Before recently, the closest I'd ever come to a casino experience was hanging out with my dad in the smoky back rooms of pool halls in Kentucky when I was kid. He and his colorful gambling mates — who had nicknames like Skillet and Kool-Aid — shouted, taunted and cursed their way through boisterous games of craps, using the bare floor as their playing surface and a combination of prayers and pleas to make the two white dice hit that lucky number.
February 1, 2007
The moment I heard chef and truffle-worshipper Kevin Blaylock yell, "Holy crap, I found a really big one!" as he scanned the fluffy, upturned soil in a patch of Douglas firs south of Olympia, I knew he'd hit pay dirt.
He knelt and picked up a dingy white orb about the size of a gumball, brought it to his nose and took a whiff so deep and passionate I thought he was falling in love with it.
From an aesthetic point of view, the ugly little truffle seemed hardly worth all the excitement.
January 4, 2007
