This weekend started badly for the Prince. My ex-wife, ever the Ball-Busting Bitch Queen, chewed me out via email for changing our son's camp schedule this week without first obtaining her approval. When I proved to her (by returning copies of her own earlier messages) that we had not changed his schedule, that she had agreed to the schedule, she admitted she was wrong and blamed her lapse on lingering grief problems (her mother died a few months back). I tried to be polite in my response and attempted to commiserate; she and her fiancé have recently moved into a huge, largely unfinished spread east of the city, they've been attempting to push their vision of some sort of planned community out there, their Big Wedding is coming up at the end of this month, and she has a lot of family coming—all, in my opinion, potential sources of stress.
Her reply? I had failed in my lame attempt to empathize (I hate that word—a sure sign that the speaker has been in counseling far too long. I, being a rational human being, was attempting to sympathize. Empathy is only possible in science fiction novels.) by failing to recite the litany that would reify her belief that she is suffering from grief-induced stupidity. Such a repetition, according to this month's edition of the Rules That Only She Knows, qualifies as validation; failure to reiterate qualifies as devaluation. I keep forgetting that I am such an unfeeling bastard.
What's more, by telling her that we expected her to stick to the usual schedule last week (they pick up our son on Thursday from school or camp and keep him until late Saturday, a schedule she created to avoid becoming just a weekend parent), we had "dropped the 'regular school schedule' pick up plans" on her just a week earlier. Okay, I can see that Princess V and I were assuming that the schedule was not going to change, and I understand that some people immediately see any assumption as erroneous. In this case, though, since the schedule has remained essentially the same for over a year— through school changes, camps, vacations, and address changes—why should we expect this instance to be different?
All of this post-marital-trauma is incidental, however. The real tragedy was the heavy rains late in the week, which made diving the lake a pretty bad idea. Visibility in Lake Travis frequently goes up (a Good Thing™) immediately following a rain storm, but after a couple of days of heavy rain, it always goes down. After the previous Saturday's dive—in which we found the visibility to be rather pea-soupish above 70 feet and clear but too damned cold below 70 feet—I didn't see any point in renting tanks and humping our gear up to the lake just to spend an hour wallowing in the mud.
Perhaps I should have gone anyway. Now, despite a weekend of much joyous wild-animal sex with Princess V, I sense a distinct hiatus in this weekend's recuperative activities. I miss the weekly nitrogen narcosis fix. A year ago, I would have argued that even a cold, murky dive is better than none. Any more, I'm not so sure. I'm sure part of the problem is just that our wetsuits are getting old and compressed, and I've always had a low tolerance to the cold (low body fat content looks good in trunks but doesn't offer much insulation), but I'm finding that I have a lessening tolerance for consistently low visibility and low fish population density (that's low population density of fish, not population density of low fish).
I enjoy following channel cats and carp around, suddenly coming upon a black bass as long as my forearm or a saucer-eyed crappie (they always appear suspended between attitudes of baddest-dog-on-the-block machismo and chihuahua terror). I enjoy toying with the tiny minds of the bream, who so ferociously attack stray locks of hair and ear lobes and dropped bits of streamer, and will belligerently shove their tiny pug noses right up against the tempered glass of my mask. I particularly like special surprises like the rare sightings of schooling striped bass hybrids or shoals of catfish fry or yard-long opelousas catfish who lie on the bottom under ledges looking like beady-eyed death and decay. When the water is warm enough at depth, I love the feeling of swimming along a wall at 80 feet with a black abyss below and the croak of the freshwater drum thrumming through the murk. It looks and feels like hovering through a canyon at night, like a constant, wordless reiteration of, "Ah, so this is flight."
Lately, though, the lake just isn't enough. I'm jaded. I want deep, warm, blue water. I want Caribbean reefs, sharks, rays, and the abyss of purest blue tumbling off into ultraviolet. I want the salt burning my lips as I soar past scarlet soldier fish and gaping green morays. I want to play hide-and-seek with the scorpion fish and peacock flounders and—who knows—maybe finally spot a frogfish. I want the deep and the blue and the sea.
At least I have Princess V to console me, my love and support, my balm and favorite toy. No matter what upsets me, I always come back around to asking myself, "What right have you to complain? You married a woman who meets and exceeds all of your sexual fantasies. How many other men your age—men of any age—get laid every night?"
Ah, the consolation of riotous, slippery sexual frenzy. Blogger rules pretty well prevent my providing any details of this weekend's sexual diversions. I can't tell you about all the interesting positions we tried, who spanked whom, who got tied to the bed, who nibbled what body parts, who penetrated whom with what appendages and sex toys, or to what sensitive spots vibrating electrical appliances were applied. Then again, if you consider that no animals, spectators, or extraneous players were employed, I guess I've about covered the bases.
As always, I attempted to fill the blank spaces of this weekend with meals. Saturday evening was a bit of a bust. I was craving steak and attempted a seared rib-eye with red bean paste. It came out a bit too sweet for my taste. Everybody ate it, but I would not call the response a rave review. For side dishes, I served seared potato slabs with sautéed shallots and Aspiration with trumpet mushrooms. The potatoes were successful. For the other vegetable dish, I screwed up just about everything.
I like Aspiration, but it really needs to be sautéed. I steamed it. It was cooked but still too crisp and, though sweet, it needed something extra. I had sprinkled it with ginger oil, but that just made it less palatable to the kids. The mushrooms I sliced top to bottom. That cut works great for maitaake or porcini mushrooms—even for white button or cremini—for trumpets this is a huge mistake. Trumpet mushrooms are too fibrous; they need to be sliced across the stems. I had originally intended to dry-sear the mushroom slices in a non-stick pan, but I was afraid they would taste too dry that way, so I sautéed them in butter. Big mistake. This treatment left them with a texture like soggy linen thread.
The potatoes, on the other hand, were a big hit. This is the second variation I've tried on what I call seared potato slabs.
Seared potato slabs
dramatis personae
- one golfball sized shallot (or two 12-in diameter scallions)
- tablespoon of parsley, frisséed
- 3 or 4 size C Yukon Gold potatoes
- two cups of water
- two tablespoons olive oil
- teaspoon kosher salt
- dash of fresh-ground pepper
instructions
This is so easy, I would not be surprised to hear a chorus of, "Oh, yeah, I do that."
- Prepare the shallot or scallions:
- slice the shallot (or the pair of scallions) across the axis of the bulb, about an eighth of an inch thick
- preheat a teaspoon or two of olive oil
- sauté the shallot (or whatever it is) until just clarified
- set these aside in a small bowl or cup for later
- mix in the parsley
- slice the potatoes into ½ in. thick slabs, skin on, and discard the rounded ends
- fill a non-stick frying pan (I use an omelet pan) half-full of water (yes, you anal-retentive pessimists may fill it half-empty)
- place the potato slabs in the pan of water so that all are covered with water and none are stacked
- heat the water to boiling and then turn it down just a bit (vigorous boiling might damage the skins)
- parboil the potatoes until just tender (test with a toothpick to avoid damaging the slabs)—about ten minutes, I guess
- carefully remove the slabs from the water with a nylon spatula
- dump out the water and replace it with the remaining olive oil
- heat the olive oil (medium heat) just to the point of smoking and then gingerly return the slabs to the pan
- fry the slabs, turning them frequently (but carefully—they're still a bit delicate) until they're golden brown (okay, actually, I prefer golden with a uniform smattering of golden brown for character)
- season the slabs with kosher salt and pepper while they're frying
- plate the slabs with a sprinkling of the prepared shallots or scallions (or, okay, cipollini or leeks or red boiler onions or whatever fires your jets)
These things are kid-friendly, but my experience suggests the scallions are more kid-friendly than the shallot. I prefer the shallot, but the Little Darlings™ scraped it off and left it on the sides of their plates. I've served the potato slabs to the girlchild once with the scallions. Those she ate.
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