The Search for Sanding Sugar *

 

Sometimes you chase down a rabbit hole. Sometimes the rabbit hole finds you. Occasionally, you just tag along down the last part of the path to the rabbit hole. And in some cases, the rabbit hole comes from sugar's sweetness. The moment you start down a rabbit hole time disappears and the search becomes the thing. 

Living here in Portugal there are things common in the US that cannot be found, period. One example is Crisco. So, it was a surprise to me today when in a specialty store I actually found a can of Crisco. It was small and expensive. The reason I was in the specialty store was the rabbit hole of my morning. 

Francie is an excellent cook. I eat well most of the time. Today at lunch for example we had a salad of greens. It was topped with poached and shredded chicken breasts, savory peanuts and a Thai style dressing. Yeah, like I said she makes wonderful food and I recognize that fact. 

When special occasions arise, she throws her inner chef into gear and cooks all out. Today is Maundy Thursday, tomorrow is Good Friday and Sunday is Easter. In this 95% Catholic country, and in many countries around the world, Sunday is a feast day. Lenten deprivations will end with sweets, alcohol and other sworn off items. As a result, Easter requires something special, something with panache.

Last year we had a full Easter meal here. This year we are attending a nibbles and drinks mid-afternoon Easter gathering. Obviously we will take libations and food treats. Francie has decided to make her famous lemon rosemary cookies. 

I don’t know all of the cookies' ingredients but I can tell by the number of lemons present in our home, and the swatches of rosemary on the kitchen counter that real lemon and real rosemary are a major part of the confection. I don’t think Crisco is required (but if that were the case you could use lard which is readily available here). My guess is that lots of butter will come into play.

The problem manifests itself in the cookies' finishing touches. As you can see from this photo of someone else’s lemon rosemary cookies there is a coating of chunks of clear sugar. In the US this is called sanding sugar. It is not confectioner’s sugar, granulated sugar, or brown sugar. Instead, this is a unique beast called sanding sugar. 

Sanding sugar is not a “thing” in Portugal. It is similar to “vanilla extract” not being a thing in Portugal. We smuggle Kirkland vanilla extract back each time we come. Next time we return from the US there will be a big can of Crisco in our checked bag. Customs folks may think we are swingers. Maybe the sanding sugar also crammed into the suitcase will also throw them off. Yeah I can see them testing the sugar to see if it is a drug. I digress.

Francie entered the rabbit hole first searching all the stores around for sanding sugar. We have been to the small stores, Coninente and Pingo Doce We have visited the big stores like El Cortes Ingles. Nope, nada, not to be found. Next she tried Amazon.de and Amazon.es, but to no avail. Nothing even vaguely resembling sanding sugar was listed on either site.

In the hope of finding sanding sugar, she joined an online English language cooking group for Portugal residents. Most people made suggestions that were a bit off the mark, suggesting using things that really were not comparable. One person however indicated there was a baking supply store near where he lived that might, just might, have sanding sugar.

Party & Bite was the name given to the store and it was said to be in Alvalade. For us to get to Alvalade required a walk to one subway line, a short ride on that line, a transfer to another subway line and the ever optimistic and euphemistic Google Maps estimated walk of 9 minutes at the tail end of the journey. Google maps does not consider the condition of the sidewalk, the topography of the area, the incline of the street, whether it has rained or the decrepit and aged person making the jaunt. 

Did I mention rain and wind came today? Oh yeah, the forecast indicated heavy rain all afternoon and high winds. Lisbon is the city of dead cheap umbrellas. Two of the three weather services said the rain would hold off until noon. We were starting out on this wild goose chase a little after 10. To me that implied we would get wet if we ventured out to Alvalade.

Nope, I did not want to get wet. Thus, the wizard inside Google Maps was consulted again. We found a second location for Party & Bite, a mere nine minutes’ walk from our apartment. We both looked at the suggested route, and nodded "yes" to trying this location first. Primarily we agreed to this because of the bothersome time factor to get to Alvalade and because the walk to the Picoas location being entirely and totally downhill.

Down, down, down we passed even walking under the yellow line of the subway. We traversed a fairly narrow street with coffee shops, clothing stores and a beautiful stand-alone balcony covered in flowers, see above. Things like that balcony just covered with plants and flowers in bloom are what make Lisbon just a great place to explore. Eventually, we got to Party & Bite. 

Party & Bite is a big store. I mean it has aisles with all kinds of baking pans, walls of tools to use in frosting and otherwise decorating pastries. It also has a large selection of jimmies, sugar confetti and the like for decorating. Off to the left I saw it. There was a jar of white sugar that was exactly what we wanted. It had very large square crystals of sugar. Sanding sugar yeah. 

Well, no. After we picked it up and marched around the store we looked at the jar again before heading to the cashier. The label stated this sanding sugar was marshmallow flavored. Yuck. There were other colors too and all were flavored. Red was raspberry. Yellow was bananas. I believe the green was asparagus or avocado. Back the jar went on the shelf.

Being the half of our dyad that will seek out clerks to avoid a half hour of unnecessary searching I approached the cashier. She took us to a the clear plastic door of a locked cabinet. When she opened the case the cashier reached very high and pulled down two McCormick spice sized jars of what for all the world appears to be slightly murky looking sanding sugar. Bought it without a second's hesitation. We haven’t tasted the sugar yet to see if it has any flavor other than sweet. God I hope it is not flavored because what non-obscene thing could slightly brownish sanding sugar taste like?

Finding ingredients like Crisco and sanding sugar in Portugal was a significant discovery. With these some beloved recipes from the US that rely on such specific ingredient can be made. Every once in a very long while one needs a sense of intimate familiarity with food, a childhood taste memory.  To occasionally have a throwback food creates a bridging as it were of the gap between the two very discrete living experiences of the EU and the US.  

Today’s rabbit hole was the search for the ever-elusive sanding sugar. Monday’s rabbit hole will be replacing a lost government ID. One way or another the rabbits of our lives beckon us deep down into their lair. Computers may have made the journeys a little quicker but they have not made them disappear by any means. 

Happy Easter.  Ah, it would be a great time to be in the low country eating hush puppies and oysters.

Sand in the Air

My grill after a weekend of Saharan sand.

The streak of dark black is where I ran my 

finer down the grill late Sunday to show 

how much grit had accumulated.

25 March 2024

 

As we move between the forceps and the stone we are always subject to new experiences. Over a couple of days this past weekend I experienced what happens when Saharan sand blows west over the Iberian Peninsula. This experience reminded me that even in familiar surroundings unexpected events and external forces (like Saharan sand) can disrupt our lives. This cloud-borne sand highlighted life's unpredictable nature. This weather also reminded me of the need to quickly adapt to life’s surprises. The joys of adaptation aside, in my humble opinion a sand-filled weekend is a less than optimal experience all around. 

 

We had been warned for several days that the sand was coming. From late Friday through Sunday night’s sunset the sky took on a yellow and grey tint. Over that period all the cars on the street amassed about 1/32 of an inch of grit on their roofs and hoods. The baseboards in my house, even though we kept the windows mostly closed, need cleaning now. Clearly, it was not just the bare surfaces of this city of stone and iron that were impacted. My lungs took a beating. 

 

Went out for a fancy breakfast on Saturday. On my way to the delight that was a plate of lemon pancakes at the Quase Café I had to take a breather sitting on a stone bench to catch my breath. Yes, it was an uphill walk to the newly built funicular, and yes I had not slept well the night before. However, the lolling of my tongue out of my mouth like some over-exerted Bassett hound was tied solely to the difficulty caused by breathing sand air. On Sunday the air was terrible, more so than on Saturday, and I didn’t even venture outside save for a quick trip to the small grocery store a mere seven doors away. 

 

But time passes and today is Tuesday. Overnight on Sunday the wind’s direction shifted. Now also a decent rain has moved in and the air smells clean. When the clouds part here, as they frequently do because spring rains are not steady rains, the sky is bright and clear blue. This shift in the weather is a welcome change, and the blue skies accompanying it are refreshing.

Flipping Omelets as I Grow Oh So Much Smaller *

On recent outings with my omelet pan I have surprised myself with my ability to properly flip the combined eggs, milk, prosciutto, and cheddar. Flipping omelets makes them so much prettier when I serve them to my family for breakfast. What I plate no longer looks like a cross between an omelet and an egg scramble. The taste is the same, but the aesthetics are much, much better. 

How I came to be able to do this is through seeing some accurate information embedded in a fictional recounting of Julia Child’s foray into public television. Seeing one of the characters trying to master the omelet flip I suddenly understood what was required. The motion is not unlike jerking a fishing line to set the hook. My wife suggested I finally figured this out and actually executed it because men have inherently stronger wrists because of the unique exercise regimen we begin in our adolescent years.

These days information comes at us from countless directions. True knowledge on the other hand has to be sought out and tested. We all have tools to winnow out true knowledge, ranging from trial-and-error testing to using logic to evaluate what we are looking at. As I glance across the pond, logic seems to be in short supply these days but that is a topic for a different post. 

With the knowledge of omelet flipping now in my mind, I am unsure of whether I will be required to jettison some other fact, technique or memory to keep it in there. There is so much stored up in my brain's engrams that is useless. I mean I can remember in detail lunch conversations from my senior year in high school when I sat with Dave, Kathy, and Barbara. However, I have lost my ability to correctly tie a bow tie.  Most likely I had to give up that skill when I learned exactly how much liquid I could pack in my carry-on luggage.

My age will be 68 in thirty days' time. With each day my awareness of how small I am and how tiny my existence is in the grand scheme of things grows. My brain compared to the universe is minuscule. Attached is a photo from the James Webb telescope. It shows the Helix Nebula which is 700 light years away. The nebula is made up of stars and entire galaxies.

Think about 700 light years for a moment. A light year is 6 trillion miles/9 trillion km. On the mileage side that is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it. A trillion is 1,000 billion. Counting continuously in perfect rhythm, one number per second, without breaks for sleeping, and eating it would take 31 years, 251 days, 6 hours, 50 minutes, 46 seconds to reach a mere billion. I don't have time to count to a billion. In addition, I do not currently have the cognitive capacity left in my brain to be able to comprehend a billion. Yeah, the distance to the Helix Nebula is a lot bigger than the space in my brain.

With time running out on my existence I guess the best thing I can do is try and make sure what is in my head is knowledge that is factual and real. I think it also means admitting what I don’t know and being blunt about it. When one goes to law school one of the core maxims taught is that when you are caught unaware in a courtroom without case law or good facts, you are to stand up, ‘…and make a noise like a lawyer.” Living in these latter years of my life a lawyer's bluster and braggadocio are useless. I think in reality looking for the factual and real is an absolute necessity for a continued meaningful existence.

I guess what I am trying to say is that making peace with the fact that I will never be the smartest person in the room and that I am really just mere filler in the universe is okay.  Having a limited understanding of something is not a sign of weakness, nor is it a sign of weakness to admit that we do not know everything. Instead, it is an opportunity for growth. Such an admission allows us to approach the world with humility and curiosity. Best to keep breathing and look at the world with childlike wonder while occasionally learning some new trick, say flipping omelets.

 Or maybe making biscuits. 

St. Patrick's Day Weekend 2024

17 March 2024 Lisboa, PT

Sunday (St. Patrick’s Day)(actually revised on Monday 18 March 2024)

Apple has installed another application on my iPhone. It is called Journal. Each day Journal pops a picture or a map up on my phone screen and suggests I write something about it before it fades from my mind. Today it showed me a picture of the parade I was at yesterday. Given I had written a good night piece for Facebook last night I decided to expand upon those words and create a blog post.

To summarize the weekend, here is what happened. 

Had to go to CUF Tejo Hospital. Had to get a test done.  The test is part of getting settled into Portugal with a good doctor and accessible health care. After the visit to the ever-efficient CUF facility I stopped by and ate at Burger Pro about a city block from the hospital Friday night. For 5 euros, I had a burger, fries and sweet lemonade. Very tasty. Sweet lemonade is not the norm in Lisbon. Lemonade here is usually tart lemon water; ‘tis so tart you could probably clean your wounds with the drink.

Took the bus home. Got lucky. We found a stop just north of the burger joint that our bus passes before pulling up in front of the hospital. Catching the 738 heading for Campo Pequino increases chances of getting a seat fivefold. Lots of people board the bus right outside the hospital.

When we got home we watched a bit of TV. In particular we saw the ending of “Masters of the Air”. Great show. Highly recommended. The three lead actors really inhabit the roles they play. Over an average week, I watch roughly an hour to an hour and a half of television per night. If I am reading a novel that number drops dramatically. Some of my favorite shows include detective shows and Spanish-language social dramas. I have seen so many Spanish language shows that I have favorite Spanish actors. These include Ester Exposito, Jose Coronado, Georgina Amorós and Pedro Casablanca. If you are searching Netflix (and if you can handle subtitles) search out one of these actors and see something they are in.

On Saturday I did three loads of laundry. All clothing is clean and most of it is dry. I left some of the heavier US weight blue jeans on the line overnight. I will get what was still damp off the line by midday today. 

Clean sheets everywhere, clean duvets and pillowcases too. When my sons left on Thursday, the smell of "guy" needed to be aired out of their rooms. With them safely back in the US the two bedrooms of the Todd B&B are ready for the next round of visitors.

After doing laundry, I headed out to the mall to buy a hairdryer. One that was purchased previously, at a discount store of course, died after a couple of months. Thus, we headed to a real electronics retailer to get another one. We bought the hairdryer and then we picked up a second dehumidifier. The dehumidifier was on sale. The dehumidifier was the same model as our current one which works really well. The only difference between the models we have purchased is the second one is improved with blue tooth WIFI and can be controlled from a distance. Ugh. Not everything needs to be WIFId. I still have to empty the collected water by hand.

The sales rep told me they delivered on Mondays and Thursdays. I was told the dehumidifier would probably get to my apartment on Thursday. The door alarm rang at 9 am on Sunday. Who delivers appliances at 9 freakin’ am on a Sunday morning? A sadist. Nothing in Portugal moves fast, nothing. But the delivery of a dehumidifier qualifies for next day deliveries?

Awakened I sent notes to the sons about stuff to do back in East Lansing. Later I made it to a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Lisboa where the skies were clear and the temperature was in the 70s F. Apparently it was the first annual St. Patrick's Day parade in Lisboa. Did see beer. Didn't see green beer. Bagpipes galore. Big fun. This is my life in a big city.

May the northern lights guide you to peace and a well deserved rest.

 

Been trying to write for a couple of days now.  Owed is a letter to Wayne.  Owed to myself is some writing that is “creative”.  I had been working on a piece about how listening to Bob Seger’s Night Moves now versus fifty years ago is different.  Chances are I will finish that piece and post it in the blog. 

 

In order to get those things off and out the door I decided I would wake up, do a quick and dirty breakfast, some cereal with raisins and nuts, and go for a twenty-minute walk.  Well, I got up and was midway through that breakfast when a bit of my world changed.  In my Facebook messages was a note that a good friend had died.

 

He and I hadn’t talked in years.  I still considered him a good friend while I am pretty sure he considered me the antichrist. Life gets complicated when you are trying to do the right thing.  Sometimes those complications are so large that you can never get beyond them. Such was the case in this situation.  This is not a note of explanation, justification or recrimination, it is a note of loss because someone is now gone that meant a great deal to me.

 

In the summer of 1977, I was living in West Wilson Hall on the campus of Michigan State University.  Back then you could take a full course load in the summer and I did.  However, on the weekends the bars of East Lansing called to me.  The High Wheeler, America’s Cup, and Lizard’s Underground, these were the places that beckoned to me. Problem was that when I got a bellyful of beer it was a long, long walk back to Wilson Hall.

 

One night as I trekked back to the dorm I decided I needed a rest and I stopped and slumped up against the original Sparty statue.  It was during that rest stop that I discovered the art deco carving of football and other sports carved into the bricks at the base of the statue.  As I sat there an old Chevy Nova pulled up and the driver and another occupant started haranguing me. Apparently they felt like razzing a stupid drunk, and yes that is what I was that night.

 

Thing is I recognized the driver’s voice and I called back asking if it was in fact who I thought it was.  Sure, as all get out it was.  The driver was one of my floor mates on 2 Wilson West. We were actually taking Accounting 101 together. We both started laughing and that led to him giving my poor tired drunk legs a ride back to the dorm. 

 

Oh, the things we got into that summer. He later told me that one of the things that drew him to me was the way I baited the Campus Crusaders for Christ by implying I was okay with some very deviant acts, you know a man and his consenting sheep.  The Crusaders actually chased me out of the study lounge over that comment.  Note I am not in favor of cross species mating but back then I was willing to be a provocateur. 

 

This man convinced me to go camping.  He goaded me into canoeing. He introduced me to the joys of college hockey.  Are three of these things were an integral part of my life in the 1980s and 1990s.  When I got married he was one of the groomsmen.  Together and with a small circle of friends we began to explore every river in the northern lower peninsula of Michigan.  We camped our way across the top of Lake Superior.  We almost drowned in a hot tub in Thunder Bay.  Never drink beer and hop in a hot tub when you are exhausted from a day of hiking. Together we feel in love with Pukaskwa National Park near Marathon. And there were the sunsets on Agawa Bay.

 

Things happen between people.  Some get over it.  Some don’t. In our case there was a wide gulf that we could never reach across.  Acceptance. Equanimity.  Life is what it is and nothing more. 

 

The world is a lesser place without the man I knew in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s. Without my friend I wouldn’t know what qualified as icing or why there were sometimes penalty shots.  Without my friend I would have seen the late evening sunset as I gazed west over Lake Superior’s.  Without my friend who knows if I would have half the experiences I treasure today.

 

Travel well good soul, travel well.  May the northern lights guide you to a place of peace and well-deserved rest. 

 

 

 

I usually end my posts with a bit of music.  Sometimes the pieces posted are soft and elegiac. Sometimes they are just odd because what I have written requires a specific sideways musical viewpoint. I can’t take either of those directions here. At the peak of our friendship my friend was all about the joy of life and filling it with as much fun as one could have. The music he loved was in keeping with his passion for life.

He had one very special musical love, the J. Geils Band. Over several years he cajoled me, begged me, and otherwise entreated me to come to the Pine Knob Music Theatre with him to see Peter Wolf and company. In 1982, I finally gave in and he drove us down to Clarkston to see this raucous set of rock n’ rollers who were at the height of their popularity.

J. Geils did not disappoint. For about two hours we sat/stood up on the hill and sang along to every song. We, two adult assed men, danced our weird little shuffle to almost all of the songs. Okay it was more of a sway because when you have a huge beer in your hands you really can’t dance. 

There we were, just the two of us on a warm Michigan summer evening listening to loud, loud music and we had flat out fun. The surprising thing was that the two of us together with a few thousand of our friends provided crowd noise for an album, J. Geils' Showtime. There is no better time to be a music fan than when a live album is recorded at the show you attended. Here is a sample of how much fun the two of us could have when we set our minds to it. 

I need to hold on to the many, many good times. People need to remember those good days and be aware there were plenty of them.

Did You See the Moon Last Night?

 

Man with Hat watching the Parade in Loures

Over the past week I have not felt like writing. It is not because I haven't had experiences, I have. But it is a selfish and anxious reason that has grabbed at the pant leg of my consciousness and kept me from focusing.

About 18 days ago I developed an ear infection. Given I pay for expat insurance I went to urgent care at one of the local hospitals here. The person triaging me was concerned, got me on an antibiotic and gave me ear drops. I was an attentive patient and took all medications prescribed. 

The infection was weird. There was some discharge from the ear. When I put the drops in, it took 7-8 hours before the ear cleared and I could hear again. At the end of the drugs, I had okay hearing for a day and then it seemed like cotton was stuffed into my ear. As a result of the diminished hearing, I have scheduled an appointment with an ENT. 

Things are different here. My appointment is tomorrow, Saturday, at 9:40. I will get up early shower, eat my meager breakfast and head off. The meager breakfast is another thing. After I saw the first ENT I figured it made sense to get a doctor here in Portugal. The ENT gave me three names and I picked one randomly.

Spent 45 minutes detailing my long history of medical maladies to the doctor I chose. As a result of the visit, I had a blood draw. They must have taken a pint out of me. So many vials. Had a EKG. Also, I was set for both an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. Here they do them at the same time. Prep was awful, just like any other time you have those "procedures". Two days of fasting and one day of taking the euphemistically named Moviprep. Yeah, it is Go Lightly without lime flavoring. 

Given that I had fasted for three days, and given that the doctor told me to lose weight I have restarted following my Weight Watchers app. Today was hard, Tuesday was also hard. Both days I was at events where an all-you-could-eat meal was scheduled in tandem with what was going on. I was a bit high on my food points but I had a lot of exercise minutes that balanced things out.

The ear worries me. It is distracting and generally annoying. The only reason I felt like writing anything was that I had two minor wins today. My sons have been here since December and we have planned to travel while they are here. But inevitably, a conflict with another event arises, or it rains, or there is a train strike. Last week we all agreed to head to Seville on the cheap, i.e., take a bus and stay on the less luxe side of accommodations.

First, I tried to get a clean but livable place to stay. IHG has no properties in Seville so my points are useless. Kayak and Expedia were swamps with far too many listings to be as useful as I found them in the past. Years ago, I was a frequent Marriott traveler so I signed up again to look at their properties and get a feel for current rates in the city.

There was one of their second-tier properties that seemed like a good fit. I thought the price was a bit high but it was a known commodity and all. When I booked the rooms there was a button to see available offers. For about 15% off the quoted rate, you could get the same room and breakfast for two adults. I grabbed it. Win number one was in the bag.

Once I had secured the room, I needed to reserve the bus. As God is my witness I spent thirty minutes trying to get the Rede Expressos website to take my reservation. I entered, reentered and reentered again all four of our passport numbers, cell phone numbers, emails and ages. Each time I got to the payment area; the app would freeze up. After trying three I said, "Bag it I headed up to the bus station to see if I could buy the tickets there.

Met a helpful clerk at the international bus ticketing booth. When I asked him for the least expensive but refundable tickets to Seville he quoted me half of what I would have paid on the website. It took a few minutes to get the tickets printed and paid for. However, it was far less time than I had already spent screwing around with the app. Win number two was captured. My hope is that the visit tomorrow will be win number three. Sometimes technology is great, but not always.

As for the former US President, I don't give a god-damn about him, his troubles or his prospects. As for Gaza, thousands of people, and I have to believe the majority of them are innocents and noncombatants in this struggle, are dying. Such a situation is not just, and morally indefensible. Hamas started this. Israel responded with an iron fist. Rinse and repeat. Oh, how I wish the world could change and lose the hatreds, resentments, senses of grievance and entitlement. Not in my lifetime I guess. And shock, Navalny is dead. I should append Peter Gabriel's Biko at the end of this but I won't. That is it for my current affairs commentary.

The moon is out tonight and the way it illuminates the courtyard behind the buildings of this block is gentle and beguiling. Looking at such soft pale light brings peace at least for me. In my mind I can hear a gentle tune playing in the background, a remnant from last Sunday's concert at the CCB in anticipation of Carnival. Here it is, be soothed. 

Blessed peace to you my friends, a peace that permeates every corner of your troubled souls. Sit back and take in the air slowly as you let every muscle relax. Glance up at the moon, it is free, and more importantly it is there for all of us.