Good morning~We are still here in Concord.
Sometimes it's difficult to find time to get onto the computer. Especially someone else's computer.
We ate lunch yesterday at the Hometown Buffet, which is a kind of cafeteria with stations...you can get a Southern menu, a Mexican menu, an Italian menu, a cold buffet, a "grill" station (which means hot dogs et cetera, but there is someone there to grill it I guess), and a regular USA menu which includes mashed potatoes, carrots, and all that stuff plus "chicken fried steak," which bears no resemblance to either chicken or steak though it is fried. I think I'll tell you how my grandmother made chicken fried steak later in this post, just to balance the bad with the good in this world. I only saw one fish dish, which were the world's tiniest filets of delicate flesh swimming in a damp sauce....looked as if they had ransacked the Bay Area's fishbowls to make it. After you have eaten all you wish of the foregoing, you can go to the dessert station, which gives you the best thing about Hometown Buffet: tiny portions already made up, of puddings, pies, cakes, brownies, --you name it. Also you can have squeeze ice cream in several flavors, plus chocolate sauce, plus nuts...My rating for all this is: Edible. Edible is the lowest of the positive ratings in my book. You can eat it and some of it is tasty. None of it rates as good. However, for a bachelor like Ben, it's good because you can get a ton of salad, and an assortment of vegetables scattered over the stations, along with whatever entree you decide upon. It's hard to get vegetables in an ordinary restaurant, for sure.
We are lingering at Benjamin's house because his car broke down Thursday afternoon. So far, it is not diagnosed. Like Theo with Kaiser. So we wait.
Kaiser has been trying to call us from SoCal but now
Theo is in a pet and won't call back. Otherwise, we are not doing much. We are very familiar with the supermarkets in the area. We have gone to a few thrift shops, but have bought little. Did buy two lamps for this very dim house, which Ben can toss after we go.
Poor little Anna K lies neglected on a table in the bedroom, while I have been reading Bad Luck and Misfortune, a revenge thriller by Chris somebody. It was very very readable. I have decided that vengeance is one of the most human satisfactions. And our Creator asks us to forego it! Frustrating, to say the least.
Let us get to Granny's Chicken-Fried Steak. If I have told this before, please forgive me.
Take one or two large round steaks. Trim them of fat and gristle, please. Cut them into pieces about the size you'd like to see on your plate. Get out the family ball-peen hammer and set to work. You want a nice resiliant strong surface, because this is exacting. You begin hammering at one end and keep going to the other, and then you go back and get all the little plump bits where your hammer missed before. Try not to bash completely through the tissue, but really get close to doing that.
As you finish hammering each piece, throw it into a bowl of ice-water. After a time, take the pieces out, dry them, and dip them into a large bowl of flour, salt and pepper. Lay them out to await the frying.
Get a big iron skillet, and put in at least one inch of good fat. Do you know that Spectrum makes a very nice snow white coconut shortening that fries things up very nice? Heat this fat to---350, I think it is...or till your test crumb of meat bubbles up convincingly. Put in the pieces of fat, not too crowded in the pan. Crisp them up, turning when needed. Lay them out on a platter covered with brown paper. Serve, and serve and serve till they are gone, saving one nice piece for yourself or else you'll never get any. Oh my. Talk about delicious. Talk about nourishing. Best steak in the world.
Today we are going to SF...hoorah. And right now I am going to get a cup of Keurig coffee in Ben's kitchen. A costly machine that turns out a nice cup of Joe. Love, YAZZYBEL
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