So, Rocket and Deirdre are off on some adventure down in the old Refuge Farm territory in Culpeper.

They just announced that they would not be back until tomorrow night.

You can imagine how that made things get quiet around the Conference Table. Deirdre normally has the afternoon hot meal going at least in concept, with some idea of what ought to be marinating, thawing or prepped for whatever crowd is willing to sit around someplace dry.

I support getting Deirdre some time off.

That still left me with the Galley.

Fortunately, I had one of my simple cheat recipes ready. It is so easy I let The Boys put it together. You buy a couple rolls of refrigerated biscuit dough, separate and flatten the pieces, and wrap them around a little cheese and meat filling.

Bake them until puffed and brown.

Around here we call them Holly’s Dirty Diapers.

You can call them anything you want.

The rest of the crowd seemed more interested in getting under the Conference Table over the latest chapter in the data-center explosion. There is still vacant farmland available out toward Culpeper to jam enormous warehouse structures into fields that have been green since long before a young surveyor named George Washington began working that country in 1749.

I decided dinner was a more manageable problem.

Down in the garage I opened the 17-cubic-foot freezer and pulled out two of the bulk packs sitting above the ground-beef trays.

One was Wyoming Pure beef, with prime cuts that fit two at a time on the Weber down on the south patio. The other was pork from Autumn Olive Farms out in the Shenandoah Valley.

That brought us back to an unresolved culinary controversy that had nearly become dramatic on the Fourth Floor:

Duke’s versus something from Japan.

The something from Japan is Kewpie mayonnaise.

Dee and I adopted Duke’s as our standard creamy salad dressing long ago, on the recommendation of Chef Tracy O’Grady from the celebrated Arlington noshery Willow. Once, when Deirdre asked what Splash should pick up at Whole Foods to stir gently into the tuna salad, Tracy looked up and simply said:

“Duke’s.”

That settled things for quite a while.

We had grown up with Hellmann’s and Miracle Whip, the latter being the slightly sweeter Depression-era Kraft alternative to conventional mayonnaise. They all had their uses.

Then Kewpie wandered into the Galley.

Kewpie is different. Rich with egg yolk and carrying a little sweetness and tang of its own, a thin swipe across a piece of beef before it hits a hot grill can help produce a remarkably brown, crisp and savory surface.

That required investigation.

Naturally.

I sent two of the beef cuts down to the patio with Keith after securing the dry rub with a light swipe of Kewpie across both sides.

That would give us the experiment.

Meanwhile, I had a slow-cook recipe in mind for the Autumn Olive pork. I could get that started before lunch and aim for a Happy Hour serving.

So that was the afternoon plan.

Rocket and Deirdre could wander around Culpeper doing whatever Rocket and Deirdre were doing.

Nobody at the Conference Table asked.

We had Dirty Diapers coming out of the oven, Kewpie beef headed for the Weber, and Shenandoah pork beginning its long slow journey toward Happy Hour.

Different people have the watch.

And today, apparently, Holly had the Galley.

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra
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