HOW I BEGAN A QUEST TO TASTE THE FINEST IN CUISINE

Well, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did land on Taiwan. This royally upsets the Chinese. But, after Ukraine, the U.S. has to take a stand in Asia. If you can recall back that far, Speaker Newt Gingrich visited in 1997. China called it a mistake and not much more. Newt himself today responded that China threats over Pelosi's Taiwan visit a "bluff." Remember the Axis during WWII? A weird trio looming might well be China, Russia and Iran.

Justice was delivered by a drone strike in Kabul, although it took more than 20 years. The victim was 71-year old al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri, #2 to Osama bin Laden, until he was earlier assassinated by Navy Seals in 2011. Apparently, Zawahiri's family was seen escaping from the building. He was an Egyptian physician who joined his first jihadist cell as a teenager. They assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Next in line is perhaps Saif al-Adel, but he is based in Iran, and has credibility problems.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday indicated: Humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation, away from nuclear annihilation. Well, he had no inside information, as this statement came in reference to the pandemic-delayed conference to review the 50-year old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Good luck getting Putin to participate.

The mid-term elections are less than 100 days away (that image to the left was for two days ago). The final rounds of primaries will occur during the next six weeks, with today being particularly busy. The Trump effect will today dominate Republican results, especially in Arizona. The more he succeeds, the more Democrats will prevail on November 8. Abortion is also on the ballot for at least Kansas.

The nation next awaits Senator Kyrsten Sinema's decision on the Inflation Reduction Act. Apparently, the expected meeting with Senator Joe Manchin was not yesterday, but today. Perhaps she is waiting for the Arizona primaries to conclude. There seems to be a curious lack of concern from the White House, so maybe something was worked out and she got what she wanted.

Yesterday 15 Craigside welcomed a new chef, Jordan Salvador. He is probably the most important person in the building. I will at the end of this posting show you who he is.

I thus decided to find a past blog that perhaps most influenced me to focus on food as one of my life passions. While our dining room will never compete with the best food in the world, the beauty of life is that we need an appropriate balance. After all, these gourmet palaces charge $400 and more these days just for a meal. Our daily food charge here is less than 10% that, and, in fact, closer to 5%.

Nostalgia day leads me to 23February2010 when I might have begun my quest to indulge in the fine cuisine of the world. Please click on my posting of NOMA AND CHEF RENE. If you didn't, here is the first paragraph:

Noma (contraction of NOrdisk and MAd, meaning food), at the age of six, is simply the third rated restaurant in the world (El Bulli in Barcelona and Fat Duck near London are #1 and #2) and Rene Redzepi was recently voted the best chef on the entire globe. Natural Nordic ingredients are used, almost all from Denmark. They even brew their own beer and wine. As such, no olive oil, no foie gras and not much salt, but a lot of vinegar. Note that the first really French restaurant on the top 50 list, Bras, came in at #7. Three of the best five are Spanish. That's Chef Rene to my left.

Just 10 days ago I wrote on the BEST WORLD RESTAURANTS. One of my most memorable cuisine days occurred in Japan a decade ago. I went to two Michelin-3 Star restaurants on the same day. For lunch I got served by Jiro himself. If you clicked on that, you would have noticed that the documentary about him earned 99/91 ratings from Rotten Tomatoes. Then for dinner, I went to Japan's newest 3-Star, Nihonryori Ryu Gin. Chef Seiji Yamamoto is now ranked in the Top 10 of the World's Best 100 Chefs.

So about 15 Craigside, here are a few photos welcoming Chef Jordan Salvador, who graduated from Farrington High School.

I close with Day 15 of my first Blood Lily bloom:

However, batch #2 is now in Day One:

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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