My kitchen windowsill is a place of honor for houseplants. Whatever is on that sill is seen so often, it must be a winsome plant. Before the remodel, I had bonsai trees and a cactus there. The cactus survived the remodel. The bonsais didn’t. They couldn’t handle the neglect while the kitchen was torn up. So I got new ones. These have been with me for a few months now and they have really settled in. I have now given them their first pruning.
The middle bonsai is a Solanum pseudocapsicum, or Jerusalem Cherry. It sounds nice, doesn’t it? But it is from the same family as Deadly Nightshade, so all parts of this plant are poisonous, including the fruit. So why do they call it a cherry if they don’t want you to eat it? The cactus is poisonous too, since it’s from the Euphorbia family. The other bonsais are a kind of tea plant and a small shrub.
Tea, cherry, shrub, and cactus:
Here are the “cherries”.
I’ve kind of gotten on a salad-inventing kick. It started when I copied the Fandango salad from Panera Bread. It’s pretty easy once you find a store-bought raspberry vinaigrette. It’s just greens, mandarin oranges, walnuts, and gorgonzola cheese. When I make it for my church dinner groups, they think I’m a genius or something.
The last dinner group I went to, I tried something different: spinach, strawberries, toasted almond slices, and orange-poppyseed dressing. It was pretty good! Since then, I’ve been trying all kinds of combinations. Some of them have been pretty gross. My latest was pretty good, though. I used a dressing I assembled myself! It was rice wine vinegar, a little oil, ground ginger, and garlic salt. If I did it again, I’d add some soy sauce. I put water chestnuts and mandarin oranges in some spinach, then put in some chicken breast pieces and toasted sesame seeds. I think I may try this one again.
In the interest of honesty, I should say I don’t eat healthy stuff every night. The night before I had this salad for dinner, my dinner was two bowls of Crunch Berries and some salted peanuts. The night before that I had half a pizza from Zorbas across the street. Grape Nuts before that, and… well, you get the picture.
Well, Fattie McBump will be staying with me for a while still. I went to the surgeon yesterday thinking he would cut off the fat hump on my shoulder, but all he did was poke it and say, “It’s a lipoma“. I already knew it was a lipoma; I wanted him to take it off! But he said that would take too much time and we’d have to reschedule. I thought I was being all clever and would just miss one class period for this. Our rescheduled appointment is at 9:30 in the morning on Friday, February 9. Now I’m gonna miss most, if not all, of a school day. grrrr….
One interesting thing he told me was that my Lumpy Fatterson is probably about as big as a golf ball. Ewww! I have a golf ball’s worth of fat in a lump in my shoulder. Take it out! Ahh! Take it out!
Here is the table I sat on while he poked my little Lumpkin:
I’ve been trying to get my hair cut for the last few days. I wanted the back of my head to look good while the doctor was cutting out the fat lump on my shoulder. (That’s tomorrow’s post) My regular place was closed on Thursday and on Sunday. I don’t know what’s going on there. I ended up going to a place I was a regular at a few years ago. Denise cut my hair. She was nice, but didn’t do a very good job. The sides of my head were all jaggedy. I hate to make it a race thing, but I have to say it: black women cut my hair better than white women. I’m sorry, but it had to be said.
I made this big deal about how I wanted my head to be round and not square. “No corners,” I said. Instead I get a shelf in the side of my head:
We finally got some snow in Baltimore. Whew! I thought it’d never come. It started yesterday with some light snow around 4:00, then kept flurrying and snow-showering through the night. We didn’t get a lot (only about an inch in most places), but at least it looks more like winter now. Baltimore County Schools have a two hour delay. We normally follow them, but it’s a teacher inservice day for us. We’re working on our accreditation. We weren’t planning to start until 9:00 anyway, so the late start doesn’t affect us.
So no day off, but at least we have some snow.
