Words of the day

I brought a cheesecake to work today, for a going-away lunch. And we ended up talking about guar gum (one of the ingredients in the prefab cake). I had no clue, so I checked ever-useful Google (which any day now I'll stop typing as "Goggle" first), and found that guar is a bean, also known as clusterbean! This is wonderful. ("Bean" isn't the last syllable I'd think of first...)

So, clusterbean. And the gum that makes guar so useful? Also called galactomannan gum. Which is also excellent. Straight out of some SF story. A class of soldiers? A type of futuristic MRE? A weapon? A superhero? A humanoid alien race? A new communications technology?

So anyway, guar is a bean, and in some parts of the world it's eaten as a bean. Now I'm curious what clusterbeans taste like.

Unexpected guests

Houseguests, so I have to pick up around here darned soon. And cook more than I'd planned for just me, supplementing with the stuff I happened to get at the Butcherie this morning. Though I don't know quite how many people might show up for lunch, either. Which is a bit stressful.

So I've made:

• a tray of chicken thighs with vegetables (onion, tomato, potato, eggplant, garlic)
  
• some sausage with red cabbage, onion, and apple, in cider vinegar
  
• roasted beets

I also have pieces of yellow watermelon, hummus, lots of bread, whitefish salad, lettuce and tomatoes (aka salad on the hoof), sauteed turkey tips (I wish the Butcherie had had turkey thighs. Sigh.), cheese (if dairy is wanted), chocolate spread (the pareve kind), and chocolate-covered mints. Oh, and nuts and raisins.
I think I have enough snackage, at least...

Still to do: hard-boil lots of eggs, straighten up, take a shower. Oh, and calm down.