Wordpress isn’t letting me do what I want with the pictures so I have created a separate page for images:
No, we are not going this time but folks from Inveneo are. We have been working all week to get ready. I’ve been posting what I’m doing on Twitter and I’ll be posting some of the pictures I’m taking around the office here.
http://www.manresarestaurant.com/
This weekend we went to Manresa, as guests of our friends for their wedding rehearsal dinner. This sort of thing is typically as much as I ever get of “Fine Dining” as we usually either cook at home or grab something from a nearby taqueria. (I recently mentioned to someone “I’m not sure the last time we ate anywhere that even takes reservations.”) But I do vaguely stay informed of trends, mainly to see how I might apply them in my own cooking. So you can take this in the context of someone who cooks, but is not a hardcore restaurant-visiting foodie. I had never heard of the place, and indeed it was the second choice for our hosts as the other restaurant had suddenly gone out of business. From looking at the websites of both, perhaps the other might have been a better option for the stubbornly picky eaters in the group, but so be it.
The location in Los Gatos hinted at a certain pretentiousness that I typically avoid, in the same way I don’t hang out in Noe Valley. On some tables there were large arrangements of roses, clearly awaiting romantic dinner dates to arrive. But we were greeted warmly despite having to move the reservation 30 minutes for being late and several in the party obviously uninterested in the suggested business casual attire. Our servers spent as much time as we needed to explain the menu, which was helpful. It was mostly taken up with the groom’s parents, although I was able to inquire about a few things that seemed dangerously dairy-laden. The way it works is once seated you order four items from the menu and they are served in something vaguely resembling a traditional sequence of courses. (I would imagine most people do get salad/soup/entree/dessert or thereabouts, but this is not at all required.)
First arrived the bread, which was a spectacular sourdough. If it wasn’t hearth baked, then that is some mighty impressive oven they must have there to get that kind of result: a touch of carbon on the outside and chewy and moist inside with huge holes. Yes, moist, which is damn hard to get in a yeast bread that has any kind of rise whatsoever. Made me wax nostalgic for my late, lamented sourdough starter. At any rate, I ate a lot of it.
Next were two different items: a strawberry gazpacho and some sort of savory cream made to look like an egg and served in an eggshell. I was expecting an amuse-bouche and thought the gazpacho was it, but then arrived the egg. I noticed our host (who is vegan) had something else entirely. I asked the server what it contained and when I politely pushed it aside she offered to bring a non-dairy option, a grape? granita with flavored soda of some sort. So that was nice (and I liked the granita) although being unfamiliar with the menu I wish I had known I could have requested more explicitly non-dairy options. (Mostly that was not a problem until it came to dessert.)
My first course was sea bream sashimi, with olive oil and seasonings. It was laid out in thin slices to cover the center of the plate in a circle, I have no idea what the little shredded tower of something was in the center (radish?) but it tasted good. I like raw fish. Next was a soup, a puree of greens poured over some vegetables, whole and in pastes, and a mustard sauce already in the bowl. The “mustard cream” had a little dairy in it but not enough to be a concern. I liked the texture of the crunchy sweet corn and getting a little of this and a little of that from the different flavors was fun.
Dillo had a dish of vegetables prepared several ways, cooked and raw that was exceptional. Little tiny vegetables of all sorts, although in the dim light I couldn’t begin to say what most of them were. There was reportedly a fennel bulb that Dillo much appreciated. The cooking broth was made into a foam, which I’m kinda unsure about, but it tasted ok. I understand foams are a hot foodie thing right now, so whatever. The veggies were enough right there. Our hosts, one vegan and one vegetarian, always have this dish. Then he had the lobster with cardoons, pickled green strawberries, foie gras and some other stuff I can’t remember. He wasn’t a fan of the duck liver but we liked the rest. Strawberries in a savory dish was unexpected. The parents of the groom ordered the same thing and were clearly disappointed their plates with a small bit of lobster mixed with other things didn’t come with butter, lemon and a bib.
Next I had roast pork, medallions of what might have been tenderloin with a layer of fat that was crispy and fried on the outside. Like thick potato chip crispy. Fried pork fat is yummy so I really liked that and the meat was good too. Not dry or anything. Dillo had chicken, I don’t remember quite what was with it but he set the chicken skin off to the side of the plate and dangerously close to mine, so it vanished when he wasn’t looking. About now we were really feeling sorry for the staff, who had to deal with the father of the groom sending back his chicken because it was “raw.” And after the second attempt we determined that his idea of properly cooked chicken is grilled until dry so his moist chicken breast was unceremoniously pushed away, uneaten.
The dessert selections were a problem, all of them featured stuff I can’t eat like ice cream and coffee. I ordered the apple dish with the ice cream on the side, thinking that would avoid most of the dairy. Well it came layered like a Napoleon with apple, caramelized sugar and cream. Very attractive, but more dairy than I was willing to deal with. I was able to pick it apart and give Dillo the cream part (swapping it and the ice cream for his beignets) but it was a little messy. Our host had requested something entirely different and vegan. Since we ordered everything at the start, I didn’t know what was going on when I could have more conveniently done something about it. I only found out later that our host had requested basically his entire meal specially made vegan. After all the fuss with the chicken incident, I wasn’t about to embarrass him any further by pressing the subject regarding my dessert. I can deal.
All in all I enjoyed the meal, even if my unfamiliarity with the menu and the chef made a couple things a little more of a surprise than I might have preferred. The portion size was modest, but with several courses plus bread it’s not like I was hungry after. I actually prefer that to having to choose only one thing and even then taking part of it home. (We were staying in a hotel, so this was less than desirable.) I was willing to experiment so I wasn’t intimidated by various stuff I didn’t recognize on the menu. This is absolutely the kind of place where you are there for the experience and to be entertained, not merely to count the nutritional values and see that they add up.
Our servers had everything totally under control, every course came out together even for a large party and no water glass was permitted to be less than half full. (I will note that the orchestrated service is a little less creepy for those not accustomed when you don’t feel outnumbered by the staff.) They also graciously handled cranky parents, although I would not choose to bring certain people to such a place. Whether or not we go back will depend on a great many other things (this was very expensive, getting to Los Gatos is a big pain and so is a meal that runs late into the evening) but I would be happy to make a return visit. If they were open earlier on weekends I would totally go mid-afternoon, as it was I was grateful to have taken a nap earlier in the day so I could make it past 9pm without threatening to fall over.
For various reasons, I’ve found myself needing to decode email file attachments in base64. (It’s ugly and involves mailx. You don’t want to know.)
Here’s how to do it:
openssl base64 -d -in infilename -out outfilename
from macosxhints.com
More stuff documented so I don’t forget it. Also, this is my manual upgrade process for WordPress. In this case, I’m going from 2.5 to 2.8.
Backup my hacked akismet. I modified it to write a logfile, so I’ll put the old version back in after the upgrade. One of these days I’ll hack up a newer version.
Back up the database for the target site:
mysqldump –add-drop-table -h localhost -u username -p feorlen_org > /my/backup/location/28jun09backup.feorlen_org.sql
Back up everything on the site, just because. (Instead of only the WordPress directory.)
Disable plug-ins from the admin interface.
Copy the install package to the top level directory. Copy to a safe location wp-config.php. Delete the following:
the contents of my wordpress directory
wordpress/include
wordpress/admin
(I have no cache or widgets directories this time.)
Restore the saved wp-config.php.
Temporarily rename my custom named directory to “wordpress” and untar the archive over it. Then put it back. (Because I’m lazy.)
Go to the admin page and follow the directions. Replace new akismet with my old hacked one. Delete that crazy Dolly thing. Re-enable plugins.
Test.
I’ve suddenly found myself running out of fds, which brings things to a screeching halt. For future reference, here are some helpful things to remember.
Check the current settings with launchctl:
www.feorlen.org[feorlen]:/etc$ launchctl limit
cpu unlimited unlimited
filesize unlimited unlimited
data 6291456 unlimited
stack 8388608 67104768
core 0 unlimited
rss unlimited unlimited
memlock unlimited unlimited
maxproc 1000 2500
maxfiles 256 unlimited
change for this shell only:
www.feorlen.org[feorlen]:/etc$ launchctl limit maxfiles 1024 unlimited
Make systemwide changes in launchd.conf:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1659
WWDC is come and gone and I’m home with shiny new goodies. I installed Snow Leopard on my laptop during the week and that went well. Exchange support seems to be working and various glitches are (mostly) minor. So I started plotting to upgrade my server.
Talking to some folks in the IT lab, what I got was they have been working on upgrade and migration. That’s nice to hear as I’m always skeptical. Tiger->Leopard was new hardware for me so I just started from scratch, but this time I’d rather not. With the mess that my email has been lately I decided to jump in and give it a try. I was ready for some wonderful automagical upgrade goodness, and to be rid of cyrus forever.
After getting a good, bootable backup I put the DVD in and let it go. I got to the second reboot and there it sat: The cheerful Welcome screen, staring at me for 90 minutes until I finally power cycled the box. On reboot I got more of the same. It’s basically sitting there continuously flushing the firewall rules. So far, I’ve filed the bug and they are looking at some logfiles. And in the meantime, imapd is still crashing.
Once again, my mailbox got corrupted. Makes me want to hand it all over to Google and get out of the email hosting business (such as it is, with three mailboxes.) But Certain Users are objecting.
In the meantime, I have this:
Reconstructing cyrus mailboxes in Mac OS X Server 10.3 or later
I hope you never need it. I’m posting it here so I can remember where to find it.
The office Dictator of Food has decreed all items in the refrigerator must be signed and dated else they face termination with prejudice. I already put my name on most things, but it’s kindof a pain to figure out where to write something in sharpie pen on a package already covered in writing. I’ve lost items before because my name was not prominently enough displayed and it was mistaken for shared food.
So…
I went and bought myself a custom date and message stamp:
Now, with the help of some extra address labels, I can mark my lunch in an appropriately officious manner.
It was finally a clear day so I went for a walk through the hills. Next to the guest house where we are staying on campus, there is the Miramare train station and a path leading further up the hill.
There is a park of sorts in this steep area on the hillside. The first half is through trees, a few in the middle of the stairway. The stairs are old, but not that old, as there is a utility cable buried along the path. You can see it in spots where the stone wall has collapsed.
But in some places there are older stone steps surrounded by newer construction, so clearly they have been there a while. The finish and color of the old stone match those around Miramare so perhaps they are from the same period. There are about a million stairs up the hill, but the view is spectacular. There is a clear spot where you can see for kilometers around the Gulf of Trieste. If I can stitch together the panorama I’ll post it.
Further along there were a few small farms, an old stone well and then you come out on the outskirts of Prosecco where there is a community playground by a pond. I followed the road into the village to have a look around.
I was stopped on the street by an African guy carrying a big gym bag, who seemed to only want to wish me a good day. In English, in the middle of an Italian farm village. My brand new white sneakers and fleece jacket must have given me away. As soon as he said he was from Nigeria I knew I was in for a story.
He said he lived in Monfalcone, a town some kilometers away, and it’s very difficult you know to make a living when one does not have a work permit. So he and his friends bring some small items in from Rome to sell to make a few euro. At 7 euro for a package of socks I was not going along with it. Living in San Francisco pretty much cures you of giving in to sad stories and goods for sale of dubious origin. So I wished him good day and went off in a totally different direction. As quickly as possible.
Prosecco had more signs in Slovenian than down the hill and it is closer to the border. My Trieste bus map isn’t so good out there so I’m not really sure how far or in which direction. I had intended to walk to to Villa Opicina but I didn’t see a path except by the narrow highway. High speed road, stone walls on either side, no clear pedestrian path. I’ll explore that another time on the bus.
I took a tiny unmarked road down the hill, crossed another highway (Strada del Friuli) and continued down what looked like an oversized goat path which around here often passes for a public street. I was in Contovella. The road was paved, which gave hope for it going through somewhere. The other option was highway, so I figured why not.
I somewhat questioned that decision at various points, particularly when the road was closed for construction. Along the way there were several narrow staircases down the hill, some more scary than others but none had railings and the steps were not exactly in good repair. One was a private path, another was clearly well used by the trash left behind. All through here the road was a cliff on one side and the hill (or stone retaining wall) on the other. There was a vehicle that went off the road decades ago, now rotting in a tree.
Down the road I continued, squeezing past the barriers around the idle construction zone, where a new section of retaining wall was being built near some expensive looking houses. The road widened into a proper street here (although still narrow) with houses and small apartment buildings. Eventually it went back under the train tracks and let out in the center of Barcola.
I got a bottle of water from the same shop I went to yesterday, hung around in the park for a while (remembering to bring extra tissues for the public toilet!) and headed back out to Grignano.
