I made dinner for my wife

I don't know what it is. Maybe the drugs. Maybe the pain. Maybe the drugs and the pain together are making me seem "off" to people who come to rent from me. But I have been having a bear of a time leasing my 3 vacant units. It is killing me. the budget is for 5% vacancy per month. right now I am at 10%. My wife noticed. She asked me yesterday if she could help. She did. One down, two to go.

So I made dinner for her tonight. It took a really long time, both because of what I made and because my right arm is too weak even chop a cucumber. Anyway, tonight I made the following (in order served).

Course 1. A wedge of Maytag cheese on a plate with grapes, pineaple chunks (I tried to slice this with my chefs knife but gave up. My arm is too weak from my neck problem. Instead, I let the weight and velocity of a meatcleaver do the job.), pluot cubes, bosc pear slices, and ripe strawberries. (All organic) and little cruncy toasts. Salty and sweet, creamy and cruncy, hard and soft. It was good.

Course 2. A garden salad consisting of green leaf lettuce, cucumber, jicama, carrots, red cabbage, heirloom tomato. Blue cheese dresing.

Course 3. Egg Tagliatelle covered in hearty red wine and lamb sauce. This takes about 5 hours to cook.
- in a medium size pan (barely big enough for all four shanks to squeese in while touching the bottom of the pan) put a couple of teaspoons of olive oil, slice and add one yellow onion to the oil and saute until the onion is transparent and just starting to caramelize.
- Next you add the lamb shanks to the pan. Some people like to trim the excess fat of the lamb shanks. I don't. I just salt and pepper them, toss them in the pan (over a medium flame), and brown them.
- Once the lamb shanks are browned and, perhaps, even have some good crunchies on them, you add 1/2 bottle of HEARTY red wine. Like a big red Bordeaux. You do not want a skinny waif of a wine for this. You do not want a wine that is thin and unidimensional, like Celine Dion - it is not up to the task. A one emotion player. It is too light, too simple. You want the Valkyrie of wines. You want the Caroline Wisnant, or if you can find it, the Deborah Voight of red wines. No! Even better. The wine you want has the power and dark passion of Janis Eckhart's Carmen. There can be no other choice. The wine must have body, character, presence, gravitas. Why? Because the wine is what makes or breaks this dish. If your wine is to wimpy (and here I am thinking something like Riunite Lambrusco, which is fine over ice on a hot day, but not in this dish.) the dish will barely be fit to serve at the Olive Garden.

Oh, do I have a story about the Olive Garden. First of all, it was a mistake to eat at a restaurant that is owned by the Darden company, or any "casual dining" restaurant, but the people I was with wanted to go there because their kids would eat it. The willingness of a child to eat food is no excuse to suffer bad food. If it was up to children Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and root beer is all they would ever eat. It is up to adults to teach, educate, and develop the the tastes of children. They will not eat pan-fired squid in plum sauce if their parents do not serve it to them. And you have to start early. I think 5 might be too late. You have to give them kiwi and avacodo and smoked salmon at 6 months. (What? you use baby food in a jar?) Hummus, pita and citrus fruit and sharp chedar cheese at at 1 year. Brie and adriatic fig spread, sushi, caviar, fried pork rinds with hot sauce, dates, all the stinky colorful cheeses, carnitas tacos from road-side stands where no one speaks English, crab, Chinese, authentic Italian, Thai food, mussels and clams at 2 years. And you have to cook with them. You have to let them risk burning their little fingers so they can stir the curry. I'm telling you, start them off young or else they will only want McDonalds when they are eight years old. And no Television. None! I used to be an ad-man. I know the power of advertising. It will twist their minds into thinking they need Cap'n Crunch for breakfast instead of French toast made from challa and covered with real maple syrup.

Anyway, 5 years ago, the third and last time I ate at the Olive Garden, I ordered shrimp in a white wine sauce. Ordinarily, this is very delicate fare - the wine cooked with a handfull of chopped scallions just to the point where all the alcohol is burned off, the shimp thrown in at the last possible moment so they do not over cook, a tiny bit of butter to hold the wine and the shrimp together. When it is done right it is almost heavenly. But that is not what I experienced at the Olive Garden. (And what is up with that name? Are they trying to say Jesus would feel comfortable praying there? Let me tell you, the Olive Garden is no Gethsemane.) No. What they brought to the table is almost too horrible to describe. It was a sea of rubbery shrimp-like things wallowing in melted butter. I ate it because I was hungry. When the waitress came back at the end of the meal and asked "is everything okay?" I tried to explain what was wrong, and that I would like to show the chef how to make this dish. She thought I was asking for my money back and said I could not have a refund. I wasn't even asking for a refund. I merely wanted to help them do better. What blindness. They serve what they call "food" and think only of money. There is no love in that kitchen. I have not been to Olive Garden since then. Oh, but let's get back to talking about the wine to go in the lamb sauce.

Now I am not talking port wine. A Graham's Six Grape Porto, as wonderful as it is, is just wrong for this dish. Port wine is too sweet and has too much alcohol. No, what you want to use is something like BV Napa Valley Merlot or a Parducci Petite Sirah. (Notice: These are two very different wines. But they both work becuse they are each full of flavor and complexity.) Once you have poured 1/2 the bottle into the pan bring it to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until the meat has fallen off the bones and the wine is almost completely reduced.
-remove the bones, what is left in the pan is your sauce.
- cook the tagliatelle according to the directions on the box.
- put the tagliatelle in individual bowls, ladle on some of the sauce.

We drank San Pellegrino on ice. The little boy said he wanted still water instead.

So, that was dinner. My wife was happy, so I was happy. And there are leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Caffine Units: 6
Tobacco Units: 0
Alcohol units: 1
Pills for neck 12
Tenant issues: 1 and it is serious. Probably going to evict someone for threatening another tenant. The problem is that he is a member of a legally protected class. My crazy 'Nam veteran in apartment #3 is easier to deal with than this guy. All he says is "You'll hear from my attorney" and then closes his door. He barely has the money to pay rent. I feel sorry for his family. Talking to the lawyer tomorrow.