Patrick Corcoran

Last night’s middle-of-the-night drama was a doozy. Susanna woke me up because Connor was crying, and I went into his room to check up on him. It was dark, and I whispered. “What’s wrong?”

“I barfed,” he cried.

I told him to cover his eyes, and I turned on the light. The poor little guy had vomit on his face and all over his pillow and bedding. There was evidence of peas from his dinner and even pinto beans from his lunch yesterday.

Susanna and I cleaned it all up. She wiped him down with a warm, wet towel while I was spraying the solid stuff off into the kitchen sink and putting a bundle together for a 2am load of laundry. By the time I got back from the laundry room downstairs he was already back asleep on his fresh bedding.

He woke up one more time needing to vomit. He threw up everything until there was nothing left. I held him as he hurled into the toilet. It was impossible not to feel his pain.

That seemed to be the end of it. After spending 45 minutes or so in our bed for comfort, he was carried back into his room by Susanna. This morning he claimed not to remember any of it, but there was a little glimmer of a fib in his eye as he said it.

There is really nothing in life which compares to parenting when it comes to being put into completely unforeseen situations. Kids are magnificent little engines of entropy.

“Mommy, you’re not very clever. But you’re as clever as daddy.”

Perhaps his first overhand double-diss?

2 tbsp. olive oil
4 tbsp. finely chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp. finely chopped peppers *
4 tbsp. finely chopped tomatoes
1 bay leaf *
3 tbsp. brandy or cognac
1/2 cup strong chicken stock
1/4 tsp. nutmeg powder
small pinch of saffron threads
black pepper
salt (to taste, after cooking)
1-1/2 lbs. swordish steaks

Heat olive oil in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and peppers, and cook until soft. Add tomatoes and bay leaf. Cook 5 minutes. Add brandy, stock, nutmeg, and saffron. Mix well. Add black pepper, to taste. At this point the sauce is finished and can be set aside for a few hours or refrigerated for a few days.

Bring sauce to a simmer. Add swordfish cubes. Cover and cook for 10 minutes on low heat.

Serve in a decorative communal bowl, accompanied by buttered garlic toasts or crostini.

This is a delicious tapas recipe. Like much of Spanish cuisine, this dish has an exotic, don’t-taste-this-every-day flavor for those of us who didn’t grow up on the stuff. It’s also very easy to make, almost foolproof. And since the sauce can be made in advance, it can be a 10-minute dish with a little planning.

Time to prepare: 15 minutes prep + 20 minutes cooking stovetop.

Difficulty: 2/10

Serves: 4

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* You can use any fresh peppers you like for this dish. I used yellow chilies, which are slightly spicy when raw but cook down to virtually no spice. Bell peppers of any color would work fine, and you could also bump up the spice by using poblanos or even jalapenos if you’re into heat. (Spicy peppers will bury the subtle flavors of this dish, but we spice fiends sometimes make this trade-off to get our kicks.)

I didn’t need to add any salt, because my stock was salty enough. If you’re in any doubt, hold off on deciding on the salt until after the fish is cooked.

The sauce is best after it has had a few hours to come together. But regardless of whether you are holding the sauce for a few hours or refrigerating for a few days, the bay leaf should be removed after cooking or the flavors will fall out of balance.

Frank “12 Galaxies” Chu is running for mayor of San Francisco?

The S.F. Examiner gives him odds of 1,000,000 to 1. Not so good, given that the official electorate population of S.F. is less than 1,000,000. Something tells me I could get better odds than Mr. Chu.

Still, the newspaper was not entirely ungenerous in their assessment:

Name: Frank Chu

Occupation: San Francisco eccentric, sign-carrier

Why: No one would campaign harder than Chu, who has walked downtown streets for years with his incoherent “12 Galaxies” signs. An Emperor Norton for the 21st century, he would do less damage in City Hall than many current and former supervisors.

Reading through the glossary of Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain, by Penelope Casas, a book full of interesting tips, tricks and miscellanea, I found this discussion of cooking live clams:

Clams, in Spanish cooking, are often prepared right in a sauce. To avoid the grittiness that could result when clams open and release sand, scrub the clams (preferably very small and hard-shelled clams, such as littlenecks), then soak at least several hours or overnight in salted water to cover, sprinkling about 1 tablespoon of cornmeal or bread crumbs over the surface. The clams will eat the cornmeal or crumbs and release any sandy material. They will also become quite plump from their meal.

This is not a technique I would have stumbled upon by myself.

C: Daddy, one day can we get a bunk bed for me?

P: Yeah, one day we will.

C: Just get it from online. It’s easy.

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/opt_form.cgi

You can choose to opt out for 5 years or permanently. The former can be done online; the latter requires a signed letter to be sent by postal mail.

This won’t completely stop the flood. Some companies don’t go through Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion to get your name and address. Instead, they look at local public records such as real-estate filings. And obviously there is no way to opt out of inclusion in the public records, at least not without some serious extenuating circumstances along the lines of being in the Witness Protection Program.

But this should stop the bulk of the legitimate “Connor, you are pre-approved for a $10 loan!” letters.

I was at Target with Connor today and upgraded my main chopping knife. Got a 7″ Henckels Santoku hollow edge. (It was $39 as a set with a 3″ sushi-style paring knife.)

Apparently Henckels makes no fewer than six different grades of this knife. Mine, the Forged Synergy, is the lowest quality. The higher end ones are almost $200 per blade. But even at the low end it’s a beauty. The blade runs through and over the handle, as a solid piece of steel. It’s also dishwasher safe, which I appreciate because I’m cruel to my knives.

Cutting with it is a dream. I can cut through the skin side of a ripe tomato without even holding the tomato. I was making a basil chiffonade, and all I had to do was drag the point of the knife across the basil using only the weight of the knife and it made perfect slices of basil. The hollow edge makes the knife thinner along the blade, allowing for narrower slices and for less “grabbing” when cutting through dense stuff. Slicing through a large onion was noticeably smoother with the slimmer blade.

It’s a poor workman who blames his tools. But it’s also a poor workman who has poor tools.

(BTW, I didn’t go into Target to buy a knife. It was an impulse, a consolation prize. I really wanted to score a food mill, because I’m making a creamy tomato soup for dinner. A food mill would be ideal for mashing everything up nicely while also pulling out the seeds and skins. But I must have been dreaming to think Target would have such a patrician device. I was also there to get Connor a new booster seat, and I scored him a beaut. It has comfy pads, an ergonomic headrest, suede paneling, and twin reading lamps, one over each shoulder. I kid you not. He doesn’t know about the reading lamps yet, but one day when he least expects it I’ll pop some batteries in there and rock his mini-world. I didn’t plan to get the super-deluxe, but the other dad who had arrived just before us in the booster isle grabbed the last one of the model I had my eye on — basically the same seat, minus the suede and the reading lamps. Connor wins, unknown kid loses.)

Slate is running a photo series honoring the tin can. Some interesting photos in there.

For me, this photo was the most powerful. Can’t really explain it, except to say it feels so… bleak. A harsh, bright light on modern life.