Evening alchemy

The job goes ever as the job must, with apologies to Seamus Heaney.

Fortunately, today there was plenty to enjoy. It was my night to cook. I got ambitious and tried to make chicken pad thai, one of my favorite treats at local Thai eateries. The experiment was a god awful smelling mess at first. That ubiquitous Thai ingredient, fish sauce, is potent stuff. Canada and the kids huddled in the front room while I tried to turn lead into gold for dinner.

Damnedest thing was, I managed to make it remarkably edible. We ate pad thai, and it had the right flavor, but not well blended. I could taste each ingredient, especially that fish sauce. It needed a subtler hand or a secret I don't know. But, it was successful for a first stab.

After dinner, I told Canada I'd but us a new album. She quickly turned cynical and translated that as "Album for Matt." Then, I made her listen and pick out the voices. She pegged Alison Krauss straight. That other vocal took a few minutes, but it hit her. Robert Plant.

Raising Sand is another bit of magic ingredients. I'd never have guessed Plant and Krauss would pair up and release an album. Turns out the thing's damn good! Melodic and wistful, sprinkled with a bluesy swagger here and there. I picked it up on Amazon to test out their new MP3 downloads. A little bit of browser fuss didn't outweigh their cheaper prices and lack of pesky digital rights management! Now, Canada and I can share tunes of an album with two of our favorite artists.

There's gold in there somewhere.