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Is "Irish Cuisine" an oxymoron?
Went to the local Irish pub (one of four, actually, on Murphy Ave) Fibber McGee's, since it was the only one with corned beef on the menu. Nice place, but it got stuffy when more warm bodies invaded. Their corned beef and cabbage was the opposite of Coco's. Instead of well-cooked beef with too much fat and gristle, it was corned beef jerky. Way too salty, hard, dry and took forever to chew.
I ordered:
Corned beef and cabbage
A side of salad
A side of garlic bread
Soda water
After 15 minutes some hard-toasted baguette with butter on it appeared. There was no discernible garlic.
Another 5 minutes and the main dish arrived
Another 5 and a huge salad was there
another 5 and the soda water came.
The serving of corned beef was three generous slices, with not an ounce of fat on them. I needed the point of the knife to cut it. It took forever to chew. They had no horseradish sauce. I finished one piece after half an hour. There was 1/4 head of cabbage, about 3/4 of it was stem. Well boiled , but not well enough to eat the core. The "cooked vegetables" was raw carrots. The potatoes were three small red spuds, not a real Idaho baked potato. The salad was just too daunting to even touch. The soda water they at least got right.
It was a good half hour from the time I was done till the time I was able to flag down my server, who was trying to cope with the three pushed-together tables in front of me which had a constantly changing cast of characters, and eventually spread to two more nearby tables.
This gave me time to look around the room and see what others were eating. The kitchen was serving more pizza than anything else. I am unfamiliar with the history of Irish pizza, but I suspect there is a tie-in with beer.
Took the last two slabs of beef home. They are soaking in hot jasmine tea. Perhaps that will help desalinize them, and maybe tenderize them enough to throw into the food processor and make chipped corned beef for omelets this weekend.
Started the day going to Kaiser for the quarterly fasting blood/urine test. It was a half hour wait. Odd for a Thursday. Maybe the Ides of March draws out the blood lust. Or something. The phlebotomist let the needle slip out before she had drawn the third vial of blood, and it looked like another one would have to bleed me from the other arm, but other one just hijacked part of the previous sample.Apparently there was plenty. The results have come back for everything except the one I am concerned about - A1C. The liver test has me in a bit of a panic, it is well over the max number. Very disturbing to see what could be cirrhosis onset when I don't drink or do drugs. Diabetes side effect no doubt. But yikes.
Work was amusing. First thing in the morning the engineer whose feature request I had re-opened closed it again, saying the feature request actually had nothing to do with what I had been testing. Long story short, his definition of "gratuitous", in the context of an internet protocol packet, is not what mine is. Mine comes from our packet capture software. Anyhow, I re-configured for what he said he had built, and everything worked the way he described. I wish this had been in the specifications. After I closed the request, including my step by step test procedure, the project manager suggested a change in the design of the feature. Sigh. He's 100% correct, but it means I will have to write at least two more test cases and test them. :-(
Ducked out to the denture clinic and had a little bit more shaved off the top. I think this time he got it all. Went for lunch close by at Crema Coffee, which makes the best mint iced tea and croissant sandwiches, fired up the netbook and installed the VPN software and tried to run a couple of tests, but could not figure out how to make our GUI fit in the 3/4-depth netbook display. Back at work I think I figured it out. But now I am thinking I may want to take the work laptop with me when I'm planning on working from a coffee shop. Or get a laptop. As convenient as the netboook is, the shortened display can be annoying.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
TBA
I ordered:
Corned beef and cabbage
A side of salad
A side of garlic bread
Soda water
After 15 minutes some hard-toasted baguette with butter on it appeared. There was no discernible garlic.
Another 5 minutes and the main dish arrived
Another 5 and a huge salad was there
another 5 and the soda water came.
The serving of corned beef was three generous slices, with not an ounce of fat on them. I needed the point of the knife to cut it. It took forever to chew. They had no horseradish sauce. I finished one piece after half an hour. There was 1/4 head of cabbage, about 3/4 of it was stem. Well boiled , but not well enough to eat the core. The "cooked vegetables" was raw carrots. The potatoes were three small red spuds, not a real Idaho baked potato. The salad was just too daunting to even touch. The soda water they at least got right.
It was a good half hour from the time I was done till the time I was able to flag down my server, who was trying to cope with the three pushed-together tables in front of me which had a constantly changing cast of characters, and eventually spread to two more nearby tables.
This gave me time to look around the room and see what others were eating. The kitchen was serving more pizza than anything else. I am unfamiliar with the history of Irish pizza, but I suspect there is a tie-in with beer.
Took the last two slabs of beef home. They are soaking in hot jasmine tea. Perhaps that will help desalinize them, and maybe tenderize them enough to throw into the food processor and make chipped corned beef for omelets this weekend.
Started the day going to Kaiser for the quarterly fasting blood/urine test. It was a half hour wait. Odd for a Thursday. Maybe the Ides of March draws out the blood lust. Or something. The phlebotomist let the needle slip out before she had drawn the third vial of blood, and it looked like another one would have to bleed me from the other arm, but other one just hijacked part of the previous sample.Apparently there was plenty. The results have come back for everything except the one I am concerned about - A1C. The liver test has me in a bit of a panic, it is well over the max number. Very disturbing to see what could be cirrhosis onset when I don't drink or do drugs. Diabetes side effect no doubt. But yikes.
Work was amusing. First thing in the morning the engineer whose feature request I had re-opened closed it again, saying the feature request actually had nothing to do with what I had been testing. Long story short, his definition of "gratuitous", in the context of an internet protocol packet, is not what mine is. Mine comes from our packet capture software. Anyhow, I re-configured for what he said he had built, and everything worked the way he described. I wish this had been in the specifications. After I closed the request, including my step by step test procedure, the project manager suggested a change in the design of the feature. Sigh. He's 100% correct, but it means I will have to write at least two more test cases and test them. :-(
Ducked out to the denture clinic and had a little bit more shaved off the top. I think this time he got it all. Went for lunch close by at Crema Coffee, which makes the best mint iced tea and croissant sandwiches, fired up the netbook and installed the VPN software and tried to run a couple of tests, but could not figure out how to make our GUI fit in the 3/4-depth netbook display. Back at work I think I figured it out. But now I am thinking I may want to take the work laptop with me when I'm planning on working from a coffee shop. Or get a laptop. As convenient as the netboook is, the shortened display can be annoying.
Plans for tomorrow:
Work
TBA