"Swan song" for a once-great Italian restaurant.

We went out for dinner last night, taking young Miss C with us. We had been promising to take her to our once "one-and-only favorite" Italian restaurant. We used to eat there two or three times a week, before they moved from a cozy small restaurant to a much larger place. And, for the icing on top of the Italian cake, we always had the same waitress, our friend K. The owners moved to the new place last year, and it hasn't been the same since. (K no longer works there.)

And goodness knows, we've tried and tried to re-capture the magic of that place, but it's gone. Even 17-year-old C noticed it last night. She used to come with us to the "old" restaurant all the time, and she knows our friend K and the great service we always got there.

Even though the new restaurant is larger and more lavishly decorated, and even though the food is still delicious, the atmosphere is different and the cozy feeling is just gone, gone, gone. The wait staff is good, not great. And the biggest disappointment is the new china, believe it or not, which is so over-sized that it feels as if you're eating your meal out of a bathroom sink. Or a large white hub-cap. Huge, heavy, round white plates that make your sensibly portioned dinner look as if it's a baby-sized happy meal.

And while we're talking about portions... the portions of whatever you order are smaller, but the prices are higher. They have a larger restaurant now, which means a higher rent, which translates into higher prices. But for goodness sake, do they have to insult you with a tablespoon's worth of a vegetable side dish? And we remember the delicious home-made bread they used to serve. Now, the bread in the little basket is grocery-store air-filled white bread shaped into a loaf that they think looks like real Italian bread. Give me a blessed break. (As my Uncle Mino would say: "I wouldn't feed that to the birds.")

Both C and I left part of our meal, though, because we knew we were going to splurge on dessert. We asked the waiter to box-up what was left, and he brought our plates into the kitchen and came back with two to-go boxes neatly packed up in a plastic bag. Not until we got to our house did we realize that he didn't give us one drop of the delicious sauce that was left on our plates. Did we really have to tell him to save the sauce for us along with the meal?

To quote my Uncle Tony, as he said more than a few times while we were in Arizona: "There are people in this world who have the mentality of a mouse. A mouse!" Come to think of it, Uncle Tony only said that when we were in restaurants.

My husband and I had been to this restaurant a few times before since their move from the original location. Each time, we walked away a little disappointed in something, but willing to give it another try. Last night's dinner with C was the last "try." At the end of the meal when we asked C what she thought, about the new location, the decor, the dinner in general... her response was "I'll bet we can find some place better." And then she said "And anyway, what's with these plates?!"

Don't step on my frog!

For the past two summers now, there has been a frog in our flowerbed near the front door. Not only is he in the flowerbed, but he has sculpted his own private entrance. Unfortunately, the little door to his kingdom is a space about half an inch wide between the pavers on our front porch and the brick border of the flowerbed itself.

The only way that the frog can get to his underground cave beneath the flowerbed is to back into it, literally back legs first with his head and front legs resting on the porch pavers while he wriggles and holds his tummy in and crams his little brown frog butt into that opening. All the while he's doing that, he is very vulnerable to any passing human feet that happen to step on that part of our front porch.

About a month ago, one of our around-the-corner neighbors came by with her granddaughter to ask us if we knew anyone who had lost a black and white dog. She knew that the dog she found wasn't ours, but she also knew that my husband knows just about every dog on this side of the subdivision, so she stopped by to ask if we knew who the lost dog belonged to. While we were talking to her near our front porch, I saw "my" little brown frog come hopping up the walkway, heading towards his home sweet home. Without missing a beat in the conversation, I told our neighbor and her granddaughter to be careful of the frog. Between all of us out there, I was certain that eight human feet were just too many for the frog to maneuver around. The neighbor looked down and asked me if that was my pet frog. I told her that he wasn't exactly a pet, but he did live underneath our flowerbed and I just didn't want him to get stepped on. "Well, if that one happens to turn into a frog pancake, then y'all can just go down to the bayou and get y'all another one."

I have lost count of how many times I have walked out our front door with Gracie and there's the frog, with the back half of his body squirming into that tiny space and the front half of him looking up at me and probably saying "Hey! Look down! And be careful with that dog!" As soon as we get to the front porch, Gracie must smell the frog because her nose immediately goes right down to that spot and she sniffs the face of the frog and then continues down the pathway while the frog looks up at me with bulging eyes. (I don't know if his eyes always bulge or if that happens because he's holding his breath so he can tuck in his tummy in order to fit into that tiny space.)

Once the frog gets down inbetween the porch pavers and the brick border of the flowerbed, I have no idea where he goes from there. For all I know, he has excavated a multi-roomed frog condo underneath the mulch of the flowerbed. And does he bring other frogs down there? "Look, Harry, all you have to do is back into this half-inch slit between the pavers and the bricks, hold your breath and push your butt down while your front legs are dangling over the edge of the porch. And don't mind that dog of theirs-- she'll just sniff your face and be on her way."

I also wonder if this is the same frog that was underneath the flowerbed last summer. He looks to be the same size as last year's frog, so he's either full grown or is very careful what he eats. Too many flies and bugs and his belly isn't going to fit into that space no matter how long he can hold his breath.

Every time I go out the front door, I check to make sure that the opening between the porch pavers and the brick border is still there. One careless move by the guys who do our lawn, and the frog will lose his entrance and maybe his underground castle will collapse right down on top of him. And then there will be a squished frog down there underneath the pink impatiens with no way out.

Chicago Cubs vs. Houston Astros

We thought about going to the ballgame yesterday. We thought we might, but we didn't go. We would have rooted for the Cubs, which would have been very hard to do in the middle of the Astros ball field. Minute Maid Park. Who in their right mind gives that name to a ballpark, for goodness sake? My husband is right. Sports is all about money these days, not about sports.

Ever since our trip to Chicago last month, and the game at Wrigley Field (Cubs vs. White Sox) we have been talking about the Cubs, the fans, and Wrigley itself. My husband says it was one of the best ball games he has ever been to, and I say it was the best ball game I've ever seen.

The fans (both inside Wrigley and outside the park, in the bars and in the roof-top bleachers) are just amazing, and very into every minute, every second of the game. When you see a game at Wrigley, all there is is the game. No huge television screens all over the upper levels. No large advertisements and no electronic video-type games being broadcast on screens to divert your attention from the game. You're there at Wrigley to see a ball game. Period. And the scoreboard is the old wooden board with men inside the little squares, putting up the numbers as they happen, when they happen. Manually, not digitally. Honestly, what more can you ask for from a ball park?

When we were out in Arizona last weekend, my cousin D's wife told us about her life-long love for The Cubs. She is originally from Chicago, and she was one of the "bleacher bums" who went to every game she possibly could attend. When I was driving in her car, through the valleys and shopping centers near Phoenix, there was a Chicago Cubs steering-wheel cover in her car. In whatever car she has driven in Arizona for all these years, there is something proclaiming her love of The Cubs. Her husband is a fan of the Chicago White Sox, which doesn't make much sense because they lived on the same side of Chicago when they both lived up there. And everyone knows that the White Sox fans come from the south side of Chicago, and Cubs fans are on the north side of the city. But he's my cousin, so we will make allowances for the error of his ways.

My husband watched the game on television last night. The Astros won. (How dare they.) I would bet that if last night's game had been at Wrigley, with 40,000 Cubs fans singing and clapping, dancing and chanting, the Astros wouldn't have had a chance.

The Astros and the Cubs play again today and tomorrow. I have just one thing to say: Go Cubs!

Arizona and the Yankee bat.

We just returned from a long weekend in Arizona, visiting my aunt and uncle and cousins. They have lived there for over twenty years now, watching their small town turn into a bigger town, and now they're watching it turn into an even larger town. I guess no matter where you go in the US, small towns are becoming obsolete as grass pastures and desert prairies get taken over by concrete. No matter where you look in their Arizona town, there is either a shopping center or a strip center filled with restaurants. (We felt right at home.)

We ate out twice a day, either for breakfast and dinner, or lunch and dinner. My aunt says that she no longer cooks because she's 84 years old and she needs a break. Plus, going out gives them a destination, something to do, something to look forward to, especially for my uncle (also 84). On any given day, one of their sons or daughters-in-law or grandchildren and/or great-grandchildren may join them, if they're not too busy with their own schedules. Being that we were visiting, everyone made it a point to join us whenever they could, which meant there were at least six of us, and at most twelve of us. It was like having a family reunion every day at a different restaurant.

My husband was there for the first two days, then he flew off to a conference while I stayed with my aunt and uncle. I could have gone to the conference, but didn't want to see Las Vegas again (especially because Barry Manilow wouldn't be performing at The Hilton last weekend. No Barry? Then no Vegas for me.) I could have just flown on home, but decided to spend the extra few days with my family out there. My husband was able to coordinate our flights home, so when his plane left Vegas and stopped at Phoenix, I was at the airport there and we flew home on the same plane to Houston.

While we were visiting, my uncle and aunt were talking about "the old days" at Grandma's house, and we talked about Aunt Dolly and her now famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask) move to Florida. Grandma's attic was a treasure trove of all things good, bad and questionable from everyone in the family. One of the good treasures up in that attic was a baseball bat of my uncle's. When he was young, he saved up his pennies until he had enough money to buy a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He brought it home and his older brother (my Uncle Mino, now deceased) took it away from him and told him it was "too good to play with." Uncle Mino polished it up with so much wax that it became useless for regular play, and then he brought it up to the attic for "safekeeping" so his younger brother wouldn't "ruin" it.

The Louisville Slugger stayed up in the attic for years and years. Whenever my Uncle Tony asked for his bat, Aunt Dolly would tell him that she didn't have time to go up there and look for it. I don't know why Uncle Tony just didn't go up in the attic and rescue his own bat, but he didn't, and for all of these years, the bat had been either up in that attic or had been given away to someone else in the family. When Aunt Dolly moved to Florida, the bat was nowhere to be found.

So there I was in my uncle's kitchen in Arizona, listening to the story of that long-ago treasure of a baseball bat. I asked my uncle who his favorite team was, even though I knew the answer: The NY Yankees. True story here-- my uncle had tried out for the NY Yankees when he got out of the service years ago, but they couldn't take him on the team because he was one inch shorter than the height requirement for the team at that time. Uncle Tony was an amazing ball player in his day, and he's still an avid fan of the game. He still has the rejection letter from the NY Yankee baseball organization.

On the day that my cousin's wife drove my husband to the airport so he could catch his flight to the conference, I went with them, and on the way back, S and I went to the local shopping mall looking for a Louisville Slugger. We went to three sporting goods stores in the mall--- no wooden bats. How can you be a sporting goods store and not sell bats? At the last store, a clerk suggested we try a sports store on the other side of the valley, so off we went to try there. Thankfully, they had Louisville Slugger bats, and (wowie zowie!) they had a bat stamped with the signature of Alex Rodriquez (A Rod) of the NY Yankees, who happens to be one of my uncles favorite players now. The store had half a dozen of those bats and I checked every one of them very carefully, looking for the perfect one. The clerk asked me if I was buying the bat for my son. He gave me a funny look when I told him I was buying the bat for my uncle.

After I paid for the bat, S drove to Target and I got a huge red and blue ribbon to tie onto the bat, along with a gift card. I wrote: "This may not be your original bat, but at least it won't get lost in Grandma's attic." I hid the bat behind my back when we walked into my uncle's house. When I gave him the bat, he looked at it with such a look of shock and surprise that it took my breath away. Then, within five seconds, tears were streaming down his face and he was holding that bat and telling me that it looked just like the bat that he had bought himself so many years ago. (His original bat had been stamped with the signature of Eddie Matthews, a NY Yankee player back in the day.)

My uncle held onto that bat all afternoon. He stood up and swung the bat and said it was the perfect size and weight. And then he cried some more. I got more hugs that afternoon, I swear. My uncle just couldn't believe that I had gone out and bought him a bat. (And I couldn't believe that no one had thought to buy him a bat before.) My uncle showed the bat to his sons, and told them he wanted to buy a display case for the bat. His younger son is going to take him to downtown Phoenix this week, to look at lucite cases for his bat.

I told my uncle that I thought he'd want to keep the bat out, so he could hold it and swing it every once in a while. But my uncle says the bat is too perfect to be kept out "in the elements." The elements? He doesn't want it to be exposed to dust, to his two cats, and to the little sticky fingers of his great-grandchildren. Oh... those elements.

July is off to a broiling start.

It must be a hundred degrees already, which usually doesn't happen till late July or early August. The weather gods aren't paying attention. Or maybe they're switching things around to see if we're paying attention.

The temperatures have been way up there for weeks now, with no sign of dropping. No cold snaps coming our way, which is a good thing because maybe the hurricanes won't come our way either. A large storm was rolling around the Gulf this week. I think they named it Bertha. Fortunately, Bertha changed her course and went out to sea. I wonder if everyone in New Orleans watches the weather more carefully now, as each hurricane season approaches. Probably not. I would imagine that they just keep making those beignets and mint juleps and hoping for the best.

We met K & B at Star Pizza for lunch the other day. Another delicious Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. Spinach and cheese again for me, this time with a whole wheat crust. One slice and that was it, and I brought the rest home. I've been eating the rest, one slice a day at lunch time rather than dinner time (more hours to work off the calories). My husband gets his own pizza, loaded with all kinds of meat, which I won't touch.

I've started walking again, with our next-door neighbor V. I saw her walking alone one night when we were driving home from dinner out, so the next morning I asked her if she wanted company. "Sure 'nuff!" was her answer. The two-and-a-half mile walks go very quickly. V's in-laws have moved from Florida to Texas, and she and her husband have been doing everything they can to make the transition easy for them. But how does that old saying go?-- "The older you get, the more set in your ways you get." And that's exactly what V and her husband are dealing with now. So rather than going into everyone's yard and pulling up weeds (which V is famous for), all the neighbors are probably silently thanking me for walking with her after dinner. V is so intent on telling me what's going on with her in-laws while we're walking that she hasn't pulled up one weed in the past three weeks. But we have done our share of picking up empty soda cans in the park as we walk, then tossing them into the trash cans as we pass them. What is it with kids and soda cans?! Is there a teenage peer-pressure code that says it's not cool to toss away the empty cans?

Our Miss C stopped by today to "hang out," as she calls it, and to tell us about her summer job. She's working in one of the local stores, the kind that sells three thousand varieties of silk flowers and seventeen million different articles for every kind of art and/or craft project that you can think of. She likes the job, but wishes they would take her off of the cash register and let her stock and re-arrange the shelves. In just one day's time at the cash counter, one customer told C that she should "praise the lord and declare herself a Christian," and another customer told her that an item was part of a 50%-off sale when in truth it wasn't on sale at all. I told C that in less than five years, she would look back on this first summer job of hers and laugh at everything that she's complaining about now.

Yeast happens.

There is an expiration date on a yeast package. Since when? I guess I've just never noticed that before.

Ever since our trip to Germany in May, and all the delicious homemade bread that is available there, every slice of bread here is just pathetic, in my opinion. We don't have the NY-style bakeries here, those wonderful German, Italian and Greek bake shops where everything in every showcase is perfectly delicious. All of the supermarkets here have bakeries, and the people who have always lived here think their cakes are "to die for." I just smile politely and nod my head, all the while thinking You haven't tasted anything unless you've been to a NY bakery.

So this morning, out came the bread machine, which I haven't used in a while. In went the flour, egg, butter, sugar, water, salt, powdered milk and (!!!) the yeast. Three and a half hours later, out came a flat stone that smelled sort of like bread. I cut off a little corner of the stone and told my husband it tasted like sourdough bread. "Not even close," was his opinion.

He asked me if I left out any of the ingredients. No way... I always check twice. Then he asked if any of the ingredients were "too old." Too old? The butter was fresh, as was the egg, the flour was a new bag.... I looked at the yeast package. "Best if used before February 2007." What?! Is that how long it's been since I used the bread machine?

My husband offered to run to Kroger's and buy more yeast. Well, we had already waited three and half hours for the first stone-loaf, and we hadn't planned anything today other than the errands I took care of this morning. Off to Kroger he went, while I cut some of the crust off of the stone and gave it to Gracie. (Well, the dog just loved it.)

Into the bread machine went the second set of ingredients, along with the brand new package of yeast. The second loaf of bread was high and perfectly browned, worthy to sit in any of the bakeries we had seen in Germany. I ate very little for dinner tonight, knowing that I would have a slice of that bread while it was still warm, along with a cup of tea.

So now I know what I guess all good bakers have known for years. Yeast gets old. And old yeast makes warm stones, not good bread.

Happy (rainy/sunny) 4th.

This morning started out sunny and hot, and we thought it would stay that way. (Ha! says the god of Texas weather.)

After our July 4th tradition of watching the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest at New York's Coney Island, we decided to go out for lunch. (Anything but hot dogs.) Honestly, though-- that contest is both exciting and gross. Exciting because the NY crowds really get into it, and gross because the contestants really get into it. Why anyone would want to eat that many hot dogs is beyond reason in the first place, but the way they eat them is just disgusting.

I say the same thing every year: they should make a rule that the contestants have to eat the hot dogs the way they're served-- in the middle of the bun. Most of them take out the hot dogs and eat that part first, and while they're chewing (swallowing?) the meat, they're holding the bun in a glass of water or lemonade. Then whatever is left of that bun gets shoved into their mouths. Really now, I believe that most of that sopping wet bun is either left at the bottom of the lemonade or gets dribbled down the front of their shirts.

But every year, at 11:00 Texas time, my husband and I are sitting in front of the television and watching to see if anyone can out-eat that little guy from Japan. Three cheers (three hot dogs!) for Joey Chestnut, for winning two years in a row.

Back to our own lunch... we decided to drive downtown to Star Pizza, for another Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. We hadn't gone very far when we saw that the sky in the direction of downtown was as dark as charcoal. We turned around and headed for the little Greek restaurant near Kemah. Instead of deep-dish Chicago pizza, we had Greek food for lunch. The sky opened up with pouring-down rain half-way through the spanikopita.

That was hours ago now, and the rains have quit and the sun is out and everything except the wet-sponge lawn is thoroughly dry. I guess tonight's fireworks will go on on planned. We're still deciding whether to make our way through the traffic to see them by the Galveston Bay bridge, or stay home and watch both the NYC and the downtown Houston fireworks on television.

Fireworks are only fireworks if you can hear them exploding above your head as the colors drip into the sky.

"The Devil in The White City"

That is the title of a book I bought when we were in Chicago. Its author is Erik Larson, who has become known for historical books which read as easily as novels. His stories, however, are true--- another of his that I have read is "Isaac's Storm," an account of the hurricane that devastated most of Galveston Island at the turn of the century.

This book was amazing... not only does it give you so much history about the city of Chicago, but the story centers around the Chicago World's Fair in the late 1800s. Not only do you learn about the building of the fair, and the months during the life of the fair, but you read the story about a serial killer who uses the fair to his advantage.

Riveting, fascinating book, from beginning to end. There were days that I just had to put the book down and walk away from it for a little while. When the book sat closed on my dining room table, I would look at it and just shake my head--- how in the world could that have kept happening and no one started an investigation?

My only regret about this book--- I wish I had read it before we went to Chicago. Now that I have finished this book, I realize that we were right there on the fair grounds when we were in Chicago. And now that I know more about the old landmarks, I would have known where to look for them as we walked around that city.

Oh well. I will know what to look for when we go there again.