It’s still winter

I have two hats and a big bottle of Chinese cooking wine

Check in

Hello!

Greetings to the Bartholomew relatives in Michigan! Debbie tells me you are fans.

Snowfall

In mid-February, the weather in Portland turned frigid. This week it snowed. I couldn’t get out in the snow to take photos, but here’s one of the back of a neighboring apartment building that’s visible from our back yard. Not a well-maintained building and not pretty in full light, it is peaceful in the light of dawn.

I call this the Toothpaste Building because of its color. Fran Gardner photo

February snow

Blanket of snow, flurries of winter. 
Already Valentine’s but snowfall is here.
Stuck in the house, my ramp is too icy;
Sitting and reading and drinking hot tea.

Dreaming the day away, lost in light slumber,
Travel is only by proxy these days.
Maybe a crossword, maybe some TV
Me, winter’s captive, snow’s hostage for now. 

I have two hats

My two hats rest on the knit rug and quilted pad that cover the seat of my power wheelchair. Fran Gardner photo

It is cold today. Just a little wind, sky thinking of rain. I’m waiting for a paratransit ride, the short bus, outside a clinic. 

A woman waits with me. She wears a stained, tattered coat. Like me, she’s in a wheelchair. She tells me her name is Joan. Her head is bare, a tangle of mussy, graying curls.

I have two hats.

One of these hats I designed and knitted myself. It’s warm wool, with a jaunty finger of a topknot. I am proud of this hat. Many people have admired it. 

My other hat has a visor. It, too, is wool. It was made by The Hat People in Talent, Ore., a town that largely burned in a wildfire in 2020, although The Hat People’s home and business survived.

I have two hats.

I think, I could give one hat to Joan. She is wringing her bare hands, hunching her shoulders. It is cold today. Which hat would I give her? I love them both.

Joan lives in assisted living. Maybe I could lend her one. I could go pick it up later in the week. But I know this is not an option.

Two buses appear. Joan is loaded on her bus, and she is gone before my driver gets back from his bathroom break. My driver helps me onto the bus, ties down my power chair, and we are off to pick up another passenger.

My indecision saved me.

I still have two hats.

But I almost gave one away.

Måke Califørnia Great Ægain

More than 200,000 Danes have already signed a petition to buy California. They are sending their best negotiators, Lego execs and the cast of Borgen, the TV series about Denmark’s first woman prime minister. The Danes say they are looking forward to a lot more sunshine and endless avocado toast, and they are willing to sweeten the deal with a lifetime supply of Danish pastries.

Of course, the deal may hinge on renaming Disneyland as Hans Christian Andersenland and fitting Mickey with a Viking helmet.

The new capital of New Denmark would be Løs Ångeles. (I suspect the petition writers may not have heard of Sacramento.)

Most appealing aspect of the whole thing: Danish values. Among these values is hygge, the Scandinavian standard of comfort and well-being. “We’ll bring hygge to Hollywood,” the petitioners promise, “bike lanes to Beverly Hills, and organic smørrebrød [smorgasbord] to every street corner. Rule of law, universal health care and fact based politics might apply.”

Bidding starts at $1 trillion. That’s only 200,000 Kroner (just under $28,000) per Dane. Skip a few lattes and the cash is there.

Cooking wine

When I was a kid, nobody cooked with wine. At least, nobody that I knew of. At that time I was familiar only with my own family. We never ate at anyone else’s house. My mom had few friends.

In those days, wine had yet to become a cult, and cooking wine was called for in recipes. It was swill, of course. I never used it. I think the point is it’s shelf-stable, thanks to plenty of preservatives.

In the 60s and 70s, magazines and cookbooks suggested sherry as the wine to use in Asian dishes. Ketchup, too, was a staple, as we didn’t have access to the exciting Asian sauces that now can be found in the humblest bodega.

For a long time, I used vermouth in place of dry white wine for cooking things like chicken breasts. Vermouth keeps, after a fashion, because it’s fortified, like sherry; wine goes bad pretty quickly.

I still don’t cook with wine much. I seldom drink it. Robert isn’t much help in this respect. He doesn’t like wine if it’s not Manishevitz, and I can’t finish a bottle of good wine by myself.

Asian choice

Nowadays the cooking wine of choice for Asian food is a Chinese product: Shaoxing cooking wine. It’s undrinkable, but that isn’t the point. It adds depth and flavor as an ingredient. I first bought it when I was experimenting with making black bean sauce. I’ve since discovered you can just rinse the fermented black beans and add them to the dish with the ingredients that would have made up the sauce.

I make huge stir-fries with multiple vegetables. I sometimes use a little meat, but crisp tofu is the usual choice. Shaoxing is the basis for a stir-fry sauce I’ve developed.

Wine sauce recipe

Mix these ingredients. Use your own judgement about proportions.

• Minced garlic and ginger (though I usually just add these to the vegetables)

• Tamari or soy sauce

• Fish sauce. It’s powerful, so use just a little.

• Tamarind pulp. I keep a brick of tamarind in the fridge. I saw off a piece and soften it in hot water, working the pulp away from the fat seeds. You could substitute lime juice.

• Black Chinese vinegar and/or Shaoxing wine

• Toasted sesame oil

• Chili crisp. This delicious crispy garlic and red pepper condiment can be found at Trader Joe’s and elsewhere; recipes for it are on the web. House of Trinh in Beaverton makes a yummy version.

Which stir-fry vegetables, you ask? The usual: bell peppers, mushrooms (fresh or rehydrated dried), onions, carrot, celery, tomatoes. I like to add shredded cabbage and dinosaur kale, sometimes eggplant. Toss in some rinsed fermented black beans, too.

One final wine secret. Manischewitz is very sweet, a quality that adds some depth to tomato pasta sauce.

Coffee cups in Weimar

The Elephant Hotel in Weimar, Germany, is now owned by Marriott.

On our trip to Germany two decades ago, Robert and I stayed at the famous Elephant Hotel in Weimar. From the terrace of the hotel we watched some street construction. I saw something I’ll never forget.

It was midmorning, and the construction workers had just finished a coffee break. They trooped back into the hotel to return their white ceramic coffee cups.

That’s right: These guys had gotten their coffee in mugs, not paper cups.

Back across the pond in America, if you go into any Starbucks, you’ll see people sitting at tables with paper cups in front of them. Most Starbucks offer “for here” crockery, even in various sizes for various drinks. But few customers even think of asking for one. And the cashiers pick paper by default—fewer dishes to wash. If you forget to ask for “for here,” it’s cardboard for you.

On a recent visit to a suburban Starbucks in Gresham, Ore., plenty of people were working and talking in-house, paper cups at the ready.

Getting comfortable at Starbucks with to-go cups instead of “for here.” Fran Gardner photos

Paper cups are everywhere. These takeout cups are on tables at Speedboat Coffee on Southeast Foster Road. Fran Gardner photo

Morning vignette

Dog walkers out early,
Warm scarves and coffee cups.
Sometimes the world tilts right on its axis.

A moving moment

As I came riding down my driveway a few days ago, I saw a woman with a big German shepherd. The dog was defecating on the lawn. When it finished, she walked away. I yelled after her, but she said she did not have a bag and was not going to go get one. “How am I going to pick that up!” I fumed. But to no avail.

Over the next days, the incident became a story.

German shepherd poop

A dog left a beastly bundle.
On our parking strip last week.
The owner walked away, no bag.
But then the pile disappeared . . . 
About the time another appeared.
This time under the big camellia.
That pile sat there for a day,
Then it, too, just vanished.
Dog works in mysterious ways.
His feces to remove.

Check out

I remember from decades ago seeing lots of power poles with angled ties like this one. But now, it’s the only one I’ve found in Portland, despite looking up and down hundreds of streets when I’m out riding the bus.

Pole of a diffrent angle. Fran Gardner photo

The connections on this pole seem different. Are they transformers? Anyone know from telephone poles?

—30—

Until next week

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