Cooking

The pandemic has been awful but one unexpected benefit of staying at home is improvement in our cooking. Since the key to honing any skill is practice, cooking more frequently helps.

Another way to improve your dishes is to learn from talented chefs. They not only teach us, they inspire us to try new techniques, new ingredients, new spices. Two chefs I discovered recently are American chef Samin Nosrat whose bestselling book "Salt Fat Acid Heat" was made into a Netflix series and British chef Nadiya Hussain who also has a fun Netflix series ("Nadiya Bakes"). 

When the pandemic ends and I invite you over for a meal, come -- your mouth won't regret it.  :-)

What Makes You Happy

 This shirt!  "Do More Of What Makes You Happy"

What could be better? And I love the picture as it captures what makes ME happy.  :-)  The shirt has multiple pieces sewn onto it, including the big bow-flower. I got it at my favorite discount-designer store (Fox's).

Yes, that helium balloon has stayed up since New Year's.  :-)

Words & Pictures

I love good writing. Sentences that make you smile and even laugh. Like these:

- Her hunger eclipses her hauteur.

- Being tasteless requires good taste.

- Don't get too proud: the size of your funeral will likely depend on the weather.

- The details of their fight are too stupid to parse.

- I realize that it sounds like I'm bragging about my neighborhood. I am never sure where my bragging and my complaining meet up for coffee to agree about their views on the world.

- He presented himself as an art-lover but, really, he was just an art-liker.

One of these was written by me. Can you guess which one?

Ethnic Food

What the heck is that?!

I like exotic food so when I read this morning that a new Indian supermarket opened in "Little India" (Hicksville, NY), I headed straight over to Maharaja Farmers Market on Route 107. What a smorgasbord of ethnic delights!

I bought fresh food and frozen dishes I don't know how to make. Among the fresh stuff are, obviously, spicy red cayenne peppers. At the center of the picture is a green thing called karela or bitter melon. If you're not deterred by its spikes, the karela is a fruit whose texture is like cucumber and flavor is bitter. I asked how you eat it and the Indian cashier said to toss it into a salad. You can eat it either raw (intense) or cooked (mild). Candidly, I bought it simply because it looks cool. :)

Passage of Time

It's surprising how you can look at something, have a reaction, and then look at the same thing later with a totally different reaction. That just happened to me when I re-watched The Beatles perform their last concert, a spur-of-the-moment one on a London rooftop in 1969.

The first time I saw the concert, fifty-two years ago, I admired the band's artistry. If we're being honest, I also envied how they were literally the most famous people on the planet at that time. There was no question about their premier status.

Now, I feel sorry for the Fab Four. Sad that two of them (John & George) died early deaths, one suffered a horribly bad romance (Paul), and the other (Ringo) simply slid into obscurity.

We can't freeze time and as it churns, our view changes. Prepare for this; it'll happen to you.