Talking about Concetta is not food porn; Concetta is Food Erotica

A friend from church (New Hope Christian Fellowship) gave Susanne Herfurth (my lovely fiance) and I a gift certificate "Dinner for two" at Concetta in downtown Modesto (1205 J st).

When she called and said she had won this certificate and a bottle of wine in a raffle the night before and wanted us to have it as a Valentine's gift, I replied that it seemed a bit excessive. She then informed me that she felt that God wanted us to have it and that she had won it for us. What could I say to that? I said thank you., and thanked God as well because Susanne and I haven't been able to afford going out to nice restaurants much.

Well, tonight we went downtown to have dinner at Concetta, and I am here thanking both God and Sarah Stone Keath publicly for gifting us that opportunity. The atmosphere is bistro casual, the service was very good, and the food is fan-fucking-tastically fabulous. 

Concetta is locally known for using fresh local ingredients, and having an ever-changing menu (tonight's is pictured here). Also, I have heard good things about their food and service whenever the place has come up in conversation which it does from time to time. I am always interested in restaurants because I am a foodie, and because I worked in restaurants for better than twelve years when I was younger.

I gotta say, Concetta is as good as any of them, and that IS saying something. I have worked in several very good fine-dining establishments in Monterrey, CA, and Ft. Lauderdale, FL, among other places. 

This evening, our table was set and waiting when we arrived for our 6:30pm reservation, including ice-water that the ice hadn't had a chance to melt in. We ordered iced-tea to drink, and it arrived momentarily. The waitress answered our questions easily, and consulted with the owner about our gift certificate since there was no dollar amount on the paper and we wanted to know where we stood before ordering. The answer was perfect. "Dinner for two, not including alcohol" is what the certificate said, and what it meant was that we could order whatever we wanted off the menu with no price cap. Awesome.

We started by ordering two Appetizers: Lamb Meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce, and Marinated Olives. There was a wide variety of olives in the dish, oil cured, brine cured, green, black, brown, and in all sizes from pinky-nail sized up to thumb sized, and everything in between. Yummy, but the meatballs stole the show. I do have to appologise in advance for the pictures, the food was so good that I forgot to take a picture before digging in each time something new arrived on the table.

I had been told they were good, and that was an understatement. The sauce was delicate and mildly spicy, the meatballs tender and juicy. While we ate those, we perused the menu further, and decided to order the rest all at once which suits the style of the place just fine as they are pretty much a "tappas house."

We ordered two salads: Wild Greens and Goodies, and Pear and Gorgonzola Salad with berries, marconas, and honey.

And two Entrees: Pork Scallopini with polenta and mustard cream, and the Pan Seared Flat Iron with wild rices and arbequina oil. 

We began eating them as they arrived, so we tried the Scallopini first, followed by the Pear and Gorgonzola salad, then the Steak, and finally the Wild Greens, but don't get me wrong, they all arrived within a very few minutes, and we were sharing each item as it showed up, so everything was groovy in our book. After thouroughly enjoying it all, even bringing home the few bites of the Wild Greens we couldn't finish to share with our Duck (pictured here helping Susanne wash dishes) who agreed that it was indeed a fine salad. 

Susanne and I discussed the finer points of the meal at length and came to the following conclusions.

1. Everything was Great!
2. You can't hardly compare meatballs to olives, so they were individually excellent, and complimented each other well.
3. The Pear and Gorgonzola salad was unbelievable. The only way it could have been any better would be if there was a bit more Gorgonzola in proportion to the other ingredients. The marconas are toasted almond bits, and the berries are big juicy blackberries...Awesome.
4. The Wild Greens with Goodies were good, a solid example of that kind of salad, with the Goodies being slivers of red pepper and little green beans, romano cheese and so forth in a very light dressing, probably just misted with oil and balsalmic, and topped with a couple of crustini with a yummy hummus like spread on them.
5. The Pork Scallopini was lovely, but the polenta and the mustard cream sauce stole the show on that plate.
6. The Pan Seared Flat Iron steak was awesome, cooked perfectly without having to tell them anything. If you like to cremate your steaks you should probably make a point of letting them know, but you'll be missing out. The wild rices were nice, but the polenta stole that show also.

We didn't have room for dessert, but plan to go back after our wedding and Honeymoon next month, so we'll just have to save room then. Tonight was just right for tonight. Thank you again Sarah.

The Global Economic Problem in a Nutshell.

"What made you finally change?"

Fossen stopped for a moment and then laughed. "When I started educating myself on why farming no longer made sense. We basically used oil and aquifer water to temporarily boost the carrying capacity of the land, all for economic growth demanded by Wall Street investors. It's a crazy system that only makes sense when you foist all the costs onto the taxpayers in the form of crop subsidies that benefit agribusiness, and defense spending to secure fossil fuels. We're basically paying for corporations to seize control of the food supply and dictate to us the terms under which we live."

FreedomTM, by Daniel Suarte (243).

This is a great sequel, to another great book, Daemon. That tell the story of the collapse of our current global economic system, and the computer virus that may or may not save humanity. The books are scarily plausible, and the author knows what he's talking about since he's written software for the defense industry, banking, and others. I've been looking in to the agribusiness issue for a while now, and can say that his research there is good as well.

These books are a great story, and I will probably write a proper review once I finish this one, but they also show us clearly how agribusiness, food companies, defense contractors, cyber-security firms, private military contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and so on are linked to governments and vice versa, how little the general population knows about who is really in charge of what, and how little can be done about it. The story also gives us at least one model of how we can turn things around. The Daemon might be a bit extreme, which is why the guy who wrote it didn't trigger it's release until his death (he didn't want to spend his twilight years in Guantánamo Bay), but something has to give the grassroots movements a lever if we're ever going to move the world.

What scares me isn't so much that the public has been hornswoggled into paying the freight for the multinational corporations takeover of the world, it is that so few people seem to realize just how bad it is getting.

We are living on borrowed time in a dozen different ways, and if we don't start getting pro-active about these situations, we're screwed. Our children are screwed. the sins of the fathers will verily be punished through the generations to come.

Doing overnight night security at New Hope Christian Fellowship's Fireworks boothfor the rest of the wek

Be camping out at 960 Oakdale Road to make sure that the fireworks do not go walking off hand in hand with local miscreants. Me 'n' Nick will be there from 10pm-10am enjoying the view of KFC, McDonald's, and passing traffic when not sleeping.

WTF?

"Good bye Jack.” I looked back at Earl as he turned away, and kept turning, and was gone.

Mean Birds

"Ha. Yeah, multi-talented. Well, tell him I said thank you.”

"I will, and I'll leave out the creepy part.”

"Good. I wouldn't want him mad at me.”

"Probably not.”

"Well, If you get done and are headed home before we close, stop by for coffee and tell me what happened.”

"Ok, I'll do that. And Alice?”

"Yeah?”

"What did the door mouse say?”

"Feed your head. Of course. Weren't you listening?”

"Bye Alice.”

"See ya later Jack.” and she was gone. Hmmm... Trouble. But nice.

"Quark!”

"Caw! Caw!” I looked up and saw half a dozen crows quarreling in the branches above me, and a drop of something warm hit me on the cheek, on the scar the Dead Guy's cane had left there. I batted at it, cursing, thinking one of the damned birds had shit on my face. Remembering a seagull in seventh grade PE class who'd done the same I screamed, “Shit!” and leapt back, scrubbing at my cheek, then looking at my hand. It was streaked crimson. That wasn't shit. It was blood.

I heard a meaty thump and looked up. Right where I'd been standing there was a dirty white blob. At first glance I thought it was a plastic grocery bag knotted around some sort of trash. Then I blinked and it was a bundle of blood spattered white feathers. I looked closer and finally realized it was the body of a good sized white pigeon with gray and black feathers along its wings and breast, and a large bloody red spot where it's head belonged. Seriously, it's head was gone, torn off at the birdy equivalent of a collarbone. No head. No neck. Not even a stump, just a bloody pink nub of spine and a bloody black hole of throat at the top of the body cavity.

I took a step back and said, “Fuck.” quietly and with feeling.

Looking up in the tree I saw the crows, six of them, perched in the high branches staring at me. The biggest one, perched highest, said “Quark!”

"Caw! Caw!” the others replied. Then they all dove and spread their wings, gliding over my head and deeper into the park.

I looked around for awhile, but I couldn't find the pigeon's head anywhere.

Standing there and shaking my head I mumbled, “Now that's kinda creepy.” I paused and lit a cigarette, dragging deep. “And kinda scary.” I headed out of the park and along Colfax towards Broadway, wondering what the hell the crows were up to, and trying to convince myself that I was nobody's pigeon. I stopped at the Jeep on the way and put the Glock in its shoulder holster on under my leather and picked up my computer bag containing the laptop and .45. Better safe than sorry.

The dead don't rest.

After rehashing my encounter with the Dead Guy and finishing my beer, I went back inside, killed the yard lights, and went back up to bed. I slept better, no more scary dreams, but I remember one in which I was talking to the Catepillar with the hookah sitting on the mushroom umbrella at Wonderland. He kept asking me “Whooo are Youuuu?”

Thinking of how to make this blog exciting and popular.

Thinking...

I have been doing most of my writing in another forum, entirely contained within my computer for now. I am working on my novel again. Started it over actually, and weaving what I wrote before into the text as back story. I am up over forty thousand words. Some of those words are even pretty good. Today I have been doing research for a friend of mine. I need to start actually flogging this blog, doing  doing daily posts that are interesting. Hmmm...maybe I will start putting in teasers from the novel or something....must think.