My grandchild is cuter than yours!

I may have some bias in this, but my granddaughter is just about the cutest thing ever.


For those of you lacking grandchildren, I strongly recommend acquiring some. The tricky part is to do this without raising children of your own. :-) The "terrible twos" are a problem for parents, perhaps, but my granddaughter is always happy to see her grandparents, and we always have a good time.

Beef - it's what's for dinner.

It's been a while since I've discussed food, so let's give that a whirl.

Dinner last night was quite tasty. I grilled some filets mignon to just barely medium-rare (indeed, some people might call them rare), and then let them rest for ten minutes while I dealt with the rest of dinner. Before that, though, I grilled some crookneck squash and some slices of polenta with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper brushed over each.

While the steaks finished, I heated some garlic (about five cloves, finely minced) in about a tsp. of olive oil until nicely browned. (Stick with a very low flame for this or the garlic will start to fry too much.) I added 4 Tbsp of butter, and let that melt into the garlic. Finally, I added 2 Tbsp of sake and another tablespoon of mirin. Let it all heat together, season with salt and pepper, and you've got a yummy sauce.

Plate assembly is easy: place a pile of arugula on a plate, slice the steaks into thick slabs, lay a steak on the arugula, and top with the sauce. Add a squash and a polenta disk, and you've got a nice looking and yummy meal. Serve with a nice crusty bread and a heavy red wine...yum! Outside of a bit too much fat, this is a meal that's also pretty good for you, too, as long as the steaks aren't too big. (The ones I used were around six ounces each.)

The wine we chose was a bottle of the 2000 St. Supéry Élu meritage. We've got a few more bottles of this specific vintage, and I think we'll hold onto them for a while. This bottle was perfect with the meal, with nice toasty oak flavors and bursting with ripe fruit. There's a bit of tannin to it still, and this will definitely age for several more years without any trouble. I think we have about seven more bottles of it, so we're looking forward to several more notable meals.

Bon appétit!

Cool site of the RTI*

Today's random cool site is the Eclipses Online Portal. This is very cool...you can search for eclipses that occur on earth between 1501 and 2100, and then display all kinds of cool and useful data about each one. For example, this year has no total solar eclipses, which is mildly unusual. For a sample page, check out the great solar eclipse of 1991 or the next total eclipse in the continental US, in 2017. Oh, and here's a lunar eclipse, too, just to be complete.

College reunion

I went to my mumble-th college reunion over the last weekend. It was a blast!

I had a great time chatting with folks I haven't seen in several years and catching up on all that's going on. There were a couple of folks I haven't seen since graduation, and that was fun.

The best part, though, was getting a chance to stun people. Most of my classmates are off starting families. It was amusing how many people had two kids - one four year old, and one two year old. After getting that piece of information on their families, I took the chance to show off my granddaughter. Yup, that's right. One of my faovrite pictures of the two of us is below - pretty much everyone at the reunion got to see this one!


Anyway, the whole thing was a really fun time. I hope to see a few of those folks, at least, before the next one rolls around. Despite all the conveniences of the Internet, it's hard to keep up on correspondence. Bummer!

If you happen to stumble on this post and were there...it was great to chat with you! If you are a member of my class and didn't make it...I hope to see you next time!