I started the morning toasting two 1/3 slices of whole Wheat Everything bagels, spread them with cream cheese, and garnished them with slices of onion and pieces of smoked white fish and capers. 8 drank green tea with the bagels.
Then a bit after 10:00 while Suzette gardened I rode to Montano and back. I am trying o get to 10 miles three times a week. This will be the first week I meet that goal this year.
When I returned home I rested and watched the Spanish national women’s soccer team beat South Africa.
Suzette then made lunch. She heated the PPI Lamb Couscous covered with sole fillets in the microwave. It was delicious beyond words. I never would have guessed how well fish and lamb flavors were together. Of course the fish was fresh and sank into the wet Couscous. We both noticed something special about the two dishes we had made by laying the sole on top of a PPI, the enchiladas and the Couscous, the fish cooked beautifully in the time it took to reheat the PPI and the delicate sole did not fall apart. Usually when we flour and sauté sole it ends up in hundreds of pieces. We may have found the best way t cook sole; laid on PPIs.
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| The dish after it was cooked |
finished watching Love It or List it at 5:00 we drove to Home Depot for graphite to loosen the mechanisms on our locks at home that have begun sticking and then to Sprouts, where we loaded up.
We bought dill, two whole Atlantic salmon filets, chicken sausage with spinach and feta, a red bell pepper, a red onion, a Vidalia onion, yogurt, large spinach tortillas, cherries , and grapes.
We then drove to Walmart to get the green food dye and Certo liquid pectin Suzette needed for making mint jelly and went home, plus Ramen noodle bowls for $.36 per bowl and Vita Herring in wine Sauce for $7.98. The vastness of the Walmart store amazed me
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| The produce area |
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| A view of the general merchandise area |
After we unloaded and had a drink to quench our thirst, we took drinks in traveling mugs and I filled a plastic bag with mixed nuts and peanut M&Ms and we drove to the Museum to listen to the diva sing jazz and Broadway and American favorites. We sat outside and ate and listened until her band took a break at which time we walked to the Plaza in Old Town for long enough to feel the press of the crowd that had come to celebrate the Festival of Saint Felipe de Neri and take a picture. We then went back to the quietude and sophisticated music at the museum. After about an hour we returned home to make dinner at about 8:30.
Suzette made two hamburgers and grilled them and made steamed broccoli, while I sliced the tomato, and some slices of Manchego cheese to melt on top of the burgers and sautéed ½ of the Vidalia onion and three large mushrooms in butter and olive oil. I went to the garden and picked two tiny sprigs of thyme and two large limbs of sage and de-stemmed them and sliced the leaves and added them to the mushrooms and onions.
When everything was ready Suzette made a stack, three tomato slices for the base, then the hamburger, and finally the sautéed onions and mushrooms with broccoli placed on either side of the stack.
We were both exhausted from our week’s work and crawled in bed at 9:30.
I woke up at 12:45 to blog a bit and drink a cup of tea.
Bon Appetit
Today’s Belmont Stakes is a good example of parimutuel betting parimutuel betting. I understand it as follows. The tickets on the winning horse share the entire pool of money bet to win after the track and State take their cut. The Place horse and winning horse split the money bet on Place and each of the 1/2 s is divided pro rata among all the ticket holders for each horse. The same is true for Show but there is a three way split. What happened today that was so interesting was a long shot, Sir Winston, a 10 to 1 long shot won and paid $22.40 for a $2.00 win ticket, $8.80 for a $2.00 Place ticket and $6.10 for a $2.00 show ticket. The favorite, Tacitus, at 9/5 which means $5.00 bet on Tacitus to win would pay approximately $9.00, placed and Joevia a 21 to 1 long shot ran third. The second favorite Will to Win ran out of the money. Because the second favorite failed to finish in the money the share for each horse was greater than if Will to Win at 2 to 1 had finished in the money. Tacitus paid about $3.90 for Place and Tacitus paid $3.20 to show. Joevia paid $8.70 to show. If Will to Win had finished in the money a $2.00 Show ticket would have paid about $2.30. The evidence that a lot of money was bet on the two favorites in the last few seconds is that Sir Winston paid slightly more than 10 to 1.
My dad loved to bet on the horses. I guess because it was a legally controlled system that meant that one with superior knowledge could beat the odds. We often summered in Ruidoso and he would take me with him when we went to Ruidoso Downs in the morning to watch the horses train. On the day of the race or the day before the trainers would often breeze their horses which meant they would put the horse they were training into a full gallop over the distance of the race to see how fast they were
and if they were ready to run. Those times were published in the Daily form up to the day of the race but not for the day of the race, so you could obtain the special knowledge of how the horses were running on the day of the race. If dad saw a fast horse, we would often walk to the barns were the horses were kept and try to find the trainer and ask him if his horse was ready to run.
Once Dad found a favorite that looked fast, his favorite way to bet the horse was $10.00 to win, $50.00 to Place and $300.00 or $350.00 to Show. Today’s Belmont was a great example of how well Dad’s betting method worked on the favorite, Tacitus. He would have lost the $10.00 win bet. He would have received $97.50 for his Place bet of $50.00 and $480.00 for his $300.00 Show bet, for a net gain of $217.50. Dad liked betting on big races like the Belmont because the better horses are more consistent. Tacitus was the favorite because he lived at Belmont so was used to the track and had won his last three races, had been rested for the Preakness and had a recent bris speed rating of 103.
Now that we are this far out into the weeds, let me provide us with the details on bris ratings, of which I was not familiar.
BRIS SPEED RATINGS F.A.Q.
HOW ARE THE BRIS SPEED RATINGS CALCULATED ?
BRIS Speed Ratings are based on a variation of the "projection method" which some other popular speed figures are based. Unlike others, BRIS uses an objective, computer precise method to make the final time projections rather than using the subjective opinion of one handicapper. The past performances of every horse competing in a given field is examined with the painstaking detail only a computer can do. The projections generated by Bloodstock Research's computer system are based on proprietary techniques and algorithms which have been rigorously tested and long proven over
hundreds of thousands of races. This computer precision enables the BRIS Speed Ratings to use the most accurate projections and variants possible.
ARE BRIS SPEED RATINGS COMPARABLE ACROSS DIFFERENT TRACKS ?
Yes. Since the ratings are "fully adjusted" (reflecting both daily and track-to-track variants), they are comparable across all North American racetracks.
HOW MANY SPEED POINTS REPRESENT ONE LENGTH ?
The BRIS Speed Ratings points-per-length scale is based on the long accepted premise that as distances increase the value of a length decreases. On the BRIS Speed Ratings scale one length is approximately equal to 1 1/2 pts in sprints and approximately 1 point in routes.
CAN BRIS SPEED RATINGS BE COMPARED FROM DIFFERING DISTANCES ?
Yes. BRIS Speed Ratings have been designed to make easy comparisons of all races, regardless of distance. A speed rating of 85 in a sprint is theoretically equivalent to a speed rating of 85 in a route. However, a sprint speed rating of 85 does not mean that the same horse is capable of earning an 85 in a route race. Horses are individuals, not machines - each horse has their own distance limitations.
WHAT ARE SOME TYPICAL SPEED RATINGS FOR 3&UP MALES?
BRIS
SPEED
A typical Grade I stakes winner .................... 106
A typical "OPEN" Claiming $10,000 winner ........... 88
A typical Maiden Claiming $10,000 winner ........... 75
A typical winning Grade I stakes older male horse will earn a BRIS Speed Rating of 106 or thereabout. Of course, these horses will often earn speed ratings much higher in their very best efforts. "Cigar" has earned speed ratings as high as 117.
So the point to all this is that if one makes a study of all the available data, one can often pick the favorite with a pretty high degree of accuracy which increases ones odds of “taking home some of the track’s money”, as my dad used to say.
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