Work? Nah.

 

I don't really like my primary job. It forces me to do things I really should never be doing, and doing them on behalf of people that mostly should never have existed in the first place.

To be fair though, I've only ever held one job I enjoyed enough to justify staying even if something more lucrative or stable came along- and then the plague killed it.

Plus, it's not like I've ever worked for an operation or company where I wasn't qualified to run the whole thing- and I've worked for some Very Big Companies in varying capacities. Hand off a c-suite to yours truly and long lasting success is almost inevitable with how easy it would be, so long as the underlying purpose is valid. Not that there are many valid businesses out in the world these days. All but a precious few are designed specifically to fabricate a need rather than fill one, and then sell a service that undoes the harm the company itself provided. It's recursive, wasteful, and full of fakery.

 

I realized that I've basically become Uncle Iroh.

One who tries very hard to be good. 

One who did right by his family, even when they betray the principles they taught. 

One who serves as a mentor, a guide, and a surrogate parent to any number of others.

One who is still, despite the passage of time, an absolute demon in a fight.

One who (perhaps offscreen) absolutely Fucks.

Almost all of that is fine.

What bothers me, though, is the paradigm shift to Mentor/Guide.

I don't want to do that. Certainly shouldn't have to. But circumstance and betrayal have left it my only recourse. 

To do everything exactly right and suffer anyway. So many opportunities I was first promised, then owed, and always denied.

Now... all I have left is to do what I can for others, to help them prepare as much for similar fates as to avoid them.

Considering additional income sources

 

One friend says things like OnlyFans. He's silly. I'm... okay, he does have a point. I'm probably very appealing to no small number of people. But I'm also an experience that doesn't really translate well to picture and video. Much better to appreciate up close- and those who so know me would likely agree.

But then there are things like Patreon. I have a vast amount of knowledge and experience. I'm a world-class expert in no small number of largely disparate fields. Like my blurb on the side says- if you have a question, and I have an answer, you can trust it. People might well pay for that. Even just for reliable access to that.

I'm also a storyteller. My life experience has given my perspective and analytical utility a depth that is vanishingly rare. Those experiences could, if properly revisited, be of enormous entertainment and development value to any number of knowledge seekers.

On the other hand, there are already tons of people out there (substantially inferior in quality, but more visible and more aggressively productive) who are desperately flooding the visible world, on and offline alike, with their own better-off-hidden miscellany.

Do I go for it anyway?

...Do I have anything to lose?

WHY DIDN'T THEY CALL ME?!

 

Boss Fight Books: Dance Dance Revolution

WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE?

I need to find out exactly who they tapped for this because I am A Little Upset that I wasn't on the list.

There are innumerable DDR players. But there are very, very few like me. I was a tournament competitor and occasional champion for *decades*, very much one of the best players on the planet. No exaggeration there, I have gameplay world records that stand even today, several hundred tournaments under my belt, and enough prize money won to basically zero out what I spent playing. My time spent learning the game happened at one of the best-known independent arcades in the country, that hosted the east coast version of EVO for a dozen years and more, and later on the most competitive music game tournaments anywhere in the US and probably the world at large.

But skills aren't everything in a book like that. You need history, you need perspective. Again, stalwart of 8 On The Break. I knew basically every major player in the US off the top of my head via the DDRFreak and AaronInJapan forums. I watched communities all over the country and over in Japan form, grow, squabble, compete... everything. 

When the first regularly updateable scoretrackers like TeamGwailo and OverTheMonkey showed up, I held my own on the leaderboards and watched the shifts in player development in close to real time, with those who knew one another sending challenges and pictures to spur one another on. 

When the first two In The Groove cabinets appeared, one went to the Break. The mighty regulars, all manner of visiting competitors, and I all worked together to do a whole bunch of the beta testing as the game evolved, through Roxor, Andamiro, and the battles with Konami. Hell, my picture is still in the credits if you can find an ITG2 cabinet that hasn't been tweaked harder than Florida Man.

I should expect to see a great many names I recognize in the acknowledgements of this book when I finally get my hands on it, but... if I don't? Rest assured there will be Yelling.

As if I didn't have enough unqualified and overappreciated nonsense to deal with.

 

I was recently reminded of one of the most infuriating and degrading experiences of my life. Beginning, of course, with someone asking for my help. What they wanted was for me to acclimatize a friend of theirs to what might be experienced as everyday food in Japan. Apparently the subject was considering a trip. 

Then I found out who it was.

I'd introduced this same person to a variety of new foods in the previous months when they would drop by to visit my current housemates and dinner happened to be near. I was never told about incoming guests, of course, but an extra plate is nothing- there are always leftovers when cooking for a full house.

Now, when I say 'new foods', I'm not talking nonwestern exotics like Jollof Rice or Lamb Vindaloo.

I'm not talking Euro classics like a simple risotto or a baked Brie en croute.

We're talking things like... Oven-baked fish, topped with parsley and breadcrumbs.

Broccoli, gently roasted, with a pat of butter.

Corn. 

Corn.

The difference between dino nuggets and karaage was apparently already too much.

I gave it due consideration, and then flat out refused.

You couldn't possibly pay me enough to make it easier to inflict such a culinarily-crippled menace on Japan. For starters, Japan is in general... less than kind to individualists. "The nail that sticks out gets hammered back down" was a common turn of phrase in my East Asian Studies undergrad classes.  There is nothing about this person that could possibly thrive there. Something personal- it's a place I've been trying to go for literal decades, and have had the opportunity ruined for me many times over. I will absolutely not help someone enjoy a luxury they're not even capable of qualifying for when someone like me keeps getting snubbed and sloughed off.

The hazardous someone in question is an adult. Somewhere in their mid to late twenties, and that grew up here in the US- in the midwest, no less. Though "grew up" is one hell of a reach in a case like this. 

The approach and experience is infantile, and the timing decades out of date. How does one near thirty without awareness and comfort of basic fundamentals of a western diet? Stuff you see in the canned goods aisle and the freezer case all year round? Or that you see in most TV dinners?

That, and more, was what comes to mind when I saw this.

A new cookbook: "COLOR TASTE TEXTURE: Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who's Ever Cringed at Food".

In some ways, to some people, it might be seen as a step in the right direction. Not to me. 

You're not supposed to make things easier for difficult people. You're supposed to make better people.

What a mess.

 

All those cuts to Meals on Wheels apparently went out over the last 24 hours or so.

So let me tell you, gentle reader, of the last 48.

Yesterday, I began to track down the family of a senior who died five years ago when mail showed up for her estate. Yes. They died in the first covid wave, amidst so many others. And disappeared. 

Today, I delivered a route, as I always do when a delivery crew fails to show. Someone who I'd spoken to on Monday didn't answer when I knocked. Thinking they might not yet be home, I called their contact number and got family. Poor man was on total life support, surrounded by loved ones. 

He died while I was on the line. I spent the next twenty minutes consoling half a dozen people I've never met as they broke down together.

This is the stuff they're taking away the funding for. Not hard to guess why- beyond the simple cruelty and ignorance, at least. Hungry people get angry, they get aggressive, they get things happening. People like this don't. They're already on the last of their resources. They'll simply fade and die, unknown and forgotten. Often, I joke that the motto of our center should be "Forgotten But Not Gone". I don't forget easily.

"To ignore the plight of those one could conceivably save is not wisdom, it is indolence"

In a world steeped in malice, I think those words ring true for those who seek a better world.

Why? Simple.

"For those we have lost. For those we can yet save."

And so I battle onward. As best I might.

Ugh. My head.

 

I have never minded the dentist. But I've been too poor for anything resembling viable dental care for... nigh on twenty years.

Root canals aren't so bad, I guess.

But I really wish that teeth weren't mistreated as Luxury Bones by the US imitation of a healthcare system. I'm a foodservice professional. I need my mouth in perfect condition. It should never be a worry for me. Instead, I'm probably going to go into an appalling amount of debt just to return to normalcy.

At this point in my life, my share of contribution is long since done. I am obliged provisioning in accordance with that. Debts are not things I owe- they are things I am owed.

I am likely to die before I ever manage to claim even the smallest fraction of them.

Resolutions?

 

Resolutions have never been something I looked at seriously. Seeing other people make their own leaves many bereft of resolve, and dooms them to failure more often than not. 

I see things like "An apology to myself and others for having fallen apart, and a commitment to restoke my fire.", and... no, I don't believe that for a second. Most people fall apart because you let yourselves crumble. You do not sacrifice what is necessary, nor do you spend your resources in a way that would help. I should know- in times long past some have asked, and I told them. If they decided to do something else? My wisdom is no shackle- even though for many it certainly should be.

Given all that mess, plus the worldly horrors of the last decade or so- plagues, fascists, brain drain, climate change, overpopulation, and many other awful things... one resolution worth considering has come to mind.

I should stop being the one who reaches out first.

The lion's share of the work in many of my interpersonal relationships has always been done by me. I know one person my age aside from myself that has a christmas card list- while written correspondence itself is vanishingly rare in this day and age, some things remain worth doing for an intimate, personal touch. Even digitally though, if it's been a while since we've talked? I'll likely drop a line every month or three to try and see what's what. All too often though, those messages simply vanish into the aether, either unread and unnoticed, or simply dismissed. My message archives are awash in open-ended queries, salutations, and attempts to reconnect.

Between the literal and figurative plagues, the chaos of the world gives more reason to be fostering relationships than any time most people alive today can remember. And yet I only grow more weary of spending my time on those who can't bothered to remember just how valuable it is. It brings to mind something of an exhausting question quite firmly cemented in my mind and worldview a couple of years ago: "How many times do I have to save someone's life before they owe me the rest?". I know the answer to that. But none of those so indebted will ever so much as admit to it, much less pay up.

What will taking the passive role and waiting for outreach do? Hard to say. It's not like I have more than a handful of people who ever bother to talk to me in the first place, and it often feels as though I'm the last option even for them.

If all it does is turn those numbers from nonzero to zero, then... it was always zero to begin with.

Probably won't change much at all, really.

It's never fair, but sometimes it's reasonable.

 Pursue a life of reckless and irresponsible enjoyment with no regard for your physical, mental, and emotional well-being?
Do not be surprised when your body betrays you.

Sympathy comes hard when you took all the easy ways out.

This is why I still get up early in the morning. I stretch. I exercise. I read and learn new things. I do my part to make the world a better place. 

My life is terrible, but I am not- and provably so.

Knowing there are endless obligations to me that will never be fulfilled, though? Tiring. 

I look back and sigh in disgust

I don't want to talk about AI. But as an educator, I have to. It's one of those Great Old One concepts, where the more you talk about it the more power it has to adversely affect its surroundings. Conceptually it's a bunch of gibberish, built by people who think in hours instead of centuries and powered by the ever-shrinking rainforests. It's an objectively unacceptable misuse of resources. Yet it's the Trendy Bullshit of the moment, picking up the slack left by fading or hiding crypto.

So. Consider one of my degrees: a B.Sci in Foodservice Management from Johnson & Wales University. It wasn't hard to get. The technical skills are largely a matter of repetition, but somehow the majority of the student body had trouble with the academics, something I found as astonishing then as I do now. Nobody who comfortably got through middle school in my hometown would have had any trouble with them. 

It was difficult to imagine how some (most) of the students in my classes were ever admitted to university in the first place. Often, as I proofread and (desperately) edited my classmates' work, it really just felt like "Can/will they sign the loan documents?" was the only real requirement, and that soured me on "higher education" quite profoundly. 

My distaste for industry-wide deceptive advertising and predatory loansharking aside, there was very little recourse for the students once enrolled. Either graduate and leverage the degree to try to get a job, or leave and hope for a wealthy benefactor or other miracle that lets them pay the bill. To that end, many instructors understood the limitations of the student body and resigned themselves to making the best of a bad situation. Now, though, things are very different.

The massive upsurge in AI-generated plagiarism and fabrication has left principled staff and faculty grasping at straws for keeping the learning process going and curricula moving forward. Grading has become an obligatory verification process before it gets to become what it's actually for- an improvement process. Instead of being spent improving the students' understanding of a given subject matter, that time is wasted making sure there's any hint of understanding to start with rather than fabricated and parroted bullshit artistry.

What, then, does one do about trade-centric schools, where academic classes are already unlikely to be paid beyond lip-service? I can almost guarantee that current JWU students are taking judicious advantage of AI to fake their way through academics even more desperately and empty-headedly than before, and graduating with even less understanding of / utility to the world they're being inflicted upon.

If they'd hired me like they ought to have, I could fix the problem. 

But they didn't- and there's no way they can. 

Bit of a shame though. If they'd learned how to do research properly they'd have made better choices. Irony.

A moment of exasperated philosophy.

Lately I've been seeing lots of variations of the "I'm starting to realize that the 'what would people think' barrier is holding 99% of people back from their dreams." bit. How disappointed such notions make me is hard even to quantify, let alone express. But not for the reason most would expect.

Whether you do something or not should only have one qualifier: That you earned the privilege. Doing something because you want to? Fine- if you're finished. If you're worthy of autonomy and choice.
And if not? Doing what you want is simply wrong. Your existence does not have intrinsic value. It does not automatically make the world a better place. Assuming otherwise is a dangerous and terrible but unforgivably common habit.

Do the work to validate your existence before inflicting it upon others and wasting resources that might otherwise be better served.

Don't poison the world for those who put in the time and effort- those that can prove we deserve to be here.

Vegas is Not For Me

My endeavours in Las Vegas were successful! I made some new contacts, spent lots of time exploring, and relished the experience, taking a lot of time to wander and see what it's really like, on-strip, off-strip, and yet further hidden away.

I gave my physical security talk to a couple groups of people, and it went over quite well. Didn't get a lot of questions, but I did get a lot of thanks from the lawyerly-looking types. Seeing my expertise be suitably acknowledged feels good, even if it's on a small scale and a couple of decades late. 

Still. I don't think I like Vegas. 

Somehow, the casinos manage to feel both organized and organic while the general miscellany comes across as hopelessly dissonant and artificial. Further still, the noise and spectacle outside had me feeling like I was at a riot that used to be a house party. 

There's no cohesion to anything outside of the casinos when it comes to entertainment, just endless effort through visuals, audio, and advertisement to get attention- whether the attention is positive or not. 

Shock value seems to translate quite well to cash value, in Vegas, and I do not like such notions at all. It speaks quite strongly of the educational and ethical deficiency of large numbers.

The street theatre was a mix of astonishingly impressive and poisonously unpleasant. Some of it was truly incredible, but in equal measure there was dreck best discreetly tossed in front of a train. Likewise for the shops and omnipresent souvenirs, from keychains to clothing, it had the feel of a flea market made by dumpster diving and designed by /b with some /pol thrown in. I have a 'novelty' shirt or two- most people do. But a great deal of what I saw there, I cannot imagine EVER being worn. Even seeing it exist was staggering.

And then there were the dark corners. Vegas turns up the lights and the noise so nobody looks too hard at the many broken fragments and castoffs that hover around the edges of the scene.

Yeah. I don't think I like Vegas much at all.

Right on cue...

Just as I'm starting to get a handle on my second new position -taking over the running of the city's Meals on Wheels operation- I've got to run out of town. Now admittedly I knew this was coming months before I took this new position and everyone relevant to it knew, but the timing is still less than stellar.

On the flip side, it's going to be fun. I'll be in Vegas handling some contracts for a chunk of the next week, which I've been looking forward to very much. A few orgs have finally bit on my physical security panels. "Clipboards and Catering Carts: Low-Tech Pentesting" got enough eyes on it that I'm being flown out to give proper in-person lectures and demonstrations.

Being noticed (and well regarded) for being invisible. It's an interesting way of things.

Ow!

Bit of an accident. Busted up my ribs. Spent the last couple weeks trying not to cough, sneeze, laugh, etc.

Catering gig went off without a hitch at least. Or as much as can be expected for a toddler's birthday outdoors on a 90 degree day. I hardly needed to light the chafing dishes!

New things, new gigs... and school's out!

 What a month.

New job- not a restaurant, at least not yet. I reloaded my first aid certs and got picked up as a lifeguard at the city pool, so that's a good bit of usefulness (and I didn't have to pay for the certifications, so double bonus). More work to come, I'm sure, but for now that stops the bleeding of my savings.

Catering has gone quite well too. After the last big one (which was apparently an offsite meetup for a bunch of Vtubers in the area for a convention) I'm hip deep in preparing for another big event in a couple of weeks. Summertime can mean a lot of outdoor events (Lots of summer birthday parties too! Hard to celebrate on a school night.), and not everyone wants to run a grill all afternoon or make the common backyard barbecue sides. A knack for the classics can potentially carry one quite a ways as long as they taste sufficiently better than the ones at the supermarket.

Short update- been busy!

Short version: Multiple interviews over the last week or so, things look good. I may have found a suitable position offered by staff that actually recognize what makes a perfect candidate. Shock!

Also booked a catering job near the end of the month, so that's been rather occupying as well. I realized that I hadn't updated my catering menu offerings (Or prices! Yikes!) since before the plague, so that's taken a fair bit of research and effort as well. I may do a writeup on that this week if I can squeeze it in.

I am not a 'Content Creator'

 

The depersonalization of expertise and expressionism is an extremely unwelcome bit of corporate linguistic shift.

I am an educator. A writer. A master culinarian. A personal trainer. I am a great many things, but when I choose to share them, it is for purpose. The notion of 'content creation' is designed to showcase the superfluous, the distraction, to work as camouflage for the exploitation beneath.

No matter how reliably I continue to do the correct and proper thing, I lose ground. The things I produce, the information I unearth, collate, refine, and share- none of it will become less valuable or less important as time passes. But it feels quite often as though I am filling a bookshelf that's somehow hidden, the contents unread.

To an extent, this is very much what might be considered a #firstworldproblem. To be grousing that no one pays attention could likewise easily be considered sour grapes. But it isn't. It's a valid and robust concern about the state of the general public, its approach to media, and the media industry's relentless efforts to homogenize, commoditize, and dehumanize.

Look for ways to improve rather than escape. You owe the world that much at least.

Much more, really. But that's a good start.

Weather!

Dammit, I moved to California so I wouldn't have to deal with weather.

Of course, I grew up around contractors and landscapers, so I learned to deal with weather when it happens.

Whoever renovated this place quite clearly did not. I've spent the entire day stuffing towels in the window frames because there's more dripping and leakage than there is dry space, and it sometimes comes so fast I've had to wring out towels before putting them in the wash.

I bet gutters and a mild slope on the roof might have helped. I bet a sloped grade and a catchbasin for the parking area wouldn't have hurt either. I bet properly sealing the fucking window frames would have done some good too!

Wonder what the 'maintenance' crew will have to say about it. Assuming they ever appear.

Lisbon, Part 2

The vibe of the city of Lisbon is most intriguing. Everyone seemed to go about at a leisurely pace, yet still with steady purpose. As a Jersey boy I learned to Move, not to meander, so a little adjustment was in order. Taking the time to see the sights was well worth the doing though, and so I submitted myself to the flow of the more relaxing local pace. 

I was put in mind of New Orleans quite early on in my time there, and the comparison never really got out of my head. In another three or four hundred years, I suspect it would look a lot like Lisbon does now. Modern conveniences laid with care upon and alongside the well-polished bones of a vast and complex history.

Churches were huge, yet in addition to the massive basilicas and other sites, many such places were hidden among the streets just like any other building. That felt strange, given how externally ostentatious most churches have been in the places I've lived. Strangely enough, I didn't feel even a little out of place in any of these, even when the chapels were empty. Perhaps it's the history, the shared understanding of age and time that I have, and that the culture in the US really doesn't.

Markets and restaurant rows were plentiful and relentless- each and every one I made it to had a thoroughly raucous vibe, everyone enthusiastically going about their business on both sides of the counters, much and many open to the air. Though the weather was also a bit brisk, no one seemed to mind. There were lots of cookie-cutter souvenir shops with all manner of small, probably quite breakable things. I did, however, pick up some postcards. After mailing them though, I discovered that mail in Portugal can be used to set one's calendar rather than one's watch. So... mom, husky, if either of you read this, you may possibly get a postcard sometime in the next year.

Now touring the streets was made relatively simple with metro passes, so score one for public transit outside of the US. Big surprise, right? Pbbbth. The architecture itself served to make navigation relatively easy, with the buses and trolleys running regularly and plenty of landmarks. Though to my mind the metro stops really need larger signs or more visible onboard route maps. If you aren't counting stops or have a timer set, you've got to keep your eyes and ears open! 

It also seemed like every couple of blocks there was another bakery with the local specialty on offer- Pasteis de Nata, or 'cream tarts'. These suckers were everywhere, and since they're composed of many of my favorite dessert components, they redeemed a lot of the other less than stellar food.

They're actually not too tough to make- it's an infused custard, poured into what's basically kouign-amann dough pressed into a tart shell shape, then baked till crispy, flakey, and decadent. It's rich, buttery, and delicious while not being too sweet. I would cheerfully eat them every day (and very well may have- shhh, don't tell). Also they come most commonly in 6-packs, like the sleeve I'm holding in the picture here. That's why they're dangerous! You think "I'll just get one!", and suddenly you're staring at the empty sleeve, nursing a large cup of coffee, and wanting a nap.

The notion of Portugal having fantastic food is so pervasive, but finding the bulk of the reasons why seemed to want to take more time than I had. A notion, for example, that would not leave my head amidst a questionable lunch decision: "How does a place so well known both for seafood *and* for invading Japan have crappy sushi?" That was certainly A Day all right.

By this time I had more or less fought through the time change, but still groused about it at 3am when I couldn't stay asleep. Having the dreadful Daylight Savings hit me the day before I flew across the world made it a special sort of grumble-inducing. Though all that was nothing compared to the trip back. Never before have I actually wanted a layover for airplane travel, but the trip to SFO definitely had me wishing I had one. If there is ever a next time, perhaps I'll touch down in DC for the night, pester a friend for a couch and a ride, then finish the journey the following day.

Lisbon, Part 1

 So, I recently spent a week or so in Lisbon.

I should open by noting I don’t speak a word of viable Portuguese. My Spanish has a fair bit of utilitarian vocabulary due to my many years in kitchens, and my French is at least sufficient for bakeries and pastry shops, but I admit to a great deal of trouble with the native tongue. The fluidity of it coupled with the Ss and elongated Js made it parse like mingled Russian and Spanish in my head- thus utterly incomprehensible to someone unfamiliar with the phraseology and diction. I found it much easier to work in English or Spanish- both quite commonly used. Got a little lucky there.

The flight safety video for air Portugal clued me in on that before my arrival, and also gave me a perfect followup at about the 1:40 mark. “In Portugal it’s not always easy to keep your belt fastened- the food is just too good!” Weeeeeell... airplane seat belt safety aside, let's just say I’ve crossed off a lot of possible places where people might have gotten that notion about the food. 

One of their best-known signature dishes / traditional specialties, the croqueta bacalhau, is a stellar example of things that, to my mind, might be better off left to history rather than remain a component of the everyday, even for the tourists.
For those not familiar, it's an offshoot of a once-necessary method for preservation- You take a fish (in this case cod, which is essentially all bacalhau refers to in Portugal) and unleash a combination of drying and salting on it. It's an extremely aggressive method, to the point that to render the fish edible again after the process is complete, it must be soaked for multiple days in multiple changes of water to leech out the salt and rehydrate it. While the technique itself is supposedly Basque, it has the feel of a method you'd see in Scandinavia, land of vaguely terrifying preservation methods.

Once you have your mummified-and-then-reconstituted fish, you then flake it like pork sung, mix it with a bit of binder, wrap it around something, and fry it till it's crispy. The filling that got the most play in the many places offering them as I passed by was a type of cheese (which I'm reasonably sure was Serra de Estrela), and as someone who loves Scotch Eggs, it tempted me enough to try. The result was basically the worst variation on a mozzarella stick that I've ever even conceptualized, let alone tasted. Not going for those again, thanks.

The most unexpectedly delicious piece of seafood I ate was simple deep-fried cuttlefish(?). But it was the underlying preparation that truly let it shine. Uncertain exactly what that was, but I suspect vigorous marination, perhaps even a quick-pickle, and pressure cooked to tenderness long ahead of time before being ordered, battered, and fried. The vigorous, salty twang struck more of a chord than almost anything that day or a few around it. Most else I ate seemed to suffer from serious flavor anemia by comparison.

The Itis: The Sandwich

Another dish where I noticed that more was in the Francesinha, a modernish, localized variant on the French classic Croque-Monsieur. On paper, this thing is a dream. Dude food, hangover food, drunk food, it ticks every box for me. It's an afternoon nap on a high-sided plate.

Many sorts of meat- marinated grilled or seared beef (of uncertain cut but with the loose grain of skirt or flank), along with linguiça, coppa or chorizo, and some sort of deli ham, all tucked in a sandwich, crisped like a grilled cheese, topped with lots of cheese and broiled, then drowned in a rich and spicy sauce of what was probably onion, garlic, madeira, tomato, and beer. And a fried egg on top, because sure, why not, we'll go full Croque-Madame with it.

I could eat one of those every day. I might die of it, but I also wouldn't really mind. So rarely have I the freedom to pursue the privilege of pleasure I qualify for, it might well serve as a common earned indulgence.

Alongside, one cannot talk food there without talking wine. Whoof. It’s everywhere, it's all sorts of affordable, and, by and large, it's very much not to my tastes. I didn’t pay more than a fiver for a bottle of wine all week… and given how they tasted I certainly wouldn’t have. I am not a regular wine drinker, even if I am conversant in how to, but the general willingness to kick back with a bottle of quaffable vinho over lunch had me a little impressed. Despite deflecting proffered pours as readily and often as able, I still drank more wine that week than in probably the previous five years.

At a very enthusiastic and informative wine tasting in a Lisbon museum, I found that it’s not uncommon to ignore the norm about blending grape varietals. In brief: The requirement to label a bottle as say, ‘Merlot’ requires a guaranteed minimum percentage of that grape to be used. While the required number varies from place to place, 75% is the minimum here in California, so I'm sure the EU has stricter standards for it.

The interesting approach I was talked through forsakes that opportunity to blend, and so I thought it worth a mention. Using blending grapes is more or less standard viticultural practice- it aids in more consistent, readily replicable product from year to year, but it does so at a potential cost. Using 100% of a given grape varietal ensures the distinct characteristics of it are in no way altered, muddled or smoothed out. I say it thus because some of those characteristics are potentially quite objectionable to the untrained palate, far more so than I might have considered to ensure them marketable.

Eating and drinking in Portugal is not for the faint of heart or flimsy of constitution.
More to come soon!