June's Birthday at the Palms Bar and Grill

      Take me back to Mr. Wizard, Hop Along Cassidy, Rin Tin Tin or Twenty Mule Team Borax, where time was slower and there were no remote controls so you had to be close to the TV to change the channels, and the source material, believe it or not was in black and white.

     Yesterday, we took June from Healdsburg out to dinner for her birthday, and I was treated to that old fashioned charm and protocol that came with the class and culture from a person, like Joyce, who was a native to Sonoma County. 

      Instead of rushing out the door upon arrival, June kindly sat with us and at least for me, gave me insight to parts of her life that was unknown to me up until now.

      June had grown up in Healdsburg, and the home that she had grown up in, when it was sold to another family, it made it's way onto the historical homes of

Healdsburg tour.  When this occurred the new owner invited her over to give the people on the tour some of the history of the home, and her own personal views of her

upbringing.  When they had done a remodel of the home, they used the huge blue hydrangea as a stopping point of the remodel.  As we drove past the house, she made remarks
about the fact of every city in Sonoma County had a Veterans Memorial Building for local events, except Healdsburg, which had opted for a park and a swimming hole

 near the Healdsburg Memorial Bridge.  When the Healdsburg Council was going to shut the area down because of fiscal problems, public outcry was the single most

 appropriate answer to such renegade thought patterns such as these.  Just to clarify for Joyce and I, as we passed by this beautiful place by the bridge, both when we

went to pick June up at five in the afternoon, and as we took her home at seven in the evening, there were still people enjoying a meal, and wading in the water.

     Now where we took June is now the Palms Bar and Grill, which used to be called Star Restaurant, and it is renovated with a great dimly lit sports bar and high ceilings and an

 open window, so you can watch the chefs do their thing in the kitchen.  It turned out that two of the chefs were co-workers at Rustic, Frankie, who had manned the Argentinian

 Grill in the main dining room, and Rob, who as I recall did the cold side on the line in the kitchen.  Both made there way out to greet me, and to be introduced to both Joyce

and June.  Our waiter, Weston Gantz, turned out to have gone to Mattie Washburn daycare, where Joyce was the director of the before and after day care center, onsite.

 Joyce, June and I enjoyed two appetizers, Coconut Prawns, with an Orange-Pineapple dipping sauce and a Potato Skins Fondue with a three cheese and bacon fondue.

      For main courses, June had the special, chicken parmesan with fettuccine, Joyce had a Rack of Lamb with a reduction sauce, and I had a Ribeye Steak with a

 chimichurri sauce.  All were full of the proverbial flavor profiles and the visual displays were very attractive.  For dessert, we had Apple Pie and a German Chocolate Cake, unlike any I had seen or even tasted.  Thumbs up for the entire experience, food, friends and 

great atmosphere.  We made sure we gave credos to the owner, and compliments to the staff for the warm feeling during our meal.
     This is what my world is becoming, the nostalgic history and culture of Sonoma County, which as a vagabond, is not my strongest forte, and yet, yesterday's experience and the last few months of kitchen adventures and being with the casts of June, the Widdifield's, the Mortensen Clan, adoptive nieces, and friends who invite us to family gatherings, has brought me down different roads and giving me an opportunity to experience these local class and significant cultures of the place where I now call home.  This is coming to you live from Steven, who is now becoming the recorder of Sonoma County paradigms of neighborhood eateries and family gatherings and who by the way in the latter stages of his life, a post hypnotic thought, in readers of this written image of my experiences, where someone in the middle of the night, one wakes up, and says to themselves, with no one watching or listening, Oh, that's what Steven meant, Child, until the Fat Lady Sings

Dining with Family for 25 Blissful Years

      On occasions and time after time, there are moments where all the connections fire at once, sort of  like the neurons in your brain, when the light bulb comes on, or for instance when you get

a large gathering of family together to assault their taste buds at a place like Chinois, an Asian Bistro.

      Joyce and I had been there, deja vu, as you know, at least some of you, who read these convoluted charades, like first word, second syllable, that masquerade as Restaurant critiques, with our good friend Shayne Baker, on my 60th birthday this year.

       For the rest of the curious bystanders, like Bob Dusell,it was going to be following some arcane ritual of putting up with Asian or Chinese, as it were, food.  Though for myself, I couldn't

 quite see Bob turning down any type of food in particular, seeing as I thought he was a non-denominational type of culinary fanatic.  As Joyce says, I'm on the Seafood Diet, see food

 and eat it.
     So like so many of our excursions into the delights of culinary visions, we ordered ten or so items and passed them around to each of the gastronomical

 adventurers languishing at the table, hoping that at least a few of the offerings were not going to be sacrificial in nature. Skewers, curries, all types of meat,

 dumplings, tofu and various vegetables pranced in our mouths and uttered words of encouragement along the way, especially when the finish was a bit spicy for some of us.

      The group was finishing off celebrating Joyce and my 25 years of traveling the matrimonial conquests we had chosen, with or without the forks in the road, or the

 whiteouts, or the foggy resolutions that came with the original 13 states of equality between husband and wife.
      Margie and Bob gave us a memory box to place the momentary

repasts of yesteryear and the linear projections of the future happy trails we would travel to on foreign soils.
     The dessert had so many definitive tails to wag, that I  

 leave it up to all of you to conjure up those palatable flavors bursting in our mouths that came with the party that followed.
      So from all of mes, to all of yous,

this is Steven, the fumbling baboon, pulsating, enthusiastic embellisher from the time he was three, and was fiddling around with the snaps on the crib, so he could break out of there, and be found by the shore patrol, climbing on a street sign and make everyone frenetic, with his own language, smiling, laughing and dancing as if no one was listening or watching, I hope, and that's the way that it was, Child

We all need Crab Cakes We can Lean On

                  Okay, so one starts to snooze, lazing around in a hammock in the back yard, on a hazy sunny afternoon, and then for some peculiar reason, this image of a Crab Cake enters the fray, and Oh, I said to myself, why am I swinging by myself somewhere in solitary, when I could be calling some friends, or family, for that matter, and having an appetizer party.   
                   Why, I'm not wearing an ankle bracelet, or no one is tracking me with a GPS device, so get off your duff, and get a recipe for those yummy good golden brown crab cakes, with a sweet chili oil dipping sauce on the side, get on the phone to Monday, and let's get that party started.  
          So one day, you open up your eyes, and realize that the day is passing you by, and you say to yourself "How did I get Here", just spin the "Wheel of Fortune", ask Vanna to give you a vowel, drag a comb across your head, go downstairs and have a cup, and indulge your fantasy, read this recipe, start to put it all together, and don't blow your mind out in a car, just enjoy family and friends and have a wonderful time with your creative mind's eye with a bucket of crab cakes....Steven, for whatever reason, feels compelled to get involved with starting the neurons firing in some malcontent's mind, Child                                                                                                              

It was a murky and often unsettling.....

       There I was carousing among the isles of numerous grocery stores, peering out into the distant thunderless, unsettling, indeterminate day we all seemed to be sharing, and partly

 because of what I chose to remove via my cart, leaving the confines of the store behind, I visualized numerous culinary processes when I would arrive home, and delegate my mind thoughts to the tasks

ahead.  I had made a collection of artichokes, including the couple small ones I had decapitated from my own artichoke plants in our back yard, and had decided they were all going to party
in some perkolating water with some of their lunatic friends, such as old bay seasoning , sweet basil, italian seasoning and the standard crown of misfits such as salt, pepper, garlic and paprika.    

        While that was blissfully minding it's own business, I deboned some chicken breasts, using the carcasses for stock, and took the medallions and breaded them up in some panko and a few of the

 usual spiced up suspects, along with a few herbs.  The leftover 10 boneless, skinless breasts found their way into vacuum sealed bags, got labeled and dated, and put away for a later meal, in

the freezer.  The next process was to fry those breaded medallions up, and let them simmer and drain onto a paper toweled plate.  

        

               Now, we have a stockpile of artichokes ready to dig into, 10 chicken meals of various flavor profiles and side dishes, stock  to say, make some split pea soup, to sip from an audacious

 oriental spoon on a breezy day, listening to the tinkle of the leaves, and a profound mound of deliciously spiced, tender and juicy chicken strips to mingle with our taste buds as we watch some movie, or

"WHEEL OF FORTUNE", instead of eating some bombastic air popped popcorn, with gobs of butter running down our cheeks.  So from all of my multiple personalities, to all of you who so graciously find the time and the will to gather the inertia to plow thru such nonsense like this, I humbly thank you from the bottom of my mind....Steven, the Friday Afternoon Leprechaun in the kitchen, with his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Child, I bid you a fond farewell.

A Sojourn of Sorts....

       Though I can't say that like Lawrence Welk, who was an admirer of Tiny Bubbles, unlike the recession plagued nation we find ourselves to be, who seem mired to the

 concept of giant bubbles, and seem to always looking for another one to burst, I can say that my fishing expeditions into the culinary trailblazing I do every so

 often, puts me in the delusionary position of being a sojourner of mild appreciation for flavor profiles that with the labor intensified side of things,

 weaves me so much further in, that I'll ever be out.
      This time, while Joyce is somewhat away from the chicken coop, Steven found it within himself to dance the

 light fantastic, for Joyce's collection of misfits that call themselves once a month, the "Bunco Squad" of diversity. Along with the traditional and all too easy Sour Cream Almond Torte, I did some crab cakes with as you 

can see,worchestshire sauce, mustard,cilantro,garlic multicolored peppers, and a trickle of spices and the lazy ends of Panko, formed, rolled and fried, and put on a

platter to display their nuances of culinary artistry.  Then, baking off multiple handfuls of potatoes, I sliced, scraped out and proceeded to add the

 permutations of ideas, that included,cilantro, garlic fresh herbs from the garden(sage, rosemary, winter savory and thyme)and some common mozzarella and yogurt,

 and enthralled all of that in the oven for 25 minutes or so, to give the cheese topping a chance to show a little color and presto, chango, we have an appetizer,an entree and a

 dessert to delight the Dicey Women of Bunco to no end...
      Though I have no ruby red slippers, and I am in no way muttering Auntie Em, Auntie Em, I gleefully have

followed the yellow brick road into the kitchen, and as I am known, as Steven, better watch your speed in the danger zone, Child, I can only wish all of you a sparkling tidbit of

intuitive harangue as it were, don't make a habit of slipping into unconsciousness while reading these parfaits that so often find themselves somewhere in the future!!!!!!!