Anytime I come to see Tracy and Kelly, I’m gaurateed to eat really good and interesting foods and to visit some outstanding galleries and such. The photos in this post were taken at the Fry Bread Lounge, next door to the Native Market in Scottsdale.
Tracy and I are showing off our turquoise and silver rings. (Tracy’s has coral, too). Many, if not most, of the art in the market were made by local artisans. It was cool to see their photos and to read the bios. Not your usual tourist trap.
The Fry Bread Lounge is native owned and operated, as is the market. The drinks were so good and unusual. We’re going to try to replicate our favorite when we get to Sedona.
There’s me giving some love to Kelly and a couple of shots of the food. The”fry bread flight” came with different sweet and savory dips. I can’t remember the name of the plate, but it was a wonderful mix of hominy, wild rice and vegetables.
If you ever get to Scottsdale, don’t miss the opportunity to visit these outstanding businesses.
Missing from this post are photos of the first restaurant visited when I just got in from Portland. Extraordinay Chinese food at the “Big Buddha”. Not your typical American Chinese food at all. The orange chicken was not drowned in the usual flouresent orange sticky sauce, the egg foo young was … well, how can I describe it? The chop suey was indescribable, as well. Can I just say delicious and surprising? I can’t believe I didn’t take any photos of the food and of the giant Buddha. You know what they say: a picture is worth a thousand words.
Then last night, we drove to Alhambra to eat at the “El Tiburon” (The Shark). Kelly’s sister Mo joined us. This took me right back to Mexico. The building, the colors both inside and out, the dark lighting and disco club flashing lights, the two guitarists standing and singing the music of Juan Gabriel, Rocio Durcal, Marc Antonio Solis, and Pedro Infante.
The outside of the “El Tiburon” is painted turquoise and was festooned in white lights. If Tracy’s friend had not recommended this place, we would never have found it, because how would we know? We ate giant oysters with discs of pulpo (octopus), avocado and fresh salsa, fish fillet smothered in butter, fish tacos in blue corn tortillas, shrimp and octopus cocktails (in glasses the size of a child’s head)… beer, margaritas, and piña coladas.
One marked difference from restaurants in Mexico is that the restroom had toilets with seats.
Why, oh, why did I not take photos? I promise to do better.
Since temps are reaching 111° – 113° daily, here’s us in the pool.
How was I to know she would be offended. I thought this would honor her. But it affected our relationship, negatively, from that day forward .
It was decades ago and we had moved from Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound, off the coast of Washington, and into the astoundingly and equally beautiful Columbia River Gorge in Oregon.
We lived on the Island for about 7 years. During that time, we met some very interesting people. Among them were Magdalene and her husband Ivor. They had both been born to Ukrainian parents in the same refugee camp in Germany after WWII was over. His family was then sent to England and hers to the US to begin again.
Their families didn’t know one another. But later, once both Ivor and Magdalene were grown young adults, by happenstance, they met in New York City and fell in love. I won’t continue their story since it’s their story to tell.
How they ended up on Whidbey Island with 2 children in tow, I can’t recall. We moved to the Island because we were promised a house and a job. An old high school friend of Jack’s was pastoring a church there and had connections.
It was at this church that we met Ivor and Magdalene. Now, when I look back, it was the friends that we made that made being in a toxic environment seem worth it. I still have a couple of friends from that time. Fewer, of course, because whenever you leave “the church” being ostracized is the norm. But I digress.
The Borscht
I’m no expert, but from what I learned, borscht is an everyday, common soup/stew eaten in many countries of the world. Mainly made of beets, which gives it its distinctively rich, red bordeaux color and the tomatoes, fresh or canned. It takes on unique flavors based on the meat used for the broth and the addition of other mostly root vegetables. Some cooks add cabbage and others add saurkraut. Dill, fresh or dried, is sprinkled in liberally.
Once the meat is seared with the onions and garlic, water is added to cover and then left to simmer until the meat is fall off the bone tender and the broth is rich and savory. Various meats can be used… like I said, this is not a “precious” soup. Its kinda like a “what’s in the fridge” kinda everyday soup. Anyway, this is what I was taught.
Then carrots, potatoes and other vegetables of your choice are added and cooked until very tender. The meat always used in this recipe was pork short ribs. Once everything is red, dyed by the beet juice and it fills the kitchen with a delectable fragrance, you should dish up huge full ladles into big bowls. Forget about small bowls.
This is a main course soup eaten with crusty, white bread or other breads of your choice. I can imagine a dark rye sliced into thick slabs smeared with soft butter. Never mind if your bread is a day or two old. This soup is made for dunking bread in.
The finishing touch is a large dollop of sour cream, sprinkled with cayenne pepper and more dill. This soup quickly became a staple in our household even though the children wouldn’t eat it. Why, I’ll never know because they’re advenurous eaters and have always been. Even to this day they turn their noses up in disgust when I offer to make a pot of borscht.
So, I’ve kind of roughly given you the recipe for what I learned to make from Magdalene. While living on the Island, we would often go to their house after church to eat with them. More often than not, there was the delicious pot of borscht on the stove. I could always eat bowl after bowl after bowl.
I was so enamored of this soup, I asked Magdalene one day for the recipe. She gladly told me how to make it just like I’ve told you here. She would say things like, “pork short ribs or spare ribs or left over roast, whatever you have”. And the same for the vegetables with the exception of the beets and she always used saurkraut and so when I began to make my own pots of borscht, of course I always used pork short ribs and there was always the saurkraut. I wanted mine to taste just like hers.
The theft of the borscht recipe
As I mentioned before, even though the kids didn’t like the soup, I still made it often enough to make them complain. I didn’t change a thing that Magdalene had taught me.
It seemed only natural when a morning TV show, that I watched almost daily, had a cooking contest. They were asking for recipes with a $25, or was it a $50, prize for the one chosen as the most delicious and desirable. Within a month my recipe had won the prize and a check arrived in the mail and the recipe connected to my name was announced on the morning show. To me this was just good fun. And even though I knew how good the soup was, I wasn’t really expecting to win, so it was a wonderful surprise to hear my name and the name of the recipe announced.
Excited, I called Magdalene to tell her and to tell her I would share the money with her or that I would give it all to her since it was her recipe. She responded in a way that I never expected. She was mad. She was offended. She wanted nothing to do with it or with me. She hung up on me right then and there.
From then on there was a rift between us. We never saw one another again even though she had moved to the eastern part of Washington and we had moved into the Gorge. We never even talked to one another on the phone again.
Occasionally, I saw her posts on Facebook. She had survived cancer and had grandchildren. She looked wonderful and I missed her as a friend. This morning, another mutual friend told me that Magdalene had died 2 years ago after a fight, I assume, from another bout with cancer.
Then the memories of the borscht theft came rushing in. Without doubt, every time I make borscht, I remember Magdalene and the infamous theft. Thank you, Magdalene, for the wonderful unintentional gift of borscht. I’ll never forget you.
It was April 5th, 2023 at 4 o’clock in the afternoon when happy hour began. It was just 8 and a 1/2 hours before the pink moon arose at 12:34 am on the 6th.
Coincidentally, I awoke just at 12:34 without prompting. There were no bells that rang. There were no sounds outside of the house nor light that entered my room. I simply awoke.
I wasn’t surprised that it was at just that moment that I stirred and sat up. These things often happen to me. They probably happen to you too and if you’re paying attention you will notice them. Perhaps you look at the clock just at 11:11 or 3:33. I often wake up at exactly 12 o’clock midnight. Always in my mind, the thought arises, and I say, “it is the witching hour”. I don’t want to think those words but there they are.
Without intention, my friend and I planned to get together on this date a week or more before, never occuring to us that there might be significance. Perhaps it did occur to her being that she is deeply knowledgeable in astrology. If she did, she didn’t mention it to me.
I texted her early in the morning wondering if we were going to meet at her house or go out for food. It was then that she said she wanted to go to the Sapphire Hotel having never been there before.
I was excited by this prospect having been there several times previously. I knew the food was good, maybe even better than good and I knew the drinks were exceptional and extraordinary.
The hotel is squeezed between a coffee shop and a framing shop at the end of a busy business district known as Hawthorn. It’s one of those areas filled with bars, restaurants, bookstores, ritual shops and grocers. There’s only a small sign on the window painted in gold announcing it’s location. The windows were dark but I could see the small candles that burned inside and the brooding ambient light, the only evidence that it was open.
The Sapphire Hotel has a dark and shady past, having once housed a brothel. Such is the history of Portland, Oregon. Like most, if not all port cities, they hold deep and dangerous secrets hidden in their past.
We were the 1st to enter. We left the daylight behind us and chose a table tucked against the wall, a candle on the table, already flickering in the dim room. The dark wooden walls and floors, the oriental carpets and red velvet drapery alluded to the mysteries that lay dormant.
“How many of the people who come here know of its history”, I wondered. I could name many hotels and restaurants with seeedy pasts that housed whores and entertained criminals. But Portland has become a city of transplants. Not many anymore have been around long enough to care about its past.
We pondered over the drink menu with its many strange names. Finally I settled on a “Wai Fai password”. Mango with dark rum and heavily spiced. She ordered an “Aquarius”, astringent with Campari, reminiscent of a Negroni but sweeter. We ordered salty, mapley bacon wrapped dates and Korean bbq wings so spicy it took two before my mouth and lips got used to the heat. We lingered over these, leaning into each other, as we shared what we had been reading, studying, doing and worrying about since we last met.
Time passed as we enjoyed each other’s company. Maybe it was an hour when we decided to order our entree. It would be a medium rare steak with chimichurri sauce, roasted and seasoned potatoes and steamed fennel laced broccoli for us both. It is a rare occasion for me to eat beef but knowing what I knew already about the food here, I gave it a try.
The steak was thick and tender, slightly pink in its interior with a spoonful or two of the chimichurri so as not to overwhelm the flavor of the beef. This was one of those times that I thanked the universe that I had given up on veganism.
Still the conversation simultaneously and continuously wandered from topic to topic in some organic way that only we could follow, as again we lingered over our food and our 2nd drink. Perhaps another hour or more passed, we weren’t counting the minutes.
Because my friend had named our dinner out, “fuck it”, having been through a bit of suffering lately, we added dessert and a 3rd drink. Dessert was a dark, appearing almost black in the candle light, lava cake on a large plate surrounded by a scoop of vanilla ice cream, more than a dollop of whipped cream and a drizzle of caramel. We wanted coffee drinks to counter the sweetness but my Spanish coffee was laden with rum, kahlua, tuaca and another coffee liqueur but I declined the whip cream. Her drink of choice was a surprising Campari laced coffee with a whip of Negroni cream. “What?”, You might say, but it was extraordinarily pleasant leaving the mouth slightly dry.
Again, we lingered. We had drunk and eaten to our pleasure limit. By now we had spent 4 lush hours and we weren’t done yet but we gathered up our coats and bags and reluctantly departed. We slowly made our way to the car while petting dogs along the way: The big, black 12 year old, with his muzzle turning mostly white, with cloudy, rhuemy eyes and the one year old meat head pittie who wiggled and jumped on me to my delight.
We had a wonderful time at the Sapphire Hotel. But all things must come to an end. If like Buddha says, “Life is suffering” this was a pleasant reprieve. Thank you, my dear friend, for this respite.
My trip to Arizona was amazing. Tracy and Kelly and I visited historic sites to view missions and petroglyphs. We visited mountains and canyons, the desert and rivers and creeks.
We hiked in the Madera Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains and did a lot of birdwatching. A coati came right to the door of our cabin… not once but three times.
Deer and wild turkeys were abundant as were the afternoon thunder storms with raindrops the size of marbles. The food we ate on our travels was a cultural adventure.
Tracy drove us along the rim of Box Canyon, an adrenaline rush to be sure. Where the road was washed out and only wide enough for the truck, we laughed or held our breath as we looked into the depths of the Canyon, yelling and telling Tracy not to look but to keep her eyes on the road.
The skies in Arizona are wide and blue or black with giant storm clouds the size of mountains. The roads are strewn with washes and signs warning of flash floods and cattle wandering the open ranges.
I greet the saguaro as we pass by. They seem like old friends and maybe ancestors. I love all of the cactus that I see as we drive long, long stretches of road through the reservations and small towns and seeming nothingness except the land, the mountains and sky. But there’s something special about the saguaro that I can’t explain.
Though October is rattler explosion time, I thankfully didn’t see a one and I thankfully didn’t see not even one bear or big cat. The universe heard my cry.
We knew the elusive Red Start was near because we could hear it’s song. We were never able to spot it until moments before we left the cabin when it hopped upon our door jamb as though to mock us and to say goodbye.
Back home we visited the Cosanti studio again where they bought me another bell. We swam in the pool and looked at the sky and read the books we bought along the way. We watched a movie or two and discussed life in general and in particular as we loved on the three old dogs and cats.
Weird day. I took the bus to Wal-Mart. Wrong idea. Nothing at all of interest. Next door is the Vallarta Mall. Less of interest there. I need tank tops. How could they not have decent tank tops? Everything is extremely air conditioned. I started to feel sick, so I got out of there.
At least I saw where the cruise ships dock right across the road and walked straight into heavily armed military guys who looked to me like teenagers.
Where the cruise ships dock.
In order to catch my bus home, I have to pass thru Old Vallarta so I decided, of course, why not go to the beach. I was getting hungry and as is my wont, I started asking where the good comida corrida is. After walking blocks and blocks, I was getting parched. I saw inside a building alot of tables with no tourists, just locals. There was no sign but a placard that said, Comida Corrida, $65 pesos. That’s a little over $4.00 USD. Soup, shrimp fajitas, salad, beans, rice, agua fresca and dessert. Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Then for a long hot walk on the beach. I was parched again and needed to get out of the sun so again I stopped at a place with no name, broken chairs, worn out umbrellas, and desperate beach guys waving menus. I was at the end of my energy, so gratefully sat at a table and ordered 2X1 mojitos. It was taking so long for them to come, I almost left.
Soon handsome beach guy, Armando, came with my drink. He was not young but was probably approaching 50 but extremely handsome. He carefully stirred and stirred the best mojito I’ve had to date. We chatted for awhile and I learned that he sleeps at the place.
A “cafe” outside of these tourist zone
While I watched a large group of really big, heavily tatooed men with women and children playing in the water, drinking and talking, I found myself thinking that the guys had hydraulicly operated hot rods with amazing paint jobs and guns and knives and that they loved their wives, girlfriends and kids. Its amazing what stories I can make up out of stereotypes.
Well, so as not to make this story any longer than it already is, while drinking my second mojito, Armando ended up massaging my right shoulder, sending healing energy into it and declared that I had a piece of metal in there (which I do) but that he could heal me. I’m suppose to go back tomorrow.
I don’t know, maybe I’ll go back, or maybe I’ll have a facial.
For those of you who know me, you know that I am a pleasure seeker. I love lushness in my surroundings, my fragrance, my food and my drinks. Well, once, I got this lucky, Lucky Strike that is.
Lucky Strike is a small lush place serving stunning Sichuan food. Dark brown walls, lipstick red chandeliers, plush purple chairs that invite you to sink into their plushness. The art is oversized and encourages you to stare. And the food… well, is hot!
We had Dan Dan noodles thick and chewy with a layer of ground pork, peanuts and scallions.
The pork filled pot stickers had a heavy yet silky wrapper and were plump, barely fitting into the pot filled with mouth watering deliciousness.
We also ordered the green beans dotted liberally with red chilies and Sichuan peppercorns that slowly exploded in our mouths leading first with citrus, then flower blossoms and then a tongue and lip tingling sensation, leaving us numb and helpless, begging for more.
Do you like chilies? Why, yes I do.
The pineapple rice is not meant as an entree and is pretty bland. The sazerac was too sweet and it took the bartender at least a half hour to make our drinks. I can sit peacefully for an hour waiting for my food if I have a gorgeous sazerac in my hand. Our pleasure was only interrupted by his inattention.
But all in all, I was fully satisfied and left exhausted with pleasure.
When the doors were open.
Unlucky for you, this incredibly decadent restaurant’s doors are permanently closed. And unlucky for me because I only had the pleasure of indulging my desires there once. Lastima!
Can a restaurant be described as sensual, sexy? Yes. Yes it can.
eyeamdust 