That Bowl Thing...

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:         That Bowl Thing...

The picture shown above is a classic helmet-to-helmet sort
of confrontation icon, sort of, seen often in the 
panoply of professional football images...  like!

 It's a kind of ritual.  We all have them, I suppose...  rituals.  Some are pleasant, even delightful, if spent with family and food, laughter and fun.  Some are purely insipid, like having to listen to the tedious droning of a vapid and vacuous politician...   A certain male senator in our state is a prime example, like a leaf blower at full and obnoxious volume when there are no leaves to be blown!   

There's a point to this lament, or complaint or explanatory narrative:  I prefer college football.  I tend not to be among the rabid devotees of the professional variety.  But, on the Sunday that has a great percentage of the populous anchored to their enormous television screens with bibs on to catch dribbles and drooling, chips and dips and other foodstuff droppings owing to a kind of inattentiveness when eyes are focused primarily on giant screens, I join my family for this particular ritualistic mayhem.

SweetHeart makes her famous and delicious chili, an enormous pool of the stuff, a complete dinner in a pot.  I help by cooking the meat that forms an important component of the stew.  And, I open cans and toss the empties into our recycle bin.  The day is so frenzied that sometimes I feel I'll land straight-jacketed in a bin of a different sort.  But, one has to be strong and brave; one is compelled to participate or one may incur various forms of torment.

On the Sunday in question, our family members watched a team called the "Rams" defeat a team known as the "Bengals."  One would think a tiger should be able to defeat and devour a member of the sheep family.  Apparently that's not how it works in the

Wait a minute!  Are these guys supposed to
be pals?  I mean, why isn't the guy on the
left eating the guy on the right??!!!

violent arena of professional football, bets and predictions, team spirit and hearts' desires notwithstanding! 

I suppose it is fitting that we fill large bowls of chili during the contest...  It's that bowl thing....   Continuity, sort of...   I watch pieces of it, the contest, that is, but spend most of my time talking nonsense or interacting with my much-loved children, grandchildren, or wandering around the home of my younger daughter who hosts the ritual annually.   

My eldest grandson is an encyclopedia of films, you know, movies, motion pictures.  We enjoy our conversations, and he reveals names of good films, favored directors and film score composers.  He's quite wonderful, and he actually makes films and scores them himself.  Remarkable talent, he is!

Our younger and also much-loved grandson and his uncle, my beloved son-in-law, spend a bit of preliminary and half-time moments competing in an electronic game we disparagingly term "Hut, Hut, Hut, Doodledy Doo," owing to the strange voice of a

presumed Quarter-of-the-Way Back "artificial intelligence" automaton announcing signals!  (We don't know what the voice really says, but it sounds ike "Doodledy doo..."  Could be some other sort of gibberish?...) 

He, the aforementioned grandson, has a new version of "Hut, Hut..." that he variously identifies as "Madden" or "Hut, Hut... Doodleldy NEW..."  

We enjoy pre-contest stuff, like Charcuterie platters and tasty hors 'doeuvre that both daughters concoct.  For me, these are pleasant diversions, distractions that allow me to remove myself from the pre-game babble, player profiles and re-run snippets of contests past.  I like to wander about, pretending to be interested, seeking other outlets to occupy my brain, such as it is.

And then there's dessert, cookies, ice cream with SweetHeart's homemade chocolate-y fudge-y topping that, when allowed to harden, becomes a delicious fudge, like the kind one might find in a candy shop (or "shoppe," if one prefers that rather overly cute and

fatuous version.).  Other baked goods from time to time, and depending on who decides to bring what!  

Did I mention dog walking?  Another necessary distraction that removes the walkers from the warmth of home and hearth allowing for an aid to digestion.  We all tend to overly consume, all of the comestibles being so delicious!  A good walk helps to re-locate the consumed stuff into different compartments of the belly, or maybe creates more blubber nodules...  Something like that!  

And consider this:  My brother once lived in a suburb of Cincinnati, but he also lived in Milwaukee, Denver, and now Dallas.  I think he has mixed allegiances!  I mean, it's a bit tricky, isn't it?  Bengals, Cowboys, Broncos, Packers??!!  I wonder if his children had a feet ball jersey sewn from fragments of all four team logo designs?!  Perhaps that's a topic for another time...  and another rant!  

Readers may note that the
helmeted rat boy is also 
a bit perplexed...  

(I mean, isn't loyalty supposed to be sort of exclusive?  Confined only to one team, not four?  This is a ponderous concept...  One needs to give this more thought, maybe an essay...  a manifesto?)

 Um...  One more observation:  As a society, we're obsessed with superlatives.  I mean, "Why 'Super'?" Baseball has the World Series.  Maybe play that "last game of the season" in footsball using the best of seven concept.  Oh, I see, them padded combatants, they'd all be dead or near dead by that time!  It's a Big Money thing, isn't it?!  The more hype the big money guys create, the more money they all make.  Yeah, it's a money thing...    

[A Confession:  If I'm being honest, I do enjoy "That Bowl Thing" ritual.  It's a fine reason to gather with family members, even if the giant television screen is a kind of distraction, roaring and chasing us from other more scholarly pursuits, butting and battering our heads and brains with mayhem and chaotic scenes of people knocking one another about, trying to dismember and maim!  (Is that what's meant by, "Heads will Roll...")  Such fun, aina??!!] 

Humbly Submitted, 02-17-2022 by Joel K.

   

     

     

 

The Fine Art of Fine Dining...!!??

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:             The Fine Art of Fine Dining...??


(Please Note:    As one advances into another level of consciousness, namely, "advancing maturity," one's tastes in cuisine -- dining establishments as well -- undergo a kind of metamorphosis, hence this dissertation on that specific topic!...  as follows...)


It devastates me to have to admit...   In my Geezerhood, I'm neither a gourmet nor a gourmand (probably never was either, even in my callow youth!).  SweetHeart insists I would savor styrofoam served under the guise of genuine beef, or any sort of ersatz stuff, like tofu or bean curd disguised as meaty dishes....   (Presented under a stainless serving platter?  Maybe on fine china??)  

These are identified as Tofu Tacos!

I will confess this, however, at this point in my life, if offered a choice of a large sack of pistachios or a similarly large portion of salted in the shell peanuts, vs. a fine steak or even chateaubriand, I'd choose the former, that is, the nuts!!  (What's that you said?  We are what we eat??!!...  Keep a civil tongue...!!)

There are some additional "however's" to this admission. On special occasions, such as SweetHeart's birthday or visits from beloved relatives and other dignitaries, we do venture to enjoy the culinary delights of fine local purveyors.  Examples:  Milwaukee Ale House has our favorite chicken pot pie, possibly in the entire hemisphere!  Oh yes, and their pot roast too!  

Traveling to the delightful environs of Kinnickinnic Avenue (the so-called "Heart of Bayview") in beautiful and often unheralded suburban Milwaukee, one might discover Cafe Corazon on the left (south side?) of that fabled and increasingly popular roadway, one suffused with fine restaurants, saloons and other attractions...  bowling, too, I believe! 

An image of Kinnickinnic Ave. We're
reliably told the word means "tobacco"
in a Native American dialect!

I haven't completely warmed to Tapas.  The other evening, our beautiful and talented daughter, Bethie, persuaded SweetHeart and me to plunge bravely into the unexplored territory of Tapas, paella too, I should add.  To me, the food was quite good, if a bit spare.  To SweetHeart, a different opinion.  

On balance, the restaurant was crowded and perhaps "understaffed."  In any case, ordering a couple of tapas at a time, and individually, spaced several minutes apart, is probably not a great idea for the ravenous!!  The paella, purportedly a 40-minute process for the kitchen, arrived in

Why is this image titled in French?  

an hour and a half.  

We were, however, treated to two desserts free of charge, a reward for enduring the overly long wait for each of the tapas and the slow-moving paella (that may have been cooked, packaged and exported directly from Spain while we waited -- eating buns and drinking beverages during said wait -- and then ferried to us aboard a lumbering commercial aircraft with one working propeller)!  (Oh, and the grandchildren both nearly fainted from hunger during our sojourn...  There was grumbling from more than just our table, I noted during my search for a restroom!!)

Moving on to other preferred dining establishments, I particularly enjoy a dish served by Simple Cafe.  It's a kind of breakfast hash affair, complete with glorious Brussel sprouts, adorned with turkey breast and assorted vegetables, topped -- like a crown, denoting a kind of royal feast -- by an egg, its golden orb staring upward, unblinking and majestic as a sunrise!  They have lots of other fine fare for the discerning diner...  breakfast and lunch only!

And then there's Benji's!  Quite possibly, Benji's serves the best breakfast fare in all of the metroplex, at least in this ranter's opinion.  The hash browns are superb.  I tend to ask the server to make them extra crispy.  I like burnt cookies too!  Oh, and the Hoppel Poppel.  You should try it at least once.  The Matzo Ball soup has healing properties!  The Hear-O Israel sandwich was featured on "Man vs. Food..."

Coffee Houses:   They serve food too, don't they?! SweetHeart and I have been devotees of Colectivo (formerly, Alterra) since approximately 1994.  We are fond of all of their coffees with the exception of Velo.  We've amassed more than a million points, at times, now down to more than 900,000.  But we're making a comeback?  They serve some fine sandwiches, and now offer a Bowl.  Stone creek has an excellent breakfast bowl, and the decaf coffee is very good.  There's a new location on Downer and Park.  We've noticed some deserters there, on occasion!  No

names!!  

I can't recall not being fond of various ethnic foods and the restaurants that serve them.  Two of my favorites are Indian -- Maharaja and Bollywood -- both on the east side of Milwaukee, WI, and both excellent.  Mango beef, chicken or port...  Jalfrazie...  naan...

roti...  samosa...  Taste, close you eyes and you're on the bank of the Ganges, sitar music floating along its waters, women in saris, singing while being rowed languorously in colorful vallams...   Something like that! 

More food and restaurant stuff, critiques and the like, perhaps to follow on a future date.  Maybe....  but...  

I'm getting hungry!!!...   "SweetHeart, do we have any nuts around here?..."       

Humbly Submitted 01-17-19 -- Joel K.