Musings

Well now, Old Man Time escaped the bounds of…time, and I must do a late-post. My alternate-reality self is in Paris (trust me), and I revere it with this time-shifting plant….

Happy Sattidy night!

For no apparent reason, let me note here that when my fingers learned to type the exclamation point, it was a far different key-stroke-combo than it is now. And there’s no reason to allot blog-space to that observation. Or I could do something totally different, and address recent settlement pattern studies…(I advise:) don’t turn me loose on this….

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Ah, bœuf bourguignon

This is Nepalese bheda ko ledho thali. Lamb stew with wee bowls of veggies, pickles, bean stoups, and rice and naan chaperones.

The accompaniment you don’t see: a lesson in blue-dot navigation.

Posted at 10:54 PM | Comments Off on Show stopper

Today was cold and windy. The cold is relative…but the wind is unarguable.

Prescription: mmmmmm pasta mini-raviolis and tomato sauce. Topped with fresh basil (splurge) and fresh-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (another splurge). Mmmmmm.

Tomorrow is to be more cold and windy. It’ll be short-lived; next week: in the 80s.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Compensating

These vegetal gems were labeled “junior bok choy.” Turns out that this is a vegetal vendor category; the store I was in didn’t make it up. I would have called them mini bok choy, or perhaps age-challenged bok choy. Nah.

Anyway, quite tasty in the corruption of stir-fry we had on Saturday night, and tonight, too. (Skipped a night, there.) If WikiPee is correct, bok choy (a phrase that makes my spell-check blotto even though it’s in my standard digital dictionary) is a subspecies of Brassica rapa L., along with bomdong (put on your Korean hat?), napa cabbage (from a Japanese term, not the valley in Cali), and turnip.

Posted at 9:48 PM | Comments Off on Not baby bok choy

Like many groc stores, the Buford Highway Farmers Market (without a single farmer in sight) puts flowers right by the front door. I think these MUST be dyed.

These, no. This is “their” color.

Sardines. No can.

Marinated apples. I wondered what the marinade was. Sugary and sweet? Sharp and vinegary? Wine?

Maybe next time I’ll buy one and see. They are in what I call the Eastern European section, but I may have my geography wrong. The Cyrillic script kinda gives it away.

Posted at 8:18 PM | Comments Off on BHFM goodies

Is this special for Lent? Rather strange to find it here in the ATL. Also unexpected that this Old World baked good is…New World flavored—pecan.

Posted at 10:18 PM | 1 Comment »

Here’s a scene for a short story, or to fit into a longer narrative: streetcar brought to a halt by an abandoned police car left in a well-marked don’t-park-here spot. No police action anywhere around; I couldn’t even guess where the driver went. Result: incessant honking by the streetcar driver, first beep-beep-beep, then beeeeeeeeeeeeee (without letup). No one had shown up by four minutes later when we departed from our very legal parking spot down the block. It’s not like the streetcar can drive around!

We have honored and celebrated π day by dining this evening on pies. Three dinner pies and two teeny sweet pies. The flavors: chicken-bacon, steak-stout, and chicken-mushroom. Dessert: apple and peach. I didn’t make them, but I did reheat them.

Posted at 8:00 PM | 2 Comments »

(Probably) jealous of family just returning after a week in Paris (rainy, but still: Paris!), I ogled these lovely French-style pastries, displayed here in the ATL. Dreaming….

Now macarons (not macaroons)…the fanciest display of them I have ever noticed was in Florence (multicolored, tall tower with ribbons and gold leaf—or perhaps my memory embroiders). Italy, not South Carolina. [Is Florence, SC, still “the place” to go for false teeth? Apologies for the mental jump….]

Posted at 9:56 PM | Comments Off on Mouthwatering offerings

Those temps well into the seventies? They faded through the late afternoon, and I planned ahead: chili. Chili is not one thing—it’s just a stew that includes chili peppers. Tonight’s stew has garbanzo beans, grated carrots, and rice along with what many chilis include.

Posted at 8:43 PM | Comments Off on Not vegetarian

A ride-through car wash is a rather unsettling experience. However, I don’t yearn for the economy of Oaxaca when we lived there years ago, and (incredibly cheap—to me—and off-street) downtown parking included a car wash as enticement for your business—totally done by hand by men/boys with buckets of scarce water and rags.

I know garbanzos are beans and beans have pods, but garbanzos in pods still catch my eye as a curiosity.

Posted at 7:46 PM | Comments Off on Cleansing-ride; commonest Cicereae