Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, July 27, 2019

5


Mountain Views-News Saturday, July 27, 2019 

TABLE FOR TWO by Peter Dills

thechefknows@yahoo.com

RACING NEWS: PRATT TOP JOCKEY AT 
SANTA ANITA;

JORGE VELEZ AT LOS AL AND DEL MAR 
OPENS 

By Joan Schmidt

 
There is so much to report in the Horse Racing World. Flavien Pratt was the jockey with 
the most wins during the last Santa Anita Meet. Then it was off to Los Alamitos for a 14 day 
meet; Apprentice Jorge Velez lead with 9 wins. Other recent highlights were Gary Stevens 
older brother Scott Stevens won the prestigious George Wolff Award, and Justify was horse 
of the year!

 It’s a disgrace that trainer Jerry Hollendorfer is banned from Santa Anita, Del Mar, 
Golden Gate Fields and some New York tracks. He is a scapegoat because of the negative 
publicity re: horse fatalities at Santa Anita in 2018. Well, CHRURCHILL DOWNS continues 
to lead in horse fatalities, followed by Hawthorne. No one realizes that because it’s kept 
quiet. During the Kentucky Derby, the biased announcers kept sneaking in ROTTEN 
comments about Santa Anita, but failing to mention that THREE died at Churchill Downs 
during training. I honestly believe they are jealous of Santa Anita because the last two 
Triple Crown Winners, American Pharoah and Justify have come from here and actually 
California Chrome would have won if jockeys didn’t purposely block him out.

 Now, everyone is down at Del Mar, a beautiful venue for a 36-day meet. A lot of 
the jockeys and their families enjoy the close proximity to the beach. Del Mar opened 
Wednesday, July 17. Flavien won the Oceanside Stakes on Jasikan (Trained by John Sadler) 
besides wins on United and Give Me the Loot. Through Sunday, July 21, he leads with 
10 wins. Joel Rosario has been successful, also. He had Stakes wins on Catalina Cruiser 
and Mutual Unusual on Saturday. Apprentice Jorge Velez had his first Del Mar win on 
Freedom Ride. Abel Cedillo who returned to Southern CA has been successful as also 
Ruben Fuentes. Everyone was happy when Victor had his first Del Mar win this year on 
Stormy Lady.

 Trainer Jerry Hollendorfer and the CA Thoroughbred trainers have filed a civil 
complaint Monday, July 15 to allow him to train at Del Mar. The Judge has postponed a 
final decision; he wants to thoroughly go through all the information. Currently, Jerry’s 
Assistant Dan Ward has been overseeing some of his horses.

 Del Mar is really a beautiful venue. You can have breakfast there. Racing is 
Wednesdays-Sundays. Please visit their website. Also we have gone just for the day. I know 
people have taken the train there for daily excursions. But it’s also great to stay a couple 
days and enjoy the beach and sights! See you there!

 

LOCAL WINE SHOP HAS A GREAT SELECTION

One of the most common questions that I get 
as a restaurant advocate/food Influencer (fancy 
name for critic on line) is where is my favorite 
steakhouse? The Answer: My house, nothing 
beats heading over to Pavilions or Howie’s for 
a filet and bbq’n at home. Wine by the glass 
another story. At a restaurant that can be a very 
tricky situation. To this, I say “buyer beware” 
from the get-go. Wine by the glass can provide a 
huge revenue stream for your favorite restaurant. 
In fairness to the restaurant (and before you start 
calculating how much the restaurant is paying 
for a bottle of wine and charging for a glass), let’s 
remember that there is often some waste once a bottle is opened. For instance, sparkling wine can’t last 
for more then 24 hours once opened. I have sent back many an old wine back and asked for a fresh 
bottle, and to my surprise, without much resistance. Local sommelier and wine geek Russ Meek tells me 
that even reds and whites, once opened, can easily lose their luster after just a few days. My advice is to 
ask the server/bartender to open a “fresh” bottle - it will make you feel a whole lot better about paying 
that premium price.

Chardonnay is the best selling wine by the glass here in California, and one that stands out to me is 
Rambuer Chardonnay. Hailing from the grape-rich area of Napa Valley, this higher end chardonnay 
satisfies those of us who like a bit of buttery and oaky chardonnay. I found this gem at one of my favorite 
non-home restaurants, Taylor’s Steak House in La Canada. Taylor’s has consistently offered a very 
good wine by the glass program; they aren’t giving it away, but you won’t feel like you’ve been gypped. 
Rombauer Chardonnay is light gold in color, well balanced, and the finish is crisp and clean. Some of 
my wine snob friends have called it “overrated” but I don’t agree. This is a fantastic special occasion wine 
or a treat at a medium to higher end restaurants. The supply is ample, and you should have no problem 
finding it at your local market. 

ALC Content 14.4%

Closure: Corked

Dills Score 91

Retails around $34; on sale for $30 The Bottle Shop in Sierra Madre carries this dandy

Each week I will give you my Dills Score. Starting with a base of 50 points, I added 8 points for color, 8 
points for aroma or “nose”, 8 points for taste, 9 points for finish, and 8 points for my overall impression, 
which includes my value rating.

Email Peter at thechefknows@yahoo.com and follow me on my podcast


CHRISTOPHER Nyerges


[Nyerges is the author of Enter the Forest, 
Guide to Wild Foods, and co-author of Extrreme 
Simplici-ty. He has led wilderness 
trips since 1974. He can be reached at the 
School of Self-Reliance (Box 41834, Eagle 
Rock, CA 90041); or on-line at www.SchoolofSelf-
Reliance.com.]

 

It was the summer of 1973 when my brother and I 
lived on my grandfather’s farm in Chardon, Ohio. 
One day, we decided to paint the kitchen a beautiful 
shade of light turquoise. 

We turned on the radio, and began our task. We 
opened the windows, and I did the trim while my 
brother rolled. We listened to the radio as we busied 
ourselves with our individual tasks. We worked the 
corners, the edges, the front surfaces.

There’s something about painting -- perhaps it’s the 
fumes, perhaps it is the long quiet times of many 
little tasks. Painting requires no moral decisions, no 
great choices, no necessary pontifications about the 
meaning and purpose of life. And yet...

And yet, there you are, with your self, and the 
task before you. For me, painting time has often 
been a time to re-enter the inner I, to think, to 
remember. In many ways, it is the ideal task for 
self-enlightenment.

When we were done, we felt we’d accomplished 
something, and felt we’d given something back to 
the old farmhouse. 

When the weekend came, another uncle came to 
visit us . He strode into the kitchen, looked around 
at the paint, and simply said “you didn’t use glossy!” 

Glossy? We were teenagers from California, visiting 
the home where our mother grew up. Though it 
may be second-nature to us today, back then we had 
no sense that a kitchen should be painted glossy. 
Glossy vs. flat were not issues that we thought much 
about. We didn’t think it mattered all that much?

But Uncle Joe seemed to think it was a big deal, 
and just one more bit of evidence that teenag-ers 
from “the big city” were a bunch of dimwits who 
wouldn’t know a cow from a goat. Uncle Joe shared 
it around to family and friends that we’d painted 
the kitchen in “wrong” paint, so we heard about in 
the weeks that followed. Some relatives didn’t care, 
but others would comment as they came in, “Oh, so 
there’s the flat paint job,” instead of, “Hey, hello, long 
time no see!” 

Dumb city boys who don’t know the difference between 
flat and glossy paint, who actually had the 
stupidity to paint a kitchen in flat paint.

Of course, our intent was to make the family happy 
that we’d improved the old farmhouse. We wanted 
the relatives to comment that we were industrious 
nephews who proved that all city boys were not 
idiots.

 Today, while I was painting my own bathroom -- 
glossy paint, white -- memories of the summer of 
1973 in Chardon began to play again in my mind. 
Perhaps it was the paint. Perhaps it was the cool 
breeze blowing fresh oxygen through the room . I 
heard the chickens out back and it reminded me of 
my brief period of farm-living.

I began to think about how Uncle Joe responded, 
and how he could have responded. I realized then 
the great truth in the phrase that WHAT we do is 
of little or no importance, but HOW we do it is 
eve-rything. 

Uncle Joe died over 10 years ago, and when I visited 
the old farm site in 1999, the entire farm house and 
barn had been torn down and were now just a field. 
None of it mattered anymore in the world of physical 
reality. Joe was gone, and the entire farmhouse 
was simply a memory, glossy or flat.

Joe could have congratulated us on taking the initiative 
to paint, and could have explained why kitchens 
are always painted glossy. He could have told us 
that it was a great primer coat, and enthusi-astically 
offered to drive us right then to the hardware store 
to get glossy paint, and we’d all do the final coat 
together. That would have been something. Our 
memory would have been profoundly different had 
Uncle Joe taken that route of inclusiveness, familyness, 
and helpfulness. 

 I do not fault him for what he did do -- he probably 
knew no other way. In fact, from what I knew about 
his father (my grandfather), his father probably 
would have beaten him had Joe painted the kitchen 
with flat paint. So to Joe, that was just one of millions 
of automatic reactions to things in his world. 
He probably forgot about in a few years, after the 
novelty of talking about Marie’s silly nephews wore 
off.

I realized then how important such “little things” 
can be, and I wondered how well I would do when 
my next opportunity arose. It is especially important 
with impressionable youth to do the very best 
we can to be a good example.

It seemed like an important insight, that the “how” 
is more important than the “what,” and that flat 
or glossy really doesn’t matter. Perhaps it was the 
paint. Perhaps it was the cool breeze blowing fresh 
oxygen through the room....

30 YEARS LATER AND THE HOUSE DEMOLISHED, DID IT MATTER 
IF WE USED GLOSSY OR FLAT?

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown


THE ISLAND OF SEA WOMEN: A NOVEL BY LISA SEE 

Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best 
friends that come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, 
they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, 
led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, 
they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility but also 
danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook’s differences 
are impossi-ble to ignore. The Island of Sea Women is an epoch set over many 
decades, be-ginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 
1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War and its aftermath, through 
the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju 
find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, and 
she will forever be marked by this association. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and 
will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that 
after surviv-ing hundreds of dives and developing the closest of bonds, forces outside their control will 
push their friendship to the breaking point. This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a world turned 
upside down, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men 
take care of the chil-dren. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces 
that shape them—The book introduces readers to the fierce and unforgettable female divers of Jeju 
Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.

PERSEPOLIS: THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD BY MARJANE SATRAPI 

A New York Times Notable Book. Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is 
Marjane Satrapi’s graphic memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revo-
lution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of 
her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the 
Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects 
of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists 
and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears wit-
ness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country. Persepolis 
paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering 
contra-dictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of 
de-throned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution 
al-lows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. 
Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing 
up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with 
laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible 
little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.

THE WRITTEN WORLD: THE POWER OF STORIES TO SHAPE PEOPLE, 
HISTORY, AND CIVILIZA-TION BY MARTIN PUCHNER 

The story of literature in sixteen acts—from Homer to Harry Potter, including 
The Tale of Genji, Don Quixote, The Communist Manifesto, and how they 
shaped world history. In this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on 
a re-markable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the how stories 
and literature have created the world we have today. Through sixteen founda-
tional texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature, 
he shows us how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the 
spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. We 
meet Murasaki, a lady from eleventh-century Japan who wrote the first novel, 
The Tale of Genji, and follow the adventures of Miguel de Cervantes as he battles pirates, both seafaring 
and literary. We watch Goethe discover world literature in Sicily, and follow the rise in influence of The 
Communist Manifesto. Puchner takes us to Troy, Pergamum, and China, speaks with Nobel laureates 
Derek Walcott in the Caribbean and Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, and introduces us to the wordsmiths of 
the oral epic Sunjata in West Africa. This delightful narrative also chronicles the inventions—writing 
technologies, the printing press, the book itself—that have shaped people, commerce, and history. In a 
book that Elaine Scarry has praised as “unique and spellbinding,” Puchner shows how literature turned 
our planet into a written world.” It’s with exhilaration . . . that one hails Puchner’s book, which as-serts 
not merely the importance of literature but its all-importance. . . . Storytell-ing is as human as breathing.”—
The New York Times Book Review.The 3 reviews are from Amazon.com


Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com