(1) Chef’s Surprise! We had dinner last night at Aventino, the terrifically, very good Italian restaurant in Bethesda. When it came time for desert, the menu listed several enticing gelati, including a very enticing flavor -“Chef’s Surprise!” -, which I ordered. Our waitress asked me if I wanted to know what it was before it came, and she was very, very pleased that I didn’t. I really didn’t. When it came, Edie and I puzzled over its excellent, but unexpected taste, and couldn’t identify it.

I asked the waitress to finally let me in on the secret. The flavor was chestnut, and in the gelato were small pieces of candied chestnut. Next time when I see “Chef’s Surprise!” on a desert menu, I will know what to expect.

Now that that mystery has been solved, does anyone know what soup de jour is? And how all the chefs in the world learn what it is, so that they will know what to serve every day?

(2) Ballet. One of my final books of the year 2024 was Six Curtains for Stroganova by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon. You ask how I chose that book. For one thing, it was staring me in the face on the top of a pile of Penguin paperbacks. For another, it was only 191 pages long. And, finally, I am a sucker for most anything that smacks of Russia.

The book was written in the 1940s, when the Soviet Union was an Allied partner, and is a very, very clever (sometimes laugh out loud – except I don’t) satire. It takes place around 1900, when Russia is still Russia. Vladimir Stroganov (grandson of Moishe the money-lender, and son of Moishe’s son) is a pampered young man, whose family in Omsk has given him enough money to permit him to create a ballet company. Natasha is a young ballerina, with a very pushy stage mother. Vladimir falls in love with Natasha, Natasha’s mother (known only as “the mamoushka”) falls in love with Vladimir’s family’s money and Natasha goes along for the ride. Vladimir and Natasha marry, and Natasha announces that Omsk is not good enough for her, that she wants to go to St. Petersburg, be the lead ballerina in Vladimir’s company, and be so loved that she gets six curtain calls.

They all move to the capital. Vladimir rents a theater shared by a circus. And things go wrong from there. Vladimir’s biggest competition is the real Serge Diaghilev. And the competition is cut throat. Equally cut throat is the competition between Natasha and two better known ballerinas for the top roles in the two companies. And then there is the new potential backer, who has a lot of money when Vladimir’s money is running low, but who also has his own “Natasha”, who can do everything but dance. The mamoushka butts in continually. But who turns out to be the most powerful? Perhaps the otherwise unknown woman who is in charge of the curtains.

It is all great fun. I recommend it. If you can find it.

(3) Korea. From a satire on ballet, I went to the opposite extreme for my next book, Philip Deane’s Captive in Korea. Deane was a Greek born newspaper reporter, working for an unnamed newspaper (I think it was the London Observer) and sent to Korea in 1950 to cover the war. His description of Korea as a backwater occupied by the poorest of the poor, the hungriest of the hungry, and the most wretched of the wretched, certainly contrasts with the Korea of today. The description of the war conditions he sees in his early days there are hard to comprehend. And then he is captured by the North Koreans.

He is in their custody for over two years, kept not with the military POWs, but with civilians – journalists, diplomats, clergy, professionals and so forth. Always on the move, never properly clothed, generally freezing (really freezing) or too hot, starving most of the time, wounded, sick with no medical care. Conditions so bad that you would think that most of the prisoners would die. Which they did.

We fret about the wars going on in Ukraine and the Middle East (and if we are really sensitive, also about those chronically raging in parts of Africa), but they may pale in comparison with Korea. In the three years of the Korean War (a war which ended with an armistice still threatening to explode 75 years later) which accomplished absolutely nothing, Google’s AI tells me that 3,000,000 people (military and civilian) died. Can you even imagine?

Do I recommend this book (also hard to find, I am sure)? Yes, if you want to read about absolute misery. No, if you would rather read a satire about ballet.

(4) Potter. I had a hard time sleeping the night before last, and when I actually fell asleep, I had several dreams. The one that stuck in my mind? I was a relatively young man (as I usual am in my dreams), living in a large house with a bunch of others, and I decided I wanted a coca-cola. So I went to the corner store, bought a chilled bottle (the vendor apologized profusely for having to charge me $4) and took it to the park nearby, where I sat on a bench. A couple sat down next to me, and the man held out his hand and said “Hi. I am Potter Stewart”.

I was shocked that I had met a Justice of the Supreme Court in my neighborhood park, and reported it back to the people with whom I shared the house. One of them said to me: “That’s impossible. He’s dead. ” I said: “Yes, I know he is. But he’s also in the park.” Stewart died in 1985.

Last night, by the way, I recall an equally strange dream. I was talking to friends, but decided I needed to take a walk to get a little exercise. I told them I was going to go up Connecticut Avenue “to the Circle” and come back. On my walk, I saw a vacant lot on the east side of the street (in real life, there are no vacant lots there), and I was surprised at how empty it was. Next to it was a sign “COMING SOON: 5 NEW SHOPS”. That surprised me, too, but not nearly as much as when I looked back at the vacant lot and discovered that it was no longer vacant, but now held 5 new shops. “SOON” was an understatement.

That’s it for this morning. Two days left in 2024. I think I will start my yearly recap tomorrow.