JULY 2014

Wednesday 2014.7.30

Challenges

Someone referred to me as a chef this past week. I am not a chef. I think of a chef as someone who has been trained at a culinary school and passed all the required courses. I don't know if they receive any type of certification. I know here in Southern California they are not licensed, but they are expected to know what they are doing because chefs typically prepare foods for the public, such as in a restaurant, and it is important that they know safe food handling.

In my videos you will never see me wearing one of those white jackets often worn by chefs. Not everyone who has passed through a proper culinary program wears a chefs jacket, but I would feel as if I were cheating if I wore one without proper training.

So I most often refer to myself as a cook. Some people call me a gourmet cook, but I don't even use the term gourmet, except as part of the name of this web site and my TV show. I sometimes describe myself as a grown kid who likes to play with his food. And that is why I enjoy a good challenge occasionally. It gives me an opportunity to play with food.

Two challenges came in during the past week. One was a coconut cake, pretty much a standard cake formula and, when done, frosted and covered with unsweetened coconut. Two things about the recipe intrigued me. The cake uses sour cream, an idea I also used in the Blueberry Muffins recipe in the Dessert Archive.

In fact, the cake portion of the two recipes shares most of the same ingredients. The second item that interests me is the coconut. Thawed frozen coconut is required. I'm familiar with it. I buy it at a local Asian market. It is unsweetened. It is the "unsweetened" part that seems odd. The shredded coconut on the baking aisle in the grocery store is sweetened, which seems more appropriate for a dessert. I'll need to think about this one for a while.

The other challenge was to come up with a good recipe for fish tacos. Ugh, tacos. There's a story behind this one:

A family that used to live here would occasionally press me to make pizza for them. I like pizza and I enjoy making it; so I would sometimes comply. One day they invited me to dinner (it was the only time) and the wife put out taco shells and fixings. There was barely half a pound of cooked ground beef among the four of us. The rest was lettuce, tomato, some cheese, guacamole, and sour cream. Talk about still being hungry at the end of a meal. The next time they asked me to make them pizza, I gave them a list of ingredients. They bought the cheapest they could find and the pizza was, naturally, disappointing. They got the message. A good meal isn't cheap. They never asked me for pizza again.

I don't make tacos. I never have. And the idea of fish tacos doesn't cause me any feelings of inspiration. The person who gave me the challenge admitted to having successfully avoided fish tacos for most of his life. However, when he agreed to eat one, not wanting to appear impolite, he was surprised by the flavor of a good sauce. The cook wouldn't share the recipe; thus the challenge was given to me. Another story:

When I was in college we would occasionally eat at a local Mexican restaurant. We loved their chicken flautas. We didn't mind flicking the cockroaches off the table to keep them away from our food. The flautas were that good. It was the sauce — I'm thinking jack cheese, sour cream, puréed green chilies, seasoning, maybe some guacamole. I've always wanted to reproduce that sauce.

So now I have another two excuses to go play with food. Maybe when the daytime temperatures cool a little. It has been warm here lately and tomorrow is supposed to be another scorcher. The swamp box cooler is filled with water and ready to go. And I'm collecting water to refill it. You've not doubt heard of the drought crisis here in California. I have a reverse osmosis filter system in my kitchen. They are notorious for wasting water. I plumbed it in with a bypass valve that lets me capture the waste water. It's clean, potable water that I can use in the cooler or for other needs, like watering my potted ficas tree outside.

As for immediate cooking, today was predicted to be the coolest day for a week. At 78°F with a slight chance of rain, it doesn't promise to be comfortable. However, I'm running out of bread and I haven't bought a loaf of sliced bread since, well, I can't remember. So this morning I bakeed another two loaves of homemade bread. They just came out of the oven and are cooling. It's how I do things.

Sunday 2014.7.27

Happy Birthday Me

Tomorrow I turn si–, si–, older than 38 (a lot older). Actually, I'll be 63 tomorrow. Feel free to use the Donate button to send me a little birthday present, but don't feel obligated. I normally don't celebrate, or even observe my birthday. It's just another day that goes by.

Wacky Maybe…

One of my wacky predictions involves observing the ants. Some ants have been coming indoors recently — not many, just a few singles, as if the colony is sending out scouts to find a safe place to spend the winter. When they finally try to move indoors there is a long line of ants. I place the ant bait on their trail, which they carry back to the colony, and that gets rid of them in a day or two.

For me, those ants are a predictor of a wet winter. I mentioned that one time at a gathering several years ago and the people laughed at me. It hurt my feelings a little, but later that year we had one of the wettest winters on record. It was so wet that a hillside collapsed in a community not far from here and one family thought they had more time to evacuate, but they were buried in their home. There were mud slides and local flooding all over Southern California that winter. The ants were right. I don't know that the ants are right every year, but when I start seeing them indoors during the latter part of summer and autumn, I think rain.

I live on high ground and not near any hillsides. There is no risk of flooding here and the land has a gentle slope downward; so there is no worry about landslides either. Just down the road from here there is a deep culvert that works well to carry water away. The culvert is clean, unlike others further away that have filled up with silt. The city is not good about keeping them clean and when a torrential winter storm hits the area the culverts overflow and flood the surrounding area.

I remember when one of those culverts was first built. I walked down to the concrete bottom. The tops of the walls were at least six feet high. Now that culvert is filled with sand and silt, leaving barely a foot or two for water runoff. If we get the El Niño winter rains that some meteorologists are predicting there will be destructive flooding in some areas.

Scaling Back

Although one friend does not approve (and another friend does), I started to do a little downsizing of my content. I deleted from YouTube one of the least watched of my cooking videos. I also removed the recipe pages and all associated links from this web site. It was something I created, which I named Costanzi, that were sort of like Spanakopita, but filled with a cheese and meat filling flavored with béchamel. As my web site gets larger, it is more work to maintain. By downsizing a little, I reduce the labor. As I always like to remind people, there is only one person here doing all the work.

Wednesday 2014.7.23

How Deep?

I'm sure you've heard of Chicago style deep dish pizza. When I was a kid in New England we first heard of it as "Greek pizza." That name is inaccurate. Deep dish pizza is made, of course, in a deep pan, the sides of which can be 1½ or 2 or more inches high. I get that, but what if you like a pizza with a more crispy crust?

I had to do some research on deep dish pizza because I have never made one. It appears to be made upside down, sort of. After arranging the dough in the pan, the cheese(s) and meats go in, then the pie is finished with sauce on top and a little more cheese for looks and browning. Then it gets baked. There are a lot of ingredients in it. It could be fun, and delicious.

I also did a little research on deep dish pizza pans. Some of them are made with a perforated bottom, similar to flat pizza pans that are perforated for a more crispy bottom crust. What is the best way to home-bake a pizza with a crispy crust? Use a pizza stone in a hot oven, of course. But how can you make a deep dish pizza on a pizza stone? The sides would collapse due to all the deep stuff piled inside the crust. However, there might be a way.

On Monday I ordered a 12-inch (30cm) cake ring. It's more than 2 inches (about 6cm) deep. My pizza stone is 16 inches (41cm) in diameter and my pizza peel is 12 inches. So here's the plan:

I have two pizza recipes here, Pizza and Sun-Dried Tomato Pizza Crust. I'll follow the same procedure for prepping the ingredients and making the crust, maybe a little more crust, and I'll pre-bake the crust using the ring and the heated pizza stone by sliding the crust, ring and all, onto the heated stone. After 5 minutes I'll use the peel again to remove the crust from the oven, fill it with the ingredients, and again slide it onto the stone, with the ring, to bake for maybe 20 to 25 minutes.

The cake ring I bought does not have perfectly perpendicular sides. They have a slight angle, like the sides of a cake pan. So what if I were to assemble the pizza with the ring upside down, with the wider edge of the rim at the bottom? It would make it easier to slide the ring off the pizza after it is baked. It could work. It had better work. The ring was nearly $40 with the tax, kind of expensive for a ring a stainless steel.

This is one of the fun ways I like to play with food. I like to give myself a challenge of solving a problem or fixing the problems in a recipe. One of my favorites is my recipe for Genovese Savory Pastries.

The original recipe was obviously never tested. The dough was impossible to make. But with a few adjustments, and the gift of some little bowls to use as pastry forms, the recipe not only came out right, the flavor was also delicious. They're fun to make and perfect for a buffet or an intimate little lunch with friends.

The cake ring should arrive by the end of this week or early next. However, daytime temperatures here are in the 80s — too hot to bake. We are entering our warmest time of year; so the deep-dish pizza might need to wait for cooler weather. The recipe and video will show here and on YouTube when it is done.

Sunday 2014.7.20

Origins

As I've been working through all my recipe HTML pages to add the Donate button I've been thinking of the origin for some of these foods. Many of the foods we might regard now as gourmet and something special to serve on holidays or special occasions actually came from humble beginnings.

Probably the most famous is Shepherd's Pie (sometimes seen as Cottage Pie — more on this in a moment). I grew up with Shepherd's Pie. My mother usually made it with ground beef, peas, and mashed potatoes. A little research revealed that this pie came out of a need to make economical use of the leftovers from the "Sunday roast." This makes logical sense. Meat, some sort of vegetables, and mashed potatoes would grace the table on Sunday, then on the following day the leftovers would be assembled into a pie to get an additional meal or two out of it. Here in the USA we often simply store the leftovers in the refrigerator and then either pick at them (maybe making a sandwich like my Steak Sandwich) until they are gone or finally toss them away when they look fuzzy. What if we were to assemble the leftovers into a new meal? Some do.

A little more about Shepherd's Pie: There has been more than a little controversy about whether to call it Shepherd's Pie or Cottage Pie. The argument goes something like this: Shepherds herd sheep, and therefore true Shepherd's Pie is made with lamb. Cottage Pie is always made with beef. However, again a little research uncovered the facts. At one time the two names were synonymous — the pie could be made with either beef or lamb and called by either name. In recent decades, however, a distinction developed and now some people strongly believe that the distinction is not only true and accurate, but that it dates back many centuries. Some people also believe the King James Version is the Bible Jesus carried around in his backpack, but this might not be entirely accurate.

Timballo is another dish that originated from leftovers. It typically uses rice and leftover vegetables for a side dish. Add meat and you have a main course. How many of us have eaten chicken and rice? I have, many many times. What if we were to assemble the leftovers into a pie and bake it? While the pie is in the oven, make a nice Béchamel sauce, and there you have the makings of a good meal. In fact, if you wanted to pull a fast one on some visiting relatives you are not very fond of, you might even get away with serving them your leftovers by assembling them in a Timballo with some rice. Proudly present the Timballo as something special you assembled with them in mind (and keep the leftovers a secret).

In fact, many savory pies probably originated from the economical use of leftovers. Chicken Pot Pie, Torta Pasqualina, Torta Rustica, Lamb and Sausage Pie, Chicken Spinach Pie, among others come to mind.

The same can probably be said for quiche. Whip up an easy eggs, cheese, and cream mixture, season it, dump in a few chopped leftovers, bake it in a pie shell, and serve it as quiche. Smoked Salmon Quiche could be made from the leftovers from an Eggs Benedict with Smoked Salmon breakfast. Got too many onions? Make Sweet Onion Quiche, which could also be made more savory with the addition of some leftover chopped ham.

Some people are skillful at reimagining leftovers as something else. An Italian friend of this web site had leftovers from a roast beef dinner. She chopped the beef, added some vegetables, including plenty of tomatoes, and made a Ragù that she then served with pasta. My Trailer Park Chicken came about as a way to use leftover Kentucky Fried Chicken because I didn't like the white meat. I ate that occasionally when I was in college.

All this comes to mind because there is a recipe I want to try — Baked Pasta Pie. It reminds me a little of my Baked Bisceglie Pasta, only it is baked in a springform pan and comes out looking more like a Timballo rather than a bowl of pasta and sauce. I need to adjust it, though. It makes 24 servings (it's from a restaurant trade journal). If I divide everything roughly by thirds I should end up with a recipe that serves six to eight.

So the next time there are leftovers in your refrigerator, don't poke your head inside and conclude, "There's nothing good to eat." Use your imagination and turn the leftovers into a delicious meal.

Wednesday 2014.7.16

Donate Button — Revisited

I am still waiting to see if PayPal approves my request for my web site to be considered for non-profit status. I know The Mobile Home Gourmet is not ranked up there with the Red Cross or the Catholic Church. However, if my site is granted non-profit status the fees PayPal deducts from donations will be reduced. Either way, the fees won't send me into bankruptcy.

I don't expect a tsunami wave of gifts anytime soon. I did receive tree donations — three more than I expected, which was a very pleasant surprise. The plan is to eventually have the button on each of my web site's pages. Too ubiquitous? All the "best practices" sites I researched say to place the button in the same prominent place(s) on all HTML pages. Phew! I currently have 479 pages in my site! This might take a while…

From reading some articles on the Internet, I learned there was a time when a Donate button on a web site was considered to be in bad taste, kind of like a homeless person on the sidewalk begging for loose change. Attitudes are changing, however. People today are more likely to express their gratitude for the work and contribution associated with a useful web site. That is one reason why YouTube and other content providers are testing donation models.

Some charities are more about the service they provide rather than the donation. Cars for Causes, for example, is a good way to get an old unwanted car out of the garage. Getting rid of the thing is more rewarding than knowing the value of the car might be doing someone good. I gave a car to Cars for Causes a few years ago. I had visions at one time of seeing the car restored; it was an old 1968 Volkswagen Beetle. However, I already have one working car that I rarely ever drive. I fill the tank with gasoline once every two or three months because I put less than 3,000 miles on the car per year. I use my bicycle when I want to go to the store or meet friends for lunch. Besides being economical, it's good for the polar bears as well. So, getting rid of the second car was a relief.

On the other hand, we like to show our appreciation for something that helps us to benefit personally. There was a time when I contributed to a new software company because I really liked their product. They included me among their beta testers and I would sometimes stretch the program use a little beyond expected norms to create some really fantastic stuff. The benefit to me was not only the entertainment of using the product — it was fun — but also the feeling of having created something unusual. It made me feel a little special. And so I was willing to offer some support to the programmers, who appreciated my support.

One of the satisfactions I enjoy from creating this web site is hearing from people who never cooked before. I recently heard from an older gentleman who said, "This cooking thing is fun!" He now bakes bread regularly, not only for his wife and himself, but also to give away to friends as gifts. I can't think of anyone who wouldn't enjoy a warm loaf of homemade bread.

There are many, many web sites offering recipes. I use them myself. And there are countless cookbooks. One thing that irritates me is recipes that are published without testing. It is frustrating to work through a recipe only to finally end up tossing your food into the trash. It's a waste of time and money. I tossed a cake into the trash yesterday. It was awful. That is one problem I try to eliminate here. Every recipe has been made by me, sometimes several times before I get it right. It isn't published until I'm satisfied with it.

Another benefit I enjoy is hearing from people who are learning how to cook. Moments ago I was on the phone with a friend who is now confident in the kitchen. He claims he learned how to think about food through me and my recipes. He has prepared many of them. Now he can create his own meals, from scratch, and they turn out the way he wants them to because he has enough knowledge about foods and cooking. That makes me feel good.

And so I appreciate it when someone I never met, never heard from, never knew existed, clicks on the Donate button to express a little gratitude for what I am building here. Thank you. I do appreciate the messages I sometimes receive, "Thank you for sharing." Yes, I share. I don't charge anything and there is no advertising on this web site. My cookbook, The Mobile Home Gourmet, is free. These are my gifts. I believe everyone should exercise a little philanthropy when possible. When someone gifts me, I feel even better. Again, thank you.

Sunday 2014.7.13

Stats Revisited

The concept of donations has arisen again. A couple weeks ago I read that Google, which owns YouTube, was testing a donation model for YouTube videos. Viewers could donate to the artists and Google would reap a small percentage of the donation. I submitted a request to be considered in the testing phase, but Google has not yet replied. I imagine they received thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of such requests.

People have suggested that I put a PayPal "Donate" button on my web site. I've thought about it more than once. However, the last time I viewed my stats, which was more than a year ago, there wasn't much traffic. My videos get all the attention. Stats haven't been available from my hosting service and there is no ETA when they might be available again. Therefore, it is difficult to guess how beneficial a Donate button might be. I can enroll in a stats program with Google, but it isn't as easy as Google makes it seem.

Its name is Google Analytics and supposedly the sign up is free. First of all, signing up is simple, if you can find the sign up page. They expose viewers to a lot of promotional hype because they want people to subscribe to their premium service (which is not free), but nowhere is there a "Sign up" button or link. It turns out the button is called something else, "Access Google Analytics," and that leads to a page with a nice big friendly "Sign up" button. It even says, "It's easy and free."

Signing up might be free, but are the free stats any good? Supposedly the stats depend on cookies. A lot of people delete their cookies, or they are deleted automatically. My virus protection software runs a scan during inactive periods and automatically deletes tracking cookies. If those cookies are counted in stats programs, my Internet web browser wouldn't be useful for Google Analytics.

As I worked deeper and deeper into the quagmire, the pain started behind my right eyebrow. Pain on the right is okay. It's only a warning. When the pain moves to my left eyebrow, that's when the migraine begins. I know to quit before that happens. Thankfully I have a warning. So, ultimately, I gave up on the idea of stats.

I might be a little too jaded, too skeptical, but I'm of the school that believes very little in this life is free. Usually the only free stuff is the bait on the hook. Every time I go to the dentist for a cleaning and exam I get a free toothbrush. Is it really free? My dentist's name and phone number is printed on the toothbrush. That bit of advertising must have cost something, and that expense is probably factored into the cost of the visit. My dentist is expensive — so expensive, in fact, that when I need something like a crown I get an estimate. Then I shop around for a dentist who can do it for less.

Would I really benefit from a "Donate" button? It all depends on how popular my web site is, and without stats, there is no way of knowing. What if I'm only getting a hundred visitors per week, and what if only one visitor out of a thousand donates a dollar? Maybe if Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates were totally hooked on my site… And maybe if a Donate button caught their attention on a day when they were feeling particularly generous… Yes, it could prove to be a benefit. Otherwise, I seriously doubt it. I might be better off just thinking about cooking.

However, there is another side of me that is not skeptical, not pessimistic. You've heard the cliché, "nothing ventured, nothing gained." What would our quality of life be if there were no scientists willing to conduct experiments? Would I have a bottle of analgesics to see me through a headache? Would I have a dentist?

PayPal does take a cut. From what I've seen, so far, they take 2.2% plus 30¢ per transaction. So if someone donates a dollar I'll get 67¢. If they donate ten dollars, I'd receive about $9.50. Obviously, more is better. I've asked my web site to be considered as a non-profit site. There is no advertising anywhere on this site. I don't earn any money from it. I maintain it at my own expense, which, admittedly, is not going to put me into bankruptcy. It's inexpensive. PayPal is considering my request. I'll let you know…

And so I'm willing to put the idea to the test. There is a donate button on the Home page. It connects to my PayPal account. Maybe by this time next year I'll own a home on the Santa Barbara Riviera. At the very least, I might have enough money to buy my own toothbrush. Realistically, I'll probably pull the Donate button down after a while. I can't see that it would ever offset the costs of supporting this web site, as inexpensive as it might be.

Wednesday 2014.7.9

Yet Another Project Done

I haven't said much about my Minute Meals lately. They are a foundation of my diet. Between those meals and bowls of chicken vegetable soup, that covers most of what I eat.

The soup is important because it is made with homemade chicken stock. Homemade stock has gelatin from the bones and cartilage. Gelatin is something like 98% protein. It doesn't contain any essential amino acids. The amino acids in gelatin are normally produced by the body anyway; therefore those proteins are not an important nutritional component of our diet. However, protein helps us to feel satisfied after a meal. A good bowl of homemade chicken soup can therefore satisfy hunger longer than can, say, a plate of spaghetti. Most broth products sold in the store do not contain that gelatin.

Back to my Minute Meals: I was out of chicken. On my Minute Meals page I have photos of chicken being prepared to go into the oven. I did the same thing on Sunday, having bought two whole chickens at the warehouse store in the morning. I deboned the breast meat, thigh, and drumstick for seasoning and roasting. And rather than store all the trim in the freezer, I immediately made more stock with it because I already had the mirapoix vegetables. That brings my storage up to 55 cups of homemade chicken stock. I'll be eating soups for a while. As for the chicken, I put 17 servings in the freezer.

On the Minute Meals page I also have a photograph of the mixed vegetables I buy at the warehouse store. I bought another bag when I purchased the chicken and I again portioned the entire bag into 4-ounce pouches — 20 servings.

It is a lot of work. I admit that. I used to call them Lazy Man Meals. One person commented on it, saying the meals could hardly be called "Lazy Man Meals" with all the work that goes into preparing them. But that's exactly why I gave them the name they have. I work one day, prepping a lot a portions I can store in little packets in the freezer, and then I can eat without cooking for a few weeks. Just pop a few pouches in the microwave oven, heat, and eat. No pots and pans to wash. Just a fork, and a plate if I don't use a paper plate.

By Sunday evening I was done with all the Minute Meals work. I still need to do a red meat. I usually buy a leg of lamb and prep it with pesto. However, I'm a little short of room in the freezer at the moment. See my Pesto Lamb recipe for my typical preparation. I rarely buy beef, although I do have some ground beef in the freezer, and some of it is already season, shaped, and frozen for my Picnic Burgers, just in case someone invites me to a barbecue this summer. When I want red meat, I go for lamb. I really prefer the flavor over other meats.

Other foods in the freezer include single-serving packets of hake loins. Hake is a variety of North Atlantic cod. I grew up in New England. I love cod. I eat hake often. When I don't feel like eating chicken or lamb, I have fish.

So Sunday was a busy day. But that gets more chores out of the way. I can relax now with lemonade made from lemons picked from my neighbor's tree.

And As For Videos…

This morning I started making chowder in front of the video camera. Someone gave me a one-pound bag of "Petite Patagonian Scallops." The look good, but small — smaller than bay scallops, too small for searing. What to do? Starting with my Clam Chowder recipe, and making a few variations, I made up a big pot of Scallop Chowder. The recipe and video will be uploaded here and to YouTube in coming weeks. The flavor, by the way, is fantastic.

Sunday 2014.7.6

Another Project Done

One odd item, or set of items, on display in my living room is the full collection of all my videos on DVD. There are more than 200 videos on 41 volumes in that set. Each disc has its own menu and it plays like any ordinary DVD. They don't have a professional/commercial look. I write the titles on the disks with a felt marker. And the jackets aren't in color (because I don't have a color printer). Regardless of those few negatives, the collection looks impressive to those who see it for the first time. (And, no, I don't sell them.)

Each DVD contains four to six videos, depending on their size. The later ones are in 16:9 anamorphic because that is the setting I use on my video camera. Actually, the original recordings are 1080p HD, but I doubt I'll ever start encoding them for Blu-ray blanks.

One of my chores while I am taking a break from cooking was to get caught up, putting all my latest videos on DVDs. I was falling behind. This past week I encoded and burned eight DVDs to bring the total up to 41. And wouldn't you know it, the one file I needed as a template to build the DVDs was one that didn't make it to the backup I did when the hard disk in this computer was failing.

The hard disk wasn't completely dead yet. There was a chance. I spent about an hour in the morning and two hours after lunch trying to retrieve that one file. I got it, finally, and stored it safely in two places. You might be thinking I could have created a new template file from scratch in less time. Yes, if I knew what I was doing. The problem is that I created that template nearly four years ago and I've been using it ever since. To start with a new template, I'd need to learn how to use the software again. It wasn't easy the first time. So three hours of struggling really was an economy.

The DVDs are handy because sometimes people ask me something about one of my videos. I don't keep them all on my computer. They take up too much room. After I upload the latest video to YouTube I archive everything in the file and burn the archives to DVD blanks. I then test the DVDs to make certain I can recover any files I might need. The discs are stored in boxes that each hold 200. The fourth box is nearly three quarters full. That's about 725 archive disks. Video files are huge. I keep a second copy on a 4TB hard disk drive that is stored in a static-safe envelope on a shelf in my home office. I try to be safe.

When I need to view one of my videos, I only need to look it up on a printed index I keep with the DVDs and then pop the appropriate DVD into the player. It's convenient.

And one other project: Make stock from the chicken trim in the freezer. I used up all my trim, putting 42 cups of stock, in one-cup portions, in the freezer. I'm ready for soups.

The Tour

Yesterday was the opening stage of the Tour de France cycling race. I was not at all happy with the outcome. Yes, Cav was the most to blame for the collision near the finish and he admitted it, but what was Fabian Cancellara doing toward the end? He's not a sprinter. He disrupted the organization of the lead-out trains for the sprinters, causing panic and mayhem, and for what — a little attention as the spoiler of the event? He didn't even finish among the top ten. Of the 198 cyclists in the race, there were only four or five good contenders for the sprint. Everyone else would do better to stay back in a sprint stage and let the lead-out trains position their best sprinter for the finish. For obvious reasons, the sprinters are always at the back of the peloton on mountain stages.

And so I blame a selfish Cancellara for Cavendish's injury. Thankfully Cav suffered no broken bones, but his injuries are serious enough to force him to retire from this year's Tour.

Wednesday 2014.7.2

A Little Celebrating

Yesterday was the third anniversary of my retirement. Thinking about the situation still makes me smile, even after three years. The fact that my former employer still pays me, each month, not to come to work is no less amazing to me than it was three years aog. Of course, I worked many years for that pension, and I paid into it each month, like Social Security; so such an entitlement shouldn't seem unfathomable. However, it still makes me smile.

Normally I make a good pizza, like the ones I have on this web site, and eat like a beast for an evening, maybe even open a bottle of wine. I had some sun-dried tomatoes in the refrigerator, so I even made the pizza crust with them. I do that only once a year; so I'm not compromising my health, which is still very good.

Bicycle Race

This week also begins another event I look forward to each year — The Tour de France cycling race. I was surprised to learn Saturday that my neighbor across the street is as enthusiastic about it as I am. He has more reason to be. He owns a Cervélo bicycle that was used during one stage of a Tour de France several years ago. He therefore gives his loyalty to Cervélo.

I don't follow any one team. I have my favorite riders. I was watching when Andy Schleck disengaged his chain from his rear gear cluster when changing gears on a mountain slope, losing the yellow jersey to Alberto Contodor and the Tour that year, coming in second. The win was eventually taken away from Contador because of drugs use and given to Schleck, but it was a painful episode to watch because I really wanted Andy to win that season.

Watching Peter Sagan and Mark Cavendish sprinting toward the finish line is an amazing event to behold. If Cavendish can get the right lead out, he's unbeatable. This year Mark Renshaw will be his lead out man again, after being on different teams for a couple years. The team should be fun to watch again.

Who will represent Team Sky this year? I still don't know if both Chris Froome and/or Bradley Wiggins will be in the Tour. Both suffered recent minor injuries. Froome's injury lost him the Critérium du Dauphine last month. Wiggins' crash in the Tour of Switzerland was almost a guarantee he would not ride in the Tour de France. So who will Richie Porte be pulling for this year?

This year's opening stage will be another one for the sprinters. They never get to wear the yellow jersey because they don't have the stamina to pull themselves over the torturous mountains in record times. They drag themselves over as best they can to stay in the race, but they rise to glory in the sprint stages. This year, like last year's first stage in Corsica, will be a sprint stage. So there is the possibility that Mark Cavendish or one of the other top sprinters could be in yellow at least one day of the tour. I'm hoping for Cavendish because the stage ends in his home town. He still has relatives living there.

Last year's Corsica stage was a disaster. This is what I had to say about it last year:

What an opening day for the Tour de France yesterday! One of the team buses jammed under the steel framework gantry supporting the finish line banner. The leaders of the race were only 20 minutes from the finish as the minutes ticked by and the ground crew couldn't dislodge the bus. The finish line was hastily moved to the 3km flag before the finish. Then they freed the bus and during the last few minutes the finish line was restored to its original place. Then a major bike crash near the finish took out two of the sprint stage favorites, Mark Cavendish and Peter Sagan. André Greipel's bicycle lost its rear derailer in the crash, taking out another sprint hopeful. (He caused the pileup by touching wheels with Tony Martin, taking him out too.) Marcel Kittel survived to be the first cyclist over the line and into the yellow jersey.

I still haven't forgiven Greipel for that bit of reckless riding last year. I doubt he'll ever be among my favorites.

And so, on Friday, I'll be sitting in front of the TV watching the Tour. It's a pity I live in California. If I want to watch the broadcast live, I'd need to be out of bed by 3:00 in the morning. No thank you. I didn't retire to rise early. Thankfully the stage is broadcast again at least once during the day, with highlights in the evening. I might get out of bed a little earlier than usual on Friday to maybe catch the last 30 minutes of the first stage live, hoping for Mark Cavendish. The rest of the time I'll be content to watch the later broadcasts.

And Every Silver Lining Comes With a Cloud

The hard disk on this computer has been dying. It took a while, but thankfully I had time to complete a good backup. The silver lining is that the hard disk is still under full-replacement guarantee. It's already in a box, ready to drop off at UPS. I keep spare hard disks; so this computer is already fully functional again.

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