I saw an ad today for a “No-See/No-Touch” mousetrap. It basically looks like a giant roach hotel and is designed so you can catch mice, but not have to look at dead mouse bodies. And this concept bothers me.
In our current house, we have gotten rid of at least two dozen mice (with the high point being three mice in one day, December '03) using plain, old-fashioned “snap” traps. Is it unpleasant to dispose of the dead mice? You bet. In fact, I usually make RWT do it because it gives me nightmares. And I don’t even want to get into what happens when a mouse is caught in the trap, but not killed. However, I have no desire to use one of those new “No-See/No-Touch” mousetraps.
I feel that if you are going to kill an animal (for any reason), you should feel bad about it. For me, it is better to look at that dead mouse, feel remorse that it could not continue with its simple short life, and tell it that I am sorry it had to die to make my existence better. With one of those new traps, I could choose to consciously ignore that my actions have killed a living creature. But I shudder to think what my unconscious mind could do with that knowledge...
It would be wonderful to be able to use humane traps and be able to relocate the mice. But to where? If they are dumped immediately outside of the house, they will quickly come back inside. Taking them for a ride to another location is not a good option either, because they’ll then become someone else’s problem. Humane traps are nice in theory, but their practicality is limited in an urban environment.
Ideally, the mice would just stay quietly in the basement walls and not be so destructive (and reproductive). Then we could all live together in harmony. Unfortunately, that is just not going to happen. So we will continue to put a baited snap-trap under the kitchen sink, continue to kill the mice that come to scrounge for goodies in the kitchen trash can and continue to feel bad about it.
I’m sorry little mousie.
25 October 2005
18 October 2005
Z vs. K
When my über-foodie sister was visiting last fall, we went to a high-end restaurant that had just opened in the D.C. area. Running the kitchen is a New Young Chef who formerly worked for a Very Famous Chef at a Very Famous Restaurant in California (of which, my sister is a Very Big Fan). The meal was wonderful, but as can be expected with a newly opened establishment, the execution of some of the food still needed a bit of work (specifically, the distribution of salt – too much in some things, not enough in elsewhere). As to the taste of the dishes… even with the glitches, they were still fantastic with the big, yet elegant, pure flavors that made the Very Famous Chef very famous.
Since I had not been back in over a year and RWT went to Hawaii last week without me (what a bum), I decided it was a good time to go back to the year-old New Young Chef’s restaurant with some of my food-group friends. My overall impression... while the cooking during my previous visit was more uneven, I liked the food better last time. Not that my more recent dinner was anything other than great (and everything was cooked perfectly), but it was just not quite as breathtaking.
Why? On my first visit, (according to my know-it-all sister) the New Young Chef was mainly cooking variations on dishes he cooked under the tutelage the Very Famous Chef at the Very Famous Restaurant. I suspect that now the New Young Chef is coming up with his own recipes and they are just not the same caliber as those of the Very Famous Chef. Or, are they just different?
Perhaps the real question is if it is fair to expect the New Young Chef to forever cook food in the style of the Very Famous Chef. The New Young Chef could certainly continue to cook things à la the Very Famous Chef and have a very successful restaurant. But I would think the he’d want to develop his own repertoire and eventually step out of the shadow of the Very Famous Chef. Hmmm, I cannot help but wonder if the New Young Chef lays awake at night fretting over this exact thing.
But regardless if the New Young Chef's stays with the tried-and-true or progresses on to something else, I won’t be going back for another taste of his food for another year or so at the earliest because of the cost (after all, we are just poor military folk). And, even then, maybe I’ll save my pennies and instead go to the Very Famous Chef’s Very Famous Restaurant the next time I’m in California since that style of food is that I'll really be craving.
Since I had not been back in over a year and RWT went to Hawaii last week without me (what a bum), I decided it was a good time to go back to the year-old New Young Chef’s restaurant with some of my food-group friends. My overall impression... while the cooking during my previous visit was more uneven, I liked the food better last time. Not that my more recent dinner was anything other than great (and everything was cooked perfectly), but it was just not quite as breathtaking.
Why? On my first visit, (according to my know-it-all sister) the New Young Chef was mainly cooking variations on dishes he cooked under the tutelage the Very Famous Chef at the Very Famous Restaurant. I suspect that now the New Young Chef is coming up with his own recipes and they are just not the same caliber as those of the Very Famous Chef. Or, are they just different?
Perhaps the real question is if it is fair to expect the New Young Chef to forever cook food in the style of the Very Famous Chef. The New Young Chef could certainly continue to cook things à la the Very Famous Chef and have a very successful restaurant. But I would think the he’d want to develop his own repertoire and eventually step out of the shadow of the Very Famous Chef. Hmmm, I cannot help but wonder if the New Young Chef lays awake at night fretting over this exact thing.
But regardless if the New Young Chef's stays with the tried-and-true or progresses on to something else, I won’t be going back for another taste of his food for another year or so at the earliest because of the cost (after all, we are just poor military folk). And, even then, maybe I’ll save my pennies and instead go to the Very Famous Chef’s Very Famous Restaurant the next time I’m in California since that style of food is that I'll really be craving.
04 October 2005
Stop Malling Me
On my favorite food forum (of all places) there has been an ongoing discussion about the new expansion of one of the large shopping malls in the area. Specifically, Tysons Corner Center (the middle-of-the-road mall, not Tysons Galleria, the pricey one). They’ve added some new stores, restaurants and a movie theater. The reason it has been a topic of interest with the foodies is that it was rumored that some of the restaurants would be of the more up-scale variety.
But (and, apparently, quite shockingly to some), the restaurants are a disappointment. With “The Cheesecake Factory” being the most popular place at the high-end Tysons mall across the street, the lack of fine dining at the more pedestrian mall did not really surprise me much. But what I did find notable was how some of the folks on the forum think that the malls at Tysons Corner are known across the country. Ha!
With the exception of people such as my uncle Joe, who worked for a mall management company, and a shop-o-holic, frequent-flyer who I worked with back in California, I know no one who knows about any malls outside of a one hundred-mile radius of their home. Sure a lot of people know the best place to go for a day of clothes shopping or where the nearest Williams-Sonoma is located, but outside of a reasonable driving distance?
And why should anyone? A mall is a mall is a mall. They are all pretty much the same thing. Sure, there are super-large malls like the Mall of America (the only mall I’ve never been that I can name, but since it is considered the “biggest”, it does get a lot of press), or the outdoor malls (I’ve been a couple of times to one in Corte Madera, CA, but I cannot tell you anything about it other than there is a J. Crew located there where RWT’s little sister worked one summer and it is really, really hard to find parking there during the holiday season), or the malls with really cool and artistic fountains (such as Newport Fashion Island), or the malls that smell of mildew (which can be found in Guam, Houston and Austin). But whether they are indoor malls, expensive malls, mediocre malls, decidedly down-scale malls, small malls, hard-to-get-to malls or whatever malls… go to enough of them and they all pretty much blur together.
To me a mall is somewhere you go when you are on a mission to purchase something. A mall is not a destination in itself. The only exception to this is when visiting a friend in a faraway city and there is nothing better to do. But such trips are not the result of a specific mall – any mall will do. We go to look and comment on the merchandise (and the other shoppers). We go to try on clothes that we’d never think of buying when shopping by ourselves and then get the giggles at how we look in them. And we eat at the mall restaurants only because if we don’t consume some calories ASAP, we will pass out (or get incredibly grumpy and then no one has any fun).
Now don’t get me wrong. I love to shop and going to a mall is a great way to squeeze maximum shopping into a minimum amount of time and effort. But the reasons I go to the Tysons Corner malls are simply that they have a good number of stores where I like to shop and are reasonably close to where I live. Any other mall amenities… décor, layout, dining options, movie theaters, skating rink, carousels and so on… they are just things to walk past when getting from one store to the next.
So, other than having a few more stores to peruse on my next shopping quest, for me, the best thing about the new addition to the Tysons mall is the possibility that, for at least a little while, everyone will park in the new parking garage near the expansion and I’ll be able to easily park at the other end near the Bloomingdales!
But (and, apparently, quite shockingly to some), the restaurants are a disappointment. With “The Cheesecake Factory” being the most popular place at the high-end Tysons mall across the street, the lack of fine dining at the more pedestrian mall did not really surprise me much. But what I did find notable was how some of the folks on the forum think that the malls at Tysons Corner are known across the country. Ha!
With the exception of people such as my uncle Joe, who worked for a mall management company, and a shop-o-holic, frequent-flyer who I worked with back in California, I know no one who knows about any malls outside of a one hundred-mile radius of their home. Sure a lot of people know the best place to go for a day of clothes shopping or where the nearest Williams-Sonoma is located, but outside of a reasonable driving distance?
And why should anyone? A mall is a mall is a mall. They are all pretty much the same thing. Sure, there are super-large malls like the Mall of America (the only mall I’ve never been that I can name, but since it is considered the “biggest”, it does get a lot of press), or the outdoor malls (I’ve been a couple of times to one in Corte Madera, CA, but I cannot tell you anything about it other than there is a J. Crew located there where RWT’s little sister worked one summer and it is really, really hard to find parking there during the holiday season), or the malls with really cool and artistic fountains (such as Newport Fashion Island), or the malls that smell of mildew (which can be found in Guam, Houston and Austin). But whether they are indoor malls, expensive malls, mediocre malls, decidedly down-scale malls, small malls, hard-to-get-to malls or whatever malls… go to enough of them and they all pretty much blur together.
To me a mall is somewhere you go when you are on a mission to purchase something. A mall is not a destination in itself. The only exception to this is when visiting a friend in a faraway city and there is nothing better to do. But such trips are not the result of a specific mall – any mall will do. We go to look and comment on the merchandise (and the other shoppers). We go to try on clothes that we’d never think of buying when shopping by ourselves and then get the giggles at how we look in them. And we eat at the mall restaurants only because if we don’t consume some calories ASAP, we will pass out (or get incredibly grumpy and then no one has any fun).
Now don’t get me wrong. I love to shop and going to a mall is a great way to squeeze maximum shopping into a minimum amount of time and effort. But the reasons I go to the Tysons Corner malls are simply that they have a good number of stores where I like to shop and are reasonably close to where I live. Any other mall amenities… décor, layout, dining options, movie theaters, skating rink, carousels and so on… they are just things to walk past when getting from one store to the next.
So, other than having a few more stores to peruse on my next shopping quest, for me, the best thing about the new addition to the Tysons mall is the possibility that, for at least a little while, everyone will park in the new parking garage near the expansion and I’ll be able to easily park at the other end near the Bloomingdales!
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