Sun., Dec. 22, 2013. Seafood Platter With Real Catfish.

Mary Ann likes crowds. It's one of the few ways in which we differ dramatically from one another. This came up twice today. She was out a lot of the day doing Christmas shopping. Later, she and I discussed the upcoming cruise along Italy's west coast, starting and ending in Rome. We will be in the Eternal City for Easter. She has almost been talked out of trying to go to Easter Mass at the Vatican. That's such a draw that you need tickets, and only those who are well connected can get them. She still has her hopes up, but in the meantime she is looking at other options, the leading one of which is Stations of the Cross in the Colosseum. [caption id="attachment_40459" align="alignnone" width="480"] Seafood platter at The Chimes.[/caption] When she returned from the shopping trek, we went for early dinner at The Chimes. I was in the mood for some fried catfish, and now that Zea and the Acme have both gone over to that oversized catfish cousin from Southeast Asia, The Chimes leads the catfish league among our regular hangouts. We split a seafood platter, which MA found less than spectacular. But I was happy enough with it. The soup of the day was a corn and crab bisque. Almost everybody who makes this soup these days seems to believe that the thicker it is, the better it is. Not so. The dip-like consistency that has become common only fills you up, without imparting any more flavor. In this case, a thirty-five percent addition of seasoned crab stock would have made this much better potage. Raining constantly, it was the perfect day to get a lot of desk work done. Still trying to dope out the ins and outs of the new NOMenu website program. It's like learning a foreign language: incomprehensible at first, but more understandable at a rising rate the more you stick with it.