Change

It's an ever-changing landscape. In spring, the faint green haze early in the season gives way to riotous growth, punctuated by slashes of flower color. In summer, the green growth even more, bringing forth fruit, and the construction crews are out in full force, demolishing one edifice, building another. Fall has flaming trees, and the emerging laciness of their bone structure underneath.

And then there's winter. It's not just snow drifting into masses, or ice coating everything in a beautiful yet treacherous layer, but the roads. Every day, there are new potholes, the small ones just a nuisance, the large ones trying to eat cars, or at least gnaw on them a bit. My impression is that this year's crop is far outweighing the last few years', but the immediate always seems worst when it's already reasonably bad. Familiarity with the roads helps some, knowing just where to move to one side of the lane or another, or switch lanes entirely. But memory doesn't help when there's a gleaming new hole just emerged overnight. I know that they're a result of repeated freeze/thaw cycles, but that only makes sense to me for frost heaves (shouldn't they be called 'freeze heaves'?) and small dips in the road. How can such big holes just appear?

I prepare to commute, and hope that there aren't any surprises on my usual path.

Random foodly thoughts (mostly)

Beet blood droplets suspended in olive oil are fascinating to watch when you tip the pan.

I added half rye flour/half white flour dumplings to a basic chicken soup. They're... interesting. Actually, once I didn't expect the wrong texture, pretty good. They've got a nuttier taste, too. I'm running low on white flour, and have been debating whether or not there's time to use up another 50-lb bag before Passover. Which leads to more experiments with the rye flour Treacle_Well passed on to me in the mean time.

On the small kitchen implement front: Trader Joe's had refillable pepper grinders! Hooray!
I managed to kill my vegetable peeler this morning (it's been limping along for ages), so that's next for replacement, hopefully this afternoon.

There was such beautiful ginger at Russo's last week that I had to buy some. The skin is thin and peels off easily, which lead me to boiling bits of it in sugar syrup this morning, as if making crystallized ginger in ginger syrup. The plan is to boil it a couple more times, then add diced plums, for a batch of plum-ginger jammish stuff. I'm still debating leaving the bits of actual ginger in or not.
Also at Russo's, I found autumn poem, though labeled with an Asian name I've forgotten.

Since last week I've been bitten by an early morning straightening bug. Who knew there was floor under there? I hope it continues for a while; there's so much left to do.