notes from an evening

Parking annoyance: I parked in a marked, legal spot at the grocery store, parallel to the building. When I came out, there was a red car parked next to me (not a spot), and another car behind me (definitely not a spot), parking me in. I went in, they paged the owner of Mass plate whatever, and she came out and moved her car... to another place that was striped as not-parking. And she said to me, as I got in my car, how the red car shouldn't have parked there. WTF? You park me in, then try to imply you didn't do anything you oughtn't've? Very odd.

Another night of cooking real food, hooray. Somehow the meal ended up sponsored by alliums (allia?): almost everything had some oniony thing in it. I made spicy eggplant (onions and eggplant cubes sauteed, with San-J Szechuan spicy sauce added. yum), a leek-chive-fresh oregano frittata, roasted potatoes and onions with rosemary, and a tomato basil salad with balsamic vinaigrette (intending, originally, to put scallions in...). I was happy with how the food came out (and thanks to cthulhia for providing impetus to cook at all).

I went out for ice cream with a couple of friends. I hadn't had Cristina's ice cream before (Inman Square), and it's very good. I tried "chocolate moose," which was quite chocolatey. There were a bunch of other chocolate flavors on the menu, too: I wouldn't mind a comparison taste test some time... I also had a taste of their ginger ice cream. From what I remember of the JP Licks ginger ice cream, this was a bit less sweet and m ore gingery. But I had the JP Licks a while ago, so this is just impression based on memory. All this ice cream goodness with a background of Madonna music from the 80s...
Oh, and I got to make silly faces at a friend's baby, which is always entertaining. I may have given him his first 'eggs' on his knees... and he seemed to like it.
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Random thoughts on cloning

Yesterday on NPR there was a discussion about the ethics of human cloning. One of the guests said how there could be difficulties in even the most innocuous sorts of cloning situations, such as an infertile couple cloning one of the parents to have a kid. The commentator went on to talk about family dynamics issues with a kid being almost exactly like one parent (improper desires, etc).

( cloning thoughts (thoughts on cloning, that is, not duplicating my thoughts in your brain... aren't you glad?) )

Veggies: week 1

This afternoon, just before the downpour, I picked up the first installment of veggies. I was surprised at how much there was (it being early in the season), both a boxful and an extra bag.

What was included:

2 big heads of green leaf lettuce
a largish bag of spinach
a bag of arugula
a large bouquet of multi-colored radishes with their greens (edible too)
3 heads of radicchio (the outer leaves looked rather more like red leaf lettuce)
a big bunch of kale
a bunch of turnip greens
a bunch of mixed greens (according to the weekly news sheet, including mustard greens and Russian kale, whatever that is)
a bottle of honey, a complete surprise: apparently the farm manager has put 4 bee hives on the edges of the farm, to encourage pollination.

Tonight I sauteed the mixed greens with minced onions, added 5 pepper oil, toasted sesame oil, and tofu cubes marinated in soy sauce, had that over a baked potato. I also put some lettuce, spinach, arugula, radicchio, scallions, fresh basil (picked in the rain tonight from the porch), and a tomato together with a couple of hard boiled eggs to make a salad, dressed with balsamic vinaigrette.

I think I'll end up cooking the rest of the need-to-cook greens tomorrow, maybe come up with some recipe for greens-with-pasta for potluck or something. And lots of salad (those heads of lettuce are rather a lot for one person to get through... have to get guests...).