flounder, salad

Sweet mustardy raspberry vinaigrette.

* Olive oil. Just pour some in a bowl, the amount you imagine will cover everything you intend to be covered but no more, possibly even less. 

*  Vinegar. Enough to acidify the oil you poured.

*  Mustard. The amount that you would like to have.

*  Raspberry preserves. Enough to sweeten the whole thing without being too saccharine. 

*  Salt and pepper and anything else you would like

Another metal bowl of the same size was reversed over this as a bulbous lid. Carefully clamping two opposite edges, so this is a two-handed technique, if you have only one hand then forget about it or use an actual clamp. At any rate, now you have empty space the area of a full bowl. Upturn the bowl so that the dressing that is whisked in the bottom is now on the top. Shake the two bowls while clamping hard so that there is no slippage or spillage and really slam the thing around. Ta daaaaa. None of this pansy tossy-toss fooling around . That's why the bowl is such a mess ↑.

Two rounded tablespoons of flour are dumped into a pie pan. This is an excess of flour, about half of it will be wasted, maybe a little less. Season with an excess of spices with everything except salt, because pteewww, too much salt is awful. 

*   Salt 

*  Pepper, a LOT of pepper

*  Cayenne

*  Garlic powder

*  Coriander, because apparently I am a nut for coriander

*  Mixed Italian herbs, because I don't know why. 

The mixture is whisked and then used to both coat the pieces of fish so that the batter will hold on, then mixed with milk to form a batter. This is why you prepare a little extra -- because you need to make sure there is enough batter to coat the pieces of fish. There is nothing worse than insufficient batter and then there you are pushing the fish around trying your best to get the last drop and it ends up not entirely coated. Better to have extra. Flour dulls the flavor of everything. That's why you have to use more spices than you might think is reasonable at first blush. Having said that, as it turned out I put way too much cayenne in this so both the initial coating and the batter were excessively hot. But I like that. Makes it interesting. And these white fish pieces are basically nothing flavor-wise anyway. But if you were entertaining then you'd definitely want to go on the dull and little bit boring side. 

Deep or shallow fry the partially frozen coated fish in 350℉/175℃ vegetable oil. 

This concludes the post on flounder. Except to note the flounder was tiny. Oi, such tiny flounders. They are like baby flounders. If I were a fisherman, I'd be embarrassed to sell them. In fact, I feel a little bit ripped off. 

Okay so there's that. Now for something entirely different that is totally gross. Stop reading right now unless you want to see something disgusting. 

This morning I had difficulty putting on my socks, and this confused me. Then I really had to cram my feet in my shoes real hard. And then I couldn't lace them up normally, and I'm all WTF? So I take my foot out of my shoe, take off my sock to see what's wrong and then I'm totally all, WTF? 

I steam-cleaned my carpets before a party on Friday because my humble abode would be swarming with guests. 

Oh! that reminds me, I just now got an email from Joseph. He's the business owner that likes to explore restaurants with me. He is a generation distant from myself and I know why I enjoy his company so well, he is a very interesting person with much experiences to share, but for the life of me I have no idea why he enjoys mine. He flies around all the time all over the place, but takes a moment to write: 

Hi Chip,

The party for Paul was great and you did a superb job of pulling it off, considering the number of people. Did not realize it was going to be such an event. Sorry I was not more help but was really hurting from a VERY trying week. Really did want to help you on Saturday but you seemed to have it under control. The food was just as great the next day and was all gone by Sunday, and I only got one little portion, PG took care of the rest.

  BEST REGARDS, 

JOE

So I check my foot to see what's wrong and both of them are all swollen which was very confusing, and I noticed the edge of the bottom was black and then I was really really WTF ???!!!1111¡¡¡¡¡eleventeen-leventy-leven1111?????¿¿¿¿

I was walking around barefoot, but so what, I had just steam-cleaned the whole carpet and cleaned the tiled floors like a charwoman. I even hosed the balcony and scrubbed it with soap and a stiff broom. So how come my hoofies became so dark? Huh? Did people really track in that much dirt? 

Let this be a lesson. It's a lesson about ... something about dirt ... something about shoes and a lot of people all at once ... and ... well, I don't know what it means. 

It means I have to steam-clean my carpet all over again. 

With this thing.

It's a super-dooper home steam cleaner that's used even for commercial purposes sometimes. It totally kicks ass on Rug Doctor. No comparison. 

Steam clean is an industry weasel-word. There is no steam involved, just very hot water. In fact, steam damages many types of carpets. Why they're allowed to get away with misleading disingenuous abuse of language just flat pisses me off, but there you go.

It holds four gallons of water. This bucket is dual purpose. There is another container directly under it and above the wheels. This blue bucket of water is used to measure the amount that is poured into the machine (along with the soap) 

The pouring-in hole is being covered by the spout of the bucket, but the whole bucket of water is emptied into the pouring-in hole. Then the bucket is empty and the machine is full, and the blue bucket becomes the receiving bucket for water vacuumed up from the carpet. Clever, eh? Anyway, this photo ↑ shows you how much non-sudsing soapy hot water eventually gets distributed over the carpet. My carpet took four such buckets full just hitting the traffic areas, not the whole carpet, as normally. I was too lazy to move around all the furniture, plus it wasn't actually necessary, I don't think.

Then the machine stops sucking up water. You can see that water is not being sucked up because the pipe is transparent so that the user can monitor the flow of water being taken up and the degree of filth. So eventually the machine itself fill up the blue bucket again with sucked-up dirty soapy water. The vacuum on this machine is fierce. Much stronger than a regular vacuum cleaner. It actually lifts up the carpet which is a bit scary. Throw rugs are impossible to clean because the machine will veritably ingest them. 

This is how much water is returned. See? It leaves behind very little water. Almost all the water is returned to the bucket, but now it is dirty water. Surprisingly dirty water. Shockingly dirty water.  Mind, the carpet was cleaned this way just four days ago. 

This is what the water pulled out of the carpet looks like.

Ewwww. See? I told you it was gross. That is why my hoofies got so brown. That is how much dirt people tracked in on Friday. I'm telling you, understanding this might put me off the idea of having people over unless I can arrange a team of cleaners to follow the next day because all this carpet cleaning is wearing me right out.