Dodger Stadium with Dad

Before he left for home, Dad's oldest brother Uncle Don gave us his Dodger tickets for Friday Night Fireworks. Traffic wasn't bad, we had a full supply of food and assorted other snacks, and the Dodgers won the second of their four-game series against the Cubs.

It was fascinating to watch the stream of fans pour onto the field, as the Dodgers allow all fans to watch the fireworks from the outfield grass. The best display, however, was from one of the first fans to get onto the field, as he plopped down on the grass and proceeded to make a "snow angel" motion with his arms and legs. And given that the quality of the grass at Dodger Stadium rivals that of most golf course greens (and is often smoother and softer than most home carpets) it was a fitting gesture.

Breakin' the Wall

The internet has made us more detached and isolated than ever before. Don't want to go to a store? Amazon will deliver right to your door. So when Joy the Baker announced that she was having a rooftop picnic to bring her readers together in person, I was amazed. Not that she would be so generous as to cater a complete picnic, complete with her homemade cupcakes, for people she'd never met, but that so many people would actually come.

It's a testament to the power of food, and more importantly, people that love food, that made Sunday's picnic such a success. I not only got to meet Joy the Baker, who was as charming and funny in person as she is on-line, but also people like the lovely couple behind Savour-Fare. Their little girl knew exactly what to do with her cupcake, and enjoyed every bite.

Lunch With Dad

I don't get a chance to see my parents very often, perhaps twice a year at most. So when Dad came out to help both my sister and me move into our respective new homes, I wanted to find some way to spend quality time with him. "Uncle" Dave, one of Dad's most longtime friends, suggested the new Chalet Edelweiss restaurant near us on Sepulveda, and the three of us took a break from packing and moving boxes for lunch.

Dad isn't what you would call the most adventurous of eaters, so for him, the Swiss mac and cheese with beef and applesauce on the side fit him perfectly. Uncle Dave got a traditional German schnitzel with red cabbage and potatoes, and I had a biergarten favorite, wurstsalat. While a little pricey (and a little noisy from the street and airport), the pitcher of Bitburger smoothed things over, and the food was generally good.

But the best part was being able to treat Dad and Uncle Dave and spend time with them, and as the older we all get, that's what I'll remember.

Geekdom

Though I'm not a parent or spouse and don't play one on TV, Wired magazine's on-line feature Geek Dad ("Raising Geek Generation 2.0) consistently has great reading. Most notably, this feature that ran last month: Top Ten Endearing Habits of a Geeky Spouse.

Some samples . . .

8. Finding the best deals in grocery stores. Not everyone will notice that, even though the 12-pack of Coke cans is on sale for $3, it’s still not as good a deal per unit as the 2-liter bottle at its regular price of $1.29. But a geek will — we knew math skills would come in handy one day, even if nobody else thought so!

7. Watching, quoting and generally loving the Muppets. Even if the person we’re courting isn’t a huge Muppets fan, there’s no decent person who doesn’t like them at least a bit, right? I can speak from personal experience here: My wife freely admits that one of the things that she found particularly attractive about me was when, on our first date, I knew the punch line to “Good grief, the comedian’s a bear!” (The circumstances under which this fact was revealed are less interesting than you may imagine.)

1. Cooking. I’m sure there are lots of geeks who don’t like to cook, or don’t think they do, but if you’re one such, I humbly suggest you give it another few tries. Cooking has so much geek potential it’s a wonder it’s not considered a “typical” geek activity: you’ve got lots of different ingredients to pick from, measuring implements, heat, chemical reactions, gadgets galore and a great deal of nuance. Plus, it’s like doing scientific experiments where you get to eat the results! And there are few things more endearing to potential life partners than being able to cook well (and not just on a grill).

Remembering Uncle Walter

He may have retired as the anchor of the CBS Evening News when I was only 10, but I can still vividly remember Walter Cronkite delivering that day's news in my living room. It was on a television that only got seven or eight channels, had a dial that I was frequently chastised for flipping too vigorously, and had a set of floppy rabbit ear antennas, but for that half hour, it had my parents' attention.

I suppose I never paid much attention to the news back then, but somehow the warm, genial delivery of "Uncle Walter" stuck with me, because he was always held up as the gold standard of television news throughout my entire college career. My broadcasting and production professors always stressed his most under-recognized, yet most valuable talent: his writing. By starting as a newspaper reporter, he always knew how to find stories, but more importantly, how to convey information clearly and concisely to his audience.

With the plethora of celebrity deaths in recent weeks, the passing of Walter Cronkite is the most meaningful for me. Robert Lloyd, the television critic of the Los Angeles Times, summed up the impact of his passing best: "There are many more rooms in the mansion that is television news nowadays, but they have grown proportionately smaller; they are no longer fit for giants."

And Walter Cronkite was the last of the giants.

Ahi in the Morning

Last Saturday before heading to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, Bumper and I wandered around the farmers' market in Playa Vista. Amid the usual assortment of fresh fruit, vegetables, and herbs, was a fish stand, selling both raw, and cooked and plated fish. Bumper decided that the seared ahi salad would make a nice breakfast, and while I like tuna as much as anyone, 10:00 a.m. is a little early for me.

Brown Sugar Bacon Waffles

It's a well-known fact (channeling my best Cliff Clavin) that bacon makes everything better. So when Joy the Baker posted her recipe for Brown Sugar Bacon Waffles a few months ago, everything inside me said, "Mmmmm . . . bacon."

But you just can't enjoy this kind of bacony goodness by yourself. It has to be shared, mostly because you need someone to call 911 if you lapse into a bacon coma. So last week while on vacation with my cousin John and his family, out came the recipe.

First off, caramelizing the brown sugar on the bacon was messy, but only in that the pan was a P.I.T.A. to clean. Imagine candied bacon, and that's basically what it is. Thankfully, Joy the Baker recommended letting the bacon cool before chopping it, because even chilled, it's sticky as all get out; I can only imagine how hard it is to handle warm.

The wet and dry ingredients are fairly straightforward, and the chopped bacon pieces are just folded into the combined ingredients. The trick, though, is to stir the batter gently each time a scoop is placed on the waffle iron, because the bacon tended to sink to the bottom of the batter.

The final product, at least to me, tended to be a bit dry, but perhaps that's because I've been spoiled by John's third-generation butter waffles (with major props to Aunty Lou and Grandma's recipe that he follows). And as any good German-descended family knows, butter goes on any- and everything, so some condiments moistened the waffles up considerably.

It almost became a treasure hunt for us as we ate, looking for the hidden nuggets of sweet bacon goodness nestled in the fluffy recesses of waffle. And every so often, one of us would mutter through a mouthful of waffle, "Ohhh . . . that was a good one."