Covid Cafe: Madoline Practice Continues

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Gwen's practicing with her new mandoline, chefs, and she returns today to update us. Just FYI, she did not cut the cedar slabs below...

Gwen writes: My first attempt with my Super Benriner Mandoline was a french-fry cut (apparently a plus as far as my husband was concerned). Unfortunately, the potato did not cut well. But I’m not throwing in the tea towel just yet. I've decided the problem could have been that the potato needed to be cut smaller or in some way differently.

In the meantime, I was able to slice eggplant and beets without a problem. The thin shave, creating a different shape of vegetable, is a nice alternate texture and not something I could have done with a knife.

Dinner was:

--Beef with onion, allspice, olive oil, lemon and garlic

--Falafel

--Grilled eggplant with olive oil, tomato and, feta

--Rice with chickpeas, lemon peel, onion, garlic, parsley and olive oil

--Yogurt with cucumbers, garlic, olive oil, mint and, lemon and...harissa (hot sauce)

?

Another mandoline success: apples shaved to top a cherry tart and that worked well.

Looking forward to more practice!

(I am standing outside your back door with a dish for leftovers...)

Rob walks Chicago: spring morning

Poetry

From Chinese poet Li Po 

On Drinking Alone by Moonlight

Here are flowers and here is wine, but where’s a friend with me to join

Hand in hand and heart to heart in one full cup before we part?

Rather than to drink alone I’ll make bold to ask the moon

To condescend to lend her face the hour and the scene to grace.

Lo, she answers, and she brings my shadow on her silver wings;

That makes three, and we shall be, I ween, a merry company.

The modest moon declines the cup, but shadow promptly takes it up,

And when I dance my shadow fleet keeps measure with my flying feet.

But though the moon declines to tipple, she dances in yon shining ripple,

And when I sing, my festive song, the echoes of the moon prolong.

Say, when shall we next meet together? Surely not in cloudy weather,

For you my boon companions dear come only when the sky is clear.

Still planting

Video

The Aurora Australis in Antarctica

Showing a full aurora and the Milky Way simultaneously