From Blue Stilton to Brillat Savarin: All about BS

I finally figured out what to do with the weird Danish/Arabic feta-like cheese, but it wasn't particularly creative.  I melted it on thin slices of French bread drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with black pepper.  It didn't really melt so well, it just got kind of soft but kept its shape.  Tasty, but certainly not groundbreaking.

But that was just a snack.  I don't really care for most of the items I've tried from August Moon, but it's close and cheap, and Mike was craving the fried noodles, banh pho xao, from the Vietnamese section of the menu.  So I tried "Rainbow Fish," described on the menu as "Crispy filet of catfish, topped w/ mushrooms, sweet onions and scallions in house special tomato sauce."  Well, it wasn't crispy at all, but it was pretty tasty.  The flour batter was light and a little sweet.  But it was the tomato sauce that made it the best dish I've ever had from August Moon.  (That's not intended to be high praise.)  The sauce was nicely acidic with medium cubes of tomato.  With the onion and the cilantro, it was a simple, fresh tasting meal.  Too bad it wasn't crispy though.  What a waste to eat soggy fried fish.

I totally forgot to record for posterity the Major Award I won last month!  There's this food blog Blackened Out by these two lawyer-type dudes who just eat and drink the crap out of some food and liquor in New Orleans, and then write about it.  They've been going at it for a little less than a year I guess, and I don't remember how I found the blog in the first place.  In the spring they wrote glowingly about St. James, and I became an even bigger fan.  So imagine my surprise and delight when I got a load of this:

Last night after getting home from darts (I'd rather not talk about it), I was slightly tipsy and trying to get to sleep when I experienced one of those Scary Life Moments when I realized no matter how hard I try, I'll never be able to read all the good books in the world.  I get these moments once every year or so, and I start making resolutions to read the Top 100 Novels of All Time Forever (not counting anything by Ayn Rand).  

Some obstacles to the Read Everything on Earth goal are surmountable.  For example, I truly believe that one day my attention span will expand to the amount of time and concentration necessary to read Ulysses.  However, I'll probably never learn to read Japanese, so there's a whole body of literature that's almost certainly cut off.   I've pretty much come to terms with the language barrier, so I'm going to concentrate on Western or translated works that have been deemed by respectable bodies to be Great Literature.

Working from the ubiquitous Modern Library 100 Best Novels list, I've decided to try to read ten of the Top 100 Best Novels by year's end.  That's ten of my choice, not the top 10, and of course no repeats unless I feel I missed the point the first time.

Yesterday, I got back from America's Most Literate City, where I didn't meet Prince.  Or Bob Dylan, Soul Asylum, Hüsker Dü, or Mary Richards.  I include Mary Richards in the list of musicians because of the Mary Tyler Moore Show's awesome theme song.  Unless I'm confusing it with Laverne & Shirley.  At any rate, since childhood I've pronounced it "MinneANapolis", rhymes with Indianapolis.  Not a coincidence:  That part of the country has a rich Native American history.  In fact, the city's name is based on the Dakota word for water, "mni'.  Just kidding, that's actually Dakota for "I totally forgot about Hüsker Dü."