If you think of places with beautiful Japanese gardens, San Antonio Texas isn’t the first place you would probably think of. That is, unless  you’ve already been to San Antonio’s Japanese Tea Gardens. Looking around the area it appeared that they were built inside an old limestone mine, because they are sunken hundreds of feet below ground level. A little Google searching when I got back showed that this was indeed at one time (mid 1800s) a limestone mine. At some point in the early 1900s they decided to convert the property into a garden.

It’s interesting, considering I’ve been to a few Japanese gardens out in California, as these seem to lack some of the feng shui that you’d expect in a Japanese garden. They are beautiful gardens, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t appear to actually be Japanese designed. They seem as though they were inspired by looking at Japanese and Chinese design, then translating that into what you see here. There are small things too that I don’t really remember seeing in a traditional Japanese garden, like faux bois, which is where you use concrete to mimic wood. You can create all sorts of complex structures out of concrete and wire, then add a faux finish to them to give the appearance of bark and other wood elements. It’s neat, but again, a Japanese garden would tend to lean towards using actual wood to create these things.

They also have a large stock of Koi swimming around in the various interconnected pools on the property. That reminds me, the channel on the Alamo property also had Koi. Why would the Alamo have Koi? Anyway, it was a peaceful place to visit, even considering the sheer amount of people on the property. There are plenty of trails to explore, and I think that helps to separate all the people and give you a more peaceful experience on the property. The waterfall really helped with that too.

I needed a stick blender for this one. As the title implies, it’s Gazpacho. I used what I thought was a more traditional selection of ingredients, only to find that spaghetti sauce in my family, every family in Spain has a different opinion on what’s truly Gazpacho. Mine has: tomatoes (juice, diced, and puree), a cucumber, a red bell pepper, half an onion, olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, Tapatio, Worcester Sauce, salt and pepper.

I’ve seen variations on the amounts of each. Also seen it with olive oil. I’ve been told it’s a beverage not a soup. I’ve been told it’s a soup, not a beverage. I’ve seen it with Serrano ham and a boiled egg. I’ve seen it a variety of ways. All seem to be “traditional” which leads me to my statement above about my family and spaghetti sauce.

Anyway, it’s a cold soup (or beverage) of raw vegetables. The key here is raw. Since all of the vegetables are raw, it gives a very cool and refreshing feeling. And each vegetable while working together on the overall taste, aren’t melded into one like if you’d cooked it. So you can taste notes of the cucumber and tomatoes, and even the onion.

With the stick blender I just bought (with a gift card), the texture is also there. It’s somewhat smooth, with a bit of coarse, and occasionally you get tiny onion or cucumber piece, or a chunk of a tomato to munch on. I think next time I’ll add the whole onion just to punch up that flavor a little bit. It also adds a nice texture.

What I Crave!

I decided when I got off work yesterday that with all the talk of possibly getting White Castles in a couple weeks, I should just go ahead and try to make my own. So that’s what I set out to do. I researched different specifics about the burgers plus applied what I’d remembered for all those foggy times I stumbled around their stores, and came up with a plan.

I took a half pound of hamburger beef and divided it into six balls. Normally I think there’d be nine per half pound if they were making them. I formed each of the six into patties and set them aside on wax paper. The only thing different about the hamburger meat, is that if I were normailly making a hamburger I’d use a very lean burger so that it’s healthier. Since most of the fat from these will cook out, I chose a 20% fat hamburger meat.

Next up, shred the onions. I broke out my mandolin and started shredding the largest onion I had until it looked like I had a nice bed of onions for the burgers to steam on. I turned the cast aluminum skillet on Medium, and let them sit. No olive oil, no seasonings, no butter. Just let the onions sit and make their own liquid. I walked away and checked Facebook.

I heard them sizzling and looked over to see steam rising. I knew it was time to finally add the patties. Like a puzzle, they only fit in the pan one way. Now for the next step, the buns. I bought dinner rolls. A style that reminded me of White Castles’ buns, and started separating them. I broke out the bread knife and sliced them in half.

It was now time to flip the burgers. I slowly turned them to make sure that I got some of the onions in each turn, while still leaving a partial bed underneath for them to further steam in. I then placed the bottom bun slices on each of the bugers, then placed the tops over top of the narrow spaces between each burger. This way they’ll all get steamed from the bed of onions.

I grabbed the small jar of hambuger pickles that I bought and picked out 12 decent sized pickles to top the burgers. Finally the burgers were ready, so I set the top buns aside, and turned the burgers (with bottom bun) onto a plate. I topped each of them with two pickles, then put the top bun on. Serve with a side of fries and you’ve got a homemade White Castles meal, or as friends call them: Rex Castles.

So I’m sure you are wondering about condiments. Well White Castles doesn’t have condiments. Sure you can get ketchup or mustard packs, maybe even mayo, but their basic burger is just a hamburger steamed over a bed of onions, served on an onion steamed bun with two pickles.

Amazingly enough, they tasted just like the real thing, except with more meat per burger. And there you go. It’s what I craved.

Eventually they got to us, and they painted five boxes of color on the wall to see what color would finally make the cut for our floor. Staff for the floor walked past, most could be heard talking about which colors they liked, and which colors they hated. And we all seemed to agree that we really didn’t like this one particular color. That’s the color they chose.

So they painted the wall a lime green and for days afterward you could hear people talking about how it looked like someone vomited on the wall. They also added a shag rug in front of the wall that didn’t really seem to make sense. But when you looked at other floors, they all got some sort of rug, some new leather chairs that sort of matched the new wall color, and an old timey telephone. We just got a rug, and nothing else.

Weeks go by, I’m looking at this thing every morning, several times throughout the day while waiting on the elevator, and other random times I have to pass through that area. The lime green is slowly starting to grow on me, but that shag carpet just looks sort of like grass. Today I decide that something must be done. Why? Because it’s a half day Friday and I used Ambien last night. I’m in a strange mood.

So I made a sign, then made something to hang the sign on. I didn’t want to tape my new sign to the new wall out of fear that it might damage the paint in some way. I recycled an old FedEx tube and wrapped it in a press sheet sheet from the latest Starbucks project I worked on — Making Merry will be available at most Starbucks stores in time for your Holiday buying experience — then hung up the sign and posted it in the lobby. And waited.

One thing I noticed after taking the photo is that our green shag rug that we all joked looked like grass, actually does look like a lawn when photographed.

Those that have been reading my posts for years may remember when I took an old King Kong cartoon from the 30s or 40s and put a santa hat on him in Photoshop. I hung that on a Capitol Records sign in the office that was the Capitol Records tower. So King Kong was festive, and hanging from the top of Capitol Records. Well, a lot of people on the floor loved it, but it still didn’t stop me from getting in trouble for it. So I’m sure today’s stunt will pretty much end the same way.

Only time will tell.

I started out by rolling the putty into a column and then sticking it to a CD slimline case that I had lying on my desk. I clipped it to my note board so that it’d be hanging mostly vertical, just to see what happened.

Here’s how it looked to start:

I’m not sure how fast the stuff moves, but usually you really can’t see it moving. But if you set it up just right, sometimes you can. This was a typical time when I couldn’t see it actually moving, but if I looked away for a bit, then checked back it’d have moved. I took photos of it as it progressed, but I’ll spare you all the in between shots.

So after a little more than a day I came in to find that it had moved down the jewel box, finally reaching what seemed to be the limits of its movement. I wasn’t sure if it’d just keep going, but as today progressed it didn’t seem to move any further than where it was when I walked in. So I snapped one final shot and called it done.

It’s really thin up at the top, and I think sheer surface area is all that’s keeping it attached at the moment. As soon as I picked at it, the whole piece fell off. Anyway, this is what happens when they give you Silly Putty at the office. While on conference calls, while waiting on return emails, or while reading emails, I had Silly Putty out and was doing something with it.

Throughout the week I’ve been handed all sorts of colors of the stuff. And I don’t really think what we have is Silly Putty, just because it doesn’t pull up the funny pages. So who knows what this stuff actually is. The “silly” part of it all is probably how I’ve set up this demo just to show that it’s a liquid.

Normally when I go to Dodger’s Stadium it’s to see a game. Even when we just go up to buy tickets I end up snapping some photos of the field, or of the city since there’s a great view up there. Today I ended up taking photos of the Daisies they have planted everywhere. Just amazing really. Nature doesn’t seem to disappoint.

This is what happens when they give you Silly Putty at work. I’m not exactly sure why they are handing this stuff out, unless it’s to reduce carpal tunnel. I guess that could be the reason. It’d also explain why they gave it out with stress balls. Anyway, Silly Putty is fun, but counter productive in an office setting, unless your office really wants you playing with the putty.

This one tasted like chocolate filled chocolate.

Someone brought chocolates into the office. And then they sat them out for us all to share. Normally I don’t eat chocolates. I find them too expensive a treat for me. And I prefer a very good dark chocolate if I’m going to have it, so usually they are priced out of the market for me. But, these were free, so I had to try a few.

This one tasted like a chocolate covered gummy bear.

There’s always been something about chocolate and coffee. I guess it’s that they both come from beans, but they seem perfect for each other. So with each new chocolate, I enjoyed a new cup of coffee.

This one tasted like chocolate covered raspberries.

This reminds me. Raspberries and chocolate go very well together too. So do oranges and chocolate. I guess I’ll have to revisit the stash to see if I can find one with orange. If I do, I’ll need to go get a fourth cup of coffee.

So imagine being in the middle of the desert, there are no trees anywhere, and a bird flies over from who the fuck knows where and shits on your windshield while you are taking photos. You try to use the washer fluid button to rinse the winshield, which always also activates the wipers for a few seconds. Now you have fresh bird shit smeared all over your windshield. What do you do?

Well you climb out and take some of your water supply and dump it on the windshield. Then you try the wipers again until it’s mostly clear. Now you can see again. A few more miles down the road another bird swoops down just to shit on the windshield of your car.

Anyway, I noted these two things when returning the car. I said that the washer fluid was an easy enough fix, but they should have the brakes checked out as it could cause someone to wreck the car. You should have to hold on for dear life when you apply brakes because you know if you don’t the steering wheel may just pull away from your hands.

They apologized for the inconvenience and credited me a day. That’s the first time that’s ever happened when I’ve rented a car. And I’ve had some real winners when I used to be stuck using Budget at the Indy airport. I guess that’s why I keep coming back to Enterprise. It’s not that I was looking for a credit, but they offered it, just to keep a regular customer happy. Strange thing, I wasn’t mad, I was just letting them know that something was wrong with the car, and that it should be checked out as it’s what I see as a big issue. If they want to give me a credit I’ll take it, but that wasn’t my intention.

Anyway, it was the  highlight of the morning.