fauxklore

Now that I’ve gotten through what I intended on my DC guide, I can do some catching up. I’ll have other posts to write, too - one on the May prompts and one on my trip to Philadelphia last week. But I am traveling again this week (and next week) so it may take a little while.

Two Local Art Installations: A couple of weeks ago, I went with a friend to see two local art installations. Prismatic was at Ballston Quarter (a shopping mall in the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington) and consisted of a number of colored prisms. We thought there was supposed to be a way of turning them and maybe there was supposed to be music, but we couldn’t get those aspects to work. It was pretty enough, but not very exciting. From there, we went to Georgetown, where we had dinner at Tony and Joe’s at Washington Harbor, followed by a steep uphill walk to see an installation called Glow. My back was aching and the walk was difficult, as a result. Anyway, there were 5 light sculptures to see. My favorite one was called Madness Method, where you had to stand in a marked circle to make a bunch of flickering lights converge. Overall, I was disappointed in both installations, but I’m glad I went to see them.

Cookout: My chavurah had a cookout on Memorial Day. I brought Asian cole slaw, which was successful. Overall, it was a nice afternoon, of good food and good conversation. There was also just the right amount of cicadas - enough to see a few, but not so many to drown everything out.

Other Recent Cooking: I finally made the Polish pickle soup recipe I had heard about a while back. The combination of potatoes, onions, sour cream, and pickles had sounded somewhat weird and, alas, it was, indeed, too weird for me. I won’t be making that again.

Viva Vienna: This is an annual festival in downtown Vienna on Memorial Day weekend. There were some crafts vendors and some politicians (e.g. my delegate to the state legislature), but mostly a lot of home improvement companies, which aren’t relevant to a condo dweller. I did buy a couple of cheap masks and a selection of nut snacks from Boso Kitchens. I’ve now sampled all of the latter and the definite winner was the honey chipotle peanuts.

BaltiCon: This science fiction convention was again on-line (and free), so I went to a few talks, mostly from their history and folklore track. There was a panel on Traditional Storytelling and Genre Fiction, which is pretty much right up my alley. Anne E.G. Nydam had an interesting presentation on bestiaries, including her own book. I was quite amused by one of her fantastic beasts - the umbrellaphant whose ears are like umbrellas and provide protection from the rain for other creatures. There was a panel on Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy, that was worth listening to, but didn’t really tell me about any books I hadn’t already heard of. One of the best presentations was a short film called “Space Torah,” about astronaut Jeff Hoffman who brought a small Torah scroll on the space shuttle and read from it while in orbit on Shabbat. (There was a Q&A with him a few days later, which I’d intended to go to, but I got sucked into something else.) Finally, there was a talk on The Heroine’s Journey, which was interesting, but was too short to really cover the material. I should also note that three of these presentations included Valerie Frankel and I need to seek out some of her work.

Annoyances: I have gotten repeated phone calls from a charity solicitor for some National Police Association, which i almost certainly a scam. They are all from the same guy, who calls himself Lee. I finally was annoyed enough, that I cussed him out. I then took a nap and had a dream in which he called me and shouted, “I can’t believe what you did.” Not only is this scammer invading my phone, but he is invading my dreams.

Speaking of Telephones: My land line rang at 8:30 in the morning last Saturday. I was irritated at a call that early - until I answered and it turned out to be the gentleman with whom I conducted the world’s longest running brief meaningless fling. He lives in London and thinks of me as getting up early, so it was okay for him to call at that hour. (Aside from which, I still pretty much melt at his voice.) Anyway, we had a nice conversation about the state of the world. He was a bit surprised at how much things have been opening up for me. Apparently, everything is still much more locked down in London.

Mammogram: I finally had my mammogram a week ago Thursday. (It had been delayed because you are supposed to wait at least 6 weeks after your second COVID vaccination, due to potential lymph node swelling). The interesting thing is that I got the results back in less than an hour! No signs of any issues.

An Evening With Rockwell: I went to an event at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial on Thursday night with a couple of friends. The focus was on a drawing by Norman Rockwell, which was used to cast part of a monument in New Hampshire. There was time to look around at current exhibits in the memorial, followed by a brief talk and slide show. They also served drinks (including wine) and had snack boxes (either fruit and cheese or a Mediterranean selection). Overall, it was a nice evening out and it was nice to see the people I went with.

Celebrity Death Watch:Dick Tuck was a political prankster. Lla Brennan was a restaurateur. John Julius Norwich wrote about history and travel. Jill Ker Conway wrote a well-received memoir, The Road from Coorain, and became the first woman president of Smith College. Nick Meglin was an editor of Mad Magazine. Bruce Kison was a baseball pitcher, including two World Series championships with Pittsburgh and a brief stint with the Boston Red Sox. Frank Carlucci was the Secretary of Defense from 1987-1989 (under Reagan). Russell Nype was a Tony-winning actor. Kate Spade was a fashion designer.


Camelot: I went to see Camelot at the Shakespeare Theatre Company on Friday night. I have a complicated relationship with this show, since we did a production of it when I was in 6th grade. That was largely on the grounds that we were studying the Middle Ages, but it was really because our teacher, Mr. Ryder, was into musicals. And, while we used the songs, we rewrote large portions of the script. Most of the songs were sung by the entire class. As a result, I know the score well, but I had never actually seen the show. (I should also mention that the show got me addicted to Dark Shadows because I made paper mache trees for the set with a couple of other girls, who insisted we had to watch that soap opera while working on them.) I have, however, read The Once and Future King, which is largely the basis for the book.

So how was it? It’s rather a mess, really. For one thing, there is no way to tell how much time passes between events. There must be some time for word to spread to France about the Round Table and for rumors about the relationship between Lancelot and Guenevere to reach Scotland. But there don’t seem to be any knights going on quests, so who knows? Even King Pellinore seems to have given up on the Questing Beast in favor of sleeping on a featherbed with a fluffy pillow. The score has a few notable moments. "If Ever I Would Leave You" is lushly romantic, but it has other songs that are easy to mock. I’m always tempted to change a lyric in "C’est Moi" from "a knight so extraordinaire" to "a knight so full of hot air." And then there are songs like "How to Handle a Woman," "The Lusty Month of May," and, especially, "Fie on Goodness"” which just scream that this is not Lerner and Loewe at their best. (I should note that my biggest objection to the score is that it doesn’t have a consistent tone and has few bits that suggest medieval England.)

I could forgive much of that if the performances were better. But Alexandra Silber was too operatic as Guenevere, without being able to enunciate clearly enough with all the vocal pyrotechnics. Ken Clark was uneven as Arthur, but that is probably as much the fault of the score (and direction) that doesn’t know quite what to do with his disillusionment. The best performance was by Nick Fitzer as Lancelot. Now, there’s a voice that suited the character!

Incidentally, I have whined before about STC’s failure to use local actors and this was another case of it. Also, while I am nitpicking, the set had Lancelot and Guenevere rolling around on a stage full of rose petals at the beginning of Act II. The petals stayed there, which may be practical from the standpoint of set design, but annoyed me, because I was distracted by them being swept around in random patterns by the long dresses and robes worn by many characters.

There is some interesting political relevance to the story, but, overall, the show just didn’t work well for me.


The Indie 500: Saturday was the Indie 500, DC’s local crossword tournament. There were plenty of out-of-town attendees, particularly the Boston crowd. They’d moved locations and there were more people competing this year.

The puzzles were fashion-themed this time, though how much the themes had to do with fashion varied. I will refrain from details to avoid spoilers for the solve-at-home crowd. (I have one spoiler in rot13 in the comments). Things started off well for me, with a decent time (5:24) on Puzzle 1, even though I entirely failed to notice the theme while solving it. The average time was 5:41, by the way.

One of the Indie 500 traditions is pie and the boxes of miniature pies showed up early this time – between puzzles 1 and 2. They were unlabeled. I got something that seemed to be a sort of lemony custard, which was quite tasty.

Puzzle 2 had a cute theme and was reasonably straightforward. I finished in 11:24, which was a little slower than I should have, but there wasn’t any particular thing that slowed me down. (And the average time was 12:57, so it isn’t as if that was a bad time.)

I really enjoyed the theme of Puzzle 3, as well. I got slightly slowed down by one of the theme clues being a Down clue, while the rest were Across clues. And there was one square that required me to go through the alphabet to figure out an answer. Still, I solved it cleanly in 17:08, while the average was 18:27. At the end of three, I was in 75th place out of 164 contestants.

Then it was time for lunch. I ended up at Rice Bar, which is a bibimbap place a couple of blocks away. It was good and filling, though I will probably choose a different sauce than the peanut sauce I got if I go there again.

Puzzle 4 was the hardest of the day and took me 24:43, while the average was 19:26. Part of my slow time was due to my being unsure about the spelling of one person’s name. I had a spelling issue on another name, too, though I figured that out quickly. But I got hung up on the southeast corner, largely due to an initial error on one clue. I did end up solving it cleanly, but I was slow.

Puzzle 5 was straightforward and had a cute theme. I finished it in 11:47, while the average was 12:52. Sounds fine, right? Well, it would have been if I hadn’t had a stupid error. I had attempted to correct an error, but did not manage to actually completely erase the wrong letter. All I can think of is that I used the eraser at the end of my pencil, instead of the click-eraser I had with me. The error cost me a lot of points. And I ended up finishing 100 out of 164. Aaargh.

While the scores were being tabulated for the finals, there was a game that involved finding names hidden in other words. I was pretty good at this, for the most part. One of my teammates was amazed that I knew the word "psaltery" (a sort of medieval stringed instrument). I will confess to actually owning one – and playing it, though not very well.

So here is how I’ve done over the years on the Indie 500:

2018 – 100 / 164 (39th percentile)
2017 – 64 / 128 (50th percentile)
2016 – 60 / 117 (49th percentile)
2015 – 61 / 100 (39th percentile)


Quajado: I got home and made quajado for a potluck on Sunday. For those who are unfamiliar with this dish, it’s a Sephardic egg, cheese, and vegetable dish, sort of like a crustless quiche. I baked it in a 9 inch square pan because that’s what I had, but one could use a round pan, of course. Here’s the recipe I used:

Chop one medium onion. Saute in olive oil until soft, about 10 minutes.

Grate two smallish zucchini.

Thaw one package of frozen chopped spinach. (You could, of course, use fresh spinach, but I had frozen on hand.)

Mix the vegetables together. Add 6 lightly beaten eggs, 1 cup of ricotta cheese, and a ½ cup of grated parmesan cheese. Add a couple of crushed garlic cloves and a teaspoon or so of crushed red pepper.

Pour the mixture into an oiled baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, until set and slightly browned. Serve warm or at room temperature.

You can use other vegetables and other cheeses, e.g. farmer cheese instead of ricotta, gouda instead of parmesan. And you could throw in additional herbs.

JGSGW Luncheon: That potluck was the annual luncheon for the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington. The quajado went over well and I didn’t have any leftovers to bring home. I suspect that was, in part, because it was more original than, say, yet another kugel (there were three if I recall correctly). I had some interesting discussions about traveling in Eastern Europe. And I refrained from pointing out that Austria is really Central Europe.

The actual program had to do with things you can find in newspapers and the speaker had some interesting examples, e.g. several items from a small town newspaper that all mentioned the street that members of a prominent family lived on. There was also a lot of information about good sources for newspaper research, starting with the Library of Congress.

Washington Folk Festival: After the luncheon I raced across Maryland in the pouring rain to get to Glen Echo Park for the folk festival. The weather was truly atrocious and River Road was pretty close to living up to its name. Still, I made it there. My set wasn’t until 5 p.m., so I had time to listen to some other people’s stories beforehand. As for my set, I told a brief Herschele Ostropole story, followed by Mendel and the Enchanted Goat, and a Nasruddin story. I could probably have squeezed in one more story, but my watch was fast so I thought I had just one minute instead of about five.

The rain had let up (though not actually stopped) by the time I left. So it wasn’t bad driving home. I had time for grocery shopping and then ate supper before pretty much collapsing.

Celebrity Death Watch: Anna Mae Hays was the 13th chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and the first woman in the U.S. armed forces to become a general officer. France Gall wa a French singer. Doreen Tracey was one of the original Mouseketeers. Keith Jackson was a sportscaster, particularly known for college football. Dan Gurney was a race car driver and is credited with creating the tradition of spraying champagne on the podium after the race. Dolores O’Riordan was the lead singer of The Cranberries. Edwin Hawkins was a gospel musician, best known for "Oh Happy Day." Jo Jo White played basketball, largely for the Celtics. Jessica Falkholt was an Australian soap opera actress. Her greatest significance is that she’s the first person anybody scored on in this year’s ghoul pool.

Joe Frank was a radio personality. I used to listen to his show, Work in Progress, on KCRW when I lived in Los Angeles. He was always interesting and, often, quite funny. There is apparently a documentary about him scheduled to be released this year.

Ghoul Pool – 2018: Speaking of ghoul pool (a contest to predict what famous people will die in the next year), the entry lists are now out of the beginning of the game embargo, so I can reveal mine. Note that the number indicates how many points a person is worth and you get an extra 12 points for uniqueness, i.e. being the only participant to have someone on your list.

20. I.M. Pei
19. Robert Mugabe
18. Ed Kranepool
17. Honor Blackman
16. Beverly Cleary
15. Dervla Murphy
14. John McCain
13. Johnny Clegg
12. Al Jaffe
11. Herman Wouk
10. Jimmy Carter
9. Javier Perez de Cuellar
8. John Paul Stevens
7. Tom Jones (the lyricist, not the Welsh singer)
6. Lawrence Ferlinghetti
5. Norman Lloyd
4. Jerry Herman
3. Olivia de Haviland
2. Sheldon Harnick
1. Sara Paretsky

The Pajama Game: Looking back, I realized I never wrote about the production of The Pajama Game at Arena Stage, which I saw just before leaving for my vacation. It’s a problematic show to modern sensibilities. I’m tempted to retitle it to something like "Sexual Harassment at the Sleep-Tite Factory." I also find a lot of the lyrics to be full of cheap, amateurish rhymes ("A new town is a blue town…")

But – and this is a huge redeeming factor – there is fabulous choreography. I was particularly pleased to see that Donna McKechnie, who played Mabel, still has it at age 74. (I saw her as Cassie in A Chorus Line back in the 1970’s!) The most striking dance moves, though, came from Blakely Slaybaugh as Prez (the union president).

I do prefer the modern sensibilities and deplore the sexism. But I also miss the days when people broke out into spectacular dance moves with little provocation. In fact, I often wish that people in real life would spontaneously broke into song and dance. It would certainly liven up many a design review.

Losers’ Post-Holiday Party: Getting back to the present time, Saturday night was the annual post-holiday party for the Style Invitational Losers. As usual with potlucks, I have a long debate with myself over what to bring. Someday I will use up the spring roll wrappers that I bought way too many of because I misunderstood the package labeling. But this time, I went for quick and easy in the form of stuffed mushrooms. You just take baby bella mushroom caps, arrange them on a baking pan. Fill each cap with some alouette (or similar) cheese. Dip the cheese-stuffed end in panko (Japanese bread crumbs). Bake at 375 degrees for about 15 minutes or so.

As for the party itself, it was conveniently metro-accessible. Or, conveniently if the Red Line weren’t running only half-hourly over the weekend, so I got there later than I intended. Still, I was in time to get food and, more importantly, in time for the sing-along, which is always a highlight of these things. Throw in lots of intelligent conversation, both with people I already knew and those I hadn’t met before, and it was a good time.

One Day University: On Sunday, I went to One Day University. This time out, it was at the Lansburgh Theatre and consisted of two lectures. The first was The Presidential Library given by Joseph Luzzi of Bard College. I had actually heard Luzzi lecture (on a different literature topic) previously and he’s quite a dynamic speaker. He posed a few general questions about the relationship between reading and ability to be an effective leader. He discussed several presidents in depth, focusing on what they read. George Washington, for example, used Cato as a model of manhood. He also collected etiquette books. Thomas Jefferson read pretty much everything. Lincoln was, of course, an autodidact. As a counterexample, Warren Harding’s reading was limited to things like Rules of Poker. Buchanan and Fillmore supposedly both read a lot, but neither was much of a leader. Grant didn’t get mentioned, but I find it hard to imagine him reading much of anything beyond the labels on liquor bottles. (Apparently, he got in trouble at West Point for spending his time reading James Fenimore Cooper, instead of his textbooks.)

Luzzi compiled an American Library List that included some obvious authors (Locke, Rousseau) and works (Plutarch’s Lives, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Bible). He also recommended things like Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and Ben Franklin’s autobiography. Fictional works which got mentioned included Great Expectations and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Didn’t any presidents appreciate the real Great American Novel – namely Moby Dick?

Anyway, Luzzi’s conclusion was, essentially, that good readers make good leaders. He made four points to support this: 1) reading fundamentally suggests a person knows he doesn’t know everything, 2) readers are curious, 3) reading supports collaboration, and 4) reading puts one in another’s shoes. As a self-confessed biblioholic, I tend to agree.

The second speaker was Mark Lapadusa of Yale University, speaking on How to Watch Movies Like a Film Professor. He started out by pointing out that this applies to seeing a movie repeatedly and, for first viewing, one should just enjoy it for what it is. Then he showed various film clips and talked about aspects of them. The films he discussed were Casablance, Citizen Kane, Psycho, Dr. Strangelove, and The Godfather (Both I and II). That’s a pretty wide assortment of styles and subject matter. He touched on one subject that I have a long-standing interest in, namely film music, specifically in the case of the shower scene from Psycho. If he’d had time for questions, I might have asked him more about that.

I was also a little disappointed that he didn’t talk about source material. For example, The Godfather is one of a handful of movies that is generally considered far more successful than the novel it is based on. Casablanca was based on an unsuccessful play. What makes a film adaptation successful and why do so many movies based on bestsellers fail either by being too true to the novel or not true enough?

I had a chance to discuss the lectures a bit more after. I had gotten into a conversation with a woman named Ann before the program. We ended up sitting together in the auditorium and decided to go out to lunch (at China Chilcano – tasty Peruvian / Asian fusion food) afterwards. It was nice to have the opportunity to digest some of what I’ve heard. All in all, an excellent way to spend part of a day.

Murder Was Her Hobby: I took advantage of being in the city to go to the Renwick Gallery and see their exhibit of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by Frances Glessner Lee. This is a series of miniature rooms depicting what may or may not be murder scenes. They were built to be a teaching tool for forensic science and are incredibly detailed. Apparently, Lee even made underwear for the dead bodies. Because they are still used for teaching, the exhibit does not include solutions to the cases. There were a few where I thought I had a good idea of what had happened, but I was completely puzzled by the majority of them. So much for all the hours I’ve spent reading murder mysteries!

The craftsmanship is amazing and the exhibit included flashlights to allow for closer examination of the crime scenes. However, there wasn’t very much thought given to the flow through the room, so one was stuck standing and waiting for people to move for long stretches of time. It would have been better to set things up so people moved only in one direction through the exhibit. And it would have been much better to limit the number of people allowed in at a time. Even with these annoyances, it was worth seeing the exhibit and I’m glad I took the time to.

I normally post entries early in the morning, but I have been in a "getting organized" mood (not that you'd know it from my lack of progress on the chaos that is my den). And I seem to be too tired to write on the nights when I am not too busy. So I am actually using a work break to catch up here, instead of my usual chit chatting.

Crafts: The crocheted coral reef exhibit is opening this weekend. I am hoping to get over to the Museum of Natural History on Sunday morning, before the meeting for volunteers at the upcoming Science Festival on the mall. But what I wanted to mention now was one of the other satellite reefs that I found interesting. It was made by inmates of a women's prison in Indiana.

Celebrity death watch: I should mention the opera singer, Joan Sutherland, but the most recent celebrity death was of Carla Cohen, co-founder of Politics and Prose, an excellent independent bookstore in northwest Washington, D.C. She had been in poor health for a while (and the shop is for sale partly because of that). Until reading her obituary, I had not realized that one of her brothers is Mark Furstenberg, owner of the well-regarded sandwich shop, Bread Line (as well as Marvelous Market, which I am less impressed with).

Amazing Race: Sunday night's episode came down to two things - luck with taxis and attention to detail. The Princeton boys did well (despite taking way too long to find Ghana on the map) because they actually read the clue for the construction materials challenge. And they were the only team who actually found the decoder key for what should have been the easier challenge.

I was annoyed at tattooed guy for his meanness to his girlfriend, though he did apologize when she had the asthma attack. I have also concluded that the doctors won't last much longer, given that they were the only team who had trouble finding the marked path to the pit stop.

Notes to myself: Does anybody have any idea what the possible significance of "303/357" might be and why I wrote it in my planner a couple of weeks ago? Or why I wrote "3200-11" a couple of days later? (Lest you think all of my notes to myself are cryptic and/or useless, I am reasonably sure that one string of letters and numbers was a temporary web password for a site I forgot my password to and had called to get reset. And I actually know that "Elstar" is a type of apple, about which more later.)

Yoga: There is a Baptist minister who has been getting skewered in the press for saying that yoga is un-Christian. I don't see the big deal. It isn't any secret that yoga has spiritual practices associated with it and it should not be surprising that those might be incompatible with other religious traditions. (By the way, I know of at least a couple of synagogues that have special yoga classes that have been designed to avoid some of the practices that are un-Jewish.)

Apples: The farmer's market has been full of apples for the past several weeks. The Elstar apples definitely had an unusual flavor, which is why I made a note about them. They were fine for a change of snacking pace, but I will stick to the Rome and (especially) Cortland apples for the most part. Were I ever going to bake a pie, they have a good supply of Northern Spy, which are the definitive pie apple as far as I am concerned.

Speaking of baking: I baked a chocolate cake for a colleague's 50th birthday. Basically, I used a recipe from Hershey's web site, substituting brown sugar for half the granulated sugar (because I ran out of granulated sugar) and tossing in a bag of chocolate chips for good measure. My ambitions are limited, however, and I used boughten frosting. It was a success and I will use that cake recipe again.

Words: Does anybody else use "boughten" to mean "store bought" or is that something I picked up somewhere obscure?

Endangered languages: I went to hear K. David Harrison's talk at National Geographic on Tuesday night. I picked up a copy of his book, The Last Speakers while I was there. He was an entertaining and informative lecturer and played clips of several speakers of endangered languages. The funniest part involved a love song from a tribe in Papua New Guinea. The lyrics were along the lines of "Your village is swampy and has death adders. I don't want to live there. Come and live in my village where there are no death adders."

I think that brings me up to date.

Last night's story swap was very well attended - 21 people if I counted right. Not everybody told, of course, but listeners are highly valued. I just told a throw-away shaggy dog story, because I'm working on three things and not really focused enough on any of them. And, by the end of the evening, I realized what I should actually spend some time focused on.

The highlight of the evening was hearing Csenge, a young woman from Hungary who is performing at the Kids Euro Festival, tell a Hungarian folk tale. What was especially impressive is that she said she had never told that story in English before.

The swap was also an excuse for baking. I actually did what I'd intended with the idea of a recipe of the month, namely trying something from the (overflowing) clippings file. The chocolate pecan brownies turned out okay, but they were: a) a bit too sweet, b) not very strongly pecan-flavored and c) not as good as Marcia's brownies (for which I do have the recipe). But, in case someone else wants to try them, the recipe is:

1. Combine 3/4 c. sugar, 1/3 c. butter and 2 T. water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove from heat and stir in 1 c. bittersweet chocolate morsels (about 1/2 a 12 ounce package) and 1 tsp. vanilla. Stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth.

2. Let cool. Beat in 2 eggs, 1 at a time. Stir in 1/4 c. flour and 1/4 tsp. baking soda.

3. Mix in remaining chocolate morsels and 1/2 c. chopped pecans. Pour into a greased 9 inch square baking pan.

4. Bake at 325 degrees until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

September's new recipe of the month was Lemon Mustard Chicken. The chicken was marinated in a mixture of lemon juice, lime juice, and Dijon mustard. Then it was rolled in bread crumbs, mixed with black pepper, oregano, and curry powder. Finally, it was baked until tender. Pretty easy and very tasty. I'm likely to make this again.

I actually ended up trying two new recipes as part of tonight's dinner.

The Bahamian mahi mahi was marinated in a mixture of rum and lime juice with thinly sliced onion. The recipe called for marinating it 2-4 hours, but it ended up being almost 24 hours because I hadn't read that far when I started preparing this last night. After marinating, the fish was sprinkled with oregano and black pepper and dotted with butter. There was also a lemon slice on top. (Most of the marinade was drained off.) This was baked covered at 350 degrees. The recipe suggseted 20 minutes, but I checked after 15 and it was done. The rum flavor was too strong for the fish, possibly because of the marinating time. (Or possibly because I used Meyer's rum, instead of some flavorless junk.) It was okay, but I've preferred other things I've done with mahi mahi.

I also made gingered cole slaw. Marcia had posted a recipe on a mailing list recently for a ginger vinaigrette - olive oil, rice vinegar, sugar, grated ginger, salt and pepper. I omitted the salt and used a packet of splenda. Marcia had thought it was too pungent with 1 T. of ginger (for a half cup of dressing), but I found that not enough for my tastes and ended up doubling it. Of course, ginger varies in potency, so it is best to be cautious and add more if you need it. Anyway, this got mixed with shredded green cabbage, red cabbage, and carrots. It was simple and delicious - very light and fresh in flavor.

There was also corn on the cob. And an amazingly juicy shiro plum from the farmer's market for dessert.

I actually made two new recipes tonight, though one was really a minor variant on something I've made before.

The first was, of all things, macaroni and cheese. I'm sure I must have made mac and cheese at some point before in my life but I'm reasonably sure it hasn't been within the past 25 years and may not have been since junior high school home economics. I had an odd craving for it a few weeks back and dug up a recipe that included cottage cheese and sour cream (as well as cheddar and parmesan cheeses and, of course, macaroni). I also liked that it was topped with panko (Japanese bread crumbs). This proved to be amazingly good - possibly the best mac and cheese I've ever had. I suspect the awesomeness is due to the sour cream, which is an ingredient I have way too much love for. And the panko provided a nice bit of crunch.

I had steamed asparagus on the side. But I had actually started with a new salad recipe. I have made grapefruit and fennel salad before, but this recipe tossed the sliced fennel and grapefruit segments with arugula and balsamic vinaigrette. It also called for black olives, but I didn't have any on hand. A little freshly ground pepper on top and this was a simple and delicious summer salad. You could make the vinaigrette yourself but if it's late and you're being lazy, Newman's own light balsamic will do. (In the past, I have made a fennel and grapefruit salad without arugula and with raspberry vinaigrette, which is also good. Of course, the whole concept is dependent on one's liking for strong, complex flavors.)

Note that both the asparagus and the fennel were from the Crystal City farmer's market. So was the bok choy I stir fried with surimi for supper last night. I could have had the last goldrush apple from the market for dessert, but I was decadent and had some blood orange sorbet (boughten Ciao Bella brand, not home made) instead. All in all, this was the best meal I've had at home in months.

Note the plural. The first new thing I tried making was sriracha mayonnaise, to imitate what I'd had at a restaurant. It was good, but mixing sriracha sauce into mayonnaise is really too trivial to count as a recipe. I will definitely do this again as a dip for french fries.

Tonight, I made tofu in peanut sauce. The sauce was basically peanut butter, soy sauce, stir fried scallions, and finely chopped ginger mixed together. Stir fry tofu in a mixture of olive oil and sesame oil, add the sauce ingredients. Take off the heat and sprinkle with dried coconut and sesame seeds. Pretty basic and tasty, but I didn't use quite enough ginger (despite having doubled what the recipe called for.) I suspect that both lemon grass and garlic would also help.

I had farfalle. Spring means asparagus. A bit of web searching turned up a recipe for farfalle with asparagus and smoked salmon. It's actually a pasta salad, intended to be eaten at room temperature. The farfalle and sliced asparagus tips are cooked separately and mixed with lox, lemon juice, olive oil, basil, black pepper and a little bit of chopped pistachio.

I liked this, though next time I would leave the lox in bigger pieces. I will, however, note that looking for recipes on-line defeats the purpose of trying a new recipe each month, since it does nothing to get me to go through umpty-ump years worth of clippings.