Indians @ Rockies 14-3

Swisher hadn't seen the new Talking Stick at Salt River,
home of the Rockies and Diamondbacks. This week the Rockies
had it to themselves, while the D'backs were off in Japan
falling into premature regular season last place courtesy
of the Dodgers.

We parked in the faraway parking, being too proud to use
the handicap area and too cheap to use the VIP lot. We had
plenty of time to hobble across the VIP lot and make it
in to our place before the festivities. To be fair, the
park offers free cart shuttles to the elderly and infirm.
To be unfair, the drivers ignored us and instead offered
places to the young, cute, and female, preferably it seems
all three.

The guy who took a seat next to me asked if I was a
Cleveland fan (we were 5 rows behind the Indians' dugout),
and I said, well, I'm certainly not a Rockies fan, which,
after an initial awkward moment, he took pretty well and
engaged me in a several-inning conversation about the
Rockies' prospects for this season, a subject about which
I know nothing (except that it's a lousy team) and cared
about as much.

This stadium offers Four Peaks products in among the regular
junk. Kilt Lifter is the strongest and the tastiest.

There's a Pima Indian fry bread stall, so I got one with
powdered sugar. It was tough and resilient and cooked in
rather old oil. A disappointment.

The Red Men ruined the day of the homies by an astounding
14-3. I understand that the favor was returned next day
by 14-6.

After this we decided to give China Magic another try: this
is the unassuming noodle house that CNN called one of the
best Chinese restaurants in the country. We had a decent
though flawed meal here a couple years ago with TW1, and I
was getting a hankering for chewy noodles and spicy Asian
food, for reasons beyond me. Swisher was a good sport.

It was only about 15 minutes from the stadium, a straight
shot down 101, so we got there during the pre-dinner lull,
with us being only about the third or fourth party there.
By the time we left, most of the tables were taken.

It's hard to eat here with just two people, as you want
to get at least two different kinds of noodles plus other
stuff. We just got the basics.

You order one of four kinds of pasta - thin, regular, wide,
or shaved - in one of several preparations, very simple
but very versatile. Thin and regular are familiar to all,
the counterparts to say vermicelli and spaghetti; wide are
like chow fun or pappardelle; and shaved are curiosities
knife cut from a chunk of dough. For me, the thinner the
better; the problem is that as with Italian pasta, the
thinner the harder to get just right.

Thin noodles with ground meat sauce - a dish that can go
two ways, one with hoisin, quite sweet, delicious in its
way (this is what you often get under the name Peking
noodles), the other with la dou ban, extremely savory.
Thankfully, this was of the latter sort; it was pretty
good but unthankfully very unspicy, and with the mass of
chewy starch (almost properly cooked, not quite) the hot
oil on the table could hardly do the job, and when we
left, half the bottle was gone. Oh, the meat was pork or
a mixture of pork and beef; it had been fried pretty hard
and so acted as a textural contrast as much as a flavoring
or an ingredient.

Beef noodles (medium) with XO sauce and vegetables came as
a standard southern stir-fry complete with overtenderized
meat; the noodles were chewier and more satisfying than the
rather limp thin ones, which as I mentioned are very hard
to get right. I should have gotten the ribbon noodles, which
are cut rather than pulled but stand up well to a saucy dish
with chunks of ingredients. The XO sauce was not much in
evidence, offering just a touch of heat, not enough, and a
touch of fishy umami, not enough for me, just right for
Swisher, who doesn't eat fish.

Iced tea - the place doesn't have an alcohol license, and we
had beer at home anyhow. The lack of license is reflected in
the low prices: our meal was under $10 each.