A little bit of this, a little bit of that

puttery Sunday
It's been one of those excellent Sundays, when doing chores around the house get done (well, some of them), things crossed off the eternal to-do list, and the weather's perfect, and none of it is onerous. So far, I've done laundry and dishes and straightened up some, and the place feels better to come home to, despite the rest of the clutter still around.

I tried to get groceries, but forgot that the one I was headed for would likely be closed. So I indulged myself with a stop at a plant place, and got some little pansies, both the classic yellow-and-purple face ones, and another kind called tiger eyes that are tawny yellow-orange with dark brown lines on them. They're now transplanted, on the porch, and I need a new bag of potting soil.

I finally used the gift certificate Theora gave me to Christina's (thank you!). I took the time to browse thoroughly. The improbably hechshered food item of the day: canned tomatillos.
What I got: fermented black beans (just because Laurie Colwin raves about them so much in Home Cooking), yellow eye steuben beans (the ones I got are a bit less dark than the tan ones on the left in the photo) (I should get some black eye beans to match :-), calypso beans (cow beans!), and anasazi beans (which I had to get because they've got the same markings as the calypso beans, but in dark red. too cool, matching beans.).
[The search for photo references has made me think I might take bean portraits before I use them. There's such a variety (there were some very cool markings on some beans I didn't get, ones that reminded me of Greek pottery, red on black, or black on red; it's hard to tell with beans :-).]
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food for Shabbat

• tilapia fillets sauteed with onions and a touch of cayenne
  
• turkey thighs baked over onions, sour cherries, and pine nuts, topped with cranberry-mango-ginger chutney
  
• dinosaur kale and cubed potatoes sauteed with onions, spicy sausage, and a bit of hot sauce
  
• vegetable melange (onion, eggplant, mushroom, roasted red peppers) with Szechuan spicy sauce

Time to start eating down the fridge, freezer, and pantry items as much as possible. I'm thinking it might be possible for me to use my freezer for Passover this year, a first; there's not so much in there right now that couldn't either (a) go into cabinets for a week (nuts, etc.), or (b) be used up in the next month (two pints of sorbet, some pesto, some focaccia starter). It would be nice to be able to stock up on meat proteins before the holiday, without having to make a Brookline run during the few days of chol ha'moed.
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free plants!
Very cool: the organization salvages plants, their something-challenged workers process them for shipping, all I pay is for shipping.