Food in Italy

Can you believe I asked Jon to take this picture but didn't go inside? "No, no", I said, "I just like to look." It's true: I love to look at nicely displayed bakeries and candy stores, especially when they use shiny printed tin or cellophane. Some of the tarts in this display have wild strawberries on them! Paradiso!

But what was I thinking "just looking"? Everyone talks about Italian food so what I say won't matter. I could never get past course two so never had any desserts. Heartbreak.

The last night in Florence I went into a really pricey chocolate store and ordered a very small custom box of filled chocolates, two of each, thinking if I liked the taste I'd share it with Jon. NO SHARE! I didn't eat them till I got home and they were exquisite. One had champagne inside that dribbled right down my chin. Another had an apricot inside with the pit still inside the apricot. I wish I could go back and buy one of everything in the store just for me.



These were ravioli. They made me feel like I was really small because they were such giant tubes, in a walled Medieval city. They were really good, just fennel and leek but they probably snuck some animal thing in there because they even serve salami at breakfast in the hotels we stayed in.



Such pretty lettuce. We went to a great farmer's market in Genoa for more "just looking." Genoa is a nifty place to visit.



Our last night in Rome we were sent to a restaurant by the hotel, (and that's not a good idea. There's some kind of kick back going on.) We were served this artistic starter, which was filled with a wonderful artichoke mousse, but then my main course, sea bass first shown to me on a big platter before anything had been done to it, (John the B?) was sea bass with cheese sauce which didn't seem very Italian and was a bit creepy.

Blogger seems to have a limit on pictures to post. I was an experimental eater in Italy: whatever sounded weird but within my range I'd order. Why not? After a very weird sea food pasta Jon stuck to tomato sauce. I think the dishes he ordered were probably tastier, but now I know what not to order!

The regional thing is sometimes claustrophobic but sometimes terrific. Anywhere in Lucca where you ordered bruschetta it came with gloppy chicken liver topping. EUW! In Genoa a wonderful artichoke quiche like thing was on all menus. (no spiky chokes.)

Loved that all our hotels served blood orange juice for breakfast, even if sometimes it seemed to be cut with Kool-Aid. Campari Orange is a wondrous drink in Rome and comes with a grilled cheese sandwich whether you want one or not.

Truly disgusting that horse is on the menu but they don't provide translation. Figured it out too late or would have definitely boycotted a restaurant in Rome where we had lunch twice.

So how's that for the uninformed traveler passing through one of the most elegant gastronomic areas in the whole entire world?

Worst meal? Pizza! Right outside the Vatican!

Veni Vidi Vici

In our house in Northridge, above the ice machine, there's a special feature pointed out to us when we bought the house long ago. It's a slide projector shelf set up so you can show slides of your travels when guests come for dinner, while they're still stuck at the table.

The Power Point presentation of its day.

"Hey, why's everyone leaving so soon?"

Faced with 600+ pictures from our trip to Italy I hope I have the good sense not to pull out the slide projector here on the blog.

We saw some great art, really great art, first in New York at the Frick and the Metropolitan, and then of course in Italy.


This parrot painting was in New York.

In Italy there are way too many paintings of John the Baptist's head on a platter. People, please! Or of Judith doing the same thing to Holofernes. Why did artists think this was something they should paint?

The platter paintings were especially awful because the whole concept of Italian eating in restaurants is based on course after course, platter after platter, and they never let you start with dessert so we never reached that course.



This was the only dessert we ordered during the trip, and it was at an obnoxious restaurant in NYC on the lower east side. The waiter was a bully and we only ordered this so called "Baked Alaska" because they seemed to have an "eat it or beat it" policy in effect and we wanted to yell at our friends a little longer. It wasn't really Baked Alaska which is meringue baked around ice cream but they can get away with calling it that because they're so hip and the restaurant is so noisy no one would hear you if you complained anyway.

The first picture is an Etruscan sculpture. More on Etruscan art later. No, you can't get up from the table. Sorry.

Let's (Not) Have Lunch

I was a tag along yesterday for a miserable lunch. Ever meet somebody who just spews creepy stories? This older British gal next to me claimed the aisle seat in a booth because :

• she might have spasms and will frighten everyone (because her hip surgery wasn't quite right.)
• told how she'd been on a run away horse with her daughter beside her and their stirrups got twisted together right before they came to a fence.
• told how another runaway horse threw her and she broke two vertebrae. (All these horses she owned.)
  
• told all about her husband's experimental stem cell cancer treatment as they drained and refilled his body. (he was in the booth too.)
  
• told how she and two other realtors got locked into a house by accident the day before and the other two realtors had accidents.
• warned us that in Italy people come up behind you and slit your throat to get your wallet. (we're going there in two months.)
  
• told how her disabled son liked to take his pants off in Harrod's and scream.
• told me how and what to put in the decoy purse I had to carry in Italy for the pickpockets.
• covered her ears at possibility of a dirty word as part of her story.

When the waitress came to ask how everything was, (after three out of our four had already sent back their fish and chips for being ice cold), I said "It's awful, it's terrible, it tastes like it was cooked last week and reheated many times." "Would you like a box for that?" the waitress asked.

I never complain about food at restaurants, only when I get home.

Today Dinah's horse had to have emergency colic surgery, and we couldn't locate Dinah. Major awful, but her horse came through it okay. Major awful.

My mother is still living on the S.S. Dementia. Today she said, "They can't decide whether this boat should go across the river or to Paris and back."

She said, "I like disciplined straight lines for everyday living, not for creative things, but for everyday living."

I told her I was going to visit her in about a month. She said, "Are you going to leave the baby in the nursery?"

Jury Duty?

This legs table was in a bail bonds window near the courthouse.

Wacky weekend around here but now we're grounded because the biggest rain of the season is supposed to slam Los Angeles all week. We'll see if that's true. It's raining now and still dark out. Glad I'm in the middle of "Gone with the Wind" which I'm enjoying.

All last week I dutifully called in to see if I had to report next day for jury duty. Thursday night I thought I'd gotten off the hook for at least a year, but no, had to show up at 8:30 the next morning. Spent the whole day reading "Gone with the Wind" in a big room with several hundred unhappy people. Around 3:15, when the room was nearly cleared out, they called the last group of potential jurors and we shuffled across the courtyard and upstairs to room F in the criminal court building.

The judge asked for a juror pool of more than 100 people for one case. That's unusual. If I get chosen I can't say more about it, but they aren't doing the selection until next Thursday.

We (last jury pool group) sat in the courtroom behind the FOUR defendants accused of extortion and murder. Two had big shaved heads and skull tattoos, and two were Russian looking in leather coats. Central casting!

Do you suppose their appearance might affect the outcome of the case? It's like with Phil Spector- why didn't his lawyer tell him not to wear the Bozo Clown fright wig to trial? That wasn't his hair. When he checked into jail he just had a little flat hairstyle and looked like an old retired raisin.

Then to add to weekend fun we took a quick trip out to Santa Anita and watched some horses run, came home and went to the Golden Globe party given by Paramount. I was on the guest list- insane, we don't know why.

I thought I'd post my twitter tweets. Many people are bewildered by twitter but I enjoy it and it doesn't track you the same way Facebook does. The 140 maximum letters per post make it challenging but more fun. A weird thing on twitter if a person is trying to tell a story is the sequence is backwards since you read the last post first.

These are my tweets (corrected in order) when we got home:

we only stayed for four races cause we're going to Paramount's Golden Globe party tonite woowoo. Told hub to bet Rummysecretwar - good..

At party tonight: Marty Scorsese, Ray Liotta, Len .DiCaprio & Don Rickles plus about 750 peeps for the food & drinks at Chateau Marmont

also me & hub & Robert deNiro who looked very confused. We stood at side door & watched the stars get wrangled in. Actors smoke a lot.

Party Food: macn cheese, paella, eggplant dish, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, sliders, mystery puffs and a tower of mini cupcakes. I ate 3.

(next day)
Just realized the weird guy with the icky face tattoo we stood next to last night at the Golden Globes Paramount party was Mike Tyson.

Somehow I only managed to identify the guy celebs, but there were many gorgeous women there too. The oddest dress was an absolute lampshade style. Strapless white bouffant with a ruffle on the bottom, which barely covered the bottom. The slightest move and you saw her black underpants. No lightbulb underneath.
There was a pretty strict no photos policy at the party, even outside with the line of valet parkers. With cel phones they can easily pop a shot just like a papparazi.

Here's a link to a gossip report on the party.

hostess dilemna

I saw this cute lady at Santa Anita the day after Christmas. Her hat was covered with sequins but I don't know how to get a sequin effect. Hope she was luckier than I was in her horse picks. We got to see Zenyatta one more time, and Brian and Dinah came too.

For Christmas we had invited nine guests. We had cooked about 20 dishes to accomodate various diets. Three of the guests were traveling together and they were picking up a fourth guest in Hollywood who can't drive. This had been arranged over a week's worth of emails.

When the carload of four arrived, guess what? There were only three. They had forgotten to pick up the fourth guest, and they were late. The food was all cooked. They'd totally forgotten.

Dinah got an A+ for volunteering to drive over to Hollywood and retrieve our guest who was patiently waiting. (But couldn't she have called to ask what's up?) Our cooked food also patiently waited for more than an hour. By the time we ate the food had patiently waited for more than two hours. We managed not to get mad and had a jolly time but it was a dilemna (that's the old fashioned spelling).



Here we are with Dinah's chickens. Remind me to wear makeup next time I get my picture taken with spring chickens.

Merry Christmas!

Dinah got home this morning, with her friend Brian,



her three chickens, and two guinea pigs.



A good friend who grew up in Puerto Rico brought us these incredible Cuban pastries. He said the line went around the block.

Hope you all have a great day whatever you celebrate, whatever you're doing.

10 Little Indians

My brother had planned a big family Thanksgiving especially for my mother. That was the reason I booked my flight. There were going to be 15 of us. All my mother's great grandchildren and some of her grandkids too. I was going to drive my mother to the feast. Then my mother broke her hip and couldn't leave her premises. 14.

Then just two days before the big day his daughter had to have repair surgery after lots of other surgeries and couldn't move or bend over. 9. Then his daughter in law who's pregnant was rushed to the hospital with a kidney stone and other complications in Boston. His son the great cook was going to help my brother cook. Now we were 6 and the expert had dropped out. My brother had never cooked a full dinner before but was determined to do it.

Dinner was set for 2:00. At ten of 2 my nephew called and said he was just leaving his house. He was an hour plus away. We were fuming and, uh, 3. The turkey was already cooked. I made the spinach salad with goat cheese pine nuts and apple per instrux. I also made the gravy.

It was a magnificent feast. Mussels mirepoix, turkey and gravy, spinach salad, cornbread stuffing, butternut squash with morel cherries, green beans with sauteed almonds, lively cranberry orange vodka relish, sweet potatoes with pecan crunch top, mashed potatoes with gorgonzola cheese... He made all this from SCRATCH without a RECIPE!!!

He wasn't even sure his single oven would work! His girlfriend was about to faint it was so good and so unexpected. Everyone had seconds, some had thirds. How had my brother gone all those years and never cooked a meal?



These are cel phone pictures. I think my the niece in this picture may have put her sticky finger on the phone lens and thus we're all spared wrinkles.

I'll tell about my mother in another post.

Governors Awards 2009

Roger Corman being toasted by Ron Howard. There were many toasts all night- something new they were trying. whew *****

Last night was the big Hollywood party at the Kodak Theatre. Since I don't have a point and shoot mini camera, I thought the cel phone would serve the trick for taking pictures. But it doesn't have flash, and half the time I forgot to click save anyway. My two pictures weren't worth posting. I found the one above on line. I was sitting right behind the woman on the right with the helmet hair.

It was an outstanding evening, written up in the L.A. Times. The food, catered by Wolfgang himself, was choice, particularly the appetizers "passed by butlers". These included tiny crabcakes, slices of Kobe beef with horseradish sauce served on a potato slice, teenser duck rolls tied with some kind of vegetable string, tuna in a cookie like cone (all these minitature) and champagne provided by Moet and Chandon.

We got there exceptionally early- fine with me-I got to sample all the appetizers. Others were letting the fancy trays pass by but I considered it a special opportunity to eat as much as I could. Besides, I got food poisoning at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant once. I had to prove him wrong. Once the crowd got roaring there wasn't much to be had. I saw Morgan Freeman sitting on the couch I'd just gotten up from. I saw Lauren Bacall pass right by looking beautiful. A woman I know asked me to hold her shawl which looked like a bathroom rug. I made a point of finding her again so I didn't have to take it into dinner with me.

We sat at the table just behind Roger Corman. Here's my take on the evening:

The lively speakers were Quentin Tarantino, Jonathan Demme, Roger Corman, Lauren Bacall, and Gordon Willis. Willis (who shot the Godfather movies), said, "Every time I worked with a beautiful actress I think she was worried I'd make her look like Marlon Brando. I just want them all to know they don't have to worry anymore."

Looking great at the awards were Roger Corman & family, Lauren Bacall, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson (no girl friend, no sunglasses, big smiles)

Lookin like a zombie: Peter Bogdanovich.
Most pompous speaker (no surprise) : Tom Hanks.
Angleica Huston presented the award to Lauren Bacall. They had family ties that went way back. Holding her Oscar, Ms. Bacall said that she was just happy to have a "two legged man" to bring home with her.

Tied for most boring speakers: Mr. and Mrs. Warren Beatty.

At the end of this SIX HOUR affair, they gave the Irving Thalberg award to John Calley who was too ill to attend. In the process they brought up all the previous award winners including Walter Mirisch, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Saul Zaentz, Norman Jewison, Warren Beatty and Dino de Larentiis. All of them have white hair and gray beards and are about the same size, except for Beatty. Looked like Snow White and the seven dwarves!

Dessert, for those who like to know these things, was "Chocolate Tear Drop filled with White Chocolate Mousse and Fresh Cherries." (though they were actually raspberries.) Very tasty!

Oh, and as for my outfit etc. I got my makeup done for the first time ever. Geez it took a long time. Do women spend 45 minutes every day to do themselves?

Here's the before picture:


I was sitting in a high chair with my eyes closed. When the makeup artist said, "Now open" I got confused and opened my mouth- halfway thinking I was at the dentist. I could tell she thought I was a nut. She asked me what I was wearing, and I said, "It's vintage." She said, "It's SPINACH?" okay so who's the nut here!



always looking my best out by the trash cans!



looks like I just sucked on one of those lemons on the ground. My stockings were navy and silver sparkly herringbone.

Who's in the Kitchen?

Weird to come upon a picture like this in Facebook. Hey, that's our kitchen! But we weren't there in October. Oh. It's the woman who house sat for us. Cute costume and makeup!

I admit, I was Facebook snooping, because we haven't been entirely happy with the way she took care of things. That's how I came upon it. Nuff said.

But Facebookers beware. We all leave quite a trail. That's one of the reasons I like Twitter better because it seems less like a mining exercise and less about the individual. What Twitter is about is still bewildering, but maybe it's their trending topics.

On to meat loaf. I made a very tasty turkey meatloaf last night riffing off of a couple of recipes. Vegetarians, be glad your hands weren't in the bowl. I'm posting it so I'll remember about it next time.

A pound of ground turkey, some dried bread crumbs, chopped onion, chopped celery, chopped garlic. An egg, some oregano. A chopped chipotle chili from a can with adobo sauce is what gives it flavor. Mix all together, put in loaf pan. Then mix a small can of tomato sauce with just a little of that adobo sauce, pour that on the top. Bake at 350 for an hour. Let set up for 15 minutes out of the oven. It stayed really moist, perhaps because the sauce sealed it.

I still am on a buzz from the Breeders Cup last weekend, and Zenyatta's amazing win.

Galloping Goose Again

We took another hike along the Galloping Goose trail bed, and had lunch by a stream with a waterfall. Molly took a swim in it.

As I walked past the old railroad ties I had this fantasy that I'd kick a rock, look down, and see an old gold watch underneath. I pick up the watch and hold it to my ear, to hear if it still ticks. I hear a distant voice that says, "Helloooo?"

And then?

Last night we went for dinner with some friends at their house. The guy's a really good cook. We were there for Thanksgiving a few years ago. When we got there last night his wife was on the phone, the football game was on the big tv, the kids were flying off a trampouline, and he was cooking.

As he mashed the potatoes we told him how great looking his cats were. He went to the freezer and pulled out a ziploc bag with a frozen dead pocket gopher in it. We admired it. We weren't worried about what was for dinner at all.

BEEN IN THE MOUNTAINS TOO LONG!!!

Weird Neighbors

Too late to illustrate, but have to say...

Down the road our 40 year old single neighbor got busted early in the summer for driving 150 miles mph while chased by the devil. In the first telling the devil was in the back seat but now I know he was in a separate car. Now the neigh is living in a Christian community in Mountain Village. (Richistan). Who knows where the devil's gone. Just checked the closets.

Not just to make fun. People with bad mental conditions get meds that make them feel like their old selves except for the side effects. They think: "Who needs these stupid pills?" and then the devil is chasing them... and so are the cops.

Now mega rich guy who's part of the Haagen Daas family is renting our victim's house while his castle is being remodeled. The devils are fattening up on strange flavors. Unappreciated famous guy was one of the first stars of beach volley ball in the 50's in case you don't appreciate.

We had crock pot cooked pot roast tonight. Or was that crack pot kook rroswt? One of the recipes I read said add an envelope of Lipton's Onion Soup mix and a can of coke.

Talk about blase....

Just couldn't go there. Dinner was a yum. Especially lemon sponge custard (joy of cooking easy masterpiece) at the end.

A very good dog

Tonight I was making lasagna, and the recipe was on the the laptop, on the couch. I'd put one layer down and couldn't remember whether you put sauce next or cheese next. I left the square dish on the counter, on top of a dishtowel, and walked over to the computer.

CRASH! Our counter slants about 15 degrees and the pyrex dish took a slide and a fracture. On the floor were shattered glass fragments, red sauce and noodles. It looked like the scene of a crime. It was meat sauce on the floor. Now our old Chows would have been fighting with me to let them at it even though it was laced with glass, but Molly just watched from her bed. Our downstairs is an open floor plan so there aren't any doors you can close off.

I spent the next 45 minutes on cleanup, and got the remaining lasagna into a bread pan, which is enough for two peeps for dinner.

Here's the lake where she took a sudden swim last week



I bet that water was really cold!

Dots!

Cruised the Target aisles last week to see what their Halloween novelties were like this year. All disappointing except for these two boxes of novelty dots: Bat Dots and Ghost Dots.

The bats don't have black wings but they do have an interesting blood orange flavor, not too sweet. I thought the ghost dots were going to glow in the dark, but they don't. Instead they are all the varied flavors of regular dots without the color to tell you what you're about to eat.

The light here is very hazy from the Colorado fires, and it's 80 degrees at 4 pm. weird.

Market Mischief

At City Market in Montrose yesterday one of those product hawkers was set up with a little stand near the meat department. He was pitching a product called Chef Michel, something like that.

His stand was nicely arranged with tiny cans and a bowl full of multi colored snack pieces. I was watching as a woman walked up, took a handful of the snack pieces and tossed them in her mouth.

Only then did he tell her, "Oh, this is dog food."

She hawked and squawked and spit it out. About a minute and a half later someone else came up and did the same thing.

You know this weirdo food guy was getting a kick out of it. I bet he got a kick out of the store too before the day was up. The product is made by Purina. I didn't try it.

Cattlemens Days Pt 1

We drove over to Gunnison on Friday for Cattlemens Days. We wanted to see what a Gunnison rodeo is like.

But before we went to the rodeo we went to the restaurant we'd been told was the best place to eat in Gunnison: the Trough.

The Trough sits lower than the highway and right next to the river. I thought it looked like an abandoned railroad car or a giant dumpster, but inside it was a different story. It had an amazing interior, which I should have taken a picture of. Slats of wood were assembled to form curving walls with much drama, almost Gaudi like, probably from the early 70's. Very experimental interior.

And a very cornball menu!



It's a special occasion restaurant, and there were big family parties filling the place. The food was delicious and it was a very nice place for prime rib, baked potato, and a glorious salad bowl served at each table.

I wrapped up two small chunks of prime rib to take to Molly, who was waiting in the car. That's why I didn't get a picture of what happened next!

As I was feeding Molly, a Paris Hilton wannabe in a pink string bikini appeared in the parking lot carrying her big inner tube. She'd been traveling on the river. She was also covered with tattoos. She propped her inner tube beside the front door and then went into the restaurant. I just wonder what happened in there next! As we were driving away she came back out of the restaurant.

This isn't the bikini girl, but a soul sister.



Rodeo story tomorrow!

Wildfire

We drove out to Rico for another lunch at the Argentine Grille. It was still tasty, but the famous understudy of Wolfgang Puck had left the premises and last week's waiter was this week's chef. The waitress was mighty cute in her panty length denim shorts but it may have been her first day. "Would you like your bill now?" It was a s-l-o-w lunch.

When we got home we could see a wildfire starting that is much more dramatic now at sunset. It looks to be about 20 miles away. The weird thing is that all the Smoky the Bear fire danger signs we drove past have arrows pointing low. But if there were arson arrows they might be pointing off the chart.

There's a big out of business resort just about at the x,y position of this fire as I look at it from the porch. hmmm... what will the papers report?

No winds here, and the smoke is blowing north.

French Rabbit

Every week or so when we've driven to Montrose for our groceries, there's been a big sign up outside City Market: "We Have French Rabbit 1 L. Boxes"

French Rabbit? Ooh, sounds kind of down and dirty. What could that be? Are the folks in Montrose getting so citified they order rabbit meat from France in big boxes?

I had to know.

Turns out it's a gloriously packaged French wine in a box that's entirely recyclable and just the thing for campers. We bought a box but haven't tried it yet.

Not a Prairie Dog

This is not a prairie dog. This is a baby marmot, one more in the dynasty that has survived for at least the last thirty years in a rock pile right by the side of our main road.

The amazing thing is that these marmots wait until you're almost upon them and then run to the other side of the road and jump in a hole. Then they stick their heads back out of the hole as if to say, "Where are you off to?"

So I'm telling them here.

We're off on a three stop adventure: first the dump, then the hot springs, then this very nice restaurant at the Hotel Beaumont in Ouray. It's a combo Father's Day and Birthday dinner. The only thing I'm sure I'm ordering on that menu is the Raspberry Baked Alaska, or maybe I should order the whole meal off that dessert menu!

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

In no particular order, but I have to say, of all the many old mining towns we've visited, Leadville is the sorriest.

The town has an incredible history, and still a lot of fine old buildings on the main street, but you can tell there's never been any zoning in the town and it just looks uncared for. Their water system is still affected by a Superfund cleanup attempt. The entry to the town is miles of debris and dumps and trailer parks, and the land is barren because it was over logged long ago and nothing grew back.



There are tourists in the tourist part of town, but there aren't many tourists and there aren't many restaurants either. Around dinner time we saw the same sorry group of folks crisscrossing our path, looking lost and hungry, wondering where they should eat dinner.

The favored spot had only one thing on the menu, beef filet, and some of the hungry ladies we talked to thought this was just the thing, because you told them exactly how many inches of filet you wanted and that's what they'd serve you. The image of the cook in the back room with ruler and giant slab of beef turned me off.

The sign in the window of the Chinese restaurant was peculiar- was it trying to be cute? Restaurant is hard to spell, so hmm...



Or there was the Italian restaurant and gifts-- the gifts part rang the wrong bell for me.

We ended up having our dinner delivered to us at the famous Silver Dollar Saloon-- slab of ribs and salad, though no utensils came with it which made it tricky at first.



This art gallery seemed completely out of place. The owner beckoned us inside, including Molly.



The artwork was really nice. I noticed that two different artists whose work I liked a lot both were favoring extremely asymmetrical compositions- one was doing pastels of horses in black and white where the horse was only partial and in a corner of the image, and the other acrylics that made me think of Albert Pynkham Ryder but again with the odd compositions where everything is happening way off on one side or the other. I didn't think it was right to take a straight on shot of the pictures, but maybe I should have.



I believe the second artist's name was Frank Sampson. His paintings are on the right.

(to be continued maybe)

The Social Life

We're having friends over for dinner tonight- the first time since we got here three weeks ago that we'll be with friends.

We're serving turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, roasted vegetables, blueberry pie and a few other things. The "friends + leftovers" special. We've known our friend Mysterian for many years and like his girl friend too.

Name changed to protect a secret revealed: Mysterian is the only person we know who didn't lose money last year. You know why? He buried it in the back yard! We all thought he was a nut to do it but he gets the last laugh. And no, he's not a dog.

Speaking of nuts, there's the scary survivalist at the top of the hill. I've written about him before. He's the one who posts angry signs and drills holes in rocks for fun. He's been up the hill this year since April, with no running water, and says he plans to leave soon. We're hoping. He's a smiling belligerent, if you know the type. Let's call him Stagolee.

Years ago before we knew better, we'd heard if you leave stale jelly donuts out in a field you'll attract bears. We considered it. But we thought we might attract Stagolee instead.



He left these buns in a gift bag on our front step with a weird note about snacks, and some avocados. In the past when he's dropped off gifts they've been followed a few days later by documents in a plastic bag that he wants us to sign. Almost appealing, because it's so childish.

Think the bears will want the gourmet buns? Not leaving them my two nice pieces of chocolate, the reward for spending hours on a black slate floor that won't get clean.

(yeah I know I'll probably get anonymous comments about what a bitch I am for this post. can't help it folks.) But Stagolee cannot even type, much less use a computer.