Sweet Lorraine

Last night at the home an exciting, glamorous lady joined the folks on the Memory Care Unit. While I complimented Alma on her new red Target bag that I watched her open at the Christmas party and she replied, "Thank you, I received it for my birthday," the folks ate and complained as usual that they don't get enough sugar. I thought it was going to be a regular old night, void of much Christmas cheer, even with the strains of Nat 'King' Cole serenading us about chestnuts on an open fire, but then the new Lorraine showed up late to dinner.

I was sitting between Gudrun and Mary, making sure each ingested enough calories to keep them healthy and alive, when a woman I'd never seen before entered the dining room. She wore only a hospital gown but she had fire-red hair, reminiscent of Lucille Ball's iconic mop, except that it was jutting out in crazy puffs all over her head, the victim of a rough afternoon of sleep. She sat down at the table with the most able residents and began talking right away. She bellowed out to anyone that would listen, "Who is singing this song?" When nobody answered, she asked again until I called across the room, "It's Nat 'King' Cole!" "That's right," she replied, "I love Nat 'King' Cole! He sings my song, Sweet Lorraine!" That's when I learned her name really is Lorraine, which makes her the third Lorraine on the unit, and she even shares the same last name as another Lorraine there! It's a small Lorraine world.

But this Lorraine was different than the others. My original Lorraine is quiet and nice as pie, rarely complaining and always smiling anytime her head isn't lying on the table top while she naps before dinner. The second Lorraine suffers from male pattern baldness and whines a lot about not wanting to eat her dinner. She's tougher to love, but looks so much like a sick child that you can't help it. But this new Lorraine was like a hurricane whirling through the unit! Her fiery hair and tongue hide the symptoms of dementia, at least so far. She just seemed like a kooky, fun old lady. Throughout the meal the firehead Lorraine talked and talked and talked and I strained to hear everything she was saying because so much of it was amusing. But Gudrun had a lot of Swedish to speak to me, or to anyone really, and she had some singing to do, so I couldn't hear it all.

When folks were finishing their meals and the nurses were making the rounds, recording how much food each resident had eaten, like they do after every single meal, Kollie stopped at the new Lorraine's table. My ears perked up when I heard Lorraine ask demure, shy Barbara over and over, "How old are you? How old are you? You can't be sixty, you look too old to be sixty. Maybe seventy? How old are you?" Barbara wouldn't answer, she rarely does more than smile in response to anything said to her, but Lorraine wouldn't have it. She turned to Kollie who was standing there with his clipboard and she asked him, "How old is this lady? She won't say anything!" I looked at Kollie with an uncomfortable grin and he lifted his eyebrows as if to say, "How did I get into this?" But he calmly replied to Lorraine, "I don't know how old Barbara is, you have to ask her." Lorraine, clearly exasperated, barked, "But she won't tell me! I've asked!" Kollie, quick as a wink, then said, "Maybe she doesn't want to tell you. How old are you, Lorraine?" To which Lorraine snapped back loudly, "That's none of your damned business!"

I think I'm going to like Sweet Lorraine.

Bradstreet Crafthouse

When a restaurant goes above and beyond the call of duty both in service and in quality of food and beverage, it deserves to be celebrated. Today I celebrate Bradstreet Crafthouse at the Graves 601 Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, across from the Target Center. Seriously, this place blew me away.

My coworkers, Becky and Liz, and I decided that rather than exchange unnecessary Christmas gifts this year, we'd go out together for dinner and drinks. After lots of discussion, we settled on Bradstreet Crafthouse because of its intriguing cocktail menu and because none of us had been there before. The place is sophisticated and sleek, modern but not cold, with lighting that could make Ed Gein look vaguely attractive. There are three main dining areas, with large comfortable tables in the bar area, kitchen seating where you can watch the chefs prepare the food, and a lounge area that is dark and cozy with music you can listen to without shouting for conversation. We chose the lounge and settled into our low table with comfortable banquette seating and table tops especially designed to complement the cocktails. Yes, the cocktails.

Bradstreet Crafthouse is all about the mixology. That's fancy talk for slinging drinks. But the drinks slung here are at a whole other level than most people are accustomed to. Bradstreet makes eight of their own bitters, fresh squeezes their juices, and includes crazy things like elderflower liqueur and Zwack in their drinks. I don't even know what Zwack is, but it makes me feel pretty cool to be around it. When we asked a few simple questions about our cocktail choices, decisions that were tough to make due to the number of delicious-sounding concoctions, our server Jesse presented us with three brown apothecary bottles filled with bitters. He invited us to stretch out our hands and he proceeded to add a couple of drops to our palms, then instructed us to rub our hands together and smell them. The difference in scent between the three bitters was amazing, I never knew that bitters had such depth. One smelled earthy and gingery while another presented a Christmas-y spiciness. Who knew? I just thought there was one kind of bitters. Jesse taught me that my least favorite alcohol of all time, Campari, is a form of bitters. He also told us about the "ice program" at Bradstreet, the fact that they offer five different forms of ice in their drinks, including a perfect ice sphere about the size of a tennis ball that takes four minutes to create each one. I'm telling you, the entire evening was one fascinating lesson after another, presented in a fun and informative way.

The whole experience started with a liquid amuse bouche, a small cocktail that the mixologists create each day that are presented to each diner. Ours was called Merry Christmas Kermit (for the green color) and though I don't know what was in it, I could easily have downed several. After that I enjoyed two different full cocktails, the Lima Sour and the Moscow Mule. The first is a potent mixture of Pisco (Peruvian brandy), fresh lemon juice, egg white, pineapple and bitters. I drank many of these in Peru a few years back and this one really brought me back. The Moscow Mule, on the other hand, made me yearn for the tropics with its organic vodka, fresh lime juice and ginger syrup. Yum. Beyond the drinks we shared the hot, tasty, toasty house bread and a delightfully simple cheese plate. For entrees, all under $10, we shared duck confit quesadillas, beef sliders with house made ketchup, and a BLT made with crispy, melty fried pork belly, chard, tomato jam and a fried egg. Every dish was better than the last and the portions were perfectly sized to allow you to enjoy your drinks and your dinner without feeling overly full. Not large portions, but just right on, especially for the price. For larger appetites, there are plenty of options to fill you up.

All three of us have pledged to return to Bradstreet Crafthouse and to bring friends with us. I'm very excited to spread the word. Don't miss it.

The Power of Doing Nothing

Well, I guess Martha Stewart will be calling me anytime now. Turns out I'm quite the gardener and, after just one week, my Aerogarden is sprouting some pretty impressive thyme plants. There's so much thyme coming off this thing that I'm practically sick of it! Ok, not quite, the plants are miniscule, but good things come to those who wait! It helps that with the Aerogarden, I don't do anything for weeks at a time and stuff just happens. It's how I live my life, but with vastly different results. Sigh.

Santa Socks

Christmas came a little early to the Memory Care Unit today when Santa (played by a girl who knew sign language) showed up to shower the residents with fun gifts plus treats and music. Here is one of my very favorite gals, Bernice, showing off her new Gold Toe socks. She thought they were pretty cool. I think she's pretty cool.

The Aerogarden Saga Begins

Come along for the ride as we follow the progress of my new Aerogarden 3, a particularly awesome gift from my brother and family! In just weeks, if everything goes as planned, I will be enjoying fresh hydroponic basil, thyme and chives infused with my morning eggs. I don't really have a green thumb, currently there is not a living plant in my house and there is good reason for that. But with a grow light that stays on for 17 hours per day, perhaps this Aerogarden stands a ghost of a chance.

Tonight I set up the little operation, added water and the "seed pods," plus a nutrient pill into the water. That was it, really. Oh, I guess I put those little plastic domes on each seed pod as well. But that was really it. Every two weeks I add water when it prompts me, as well as a new nutrient pill. Should be pretty cut and dried (herb pun intended), no?

Stay tuned for periodic updates!

Garage Gougeres

Football parties are an opportunity for me to see friends, taste a myriad potluck items, and most importantly, to try to cook or bake something new. Notice I didn't mention anything to do with actually watching the football game.

Short on time, I needed something quick and easy to make for today's garage party, so named because once per year I have friends who enjoy watching the Vikings on a TV inside the garage, without benefit of heaters and other such frilly modern inventions. I don't know why this is fun, standing there shivering in snowmobile suits and Sorels, but they like it. I like to see everyone, but I tend to make it a short visit. So this morning I thought about a recipe I had read about recently that took the usually complicated pate a choux dough and simplified it for the every day cook, like me. It seemed like a good, basic recipe to have in one's repertoire, a versatile recipe that could go from sweet to savory in no time flat and could be made increasingly indulgent with any number of add-ins. I chose to go simple today with just gruyere cheese so that the little cheesy puffs, called gougeres, could be served alongside chili or other soups.

Easy doesn't begin to cover this recipe. I simply simmered some water with butter, added flour and cooked and stirred the mixture for a couple of minutes. Then I placed the dough into my KitchenAid and mixed in the cheese, eggs and salt. Final step was piping the dough onto cookie sheets and baking. Easy peasy, and the result was divine. Friends seemed to love them and now I am determined to turn them into some sort of dessert. And I'm not waiting for a dumb ol' football game to do it.

Portrait of the Artist

This week, this month really, is getting away from me. Something going on every night, super busy at work every day. December is always a crazy time. It's even tougher for great artists, like myself, who create in order to express their innermost thoughts and feelings. When great artists, like me, produce great art, it takes time and can be exhausting. Case in point, my Christmas ornament made from sour gummi worms and circus peanuts. Great art like this doesn't make itself, it needs to be nurtured and encouraged so that it may become a life force unto itself. And that's exactly what happened when I got a hot glue gun and an idea to incorporate my company's logo into an ornament. You can practically smell the life force, can't you?

Bundt or Backhand?

Today I made this banana bundt cake and I took my first tennis lesson. Let's just say I should probably stick to baking. My bundt is better than my backhand!

Christmas Came Early

At my place of business, anything can happen if one lives dangerously and walks away from their office. I went to lunch one day this week and returned to almost everything on my desk covered in red Christmas bows. Even my stickie notes.

My Cat Is An Animal

My boy Hakeem received a clean bill of physical health from the vet the other night (woo hoo!!), but I'm not so sure how the doc feels about his mental health. Nobody who knows my big guy, who has spent any time with him around my house, who has seen this cat visit patients at a nursing home, would ever believe he's anything but a big, fat, sweet kitty. But the folks at the veterinary hospital probably feel differently. Hakeem's nothing but an animal there.

It Must Be Love

When I set up an appointment for Hakeem Wallace, my best furry buddy, to visit the vet, they asked if I could possibly collect a urine sample to bring in. Good question, I thought to myself, can a person collect a urine sample from a cat? How on earth?

Hakeem Wallace has never been much of a water drinker, at least not from his bowl. In his younger years he spent the better part of his days in the tub, drinking water straight from the faucet. Because of that I never really knew how much water he consumed on a daily basis. But he was healthy and young and I wasn't really worried about it. Then as he got older and fatter I switched him over to wet food at the veterinarian's suggestion, for the higher protein content that would help him drop pounds. It worked, but it also provided him with the moisture that his body needed so he really didn't drink that much noticeable water still. After the recent surgical assault on his mouth that left him with three fewer teeth than he began with, I thought I'd reintroduce dry food to ensure that he was using his teeth to crush the crunchy pellets. So now, at the age of thirteen, he is drinking water all of the time. Maybe it's nothing to worry about, just a response to the dry food, but with an older, larger animal you don't fool around and wait to find out. You have him checked out to make sure his kidneys are functioning properly and he hasn't developed diabetes. This is where the whole heretofore preposterous notion of collecting a cat urine sample came to life.

The vet tech told me over the phone that sometimes if you clean the litter box out completely, wash it up and everything, the cat will still relieve himself in it. I did not believe this for one second and haven't talked to a cat owner yet who believes it either. Cats, unless they're sick or angry, don't like to pee without benefit of some sort of matter they can cover their output with. This is a lovely topic, isn't it? Anyway, I did the real suffering, you can survive the retelling. The vet told me if I wasn't able to collect a sample, they could do it, but it would be unpleasant for the feline. This is all I needed to know. I consulted my friend Google who let me know that sometimes plastic straws will do the trick. If you cut up a bunch of plastic straws (two boxes of Food Club brand, in my case) and line the clean litter box with them as if it were sand, that might just be enough for the cat to accept and do his duty. And so I cleaned up his old maroon litter box, which still has its old original label that proclaims it to be Super-Giant in four languages. If there were a bigger size, like Super Duper Extra Ginormous, I would buy it, but Hakeem's is the largest I've ever seen, and he just fits. Then I lined the bottom with a layer of cut up flexible straws and put it back in its regular spot. I really didn't have high hopes, but sure enough, Hakeem got up off the couch for the first time in hours and had a bite to eat and some water, then walked over to the box and did exactly what he needed to do. He didn't seem to mind walking on the straws until he had to jump out of the box. I think they were slippery and he didn't care for that. But he did what he had to, I poured the urine out of his box, unfettered by absorbent litter, and collected it in a small Gladware container. I'm not sure this is what the fine folks at Glad had in mind for their fine products, but too bad. I wasn't going to use a reusable container!

So now it's all over but the shrieking. Specifically, Hakeem's feline shrieking when he gets to the vet's office tonight and smells all those awful dogs and cats and hears them barking and meowing. It's really his worst nightmare. So I guess, today at least, he and I are even.

Twice as Nice

Having a birthday on Thanksgiving like I did this week brings something quite delightful – twice the usual desserts! In addition to the pecan pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cream cheese swirl pie, and coconut bundt cake (what can I say, I have a giant family and my Cousin Megan and I love to bake!), there were two birthday cakes. One was the beloved DQ ice cream cake that the kids all happily devoured in about two seconds, and then there was the Wuollet's cake (pictured below) that shows me doing what I love, riding my bike with Hakeem. You can tell it's me because of my thin, athletic frame and flat chest. You can tell it's Hakeem because he's orange and very active. Could it be any cuter or more delicious? No, it could not. As for the pumpkin cream cheese swirl pie, this is the first time I've made it but it will now be the standard bearer for pumpkin pies in my household. It's really quite easy and it breaks up the solid mass of pumpkin custard that I actually love but some people find to be too much for them.

If you think my birthday celebration is over, think again. This morning will be the family get-together (Thanksgiving didn't count because we have to get together for that!) at Maria's Cafe for Cachapas Venezolanas with Cotija Cheese – giant Venezuelan sweet corn pancakes with a salty, powdery cheese on top plus maple syrup, and this week Brasa for dinner with my Hags. I'll never understand why people want to deny their birthdays, it doesn't get any better than this!

Jive Turkey

Last Wednesday night at the nursing home, Alma was perusing a catalog of old time music. I asked her what kind of music she enjoyed listening to and she seemed confused, so I pointed to the Elvis CD for sale in the catalog and asked her if she liked to listen to Elvis Presley. "Oh yes, I like Elvis," she told me. Rosalie overheard our conversation and commented that she, too, liked Elvis. I asked Rosalie if she knew any Elvis songs and she suddenly broke into the King's hit Are You Lonesome Tonight? I sang along with her, helping her along at parts she had forgotten. The nurses on the floor laughed, saying they'd never heard Rosalie break into song like that. As Rosalie continued singing, alternating between Are You Lonesome Tonight? and O Holy Night, and sometimes singing both interwoven as the same song, I told Mary that she wasn't eating enough and I wanted her to eat more. Rosalie, hearing this, announced that we at our table were all "jive turkeys." Laughing on the inside, I asked her why she was calling us all jive turkeys. She answered that it was because nobody at the table was eating. She said whoever is eating is not a jive turkey. I looked at her plate, still full of ham and potatoes because she was too busy singing to eat, and said, "Then you must be a jive turkey, Rosalie, because you're not eating!" Rosalie couldn't believe she was having her super cool term, jive turkey, thrown right back at her and didn't know what to say. Mattie, who was clearly sick of listening to Rosalie belt out Elvis tunes, laughed and said to Rosalie, "She got you!"

Today I picked up an Elvis CD to bring to the nursing home next week. It should be interesting!

A River Runs Through It

It isn't often in this state that you can go for a leisurely walk along the river without freezing your ass off. So today I made especially sure to enjoy these waning days of Autumn on the Mississippi and it didn't disappoint. In the distance the river water sprayed up off of the falls and the sun cast long shadows off of the bare elms. I'm going to miss this during the next six months of winter. Ah, Minnesota.

Gordo Rides Hakeem's Tail to Stardom

Boy howdy, this fat cat of mine regularly makes the news, and he takes my dad along with him for the ride! First it was MSNBC.com, then the venerable BBC, and now The Kitty City Gazette! The Kitty City Gazette is an online compendium of fabricated news stories that star cats from around the blogosphere. I was introduced to it by my friend Debbie on her blog, Glogirly, who recommended that I send in a photo of my Hakeem. So check it out, you'll find Hakeem and Gordo in the story New California Law Cracks Down on Sale of Energy-Gobbling Cats. No autographs, please.

Waiting for Guittard

Sorry I've been absent for so long, but I've been consumed for the last week by thoughts of the new mochas being served up at Caribou Coffee. The new mochas are made with your choice of white, milk, or dark Guittard chocolate, steamed and left all melty at the bottom of your cup of sweet nectar. Most coffee shops use powdered chocolate or syrup, so this is a fairly major departure in the coffee world.

I am not a coffee drinker, unless it's fattened up nicely with chocolate and sugar and I didn't sleep particularly well the night before. I don't indulge in them often, but I really enjoy them when I do. And the place I usually enjoy them is Starbucks, so this development from Caribou is really out of left field for me.

The biggest problem, of course, is that I am in the waning days of my Month Without Sugar experiment. I'm just taking a month, along with some coworkers, to avoid candy, desserts, and other sweets such as fetching, chocolate-y mochas. So all I can do until next Wednesday is daydream about a Guittard mocha, and daydream I will. Again, I apologize that it's been so long since I've posted. But now I think you can totally understand why. It's the mocha.

Stalking Tarzan

Unwittingly, I've been following in the wet footsteps of Olympic swimmer and, more famously, Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller. I don't have many memories of the handsome European as I didn't grow up watching a lot of Tarzan, but I've grown to appreciate his contributions to pop culture. I mean, he was Tarzan!

I first started accidentally following Mr. Weissmuller several years ago when I read about a hotel in Acapulco that was sort of forgotten up on the highest cliffs in this coastal Pacific city. My aim was to spend one night in Acapulco on the way from Mexico City to my fishing village paradise south of Acapulco. I wanted to be close to the famous cliff divers of La Quebrada, so when I stumbled across the Hotel Los Flamingos, just blocks away, I was excited. I'm pretty sure many of my readers have been there with me, right? Holla for Tarzan! Turns out Los Flamingos was once owned by Weissmuller and his band of funsters which included John Wayne, Fred McMurray, and Errol Flynn. That would have been enough excitement for me, but then another Weissmuller coincidence found its way into my life when a chance trip to Chicago led me to the twelfth floor pool at the InterContinental Hotel.

The junior Olympic swimming pool area at the InterContinental, considered an engineering marvel in its day many decades ago, is a gorgeous melange of intricate Mediterranean tiles, stained glass windows, and wicker tables and chairs in the gallery that make you feel like you're going back in time. No wonder Johnny Weissmuller was known to have taken a dip in the pool there, and no wonder I'm stalking him. Now if I could only find out that he spent some amount of time in a certain pool in Tahiti, I'd be ready for my next trip.

Lucidity

Mary doesn't respond very often to direct questions, at least not with direct answers. But tonight in the dementia unit at the nursing home she seemed to be lost in the gentle strains of the old time music wafting from the cheap boom box, so I thought I'd ask her if she knew what she was listening to. A Muzak version of Blue Moon interrupted the clink of fork tines scraping along plates and folks yelling about some imagined wrongdoing. I looked at Mary and asked her, "Mary, do you know this song?" She continued to look faraway and didn't answer. When Somewhere Over the Rainbow came on, I asked her if she knew that song. Nothing. However, Alma volunteered that she indeed knew the song. She and I then discussed watching The Wizard of Oz sometime and we agreed that would be fun. Then The Platters' tune, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, performed with a forlorn-sounding saxophone, caught my ear. I've always loved the song so I sang along and then asked Mary the obvious question, "How about this one, Mary? Smoke Gets in Your Eyes?" Mary looked right at me and said, plain as day, "Yes, sometimes it does." I couldn't help but laugh, she had answered my question, in a way.

What To Do in Chicago

Your next trip to the Second City won't be complete if you don't visit the Billy Goat Tavern, a greasy dive made famous in the old '70s Saturday Night Live sketches where Greek cooks smoked cigarettes over a hot griddle covered in juicy cheeseburgers while yelling out "cheezborger cheezborger cheezborger!" and "no fries, cheeps!" There are a few Billy Goat Tavern locations, but the real deal resides below Michigan Avenue right across from the storied Chicago Tribune building. Famous newspapermen were known to hang out at the Billy Goat, as well as SNL alumnus Dan Aykroyd and pals. It's a kitschy little workingman's saloon and has a very Northeast vibe as well, so we were quite comfortable throwing back Billy Goat Lagers and brandy sevens.

After a particularly well-made gin martini, my dad asked me to take his photo in front of the Horny Goat talk bubble meant for a stuffed goat's head affixed to the wall there. Now you know what to do the next time you make it to the Windy City. You're welcome.

Ape Reflections

I would like to submit that it is not Disney World that is the Happiest Place on Earth, but rather it is the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park in Chicago that is. Better known as "The Bean" because of its unmistakable shape, it reflects the cloudy sky as well as the city's gorgeous skyline. Michigan Avenue's stainless steel behemoth brings joy to all who encounter it, even gorillas.