mythical guitar and demi-glace

Yesterday I made the beef stock preparatory to putting together demi-glace, the mother of all sauces. Today we zapped out yet again, to go on a series of errands, including a trip to Turlock's own Ingram Music.

I saw a guitar.

It was a Monroe-Moore (or Moore-Monroe; I'm not familiar with the brand) electric semi-hollow-body, with double cut-aways, like John Lennon's Epiphone Casino.

It was blond, too. It had an action like no guitar I have ever played, perfect balance, and frets so smooth they felt frictionless. The neck actually felt soft.

I tried to look the machine up online, to no avail. Moore-Monroe (or Monroe-Moore; see above; who knows?) doesn't have a website, it seems, and they're known for bluegrass acoustic guitars and mandolins. They also make a fair number of resonator guitars and, I kid not, an acoustic-electric bouzouki. But I didn't see this electric thing anywhere. But nothing on the electric guitar. Nobody has seen this beast, anywhere, except, it seems, Ingram, and me and Lauren.

I called Bobo, who not only owns an encyclopedia of electric guitars, but is also in many ways a walking guitar encyclopedia himself. To quote him: "I got nothing."

Horrors. A guitar Imj hasn't heard of is peculiar enough, nigh onto absurd, in fact. There can be only one conclusion: This guitar does not exist. I could go back to Ingram tomorrow (in fact, am sorely tempted), but it won't be there.

Anyway, I've made exemplary sauce Espagnole, the next step in making demi-glace. It's beef stock, a mirepoix of veggies sauteed in fatback, a roux, and good sherry, reduced down to 1/4 or so of its original volume, all the while skimming fat and other stuff off the surface. Tomorrow I'll be adding this to more sherry and the rest of the stock, reducing that to 1/2 or so of its volume, again with the skimming (always the skimming), and finally into ice trays to make demi-glace ice-cubes.

Demi-glace and electric guitars have a few things in common.