A Delicious Conversation

A couple of days ago, Mary baked some of her amazing bread, and she promised one of the finished products to Kathryn and Elizabeth, our daughters. While we were driving over to Powell's on Hawthorne, where Elizabeth works, to drop off a loaf, an interesting conversation arose. Mary had begun to think aloud about dinner, wondering what she might make.

"What about huevos rancheros?" I suggested. "We haven't had that in a long time." Now, huevos rancheros, to my simplistic cooking mind, is an easy dish. Grab a tortilla, throw on some black beans, maybe a little salsa, top with a fried egg, and you’re done. I offered this, never actually having cooked it.



“What do you have in mind by huevos rancheros?” she asked. I described to her my vision of same, surprised that the real thing might be something different. “That isn’t exactly huevos rancheros,” she said.

This was getting a little out of my cooking depth, which is roughly comparable to a puddle on a street. But I plunged ahead. “So how would you describe huevos rancheros?”



“Well, what you described sounds like Wackety Eggs.” This was a reference back to our restaurant days in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. In our cafe, called Pywacket’s, we served a dish called Wackety Eggs, which was a big hit with everyone, including me, although apparently I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on under the runny eggs.

“Huevos rancheros,” she continued, “has some other things in it, usually a homemade sauce of some sort, and there are different ways to make it. You know, it’s really interesting that you should suggest huevos rancheros, because this month’s issue of Bon Appetit has several recipes for egg-type Mexican dishes.”



"So," I said, feeling a little full of myself, "I guess that means I'm on the cutting edge of cooking these days."



“Yes, you’re right on the cutting edge, at least according to Bon Appetit.”



“Maybe that’s why I never learned to cook,” I said, “because I already knew how.”

"I’d like to see some evidence of that,” she parried.

Wow! Not only can this woman cook, but she can also deliver the crisp little zinger when the occasion calls for it. I did a two-second scan of my entire life and found no such evidence to offer, so I shut my mouth and turned my attention back to driving, something I am at least moderately capable of doing.

For dinner that evening Mary cooked huevos rancheros -- the best I have ever tasted. The picture below (click to enlarge) shows how this Mexican-inspired delight came together. Check out the huevos rancheros veggies (a mix of  onions, potatoes, tomatoes, 4 kinds of peppers, black beans, perfectly seasoned), along with the topping (yoghurt, sour cream, garlic, green onions, aleppo pepper), combined on a flour tortilla and cheese, and topped with eggs cooked to perfection.

Even as I write about it, my mouth waters . . . and my mind begins searching for something else I don't know how to cook.

A note from the cook:
Every good cook needs both inspiration and an appreciative audience.  As you can see from this blog entry, David is both, in addition to being great at making salads and cleaning up after we have enjoyed a meal.  I love trying new dishes, and David is always a willing guinea pig.  So, in my book, it's a great partnership!  

The Clicker is Quicker

Piper recently graduated from a 5-week Obedience Training Course from Auntie Sally. All the dogs graduated, actually. She wasn't the best, wasn't the worst -- each dog did well in some areas, not so well in others. Piper proved to have a quick learning curve, undermined by her over-the-top sociability, which at least is better than being a biter, a barker, or a "scaredy dog".

The class was based on Clicker Training (CT), in the mode of Karen Pryor, best known for her work with dolphins and as one of the founders of what is now the familiar method of "click and treat" (CT). This method turned out to suit Piper much better than traditional methods, many of which use a strong dose of negative conditioning, including choke collars and frequent use of the word "No". With CT everything is positive. When the dog engages in a behavior desired by the trainer, she hears a click and gets a treat. That simple. There are a lot of web sites that talk about CT, but for an excellent and thoroughly enjoyable account of the origins and applications of operant conditioning for animals in general and dogs in particular, we suggest her book, Reaching the Animal Mind.

CT does not guarantee instant success. The dog has something to say about it, and Piper's bugaboo is her strong, playful attraction to people and other dogs. Training her to be more relaxed around others is difficult for us because we don't have a lot of people coming and going here at home, nor do we have any other dogs, only a justifiably wary cat called Pywacket. CT has helped in this regard — Piper gets rewarded for not chasing Mr. Py and not jumping on him. The training has proven to be effective here and in many other areas as well, although Piper's desire/compulsion to chase or bug her kitty friend is obviously still there, even when it is overcome by treats.

We like Clicker Training and will continue to use it with Piper. Her graduation meant mostly that we were trained in how to train her in over a dozen basic behaviors. So we have a lot of work ahead of us, and she has a lot of treats ahead of her!

A Brief Look Inside Her Brain

The minds of dogs are fascinating, not only because it's so hard to figure out what they are thinking, but also because they surprise us with unexpected displays of complex mental activity. Piper did just that two nights ago.

Sometimes in the evening we give her a rawhide bone. The ones we have are about a foot long, no knobs on the end, and our custom has been to take them away from her either when the bone is half gone it or when it's nine o'clock, whichever comes first. Piper does not like to give up her chew toys. She's never mean about it – just tries to hide or to hang onto them for dear life. Usually we end up having to pry the rawhide from her mouth, something which I really don't like to do, because I know how much she likes her rawhide.

Tuesday evening the clock was approaching nine – both the clock on the wall and Piper's internal clock. At about 8:45 Mary noticed the clock, and said, half-joking, "Wouldn't it be great if she knew it was time to stop chewing, and brought us the bone?" A few minutes later, Piper got up, rawhide firmly ensconced in her teeth, and sneaked around our recliner and underneath an end table, where she often hides to avoid having her prize taken away. It was interesting to the two of us, who were sitting on either side of the end table, that she wasn't chewing on it – just lying there with the rawhide.

At about five minutes before nine, she suddenly pulled out from behind the table and sat up, leaving the rawhide on the floor. She looked at us, as if to say, "OK, go ahead and take it now," which we did. All three of us then resumed our normal evening routine.

We were both stunned by what she had done, first, because it was an entirely new behavior, and second, because it displayed an intelligence on her part which somehow overrode her instinctual desire to hang onto important things, and third, because we had just been joking about just this very behavior. We still don't know for sure what is going on in that pretty head of hers, but what we do know is that there is a lot more happening there than we thought.

On the other side of the ledger, Piper has become a diggin' fool lately, scouring out little holes here and there. That, we hear, is a tough habit to break. But now that she is smarter than we thought, we feel a little more confident about it (though not much!).

Update on this post: A week later the bone was being seriously chewed, as usual, and when we went to take it from her, she growled at us. We did end up taking the bone from her, and we learned that she is all bark and no bite - true to her Golden genes, thankfully!