Dear friends,
The good news is that I am in cookbook love. With the gift certificate that one of my boss fellas gave me for Xmas, I picked up some goodies, including the wonderful, wonderful Lands of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop, and tonight I got to test-drive it for the first time.
The bad news is that I waited until I was thoroughly exhausted before sitting down to write about it, and as a result I have lost the ability to edit, rewrite or speak English.
The good news is that I know that all I need is a good night’s sleep and an early morning show of ROTK tomorrow, and I will be back in form, and when I am, I will be more than ready to tell you why this book is worth its weight in pepper.
In the meantime, since I am still too compulsive to leave well enough alone, here are some more pieces of evidence that I am pleased as punch with my ability to download my pictures off my new camera…
Picture #1 is the view from my front stoop, facing southeast (albeit in a wide-angle view; objects, such as the intersection of 29th Street and 23rd Avenue, are closer than they appear). As I pressed the shutter, I heard a loud noise behind me and, startled, I moved the camera. When I looked at the thumbnail, I saw that the brick building across the street had this interesting stripy moire pattern. I was dead pleased with myself. Look at that, I said to myself. I am an accidental genius. If I had tried to do that on purpose, it never would have worked. Just wait till I show this to all the cool kids!
Then I downloaded it and discovered that it was a thumbnail-specific effect, and that once you enlarge it, a brick wall is a brick wall is a brick wall. Nice work, genius.
I still like this picture, because it feels friendly, much like my street.
Picture #2 is of something I found on yesterday’s field trip. I was so enamored of it that I went back after my regular Saturday morning trip to the Greenmarket and bought two bottles of it, along with a bottle of Samuel Smith’s Winter Welcome 2002-03, one of the real pleasures of winter for us, and a bottle of Lindemanns sour cherry lambic, which, if you like lambics, is one of the nicest things you will ever drink. (If you don’t like lambics, then, uh, never mind.)
The Grail Ale, incidentally, is brewed by Black Sheep Brewery in Yorkshire. It is actually a decent ale, a bit bitter but with a nice lingering finish...which, oddly enough, sounds like “Nnnnnnnnnni!”
