HAND FOR THE HOG

Well they tell me, but I can’t be sure
that a man’s best friend is a mangy cur.
I kinda favor the hog myself;
how about a hand for the hog.
Ya say a hog ain’t nothin’ but a porky thing,
little forked feet with a nosey ring,
Pickle them feet, folks,
how about a hand for the hog.

From Big River written by Roger Miller

“Okay,” said the lady with the soft Teutonic accent.  “Who’s going to kill the next one?”

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I’m putting up a short post just to let everyone know I’m still alive.  MD and I have both had incredibly hectic schedules lately that have precluded us from attending to our blogs.  MD and the Santa Barbara Choral Society just performed Ralph Vaughn Williams A Sea Symphony over the past weekend, which activity (the aforementioned wretched choral society) has consumed all her time.  I, for the first time in a long time, have become a working stiff.

The sous vide project has gone wild.  Instead of watching from the sidelines and showing up at board meetings, which heretofore has been my chief activity vis a vis the company, I am now in charge of the entire direct-to-consumer operation.  Consequently, I have been on the road and will continue to be a road warrior for a while.

Tomorrow, in fact, will find MD and me in San Francisco at the Sur La Table store for a Sous Vide Supreme demonstration.  Richard Blais, the chef pictured above with the two us (he’s the one with the faux hawk), will be doing the demo, but MD and I will be in attendance.  So, if you want to drop by and meet us, have a chat or just see how much older we look in person than in our photographs, come on down to the Ferry Building Marketplace in San Francisco tomorrow (May 8th) from 10 ‘til 2.  Hope to see you there.

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I’m just getting back to my desk after a several days in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

I had a little R & R, played some golf, and just enjoyed myself in general.  Had all the same kinds of food I wrote about in a post last year, so I returned well fed.  Now I’m tanned, fed, fit and ready to type, so it’s back to the grindstone.

Thanks to the poor economy, this trip was a little more exciting than previous trips.  At least the golf part.  When we pulled the carts up to the first green on the first day we played, the caddy told us to pull off the cart path and park the carts down by the green.  When we asked why, he replied, “Banditos.”

Turns out that hard times have driven many desperate people to turn to crime to feed their families.  According to the caddy, ‘banditos’ hide in the jungle along side the cart paths and come out while the players are on the green and steal anything they can get their hands on.  A few weeks before we got there, there was an actual armed robbery on the course.  Fortunately, our trip was without incident, so I returned home with all my belongings.  Didn’t even lose anything to the airlines, which is probably a more likely way to lose valuables than to banditos on the golf course.

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I’m throwing up a quick post just so you all won’t think I’ve been captured and sold into slavery.  MD and I are on the coast-to-coast Sous Vide Supreme introduction tour, which  ends today.  I thought I would have plenty of time to blog and Tweet on this tour, but it has ended up being a huge time gobbler.  What with getting all the stuff set up, checking in and out of hotels, running for flights and flying all over heck and gone, there has been barely any time to keep up with emails let alone fiddling with the blog.

As I type these words, we’re at 37,000 feet somewhere between Chicago and New York.  After all the complaining I’ve done in previous posts about my disastrous experiences with a multitude of airlines, I’ve got to say that this tour has gone without a hitch.  We’ve flown U.S. Air, American, Alaskan Airlines, and now Delta, and all flights have been on time on both ends.  We’re traveling with a crew of nine, so I am thankful for all the airlines we’ve flown and the weather gods for allowing all this to come off on schedule.

I planned to post about the different venues as we went from city to city, but as I said, the time constraints have been such that I really couldn’t do it.  I’ve got a zillion photos that I’ll post in due course and a lot of info about cooking that I’ve learned from the best.

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After meetings all day long Monday and Tuesday, we left with our partner to head for his place on Orcas Island.  We drove for an hour and a half then took a ferry for an hour to get there where his wife, who had gone up the day before, was patiently waiting.  We went to dinner and headed to the house.  We got there long after dark and crashed.  I always love to wake up in the morning in a place that I haven’t yet really seen because I arrived under the cover of darkness the night before.

Our partner’s house has a phenomenal view overlooking the sound and is nestled in among the Douglas firs, many of which are at least four feet in diameter.  It is really a forest primeval and a great place to vacation. Unfortunately, we had come to work.

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