Oct 22, breakfast. Starbucks cappuccino and a scone. About as usual.
Oct 22, snack. Or maybe lunch. Some peanuts in the Pittsburgh airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Memphis (and then on to Austin).
October 22, dinner. Iron Works BBQ in Austin Texas. A shrine to great BBQ. This was incredible stuff. The ribs were good (although, to my taste, a bit overcooked as the bones were sliding out of the meat). Even the potato salad was good. The sauce was tomato based, but not sweet (and entirely optional). This is truly great BBQ.
Oct 22, dinner. At Austin's Ironworks BBQ. I couldn't resist also having some brisket, which was worth the extra calories. Smoky, tender, and still delicious. These people make great BBQ.
Oct 22, dessert. One thin mint, left on my pillow at the Omni Austin.
Oct 23, breakfast. Cup of coffee, weak, at the Omni hotel in Austin, Texas.
Oct 23, lunch. Some random deli crap at the Austin Omni hotel. Mostly junk, but I had seconds of the chips for dessert. Those were good.
Oct 23, lunch. Chips at the Austin Omni hotel. Good snack.
October 23, dinner. At Harlon's BBQ in the Austin Airport. Major disappointment. I got the multi-meat plate. The ribs were fine, if oversauced. And too few ribs; too much everything else! But the brisket was shamefully bad. It was fatty and improperly cooked. The sausage was fine, but it's hard to ruin good sausage.
October 23, dinner. And a Shiner Blonde. Austin Airport.
Oct 24, breakfast. The usual. And a glass of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice.
Oct 24, lunch. Salad at home with Jan. Fresh greens, sausage, olives, and some really wonderful cheese.
Oct 24, snack. A mint.
October 24, snack. A piece of this incredibly wonderful Sardinian pecorino. I brought this back from Volpetti's in Rome a few weeks ago because we really don't have any options in Tucson to get this kind of great cheese. There are some soft cheeses available, but a mature pecorino---not anywhere I can find it. Wow. What a great cheese. This was about 6 pounds and approx. 100 Euros. Volpetti's is a bit expensive. But worth it.
October 24, dinner. At Zemam's with Rose and Mark and Jan. The usual Ethiopa extravaganza. Tucson.
October 25, breakfast. A bit of a tortilla, fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, and a cappuccino (iced). Plus a horse pill vitamin. The tortilla was tasty, but nothing like a real tortilla. I need to work on that. I've had 'em, and I've seen 'em made. In this case, I was way too hot on the skillet. I think what a good tortilla needs is a long cook in a very oily moderate heat.
October 25, dinner. At Shlomo and Vito's in Tucson. Start with pickles. I didn't eat all of these. But they were good. With Dale and Jan.
October 25, dinner. Chopped liver appetizer at Shlomo and Vito's. I got this instead of a sandwich and just made my own, which was good. In this case, I think that the chopped liver lacked flavor. I am not sure why---might have been as simple as salt. Certainly there wasn't any chicken shmaltz in it, which might have helped.
October 26, Breakfast. The Usual. On my way out of town to Helsinki.
October 26, breakfast. Aboard Delta flight Tucson to Atlanta. I ate the fruit and half the bagel, but not the cereal or the vile little yogurt thing.
Oct 26, snack. Little pretzel balls in the Delta Crown Room. These are new, and very good. I hope they keep them. This is better than the old carbo-mix they used to have.
Oct 26, snack. More stuff from the buffet at the Delta Crown Room in Atlanta. The cheese-esque thing was not really cheese; it was some polymer resembling plastic that smelled vaguely of foil which looked like cheese from a distance of 80 yards. The olives were olives.
Oct 26, dinner. Glass of champagne and a roll aboard Delta flight from Atlanta to Prague.
October 26, dinner. Aboard Delta flight from Atlanta to Prague. Shrimp bisque, which was good, and tuna appetizer, which was average. Plus some bread. Overall, not their best performance.
October 26, dessert. Cheese (cold, hard, not tasty) and fruit (cold, small, poorly selected) plate. Aboard Delta flight from Atlanta to Prague.
October 27, breakfast. In the KLM Lounge in Prague airport. An espresso and a piece of bread with some butter on it.
October 27, breakfast. Some cheese-ish things from the lounge in Prague airport. The "Welcome" was really really bad. The Lipno was a moderately good cream cheese; it reminded me a bit of Boursin cheese.
October 27, lunch. A sandwich aboard Czech airline flight from Prague to Helsinki. About what you'd expect from a plastic wrapped sandwich on an airline in a former East Bloc nation.
October 28, breakfast. At Hilton Strand in Helsinki. From the buffet. Eggs, scrambled, awful. Really awful. Sausages and bacon average. Cold smoked salmon and hot smoked salmon, both good, but not exceptional. Bread, really well done. Cappuccino and juice fine. The berry stuff on the far left was also quite good; it's common in breakfasts in Finland and is a nice change from the usual melon-and-pineapple that most hotels have all the time.
Oct 28, lunch. Homemade Fish cakes with lime creme fraiche. At Spektri Cafeteria. In Finnish, Meillä tehtyjä kalamurekepihvejä, lime-ranskankermaa. Quite good for cafeteria food, really.