TRIAL UPDATE

I won! Back to blogging as soon as I calm down a little.

IN TRIAL: be back soon

Dang! I hate it when my job interferes with my hobbies.

Cookbook Library: Licensed to Grill

Although it is a rainy Labor Day weekend here in Portland, tradition calls for grilling. So I turned as always to License to Grill by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby, authors of the very popular Thrill of the Grill. This time, I tried their Grilled Shrimp and Bacon Skewers with Pickled Onion and Avocado Salad. The recipe was simple, although it involved a lot of separate parts. Use one pound of raw shrimp—peeled and deveined, but with the tails on. The recipe called for 16-20/pound shrimp, which Safeway didn’t have, so I used 20-25/pound shrimp and they worked fine. Start the salad first: Thinly slice one red onion and soak for one hour in white vinegar. Chop two avocados into medium chunks. Seed and core one medium tomato and chop into 1/2” to 1” chunks. Toss avocado and tomato with 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup fresh lime juice, 1 tablespoon cumin, and 1 teaspoon crushed garlic. Set in fridge while onions soak. Right before serving, drain the vinegar off the onion; toss the onions with the rest of the salad; add 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro. (See NOTE.) To make the kebabs: Dice 8 oz of slab bacon (the kind that isn’t pre-sliced) into 1/2 oz cubes. Blanch in boiling water for about 1 minute to they are cooked before the go on the grill. Thread the kebabs: alternate shrimp, a cube of bacon, a 1” red pepper chunk, a 1” piece of green onion, repeat. I got 3 shrimp and 2 of everything else on a 9” stick. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Grill over medium heat for about 3 minutes or so, until the shrimp are cooked through but not dried out. Serve kebabs on top of the salad. NOTE: There were a couple of things I would change about the recipe. 1) The bacon, even though it was cooked through and gave good flavor to the shrimp, was too blubbery to eat. I don’t know what to do about that. I think substituting a pre-cooked sausage like a kielbasa would give the same flavor without the blubber -- and no par-boiling required. 2) Unless you REALLY love onions, use only half or less of what the recipe calls for. I made them all, but only used about 1/3. 3) The salad needs something crunchy. I served it on a couple of romaine leaves and that turned out to be a very good addition. All in all, a good recipe because it got me to try shrimp kebabs on the grill. Needs adaptation, but I will make this one again.

Review of the Day: Life and Times of Michael K

Life and Times of Michael K is a Booker Prize winner by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. Despite the credentials, I did not like this book and I do not see the point of it.

Near the end, the main character, Michael K, questions whether the moral of the story is that there is time for everything. But if that is the moral of this story, then it was not clear at all. Michael K has nothing but time, but he does not do anything. He seems incapable of doing anything. He cannot cope with living in any kind of society; nor does he succeed in living on his own in the wilderness.

Read literally, the book is horribly depressing, because Michael seems to be mentally ill or mentally deficient (because he cannot provide for himself and he has no will to survive), but no one is able to help him. Read symbolically, I just do not get it. If Michael is supposed to represent some greater meaning, as the doctor/narrator suggests in the second part of the book, what is that meaning?

The book does not answer that question and I am at a loss to understand how Michael's numbing, endless suffering has meaning.