I ate buffalo tonight. Buffalo tacos. While the meat had a flavor that was a bit unusual, it grew on me after awhile. It certainly is lean meat; I like that about it. My wife and I bought a couple of pounds of buffalo meat not long ago and froze it. Recently, my wife made an interesting dish of ground buffalo meat, canned tomatoes, spices, and black beans. Very good! And she made another interesting dish last night, with habañero sausage, canned tomatoes, and other stuff (I don't recall) that was wonderful.
The tacos were good tonight. I did my usual, spicing the meat with massive doses of chile powder, a bit of ground oregano, lots of ground cumin, garlic powder, salt & pepper. I chop onions and tomatoes to add to the meat after it's in the taco shell. And, I put a bit of Pace picante sauce on the tacos. And tonight, I added some habañero salsa, which tastes wonderful and very nearly caused me to shed my skin. My god, that stuff is hot!
I've been walking on eggshells since Monday, hoping that my conversation with my recently-hired employee and my wife's emails with her would result in her return. She left after only 3 days on the job, when her grandfather died. He had been living in Denver, but was originally from New Orleans. My employee had never experienced a death in the family and was, apparently, really traumatized by it. She wanted to spend more time than she thought we would be willing to give with her family. My wife communicated with her, trying to get a sense of whether she really wanted/liked the job and wanted to return. I spoke to her on Monday and she said she wanted to come back today. And she did! I hope she stays; she seems positive and pleasant and intelligent.
This is all good, AND she is African American. I value having a diverse workplace. We have an Hispanic woman on staff and a young woman from Australia and now, an African American woman. If we grow and add more staff, I'd like to add more diversity...I'm not hiring on the basis of ethnicity, but if the opportunity presents itself with ethnically diverse candidates with good skills and promise, it can make a difference in my decision-making. We once had a young woman on staff who was born and spent most of her life in India. It's really interesting to have people from other cultures close at hand. I like to learn about them and their experiences. If I could build a large company with a large staff, one of my objectives would be to create a diverse workplace. The only area of diversity about which I would not encourage discussion is religion; I don't care if a person is Catholic, Methodist, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or Atheist, but I don't want them wearing their religious beliefs on their sleeves. They keep it to themselves unless others have an obvious interest, and then they share only privately. No religion at the office. That's my mantra.
Saturday, my wife and I head to Boston to visit her sister and boyfriend-in-law. We get there late mid-afternoon. We'll have a quick burst of socializing with them on Saturday and Sunday, then I head out early Sunday evening on KLM to Amsterdam, then to Frankfort, then to Dubrovnik. I wish I were looking forward to the trip, but I'm looking at it as work, with complications caused by travel and time-changes thrown in. I am sure I will like Dubrovnik once I'm there, but I don't travel well as a loner. When my wife is with me, I envision having fun. When I travel alone, I envision tolerating interactions with people I may or may not like, but with whom I share little.
My wife told me this afternoon that a member company of a client association landed an account in Dallas. The two guys who own the company visited recently and we went to visit them in their funky hotel and took them to dinner. The guys say they will be back in Dallas sometime in July. My wife wants to invite them, when they come, on a lunch adventure. That is, she wants to invite them on a road trip like we used to take regularly; drive 4+ hours to Llano, Texas to have lunch at Cooper's Barbeque.
Cooper's is a uniquely Texan experience, I think. My wife and I love the place. When you arrive at Cooper's on the western edge of Llano, you park, then walk to the covered smoking pits outside the front door of the restaurant (there's always a line). The grills are outdoors under a huge tin-roof covered area. The grillman who is tending the meat asks what you want...as you gaze down at huge volumes of sausage links, steaks, brisket, chickens, pork chops, etc. You point at what you want, he cuts it (or just stabs it), dips it into a vat of BBQ sauce, then slaps it onto a cafeteria style tray. You take the meat inside, where you select various sides, then have the meat weighed, and pay for it. They put your meat on white butcher paper for you and give you some utensils.
Once you pay, then you go to the condiment area, where you get beans, iced tea, onions, etc. At the picnic-style tables, where there are usually dozens of people seated, you find an empty spot and sit down. There, you'll find loaves of white bread, big jars of jalapeños, jars of dill pickles, and other goodies. Then, you chow down! It's a wonderful experience and the food is fabulous. I can almost enjoy white bread in that environement (but not quite). I'm sure the experience of selecting the meat from the grill before you even walk in the door has something to do with the appeal. So does the family-style dining at picnic tables. And even the rural redneck clientele has a certain appeal. Go. You will enjoy it.
Anyway, back to my wife's interest in inviting the guys. They are interesting people and very generous and thoughtful. They both have a great sense of humor and share my wife's and my political views. People like them make it easier for me to be liberal in my attitudes about gays; I can't really understand how a person can be gay (I guess you can't really understand unless you have been there), but I have no problems whatsoever with people who are gay. People who are anti-gay truly piss me off...ignorant bastards. Back to their political view; they lean left. I think I lean far more to the left than most people (them included) realize; I hesitate to reveal that I am in favor of mandatory presidential euthanasia whenever the president's IQ dips below 40. While none of them like Bush, I'm not sure they want him tanned and turned into a belt as much as I do.
I'm blogged out for the moment. I have the interest, but not the energy. Bye for now.
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