Text 10997, 117 rader
Skriven 2007-01-27 12:19:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: more New Braunfels 951
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More New Braunfels Smokehouse things followed by a minitrip report.

I got kind of irritated at my father for buying heaps of this stuff
- we know he's even more irrational about money than I am, but he
at least has some - but then I went to the website and discovered
that the prices weren't so extortionate as I'd feared - most of the
things were $9 or 10/lb, with a few items as low as $5; shipping
around $10 an order.

Smoked pastrami - nasty, salty, oversmoked, underspiced. Oh,
also tough. Not unlike jerky only not as tasty. I think from
the eye of round, despite a very strange shape - the slices
like irregular-shaped pressed flowers.

Smoked Cheddar cheese - quite pointless, a slight smoky aroma,
a slight rotten milk on the palate. My father allowed as
regular Monterey Jack was tastier (which says a lot I think).

Jalapeno jelly - first impression is sugar, second HFCS.
Jalapenos a distant third - a slight greenness, a touch of
heat; no real flavor. Oddly, in the space of a few days my
father ate a third of the jar, rocketing his blood sugar
to 500 and forcing him into the hospital.

Bismarkian brand smoked sausage - extremely salty, though
smoked to the correct degree. About the texture of a smoked
kielbasa, except with large chunks of gristle, which would
be a deal-killer for some - not for me though. Okay.

Smoked salami - quite salty, not oversmoked. Funny rubbery
texture. Too lean by far. Slight garlic-smoke aftertaste.
Not displeasing but nothing special.

Hickory-smoked bacon - I was all set to take the old man's credit
card away from him, until I tasted this. Surprisingly excellent,
neither too wet nor too dry, not too salty, nicely smoked. Cooked
up to a nice crisp smoky mouthful. Even better raw.

=

So we got this panicked phone call from the hematologist. My
father's blood glucose was so high that he should by all rights
have been in some kind of coma (of course, being even more of a
paradox than I, he wasn't). We were told to go to Sibley as
soon as possible. After a bit of half-hearted argument he agreed
to this (he was just a little scared - 500 is pretty unheard of).

Spent the afternoon doing hospital tasks from filling out forms to
emptying urinals. Time flies when you are having fun, and time just
crawled. The hospital (best in town) is relatively cheery, and the
staff are pretty nice, and they do what they can. They're still as
inefficient as anything, though (hence my having to empty out
my father's urinals). After waiting 6 hours (groan) for him to be
admitted, there wasn't much time for dining; I cabbed straight to
the airport and, as the Panda Express and the Burger King are gone,
I fell back on Moe's, of which I have written not-so-complimentary
things before. Moe's is in a relatively dead spot in the relatively
dead D terminal, where a Chili's or Friday's used to be, but it was
pretty hopping given that it was past normal dinner hour and past
prime travel time; this I took as a good sign. I noted that most of
the people in the dining room side (as opposed to the bar side) were
drinking soft drinks; this I also took as a good sign. To maximize my
chances, instead of its dry and somewhat sawdustlike Montreal smoked
meat, I decided on the most expensive thing on the menu, the $19
New York sirloin steak served with fries and slaw. The alternative
was the 1/3 lb burger at $10; I figured if I got anything like 2/3
lb of meat I'd be satisfied. What came. A very thin (1/2" tops)
steak from an unknown cut, previously frozen, machine cut while
still frozen, about 10 oz (so made target in this way) as it was
quite wide. It tasted like some kind of round but had more gristle
than anywhere on the round that I know, plus it had a knot of that
very dense and fibrous gristle that I see mostly in the chuck (this
was definitely not chuck). It also smelled like burned round fat
(imagine burned chicken-fried steak smell). The fat had the crispness
of round fat, but the meat was slightly more tender than round. It
was definitely not sirloin, though. Maybe some offcut of the rump.
It had perhaps been cooked from frozen as well, as despite its
amazing thinness it managed to come out kind of pink in the middle.
The slaw was ice cold (okay), and the fries were ice cold (not okay).
I ordered a large Old Dominion (10 oz = 4.25; 22 oz = 5.75; a definite
no-brainer), expecting a nice amber ale. Turns out they pour the black
and tan, which tastes distressingly like whole-grain bread. A most
mediocre meal for twice what it should have cost (though the beer was
the right price, and in truth the total bill was less than half the
cost of the taxi ride).

UA 844 IAD BOS 2130 2259 319 6A

A fairly full flight, with the wayback packed six across and most
of Economy Plus four across. But somehow rows 7 and 8 had nobody
in the left window and middle. And somehow they put someone into the
middle seat between (indignant) me and the (indignant) super elite
in 6C, contrary to policy, when they could have put the person in 7A
or 8A instead. Turned out to be an excessively pretty blonde girl who
kept elbowing me over the armrest (I was extra indignant). And it
also turned out that she was about as nervous a flier as I've ever
encountered - when she wasn't drumming her elegantly-booted feet
on the floor (annoying) she was doubled over whimpering softly into
her pillow (distressing). Hypothesis: a terrified flyer who wanted to
be as boxed in as possible and who'd refused to sit by a window. For
much of the flight I thought "why me, O Lord?" - but then I reflected
that whoever won this picture perfect prize would spend much of the
rest of his life thinking "why me, O Lord?" When we landed she pushed
her way past the guy in the aisle seat (at least she said "excuse me")
and hurried out as fast as possible.

When I eventually got out, it was 6F (-15C). I would gladly have
spent the rest of the night in an airplane at 30000 feet.

P.S. I think it was folly for the hospital to give the old coot
6 units of insulin, which brought his blood sugar down from 444
at admission to 168 when I left. Doctors are stupid SOBs ... it
would make far more sense to bring it down to his normal of 300
first and then go from there.
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