Month: May 2021

Breakfast in America

First published: 27 April, 2004

The concept of eating out at breakfast time is still alien to most British people although it’s a tradition they usually enjoy when visiting the States. When my parental units had their 25th wedding anniversary, a US based Uncle offered to take everyone out for breakfast the following morning. He was surprised and not a little disappointed to learn there was simply nowhere he could take us to. Our town didn’t even have a McDonalds in those days, although most of us would rather starve than eat there. Personally, I love the concept of eating out at breakfast time, particularly the fact that my coffee cup is constantly refilled at no extra charge. This is one of my criteria for heaven.

For a rural setting, the Bailey area has its share of breakfast choices, although it has to be said, some of them are mediocre at best and most struggle to stay in business for any length of time. I see the Green Valley Grill went up for sale again this week. This is no great shock to anyone who’s eaten there since it changed hands a few months ago; iffy food and poor service are generally a death knell, even for well-established eateries, but it’s just another in a long line of eateries which have been unable to make a go of it along the 285 corridor.

The very first local meal I ate, was at the Woodside Grill, in Pine Junction. Serving Chinese & American cuisine, it occupies a prime location near the traffic lights. The back windows afford a breath-taking view of Pine Valley, an uplifting sight for anyone with a soul, but particularly someone in the process of relocating from Phoenix, Arizona, and the building itself is perfectly acceptable as restaurants go. And yet, the food can only be described as….crap. I’ve been to China and, trust me on this one; the food is not Day-Glo orange.

In the first few months of our residency, one of our favourite eateries was “The Crow’s Foot”, situated, at the foot of Crow Hill. The Crow’s Foot had been in business for some years, but had recently changed hands and while the fare was quite acceptable during our first few visits, over time it became more and more bland, the portions noticeably smaller and the service increasingly erratic.

In addition, the proprietors never seemed to address the issue of the poor lighting, which while it might have been appropriate for romantic candlelit dinners, made the breakfast experience somewhat gloomy. I once overheard the owner telling another customer of his plans to replace the whole lighting system and I understand the capital investment required may not have been available, but in the short term, replacing the 60W bulbs with 100W ones would have helped. As time went on, the quality of the restaurant continued to deteriorate until one day it was announced the original owners were coming out of retirement to take on the business once more. A new name and a new look attracted a lot of attention but sadly, I think the damage had been done and now, only a few months later, it is sitting empty.

Another Bailey landmark, which recently underwent a change of ownership is “Sully’s”, now known as “Tom’s Bailey Station”. In this case the problem lies with the fact that it hasn’t yet decided if it wants to be a diner or a bar. Both sides of the business attract a somewhat loyal following, but even the most dedicated social mixer would be forced to admit, the two groups have somewhat different needs. When I’m bellied up to the bar enjoying a beer, I don’t generally need the smell of breakfast and the babble of family diners to complete the experience. Conversely, when I’m working my way through a plate of bacon, eggs and toast, I can usually do without the pall of blue tobacco smoke and the salty language of the bar’s regulars. They both have their place don’t get me wrong; I just don’t usually enjoy them together.

To be fair, the new owners do seem to have addressed the quality of the service or rather, the lack thereof. Under the old management, the waitresses often appeared to have their minds, such as they were, on other things. It was common for a group of four diners to receive their meals at completely different times so that three people might be finished eating while the fourth was still awaiting their meal. The first serving of coffee often arrived after the end of the food, while the bill regularly came before it. It might not have been your bill, at least not entirely, but it was a bill nonetheless.

Across the street, lies The Cutthroat, which until recently was sold was the Mountain View Café, a semi-upscale restaurant, serving undisputedly fine cuisine. The pricing was a little rich for our blood except for the most special of special occasions (such as someone else picking up the tab) but the few meals we ate there were pretty good. We took my parents there during their last visit from Britain and after the excellent steaks, had the additional fun of seeing my 72-year old Mum tackle her first ever deep-fried ice cream. I never heard anyone with a bad word to say about the place, but in the end, there just weren’t enough people willing to spend that type of money on a regular enough basis to keep the place afloat. Fortunately, this sale had a happy ending and the new owners transformed it into a quite excellent little breakfast place. Prices are reasonable, portions are generous and the food and service top-notch. I’ve only made it there once so far, but The Light of my Life™ has become quite the regular.

Working as I do over an hour from home, weekday breakfasts are generally a protein shake before leaving the house, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich upon reaching the office. Even on the weekends, if I’m cooking for myself my repertoire is generally limited to toast, or something equally exotic. So it’s nice to occasionally splurge and have someone else do the cooking (and the washing up). Even better, the generosity of the portions generally means there’s no need for a big lunch, what could be better than that? Of course, the real kicker is those endless coffee refills. They’ve got me hooked on Breakfast in America.

Is this a great country or what?

The Long Arm of the Law

First Published: 1 June, 2004

We just enjoyed a holiday weekend, which of course meant the roads were packed with cars, trucks and vans, trailers, RVs and boats all headed up to the mountains to enjoy three whole days of play. And of course, they were joined with the inevitable array of law enforcement officers, gleefully seizing the opportunity to write a few hundred tickets – oh I’m sorry, I mean “to keep the roads safe.”

There are two distinct schools of thoughts when it comes to the police presence on our highways. Those who believe they perform an invaluable service by discouraging speeders, drunks and dangerous drivers and others who think this is nothing more than an exercise in tax collection. I’m with the latter.

My dislike of traffic cops began at an early age when, as a comparatively law-abiding citizen, I was harassed to the point of comedy by the local fuzz. I initially got on their bad side by having a problematic tail light, which went out repeatedly despite the best efforts of me, my Dad and several repair shops. We eventually resolved the matter but not before I’d been pulled over a dozen or so times by enthusiastic cops looking to make a name for themselves by busting a high profile case like this.

Even once the tail light was functioning reliably, the pullovers didn’t stop. My car was now in the database and every time I drove, particularly after dark, I could pretty well guarantee to be stopped by the first cop that saw me. In the two years or so I drove that car, I was probably pulled over 40 or 50 times and I’m happy to say I never once received a ticket. But they tried, oh boy did they try. I never drank so much as a single beer if I was driving and the car struggled to break the speed limit anyway, but I had cops checking the tread on my tires, pushing the car backwards to check the parking brake, and one even crawled underneath to check the rust level of the chassis. It must have been very disappointing for them.

I’ve lived in the US for eleven years now and while the level of police interest is nowhere near as high as in my younger days, I’ve still had more than my share of roadside chats. These have been over such major offences as driving 60mph on a 55mph freeway, having a cracked taillight (which I had to get down on my hands and knees to see) and having license tags expired by 2 days. I will admit I’ve received tickets which were justified, almost all for speeding but for the most part, I’ve been pulled over by bored, under worked cops simply justifying their existence by taking some of the pleasure out of mine. So when I see highways laden with polis, as they were this weekend. I retain a somewhat healthy cynicism over the idea that they’re doing this out of some kind of altruism.

The police departments here, like everywhere else on the planet are constantly crying poverty when it comes to explaining why crime detection rates are so poor. The manpower isn’t there when it comes to tracking robbers, rapists and burglars. Yet show them a motorist driving a few miles an hour over the speed limit and miraculously, there are three squad cars available to handle it. Now as I’ve been told, highway patrol and crime detection are two different branches of the department, I’ll accept that. Yet there’s something inherently wrong when the police officers responsible for chasing real criminals don’t have the money to do so, while traffic cops have a seemingly endless supply of funding.

It’s not simply squad cars that they need. On SR285, the road with which I’m most familiar, it’s common to see hapless motorists sitting glumly on the shoulder while being written a ticket by some hot shot sitting in an unmarked police vehicle. To my knowledge, there are at least three pick ups, one SUV and multiple sedan cars doing duty as undercover ticket generators. Now you don’t exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to catch speeding motorists in the first place, so why is it necessary to use a disguise? After all, if, as we’re told, the purpose of a heavy presence is to encourage safer driving, wouldn’t it make more sense for the police to advertise their presence rather than hide it?

Which also leads to the question; if the purpose of the traffic cops is to enforce safety, why do they only seem to be concerned with speeders? Yes, we all know excessive speed is a factor in most accidents. However statistically, other dangerous practices such as tailgating, aggressive driving and simple inattention cause more. Yet when was the last time you heard of someone receiving a ticket for tailgating? I never have. Could it just be that speeders are easier to catch, or is it that this carries a higher fine?

The fines may indeed be the key. Although Park County is one of the largest in the nation (considerably bigger than the state of Rhode Island for example) it has a comparatively small population and with no businesses of any size, the tax base is extremely low. Which means the Sheriff’s Department relies largely on revenue from traffic tickets for their income. Compound that by the fact that the majority of Park County residents inhabit a small area on the extreme eastern edge and you find that a short stretch of highway receives a greater police presence than any high crime district in the metro area.

On Friday I counted 5 police vehicles in less than 5 miles. There may have been unmarked cars there too, I don’t know. Were they keeping the highway safe? Arguably, although given the number of accidents reported, that claim is somewhat dubious. Given that this is the busiest traffic weekend of the year and understanding the opportunity for revenue enhancement, I’m inclined to think they were there for other reasons.

It would have been an interesting experiment to have called the cops on Friday to report a burglary or a bicycle theft, just to see what level of attention this would have received. I’m willing to bet the phrase “nothing much we can do” would pop into the conversation at some point. “Not enough manpower, see?”

But if any law enforcement officers happen to be reading this; let me just say here and now, “I don’t drive a car. Nope never. Not me. Sorry, I walk everywhere. Keep up the good work!”

The Radio Age

First published: 18 May, 2004

Growing up in Britain, I can’t say I was a great fan of radio. It was usually on in the car or as background noise around the house but for my parents the channel of choice was BBC Radio 2. Middle-of-the-road standards, easy listening, music for dead people. Top 20 pop music, was played on BBC Radio 1, in those days only available on the AM dial and with a signal so weak that living as I did surrounded by hills reaching the dizzying heights of 2,000 feet and more, it was rare we were able to tune in at all.

The real action took place on the pirate stations, Radio Luxembourg which did not, as most of us believed; come from the country of Luxembourg, but from somewhere in London and the pirate station Radio Caroline, which broadcast from a ship anchored in the North Sea. Or at least it did until a storm sank it sometime in the mid-seventies. Radio listening for me meant huddling under the blankets with a tiny transistor radio pressed to my ear trying to identify the tune being played through the interference.

By the time I left Britain in the early ‘90s, things had progressed considerably. BBC Radio 1 could now be found on the FM dial, with a much clearer signal and commercial stations were making inroads into markets outside the major cities. The problem was I’d long outgrown pop music by this time and for people under 50, there was little else to be had. True, the AM dial still had a large number of stations but with Britain being situated on the edge of Europe, the reception was a crazed mass of signals from multiple countries. It’s still a mystery how foreign radio stations located hundreds of miles away could deliver a clearer signal than the British ones on my doorstep.

So when I moved to the US, one of the many things I heartily embraced was the wealth of radio stations delivering crystal clear signals and every genre of music imaginable. Blues, classic rock, oldies, even country and western for the weirdos. Whatever your mood, you could find a station which would match it. The Light of my Life™ was always puzzled by my enthusiasm as she didn’t think the radio was anything special but then I assumed, that was because she’d grown up in Los Angeles and had perhaps been somewhat spoilt. It wasn’t until my motor cycle died and I began commuting in a car and thus spent a lot more of my day listening to the radio that I began to see what she meant. Now, after more than ten years as a US resident, my opinion of radio has degenerated into what can only be called contempt.

The blame for this can be laid largely at the feet of two corporate entities; Clear Channel and Westwood One as well as the corrupt politicians who relaxed the laws limiting the number of stations one company could own in any given market. In the name of “freedom of choice for the consumer”, this pair have been allowed to gobble up some 80% of the radio stations in America which would be bad enough if it weren’t for the fact that they’re determined to turn the entire country in a homogenized desert of unimaginative blandness. There was a time when a road trip across America would reveal a wealth of musical styles and tastes as one traversed the country. No more. Now the radio dial has the same offering whether you’re in the Appalachians or Albuquerque; Wyoming or Washington DC.

Where the disc jockey was once the arbiter of taste; playing the music he or she wanted to hear, opinion polls tell today’s radio stations what to broadcast. The established, the predictable, the safe will always find a home on today’s radio, but young bands, new artists or anyone yet to fill their wall with gold records finds it almost impossible to gain a foothold. Yet the problem isn’t just that the stations keep their offerings to a limited number of artists, but that they play them endlessly, hour after hour, day after day.

Every city has at least one station, usually more, obsessed with work of Led Zeppelin and when cruising the dial it’s almost a certainty you’ll come across one of their songs within a few minutes. Like many other people I was very taken with the work of Norah Jones when she burst on the scene a few months ago. Now I’m in serious danger of becoming sick to death of her. At one point on my drive home last night, three of my six pre-programmed car radio stations were playing her music. The other three were on commercial.

Which leads me to my other complaint about today’s radio. I’m well aware that radio stations aren’t charities; they’re in the business to make money and that commercials are a necessary evil. Even so, since corporate radio became the norm, the amount of time spent on advertisements has increased to a ludicrous level. Most commercial breaks last six minutes or more while longer ones are not unheard of and many stations have no problem with returning to the air for a 30 second news or traffic update, then going straight back to commercials. Rush hour, or “drive time” periods are the worst, presumably because they know the audience is captive and between the commercials and the inane prattle of the presenters, many radio stations provide no more than two or three songs in any given hour.

And that’s another point right there. The term “disc jockey” disappeared along with vinyl and today’s music is played by “presenters” or “hosts”. Except somewhere along the line, the presenters became the focus of the show, not the music. Presumably because their market research says this is what the public wants, most stations now feel the need to entertain us with “wacky” morning shows, where two or sometimes three presenters will subject us to the most imbecilic drivel while occasionally…very occasionally, deigning to play some music. The pollsters have never asked my opinion, but as and when they do, my recommendation will be simple. Tell us a little about the artist, or the music, then shut the hell up and play it.

Why subject myself to this at all, you might be wondering, why not listen to tapes or CDs. Aye there’s the rub. I don’t have a CD player in my car, and the tape deck has a cassette jammed in it. So it’s radio or nothing. Sigh. I wonder if Radio Luxembourg is still on the air.

The Loneliness of the Short Distance Runner

First Published: 20 April, 2004

Coming to terms as I am, with the unhappy fact that I’m in my forties and seriously out of condition, I recently embarked on yet another attempt to fight the ravages of time. Plastic surgery isn’t an option, nor is a red sports car or a 19-year old girlfriend. So I took up running. Unlike apparently everyone else in the western hemisphere, I’m not overweight, quite the opposite. My body type tends towards what could charitably be called “lean”, but more truthfully, (and more often) is referred to as “skinny”. Being blessed with a metabolism which curiously, causes me to lose weight when I don’t exercise, my life has been a constant battle to avoid being compared to the “Before” picture in the Charles Atlas advertisements.

I do try to spend as much of my free time outdoors as possible. My dogs all receive regular walks and I even know where my bike is, although it’s a little dusty right now. (Hey come on, we’re just at the end of winter here!) So despite my advanced age and lack of muscular bulk, I am in reasonably healthy shape. All my limbs are attached and I can walk up the 3 flights of stairs at the office without needing the emergency services on speed dial. However, a recent trip to the Doctor’s office showed my blood pressure was, for the first time ever, higher than normal. For the last couple of years, I have been spending far too long chained to my desk and as driving a computer mouse doesn’t tend to raise the heart rate in any way that could be considered healthy, I realise it’s time to take more drastic action.

Like many other people, I was part of the running craze in the early 80s and in addition to a number of shorter races, clocked up six marathons over about three or four years. I was in my teens and early twenties then so was more than capable of sinking five or six pints of a Saturday lunchtime then clocking up a leisurely ten miles before getting ready to go out for the night. Somewhere there’s a photograph of me, in full running gear, sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette and holding a can of beer near mile fifteen of the Bolton Marathon. Sadly, like my vinyl collection and my Morris Minor, those days are long gone.

My first attempt at resurrecting my athletic career came about six months ago but, as these things so often are, was short-lived. For the last twenty years or so the only running I’ve done has been the little panicked trot when the blare of a car horn has reminded me that jaywalking can have its consequences. More to the point however, is that I now live at just less than 9,000 feet and there’s no denying, the air is a whole lot thinner up here. Even the flatlanders down in Denver, a mere one-mile above sea level, are a good 3,500 feet lower than us, yet professional sports teams often cite the altitude as a factor when they receive a drubbing here. So I was well aware I wouldn’t be ready for the Ironman my first week out.

I started with what I thought would be a gentle introduction to the sport, covering only one mile and alternating between running and walking, 100 paces each. Despite my caution, I developed pains in my legs that within a few days made ordinary life extremely uncomfortable. The muscles felt fine but the pains seemed to be coming from the bones themselves. Concerned I was suffering from some kind of old-fart bone loss disease, I stopped running just about the time winter kicked in and the early morning temperatures were beginning to plummet.

Until a couple of weeks ago that is, when my doctor, struggling I’m sure to keep her face straight, assured me that bone pain is almost unheard of and what I was experiencing was nothing more dramatic than long unused muscles suddenly being asked to earn their keep. This wasn’t manifesting in stiffness, as I had assumed it would, but the dull ache with which I was so familiar. “Get out there and run.” was her message, “It will do you good”. So, with medical assurance that my crippling bone disease would only be temporary, I decided to give running another chance.

Another big advantage of running in my youth was that in those days I had the money for top quality shoes. Back then we snobs would tell ourselves that a jogger wore clothes worth $100 and shoes worth $5, while with a <em>runner</em>, the opposite was the case. Quality footware is vitally important for anyone who wishes to rack up the miles and I’m well aware that the beaten up tennis shoes in which I was running, were not doing my feet, ankles, legs or back any good at all. Unfortunately, I’m now tied to the other trappings of middle age such as a mortgage, two cars and, probably a bigger financial drain, a wife.

I’m also responsible for the economic well-being of several other financial institutions, banks, credit card companies and the like so despite my good intentions, I don’t have the folding money to shell out on a project that, let’s face it, has had a high failure rate for plenty of other people in the past. Luckily, the other night I happened across a shoe store going through the final stages of a closing down sale and was able to snag a snappy looking pair of Reeboks for only about the same amount as my first weekly wage. The uppers are a little stiffer than I would like and they’re blindingly white, but they’ll do.

Which means I have no excuse not to get my bum out of bed and hit the road. Every other day I’ve been setting the alarm for the ungodly hour of 5:30am and after a few brief stretches, have been plodding my way around a one-mile block of my neighbourhood. Running the full mile without stopping is out of the question so again; I’m using the run-walk-run approach. This morning I only walked twice, for 100 paces each time and think it won’t be long before I can skip that part altogether. Over time, I’d like to build up to where I can do 3-5 miles comfortably. If you aren’t familiar with exercising at altitude, that’s a bigger achievement than it sounds.

For the moment though, my legs hurt, walking upstairs is a trial and my lungs are producing an astonishing amount of goo. But, I’ll keep at it. You’ll see me in the Ironman yet.

Take me out to the ballgame

First published: 3 April, 2004

Summer was a sports wilderness when I was growing up in Britain and for me, you could keep it. Following sports meant football. Real football, known left of the Atlantic as soccer, not that pansy stuff with padding and pantyhose, and commercial breaks every 12 seconds. No, from late August until the early May, I was a passionate devotee of the beautiful game. However, once the F.A. Cup Final closed out the season, we were cast into the endless, bleak purgatory that was….the cricket season.

In case you aren’t familiar with cricket, and I’m assuming you aren’t, it’s a game invented for those who found the sport of watching grass grow to be too taxing on their nervous systems. Largely due to endless periods of inaction, the games stretched out for 3, sometimes 4 days and even then there was often no winner. For some reason, cricket aficionados seem to have no problem with this. Mind you these are people, who actually understand the concept of the game, which itself, tells you a lot about them. The verbiage is a morass of overs and outs, sticky wickets and short legs, slips and creases, none of which have any connection with what’s happening on the field, which is precious little if you really want to know. How anyone would voluntarily suffer through this torment is beyond me.

Which perhaps makes it all the more strange that over the last few years I have become a bit of a fan of baseball, a game, which pays more than a passing nod to its older, and statelier ancestor. There are an equal number of mystifying expressions such as ERA, RBI and pinch hitter, all designed to baffle the neophyte. Fans share an equally mind-numbing passion for collecting statistics and it’s equally rare for the action to ever reach edge-of-the-seat excitement. However, they share positive aspects too. Both games have the same warm, lazy summer afternoon quality, with the smell of fresh mown grass mixed with sun block and beer. And each give pleasure to fans of all ages, from the very young to the very old and all points in between. However, in my not so humble opinion, baseball is head and shoulders over cricket due to the fact that every few minutes something happens, and by the time you go home the game has either been won or lost. Maybe it’s just me but I think that should count for something.

This week marked the start of the 2004 baseball season and yesterday, our very own Colorado Rockies took the field for their home opener against another team with which I have a vague connection, the Arizona Diamondbacks who hail from my ex hometown of Phoenix. Despite the season being less than seven days old, they’ve already played three times with the Diamondbacks taking the honours in two of those games. Despite being one of baseball’s newer franchises the Diamondbacks also have a World Series championship under their belts, largely thanks to the owner’s policy of hocking the team’s future and plunging them into colossal debt when buying the players necessary to achieve this.

I was never particularly a fan of the Diamondbacks, a long and ugly political battle over the taxpayers’ role in the financing of their stadium rather soured me on them from the beginning. However, it was the fact that we had a team in town that inspired me to make the effort and figure out what the game was all about. I tried following the TV coverage, but as I’ve explained, unless you’re up on the lingo and fully cognisant of the subtleties, it was kind of hard to really get involved. It took a visit to a minor league park where a friend spent the evening explaining exactly what was happening out there and why, before I really started to appreciate what I was watching. Once I’d overcome that milestone I was hooked and over the next four or five years, developed a love affair with the game. Well, not a love affair exactly. A wee crush, perhaps.

Upon moving up to Colorado, I was happy to embrace each of Denver’s four major league teams. Well, not the basketball team obviously. I’m not quite ready for that level of tedium, but both the football and hockey teams have won their respective national championships not once, but twice within the last decade, a feat which Arizona’s perennial losers the Arizona Cardinals and the Phoenix Coyotes are never likely to achieve in my lifetime, or probably theirs. The transition to becoming a fan of my new hometown baseball club wasn’t quite so easy. The Rockies are, let’s be charitable, not the stuff of which legends are made. They stink.

This isn’t entirely their fault. Denver’s famous lack of humidity causes the baseballs to dry out. This makes them lighter and allows them to fly much further, making home runs much easier to score than in ballparks in lower and damper locations. For reasons, which aren’t entirely clear to me, the altitude also adds to this phenomenon. “What’s the problem with that?” I hear you ask, “Isn’t it the same ball for each team”. Well that’s a very good question, but as someone recently explained to me, it means the games tend to be higher scoring when played in Denver. No decent pitcher wants to play for a team where his figures consistently look awful, after all, that could dictate whether or not he makes it into the hall of fame one day. So, the good pitchers choose to play elsewhere and this in turn discourages other top-notch players from making their homes in the Rocky Mountains.

It’s been a problem since the Rockies first arrived in Denver but last year they came up with a creative way to address the issue. The installed a humidifier in which to store the balls. The room temperature is kept at about 90 degrees to keep condensation from forming on the balls, and the humidity is set at 40 percent to mirror conditions at a Missouri warehouse where the baseballs are stored on receipt from the manufacturing plant in Haiti. Statistics have shown that while the Rockies haven’t been winning a significantly higher proportion of games since adding the new feature, double digit games, where one team has scored ten runs or more, have been cut almost in half. Maybe not as exciting to watch, but certainly more pitcher friendly.

There’s still snow on the ground, and a chill in the air, but from my office window I can look over to downtown bathed in early spring sunshine and I know, the boys of summer are back.

Footnote: They won!

Footnote 2: They’re 10 games into the 2021 season and have won a massive 3 games out of 13 played. This could be the year!

Footnote 3: It won’t be.

What’s Cooking?

First published: 11 May, 2004

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how many restaurants in the Bailey area had failed to stay in business for more than a few months. Which leads to the question “Well, why don’t you cook for yourself, whiny-ass?” which of course, is a question with some merit. And the answer is, I do cook, although not as often as I’d like. The perpetual complaint of “not enough time in the day” rears its ugly head, but on occasion, such as this weekend when I had the house to myself without too many chores to do, I had a grand old time cooking for myself.

The Light of my Life™ and I tend to have different tastes in home cooking as in; I like food with heat while she does not. Now I know what you’re thinking; she’s American while I’m British so therefore it should be the other way round, right? After all, as every American knows, British food is bland. The number of times I’ve had this pointed out to me by Americans (usually ones who’ve never been there) leads me to wonder if this is something taught in schools.

The fact is, that during my almost twelve years in this country, I’ve been constantly disappointed by the insipid fare served in most restaurants. Even menus boasting “hot and spicy” choices are invariably disappointing. True, there are authentic flavorful ethnic dishes to be found, but anything catering to an American audience tastes like so much baby food. The Light of my Life™, bless her heart, is unable to handle anything remotely resembling flavour so when I cook for us both, the dish has to cater to the lowest common denominator. In order for her to enjoy it, I rarely can.

So when I do get the opportunity to cook for myself alone, I tend to go hog-wild with hot spices, chilies and garlic. Friday night was vindaloo curry and if I say so myself, it was pretty darn good. It wasn’t the same kind of Chernobyl strength production I used to make for myself a decade or two back, but then I have to remember that not only am I unused to hot food these days, I’m also in my forties and there’s only so much my colon can handle. Placing the toilet paper in the fridge the night before is all well and good but experiencing the ol’ Ring of Fire has lost its appeal somewhat.

Once that was out of my system (in more ways than one), I was able to settle down and tackle some dishes which, while still tasty, weren’t likely to melt holes in my intestines. Someone recently gave me a beautiful Irish cookbook, full of photographs, history, folklore and mouth-watering recipes. I’d been anxious to try some of them so after investing a chunk of my pay cheque at the supermarket, I came home with a fridge full of ingredients and a spring in my step.

Cooking in the mountains comes with challenges flatlanders will never experience. Many cooking instructions will give advice beginning with “At high altitude (above 3,000 feet)”, with details of the changes required. Which is all well and good, but considering Denver sits at 5,275 feet, while we’re a giddy 3,500 feet higher still – over 1 ½ miles above sea level, just what adjustments are we supposed to make?

Experienced chefs swap notes on the importance of decreasing the quantities of baking powder, baking soda and sugar, while increasing the water, flour and cooking times. Even so, comparatively close neighbors can still have variances of a couple of thousand feet or more in their elevation so a certain amount of trial and error is invariably called for. Still, the recipes I’d chosen were straightforward enough and other than adding extra water and allowing for more cooking time, there wasn’t too much to worry about.

I’m very much a fan of the “stick everything in a pot, stir it and see what it tastes like” school of cookery. Subsequently, my repertoire tends towards the stews, curries and other sloppy type foods. I’m also a big fan of soup so my first effort was carrot soup, with a traditional Irish potato based dish called boxty. The carrot soup was straightforward enough and even allowed me to use up some home made turkey stock that’s been in the freezer for longer than I choose to think about. It also called for orange juice, which was tasty enough but a little overpowering so I made a note in the book to use a little less next time.

The boxty was a bit more of a challenge, mainly due to the fact that I had no idea what it was supposed to look like. It’s made with a combination of mashed and grated potato with a few other bits and pieces for flavour. Planning ahead, I’d already done the grunt work and had the potatoes prepared and sitting in a zip lock bag in the fridge, which maybe kept them fresh, but didn’t stop them from turning an unappetizing brown colour. Or maybe that was because I’d left the skins on. (Very nutritious don’t you know, and far easier than peeling).

Not only that, it was apparent I’d made far too much. What threw me further was that the recipe advised putting “2 or 3” large spoonfuls of the mixture in the frying pan. All well and good, but primitive that I am, I didn’t know if this was for one boxty or “2 or 3”. Naturally, I guessed wrong and made huge, slab like creations, which while tasting better than they looked, tended to settle rather heavily on the stomach. From the taste, I suspect they were supposed to be more like the 3-bite hash browns served at upscale restaurants such as McDonalds. I’ll know better next time.

The final production, for Sunday night required me to save a can from my precious stash of Guinness, which took a lot of willpower, let me tell you. However, once added to the stew it released a flavor, which can only be described as superlative. That one’s a keeper too.

So, four days of self sufficiency and I have to say, that’s the best I’ve eaten in a long time. The bad news is, The Light of my Life™ will be home tonight and as of time of writing, I’ve no idea what I’m going to feed her for dinner. The products of my supermarket trip are all used up and the cupboards are bare. Mind you, I did see something green and furry at the back of the fridge – I wonder if I could find a recipe for that. I’ll get back to you.