Why is it that so many times you bite into chicken salad and are confronted with gristle or tendon or whatever that nasty connective tissue is called? How much more time would it take a chicken salad maker to remove that crap? I just don’t get it. I’m so glad my boxed lunch included a brownie because the chicken salad went right back into the box. Blech.
Mom: Quick, Honey, turn on the TV the national morning shows are about to start.
Kid: Look Mom, there we are! We’re on TV! See, that’s us right there off to the left side running through the raceway complex.
Mom: Dear, I’m so glad you suggested we wear our sneakers. I totally knocked that woman and stroller out of my way and I couldn’t have done it if I was wearing my flip flops. Who in the world brings a small kid to a thing like that anyway?
Kid: Who knows. Look at that woman whining about how she didn’t get her a $50 i-book. What a loser.
Mom: Tell me about it. We need to call the computer doctor this morning to find out how much a new screen costs for the one we bought.
Kid: Don’t forget to ask him about replacing the CD-ROM and the touch pad.
Mom: We sure did get a good deal didn’t we?
We had dinner last night at Full Kee and they rocked the house yet again. I ordered steamed dumplings, hot and sour soup and Deep Fried Spicy Shrimp, Scallop and Squid and shared the dumplings and seafood with the better-half. He ordered shrimp rolls, hot and sour soup and Scallops in Garlic Sauce. He shared with me. We polished off dinner like it was the last meal on earth.
The thing I like most about Full Kee is that it is authentic Chinese. I first heard about it at work when one Chinese woman told another new-to-town Chinese woman to check it out when she needed a taste of home. Last night we sat next to a table of old men who spoke not one word in English. They ate like it was their last meal too.
I’ve had a hankering for mussels lately and last weekend we saw that one of our local grocery stores had a bag of them in their fish case. It wasn’t something we could do that night for dinner but I’ve been thinking about it since then.
When I went to the grocery store on Thursday I looked but they had no mussels. On Friday the better-half stopped at two stores and was told at the second stop that they’d just sold out. We had a delicious fiery tilapia recipe instead.
Yesterday we went to the Yellow Umbrella fish monger and got almost two pounds of mussels. The Yellow Umbrella, my friends, is the place to go to for fish. It was recommended by the better-half’s aunt and I’d totally load up the cooler with ice and head back across town to buy fish from them again. They had a wonderful selection, the place was very clean, it smelled like fresh and they talked to every single customer about their fish purchase. And, there were plenty of customers.
I found a bottle of Belgian ale at Total Wine:
We used a simple mussels recipe from epicurious. I didn’t follow their recipe for tomato sauce since I’m the KING of tomato sauce.
We served the mussels with the remains of a crusty baguette and a small salad:
We’re making mussels again:
Yesterday we went to BJ’s to stock up on a few things. The better-half was out of Claritin and I was almost out of Alavert. He likes the 24 hour dose and I can get by with a 12 hour dose. As we were using the self-checking lane (which is a wonderful thing when everything is working right) the scanner told us we couldn’t buy the Alavert. I got kind of torqued and said oh yes I will. The person working the self-check aisle told us it was now the law that they have to limit how much Psuedoephedrine they can sell in one order. She looked right at me and confirmed that I could do what I wanted to do…pay for the Alavert separately. So, we’re good to go on cooking up the meth in the lab. Only I’m too busy taking the sinus/allergy stuff so that I can breathe.
I pulled into the parking lot at work this morning and noticed I was the first one here–most of us park in the lot but a few park on the street right in front of the building. Being first usually fills me with a bit of trepidation because the first person in the building has to disarm the security system. I set it off once and even though I have successfully disarmed and armed the alarm since then, I’m always a little wary of the alarm. No worries this morning, the alarm was already blaring when I got to the front door.
I unlocked the door and disarmed the alarm. Then I switched on the lights and noticed a cell phone in the middle of the hallway. I knew the maintenance/cleaning crew uses those Nextel phones that double as walkie-talkies so I felt a bit better that the alarm was going off because one of them had been in the building. It was still creepy enough for me to turn on all the lights and then start checking cubes to see if computers were still on the desks.
Apparently, the alarm had been going off long enough that the security company had already tried calling because no one called for me to give over our secret code. I guess University police will eventually show up.
I’m working on two courses at work and I really want to work on one of them and I really don’t want to work on the other. The one I don’t particularly like is the type of course that I’ll be working on for the rest of my career there. See a problem with this? Methinks I need to get creative and figure out how to carve out a different job description.
Speaking of carving something out…MT you are on my carving list. How many times must I find a duplicate entry on this site? Jeez. I know how the other duplicates happened and have stopped doing that action. The latest duplicate? I have no idea how it happened and I’m sick of it. Sick, Sick, Sick of it.
I’ve been reading the Movable Feast blog for some months and find it fascinating. After reading this post, I decided to record the first episode of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. I mainly recorded the episode to see what the writer of the blog was like. Now, I’m hooked on the show. I can’t help but love a food show in which the host says “Fuck Cheerios” when discussing what the men (and a few women) of the wholesale market eat for breakfast.
Today I spent a lot of time in meetings. The last meeting of the day made me think about how strange it is that the most comfortable looking chairs I’ve sat in today have turned out to be the most uncomfortable. My butt was in serious revolt by the time the last meeting rolled around and I couldn’t take the slouch mode so I chose instead to shift around in my chair. I’m sure folks wondered if I needed a tube of the PrepH. My saving grace is that I tend to fidget anyway so they probably didn’t even notice.
I’m not sure what we’re having for dinner tonight but what I want is a big bowl of popcorn. I like mine with Lowery’s Season Salt and a moderate amount of melted butter.
I’d like to extend a very special thank you this morning to the 6 or 7 cars on the Shockoe Valley bridge that couldn’t pay attention to their driving. I’d like thank you for making me and a 1000 other people late for work. I’d also like to thank the brainiac in the white truck who got off the highway after the last exit before the bridge and then realized he was a flipping idiot so he backed up at a high rate of speed to get off on that last exit. The one he drove right past. Thanks for almost causing another accident which would have meant even more delay and injury all because you are a big fat turd.
