Gratitude Monday: At last

A small gratitude today. After about eight years of making pizza most Friday nights, I am happy to report that I’m finally producing pies that are recognizably round.

If you had any notion of how misshapen my pizza have been for years, you’d kvell with me.

(One of my colleagues at my last job used to say his pizzas looked like the Elephant Man, and mine were right up there.)

Yes—it will not change the world, and I bury it right away with arugula anyhow. But it’s a small victory, and I am grateful for it.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

Not a senator from Alabama (although smarter)

Okay, a while back I found the mother of all tubers at Wegman’s. I mean—it dwarfed all the other potatoes in the bin.

(I have no bananas, so here’s a paring knife for comparison.)

It made a whole bowl of mashed potatoes, with having to peel only one.

Win-win.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

My bread you snap

I read a WaPo headline the other day to the effect that Republicans in Red states are having difficulties passing anti-immigration bills because of pushback from business lobbyists. I didn’t read the story because, first of all—duh, but also because it’s just another case of FAFO. It turns out that without immigrants willing to work for low wages and no benefits, anything to do with the food chain—from tending the fields to bussing the restaurant tables—can’t survive. (Also, manufacturing, transportation, retail, construction and trades apparently have the same crap business model. They all depend on exploitation of the workforce to turn a profit, so without immigrants, they’re toast.)

Imagine that.

This year, we’re facing increased strains on the global food supply chain. Climate change has altered the geography of arable land, and violent weather has played up with crops. Tariffs have screwed farmer and consumer alike. Moreover, this moronic war of choice in the Middle East has not only sent the price of all petroleum-based fuels (and products) skyrocketing, but it turns out that a big chunk of the world’s fertilizer passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which is now closed as a totally predictable (to everyone except the Kleptocrat, apparently) outcome of the attacks on Iran.

Yay—not only are prices of food going up, but we may all get to experience food scarcity. First hand.

Well, my entry for today in National Poetry Month is from the immortal Dylan Thomas, “The Bread I Break”.

You can read this on so many levels—literally on the process of what it takes to turn grain into bread and fruit into wine. It’s a commentary on humans pillaging the planet. It’s also an allegory of the sacrifice of Christ.

(Who in no way—physical or moral—resembles the brain-rotting occupant of the White House.)

“This Bread I Break”

This bread I break was once the oat,
This wine upon a foreign tree
Plunged in its fruit;
Man in the day or wine at night
Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this time wine the summer blood
Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,
Once in this bread
The oat was merry in the wind;
Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let
Make desolation in the vein,
Were oat and grape
Born of the sensual root and sap;
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

Turns out humans are utter crap at appreciating sacrifice of any sort, whether it’s the chicken they’re frying or the god they worship. Yippee.

 

©2026 Bas Bleu

 

In your cup

My morning walk Monday took me past this recycling bin and I was struck by the Folgers container.

I was unaware that it was still in business.

Back in the last century, Folgers had quite the market share in the States, along with Maxwell House. Since that was also the era of pre-cable TV (much less internet streaming), their commercials were all over the airwaves. People made Folgers coffee in percolators, on their stoves. Yuban was considered upmarket.

(And I only knew this from the TV ads because my parents drank instant coffee and my mom bought whatever was on sale. Sadly, I can still recall the jingles for them.)

It wasn’t until I worked for the Army and was introduced to coffee made by grizzled staff sergeants (guys who didn’t judge java as brewed unless you could stand a spoon straight up in it) in industrial-sized urns that I came to appreciate the concoction. I started out with Mr. Coffee makers, dabbled in cone filters for single servings and then moved on to dual pot-plus-espresso machines.

My current setup is an espresso machine, a burr grinder and a couple of French presses for when I’m not drinking Italiano. I buy whole beans from Costco and they last me a good long while, because I’m happy with one cup per day. (I did stock up early this year in anticipation of the Kleptocrat's whack-job tariffs.)

I haven’t been down a beverages aisle in a supermarket since 2020 when Wegmans took out their bulk tea option, so I have no idea what’s on the shelves. But evidently Folgers is still on them.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

 

Gratitude Monday: daily servings

One of the goals of my Costco run last week was to get some frozen vegetables. Since the pandemic, grocery stores seem to have gone more towards pre-packaged vegetables, as opposed to pick-your-own, and I end up with a crisper full of vegetable soup before I can eat them.

I hate wasting food.

Since I have a 17-cubic-foot freezer, I decided that bulk and frozen is the way to go. So I slapped down $50 for three bags’ worth, partly based on recos in the Costco sub on Reddit.

(For comparison, $50 at Wegmans would get me three containers of mushrooms and an 8oz package of haricots verts, none of which I could pick for myself out of bins.)

First out of the chute was the Provençale Vegetables; I had them as a side for salmon with rice on Thursday, and hokey smokes! Spread them out on a pan with a splash of olive oil in the toaster oven—so good I considered making a second serving.

(Sheet pan and vegetable mélange are coming up soon on the rota.)

And that’s my gratitude for today: that having the freezer makes it possible for me to solve the veg intake/food waste problem, and that it turns out to be delicious.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Paws, claws & feet

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Costco in Fairfax instead of the one in Sterling. Dunno if that fact is relevant, but this is the first time I’ve seen this product available in a Costco:

Actually, this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything calling itself “chicken paws”. I once had chicken feet at a Chinese restaurant in Milpitas. (They were delicious, but difficult to eat with chopsticks. Slippery little buggers.) Actually—even “feet” is odd; technically they’re claws.

I should have got a shot of the price, but fell down on the job. Sorry.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

 

Consumption

If you want to know how long I’ve had this sixer of Gosling ginger beer, it’s since long before the industry ditched the plastic loop packaging three years ago.

I’m thinking from around 2016.

But it still has all its taste, unlike the odd Diet Coke I sometimes find at the back of the fridge.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Foraging

You know, one of the bits of collateral damage from the Covid pandemic is that supermarkets have stopped having bins of mushrooms, so you can pick as few or as many of as many types as you need for a particular recipe.

(I developed one for wild rice that I steam with chicken stock, then sauté a mix of fungi—portobello, oyster, shitake, cremini—with some diced shallots, mix it all together and put it in the oven while I’m roasting chicken breasts marinated in orange juice, soy sauce, Dijon mustard and ginger root. Delish.)

But since the pandemic, you have to buy pre-packaged mushrooms, which starts running into some serious coin if you want a variety, not to mention you get what they pack, not the ones you want. This is the case not only in the big national and regional chains, but also in the Asian and Latino grocery stores I frequent.

(A friend who lives in the Seattle environs swears that they’re all free range there, but I have to wonder.)

So I have to say that when I came across these guys on one of my walks, I was tempted…

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Pantry staples

Sometime back in the 90s, I recall reading an article that proclaimed you were a yuppie (roughly defined as a Beamer-driving, condo-residing, dressing-for-success Young Urban Professional) if you had more than three types of vinegar.

I remember getting a kind of sinking feeling in my stomach, because at that time I knew my pantry held apple cider, red wine, white, white wine and sherry vinegars. I also had EVOO, corn oil and peanut oil.

So, after yesterday’s confessional exercise, I thought I’d take inventory. Yeah—so far over the line.

Vinegars:

Oils:

(The peanut oil lives in the refrigerator because it goes rancid at room temperature after being opened. And the Wegman's basting oil is something they gave away for getting their shopping card, back in the 90s, which I've never opened.)

And a bunch of infused olive oils my sister gave me for Christmas possibly 15 years ago, which I should probably start using.

I am somewhat curious about the chocolate one.

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Move over, Sally

I just want everyone to know: I do not have a baking problem.

I can give it up whenever I want.

I, uh, also have bread flour (in 10lb sacks), whole wheat flour, rye flour, cake flour and 00 flour (for pizzas). Moreover, I buy granulated sugar 10 pounds at a time, because Big Sugar (and therefore all supermarkets) now sells what used to be five pounds in four-pound bags. That pissed me off. Costco used to have 7lb sacks of icing sugar, but they stopped carrying those. It's 50lbs or nothing, which is really annoying.

(The only reason I don't have 50lb sacks is because I can't lift them off the Costco shelves or into the trunk of my car.)

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

The beaches, the landing fields and the cake stands

I confess: I like cake. (I like pie, cookies, ice cream and tiramisu, as well, but this post is about cake.) You may recall how, when told that “Bosnians like cake”, I made sure that I had cake for breakfast every day I was in Sarajevo.

I got into baking cakes as a stress reliever while in grad school—it’s something you can do that you have to concentrate on (so you’re not wigging out about your research) but is time delimited and bears concrete results relatively quickly. In recent times I’ve switched from full layer cakes to cupcakes both for portion control and because you can freeze cupcakes so they don’t dry out like the big ones do.

(My first cupcakes were pathetic—using a spatula to frost them resulted in things that looked like plops of dinosaur poop. Then I spent a few hours on YouTube, bought a pastry bag and tips and my output has improved. I have no idea how people learned to bake before YT.)

Well, the conman currently heading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Mehmet Oz, went on TV this week to lie about how the recently passed budget bill won’t negatively affect Medicaid recipients (fun fact: it will). And Mr. Crudités added this advice for people losing their healthcare: “Don’t eat carrot cake.”

This was evidently said without irony, in the face of TACOman’s preferred diet of fast food and Diet Coke. (Li’l Donnie Two-scoops, of course, is probably the most chemically-enhanced president in our history. A chunk of that enhancement has to be cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes medication.)

Well—there sprang up a new group of heroes in this nation—the Cake Resistance.

And I have enlisted as a private in that army.

On y va.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Fine wine

Yes, I bought it because of the bottle.

How does it taste?

I bought it for the bottle.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Sweet

Well, okay—yesterday I was in the local Lotte market (which serves Asian and Latino customers) looking for a specific tea, and I came across a new word.

Turns out that jaggery is a type of cane sugar popular in South and Southeast Asia.

Now I’ll have to go back and see what it looks like on the hoof.

(Lotte didn't have the tea, despite the tea company's claim on their website.)

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Chocolate science

Last month I was entranced by the story of an opossum in Nebraska that ate an entire Costco cake that homeowners had put out on their deck because the refrigerator was too full to accommodate it while the family was preparing and eating a meal.

The Doggett family found that the female opossum had pulled the plastic cover off a Tuxedo chocolate mousse cake and eaten the whole thing, leaving only a trail of chocolate footprints from the rail to the deck furniture where it had curled up to recover. Concerned about its condition—it was panting and in distress—they called the local Humane Society, who sent an animal control unit out; they collected the marsupial and took her to a vet.

Post-checkup, the opossum—oh, why don’t we just call her Tracy—was moved to wildlife rehab, where she received chelation therapy to counteract her overindulgence. As with dogs, chocolate is thought to be toxic to opossums, but the belief has never been put to the test by observing one eating a cake larger than she is before.

Photo by Nebraska Wildlife Rehab

Now, naturally I heard this story first on social media, where the preponderance of users immediately identified with Tracy’s binge. Look—we’ve all been there, babe. Sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

I also learned that Tracy chose well—very high marks all around for the Costco Tuxedo cake. Very high.

So, on my next run to top up my supply of butter and chicken breasts, I picked up one of them. Just in the spirit of scientific inquiry, you understand.

Let me just say: my hat’s off to Tracy. That girl’s got game. My first slice—maybe 1.25” thick—about laid me low. I mean—it’s mousse and sponge cake, covered in ganache, but damn is it rich. It took me 10 days to finish that thing.

If that marsupial can survive chugging the entire cake in one sitting, she’s got some serious gastric superpowers.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

No eggs for you!

Evidently that part of the kakistocracy that is not subsumed in kowtowing to the Muskrat and his DOGiEs’ campaign to dismantle government or unconstitutionally engaging in rounding up and expatriating people without any due process has been begging European countries for eggs.

No—I am not making this up. As of time of writing, the kleptocrat has asked Denmark, Finland, Germany and Lithuania if they would very kindly give (or possibly sell) us eggs, since they haven’t completely bollocksed up their poultry farming.

And—all have declined to help us out. (As an English friend of mine said: that's them off the Christmas card list, then!)

This guy inherited a strong economy and the greatest power in the world. All through his campaign, he denied both of these facts and promised to “restore” both wealth and power “on day one”. (That was also the day he would be a dictator.)

Now we’re begging Lithuania for any spare cackleberries they might have lying around.

(BTW: this Reddit thread from Tuesday just cracked me up.)

 What are the odds that within two weeks he’ll send in the 82^nd Airborne to some EU country to “liberate” crates of eggs for distribution in Red states?

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Forgettable

Back some 40 years ago, a guy in my American Sign Language class raved about Häagen-Dazs ice cream; I mean he was having a transcendental experience just telling our classmates how wonderful it was.

(Our class was held in a building about a block away from the HD shop that had only recently opened in Pasadena, across from the Bullocks store, RIP.)

Since then, I must have had it, but I don’t recall.

And then last week I bought a pint of what they’re pleased to call coffee ice cream (for which I’m thinking I paid nearly $5):

I have to report that this is the most beige, most tasteless ice cream I have ever had in my life. This includes vanilla ice milk.

I mean—just look at this:

It’s as colorless as it is flavorless.

(And it took me a week to finish off a pint.)

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

No eggsateration

I guess the good news here is that the local Wegmans has eggs.

The bad news is that customers are limited to 10 cartons per.

Meaning—the total number of eggs you can get on one trip through the check-out line is 120.

(This, of course, doesn’t preclude people doing what my mom used to do when there were limits on how many sale items one customer could by: she’d send all her children through different lanes [this was when supermarkets had more than one staffed lane open at a time] with the max allowed and just the right amount of money to buy them. Until Safeway wised up and put a minimum age requirement on people buying cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup for $0.10 each. Probably unconstitutional, but it worked.)

This makes me wonder: who could actually use 120 eggs? Where would they even store 10 cartons of eggs?

(Unless they’re buying for a middle school. Or maybe a neighborhood co-op.)

But the other bad news is that these eggs are $8.59 per dozen. That means (with tax—yes, Virginia taxes groceries), you’d be forking out $94.49 for that max allowed, so your mom better be giving you a Benjamin to hand over to the one staffed cashier at Wegmans.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Customer feedback

You may not be aware of this, but it turns out that neither foxes nor squirrels like chickpeas.

Clearly, birds don’t, either, as that plate sat out there all day Monday.

Since I agree with them (ergo them being out on the patio in the first place), I really can’t fault them on this.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Liquid assets

Okay—I found this in my refrigerator:

Can’t decide whether to make meringues and lemon curd or sell them and pay off my mortgage.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

Spores, music and food

These may be the last of the mushrooms for the season. They’re beside the W&OD Trail, a location where I’ve seen their ilk in the past.

This one reminds me of the little guy in "Tea", the Chinese dance in The Nutcracker, as depicted in Fantasia.

Dunno why, but I’m thinking about risotto. Mushroom risotto.

 

  

©2024 Bas Bleu