Sunday Morning Smoke

I know what you can do with your hands, Vince. All those great recipes you've been talking about through the years, including desserts. Start working on them now, no pork or shellfish please, when done, flash freeze them and send them to me. I'll eat most of it, and send you cigars for when you can resume smoking. I'll also go into the food shipping business. You cook it, I'll distribute it. We'll be The Second Coming of Harry and David.

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

You've got a really good point there. Talk about eating all the profits. By the way, I haven't opened it yet, but that box of Don Carlos robustos just came in, the one I asked you for advice about on the price. I also purchased a new digital hygrometer, since the other one had been dropped so many times being switched around the four desk tops, that it just plain broke. Can't wait to start sending out some packages. I couldn't pass up the chance for some Don Carlos, since they're usually so expensive. Thanks again for the advice. Keep us posted on Mike, and your own situation. Are you x'ing off the days on the calendar until you can smoke your next cigar?

FuManchu and I rose early this morning, sneaking out of the house (after we raided the refrigerator); making our way down to Havensight harbor in the pre-dawn, before all the 1970s and 80s Chrysler and Chevy cabs and open top tour trucks begin to stream down to the ocean liner docks looking for business. We were careful not to wake Le Madame or my daughters, stopping long enough to make a sandwich, and a thermos of coffee (of course cigars were included (Fu does have problems as an assistant in food preparation; he is a “snacker” and tends to want to eat now and worry about later…later – we have discussed this several times, but it has not helped, to date.

Coffee on the boat this morning was Sumatran. IMO, this is a very full-bodied, concentrated coffee. The flavor is sweet, earthy and has gutsy richness. Sumatran is an Indonesian coffee grown by small farmers who may only have a few trees on their property, and they process coffee by the dry method, i.e., the ripe coffee cherries are pulped by hand and spread in the sun to dry rather than being rinsed (wet method) in water overnight. The net result of dry-processed coffee is a very heavy body and very full flavor. It's not the most refined or elegant coffee you can drink, but it has a “wake up and see the day” flavor and a nice foamy head in the cup. As an old Turkish proverb says: “Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and as sweet as love.”

My cigar: A Sancho Panza Belicoso (Vitola is Campana). For starters, this is not a beautiful cigar; a lot of veins on the wrapper and the construction on the cap (for a Cuban) was a little iffy, IMO. However, the draw was what you can expect from a good cigar: smooth and easy. When I torched the stick it instantly tasted of pepper, (and I mean a lot of pepper – Bloofington: IMO you would be safe to stand on the other side of a room with a Kleenex in one hand and a fire extinguisher in the other). After about a half inch, the pepper turned into creamy tastes of chocolate and vanilla. It took me about an hour and a half to finish this smoke. No relights were necessary.

My wife and I had a good trip to French Polynesia. IMO, people go there to live it up in stylish resorts (we stayed with friends), stuff themselves with French food prepared South Pacific style (I did that – just be sure to pack Pepto and mix it with your Scotch) and scuba dive with tons of tropical fish (I worked, Le Madame scuba'd). IMO, French Polynesia has become a tropical paradise myth for Europeans (probably Americans, too). Tahiti, for example is the biggest and most famous island, but most of the pictures you see in a travel agent’s books are most likely to be of some other French Polynesian island. The beaches are spectacular – especially the nude ones. I’ve always wondered why there are beaches with signs that say “Topless” or “Nude” but none that say “Bottomless”. My wife just glares and mutters under her breath when I bring it up (which I did at a dinner party while we were there). Life is full of unanswered questions.

After Fu and I admired the sunrise and watched smoke cuts rise up from the stacks of two liners at anchor in St. Thomas, we decided it was time for breakfast. I poured the last of the Sumatran into my thermos cup and divided the brown bread sandwich layered with mashed potatoes and potato chips in half and shared with my first mate. My wife, of course, would be furious if she knew about this, i.e., my blood pressure, and how bad it is for the dawg. But, to quote James Beard a well-known American Chef: “A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch."

P.S. – Vince, my profound sympathies on your having to give up cigars for 3 months. As George Burns once said: “I smoke 10 to 15 cigars a day. At my age I have to hold on to something.”

cian

Ahhhhhh, Sumatran Mandheling, one of my all-time favorite coffees, always will be. I don't think you'll ever be able to teach Fu about later. :cryinlaugh:

Tofu's great stuff. I eat it all kinds of ways. Of course, I don't do the prep like Vince, but I have it in a lot of foods that you can buy, like sandwiches, or the plastic containers with tofu pieces in a curry sauce, sweet and sour sauce, barbecue sauce, pieces of carrot, other things they put in there. They put pineapple squares in the sweet and sour tofu, but of courrrrrrrse.

Maybe he wanted your cigars! :mrgreen: :cryinlaugh: umpkin:

HAHAHa I can just imagine what would happen if I tossed a stick and said "fetch" to a woman...

Vince, and please everyone, I'm not talking about "heel and toe" walking here, but if you walked 2.5 miles in 32 minutes, that is VERY, VERY fast for walking that isn't deliberately done in emulation of the type performed in track and field, VERY fast, trust me. My absolute top walking speed on level ground is a 12 minute mile, a pace which I can keep up for quite a while, and there are few around who can keep up with me for ONE mile. Trust me, you walked that 2.5 miles VERY fast, and you're in great shape. Keep it up. Can't wait to hear some more progress. Go with The Lord.

No Vince, 32 minutes for 2.5 miles is 12 minutes and 48 seconds per mile. I can walk 2.5 miles in 30 minutes. Try again. :cryinlaugh: :neer: :rotflmao:

I've probably hit less than 12 minutes for my best mile, but overall, 12 minutes a mile is my basic top speed. That's really fast walking Vince, and if anyone in the world can walk eight minutes per mile, they're not far from being in the Olympics. I was talking about non-Olympic style walking. The 32 minutes you did for 2.5 miles is quite fast, as previously stated.

Also, a heart rate of 55 is "world class athlete" level, so you're definitely doing something right. Keep it up. :thumbsup: