it's Tuesday, and I have things

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

41. Union meetings. I just love 'em. Some of my fellow union activists don't love the meetings, and some claim they come just for the food (hotel kitchen food). I come for the meeting.

They're not all great, I admit. I also can't do very much with union rah-rah-ism. But I am a sucker for solidarity, and the meetings almost always build a great sense of solidarity. We're going this weekend to the CFA Lecturers' Council spring planning meeting, and despite the rather gloomy political/budget news of late, I'm optimistic.

40. Excuses to make buerre blanc. I just love 'em. The excuse today was our unscheduled trip to Motown to buy cat digestive enzymes in a further effort to resolve Lancelot's GI problems.

The need to go up there fairly quickly hatched a plan to go to Johnathan's, which is, to be frank, a meat market. But they also are the best source of fresh seafood in the area, and I've been thinking about shrimp lately with a fairly passionate Mediterranean feeling - lots of garlic, saffron, things like that. (Domestic shrimp, which is far better for the planet than imported, is extremely hard to get here, so we eat very little shrimp, sadly.) We ended up getting Louisiana rock shrimp and wild Alaskan coho salmon, and as I started thinking about it, buerre blanc would be perfectly suitable for salmon as well. What the heck.

So, shallots in white wine vinegar and dry white wine, boiled down to a couple tablespoons, with mounds of butter whisked in. This is just about unspeakably good on shrimp.