Lee White's Department Store Essay

One stop shopping

Lee has created many and diverse items worth, in a sense, “purchasing” (accessing and reading). Here they are all gathered under one roof and conveniently organized for efficient shopping. Lee is always creating more (and more), and they, too, will be brought into the store as soon as they are ready to be made available to the public. The idea of the store is that it’s one place to go to find everything.

This store is organized into floors. That makes it easy to find things. New items will be added regularly; even new floors will be added from time to time, though it must also be said that Lee pauses in his endeavors from time to time.

Think of Lee White’s Department Store this way — rather than hopping around from one item to another, hop back here each time and find the next thing you want to look at. Clicks can be saved by doing this, and you are less likely to get lost.

A virtual department store, not too different from a real one — and easier to get to. What with the price of gas these days, you’ll save money, too.

1st Floor Food Emporium: Fruits

  • Grilled figs
  • Grilled melon
  • Grilled nectarines
  • Grilled grapefruit
  • Grilled apricots
  • Grilled strawberries
  • Grilled pears
  • Grilled peaches
  • Grilled plums
  • Grilled blueberries
  • Grilled papaya
  • Grilled kiwi
  • Grilled grapes
  • Grilled mango
  • Grilled apples

As you have no doubt noticed by now, all of these are grilled and all promise to be delicious. Some are unusual fruits to find on a grill, but that only makes all this more interesting.

1st Floor Food Emporium: Vegetables

  • Grilled tomatoes & corn
  • Grilled eggplant
  • Grilled endive
  • Grilled mushrooms
  • Grilled cucumbers
  • Grilled leeks
  • Grilled peppers & zucchini
  • Grilled teeny potatoes
  • Grilled heirlooms
  • Grilled bell peppers
  • French fries
  • Grilled artichokes

The Potato – its story and glory

Kimchi: an intro

Not everything in this section of the 1st Floor is grilled, but most things are. As for the potato, should we have included this instead on the top floor — Ideas?

1st Floor Food Emporium: Seafood

Crab Cakes (Chesapeake)

  • Grilled salmon with lemon
  • Grilled salmon with soy
  • Smoked salmon New World
  • Grilled swordfish
  • Sauteed scallops
  • Grilled tuna steaks

See also our Sandwich and Salad areas, also on the first floor, for further seafood selections.

1st Floor Food Emporium: Meats

  • Grilled flank steak 1
  • Grilled flank steak 2
  • Grilled ribeye steak
  • Grilled sausages tomato pasta
  • Grilled Korean beef (bulkogi)
  • Grilled kebabs
  • Grilled lamb chops
  • Grilled NY steak
  • Grilled sausages
  • Sausages – grilled with garlic & broccoli
  • Beef stew
  • Grilled chicken breasts
  • Grilled steak (petit fillet)
  • Grilled veal stew

Of course, vegetarians will wish to avoid this area of the first floor, but that will be easy for them to do. All they have to do is jump right to the next section or proceed directly up the stairs to the upper floors.

1st Floor Food Emporium: Salads

  • Greek salad
  • Salad with grilled salmon
  • Salad with prosciutto & artichoke
  • Salad with grilled tuna steak
  • Salad with grilled blueberries
  • Salad with grilled peaches & endive
  • Salad with aged gouda & teeny potatoes
  • Salad with feta & grilled grapes

Most of these, though not all, are luncheon salads, so perhaps we should call this the “Luncheon corner.” However, most of these lunches can be readily expanded into dinner plates by the addition of more of the ingredients shown. Then these salads will be just as satisfying as they were as lunches.

1st Floor Food Emporium: Sandwiches/Burgers

  • Grilled sausage sandwich
  • Grilled salmon sandwich
  • Italian cold cuts sub
  • Grilled eggplant sandwich
  • Burger – Mahi-Mahi
  • Burger – Beef
  • Burger – Salmon
  • Grilled swordfish sandwich
  • Grilled lamb sandwich

Basically, the comments made above about salads apply here also, only more so. Whether these are lunch or dinner depends more on your appetite than on the dish you are preparing as you read along.

1st Floor Food Emporium: Pasta

  • Spaghetti – Korean! (a la Kim)
  • Spaghetti
  • Leftovers – chicken fettuccine
  • Pasta meat sauce
  • Sausage tomato pasta
  • Asian noodle soup
  • Leftovers – Roast chicken & fettuccine

This, obviously, will be one of the areas on the first floor which will be most rapidly expanded. There is no end to the possibilities here.

1st Floor Food Emporium: Assorted Delicacies

  • Raspberry smoothie
  • Espresso
  • Arnold Palmer
  • Wine taste test
  • Fried rice easy
  • EVOO
  • Pizza – Quick
  • Dutch oven
  • Sourdough bread – available?

The word “Delicacies” here is intended to have a very wide range. Not all of these are even edible, the Dutch oven, for example, or the espresso machine, but they all result in something delicious.

2nd Floor: Bookstore

  • China: Chang, Bell, Spence
  • China: Shambaugh, Waley, Fairbank
  • China: Shapiro, Mitter, Hucker
  • China Perkowski, Smedley, Li
  • China: Hessler, Sledge, Salzman
  • China biz 1
  • China biz 2
  • 5 American memoirs
  • 2 detective novels

Reading is fundamental, and there is plenty of reading to do up here in Lee White’s Department Store book shop. Unlike a physical bookstore, however, the books here do not vanish after a short duration when they are “current.” Just click and get. More will be added, as well, in due course.

3rd Floor: Travel agency

  • China: provinces 1
  • China: provinces 2
  • China: provinces 3
  • China: provinces 4 (under construction)
  • China: provinces 5
  • China: cities 1
  • China: cities 2

Up one more flight is our travel shop. There’s a whole world up here, and we will see more and more of it as time goes by. The items here are just introductions, but all travelers have to start with ideas.

Top Floor: Thoughts and Ideas

(under construction)

Ideas – Diversity

Poets – Ezra Pound

Questions: odd but unanswered

Parting facts

“Parting facts” is a section we include near the end of every item listed above. It is intended to answer a question or two that might occur while reading the page, or to provoke a thought. It can be a bit quixotic, as here:

Department stores, of the sort known today, can apparently be traced back to London in 1796, when Harding, Howell & Co. opened its doors on Pall Mall. In fact, though, the department store movement did not really gather momentum until forty or fifty years later. Harrods dates back to 1834 and is still prospering. Harrods is uniformly described as “upmarket,” unlike Selfridges on Oxford Street, which began in 1909 and which was opened by Harry Gordon Selfridge who was born and raised in Ripon, Wisconsin and early found employment at Marshall Field’s in Chicago. (Macy’s traces to 1843).

Here, in Lee White’s Department Store, we have the next stage in these developments — existing solely on the internet and all the goods are free!