Last night Beth took the student teachers out to dinner. Several of us joined them. We went to the Silver Spring Mining Company. They have the best crab pretzels ever. I ordered one of course. They had fried pickles on the appetizer menu. People were curious, so someone ordered some. It reminded several of us of those hot pickles you sometimes get on fast food burgers. I didn’t dislike them, but I wouldn’t order them.
My main course was rockfish stuffed with crab imperial. It was awesome. It was so rich and so filling I only ate half of it. The other half is waiting in my refrigerator. Mmm… For dessert, I had a mudslide. It was like a tasty alcoholic chocolate shake. Many other people got the rice pudding. I tasted it and liked it because it was more pudding than rice. Sometimes you get more rice than pudding and you almost want to add milk to it or something. That was not the case last night.
Beth and I finished the night by making a quick trip to IKEA, but we only had 45 minutes there, so we’ll make a second trip today.
Beth is here again! She’s making her second visit to the student teachers. This time, she arrived on a Thursday and is leaving early Sunday morning. Ehhxcellent.
After picking her up from the airport, we came home and had some Zorba’s pizza. Mmmm… Zorba’s…. gggghhhhhaaa (that’s a drooling noise) While we ate, we watched Survivor. I’ve never watched a whole episode. I think I finally understand the basics of how the show works.
Denis made his world-famous avocado shakes. Beth liked it, but it was a little strange, so she didn’t have a full glass. I used to be like that, but I’ve become acclimated, so I slammed mine as usual.
Tara sent some artwork. I got a very nice tempera painting. Max got a watercolor. He liked it:
Oh, and we didn’t actually search for Spock. But we did search for caramel ice cream topping so Beth could make her home-made frappuccino this morning.
I ordered four apple trees a while back. They’re specially bred trees that won’t grow any branches. They grow small spurs off the trunk and the apples just hang there. I was very excited to try them.
They came late in March. I didn’t know where I would plant them, so I waited. And waited. It was Spring Break by the time I got them in the ground. Two of the trees had already broken bud and started growing leaves. Two of the trees still looked like sticks. It’s been alternately sunny and rainy since I planted them, and the two that sprouted are doing well. The two that haven’t sprouted still look like sticks.
I’ve been having trouble deciding if I should order replacements for the two stick-like trees. Are they dead, or are they just slow? I don’t want to order replacements and find out a couple days later everything is fine. But I don’t want to wait, find out they’re dead, then have to wait a whole year to replace them.
Two days ago, a mailer came from Miller Nurseries – the apple trees were on sale. How could I NOT get them? I ordered new trees yesterday.
There’s an impulse-buy fern that’s been in the kitchen since the fall. It’s nice because it likes the kind of light I have in the kitchen, so it’s doing well. This spring it started sending out new stems. They’re CRAZY long. The stems grow out branchless, then branches and leaves suddenly pop out of them. One stem has seemed to be growing for a long, long time. And it seems like each time I come back into the kitchen, the stem is in a different position. It moves! Sometimes it reaches up to the light from the window over the sink, other times it stretches out into the middle of the room. I’ve been worried that I might accidentally damage it as I walk by, but in the meantime, it’s really cool looking.
This picture is to show how long the stem is:
But this picture shows how really cool the stem is. It’s like it’s reaching for you.
Last night I cooked some cauliflower. I was planning on eating it with Velveeta melted on top. We had that a lot when I was a kid, and I crave it every once in a while. I had gotten the cauliflower last time I was at the grocery store, and I thought I had some Velveeta in the refridgerator. But I didn’t. Dang.
I was too lazy to go to the grocery store, so I wondered if I could use a substitue. I had some Muenster and some Romano. The Muenster was yuck. I didn’t like it at all. But the Romano was promising. It had a sharpness to it that would help the blandness of the cauliflower. I shredded a bunch of it, then sprinkled it on the cauliflower. I ate some, but it wasn’t quite right. I added pepper and ate some more, but it wasn’t quite right. I added salt and ate a little more, but it still wasn’t quite right. By this time, I’d eaten a fourth of the head of cauliflower. I threw the rest out into the back yard. I mean seriously, who eats a whole head of cauliflower?
