Sunday Serial: Wandering Rose Grill and Café, Coco Larkin Cooks, and Bellview Winery’s Gruner Veltliner

It’s been a quiet weekend here in rural East Vineland. I was in a fine mood all day Friday, buzzing with weekend anticipation. Next Saturday we’re going up to New Brunswick for a quick overnight visit with Aaron. We’re going to dine out at Casa Ragazzi before he heads out for social activities. I’m looking forward to taking some pictures and having a nice dinner with him. It’s a three-day weekend for us next weekend, so that will make Sunday a nice treat, too. We can push off the scaries for a day and enjoy the weekend.

Wandering Rose Grill and Café

We recently found that a former Chinese restaurant in town, which was briefly a Jersey-style diner, is now a Turkish restaurant. This got my antennae up right away: we’ve never had a Turkish restaurant in town, and I’ve never had Turkish food. Upon our first investigation, I was pleased to see entirely unfamiliar dishes on the menu, as opposed to a dinner-adjacent menu with a few Turkish dishes. (There are plenty of American-style items, too.)

We’ve been a handful of times, and the food has always been good. We’ve tried the Mezze table appetizer a bunch of times, which is a collection of small dishes to share, including hummus and baba ghanoush. Joe has tried the pide a few times, while Rhonda is serially drawn to the Köfte. I’ve wandered around the menu, and Friday night I tried a special, which was a kind of beef stew over a creamy version of their baba ghanoush.

Needless to say, we take a couple of bottles of Bellview wine with us on our visits to the Wandering Rose.

Coco Larkin Cooks

Rhonda discovered Coco Larkin Cooks on social media, and she was inspired to try a few of her recipes. Many of her recipes skew French, so there’s some heavy cream and butter involved. Rhonda has made her chicken thighs au poivre for dinner a few times, and it’s been a hit (and an unexpected one at that; I wouldn’t have thought that chicken thighs au poivre would be a thing).

My TikTok and Instagram feeds are full of comedians and guys doing dumb shit, but Coco Larkin Cooks is a welcome addition to the mix.

Bellview Winery’ Gruner Veltliner

Speaking of wine and Bellview, since they don’t have any dry whites on tap, I’ve been picking up a couple of their reds on tap. Last week, I got a small growler of their Chambourcin, which is a dry, more acidic red. They blend it in all kinds of things, but they have it straight up on tap right now (I think it’s almost gone). Their Cabernet Franc recently replaced their excellent Saperavi on tap, the latter of which is being bottled. After comparing the Chambourcin to the Cab Franc, I can definitively say that I prefer the Cab Franc.

Anyway, a lack of on-tap dry white options has been trying bottles that I haven’t tried in a long time. I’ve been enjoying their Mixtape blend for a while, and that one holds up over repeated tastings. I eyeballed the bottle yesterday while we were having some salami and cheese with some wine on prem at the winery, and realized it’s about 50% Gruner. A couple of recent bottles of the Gruner proper have cemented it as a favorite, which explains why I like the Mixtape blend so much.

Their Traminette is also featured in the Mixtape blend, and so I tried that a few weeks ago. Alas, it’s “off-dry” or “semi-sweet,” and hence not a go-to for my tastes. Their Pinto Grigio is excellent, I’ve learned over repeated tastings, and a tasty companion for dinners out.

But boy do I love their Gruner.

Sunday Serial: Snouts and Stouts Brewing, Mochi Type, and Colori

I just got back inside after washing the cars. I learned a trick from Aaron to avoid swirl marks on the paint when he washed his Mini Cooper after trialing the foam cannon this past summer: I noticed he was drying the surface after hand washing in a straight up and down motion, rather than in a circular motion. I’ve tried it a few times since, and I can’t argue with the results. I hand wash that way now, too.

It’s a very satisfying thing, to learn something from your kids.

Snouts and Stouts Brewing in Hammonton, NJ

We had a family dinner at the excellent Rocco’s in Hammonton last night to celebrate Rhonda’s birthday, which is tomorrow. We left home early so that we could stop at Bagliani’s for some of their salami and cheese, as well as a few other things. We had some time to kill before our 6pm reservation, so we drove over to Snouts and Stouts Brewingto have a a beer. Rhonda had an Newfie IPA, which is a hazy brew made with Citra, Mosaic, and Nelson hops. I’m not familiar with Nelson hops, but we’re both big fans of Citra. Glasstown Brewery in Millville makes a unique brew called Mosaic Man, which is hopped exclusively using Mosaic hops and has endeared me to Mosaic. I had a hard time choosing which beer to try, as they had a kolsch, a German pilsner, and an Oktoberfest on tap. I ended up trying a Marzen, which had a great malt-to-hops balance. We can’t wait to go back.

Mochi Type

When I was in high school many years ago, the recommended sequence of courses for college-bound students was to take four years of a foreign language–in my case, French. Owing to the small size of my high school, taking four years of French was incompatible with taking a typing elective.

My mom, thoughtful person that she is, signed me up for eight weeks of typing lessons with a teacher from our local public high school after school. I drove to her house during the fall of my senior year, where she taught me the QWERTY keyboard layout and how to type on an electric typewriter. Due to this experience, I am able to touch type at a reasonable speed.

Learning how to type has come in decidedly more useful than French in the intervening years.

I found Mochi Type on the latest Bundlehunt sale, and it’s a gorgeous typing tutor. There are a plethora of color schemes, including the default Dracula-based theme. Mochi will teach you the basics, if you don’t know them already, but if you do, you can jump right in and practice. Error rate and words per minute are calculated after each one-minute practice session, and it shows your progress over time.

Colori

I’m not a designer, but I do like to view color palettes for setting up styles in applications like Ulysses and OmniOutliner. Colori offers 800 five-color palettes to inspire your design. It’s a satisfying digital version of the paint chips you’d find at a hardware store.

Sunday Serial: Staying Sharp, Hold My Notes, Unread RSS v5

It’s a hot mid-September weekend here in the Garden State. We notionally equate September as heralding the start of the fall, with the season’s attendant chilly nights, crisp days, and changing foliage. But September to me has always been a hot month. I went to a small Catholic school as a child, and back then, in the 80s, there was no air conditioning, and the boys’ uniforms mandated navy blue pants, which were thick and most unwelcome in hot weather. My high school experience was only marginally better: gray pants, but pants nonetheless, and no air conditioning. And like most schools, both were surrounded by parking lots and no shade.

So yeah: I’m a Gen Xer slowly gaining an appreciation for our generational toughness. Maybe it’s due to thermal conditioning.

Whatever Sundays are for, they are always a day to prep for the week ahead. For me, that means pre-packing my lunches and breakfasts, ironing shirts, and other quotidian tasks.

Staying Sharp

One not-so-quotidian task includes occasionally sharpening our kitchen knives. We have two German steel knives that we’ve had for over two decades: a Henckels chef’s knife, a Santoku knife, and a paring knife.

German steel knives are (in)famous for their soft steel, which means they are easy to sharpen, but also easily dulled. I’ve sharpened them using a few different methods over the years: an electric sharpener with two stages, a Lansky set of hones, and an oil stone I purchased at a local hardware store.

The electric sharpener does a nice job on the chef’s knife and my cheap cleaver, but not so much on the Santoku and paring knives. Unfortunately, the electric sharpener is wearing away the chef’s knife’s blade, but not the bolster, so I’m slowly creating a knife that’s not useful across its entire length.

I’ve watched a bunch of videos about sharpening knives using whetstones, and I’ve planned, for a long time, to eventually get a set of Japanese water stones and learn how to use them.

Curiosity got the better of me once again, and I found myself this weekend trying out the old oil stone I got at Ace Hardware years ago. I’ve rehabbed some beat up old pocket knives with it, much to my delight, but I haven’t used it on the kitchen set in a very long time.

I made a cheap 25-degree spacer out of an index card to check the angle of the knife on the stone, and got to work. I tested the results on one of Rhonda’s amazing garden tomatoes, and the results were great.

Hold My Notes

The software universe is rife with notes apps, and the Apple ecosystem boasts some fine choices for all tastes. I’m currently an Apple Notes user, largely because I love taking handwritten notes, and Notes’ Smart Script blows me away. If Apple made Smart Script available in, say, Notability, I’d probably migrate over to it, but I’m generally happy with Notes (more on that later in a different post that I’ve been working on).

There is a place, however, for other Notes on the Mac. I’ve enjoyed Tot, for example, with its very opinionated focus on a specific number of notes. I’ve used other menu bar-centric apps in the past to keep Mac-specific info at my fingertips, such as MailMate’s search modifiers; one great example is FiveNotes.

Apps like Bartender highlight the complication that comes with adding items to your Mac’s Menu Bar: too many icons in the menu bar likely results in not seeing anything there at all, or expending some cycles trying to figure out what you’re looking for up there. And keyboard commands? Useful for sure, but contrary to the visual advantages of having a graphical user interface.

Consider Apple’s longstanding Stickies app: it’s a Mac app. It’s only a Mac app. It hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s a full GUI affair, with rich text support. It migrated from the Mac’s Classic OS to OS X/macOS, and continues to come pre-installed on every Mac to this day. I still use it.

Outside of the Menu Bar, the edges of the Mac’s screen are a common place to add UI elements. Yojimbo, a great digital junk drawer, has long allowed users to drag all kinds of content to a shelf on the edges of the screen. And Yoink, one of my must-have infrastructural apps, lives on the left side of my screen.

Hold My Notes is a new app that takes advantage of the Mac’s edge-of-the-screen UI. In a landscape of plain-text notes apps, it’s a full-on GUI affair, with fetching tabs and pop-out card views. You can turn note contents into checklists, and change the background color of the note. You can pin a note to the screen to keep it in view, and archive notes that you don’t need to see. And the hover animation is absolutely delightful.

Despite the app’s visual richness, though, it doesn’t support rich text: dragging links to a note produces a plain-text link, which I don’t like at all. It is, in a sense, a Markdown note editor with a thoughtful GUI. To my mind, pulling a URL out of Safari and dropping it into Hold My Notes should behave the same way as Stickies: create a rich text note link, not a plain-text one. I want to drag a link or a screenshot to a note and have it appear just as it does in the system.

Hold My Notes supports iCloud syncing, and license costs less than a sawbuck for up to three Macs.

Unread RSS v5

Unread is one of my favorite RSS readers; it’s unique (to me) in that it’s fabulous on the iPhone and Mac, but not so great on my 13” iPad. On the Mac, it supports amazing themes and FeedBin, while on the iPhone, it presents your feeds in a most device-forward (and thoughtful) way. It is singular in its design on the iPhone.

Unread’s version 5 isn’t a redesign, but features welcome and meaningful improvements.

Labor Day Grill-Ba-Cue

We’re no strangers to prolific, year-round grilling since forever. A succession of Weber kettle grills–I’d say two over the last 30 years–have served us through sweltering summers and cold dark winters. This weekend is no exception.

Last night, we had my parents over to celebrate Labor Day, for which I cooked a picanha roast, a Brazilian steakhouse cut of beef. I cooked it in a sous vide tank for about four hours at 129°F before searing it on the grill. Picanha is a roast cut from the top sirloin, with a layer of fat on top. So in the tank and on the grill, it bastes itself sorta-kinda.

I had some apple wood from the last time we smoked ribs, and I decided to throw some on the fire yesterday. I can’t say that I noticed a difference (apple wood being a mild smoke), but I’m using the same technique, such as it is, with tonight’s dinner.

Today we’re having a growing grill staple recipe featuring chicken thighs. These always come out great and require such little attention. The local corn is still in season, and we have a complement of long hot peppers from the garden. Oh, and some heirloom tomatoes from the garden as well.

I made this habanero relish today: chopped habaneros, a sprinkle of kosher salt, and a dash of apple cider vinegar.

My cheeky title portmanteaus two similar, but distinct, methods of outdoor cooking. The roast was a straight-up grill: high heat and a short cook time. The chicken thighs were cooked low and slow over a couple of hours over indirect heat, and benefit a great deal from the smoke flavor. This brings my inner pedant great joy.

Sunday Serial for Labor Day 2026: Bellview Winery’s Saperavi, Cotypist iCloud Sync, and Newsairy RSS Reader

It’s a Sunday that feels like a Saturday!

I managed to replace the faucet in the upstairs kitchen; it was leaking a bit at the handle, and my previous attempt to remove the handle only made the leak worse. I put the repair off long enough to replace my basin wrench, which had gone missing.

I got the wrench and summoned the gumption to replace the faucet yesterday after coffee. I did not, in turns out, need the basin wrench; the design of the faucet is such that it includes the hot and cold water lines in the unit. It’s the second faucet I’ve replaced that came from the factory this way, but I forgot that it was a thing. So while removing the old faucet was a bit of a pain, once removed, the new installation was a breeze.

It’s a feeling of accomplishment to get something like that done. I always worry a bit with plumbing stuff that a supply pipe will break when I’m working on a faucet or another fixture, but happily, this was a quick and easy job. Special thanks to vice grip pliers and a can of Liquid Wrench for making it happen.

Bellview Winery’s New Red Wine: Saperavi

I stopped by Bellview Winery in Landisville, NJ, on Friday to pick up a couple of bottles of wine, and they had their new Saperavi on tap, which often precedes bottling at the winery, but is sometimes their way to test a new wine before going whole hog.

It’s a dark and luscious red, with notes of blackberry and black pepper. There’s a ton of berry up front before the tannins weight in. It’s a tart wine for sure.

I have a Picanha in the sous vide tank that’s going to pair nicely with this wine.

A new dry red grape coming soon to Bellview Winery. This red has notes of blackberry and black pepper. Fans of Syrah or Malbec should stop in and give this wine a taste.

Cotypist Sync

Cotypist version 2026.4 adds a feature that I was hoping for: iCloud Sync across your Macs. I have an M1 Studio at home, and a MacBook Air for work, and I use both enough that a shared base of autocomplete behavior would be very much appreciated in Cotypist.

One of the privacy-forward virtues Cotypist has always extolled is its on-device storage model: all of the processing happens on your Mac. In addition to not switching context to a chatbot, you use the app you need while Cotypist scaffolds your writing.

And now, we have encrypted sync across devices via iCloud.

Newsairy RSS Readers for iOS + iPadOS

Developer Enrico Bonaldo recently released his take on an RSS reader for iOS. Having too many RSS readers to choose from is a good problem to have; I serially switch between Unread, Reeder Classic, NetNewsWire, Current, and Fiery Feeds; I love each of them for the unique features that define their character.

Newsairy has a crisp look and feel. There are a number of settings to tweak to customize your reading experience. And Newsairy supports Feedbin, among other aggregators.

Weekend Culinary

I’m often impressed, if not merely satisfied, by the quality of the food we enjoy at home. Rhonda and I both very much love going out to dinner, but it’s nice to not only know your way around the home kitchen, but also to be able to make such abiding memories.

Porterhouse Steak and Potato Gratin

One of the nice things about Rhonda being home in the summer is that she picks up some special groceries when she’s out. This week, she stopped at Marcacci’s, our most frequently visited butcher, and picked up two porterhouse steaks. She had them cut to order, with the idea that we’d attempt to recreate our visit to Osteria in Philly.

I cooked the steaks sous vide at 128 degrees for a few hours; I rub them with olive oil, salt, and black pepper before confining them in a vacuum bag. After a bath in the tank and a short rest at room temperature, I finished them on the grill: lots of lump charcoal = lots of heat.

Meanwhile, Rhonda made a potato gratin, as well as the pearl onions and mushrooms that adorned the preparation we enjoyed at Osteria.

The potato dish was something Rhonda saw on Facebook, and there wasn’t a recipe for it, so she had to wing it. It came out great, though. And boy does it make for good pictures.

We enjoyed some of Bellview’s Argento red with dinner. I’m having some right now, in fact.

Breakfast Sammy

On Saturday, I had a three-egg omelette myself, but I made one of these for Joe. It’s a Bays English Muffin, with two fried eggs (prepared in a ring mold on the Blackstone), three strips of bacon, and two slices of Cooper Sharp. Oh yeah: buttered the muffin, too.

Sunday Serial: Bellview Winery’s Mixtape Blanc, Clues by Sam, and IndieBlog

Aaron is off to Rutgers for his second year of college. We rode up with him while I was on vacation to help get his apartment set up, and we briefly considered driving up with him yesterday for the same reason, but he was able to get everything in his car, and seemed confident that he’d be fine making the trip solo. So we white knuckled our Saturday afternoon while he made the journey, and then relaxed at Bellview for some wine and snacks. You never know when you’re doing too much, too little, or just enough. But we are definitely missing him today.

Bellview Winery’s Mixtape Blanc

I stopped by Bellview Winery Thursday after work to fill up a growler with their Gemini blend, which I’ve been enjoying very much. Sadly, they were out, and there was no other dry white on tap. One of the staff members suggested that I try their Mixtape blend, which is blended using their Gruner, Traminette, and Viognier grapes. It’s soft and fruity, perfectly dry. We had a bottle yesterday, too. I grabbed a bottle of their Leo, too, which we had last year at their 25th anniversary party. It’s more tart than the Mixtape, redolent with grapefruit flavors.

Clues by Sam

The New York Times’ Melissa Kirsch recently shared an online game, Clues by Sam. It’s a grid-based puzzle game where you have to identify the criminals in the array based on clues provided. It’s pretty challenging, but you can take your time with it.

Clues by Sam

IndieBlog

Andreas Gohr’s love letter to blogging isn’t a post about blogging; instead, it’s a service that connects you to a random post at a personal blog. It’s a great alternative to doom scrolling social media, and is a guaranteed way to find something interesting to read. The site even reminds you of the last six posts you’ve seen, with links to their Mastodon and RSS feeds.

IndieBlog.page

Friday’s Cheese Board

There’s hummus and veggies and salami too.

“One cannot think well, love well, or sleep well if one has not eaten well.”

On the wall at Osteria in Philly:

Sunday Serial, Vacation Edition: Control, SteelSeries Nimbus+, and Errata

I’m coming off of a week-long vacation, or staycation, if you will: we didn’t go anywhere in particular, save for the overnight in New Brunswick. I just made salads and boiled eggs for the week ahead. Of course there’s some Sunday scaries, but not too bad.

We did a lot of floating in the pool during the day. I’d usually have something for breakfast and then skip lunch, and then we’d have some cured meats and cheese and other pickings (peanuts, pipits) phon the deck or in the house while we cooked.

I follow Ina Garten’s hummus recipe, which I often make when we get together with friends. This is exactly what I did Wednesday after we got home from New Brunswick before meeting some friends at the Blue Rascal for drinks. I made a second batch on Thursday because it was so good, and we finished that one off by the pool yesterday while enjoying some spritzes. Rhonda’s at the store now getting some more ingredients so I can make another batch. It really comes out creamy and smooth. I’ve read that you have to remove the chick peas from their shell or skin, but this recipe doesn’t call for doing so, and everyone seems to like it.

Game On

Vacation is a good time to play a game or two; the work week doesn’t leave a lot of time for that, although I did enjoy Dredge earlier in the summer. I’ve been meaning to play Icewind Dale on the iPad for a while now, but I never end up getting around to it.

I’ve been gaming on an Apple computer for many years. We had the original Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple II, and a few other games to boot: Dig Dug, Sea Wolf, and many others.

My first Mac was Color Classic, and I enjoyed the hell out of playing Prince of Persia, Spectre, and Wolfenstein 3D. I eventually played through the original Doom and Doom 2, but my all-time favorite franchise is the Marathon series. I still have them installed on my Mac. Halo was a worthy successor, but Marathon always brings me back to my youth as a college student. We’d sneak into the bio lab on campus and install the demo on the networked PowerPCs on the lab tables and have a frag fest. What a blast.

There are lots of games over the years that I’ve sunk many hours into, not just on the Mac. I could never name them all, here’s a list of some notables:

Legend of Zelda (NES)
Metal Gear (NES)
Marathon (Mac)
Oni (Mac)
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Mac)
Metal Gear Solid (PSP)
Ocarina of Time (N64)
Halo (Mac)
Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Breath of the Wild (Switch)

I’m forgetting a ton of games for sure. I played a lot of Quake and Unreal Tournament on the Mac. Giants:Citizen Kabuto was a strange and wild standout. I’ve played through Max Payne a bunch of times, and the first-person shooter Star Wars games, especially Jedi Knight II, many times as well.

I have a nice little library of Steam games that I can play on the Mac. I watch for sales on wishlist items and buy them when they come up at an irresistible price. Outside of Metro Exodus and Firewatch (a game I’ve played through several times), most of them as started but unfinished, or not played at all. I likewise have been meaning to play Warcraft 3 for about 24 years now. It’s installed and ready to go. I purchased it on CD back in 2002 at the Marlton Apple Store, and I still have it installed via Battle.net. I really need to play it.

There are a couple of reasons for this, but primarily it’s because I don’t want to sit in front of my computer at night after we’ve cleaned up from dinner. That’s our chance to watch a little TV and maybe fart around with my iPad. Plugging into a game for real is more of a vacation thing.

Which happened to be this past week!

Control

I purchased Control on Steam a while back, but didn’t get far at all. I decided to pick it up for iOS yesterday, as it was only five bucks. I’ve played a couple of hours on the iPad and have been really enjoying it, except for that I think there was a bug that caused me to start the game over from the beginning. I wasn’t too far in to make that a big deal.

Just for kicks, I started it up on my Mac on Sunday through Steam. The graphics look a bit more detailed on the Mac, and as I expected, I love the keyboard and mouse compared to the touchscreen on the iPad.

It’s a third-person shooter, with a theme involving a government agency that’s investigating a mysterious power that possesses people. You play as Jesse Faden, whose brother’s disappearance is linked to the agency. It puts me in mind of Max Payne, where it’s a shooter, but the additional combat feature opens up heroine Jesse’s ability to pick up and throw objects. It makes for a cool 1-2 punch feature, a la Booker’s Vigors in Bioshock Infinite.

So I’m playing it simultaneously on the iPad and the Mac in such a way that progress on one device has no bearing on the other. I could download Control from the App Store onto an external hard drive (which is where I have my Steam library), but I would need to make some room on the drive. Or… get another drive. Hmmm.

One discovery I made is that Apple’s newish Games app shows not just your installed games from the App Store, but your Steam and Blizzard games, too. Pretty cool.

One thing about gaming on a computer is my mousing situation. I’m a left by birth, but I mouse right handed due to some RSI that I was developing years ago. Despite this, I can’t WASD+mouse with my right hand; I have switch back to left-handed mousing.

A lot of mice are designed to be ambidextrous, with sides that are symmetrical. My preferred mouse of choice, however, is the Logitech MX Master, which is made for right-handed users.

To this end, I not only have to swap my mouse to the left of the keyboard, I have to swap the mouse itself. I have a Logitech G300 for gaming. It’s cheap but it works.

SteelSeries Nimbus+

I am largely sports-avoidant: I just don’t watch them. I have, however, enjoyed a handful of sports games over the years, most of which I have never played the analog version of. NHL ’93 and ’94, a basketball game called Hoops on the Nintendo, and even a baseball game on the Sony PSP. I recently saw Madden 27 pop up for Apple Arcade, and I figured that, too, might be a fun game for a sport I don’t watch.

I suspected that Madden might be more of a controller based game than a touchscreen game. I’ve been thinking about getting a controller after trying one of the boys’ older Playstation controllers to play some games, like Gear Club:Stradale on the Mac (another sport, car racing, that I don’t watch but enjoy video games of). I had the original Nimbus controller for our Apple TV, and while it still pairs with my Mac, it’s definitely missing some features that make me think it’s outdated.

I found a refurbished Nimbus+ on Amazon for $35 bucks.

Wise Fools in New Brunswick

Arron will be a sophomore at Rutgers this coming fall, and he is moving out of the dorms and into a apartment. Rhonda and I drove up to New Brunswick this week to help him move some of his stuff, and he followed us in his car for practice, as he didn’t have it with him last year, and so has never driven on the formidable NJ Turnpike.

The house is pretty much what you would expect for a college frat house. We moved a big air conditioner into his room, which is the third floor and a converted attic. AC is a necessity! We put together some furniture, and came back the second day to finish the job after stopping to get pillows and, unplanned, a vacuum cleaner for his room.

It’s a neat space and reminds me of one of the dorms I lived in at Ursinus, specifically one of the rooms on the third floor. It was a converted house. It will be a very cool place to hang out with friends.

I booked a room for Tuesday night at a local Marriott, and made a reservation at Saltfor dinner. After we finished moving, we checked in and had cocktails that I made at home to enjoy in the room. We lit out for Salt after a quick rest in the room.

Salt was excellent from start to finish. They had a capacious selection of oysters, and so we ordered six Wellfleets (old favorites), six Kumamotos, and another six of another variety whose name escapes me. I skew briny with oysters, so all of them were described thus, but there was still a tremendous range of flavors. The Wellfleets were probably our favorites, with a sweet, meaty texture along with an assertive brininess. We gilded the appetizer lily by ordering some steamed PEI mussels and clams casino, too.

Dinner was a full fish-fest: I had the whole branzino, Rhonda the soft-shell crab, and Aaron the crispy skin Black Sea bass. Each of these were excellent: the branzino was perfectly cooked and beautifully presented with the head and tail intact, but on a nice small plate, making it look less like a giant meal and more of a humble fish for a hungry fella. The soft-shell crab was sweet and crunch without relying on a thick layer of breading or batter. Mission accomplished with that dish for sure. Aaron’s sea bass had a nice crispy skin, as promised, and served over a small mound of risotto.

Another standout: when I got fussy about our Manhattans, asking for a specific rye and vermouth, as well as the proportion of each, the server didn’t miss a beat. I’ve had servers frown and take a lot of notes, but our man nodded knowingly with each request. (For the record, we had WhistlePig rye 10 year, which I’ve only ever had once before, at Knife and Fork in Atlantic City. Salt also had the 15-year-old version.)

We had plans to meet some friends at the Blue Rascal in Hammonton on Wednesday night. We got up, checked out, and drove back to the apartment for the aforementioned tasks, and then set off for home. We couldn’t help stopping once again at the Szechuan House on the way home for lunch. It’s a great place to order a bunch of dishes and share.

Rhonda and I split a bottle of Bellview Rosé, and we ordered a few appetizers: cold sliced beef and tripe, which comes with a chili vinaigrette; Dan Dan noodles; an egg roll; and chicken dumplings with the chili vinaigrette. We also ordered salt and pepper prawns (heads on), Kung Pal chicken, and shredded pork. Everything was excellent once again, and the lunch obviated the need for dinner.

Philly Fun: Osteria and Tomahawk

Rhonda and I took off for Philly yesterday to see Tomahawk at Union Transfer. We had a lot of fun taking to boys to see the Foo Fighters two summers ago in Hershey, PA, and while we were tempted to reprise that trip, the Foo Fighters tickets were just too expensive.

I booked a room at Sosuite at Independence Lofts. They have a bunch of rooms on the ninth floor of a building in the Spring Garden section of the city. Like some of the more recent trips we’ve taken, Sosuite manages your check-in and check-out remotely; you don’t deal with a hotel manager or concierge. It was a great little room, with a nice view of the city, a queen size bed, bathroom, and kitchenette. It was perfect for a quick overnight.

We stopped by the Institute Craft Bar & Kitchen in the same building as our suite for a couple of drinks. We had Manhattans. It was the bartender’s first day on the job, so she needed a little direction. She even asked for our feedback (they were good).

Before the show, we had dinner at Osteria. It’s a more accessible version of Marc Vetri’s namesake restaurant. We shared the Frito miso, and we each tried a couple of the pasta dishes from the Primi section of the menu. (I learned by visiting the country twice that dinner in Italy isn’t a big plate of pasta; pasta is a small dish you enjoy before the second course, which is typically fish or meat.) I had the rigatoni, which is made with chicken liver, cipollini onion, and sage. I was torn between that and the tagliatelle, but when I asked our server what she recommended, she said the rigatoni is famous by dint of wining a James Beard Award. So that sealed the deal. Rhonda tried the Tortelli, which was served with sheep’s milk ricotta, brasied baby artichoke, and lamb bolognese. Both dishes were emblematic of both Vetri’s style and the Primi piatti tradition: just a few bites of pasta. We had a rosé with the appetizer and pasta.

The restaurant generously brought out a free pizza for us to share, which was a lot more food than we needed, but we were both keen to try it. It has a great chewy crust, charred on the undercarriage, but soft and chewy to the bite.

We splurged a bit and shared the T-bone steak special, which was superb. My general rule of thumb with steak in restaurants is to avoid it: I make it often enough at home, and it comes out pretty great. But this sounded too good to pass up, and provided a nice counterpoint to the carb-heavy pasta, focaccia, and pizza we’d enjoyed first.

There was nothing to regret with the T-Bone: it was expertly cooked to medium rare, cut Peter Luger style, with the sliced steak returned to its original place on the bone for serving. The platter was adorned with cippolini.

Osteria is a quick walk to and from our room, which was also a short walk from the venue. We strolled back to the room to drop off our leftovers, and then headed over to the show.

Union Transfer is a charming venue to say the least. It’s plenty small, if your tastes skew toward the intimate. It already pretty crowded when we got there, and after finding a place to stand upstairs, I went back downstairs to fetch us a couple of beers. I was on my way back up with our drinks when I heard the first strains of the Melvins, who were the show’s opener. I’m not familiar with the stuff, but man it sounded so tight. I grooved to the rest of their set. My only complaint is that we couldn’t find a place to stand that afforded us a view—any view—of the stage.

I checked out Union Transfer after the show online, and learned that it’s know for having great sound. I can’t disagree. Both bands were loud, but the sound was clear and intelligible. You could really feel it in the room.

Sunday Serial: Car Care and Software

Bloody hell: I’ve been wrestling with the lawnmower for a couple of days now. I put a new deck belt on because something wasn’t working, and I noticed it looked pretty chopped up. That didn’t entirely solve the issue, and I came home from running a couple of errands to find Rhonda trying to mow with the clutch slipping off.

I got the clutch back on after some struggles in the blazing mid-day sun, but there’s still something up with the deck belt again. I’m gonna have to fart with it again in the very near future.

I reprised the excellent smoked baby back ribs and spareribs meal from Fathers Day; Rhonda was out running some errands earlier in the week, and found ribs on sale at one of the local butchers. She made Cooper sharp mac and cheese to go with. Tonight: the competition barbecue chicken thighs once again.

Tomorrow I’m taking a half day, and Rhonda and I are rolling over the bridge to Philly to see Tomahawk and the Melvins at Union Transfer in Spring Garden. I’ve never been to Union Transfer, and I’ve never seen Tomahawk, despite being a fan for the last twenty years. We have a five pm rez at Osteria, which is Marc Vetri’s pizzeria and casual dinner spot. It’s gonna be great I think.

Rhonda painted the deck stairs and railings this week. She used a Sherwin-Williams paint that really looks good. Is thick a way to describe paint? I’m not sure. But it looks great.

I regret missing last Sunday’s installment of Sunday Serial. I had a lot of fun on Saturday night with some old friends, and writing wasn’t even on the radar.

Foam Cannon

I used a foam cannon that I got from my dad some time ago for the first time today; Aaron and a buddy used it earlier in the week. I had to find the correct parts to connect it to my pressure washer, but it’s all connected and working now.

It was a lot of fun to foam up the cars and let the foam sit (the luxurious word in the car entertainment space is “dwell”) for a few minutes before rinsing them off. I was hoping that this would allow me to skip a formal hand washing, but the results were not that good. I’ll add this as a step before a good hand wash, and as an intermediate wash between hand washings.

303 Convertible Top Protectant

Back in the summer of 2003, I traded in my Ford Contour for a gently used 2000 Toyota MR2 Spyder. It was my first convertible car and I developed some neurotic anxiety about caring for the top. I used a specific Raggtopp cleaner and protectant back then in the hopes of extending the top’s life. I’m not nearly as anxious about Miata’s top, but I do think it wise to care for it to the degree that I can. In southern New Jersey, the summers are dry and hot, and there’s a lot of sun for a car to soak up. And I don’t have a garage, so winters will be rough on the top for sure.

To this end, I applied 303 Convertible Top Protectant after a good wash and treatment with 303’s cleaner. I’m looking forward to seeing beaded dew on the top in the morning.

PasteBot 3

PasteBot is one of my favorite clipboard history munger utilities for the Mac. I came to it via the iOS version, which has long since ceased to exist. I remember Merlin Mann raving about the iOS version, which compelled me to try it.

Version three moves to a modern take on subscription apps: you pay one price for the new version, and subsequent years will net you new updates that have dropped for a reduced price. Bike uses this model, but perhaps Agenda made it famous.

I’ve been looking hard at my subscriptions lately, being a little more fastidious about whether I really use the subs I have, and cancelling ones I don’t need. But PasteBot is a good app, and one I use a lot.

iCanBike

Sagami: Classic Sushi, Hold the Mayo

We also hit up Sagami for an early dinner on Friday. Sagami, for those unfamiliar, is a fantastic sushi restaurant just outside of Philadelphia. For me personally, it’s the first place I ever had sushi. I had just graduated from college, and gotten a job in Camden City, which found me driving all around Camden County. I took mental notes of all of these interesting places I’d pass during the work day, and the Rhonda and I would light out for dinner and drinks on the weekends, often trying places I’d spied during the week. Interestingly enough, she had been there once before we went. But that was my first blush with raw fish, save for a fraternity prank, and it was illuminating and instructive.

I can’t possibly know enough about Japanese cuisine to speak authoritatively about it, but what I have always appreciated about Sagami is the utter simplicity of the presentation. Later sushi excursions have found me staring at complex maki, with fish inside, fish outside, and a goopy mayonnaise squirted about.

Sagami doesn’t play that game.

We shared some edamame, and then I ordered some fried oysters, and the following list:

Negi toro roll
Sashimi:
– Hokaido uni
– engawa
– hotate
– salmon
– hamachi

Sublime.

Classic Styles, Tonewood’s Touch

Yesterday, Rhonda and I dropped Aaron and Joey off at the House of Fun and headed over for a couple of beers at Tonewood.Brewing in Barrington, NJ. Tonewood’s non‑IPA beers consistently stand out; they don’t read as perfunctory crowd‑pleasers aimed at the Budweiser set, though widening their appeal may well be a factor. They feel like deliberate, respectful riffs on time‑honored styles. That’s no knock on their IPAs, though, which are excellent.

Yesterday, I tried the Birdie Rice Lager, and the Picnic American Pale Ale.

Birdie Rice Lager 4% : Light refreshing and crushable! Our Rice lager is brewed with Extra Pale Pilsner Malts, Jasmine Rice and Acidulated then hopped with Saaz, Mandarin Bavaria and Lemondrop.

Tonewood Picnic Pale Ale

Picnic American Pale Ale 4.8%: Notes of orange water ice, mango and papaya fruit cups, sticky pine sap and a fresh Spring breeze in Yakima

I nearly got the Slipstream Pub Ale again, but I wanted to try the Picnic. I still want to try the Slipstream on the hand pump at their Oaklyn location.