We've reached the halfway mark for winter. "What," Blondie cries, "You mean that we have as much misery in front of us as we have behind us?"

Yes, Virginia, there is a nasty forecast in your future. I'm told that there was snow last week in 49 of the 50 states, Florida being the sole exception. Even Hawaii got some snow, although admittedly, it was at the peaks of their mountains.

I remind her that there are people who like snowy weather, and not just those who supplement their income by plowing the white stuff. They like winter sports like skiing, and sledding and skating, and as Eddie Rendell reminds us, football used to be a cold weather sport. She is more concerned about getting out and taking walks with Marie, although Marie likes this weather just fine. She sticks her nose into the snow and roots around like a hog in a muddy pasture.

Seasonal Affective Disorder

I've been depressed this past week, and I blame Seasonal Affective Disorder. Not everyone believes it exists, but then, the Scientologists claim that all mental illness is a crock, so you can't go by that. The folks with PET scanners seem to have demonstrated that people's brains work differently if they don't get enough UV light, and that if you substitute regular lighting with full-spectrum light bulbs, without people knowing, their mood generally improves, and their PET scans revert to summer-type patterns.

I have another solution to the problem - and it's poor man's Prozac. And unlike the stuff from Eli Lilly, poor man's Viagra doesn't depress the libido. It's potatoes.

Blondie seems to think that there's such a thing as a "starch" food group. There isn't. Bread and noodles are grains, while potatoes are vegetables. Bread and noodles are richer in B vitamins, while potatoes are richer in vitamin C.

There are lots of ways to prepare potatoes, but stewed potatoes are one of the ways that nutritionists like best. It's better to use a waxy potato, I suppose, but baking potatoes are easier to come by this time of year. Mama always cut the potatoes into 1/2-inch cubes, which is how I've made the ones in the picture, but half the time, I end up simply slicing the potatoes into 3/16" slices - the slices cook quicker.

No Peeling, Please

You'll notice that I don't peel the potatoes first; I just scrub the potatoes. If you're feeding kids, you may decide to peel them, but I advise against it, because if kids consider the possibility that potatoes can be peeled, they will expect potatoes to always be peeled, so that's a bad precedent to set.

About a year ago, I bought this Paula Deen cast iron casserole at Ollie's - good stuff cheap! - and after I got it home, it remained in the box for six months. Blondie didn't realize it was cast iron, and didn't think we needed another casserole for the oven. Because it's oval, it doesn't work quite as well on an electric range as it might on a gas burner, but it's proving to be rather nifty. The biggest shortcoming of the pan is that it's rather heavy, but it's as non-stick as all cast iron, and it could be used for any variety of things. I keep thinking it'd be great for a chicken roaster. Lodge should take note, and add something like this to their line of cast-iron cookware.

Most of the time, when I make stewed potatoes, I just fish the taters out of the liquid onto a plate, and add salt and butter to taste. This time, I chopped up a couple of Johnsonville brats and tossed them into the water, then added dried chives to the potatoes on the plate before adding salt and butter. The brats went well with the taters, and the chives complemented everything extremely nicely.

Introducing Bratwurst

I had never heard of bratwurst when I moved to Cincinnati in the 1970s. There, most restaurants (including Riverfront concession stands) offered brats and metts, and it was easy to fall in love with them. When I moved away from Cincinnati, I found that Johnsonville had done a wonderful job of marketing brats to the rest of the world. Metts, however, remain a well-kept secret. They are a gray-colored sausage, and they are probably less popular because of the color, not because of the taste, because they are quite tasty. When I moved away from Cincinnati, I was disappointed by Johnsonville brats for a long time, for they really aren't as good as the brats I used to eat in Cincinnati, but to be fair, while Johnsonville is slightly different, it's not like they are better or worse (or wurst) than the native Cincinnati brats.

And if truth be known, I'm far more likely to use Polksa Keilbasa in stewed potatoes that bratwurst. My first wife, Em, was plant nurse at the original Osage Street plant of Peter Eckrich and Sons, and in my opinion, many Eckrich products went marketedly downward in quality when Eckrich became part of Swift, and then was sold to Corn Products. Their Polksa Keilbasa is an exception. What's more, for the last couple of years, I've been finding Eckrich brand Polksa Keilbasa at Sharp Shopper, Glenwood Foods, Amelia's and other "distressed groceries" outlets. It's often available at bargain prices. Keilbasa has a taste not too different from bratwurst.

My Monthly Shower

I hadn't been out of the house in a week, and Blondie was dying to go out in public, so I took my monthly shower this morning, and we went to Sharp Shopper Leola this afternoon. We needed bread and milk, salad fixings, meat, yogurt, and paper products. Normally, Sharp Shopper has a better choice of meats than anyone but Amelia, and most of Amelia's meats are breaded. We were disappointed by the salad fixin's, the meat, and even their bread shelves were barren by the time we arrived. Well, they're closed on Sunday, so I'd be trying to sell out the bread by Saturday afternoon, too.

Halfway through shopping, though, I started experiencing symptoms of low blood sugar. I didn't want to drive far that way. There's a Two Cousins Pizza in the Sharp Shopper center, but we weren't in the mood for Italian. The Leola Family Restaurant is on that corner, but their parking lot was dead empty. Are they out of business? We didn't investigate. I drove across Lsura Lee Boulevard to the Golden Dragon restaurant.

Well, that's what the sign still says at the rear of the building. On the face of the building, it says "Wu's Garden". There used to be a Royer Pharmacy in this building, with a Rita's (or maybe it was another brand of Italian Ice) to the right and Leola Beverage, a beer wholesaler, to the left. Leola Beverage is still there, but the other two businesses became the Golden Dragon, and now Wu's Garden.

Not Our First Visit

Blondie and I ate there a year or two ago, when it was called Golden Dragon. We thought it was fairly nice. Unlike most of the oriental restaurants in Lancaster County, it's not a buffet. New on the menu are a few pages of Thai foods.

The decor is upgraded from what it was, and it wasn't really a dump before. The booths are comfortable, and roomy enough for supersized diners. The foods are served on elegant white china, and the salt and pepper shakers (and what I presume is a creamer) are elegant white china as well. The only way to upgrade the decor further would be to replace the booths with tables featuring linen tablecloths.

Blondie had Thai mango chicken. I had beef egg foo yung, crab rangoon, and hot & sour soup. I always get crab rangoon at the various buffets around town, and Blondie turns up her nose at them, but she thought these looked especially appealing, and when she tasted them, decided she really liked them. She also tore into her chicken, although she claimed not to be hungry before we entered the restaurant, and she'd already eaten half my crab rangoon, and then begged for some of my beef egg foo yung as well.

Hot & Sour & Peppery

I wasn't particularly impressed by the hot-and-sour soup. Some places make it hotter (spicy hot, not thermometer hot) than others, but Wu's Garden seemed to have a strong taste of black pepper. Some will find it highly appealing; it wasn't bad soup, only soup that didn't delight my palate this afternoon.

I was slightly impressed by the crab rangoon. It was meatier and crabbier than what's found on most local buffets, and it was served with a nice sweet-and-sour sauce, but I am generally pretty happy with the buffet fare, and IMO, there's not that much that it can be improved upon.

Egg foo yung is a food without a recipe. Basically, you make small omelettes filled with your leftovers, and serve it with a thin brown gravy. Again, how do you markedly improve upon what others are producing? My entree was tender, properly cooked, and the brown sauce was rather tasty.

Goodbye, Columbus

I used to live in Columbus, which has more first-class chinese restaurants than any five cities that size should have. Chinese is to Columbus as 3-way chili is to Cincinnati, or cheese-steaks are to Philadelphia. If I'd gone into Wu's Garden with the intent of reviewing it, rather than to restore my blood sugar levels, I'd have ordered something else that would have presented a challenge to the kitchen, rather than "playing it safe". As it is, I can't swear that the food is exceptional there, even though I suspect it's equally as good as the service, the decor, and the sanitation.

My apologies to you, and to Wu's Garden. If you've eaten there recently, please tell me about your experience, so others can benefit thereby.

I normally take pictures with a Canon Sureshot A570 camera, which has a green card for a pocket in my coat. I took it out to shoot the pictures of the stewed potatoes, and didn't get it back into my coat pocket before leaving the house, so the restaurant pictures were taken with a UT Starcom ARC phone - a $20 flip phone that requires me to spend $20 every three months with Virgin Mobile. I was impressed that I ended up with something useable!

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Amelia - bratwurst - cheese steaks - chives - Cincinnati - Columbus - Corn Products - crab rangoon - egg foo yung - German Shepherd - Glenwood Foods - hot & sour soup - Johnsonville - mango chicken - mettwurst - Paula Deen - PET scans - Peter Eckrich - Philadelphia - Polksa Keilbasa - Seasonal Affective Disorder - Sharp Shopper - snow - stewed potatoes - Swift & Company - thai - Two Cousins - winter - Wu's Dragon