; and the orange, which didn't taste like orange at all
but a very fleeting fruitiness, not even citrus, was in fact pond
water green. I suspected that it had been past its due date, but a
check revealed a 2020 expiration. I think this was also Aleppo brand.

I don't remember the brand on that, so you may be right... a good thing
for me, the coffee flavored one didn't have enough coffee to trigger my allergy, so I was able to taste it, along with the other two... :) They
were ok, but not as addictive as the stuff poor Edmund got in Narnia...
of course that stuff was also enchanted.... ;)

=
It was an uneventful trip punctuated by substantial showers
in a couple places. It being unpleasantly glarey I kept my
eyes shut most of the time and certainly took a nap or two.
I don't know if Nancy felt left alone, but I can and do carry
on conversations with my eyes closed and possibly even asleep.

You were sufficiently engaged... and I'm pretty used to traveling alone
anyway, so wasn't concerned... :)

One gratifying effect of our finding the classical stations
was our listening to WETA coming back and hearing the Franz
Clement violin concerto in D, which seemed an amusing mishmosh
of violin works by Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. It
was interesting enough for me to look it up, and guess what?
It was written before Beethoven's violin concerto and when
Schubert was 8 and years before Mendelssohn was born. The
others were cribbing from him, not the other way round! This
composer deserves another look for sure.

Who'da guessed... :) Their cribbing might have been unintended, just happenstance... similar musical idioms.... :)

We debated which way to take the Beltway around Washington.
I initially wanted to go the long way but then waffled and
figured the normal way (west, left) wouldn't be too terrible.
When the time we hit the confusing interchange at Springfield,
we were in the west, left lane, which promptly curved under
and became an east, right exit, so the best laid plans went
awry, and the next time I opened my eyes we were heading for
the famous cost-cutting drawbridge that commuters have hated
for decades.
It turns out that my rule of thumb "outer loop good, inner
loop bad" obtained, and if we'd gone the normal way we would
have lost half an hour.

Just as well that my brain was too addled to realize that I really
didn't want to stay on I95 at that point... ;)

As it was we got in an hour before the Shipps and had a snack
of the Cabot 3-year-old along with a bit of summer sausage and braunschweiger, both okay and nothing special.

For dinner porterhouses cooked from frozen, a newish adventure,
and word to the wise, don't trust the instant-read thermometer:
when according to my timetable the meat wanted to come off, the
reading inside was 77F, so we kept it on a bit more; when the
thermometer gave an acceptable number, the steaks ended up a
notch or two over, medium-rare to medium. To complete the meal,
broccoli and baked potatoes; I had an ounce of the former with
half an ounce of butter. The steaks had been Choice and quite
marbled, so a little extra cooking didn't harm the flavor or
the texture.

I suppose cooking with a thermometer is the acceptable way to do it...
but, in my usual minimalist way, I've never seen the need for it,
especially for meats and entrees and such...

==

Some things that came to the picnic as tastes, but never happened:

McVittie's digestive biscuits with chocolate and caramel... after our discussion of the availability of the dark chocolate covered digestives
I went looking, and did find these, instead... so grabbed them for the picnic... I broke into them later, after I got back home... It's an
interesting combination, rather pleasant...

Canned spotted dick pudding... also found at Wegmans with the above, on clearance as it was being discontinued... the best by date is in either
2020 or 2021, so that wasn't the problem... I thought it might be
appropriate to serve along with the steak and kidney pie... :) Ruth and
I talked about using the instructions on the can to reheat by using the microwave, but somehow it just never happened... :)

Vroortmans pumpkin spice wafers and chocolate covered vanilla wafer
cookies... these were sort of a follow-on from last year's wafer cookie comparison, where Vroortmans came off rather disappointingly stale...
these, being packaged rather than bulk, offered a chance for
redemption... I have since tried the first... they are indeed more
crisp, and not stale... the packaging helped immensely... the pumpkin
flavor and the spice are both rather faint, although it is supposed to
have been made from actual pumpkin... perhaps one should just call it delicate... it isn't bad, just not very obvious... :)

I brought along a canister of Almond Roca, which never really got passed around, though Ruth and Mark had tastes (and grabbed a few to take
along) as Mark was packing up to leave...

Mark brought a few bags of dried fruit that never did get opened... he
may have left one of those with Ruth...

Mark also brought a jar of mint jelly with bits of mint leaves suspended
in the jelly... perhaps that was more for show and tell rather than
taste, though... :)

And as far as I'm aware, the sous-vide that Steve had talked about demonstrating at the picnic never happened...

ttyl neb

... My support group for procrastinators hasn't met yet.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
* Origin: Fido Since 1991 | QWK by Web | BBS.FIDOSYSOP.ORG (1:123/140)