Old Pictures Recovered (In Loving Memory of My S200)

Exciting news: I got my birthday camera today! Hurrah! Hurrah!

But before we celebrate the joys of my new PowerShot S70, let’s take a moment to pay loving tribute to my old, eviscerated Powershot S200. Yes, it was in the final days of my S200 that these pictures were taken. Its final words, as I jabbed at it with a knife, were: “Don’t let these pictures die with me…carry them forth…remove my memory chip and plant them in your new camera…so my children…one day…can remember their…grandcamera.”

And so, children, we gather now to study the S200’s final food moments. First, a moment of silence. Turn your flashes off, please.

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It was a week ago Friday (the 4th) that the S200 joined me at lunch with my classmate Diana. We went somewhere that I am not going to disclose for a reason that will soon be apparent.

Diana ordered a quiche which I declared to be WASPy food. She said, “Well I am WASPy” and modelled her quiche.

I, in turn, ordered a salad with asparagus. Looks normal, doesn’t it?

Yet the late great S200 picked something up that you may not have noticed at first glance. Look at the tomato, 3 o’clock. See that black cylindrical object? I saw it too. I wondered: “What is this? Is it a vegetable? A fruit? A meat product?” I bit into it. It was wood!

I showed the waitress and she was horrified. She told the owner and they paid for BOTH OUR MEALS. So it was really nice of them. That’s why I’m not going to destroy their business by revealing their identity. And the wood, by the way, was part of a utensil. It must have broke off during the tossing.

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Next up, we have Newman’s Own Lemonade. I talked about this last week—how I really like it. How it’s really special lemonade. Well now you can see it. The S200 didn’t shy away from Paul Newman or his pink lemonade.

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Did you know I made a Caesar salad last week? The S200 did. It was there with me. I made Amanda Hesser’s Caesar salad from “Cooking With Mr. Latte.” To be honest, it was a huge disappointment.

See, to me what makes Caesar great is the marriage of anchovy and garlic. When that gets blended together you have a pungent mixture to be rivaled by few others. But Amanda doesn’t incorporate the anchovies until way later. So first you boil the eggs on a spoon for 45 seconds:

Now for the sucky part: the dressing. You just whisk together garlic, olive oil and then the egg stuff. I think it was one egg and one egg yolk. Where’s the anchovy? Not yet, according to Amanda.

When it’s time for anchovy, you rinse them off and dry them out:

You chop them up and put them in the bowl with the romaine lettuce. Add parmesan cheese:

Then the dressing. And you toss.

It looks good, I know, but it doesn’t taste like Caesar because the anchovies aren’t incorporated in the dressing. That’s the whole point! The best Caesar salads I’ve made involve a food processor in which you blend garlic, anchovies and olive oil and you get deliciousness. Amanda’s salad was like a deconstructed Caesar which I suppose is sophisticated, but made me and my S200 crave the lowbrow version.

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Then there was this Galia melon. Remember, I talked about it?

Well we cut it open:

And it looked like a cucumber and tasted like a mild honeydew. Not my favorite–unless it wasn’t ripe yet, in which case I chose a poor Galia melon.

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Now for the S200’s final memory. My lunch at ‘ino with Patty and Molly:

This lunch was awesome and proved a worthy last meal for the S200. I ordered the Quattro panini as did Molly and Patty and we all raved. The S200 was there to photograph it:

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And that’s it, friends. The S200’s final image. In a way, the arrangement of paninis looks like a Christian grave marker. Let’s hope the S200 wasn’t Jewish. If it was, Shalom S200–you served me well!