Right Now...

... well, OK... ten minutes ago. The view from under the awning during Happy Hour, just concluded. You'll have to twist the second pic in your mind's eye, coz I'm too lazy to (mess) with the eccentricities of Blogger and my photo editing program to fix what should NOT have to be fixed to begin with. Suffice to say the photo appears in its natural landscape format in my photo editing program, but refuses to display appropriately in Blogger. (note: fixed at a later date because I upgraded my image management program and the upgrade WORKS!)

All that said... that's one of those exquisite Acid Deep Dish cigars... nearing the end of its natural life... in the company of a New Belgium Sunshine Wheat. It was the most unusual of occasions: a passing thunderstorm without accompanying gale-force winds. So we sat our Old Ass under the awning and leisurely finished our beer while drinking in the sights, sounds and smells of rain on The High Plains of New Mexico. I'll have to admit, Gentle Reader, that yes... it does get better than this. But not lately.

Postscript, 1700 hrs.: Dinner is served... garlic shrimp linguine and a big-ass salad. I told you it gets better, didn't I? ;-)

PPS, 1805 hrs: Dessert. German chocolate cake with a bit of Häagen-Dazs butter pecan on the side. No coffee though. What a Philistine, eh? (Am I scraping the bottom of the blogging barrel... or what?)

What's For Dessert?

If it’s on the menu at any good restaurant I’m eating in, you can bet it’s what’s for dessert. I’m speaking of crème brulée. But there’s not a restaurant within 150 miles of me that features my all-time favorite dessert, more’s the pity.

I have, however, found a reasonable facsimile and something I’ll buy more of… a LOT more of… Ben and Jerry’s Crème Brulée ice cream. If you google it you’ll find reviews are about 3:1 favorable (FWIW). I suppose it helps if you approach the dish as a custard-based ice cream instead of expecting something like a real (albeit frozen) crème brulée. It ain’t that, most certainly.

But Hey! This stuff is danged good, even if it’s a serious diet killer at 310 calories per quarter pint. I’ve been known to eat an entire pint of Cherry Garcia at a single sitting, but there’s NO way I could do that with Crème Brulée… it’s just too danged rich. I can do a half-pint, though. Easily. Been there, done that, hope to gain weight.

On Salsa... Oh So Briefly (and Other Things, Too)

There’s one thing I just have to say before I even get started… home-made is BEST. It’s always been so, and probably will always BE so… with just a couple of caveats: (1) you gotta know what you’re doing and (2) you have to have the proper ingredients. Number Two is key, yanno. Some folks can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but that ain’t the case when it comes to salsa and its prime ingredient: chile. The ol’ IT saw… garbage in, garbage out… applies to salsa, in spades.

I might could be a salsa connoisseur, but I’m reluctant to bill myself as such. Let’s just say my experience with the art form goes back well over 40 years and I’ve eaten a tremendous number of varieties of this essential condiment… ranging from the exquisite to the mundane (and worse). And speaking of “exquisite,” The First Mrs. Pennington is a past master at creating the most delectable salsa you can imagine. Apropos of nothing, the lady kept me supplied with it (the salsa) during my one-year sojourn in Beautiful-Sinop-By-The-Sea via frequent Care Packages containing Mason jars of her salsa. That salsa was jealously guarded… believe me… and accompanied me to the chow hall every morning to grace my eggs and every evening to make other things edible (Army food SUCKS). Her salsa was also much in demand from friends who knew about the wonderfulness of salsa in general and hers, in particular. A few friendships were made because of her salsa, but let us not digress further.

One of the absolute worst periods of my life where salsa is concerned was spending over ten years in the Great Salsa Desert, also known as the northern tier (read as: Detroit and Rochester, NY). People in that part of the world have absolutely NO idea about salsa… and their concept of “good salsa” is limited to Pace or Old El Paso. Blech. Either of those two brands are to salsa as ketchup is to marinara sauce… i.e., they’re both red, but the resemblance begins and ends right there. And you know what’s strange? I can go to Wally-World right here in P-Ville and BOTH of those brands are featured prominently on the shelves. Go figure…

One of the reasons I make my bi-weekly trips over to The Big(ger) City^TM is to pick up a couple weeks’ supply of El Pinto, my current favorite salsa. El Pinto used to be available in P-Ville but for some reason the managers at Wally-World decided to discontinue it… more than likely because it ain’t the cheapest brand available, and Wally-World is ALL about cheap. But we digress… yet again. I truly believe El Pinto is the absolute BEST commercial salsa I’ve ever tasted and comes awfully danged close to home-made. It’s also available in several different formulas, from the usual mild to hot, to various permutations of red, green, and other varieties. And there’s good news for those folks who aren’t privileged to live in New Mexico, otherwise known as The Capital of the Chile Universe: you can buy El Pinto salsa on-line. My two favorite flavors are illustrated at left.

So… just as life is too short to drink bad beer, it’s most definitely too short to tolerate less than the best salsa. You DO have options. Use ‘em.

―:☺:―

Via Johnny Dollar at Olbermann Watch… a most excellent segment from last Friday’s Red Eye:

The whole Halftime Report is here… if’n ya wanna go. It’s worth the trip.

―:☺:―

While we’re on about politics, there’s this:

Looking for all the world like the sweating floor manager on the late afternoon shift at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club in an unbuttoned shiny black shirt and undersized sport coat, Rush Limbaugh leaned his meaty hands on the lectern at the CPAC conference and slipped a greasy dollar bill into the G-string of the writhing conservative dead-enders packed into garishly lit Omni Shoreham in Washington DC.

Jowls rolling like thunder from the right via CNN's unfortunate high-definition feed, Limbaugh took control of the sad and tattered remnants of the mainstream conservative movement, and urged continued allegiance to the noble Lost Cause of Reagan, metaphorically carrying his rebel-yelling followers into the hills like modern-day Quantrill's Raiders standing firm against change.

Judas Priest. The above takes the proverbial cake in the Purple Prose Sweepstakes. Isn’t there some sort of web site dedicated to over-reliance on one’s handy-dandy thesaurus and bad writing, in general? Why, yes… yes there IS. I’m thinking you’re seeing the 2009 Bulwer-Lytton winner, just above. All others should just give it up… there’s NO topping Mr. Watson. Elementary, and all that.