Musings

In honor of President’s Day (not really), we embarked on a multi-cultural experience (or merely a not-Western adventure). We met friends at a Korean BBQ, and learned how to order and enjoy tasty food cooked on an upside-down wok-like cooker in the middle of the table. That’s some kimchi on the left, a pancake, and some marinated soy sprouts on the cooker, and three condiments in the tray for our side of the table to share. This was the first food on the cooker.

For protein, we got pork and pork, beef, shrimp, and octopus, cooked in sequence. And got stuffed.

At the end of the meal, the server scraped the well-cooked bits left on the cooking surface into some white rice and chopped seaweed and lettuce, then tossed and shuffled them together until homogenous. Oh yum. Yes, we kept eating when we were already full. I especially enjoyed the thin slices of radish (I think—the white in the bowl left of the cooker), lightly pickled, and used to wrap bean paste (left, in trio-tray) and veg and protein, eaten like a taquito.

Soju is a clear Korean liquor, just the thing to make you poorly productive in the afternoon if you have it for a late lunch. As I can testify! Oh yum (I repeat myself).

Posted at 6:52 PM | 2 Comments »

Kohlrabi is the fat-stem cabbage variant. Perhaps a modified kale.

Or just a decorative seasonal winter planting….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Food or fun

Despite the cold (like high 40s), we braved the elephants and strolled in Piedmont Park and the Bot Garden with the lovely B, especially enjoying the sunny moments. We discovered this verbal joke in the orchid house.

Hmmm. Stilettos in…nope….

Answer in photo name, if you can’t figure it out….

Posted at 7:39 PM | 1 Comment »

We crowned the end of Cooking Week with…take-out. I didn’t plan it that way; I just ran out of steam by the time the afternoon wore on.

Last weekend was Group Cooking, with a strong measure of laughter and great fun.

During the week, we had The Great Lincoln/FIL Birthday, again a group-cook, and with great enjoyment and celebration.

We followed that with Heart-Day, always a pleasure. I mixed it up with some cooking and some reheat (yielding our version of surf and turf—fresh-sauteed Georgia shrimp plus great BBQ from WF, accented with my BBQ sauce), but still a cooking event. For two.

Whew!

Undeniably tasty. Yet.

The flower honors the trust my neighbors put in me to back up their trailer in the driveway—two driveways, actually. I reached deep in my sense memory and managed to pull the exercise(s) off. Thank you, my strange work history, for giving me this highly specialized training….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Tale of a week

So St. Val isn’t the saint anymore, and the Pope is a lame duck.

Good thing the prosecco’s holding up!

Posted at 7:55 PM | 1 Comment »

Reaching back to the weekend, we motored home via Experiment GeeA—named for the UGA Experiment Station there. Sleepy place on a rainy winter Sunday afternoon.

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Forgive me if I repeat myself with another garden reflector from last weekend, but I was distracted today with celebrating SomeOne’s eight-something b-day, so no new artsy photos, only family photos. Which are wonderful, but not the same as blog-photos….

Posted at 10:12 PM | Comments Off on Acronym of the day: FIL

Reflector I captured over the weekend….

My reflection: whole lotta misinformation out there regarding the Pope<>God relationship…. Of course, for starters, it’s a one-sided report.

Posted at 9:50 PM | Comments Off on Garden glitter

I am so very happy to have good friends nearby but far enough away that we stay overnight and our laugh-filled visit is a tremendously fine and effective antidote for the sourness that crops up in the every-day world and rode on our shoulders as we traveled along the highway toward our destination.

I think we laughed for hours about this giant sweet potato, and that was even before the wiggly eyes got added.

That was last night. Today we talked, laughed more, but also covered some serious topics—no need to detail them.

We also strolled the north and south forties, which weren’t full forties so it wasn’t the tromp it sounds like. Still, the balm of the forest worked for me.

The art of the property extended beyond anthropomorphic sweeties, as you can see….

Thanks ever so much to our hosts for allowing us to transform into OOTFs, and for all the great good-times….

Posted at 10:22 PM | 1 Comment »

Oh so many shifts in the small-town political economy in the rural US. The downtown hardware store, once so important, now merely indicated in peeling paint. Along with its cousin, the auto parts store. And so much more.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Peeling paint of history