Friday Random Ten

First off though, please accept my apology for the dearth of blogging. I got stuff happening and really haven't had the time to sit down and compose anything of merit. I am kicking around some ideas. Stuff like trying to do a psych autopsy on John McCain's cognitive dissonance about Iraq, which springs from his congnitive dissonance about Viet Nam. Thing is, if you need to absorb and believe mightily in things that are not true in order to present yourself as somewhat sane, then, to my thinking, you are simply not somewhat sane, you're fucking deluded.

Anyway, I'm off to San Diego today. Dropping off truffles for Tartness, picking up supplies to make more truffles (I have an 80 lb chocolate order to pick up from Trader Joe's Pacific Beach), visiting the tailor to spruce up and have something distinguished to wear for the Hillary Fund Raiser (put on by the music industry's own She, Who Must Be Obeyed), then to top the whole trip off I am joining my aunt and uncle at the Viejas Casino to watch my cousin's dance troupe NightFire perform.

When I hit Random this morning, this was the top ten:

For the Sake of the Rock and Roll - - - Doug Sahm
Leave My Blues At Home - - - Duane Allman
Smoke Signals - - - I Brake For Pow-Wows
Message From The Master - - - BooZoo Chavez
Les Blues Des Vache Au Lait (Milk Cow Blues) - - - Clifton Chenier
Greezy Greens - - - Pink Anderson
All Through The Night - - - Cyndi Lauper (live bootleg, Rick Derringer and me on guitars)
In The Pines - - - Leadbelly
Ballad of Tom Joad - - - Woody Guthrie
Motorcylcle - - - Arlo Guthrie


Bonus:

Gotta Travel On - - - Bill Monroe (Emmylou Harris sings backup on this one)

Truffle News

I am planning to make a representative assortment of the truffles. It will be a dozen that will be used by my cousin Tsa-Ka'alim when he talks with the buyers at the Indian Casinos. He'll be speaking with Executive Chefs, Banquet Chefs, and Special Events Coordinators. He agrees with me that the best way for him to make a sale is to have them try the product. He's done it twice and in both instances the people who tried them for the first time said "There's really no way your description did justice to these." He laughs and said that my having the same marketing strategy as a drug dealer is perfect. He always gets a laugh when he says "The first one's free" as he hands them their first truffle.

So here's my decision. I figure to have six dark flavors and three white. Then double up on the very best truffles inside the assortment of a dozen.

The tentative flavors I intend to have are:

Classic Bittersweet
Crystallized Ginger
Raspberry
Frangelico
Starbuck's Coffee Liqueur
Calvados.

Those show the range of the truffles when using liqueurs and fresh ingredients.

For the whites I will use:

White Chocolate (which is really a vanilla)
White Raspberry
White Crystallized Ginger.

That's the tentative lineup, but then I figured I'd toss the subject out to you. What are your favorites? Let me know. I'm trying to assemble an All-Star Team here.

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