porked

i feel very lucky that there are dozens of excellent, worthy restaurants in asheville that i am thrilled to patronize.

for instance, i love 9 mile, salsa's, the early girl, laughing seed, limones, marco's pizza, sunny point, and 12 bones. i would recommend any of these restaurants at any time to anybody.

i can not say the same about havana, the bright pastel cuban place downtown. we went off a recommendation from a friend, and it looked interesting from the outside, but we were sadly disappointed.

this is going against thumper's rule if you can't say something nice don't say nothing at all, but it was too bad and too expensive to let it go.

it would be one thing if the prices were low, or even reasonable, but for $14 a plate, at a place that clearly did not spend money on decor, i expect a heaping plate of good food.

we started off with weak mojitos in small glasses full of ice. ($7)

i ordered arroz con pollo ($14). first came out a 'dinner salad' which consisted of shredded iceberg lettuce with shredded carrot sticks swimming in canola oil and salt and pepper. it was...not good....

then the waitress came out and said the arroz con pollo wouldn't be ready for a few hours so could i order something else? i ordered the garlic calamari appetizer for my dinner. it was billed as 'lightly fried and tossed in a special mix.' what came out was a plate of thick rings only, wet with dark grease, seemingly from a bag in the freezer. ($9)

my friend ordered the first thing on the menu - columbia lechon - and the waitress recommended it saying "he is known for his pork." the pork was good - tender and spicy and fresh. the mango on top of it was tangy and a good complement. the rest of the plate was extremely blah. black beans from a can, clumpy white rice, dry yucca fries, and soggy plantains. ($14).

we spent $60 and left hungry and sad. maybe we misordered, or went at a bad time, but with all the great restaurants downtown i'm not sure how this place will stay afloat.

under construction

i changed the template for this blog around this weekend, the first update since finding some crap template on the internet when i started in 2006.

dealing with html and technicalities and change is always frustrating and infuriating, but after some hyperventilating i think it looks pretty much the same with the shiny new corporate blogger template, but now there's a link at the bottom to go to older posts, and the comments should be easier to work.

baby steps...

shrimp people

went down to spartanburg yesterday to see neil young solo. i'd never seen him live and was struck by how he made his instruments sound like 2 or 3 people were playing at once.

the tailgate before the show was the best tailgate i've ever been to. my dad gave us a box of frozen shrimp to carry on to the plane back in march and kevin made shrimp pierre and they were completely scrumptious and completely gone by the end of the night.

thank you shrimppeople.com!

shrimp pierre recipe:

young buck

saw this long lost little cousin of my brother henry while walking nacho. he is super sweet. they stuck their noses through the fence and licked each other.

ump's heads

if i were an umpire and needed an x-ray of any kind, i would go to asheville radiology and demand free service.

window

I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God.
- Frances Farmer

i want a baby polar bear!

looking west

smoky mountains at sunset

also the title of the new tea leaf green album - http://tealeafgreen.com/album/looking-west

peace and chicken grease

what happens when a dog sticks his head under the grill while chicken is cooking?

firstborn sex same as dog?

i have done a highly unscientific study involving everybody i can think of which supports the conclusion that the sex of a first child is likely to be the same as the sex of the dog those people own.

i would say 75-85% of people i can think of who own/owned a dog before having a child are blessed with a baby of that same gender. it is not 100% and there are exceptions to every rule, but it seems to be the great majority. it does not hold as true for second or third babies.

think of someone you know who had a boy baby.

did they have a boy dog?

is this true across the board or just with people that i know?

if it's true - why? do the dogs emit hormones?

is it true for cats too?

chime in!

william christopher mctammany

my brother and angela had their baby! monday night almost midnight. i think 5-10-10 is a sweet birth date. he was 8lbs 1 oz. they named him william. i asked chris if it was after braveheart, and he said 'obviously.' they're going to call him will. i'm going to call him willie. ang pushed him out with no drugs whatsoever. i want drugs just thinking about it. he's pretty freakin adorable!

breakfast burrito chorizo cheese grits

also from sunny point, cheese grits and a breakfast burrito involving eggs and peppers and other manner of deliciousness including chorizo which is tasty sausage crumbled up like ground beef and not in a casing or any weiner form.