Best Chinese Ever!

When we arrived in Waco for a visit with my family, we were greeted with a spread so unexpected that I had to write about it. My grandmother (mom's mom) had been prepping a Chinese meal for the previous few days, and she was pulling out all the stops for our arrival. Because it's so infrequent that we're in Texas for a visit, she made sure that plenty of people were there and all had something special to eat.
While she was cooking the last dish, we managed to get the entire episode on video and let me tell you, my grandmother would make a great cooking show host. I'm going to try to get more videos of her doing things like this.
Mom and Dad had gotten there a few minutes after we arrived, and Mark and Uncle showed up shortly thereafter too. Including Popo, there were 7 of us who sat down to the following meal:
Beef and broccoli (Mark's dish)
Chicken in lettuce cups (Uncle's dish)
Chicken in black bean sauce (Mom's dish)
Piccadillo (a Cuban alternative, just in case Mark didn't have enough to eat)
Chinese soup
Lobster Cantonese (sort of Dad's dish, sort of just special)

All of it was outstanding!

Tillman's Roadhouse

On a visit to Waco recently, we got to spend the night with Jessica and Jay, and they took us to a fun place in Dallas called Tillman’s Roadhouse. Imagine a fancified Shady Grove, if you know the place in Austin. It had a swanky bar with equally swanky cocktails (from the cocktail mistress Lucy Brennan), but it was really just an upscale hunting cabin, complete with animal heads hanging from the walls. The animal heads were wooden, and the room lighted with shabby-chic chandeliers, but you get the idea.
When we were seated, the waiter brought two different snacks – fresh roasted Spanish peanuts and truffle popcorn. I think it was kettle cooked with white truffle oil and then topped with a little shaved black truffle. It was the best popcorn I’d ever eaten and completely original.
For appetizers, we shared a round of deep-fried pickles – they were closer to sweet pickles, not dill pickles – and they were served with homemade ketchup and horseradish mayo. To continue the fried theme, we had a trio of French fries: Peruvian purple potato, sweet potato and Yukon golds topped with a chile spice, smoked salt, and a rosemary garlic mixture respectively. Dinner was equally creative - the guys had chicken fried hanger steaks, Jessica had a supreme hamburger (with foie gras) and I had Frito pie, made with venison chili.
But dessert was where it was at. We four shared a little sterno-hibachi grill and made fresh s'mores from homemade marshmallows, homemade graham crackers and a nice, dark chocolate. Yum!

Give Thanks

Over the last two weeks, I've ben witness to a couple of remarkable transformations. One was very public, the other a little more private. But both were moving and gave me pause to think about the big things - family, friends, life, love and happiness.
The first was the death of a little girl from the Seattle area. Her name was Gloria Strauss. She'd been battling a particularly nasty form of cancer for four of her short twelve years - and the last six months her family allowed a reporter in to chronicle her battle. I picked up the thread in August when she'd fallen into a coma - and somehow I managed to read his blog entry every day since. I quietly asked around - others were reading about her too. It sounds voyeuristic, but she had such grace in the face of it all that it was a salve to all who peered in.
The second was the end of a friend's marriage. The last several months had been painful - I'd seen him bitterly angry, flippant, and mean-spirited. All at once within a few short weeks, his wife left. Left him and his two small kids. All of it. She had her reasons, as did he. And somehow, he's come out of it a little more thoughtful, not quite regretful, and full of wisdom one has only when living in that state. The further I get from that place, the more of that wisdom I fear I lose. But it turns out that it's not a momentary grace (there's that word again), but becomes part of you, it's in your bones and lives in every choice you make thereafter - even if you don't smart from the source anymore. And today when I spoke with him, I heard it in his voice - and it came back to me too. I came home, hugged the dogs, made sure Todd knew that I love him, and made dinner. And tomorrow I'll not be so earnest.